faulknerwn

Because they get over the incredible initial fear of jumping out of an airplane on the somewhat more controlled circumstances of tandems, and have been walked through the landing process with an experienced instructor right there showing them landing patterns and the dropzone and such. Going on the first jump solo, they fight fear, the unknown of what the body position should feel like, and have never flown a canopy before so even more fear. The tandems help get them comfortable with the skydive and flying the parachute.

I had wanted to go since I was a little kid and it was exam week in grad school in 1993. Drove 3 hours to the closest dz, did 2 static line jumps the first day and never looked back!

We had a guy with 30 jumps or so spiral and set off our student Mars on a Solo 210. I don't remember what airspeed he achieved though I remember looking it up at the time. Also had another guy who had a changeable Vigil and accidently had it in student mode and fired it on a Storm 150 I believe...

Get the students to relax. Smile. Laugh. Make faces at them in freefall. If you can get them to relax 90% of your job is done. My favorite other AFF instructor was super chill and our students tended to perform well. Not because we were more spectacular at training or anything else - but we were relaxed so they were. In the airplane - even if you are a rookie and are scared to death to be an instructor (I have been there!) smile and relax. I have had a LOT of students tell me a hundred or two hundred jumps later tell me how it was so relaxing to jump with me but instructor X stressed them the heck out and they performed poorly partly because of being stressed about the instructor. If they see the instructor calm and relaxed, they will reflect that. If their instructor is not worried and is chill, it will calm them down and they will perform better. I had one licensed skydiver who came to my dropzone and talking to him he told me how his original dz flunked him on level 1 for not doing a good exit count. I was in disbelief. I jump at a 182 dz, and even though we practice a lot on the ground, what the student does on a strut can be creative. I am an instructor - I am used to students doing pushups on the step. I had a student who did his first two jumps the same day. The first jump he did a couple counts and the second he climbed out and left. And I just went into freefall on the second one laughing because his first one he was doing pushups. And he did GREAT in freefall on both jumps. Relax and give the student a chance to learn.

Yes - you were the organizer of the 1997 record. We tried to do another record attempt in 2005 but could not get enough interest so we dropped the idea.

I have a few medals at nationals with Pat from years back. Sad to hear he is gone.

Because even other people in the audience could not usually hear audience questions, he would normally repeat them himself over the microphone. https://www.facebook.com/betoorourke/?ref=br_rs is his facebook page. If you scroll down you will see thousands of live stream videos

Beto O'Rourke - a candidate for senate in Texas - live streams every single town hall he does - just using an iphone and facebook live. These are in rooms of several hundred people or more. Has anyone even tried doing it on something like an iphone to see how well it would work? Even as just a test?

Mike McGowan (famous videographer) has a video out there where he cut away a pc-in-tow and his main came out and entangled his reserve but unfortunately since the risers were cut away they were out of reach and he could not grab them or affect them. There have been cases each way where cutting away or not cutting away would have been better. I do have a friend though who would be dead if he had cutaway a total. This was probably 20 years ago. Big guy, 50 jumps or so. Had his pc handle squished down into his pouch and could not get it out. Rookie so probably went a bit head low as he was fumbling for it. Gave up and dumped his reserve. It broke 2-3 lines on it (it was a 250ish of some sort). He unstowed his brakes and his reserve collapsed and started streamering. He then got REALLY motivated to find the main handle and did and he got it out and landed the main with a streamered reserve. If he had cutaway the main he would have died.

What kind of airplane do you jump?

There is some company (Aerodyne I think?) that ships their new rigs with slinks to attach the bag with. I have seen one pull through - but it was only routed through once instead of twice - admittedly the way that it is attached on theirs makes it seem like you should only go through once.

I'm glad you said that - I had not seen that. I am going to have to give the jumpers at my Cessna dz a heads up. I wish they would publish these potential changes so that people could chime in with thoughts beforehand. If they do I have not seen it.

15 years ago I was over in Tokyo on business and I went with a girl from the office to the skydiving center. We hung out all day Saturday because the winds were too high and I showed them CRW videos, and we had fun. Very few people spoke English. At the end of the day my friend from work headed back to Tokyo but I ended up crashing on the floor of the hanger with the rest of them. We went out to dinner and after observing my very pitiful abilities with chopsticks someone managed to find me the only fork probably within a 100 mile area for which I was very thankful :-) We went back, drank beer, played cards - which I just had to figure out the rules. There was one guy in the group who was telling stories and who was clearly the comedian of the group. I don't have the faintest idea what he was talking about but he was clearly hilarious and I was laughing so much with everyone that someone even asked if I spoke Japanese. Nope he is just funny :-) Understanding the language is highly overrated!

I have never met him but my question to you was he nice to people who did not have white skin? We have had people from all over the planet who did not speak great English. Using translators in their group or translation apps on your phone it is easy to communicate these days. Heck I have not been there but from what I understand half of the people at the dropzones in Hawaii are Japanese tourists. Especially with modern technology it is easier than ever to communicate. Our first group this morning was a black-skinned family of 4. The organizer was a male who is in the US military. He talked to his family in a language I have no idea what it was because it was not one I recognized. They understood enough English and were super sweet and wonderful and the type of customers we would love to have come back. I have jumped in Japan and Brazil and Spain and elsewhere - should I have not been allowed to jump in Japan because my Japanese was fairly limited to hello and goodbye and thank you? I truly think most people who think like this have never spent much or any time overseas. I love nothing more.

We switched to this a few years ago with great success. Our first solo students perform WAY better than when their first jump was solo with two instructors. I have had almost no issues with first solo jumps this way - far less than when we didn't require tandems and had two instructors.

Maybe I have ear problems or super small ears (I do always wear XS helmets), but I cannot even wear ear plugs in the plane to 14k without having to take them out to clear my ears. I cannot clear my ears with them in. I have skydived with a head cold before (bad idea) and that was nothing compared to the pain I felt in freefall when I accidently wore my ear plugs. I thought I exploded my ears. And for the person who worries about mental clarity - I think that is an individual thing. I do not notice freefall noise. At all. Whether I wear a helmet or not. Maybe I would have when I was a rookie but I have enough experience now that my brain tunes it all out. And my audible to me sounds just as painfully loud to me in freefall as it does on the ground - I would actually prefer to lower the volume... But it definitely sounds like I an exception to the rule!

I think a lot depends on your head and ear size. All my helmets are XS so I have a small head. I religiously wear earplugs on the way up but even then I usually have to pull them out at least once on the way (cheap foam ones) on the way up to clear my ears. I forgot them once and freefall them and thought my head was going to explode. Freefalling with a head cold was nothing compared to how much that hurt me. So I suspect if you have a big head/ears they will not be so snug to be an issue. But for me it is a big deal. I have contemplated over the years buying me some fancy earplugs that would eliminate this issues but never have.

I don't really see the ability to pull a front riser as an issue - I truly doubt any woman competing in swooping has an issue with front risers. To me it is all a weight issue - I could see dividing competitions into weight classes rather than dividing by sex. That would be a fairer division. A 130 pound guy does not really have any advantage over a 130 pound woman. The female may be shorter and have less drag if anything..

I don't mind the two hands on each handle if the people have an RSL. But I suspect it has killed friends of mine who did not have one on a particular jump and went back into freefall trying to find the reserve handle. I much prefer the one hand on each handle because I have been in freefall after a cutaway multiple times spinning like a top and I would not have wanted to be fumbling and searching for a handle while tumbling. I think that many/most skydivers can adapt during a cutaway. My 3rd or 4th cutaway years ago I pulled the cutaway not quite far enough and only one riser released. It was very obvious (and actually quite nice as I went from spinning out of control to straight down under a streamer.) I took an extra half a second to finish cutting away and then pulled my reserve. It was not difficult at all to change procedures a tad. There are hundreds of youtube videos of things not going quite like we teach in the FJC and skydivers successfully pulling out their freebags and throwing them or clearing entanglements by releasing their RSLs and such. Of my 20-ish cutaways, 4-5 have had some "unusual" element to them where I had to adapt. I believe in the KISS principle and I believe its good to keep things simple for rookies, but experienced skydivers need to think and analyze beyond the simple one procedure for everything (pc in tow for example). I remember many years ago I cutaway at 7-8k after a crw wrap, deliberately not having my hand on my reserve handle because I wanted to get separation from the mess and had lots of altitude to get stable. I just remember the initial tumble out of control after I got free of the spinning mess and trying to find my reserve handle during that tumble, and not seeing it because I was out of control. It was easy to find once I was stable. I just remember thinking at the time that I was going to look like an absolute idiot in Parachutist chopping at 7 and never pulling my reserve.

I don't think that they are that common. I have between 10-11,000 jumps and have had only two really hard opening. Some brisk ones over the years but only two which actually left me sore the next day. One was when I dumped a belly mount round reserve at terminal (definite ouch). The second was when I took a tail-pocketed mesh slider Lightning CRW canopy to terminal (The trail plane was REALLY high and if I didn't do a long delay I wouldn't get in. I was the only person from the trail plane to dock :) I was definitely sore the next day though - but I knew that I would be when I did it!) I suspect that they are more common in places where fewer people pack for themselves and they have their rigs packed by rushed packers instead of taking time to do it themselves. Definitely any canopy can have a rogue opening, but I definitely think some are much more prone to it than others.

You did fine. You are alive and walking. You might check out USPA's VR videos of malfunctions - they might help you get used to seeing some things in a more realistic way than just looking at pictures...

I jumped it a couple times on RW jumps and had nice pleasant openings. The owner of the canopy actually got injured from a slammer opener on his wingsuit. I liked the canopy - it seemed to be a cross between the Diablo and the Triathlon - not as radical and fun as the Diablo, but a better flare and performance than the Triathlon.

I have a ton of reserve rides over the years - my Tempo 120's and PD 113's and 126's (I am not that big so not too heavily loaded) were both very docile and easy to fly and land. MicroRavens suck. Rounds suck. One of my reserve rides I chopped spinning on my back and my PD 126 opened with a bunch of line twists. I spread the risers and kicked. Got nowhere. Pushed the risers together and kicked and got nowhere. Finally pushed one riser forward and one back and finally got out of the twists. The whole time the canopy flew stable right back to the dz.... I have never ridden a Smart on a true reserve ride but I jumped a demo 135(?) at a boogie. It was docile but super flat trimmed. I was test jumping it so I tried using rear risers and such - I could not use the rear risers at all without stalling it. Which could be good or bad depending on the situation you are in. My worry with Optimums is the crazy number of videos there are on youtube of them sniveling. In 20+ reserve rides I have never had one snivel. And I am ok with that. I have lost friends do to low reserve pulls so I would much prefer a hard fast reserve opening than a soft one.

I don't know if you guys have gone to electronic waivers but if so it would be easy to pull that data in. And I bet for paper waivers you could easily find a ton of rookie wanna be student skydivers who will enter that data from paper waivers into an Excel spreadsheet for jump credit.

I randomly saw this in my quora feed today - there is an example here of just the difference between a cheaper lens and an expensive lens - small sports cams can't even compare - print out an 8x10 and the difference will be obvious. https://www.quora.com/?digest_story=78777368 That being said when I jump my heavy video helmet I only do it with canopies that ALWAYS open soft. I have some that I have more of a worry whether it will open at all than if it will open hard. Most videographers use similar canopy choices..