davelepka

Thats a fine question. Your arms need to be back behind your c of g. When viewed from the side, your torso should be vertical, with your legs extending forward, and your arms an equal distance to the rear. Your lower leg (from the knee down) needs to also be vertical, so your arms are only balancing out the force from your thighs and bottoms of your feet. This is the "ideal" configuration, and you will go through many variations of this while you learn. As your skills progress, you will learn to bring your legs more underneath you, allowing you to bring your arms more forward, and reach out to take grips. When doing this you will spread your legs out to the side in order to control your fall rate. In your early attempts, try to keep your legs together, and close to your torso, minimizimg the drag they will create. This will make it easier for you to push yourself upright by forcing your arms behind your c of g. For the really slow ones, on the short bus, push your hips forward, get your legs out, wait for the beep, and deploy.

Here's the point - I'm willing to bet most responses are for #1, which means that for most jumpers, the only point you actually need attach is the chest strap. WHY CAN'T PEOPLE HANDLE ONE ATTACHMENT POINT? LETS START PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT WE ARE DOING, AND STOP FALLING OUT OF OUR RIGS. ONE ATACHMENT POINT, THATS ALL. Thanks for reading this.

If your pads (or shoes) are thin, the pistons may have to push too far to actually make contact. Also, I'm pretty sure your bakes are power assisted (I think they all are nowadays) so check the vaccum lines going into the master cylinder. If all the lines are hooked up (and no cracked or broken) look for a vaccum leak somewhere else in the system. A leak in the intake manifold will cause a weak vaccum as well, so check that area also. When my Stiletto doesn't want to stop, I drag my feet on the ground, so thats another option as well.

AFF is the way to go if you think you may like it. Tandem is good for a one time thrill. If you do stay with it, you'll be gladf to look back on your first jump and know that you did the work yourself. Good luck

Very true, Sad, but true. Maybe "nylon airplane" isn't the best term as extensive training, testing, and re-testing is required to fly an airplane. Any jackass with some free time on the weekend and some extra cash can buy and fly any parachute they please. Of course, if we had some sort of training requirements in place, similar to the pilots license maybe Booths Law #2 would be more like "You must comb your beard after each jump to prevent knotting".

Excellent advice from all. If you should find yourself too low for a cutaway (perhaps you didn't notice the broken line at first), during your practice flare, find the stall point, make a mental note, and for your landing, prepare for a PLF, flare gently being sure to stop the flare well short of the stall point. Hold the toggles there and roll. I have landed a highly loaded eliptical with a broken A line with this technique before and it works reasonably well. Again, this is for the worst case scenario. Above all, make your determination above your cutaway altitude, and if you have doubts about how your landing will go, pull the red handle, etc.....

Thats a great story, and I'm glad you caught the problem before it turned into a bigger problem, but your anger should be dircted at the person who gave him the gear to demo. With a non-collaspible PC on his current rig, this jumper sounds like he may be newer to the sport. Regardless of this though, anyone handing out demo gear should confirm the jumper knows the in's and out's of that rig (flap order, brake stowing, pilot chute/slider operation).

All right, for real now. You need to be able to swoop to some degree to carve. On a straight in landing, the speed on your canopy does not provide enough lift to turn and flare. Even with a good swoop, the carve uses up energy you could be using to fly further, or shut the thing down. I agree with practicing things up high, but with the carve, you need to maintain level flight, while turning, and there is no reference for that at altitude. Even a variation of one to two feet, will have you rolling along the ground on an actual landing, and there is no way to practice with that degree of percision at altitude. By the time you learn to swoop, you will have a better "feel" for your toggles, and the carve will work it's way into your bag of tricks. Understand that the straight swooping skills need to be solid before incorporating the carve. I find myself carving on most every landing, for lack of anything better to do (it's fun). For now, of course, learn to land straight in, where you want, every time. These skills will prepare you for the first time you have to land a small canopy in a small space (off field). Take the swooping thing slowly, along with the downsizing thing as well. The numbers show that people do get hurt and worse when they don't follow this advice. For now, get your thrills in freefall, and be safe and cautious under canopy.

Hey man, read the rest of the thread and you'll see the Quade pointed out that our exchange was not productive, to which I agreed and conceeded (publicly) to agree to disagree. I will not be at the Goodtime boogie, but I invite you to Aerohio at anytime, where I will be happy to shake your hand, and interested to see some higher quality wide angle lenses.

Very good observation. We're all just human I guess, and we make mistakes. Of course some of us are just stupid humans.....no, I'm kidding, really...I will agree to disagree on this matter.

My point: A: danwayland was looking for advice on what TO do , not what NOT to do (such as not buying a cheap lens). You proceeded however to inform us all of the design flaws of inexpensive lenses, while making a non-specific reference to some higher quality lenses we should be using, without offering any actual useful information. B: Assuming your profile is current and correct, it seems odd that someone with your consideralbe jump numbers would be jumping the least expensive container on the market without an AAD, and then would turn around and advise others to not be "CHEAP". You knew what my point was from the start, dude.

Wow, great advice dude. You mentioned every brand of lens NOT to buy, but no mention of brands to buy, or where to look for them. Oh, and "DONT BE CHEAP", in all caps, is hard to take from a guy with 3000 jumps who's jumping a Dolphin with no Cypress.

Think about waiting for a bit on this one. When you get closer to finishing your student jumps, talk to your instructors and DZO about what gear to look at. Stay away from "advice" you'll get from the peanut gallery. Nobody else knows your skydiving needs better at this point than your instructors.

Good luck with that

For real? You think it's a good idea to put a belly mount reserve on a student (or low time jumper), have them open a good canopy, only to cut it away, and try the reserve? Seriously? OK, here we go.. PRO's 1. Actual cutaway experience CON's 1. Complicated rigging and procedures for an already overloaded student. 2. Potential loss of main canopy, cutaway handle, reserve ripcord, and freebag. 3.Excess wear and tear on reserves in student gear. 4.Cost of keeping round reserves in date, repacking student reserve, additonal training and rigging required, plus jump ticket would add up to well over $100 (if no components were lost) for a hop and pop. Still think it's a good idea? Ever heard of a hanging harness? Think your DZO would approve of you doing an intentional cutaway with 17 jumps? Oh, here's a good one, what if we gave the main a line over, so we could reinforce the malfunction training? Of course that would mean a whole series of intentional cutaways. One for the baglock, one for the streamer, one for the horseshoe (call me for that one, I'll video that for free). Oh, yeah, no offense or anything, but have 3000+ jumps with no cutaways. I'd like to keep it that way, and I think that if you open a good canopy, you should land it.

The organizer on that dive should have made the rules clear to everyone beofre you went up. If your not in the formation at 5000, turn and track away. If you're lower that the formation AT ANY POINT, turn and track away, recover somewhere else, and re-approach from above. Especially with low time jumpers (evident by your "lousy" tracking), these points need to be stressed before each and every skydive. You're lucky to still have your legs, and the other guy is lucky to still have full brain function.

I think the mod only applied to the larger sizes. I'm not sure what qualifies as "larger", but my 89 didn't fall under that heading. Loaded at 2.2 it seems to swoop pretty far, I guess..

OK, OK, I aploigize for the harshness, BUT, the problem was that you wouldn't stop and listen to what people with 10 or 15 times the jumps you have were saying, you continued to come back with frequent and lenghty replies (wait, you still haven't stopped). WHATEVER the reasons may be (it could be the advice of Bill Booths psychic advisor for all I know) but the fact is that TM's don't use helmets on their students, Gath, Pro Tec or otherwise. I'm not giving you greif about the sports cam. I don't care what sort of camera you use, your videos will suck. It's got very little to do with the equipment. When I started shooting video, Mini DV was some Japanese engineers wet dream. I shot SVHS or VHS-C, and while the picture quality sucked, the flying was solid, and the product looked good. Top camera flyers all use the best equipment they can because they are passionate about thier work, and once the flying is there, the only way to improve is the equipment. Keep looking around the net for small cameras, and editing on your computer, or reading your photo shop catalogs, and while you're doing that, you will miss the bus as some other guy is at the DZ with a $200 Samsung 8mm and an old ProTec, working on his exit timing, shot framing, and lighting, on his way to becoming the video flyer you think you can be. Thankfully once your super helmet is assembled, you will miss the exit count on your first tandem video, and take a shot from the drouge square on the chin, and hopefully that will convince you to shut your trap and listen to the people who have been doing this for a long time and lived to tell the storries of those who haven't survived the mistakes and mishaps that continue to thin our already small population. Blue skies....

Seriously dude, give it up. With a hair over 200 jumps, and your home DZ (and frame of reference) only having one multi rated jumper, maybe it's time to defer to the judgement of those with a little more expereince. I would suspect that some TM's in Perris probably do close to 200 tandems a month in their busy season, and if they (and every other TM I have ever met or seen) would opt for a bare headed student over a helmet, they may be on to something. Think about logging off the computer, doing another 1000 jumps, including some tandems and some video, then come back and see if you feel the same way.

I agree with the others that video is an easier and more productive way to get started. Kudos to you for waiting untill you have 500 jumps to do the camera thing. Your patience will be rewarded with quicker and safer progress over those who started earlier. Good luck...

I would be weary of putting my hands into a loop on the rear riser. Anyway, try pulling the rear risers out instead of down. Try it first at altitude, but I think you will find it much easier.

Seriously, not to give you a hard time, but the pullout is a great system, and for the last 350 jumps it has worked well, but the wings are the new factor here, and wings and the pullout don't always play nice. With a throw out, you can pitch the piot chute waaaay out there, where it will infalte far away from your burble. The pullout, as you said, gets yanked out of your hand as it hit s the wind, at the same time, you are extending your right arm, opeing up your wing. The pilot chute stands a good cahnce of getting sucked into the burble on it's way up. Even if it just wanders along the edge of the burble, it's not the clean air your pilot chute really wants. The opening you described sounds like the bag spun on the way to line stretch, which is what would happen if you pilot chute didn't launch clean. With a bigger canopy you would have had some harmless line twists, but with the Xoas, things got chaotic (no pun intended). With a good kill line throw out, and a secure pouch, you shouldn't have any problems. I've got 3500+ jumps with that system, and 3000 of those jumps are split between camera and freefly. As for low altitude, if you system is set up correctly, the speed of the plane alone should be enough to get your stuff out.

I agree with captain Cajones. Did anyone at your DZ rasie an eyebrow when you said you wanted to jump a 98 Xaos with wings and a pullout and 600 jumps and a camera and a dis-proportionate 143 reserve? I know, there are alot of "ands" in that sentence but thats just the point. How many jumps do you have on with each of those factors alone? For intsance, with camera, but no wings, or tiny parachute? Or how about, wings w/no camera or tiny parachute? Tiny parachute w/ no camera, or wings, etc.? I'm sure you get the point (I hope).

I have to agree with the other reply. That still camera is waaay out there. I know they are popular, but that quick relase deal adds alot of height to the set-up. Where are you going with that still cam anyway? Does it really need to come off that quick? Mine is mounted directly to the Bonehead flat top mount with a tripod screw and a zip tie over the lens. I can get it off if I need to, and I can change the camera batts while it's mounted. Besides. lowing the camera will centralize the mass, reducing the leverage on your neck musscles, and the wind deflection on your head.

Wow, some interesting replies from all. A few years back I did dock on the main lift webs of an actual tandem student. The video was so-so, and it scared the crap out of the TM (we had talked about it before hand). Seriously, I would say that it was one of the worst ideas I ever had. Truthfully, I don't think anyone should ever be under a tandem (as in stealing their air). An accidental deployment at that time would kill a small handfull of people. Freeflying and backflying with tandems is cool, but if you stay just out or their air, so will your accidentally deploying main or reserve. As far as getting over the top of tandems, thats insane (I'm mean take a good look a packed tandem rig, tight and secure are not the words that come to mind).