Pablo.Moreno

At our DZ every student has to SPOT the plane at least three times and land with in 50 meters of the target before they get their solo. (Which means they try to figured what the ground winds are doing, winds at opening and half way). It is funny when we all go to a boogie and ask: "How does the guy at the door of the otter tells the pilot where to go in JR??" Related to the post: It doesn't matter which direction you face on opening, and a good practice is, after opening always fly perpendicular away from the line of flight as long as none is there.

Vodoo Curv, SO far I have Jumped Javelin, wings, Reflex and none of them fit and feel like nothing is behind your back like the Voodoo Curv. On the pricer side?? not really, they just don't build a cheapo rig without options (it is all included). With the Curv you get pretty much all the options that you can get on other rigs plus all the new components of the rig and dynamics of that rig. I can say that the Curv can translate a lot of the freeflying skills you learn in the tunnel to the sky. It doesn't interfere with your body flexibility and the way is build it doesnt interfere as much as other rigs I have tried.

I have done close to 11 (maybe 14 with sharing time) hrs in the tunnel all with a coach on the course of 3 years and 3 trips and doing all in between 2.5-6 hrs per trip. I can fly head down head up, do all three transitions, also got to learn all basic dynamic transitions and moves but out face carving on my head. Unless you live by a tunnel the coaching is always worth it, you get immediate feed back on body position and they can come up with drills to improve efficiency. You can ask them to fly with you to be a point of reference, to generate dives that are at your skill level and to push you pass your comfortable zone. This is all worth it. If you live by a tunnel then I guess coaching can be alternated by some solo sessions since there is no rush and the coaches are always going to be there. as in gear, depending on how much time are you going to be spending at the tunnel. If you are going to be doing 4hrs+ then I would recommend you talking with an experience flyer to see what would be the best suit for you (It depends on your body shape and weight obviously, but aim for the best performance suit. At the beginning use the tunnels baggier suits to help you with the lack of efficiency and then move on your own suit once you can out fly the baggier suit, the less draggy suits are awesome. Also, the g3 are really nice, but a cheap open face would also do the trick (Try to avoid the protects, when you are head down hair might sneak out of the holes and will feel pretty uncomfortable. Also, if you are doing a lot of time make sure to wear some under armor. After wearing an under armor I could feel my skin raw and dry after a week of being off the tunnel. I cant imagine how bad it would be if you are not wearing anything under the suit.

I guess I forgot about the part of, Once you feel a bit more comfortable with the canopy, try doing 90s with harness. To feed my need of going a little bit faster on landings what I have been doing on the JVX is 90s with just harness starting pretty high, slow, snappy or both, because of the nature of the canopy and slow recovery arch, even when I would turn obviously high it would still carry on some speed for landings. I had my bottom deck altitude where I wouldn't do a harness turn, where, If would do a turn I would still would be safe, but I didn't want to run the risk (this was for intentional turns obviously)

I have been checking on the incident forums and also directly from people that have gotten injured. The common phrase was... Jumper with about 30-100 jumps on that canopy (All in between a saber 150 to a JVX 101) and was doing a 180-270 and was to low. So, I guess to where the conversation is on it now, don't rush it put at least 100 regular landings on the canopy with out any front riser, get to know it on rears, carving, bail out, pattern flying from any position, etc, etc. Get to do drills to build an average of lost altitude in a 90, 180 etc. All up high. After you feel a little more comfortable on your current wing, start doing some crosswind and light down winds. Make sure you know how to slide. When I got my current canopy JVX 94, now 130 jumps, had one low turn and was able to come out just fine. It is amazing the sight picture you develop on the "I am to low" situations. In my current training schedule I will be doing 3 drills of 90s 10 second delay on 10 jumps to build an average. and do 90s until I can perfect them and move on. As, everyone said, get some coaching and, If you have read Bryan Burks articles, Swooping is not a safe discipline, but you can try to increase your safety through patience, and building up your skill and knowledge, never swoop hung over or tired and always remember: you don't have to swoop on every jump, but you can always swoop on the next jump. Eddit: for grammar, and I apologize on my Anglish

Affect my depth perception, I bail a lot more often on the last few hrs of the day on a real busy day. Chain of though, clear space check, clear landing area check, right altitude check (dietter) right IP check, as I am rotating I cant really tell by my sight picture if I am at the right altitude... Bail ( normally this happens when I am tired, but I dont feel tired if you know what I mean). Your sense go dull when you are tired.

You can have a full RDS on a ZP JVX, I don't see how you wouldn't be able to have one on the Petra-lite, since it is a slider configuration. The reason for me to have a removable slider is visibility and safety, I had a few times the slider to come up mid swoop, but, unless you start competing, I dont see the real benefit of a full RDS.

Hey, if you are using a JVX or Velo for for wingsuit, I dont see any problems using this Petra-lite for wingsuit. You might want to get a full removal wingsuit system so the the wingsuit drag dont slow down your swoop.

You meet resistance trying to spend more time with students? This is the reason I have taken a leave... my instructors tried their best but on busy days I felt alone on the DZ. I think that students should have much more time with their instructors. Stay late for the fire and beers, that's where you learn the other 50% that is not tough.

So does going to the gym, and having your student fly most of the canopy ride. +1

I have to disagree with you here. I will say each technique has its strengths and its weakness. No one is more effective than the other. Lets look at nick batsch and curt barthalomew for example, both are team mates with equally opposites techniques and overall size of rotations during their turns. Both have and continue to dominate competitive swooping meet after meet. Even going to the PDFT and every other swoop team out there, each of the individual pilots on the teams have equally different turns. In theory, and with a perfect turn, maximum canopy speed and potential can be reached by all methods. The point being made here is both are proven and effective methods neither more right then the other. Its all about what a pilot prefers and his past mentors who taught him. Flysight data will show and prove this to you if you want to compare speeds, rotation drifts, etc. I guess I should've add, that's what works the best and what I been tough ( I have taken a few canopy courses and in all honesty I was spouting what was tough to me) and what works for myself

There is people that do HP landings by only doing harness turns, is a lot more difficult to control the rotation hence more difficult to hit the gates. With front risers you can control all variables of the turn such as speeding up, slowing down, not to mention that you would reach terminal a lot faster. That way you can start your turn lower than if you attempt to reach the same speed through only harness inputs and the rotation would be smaller. All around, front risers are way more efficient than harness turns, but it is a good way to finish a big rotation when the pressure is to high, or even better, improve your technique. On that note, to get used to my current wing and add speed to my landings, I am doing a lot of 90 harness turns on landings and I am still building up some decent speed, until I feel I can start touching front risers.

I might not have near as many tandems as rigerrob, but I have close to 100 tandems with handcam and I always do my handles check. I do a total of 4 handles check, One before putting the rig on Second when I adjust and tighten the side straps and top connectors Third right before the door opens. Fourth after I throw the drouge (I got into the habit of checking the drouge) touch my cuttaway handle and the right main release handle and I do a visual check on the reserve handle. I have had two cutaways under tandem and on either of them I never had a problem with the camera. On one I had a line over and the camera record everything and on the other one I had turn the camera off already and the right toggle was locked, after I cuttaway the camera never turn back on and I gave the video to the student for free. I wouldn't give the camera to the student, first I don't think is safe, second I want them to be as relax as possible and not having to worry about a camera ( hence, 200 jumps for a person before they even wear a camera), and third, even thou sometimes you might get the odd good picture the overall quality of the video is going to be poor in comparison to the different angles I can do in a skydive when I am recording.

maybe demo a few different rigs. So far I am pretty happy with the voodoo Curve, we had many people jumping all sizes for that container and everyone is really, really happy for what they got. They are really comfortable and they look sharp. I have jumped wings, javelin reflex and stuff and so far the Curv is like a dream.

I would recommend you to read on the specification and for what the canopy was made for. I jumped a pilot 117 loading it at 1.9, never had a bad landing, but as I was done flaring the canopy was behind me collapse, then read about it and it is not recommended to load it pass 1.6. Then I flew a Velo 111 and it was WAY way better than the pilot, coming straight in or doing harness turns. I think for the loading and not planing any HP landings a saber2 and a safire2 will do you wonders. a crossfire loaded at 1.8/1.9 will be on the less forgiving side than the saber/safire, but the openings are awesome.

I started doing tandems at about 535 jumps. I did the 5 evaluation jumps with the Tandems facilitator and the other 5 with a tandem master that had close to 1000 tandems, he is also the chief instructor. To be honest the evaluation jumps where easy in comparison of the hell I went through with the next 5 jumps. On the first one he got me in a spin so bad that I lost time awareness/altitude awareness trying to fix the spin and end up opening at about 3.500 ft (from there I have been trying to be as aware as I can be in all my tandems (I have over 230 tandems now). On the second he didn't do the spin, but he did the rocking motion, right after we jump off ( I got us belly to earth and stable and tossed the drouge and after 1000 feet even though he was trying to touch his toes every 2 seconds we were not rocking anymore. On the third he brought his hands out after we exit got the drouge being belly to earth, and he tried again to spin this time we were not moving, I was able to counter all his turns to the point that I could see th strap fully extended by the pression created by both of us going opposite ways ( obviously he would change directions time to time, but we didn't turn anything more than a 90. On the forth was kind of easy he just turn into a ball the whole jump on the last one he said: "Ill be a normal; student on this one, also wave before pulling"... he wasn't a normal student he again was rocking and turning and shit, when I wave he grab both my arms and tries to lock them, I force the right arm so he focus on the right arm as I rapidly release the left arm and pull. After the 5 jumps, he said..." Know I feel confident you are going to be able to take care of almost everything" I was doing tandems next day and maybe had a few that have taken me for a ride, but nothing a deep breath and flying didn't fix. Also, had two reserve rides with in my 230 tandems, toggle lock and line over Fun times!!!. I guess the best advice I can tell you that I been told, - Fly your body, a student shouldn't be able to out fly you. - Know you EP's study them and do many mental rehearsal. - build some triceps strength so you are able to land the tandem flaring all the way (have seen many different tandems instructors that don't really finish their flare) - The most important, mix entrainment and training with your student, the more relax they are the better the skydive is going to go and even thou they might still be afraid they are going to die, they will trust the instructor and have a blast anyway.

Backflying in the air is kind of pointless (big reason in the tunnel is because it is a bail out position and at higher speeds you want to be in control), but if you want to freefly and there isnt any plans on tunnel, I would suggest you do a figure 8 on your back at low speed and once you can do it then make the turn faster and stop. More than once I have seen people learning how freefly get on their backs and they don't know how to stop the turn wasting a lot of time getting back to their bellys and then try to sit again. I wouldn't waste time backflying in the air after you can control the turns. I would also recommend you to be a proficient tracker, once you are a able to freefly with other people you want to be proficient also at clearing you airspace. I know a lot of people that are decent freeflyers but really bad belly flyers, but they don't plan on belly fly any anytime soon so, I personally don't mind as long as they can track for a 4-way or better. Big thing when learning how sit fly on your own, fly facing perpendicular to jump run, so if you are back sliding (which you are probably going to do) or going forward you don't fly to other groups air space. I am pretty sure you can look at a lot of videos from Axis school on learning how to sit fly. The major things that I teach someone who has never sit fly before are: Arms 90 degree of your torso, slightly behind you, hips 90 degree and knees 90 degree. And start from there. My Anglish isn't great, but that's my 2 cents. PS: make sure you talk with the people on your loads on what you are doing so the exit order is not messed up. PS of PS: Make sure what you jump is freefly friendly

Whats a round? like lol.

Look up, breath and pull :)

That goes without saying. Try jumping a highly loaded crossbraced wing and see how good and stable is your body position.

I should rephrase, If I was going to do more than just one skydive, then it would be worth it to go and do a few jumps. I am on a family holiday so doing a bunch of jumps isn't an option specially since we are going to be here only for only 9 days. If I were to do a skydiving holiday out of it then it would definitely be worth it.

Or maybe is just packing and body position lol. I bet the manufacture doesn't said pull rears like your life depends on it, for the canopy to open properly, maybe I am wrong. I still remember the few first opening on my JVX, they were pretty wild, but now they are sweet, for either HnP or terminal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymk6mhvqrMk scirocco 72 @ wl. 2.65 it looks like a lot of rears input on opening, let it open before you try to start flying it, and once is open then fix whatever you need to fix (highly recommend go with the turn and you will save yourself a few revolutions if you get line twist). Depending on the wing loading (in higher wing loadings by just touching rears the canopy will violently turn where you wanted it to turn). On my JVX I am just a relax bag and I have pretty good openings and is loaded at 2.5/1.

I wonder if i do a few tandem they would let me jump cheaper lol. going to Tokyo for a week and was planing maybe doing a jump, but not if is going to cost me close to $400.

Hence, the rest of my post saying if he want anyone commenting on his swoop (specially if he want some pointers), he might want to present a better video.