Chubba

They're all crosswind though, wind is 99% of the time directly on shore and there's only 50ft of beach max inland.

Fair enough, the beach they land on is where I kitesurf, it's usually 20 knots 7 days a week :) I guess if you had nice soft sand to land into you would just slide it in everytime anyway.

It was more along the lines of "why don't the majority of tandem jumps stand up"? I'm really new to the sport, is it because of the equipment? I see most AFF jumpers stand up on their big student canopies, why aren't tandems masters standing up with their massive tandem canopies? These are legit questions, I have no idea... I would have assumed two people, twice the weight, twice the size of the canopy and all was fine and dandy to flare in perfectly to stand up everytime? Don't take any offence to this anyone, I only learn by asking questions.

I was suprised she didn't break herself on that one. I just don't understand tandem landings, they seem incredibly harsh in nearly all cases... I go down the road every saturday and watch the tandem factory come in on the beach and they're lucky to have sand to slam into. What's the rate of landing injury for tandem jumpers compared to AFF1?

It only gets better I got Stage 5 and 6 this Saturday. I've seen probably 30 - 40 AFF's Stage 1's in person so far and NOBODY has a stand up landing so don't worry about that. I landed on my ass my Stage 1 but did tippy toe landings for Stage 2 - 4 (Stage 2 was 1.2km off dropzone in someones backyard)... you just got to keep your legs together and not be afraid of the ground, those massive student canopies aren't going to slam you in (ideally ).

Rig it up as a powerkite and go kitesurfing. ... though seriously, I'm having a VERY hard time seeing the difference between a ram air cell canopy and my powerkite with open air cells. Prove me wrong someone :(

Well I went to the doctor this morning, he thinks it's purely muscle with maybe a bit of connective tissue damage... should heal in a few days... it is bruised as hell. Hurt this morning, massive pain, worse then yesterday... but right now (12 hours later) I'm not even noticing it. /fingers crossed, I might be back to the DZ for AFF 5 in a week. Thanks for all the replies, this is my first "proper" post on DZ and I'm happy people are accepting even though I'm a noob.

I only got 4 jumps, but I say it's fairly obvious that going feet first would be worse then belly. Hell, even if you do a PLF, you will still be landing on your side/back @ MUCH higher speeds then belly flying. It's not even going to be a roll, 170mph nobody could go through the full seqeuence of a PLF in a millionth of a second... they would just SPLAT.

I was the same, I didn't even care about skydiving, it was just merely the stepping stone to better things. Then I jumped I got excited and started reading articles/forums/watching videos for hours each day about skydiving. Now I'm convinced that skydiving has so much awesome variety to offer that I don't even think about BASE at all, now my longterm goal is freeflying rather then jumping off a cliff. Have fun! The first jump is

Definetely, I took the month off on purpose to save up the money for 4 - 9, I was planning on doing 3 dives today and 3 dives in a weeks time. My masterplan failed me obviously :) Here's hoping my shoulder is good in a few days so I can head back. It's pretty much better now in the joint, pain free.. it's just the front deltoid/pec muscle is MASSIVELY bruised. If my instructor wasn't such a cainer I doubt I would have come back after this dive... catching my spin in probably less then 0.5 second gives me great confidence in his abilities.

Well today I jumped my AFF4, it had been 1 month exactly since AFF3. All I can say is, HOLY SHIT, I have a newfound respect for skydiving. Here's how it went down, it was a Cessna 182 exit, linked at the shoulder. On my way out, my rig hit the door (didn't know that till debrief) and viola, upside down

Overdose on fruit (citrus is good) and you will be good in no time.

I had a ~2km off dropzone landing on my AFF2. Radio in my helmet didn't work and consequently I zoomed downwind for a few minutes before I reaslied what was going on. Nearly shat my pants on that one when all I could see around me was roads, bush and powerlines.

Thanks skymama! I don't know whether it helped me or freaked me out reading this site for hours a day for multiple months. I must admit a few things took me by complete suprise when I first turned up. The first was the size of the jump plane (Cessna 182)... it was absolutely mind boggling that they expected 5 jumpers and pilot to cram into that space :) The second were the instructors and skydivers... what a weird bunch of people :) Within 60 seconds of turning up the chief instructor was playing jokes on me, very friendly group of people... extremely relaxed atmosphere at this DZ... 1 hangar + 1 cessna + 1 round table with chairs. Thirdly.. The freefalling sensation at first dissapointed me, completely different then I thought... then as I relaxed a bit I slowly realised it was better then expected. I thought it would be this intense, psycho, mindboggling falling feeling... but really it was a nice, calm, floating sensation. It didn't feel CRAZY, it just felt NICE, extremely NICE

Hello DZ.com :) Been lurking around on this forum for a few months, reading and watching videos while I've been saving up $$ for my AFF course. Well today I took my first AFF jump so I decided it was time to finally sign up. After searching around a bunch of DZ's I found a local one that was small (1 Cessna) and really tight nit. The jump could not have went better, climb out was insanely scary for me... but after that myself and 2 instructors flew 110% stable and I did my practice pulls @ 10k allowing me to just enjoy the fall, definetely the best feeling ever. Waved off at 4.5k, opened up fine and flew down to a stand up landing via radio assistance. I stuck around, bought my "first jump carton of beer" for my instructors and DZ operators. Booked in to do stage 2 in a weeks time. Sooo... Hello DZ.com :D