Melt16

It seems to be working for me though. Fortunately at our DZ the wind usually blows in the same direction all the time. So its easy to setup the final approach. What would you do differently?

Atmo is short for atmonauti, a sort of track where you shape yourself like the wing of the plane and get good lateral movement instead of going down. Check out www.atmonauti.com for more info. I find its easier to hit your spot if you use the same landing pattern each time. I make my final approach turn at roughly the same spot every time and at the same altitude. Obviously if the wind is strong I adjust how far away the final approach begins from the target.

Well we were missing our main plane for the last few weeks as it was away for a service and some paperwork. I did jumps 48 and 49 on that day in the little replacement plane that takes ages and only gets to 8000ft. So i was pretty stoked when we were about to board the little plane for my 50th jump when suddenly our big plane came into view over the runway and landed. So got to jump in that back at 13000 ft Didn't do anything special, just some Atmo but it was fun and I had a wonderful skydive and hit my landing right on the spot!

Got 4 jumps in on Saturday and reached my first milestone, 50 jumps! I must say since I bought my own rig I've found I've enjoyed each jump more and more. Back when I was using a variety of club rigs I didn't feel like I was progressing at all, and you always had that additional stress of the rig not fitting right or you not being able to have consistent canopy control. Can't wait to get back into the sky again. Blue Skies

Which Go Pro Hero mounting is that? Or is it just a part of the Helmet Hero and you left the rest out?

Hey, I got mine already. Check out this post. It has some pics of my suit and a small review. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3350802;page=unread#unread

Bear Grylls rocks, he has a great TV show and I have a lot of respect for what that guy does.

aaah, I get it so you feel more of the downward acceleration than jumping out a plane. Sounds cool. Also like the point made about being all able to hang on the skids and let go at the same time

Sounds like fun, but I don't see whats so great about doing a hop n pop from a heli? Could someone explain why its so awesome?

I've just finished my AFF and now doing my ISP program. I'm doing miserably bad, as I'm battling to move forward in the sky to dock on my instructor. He has given me some good advice and said one of my issues is that I am backsliding, this has been corrected by widening and straightening my legs but when I try to move forward just feels like I am going nowhere Was just wondering if any of you could give some tips on moving forward and other things I can do that will help. Thanks

Agreed. I got 15 jumps now and can't stop talking to people about the jumps. I got my one mate who keeps moaning about how I keep going on about it but he is doing his first jumps, AFF 1, 2 & 3 on Sunday and I can't wait to tell him to shut up hahaha

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments. Yes I agree you can learn a lot about yourself and what you are doing in a jump to improve yourself. I was fortunate in that my instructors both wore helmets with cameras so I actually had film from both angles. No additional money was charged, I think they were gracious enough to realise the course is expensive enough as it is

I would say once you are no longer a student and capable to jump out by yourself.

I'm definately more comfortable with one of my instructors than the other. The one is more serious, and it sounds like he is crapping on me, rather than telling me what I'm doing wrong, while my other is more laid back and chilled and just says things in a nice way. Due to my personality and upbringing I respond better to the more laid back instructor.

For anyone whose keen to watch me do my first few jumps... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZRZGK2fb7o Thanks to the advice on this forum I ended up using Sony Vegas Movie Studio to do the editing and DIVX converter to pull the DVD video into AVI format. Let me know what you think LOL.