Snowflake

Sounds like wire fraud to me. Did you contact the authorities?

My suggestion is do a hop and pop(pull as soon as you clear the plane) and check your altitude at exit and when your canopy is fully open. Things to take in to account sub terminal opening, Forward velocity. (Just a general reply to no one in particular)

1. What do you want to do?......CREW, swoop,, not sure? Figure that part out first(if you change your mind no biggie, but at least have an idea of where you want to be) 2. Educate your self. 7 vs 9 cell, "elliptical" vs "square", Tri-cell/cross braced vs not. 3. Ask experienced jumpers what they jump and what they think of there canopies. Check out canopy makers websites. Most of them have some good info. 4. Demo the canopies your thinking about buying first. 5 Make a decision. My .02 I don't know your W/L but there's nothing wrong with flying the 190 until you can pass BillVons downsizing "tasks"....I'm too lazy to find the link, but I think it's under safetyQuote

You guy's jumpin at Waller now?

I love Standard Issue. To bad he doesn't sell that also. Not sure why, might have to do with the two/four way headdown. Tell your buddy to break that shit out, when you see him at the DZ.

What if his pace is 1 every 6 months?

My opinion is that your trying to get certain actions into "muscle memory". Frequency and repetition count more than anything else. I averaged 1 a week through AFF, and would have gone faster if I could have afforded it. That's my .02

Actually, allure is a place for freaks but it is more of a private club. I can't believe no one mentioned one to one on 5th and red river. One to One is skydiver owned go there and look for the short guy with a shaved head(Gregg). He can hook you up with the lowdown. on Austin http://one2onebar.com/ Pick up a copy of the Austin Chronicle, cause you never know who's playin

True, but I'd rather know my options even if they are outside the bounds of my parameters.

I'd go for the Puerto Rico Boogie. It's cheap to get to the VI/BVI from there and PR is a cool place to visit. Plus the boogie is on the quiet/surfer side of the island near the observatory

Statistics say there will be people who were better and worse in respect to standing up landings. Being generous you've only had at most 77 seconds of flaring. Give it time to get into muscle memory. Don't sweat the style points, as long as your not pounding in or being a danger to others. It will come to you

Let me throw this out there. Talk to your instructors about 1 stage vs 2 stage flares. IMHO it's real hard to land no wind with a 1 stage flare. I don't know if that's your issue, but it's useful information edit to add If it comes down to a choice of my gear getting dirty and looking foolish or hurting myself. I'll choose getting my gear dirty every time. I really try to avoid putting myself in situations where I have to make that choice though.

What they said especially the part about talking to an instructor/trusted up jumper. Let me add The few people I've helped with their track the problem wasn't the de arch, but that they were not applying any pressure to their legs. Try going into a track on a creeper with someone loosely holding on to your feet. When you reach track position you should be trying to push down against their grip. I found that people that needed help with their track were not applying pressure when we were creeping it. The de-arch is only one part of the track legs are important too.

I can't stop laughing.....classic [url]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45807375[url] http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45807375

The hands down winner is the Lutzmiester. You can't get any closer to a Darwin award, and live to talk about it. Stupidity taken to a "ho nuvah levewl" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV-wWegKpvs

This may be valid or not. I have a different injury to my shoulder. If their teaching you to pull by moving your arm in a circular motion, try moving your arm from the elbow down straight down like your being held up and you have to reach for a gun at your hip quick. For me the circular motion doesn't bother me, but you throw in the 180 rotation I have to do at the same time causes me pain. Talk to your instructors about it

I tried to fly (and more importantly flare, at height obviously) my canopy with 1 arm because I was curious and it always comes up as a topic. Extremely hard The bad thing is you're at the mercy of the wind, it's all good getting both toggles in 1 hand, but on your final you will be probably blown crosswind/downwind and you can't correct it without dropping a toggle... and I definitely wouldn't want to land downwind with no flare. Your not at the mercy of the wind with one arm. I know this!! When turning you have to compensate for the fact that your most likely going to be pulling the brake line opposite your arm farther. Lets say you only have your right arm. when you pull down you'll probably turn left, because you'll tend to pull down the right side of your body. move your arm across your body and you'll turn right. To flare you have to move diagonally down and to the left. I actually grabbed my left toggle with my left hand at a point a little below my neck and finished the flare with both hands. It was twitchy ,but it worked and if I had my left arm working I could have run it out . Instead I stumbled and hit the ground which sucked. I was under a [email protected]:1 so I didn't have to pull down as far to flare or turn. Don't know if that makes a big difference for turns, but I imagine it does for the flare I did end up landing down wind, but only because I spent most of my time flying in circles trying to get my arm back in socket and not paying enough attention to where I was Do you really think you have enough experience at 25 jumps to be saying what is and what is not possible?

I think I would probably pass out if that happened to me, I cannot imagine how painful that must be. My biggest fear is having both pop out and leaving my fate to the AAD! It sounds like it takes a violent action before your shoulder comes out, if that's the case I wouldn't worry too much. My incident was my fault. I trusted a student that I had done coach jumps with to go on go with a connected exit. she didn't go until I pulled her off the plane. needless to say the difference in speed between the two of us caused my shoulder to come out. Other than that I've had it pop out and right back in once in free fall, when I first started sit flying which doesn't leave me without an arm, but hurts like a MF'er. Either way if you still have the bands for PT then start strengthening your shoulders. Can't hurt and it might help. Depending on how "loose" your shoulder joints are. You might also want to consult with your orthopedic dude. Hope that doesn't muddy the water too much. PS I doubt you'd pass out it's amazing how much pain you can take if you believe your life depends on it. PSS For peace of mind you can ask the AFF instructor to go over/recommend procedures for you to take if it does happen. No matter what ......HAVE A PLAN!!!!! (Edit. I had to modify my reach and pull from day one. For symmetry most teach you to reach in a circular motion, if it was just the circular motion without rotation I could do it, but you have to rotate your hand 180 degrees while doing the circular motion. My shoulder don't like that at all. I reach down and angle in to the hacky/handle, and have had no problems what so ever.)

I don't use a brace, but I have bad shoulders and have dislocated my shoulder on exit, so I'll give you my .02 First lets look at it from a procedure standpoint. Your right comes out you can pull your reserve. If it's your left you can pull your main. Then you need to land. To land you have a couple of options. use your good arm to release the toggles. you can steer with both toggles in one hand, it's a little tricky but not all that hard. You can also steer with one hand and then just before you land trnsfer the toggle to your bad arm and flare which is easier to steer, but probably painful. The thing is to have a well thought out plan before it happens. I found the hardest thing was getting out of the rig. I had to have help to do that and would have been in excruciating pain if I had had to do it myself. It also helps if you can tell someone how to reduce your shoulder. PS think it hurts when it comes out? Just try going from 120 to 20 mph in a few seconds with it out of socket.

If you can find the book for Skydive U get it and read it. In one part it describes The "red zone", which i think is 10 yards from your target. At that point it's better to stop, see where you wanna go, and slowly move in from that point. If you blow by your target it's harder to cancel the speed turn and then close again. As opposed to moving in slowly from 10 yards out. The same applies to when your closing vertical distance so you don't go low. At this point in time slow=fast. Later if RW turns out to be your thing fast will equal fast, if that doesn't make sense now it will later

The simple answer is that on your belly pushing down with your right arm turns you right, because your right side is going slower. So your body "spins" around that point. The same applies to your left leg. Push down with your right arm and your left leg at the same time and you should be "spinning" with the axis through your stomach. There are all kinds of variations on that theme. Almost all are based on using your extremities as control surfaces. I agree with #141 that your over thinking a little. Quite frankly flips and barrel rolls are just a tool to make sure you can get stable. Thus you passed, because you got stable. They really don't give a crap about the form. Only that you got stable. You won't really be using them to do RW, and in freefly you use the control surfaces a little different, and your torso becomes more of a control surface. If you really want to get technical look for freefall and center of pressure vs center of gravity or CP v CG. Also look up how planes respond to inputs. In the end it's all fluid dynamics

I never liked the idea of doing short delays. My personal preference from the beginning. I say do an AFF. It won't cure your problems, but it will help. I was a big time swimmer on exit even after i finished AFF, if I had gone through static or some other progression. I would probably still be on student status. It's a lot easier if you have 55 seconds to fix the five seconds you blew on exit. Than to think about trying to fix that first five seconds over and over again. Thats my personal opinion, and it may or may not be valid to your situation, since I went through AFF. I swam all my AFF exits and only failed one. PS if your swimming it's your hindbrain telling you to keep your feet under you. Even though your brain knows better, it takes a few seconds to get control. One way or another if you keep at it you will get control

You are correct. But on this site, we call them ignorant liberals

You can't really know until you do it. I didn't know until I had the responsibility for saving my own life and had some idea of all the things that could possibly go wrong. The fear of heights is natural for most human beings, and so is the fear of death. My insides still do flip flops at heights under a mile. At 2 1/2 miles up height becomes abstract, only your brain knows your that high. You can always do 1 AFF or static jump and decide it's not for you. For that matter you could go thru First jump class and decide it's not for you. My pet name for FJC is Death School AKA "here are all the ways you can die skydiving". Think your imagination bugs you now see how it is after getting all the malfunction information. All that being said. I love this sport!!!!!! "Don't let the fear of dying keep you from living." I played Ultimate for a long time(3 Nationals, 1 Worlds ). I'm just too lazy and old to play anymore. Thats why I took up skydiving, really. You can only get horizontal for a second at max. Skydiving you get horizontal for 60 seconds. How sweet is that

Just remember cheese is no good unless you have some whine with it. OHHH MY PUSSY HURTS!!!! Talking about my cat of course. I just gave him an old fashioned American beat down. Oh BTW Yes I am. I have to butter my ears to get my head thru the door. Thats how good I am. You actually have a point, but expressing it like that means you can't be taken seriously. Thanks for the giggles, and good luck with your bashing/trolling.