davelepka

Bingo! If you assume that packers are going to take care of X, Y, and Z, and they don't, you have a real problem on your hands. If you assume that they won't, and you do X, Y, and Z yourself, and it turns out that they would have done those things for you, your biggest problem is that you wasted 60 seconds doing shit you didn't need to.

A couple thoughts, a 260 at .88 puts you at the 'bigger' end of skydivers, and if what you are jumping is an actual PD260 (as-in the model 'PD260, and not a 260 built by PD which could be a Navigator) than what you have is an F-111 canopy. F-111 is a different animal than a zero-porosity canopy, and in truth, .88 is a fairly high WL for that type of canopy. You would probably not want to jump anything smaller than a 260 in F-111 given your size and experience level. That said, a z-po canopy is going to be a better choice for sure. A 240 or 230 z-po canopy will land you just as soft, and will do better in winds. Some people will argue that the F-111 is 'just fine', and it might be, but a z-po canopy is 'just better'. For the record, my first 100 jumps were on various F-11 canopies from 280 down to 190, with a max WL of about 1.1 to 1.

Just to put this in perspective, with two whole jumps under your belt, you had a skydive where you didn't perform your best, right? News flash, everyone has jumps where they don't perform their best, regardless of their overall experience. Given your two whole jumps going in, I think that you can cut yourself some slack and maybe not use the word 'failure'. Did you open a parachute? Did you land that parachute without injury to yourself or others? It's hard to call that a failure in my book. AFF is a fast paced, challenging program. Most people (literally most, as-in more than half) do not make it all the way to an A license without a re-jump. The point of the program is to allow you to learn the skills you need, it's not a series of test jumps to confirm what you already know. So you're taking more than one jump to learn a certain skill, and FYI. the transition from lv 2 to lv 3 is the biggest one in the program. Everything else is tiny little building blocks, but going from having two instructors holding your harness to being solo in freefall is by far the biggest step in the program. Hit the tunnel, and worry more about just relaxing than anything else. If you're relaxed, things will either just go great, or you'll be clear-headed and can solve any problem that does come up.

Overall, you're making a very good choice. It's a real 'turning point' in a jumper career when they decide that their canopy is 'small enough', and they end the drive to keep going smaller. No, they're not. Again, it's not the size of the rig, it's the harness that you're having issue with. Restriction in the shoulder/yoke are (as you indicated) is all harness related. Every container is about the same up in that area, but harnesses can be vastly different. If your rig was wider than your body, or was so long that your butt was touching your BOC when you tried to arch, that's a container size issue for sure.

Just a generic response to the idea of this thread, but you need to REALLY think through the consequences of your actions before you involve yourself in someone else's skydive. Let's take the 'harmless' idea of dumping someone out at 10k. Even if everyone else on the load and the ground knows what you're doing, and you cover all the bases you can, how about - - a malfunction? How far away will the main and freebag drift if the jumper chops up high? Are you going to scour 10 sq miles of countryside to help find the $2000 worth of stuff that's now lost? - a hard opening? Ever heard of an opening hard enough to cause injury? What are the odds of a hard opening when the jumper isn't expecting the deployment, you're hanging off their harness, and you're up in the thin air? How about if you dump someone out, they get hurt, and then have to sit under canopy for 10 min trying to get to the ground? What if they're injured and unable to steer their canopy? How far away from help will they land? So 10 min under canopy and 30 min laying on the ground waiting to be found? Now you could say that either of the above could happen to a jumper who decides to dump high, but the key word there is that the JUMPER decides to do this, not someone else decides for them. The best to know if a prank is acceptable is to look at the time/place. You can do anything you want, provided that it happens before the jumper hits the loading area or after they walk in from the landing area, and that the prank doesn't carry over into either of those areas. As comfortable as you might become with skydiving, remember that everyone's life is literally on the line, and that things go from regular 'fun day at the DZ' to 'someone ends up dead for no good reason' very, very quickly. Every fatality I've ever seen started off as business as usual, which turned into a mal or other problem, and ended with a dead jumper less than 30 seconds later. I've got a lot of time shooting tandem and student videos, and early on I learned that the #1 rule of doing that job is to 'do no harm'. No matter what happens, you can not become a safety hazard to the student in the course of doing your job. Even if you have to shit-can the video in order to avoid adding an ounce of risk to the student, you shit-can the video. I've taken that same thought process into my other jumps in that no matter what happens, I'm not going to be a part of subtracting from the safety of another jumpers skydive. One thing you can count on when jumping with me is that you will have every opportunity to conduct a safe skydive, and that I will never 'subtract' from that part of your jump. I may 'add' to it by helping you or otherwise influencing related factors, but the one thing I will never do is be any part of anything that could even remotely become a link in a chain of events that leads to an accident.

That's not related to the size of your container, that's a problem with the size of your harness. It's two different things, just like (in your case) the size of your container isn't related to the size of your canopy. Just like you can get a different harness with the same container, you can also get a different container with your same canopy. You could have both a better fitting harness and a smaller container without having to downsize your canopy. What I'm hearing from you is that a faster canopy is not something you're really 'wanting'. You might be willing to jump one, but all of the 'reasons' you stated for wanting to downsize were related to harness/container issues, not the desire for a faster canopy. When you combine that idea with the facts that you're already at a fairly high WL, and that you have no plans to really 'use' a faster canopy, it just doesn't make sense. It would be like a guy who drives Subaru WRX somewhere it snows for 5 months out of the year, who then decides he wants a Ferrari, but that he has no plans to drive it any faster than the WRX. The WRX is a nice car, pretty fast, and does OK in the snow, where the Ferrari is also nice, more expensive to buy and maintain, and will be shit in the snow. If you were planning to drive the wheels of the Ferrari when the roads are dry, it might be worth all the downsides because the performance would be sublime, but it you're not planning to do anything more with it than you already do with the WRX, why take on the all the downsides?

My suggestion is that you don't load a canopy at 1.8 or 1.9 unless you need that loading to go faster. If you're not planning to swoop, there is just no need to load a canopy at that level. Jumping at higher WL is a trade-off where you put up with the downsides of the highly loaded canopy because you want the upside, that being the speed. If you're not planning to use the upside, then why take on the downsides. If you're a big enough guy to load a 120 at 1.9, then I don't know what you mean by 'max mobility' in freefall. A rig built for a 135 would still be smaller than you are, and I don't think you would notice one bit of difference in-air between that and a rig built for a 120. It would be one thing if you were a smaller person jumping a rig that's huge on them, and hangs over the sides of their body and such, but I can't imagine that's the case. If your current container is on the bigger side for your 132, then just get a new one that fits the 132 'snug' with a perfectly sized harness, and you'll be all set. It comes back to the old saying that you sometimes hear about reserve sizing, "You're never going to look up and wish that you had a smaller reserve". That applies to your main too if you're not planning to push the canopy to the edge of it's performance (via swooping). So I haven't jumped anything bigger than my 103 in about 5 years. Every time I borrow a rig it has a smaller Velo in it, and that's just fine by me. Anyway, I had my pick of rigs to use at Bridge Day this year, from 240, 260 or 280. It's a wide open LZ, you open plenty high to set up for landing, and it's the middle of the day, so it's not a tough landing situation. Despite that, I went with the 280 because speed was not my goal that day, and in that case the extra square footage could have been an advantage in a whole bunch of situations. (True, it can be a detriment in certain cases, like higher winds, but then we wouldn't be jumping. In your case. considering that your 'bigger' choice is still loaded at 1.7, I don't think that's ever going to be a problem for you).

Another good point. The control stroke on the rears is very short, even on a 'good' canopy. Something like 6 or 8 inches until the stall. So when the canopy is not good, you need to feel out the stall point if you intend to land the canopy. If it wants to fold up at 3 inches of input, and you give it that at 10 ft up, you just made a tough landing much tougher. If you do intend to land the canopy on rears, one idea is to talk to yourself all the way down your final approach saying, 'Landing on rears, landing on rears, landing on rears' in order to help you overcome the muscle memory of a full toggle stroke when you want to flare.

The key to your question is the word 'personal'. The correct answer to the question is a personal choice, and dependent on factors like the gear, the nature of the wind itself (smooth, turbulent, gusty) and the overall skill/experience of the jumper. All you really need to know is that two people have to be confident in your abilities when considering the go/no-go decision on a windy day - 1. The first is you. Unless you get in the plane feeling 100% like you can handle the winds and land safely, do not get in the plane. Don't let anyone talk you into it, go with your first instinct and don't go up on the load. If the winds are marginal, there is a very real chance that your skills will be pushed to their limit, and if you're not confident it can effect your performance, and the last thing you need on a challenging wind day is for your performance to take a hit due to lack of confidence. 2. Any (or all) of the older, more experienced jumpers on the DZ. If one (or any, or all) seem to feel that it might not be a good idea for you to jump in certain conditions, then don't jump. Referring to #1 from above, you might feel fine about your skills, but you also have a limited scope of experience to draw from. If you've never been in tough wind conditions, you might not know what it takes to fly in them, and maybe that's why you feel like you'll be OK. The older, more experienced jumpers have flown I those winds, and know what it takes. So unless you have a consensus of people on the DZ who support you jumping on a given day, don't jump. There will be days that you will get in the plane when the winds are higher, but still OK, and then they will kick up between the plane taking off and you landing your canopy (like you had), and that's how you can unwillingly build your experience such that you can make your own calls as far as go/no-go in the future. The idea is to limit your exposure to those situations to 'accidentally' jumping in high winds, as opposed to willingly going up in those conditions. Until you have enough of those 'accidents' use the criteria I listed above to help you make the right choice. It's an old saying, but I'll repeat it just in case you don't know - "I'd rather be on the ground wishing I was up in the air, then up in the air wishing I was on the ground". The idea is that if you make the wrong call, make it being too conservative, and standing down watching everyone else make a safe landing in 'ok' winds, as opposed to going up and finding out you're in over your head once you get under canopy because now you're forced to land in those terrible conditions.

Indeed it does, however, the wind pressure that bows the line backwards also provides tension on the line that holds the tail in place. If you had no steering lines, the tail itself aft of the D lines would have a tendency to point upwards, especially when you flare the canopy (with the rears) and build pressure on the bottom skin. This is why it's ill advised to cut the remaining steering line if the other one breaks. People seem to think that you just 'land on the rears', but with both steering lines cut, you lose all of the sq footage aft of the D lines in terms of 'fly-able' surface area. So now you have essentially a much smaller canopy, with no proven flare performance and no experience on the part of the pilot flaring in that configuration, so the odds of a problem on landing go way up. In terms of the question in this thread, if both toggles/steering lines are intact, your hand position with regards to the toggles makes no difference on a rear riser flare. In your hands or not, both toggles will be either up against, or very close, to the guide ring, and will be pulled down with the riser when you flare. In terms of what I suggested above, and the idea of a broken steering line creating an asymmetrical configuration on landing, it's true it will be there, but it's the pilots job to 'fly' the canopy through the landing. Sometimes that means a perfectly symmetrical flare, and sometimes that means an asymmetrical flare to compensate for wind conditions or gear issues. So if the canopy has an asymmetry, the pilot has to have an equal but opposite asymmetry in their inputs, and they can achieve a level flare upon landing. Of course, how soft that landing will be is a big unknown. To offset the asymmetrical configuration, you may only be able to flare one side to 75%, so your overall stopping power will be reduced. For this reason it's also the pilot's job to realize that this is not going to be a normal landing, and be prepared for a PLF to reduce the chances of injury.

As mentioned, the above quote is the key point to this story. Think back to every single jump you made before that, you planned out every aspect with the help of an instructor/coach, reviewed those plans several times, and even then you were jumping with a 'professional' jumper who was going to able to fly their slot on the dive with no problem. So now you're on your own, the first jump you make is with a jumper of unknown skill/experience, and it's decided at the last minute that you are going to jump together. Did you have a dive flow? Did you rehearse it and the exit several times before hand? Did you talk about the skills you might need to use within that dive flow, and review the techniques for employing those skills? Did you build the break-off, track, and deployment into that planning/practicing, and look at those thinks as individual skills that merit consideration? So those are mostly rhetorical questions, however, those do represent the preparation that you should be going through on all your student jumps with an instructor/coach, and if you don't maintain that standard, that level of prep, you're going to get what you had, a sloppy, and potentially dangerous skydive. Are you to blame? Maybe not. Is the other guy? Depending on his experience level, maybe or maybe not. Not all instructors/coaches will present things to you in the way that I did. If nobody points out that you've been making highly prepared jumps with professional skydivers thus far, and that you to maintain that level of planning into your 'fun' jumps, how would you know that? It might be easy for you to assume that any 'experienced' jumper is going to conduct themselves that same way that the 'professional' you're used to jumping did when you jumped together, but as you can see, that is not the case. Moving forward, now you know. Take your time, and carefully consider every aspect of the jumps you're going to make. Think through the entire process from gearing up to walking back to the hanger, and make sure you can visualize a successful outcome on all aspects. Be critical of the people who want to jump with you, consider their skill/experience level when making decisions regarding that. Sure, two newer jumpers can jump together, but you might need to pull in a 'professional' to help with the planning to make sure that the two newbies have all the bases covered.

Nice. I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, it might go better in 'Safety and Training'. The 'Photo and Video' forum is more for threads about jumping with cameras, editing and related topics. With that said, check out your leg position. It's a little 'in and out'. Sometimes they look good, and other times they're not out far enough. What's nice about the video is that it gives you a great shot of your legs and the effect it has on your body. Note in the side-view that when your legs are up, your body tends to sit a little head-high. This allows air to spill off of your chest/upper body, and you slide backwards. Compare that to when your legs are extended. and you'll see that your torso sits more level, and you're falling straight down. Just to take the concept one step further, imagine if you put your legs all the way out (straight), it would tip your body head-low, allowing air to spill off your legs, and you would move forward. That's the basis for forward motion and it's big-brother, tracking.

I would suggest that this is the norm (or something close to it) for the majority of A license grads. I'm not suggesting that anyone is really 'shorting' anyone on instruction, just that there is such a volume of info out there, you really only can scratch the surface in the course of 25 jumps. Think about it, how long could you sit down with a guy who has 26 jumps and go over stuff he doesn't know, but probably should? I did just that when an old friends son started jumping. I mentored him through the A license, and then when he was ready to 'leave the nest' and go jump at another DZ, we met at a coffee shop and talked for 2+ hours about stuff I wanted him to know that didn't come up during the 'regular' training. Try as hard as you may, the A license training is always going to produce a 'beginner' skydiver, with the rest being up to the jumper. Info is available, and there are people willing to help with whatever you need at every DZ out there, it's just a matter of the jumper having the drive and motivation to go after the 'higher learning'. That's what I did. I spent time at the DZ during off hours, helped the DZO with rigging, showed up early and helped the pilots pre-flight the plane, hung out late and talked with the experienced jumpers, etc. This was 20 years ago, before the internet/youtube etc, today's jumpers have a much easier time accessing the info, but at the end of the day it's up to them to make it happen.

Majorsky - this post is not directed at you, you just won the 'last post in the thread' lotto. Nobody has any 'right' to be on any record at any time. As long as the jump meets the requirements for the record (location, size, pre-planned, correctly judged), any of the other factors are up to the organizer. You want a Texas HD record that the USPA will recognize? You can do it any DZ in Texas, any time you want, with any group of jumpers you want (provided more than half are USPA members). Nobody 'owns' the records, or has any 'right' to them, their organization or planning. It's just that simple. In terms of what Simon did, it was a dick move for sure. From what I saw in the video, it looked like a solid jump and all involved (aside from Simon) deserved the record and deserved to have their efforts as a 'team' rewarded. If Simon had a pre-conceived notion that there was something 'unethical' or 'unfair' about the jump, he should have simply backed off the load and voiced his concerns on the ground. I don't think what he did was 'unsafe', or put anyone at risk. I saw the video, and while he was a little 'drifty', he kept up the fall rate and 'did no harm' in terms of making a safe skydive. The guy is an accomplished freeflyer, and could handle his slot head-up without putting anyone 'at risk'. Uncool? Yep, 100%. Unsafe? Not really, I think people are just floating that idea because they're upset and looking to 'pile on' to what a bad guy he is.

Age is not a factor, provided you have the physical ability to pack, it's your maturity that I would be more concerned about. Some people take main canopy pack jobs lightly, but let's remember that improper packing can directly lead to injury. Hard openings can (and have) done significant damage to jumpers in the past. These canopies opened 'successfully' in that they were open. straight, and land-able, they just opened hard enough to cause injury, sometimes severe. So it would be your maturity that I would be looking for, your ability to focus and stay on-task, and complete the process 100% with a very high degree of reliability. Otherwise, I think it's fine, and you'll find that most DZs have at least one teenager on the packing mat, so you're not breaking any new ground. Note - my one piece of advice for you is this - there are lots of different rigs, canopies, and riser/toggle configurations. You are going to see new things (to you) from time to time, and the one thing you CANNOT do is 'guess' how they should be packed. Many rigs are designed to be packed one way, and there's not a lot of 'wiggle room' in that, so if you just guess and you're wrong, there's a chance it's not going to work right. It all comes back to maturity, but you need to know what to say 'I don't know how to do this' and just get some help from someone who does. Ask your dad about getting his riggers ticket, there are times during the test phase where the correct answer is 'I don't know for sure, I need to consult the manual or call the manufacturer'. It's not wrong not to know, it's wrong to take a guess. The correct answer is to admit you've reached the limit of your '100% guaranteed correct' knowledge, and that you need to consult someone/something to solve a problem and be '100% guaranteed correct'. In the end, it's way more important that your solution is 100% correct than you just knowing the solution off the top of your head.

Now. The winter is their busy season. Call the DZ to see who is currently offering freefly coaching at the DZ, they always have a few great freefly coaches around you can work with.

Not sure if you're serious about the core thought of the car being a replacement for a physical 'shortcoming', but I've heard that sentiment in the past from others. My thoughts are that sometimes that might be true, but that same thing is true in every facet of life. Look around the DZ, there are jumpers who have to have the latest and greatest rig or jumpsuit in an attempt to be cool. They probably don't need the new gear, or even know how to use it that well, but it makes them feel like one of the 'cool kids'. However, there are also people with nothing to prove who just like driving fast cars. I love driving a fast car that handles well, and truth be told, I would rather have a 'sleeper' than a new Vette or similar. (For those that don't know, a 'sleeper' is a car that looks like a regular car, but actually has the engine and suspension of a sports or race car. You can drive around not looking like a trouble-maker, and then make all the trouble you want). That said, I haven't seen the new Vette in person yet. I do like the looks of the pics, and I can see the influence of the new Ferrari's all over them. My friend's dad is a collector, and I'm sure he'll have one in the spring, so I'll check it out and take it for spin then. (However, he also has a 2012 ZR1, and good god I'm not sure how any Vette could be more impressive than that).

FYI, I have a Hero 3 silver, and after maybe 100 jumps the battery failed. It started screwing up where it wouldn't charge if you plugged it in to charge half of the time, and then a full charge would only last a jump or two. Finally, it got to the point that the camera wouldn't even turn on. Some web research revealed that this was 'common' problem, and a new battery solved it. About $20 US. I guess the 3+ might have solved that, but you might also be able to get the regular 3 cheap enough to afford having a couple of extra batteries on hand. and still have it be less than just buying all new 3+s. Aside from the battery issue, it has worked well, and never failed to record when asked to. Maybe 3 or 4 times, it locked up during playback, and just taking out the battery for 10 seconds cleared that up and it went back to working as normal.

'I think' the old Astra AAD had an on/off module that mounted externally on your mudflap, so you could turn it off while the rig was on. Of course, that AAD is out of production, so who knows if that was a good idea or not. As others have mentioned, I'm having a real hard time thinking of a situation where I would board the plane with an AAD activated, and then my plans would change such that I didn't want it activated any longer. Again as others have mentioned, if you're pilot is descending fast enough down below activation altitude, there's some crazy unsafe flying going on. The 78mph activation speed equals about a 6800 feet per minute descent, and FYI, 'regular' pilots are generally at something less than 500 feet per minute descent down under 1000ft. If they're descending at more than 10x that rate under 1000ft, that's more or less airshow stunt flying. and not something any pilot should be doing outside of an airshow, and especially into an airport where there are parachutes landing.

There is no 'best' answer that works for everyone, it's all dependent on the person. My suggestion would be to show them videos of each method available at the local DZ, explain what's involved in each one, and see what they think makes 'sense' as far as a first jump goes. Some people will see the value in a 'no responsibility' first jump like a tandem, some will see the value in an 'intermediate' jump like a static-line where there's no freefall to worry about, and others will see AFF as the bets idea for making a first jump. If the jumper in question 'believes' in the choice they make, it will only serve to boost their confidence and probably improve their performance. Tunnel is not an option as it's not a skydive. It's fun, and you can learn some things about body flight that will translate into skydiving, but in terms of someone who has never stepped out of an airplane in flight, it just shouldn't be on the list. I'm taking my 11 year old daughter to the tunnel over the winter, and have no doubts that she will do great and have a blast. even if was legal in the US, I would not let her jump out of plane in any capacity at this point in her life. The tunnel is one thing, making a skydive is another.

Your best bet will be to work through the DZ/club and make a deal with them where they take the rig into their rental fleet, and come up with some sort of split on the rental income. Have them handle everything from collecting payment, to packing, to overseeing the maintenance. If you can just hand it over and get $5 per jump, it's going to be much better than you trying to 'manage' the rig for $13 per jump. You never have to worry about who is jumping it or what they are doing, you just let it sit and make you money. Truth be told, you'll probably make more money working with the DZ as opposed to trying to do it yourself. You'll have more people wanting to jump the rig, and the DZ can 'manage' the rig while you are not there to oversee things. Now keep in mind that you will add wear and tear to your rig, it's going to get dirty when the newbies tumble on landing, and you're going to wear out the lines on your main in the process. Of course, if you can collect $5/jump, that will more than pay for a new lineset (new lines run under $1/jump, figure on $350 for a reline that will last for 500 jumps). But for your personally to deal with individuals who want to jump your rig, I would pass. You would need each person to sign an agreement, then you would need to physically hand them the rig each day they wanted to jump it (and collect it from them afterwards), and you would either be limited to one jumper per day, or you would have to set up a complicated 'sharing' arrangement where jumper A gets one jump, then passes it to jumper B, who then passes it to jumper C, etc. If one of those jumpers is late, or gets bumped back a load, everyone has a problem and is looking at you to solve it.

Sweet. So $150/jump? Maybe $175 if the Jet-A price jumps a few cents?

I also saw a good one in line at BD. A guys PC fell out of the BOC pouch and was laying on the ground. A dude behind him picked it up and handed it to him. During this process, another guy noticed that the bridle was routed around the lateral, and they had to thread the PC down through the lateral before putting it back in the pouch. Guaranteed PC in tow. I think the guys at the exit point would have caught it, but WTF? How do you get in line and put on a rig in that condition? To me, the gear checks they provide at the exit are just confirmation that I did my job the right way. Maybe some people see it differently, but I walk up there with a 100% expectation that my stuff will check out, and they will pass me along with no action required. Ditto for gear checks at the DZ.

While there are definitely downsides to wearing tinted goggles or sunglasses while skydiving, none of them should be 'deal breakers'. Truth be told, your instructors will only be able to 'look you in the eyes' before you leave the plane. Once in freefall, they'll be on either side of you, and eye contact becomes less of an issue. There are times that students never look away from 'straight ahead', and you don't see their face at all once you leave the plane. On higher level student jumps, you will be face to face with your instructors in freefall, but by then you would have proven yourself to the point that they passed you on the lower levels and trust your skills up to that point. I'll second what others have said about going to the DZ in person and sitting down with the head instructor to discuss the issue. You will probably have to go at the very beginning or end of the day, as they will probably be jumping during the middle of the day. Also, you'll probably have to purchase your own tinted goggles, be sure to ask the instructor which brand and style they want you to have. While I would be open to a student using tinted goggles if there was a medical reason, I would not let a student jump in sunglasses or any type of 'hard' goggles.

I haven't read this entire thread, so maybe this has already come up, buuuuut........ One thing for every jumper to keep in mind is that unless you are 100% sure you are familiar with the rig in question, DO NOT put your hands on someone's gear, even if they ask for a gear check. Don't guess, or just assume it's 'the same' as some other rig, just politely decline and see if you can't help the jumper find someone who knows the rig. You may very well end up giving the 'A-ok' to a rig that is not, or causing a problem trying to fix something that is correctly packed but not the way you are familiar with. People are literally making a 'life and death' decision based on what you tell them when they ask for a gear check. They will literally jump out of a plane if you tell them their stuff is 100% ready to go, and potentially ride the plane down if you tell them otherwise. Don't take that lightly. I was standing in line at Bridge Day a couple weeks ago with some newer jumpers from my DZ who were making their first BASE jump. I've known these guys since they made their first skydive, and they know me as the 'go to' guy with questions about anything on the DZ. So one of them starts to ask me about his bridle routing over his shoulder because he was going hand-held, and he was prepping his PC (we were almost up). He says to me 'Hey Lepka, can you check my....:, and before he could finish his sentence, I interrupted him and said, 'Nope. I don't know anything about going hand-held on a BASE jump, ask one of the gear-check guys at the bottom of the ramp'. I've never gone hand-held, never been trained on it, never even considered it. Even though I'm sure I could have figured it out, and there are at least 3 highly-experienced BASE jumpers doing gear check up at the exit point who would have caught any problems, I wasn't about to 'guess', or get involved in the process in any way because it just wasn't my place.