bluetwo

Visualize and rehearse mentally. I'm a pretty new jumper myself but I found going through the whole jump, or most of it, all in my head helped me know exactly what to do when the time came. Trust the arch. I'll admit, I still chip now and then, and I'm far from super smooth even at my best. You can practice almost everything on the ground though. Obviously your instructors at the DZ are the best ones to tell you what to practice and how to do it but I would also just throw one more thing at you which is practice reaching on the carpet or on a creeper. Oh and don't quit, cheers. _______________________________________

Yes. _______________________________________

Thats awesome. Glad to hear you got such an early start. I hope you learn a lot and stick with it. Cheers _______________________________________

Hello. Welcome to the family. _______________________________________

Hi _______________________________________

Maybe after the olympics? _______________________________________

I'm pretty sure that's Doug and Kevin..... Just kidding, I have no frikin idea. _______________________________________

Thank you!! Seriously, big props for actually providing a place to learn about potential life saving procedures instead of just saying you need to go learn them. I was seriously about to blast some people out for that, not that I wanted to. It's just not right in my opinion, actually in the real world that we occupy it's not right. Some people like to act like they are above helping I guess. _______________________________________

The student is COMPLETELY responsible. There's just no two ways about it. We ALL know full well that an AAD is really just a back up device, and not a 100% reliable one at that. Ultimately we have to save our own lives. Every incident is tragic and one can't help but think if only they had done this or that... It seems like way too many fatalities are due to the person not reacting. It could certainly happen to me and lord knows I hope it doesn't. _______________________________________

I can relate to traveling to crazy places. I actually started when you did, except basically about a month sooner. I've been forced to take nearly a year off and for sure it sucks. A license and a rig and you'll be good though!! Lol, A license for now if the rig is still some ways off. Welcome back in is order I guess. Blue skies _______________________________________

What up... Glad you're doin it. Cheers! _______________________________________

Big welcome, and yes, definitely say blue skies already. Glad you are passionate about the sport and best of times to ya. _______________________________________

Hi. I've got about 10 years of active service too, a few deployments, and I couldn't agree more. Live, because as far as I know you only get one chance to do it. Welcome to the site. Feel free to ask any questions any time. There are some crazies here like on any forum but for the most part it's cool and you prolly already have thick skin anyway. Blue skies!! _______________________________________

+1 Underarmor is the way to go. _______________________________________

Good. It's about time they started doing their parts. I'm sure they'd be happy to sit pretty while the country crashes but they shouldn't be allowed to. _______________________________________

Really? You might want to adjust your 'rest easy' altitude up a few hundred feet. How long do you think it will take to get the door open and for you to actaully leave the plane? If the engine quits, you're going to start losing altitude NOW, so every second that goes by, your 1000ft gets lower and lower. On top of that, Porters are somtimes loaded 'tight', which makes it that much harder for everyone to get out, especialy from a seated position. If one person in between you and the door has trouble getting up, or getting out, you're going to be well below 1000ft before you get anywhere near the door. That's true, you're right and when you're right, you're right. These are all very good points and it reminds me that you can't just think about yourself. I was always sitting right by the door since I was just doing hop n' pops for the canopy work but that's no reason to think everyone else would be ok or that they wouldn't all try to spill out at once and get jammed up in the door possibly even getting someone hung up on the wheel or even worse a premature deployment and hung up on the rudder. _______________________________________

There were definitely no seat belts in the Pilatus Porter I jumped from in Greece. To be honest though I don't think I missed 'em... except for that whole part about taking off. I'd be lying if I said I didn't breath easy every time we got up over a thousand feet. At least then you can choose to land under a reserve instead of a crash landing. _______________________________________

I wear cammo for a living and I think it's hideous, but that's just me. I don't want anything in any cammo pattern other actual uniforms and gear that I wear but that doesn't mean I frown on anyone else using it. I figure not everyone can be in the military, for whatever reason, in fact less than 10% of the entire country EVER serves and only a fraction of a percent of the country is serving at any given time. Those are the latest stats but that is usually how it goes. My point is more power to ya, and everybody else that likes camouflage. I think it is disgusting on a rig but we can totally agree to disagree!! :-) _______________________________________

I like that. Involving a rigger..... you can't count on people to be honest unfortunately. Having a rigger look at it should make people think twice about not being totally up front about what they are selling. _______________________________________

Welcome Brand New!!! I used to catch myself going on and on and on when people would ask me about skydiving, like 30 minutes later their eyes would start to glaze over.... So of course I would just keep on talking about it. If only I had worked with other skydivers, that probably would've been the ****!! Have fun! _______________________________________

Caution: Link below http://www.chutingstar.com/ _______________________________________

There's definitely a TON of good stuff here... namely in the Safety Articles and certain parts of the forums. That said, filter. One of the best things is there are varying opinions and debates in a lot of threads which goes to show you what is great for some is terrible for others and what some believe wholeheartedly is completely backwards to others. The bad thing is there are a lot of varying opinions and unless you can decide what makes sense to you some topics can get confusing. As long as you like to read you're good :-) _______________________________________

My girlfriend (at the time) literally dragged me to the dropzone because she wanted to jump. Sadly, she got freaked out because the jump plane was a Cesna 182 and not a twin like she was used to and decided not to jump, but insisted that I should still do it since we had driven so far. That little voice in my head told me not to do it because she might not take it well but looking back on it **** what she thought about it. Now I have 50 times as many jumps as she does. Muh ah ah ah ah... _______________________________________

The little bit of tunnel time I got made a HUGE difference, like everybody else I guess. I'm not trying to say it was some mystical thing beyond understanding but at the same time I can't quite explain why it made such a huge difference. The truth is I didn't feel like I made any real progress in the tunnel and wanted more time. Everybody does, I get it. Yet despite the obvious differences in a smooth indoor setting Vs. wide-open mother nature and all that can happen out there, I still wish I could understand the technical parts better. I guess people would say get more tunnel time if you want to get better. Normally I say simplify it, by all means, but I would so like to have some decent conversation about tunnels, techniques and how they relate to jumps. _______________________________________

Nice job in the tunnel, I'd say, with my limited experience, that you're pretty natural too. Freefall is different, and not to open a huge can of worms but I say keep an open mind and take it all in because for me at least there is a big difference in the two. Others will disagree I'm sure but that's probably in a different thread somewhere too. _______________________________________