jonathan.newman

Congratulations, and welcome to the sport! To answer your question, yes, you can join the USPA and get USPA licenses. There are even USPA dropzones in Canada. I visited Montreal, and was able to jump at one DZ with just my USPA license. BUT, the DZ closest to my house wanted me to join the CSPA for insurance reasons. Many DZs want the higher insurance coverage of the CSPA $2Mil vs the USPA $50,000. Hope to see you next season!

I was at Skydive Spain this year in March. The weather was decent. The aircraft are top notch (15,000 ft in 15 mins, at 70% power). It was a bit cold and cloudy at times, but the rest of Spain, France, Germany, UK were having bad cold nasty weather. And they are a BPA DZ. Also, Algarve Portugal was nice the same time of year. Same planes, plus a Let 410. There is a bunkhouse in Spain. Skydive Sardegna in Italy also has nice Mediterreanean weather, and bunkhouse.

I got the chance to try this out on my sport canopy and it really works quickly, with much less effort than kicking out of line twist. I guess trying it out on a tandem will have to wait until next season

Gators, You may want to seriously consider working with Olly as part of the DZ-manager team. If you want to flex your design/coding skills, you sure could do that by installing the system at a new DZ. He's got a very functional product, but every now and then, there is a hiccup that needs a programmer's touch to fix. I'm not sure what your goals are beyond what you stated, but it might be worth exploring.

There is a great BPA dropzone at Skydive Spain, which has warm weather when everyone in middle and northern Spain and UK is freezing. I took an AFF Instructor course there, and there were several AFF students with their instructors from UK DZs doing AFF. I've heard good things about other Spanish DZs, like Lillo and Empuria, but never jumped there. Except for the weather (occasionally bad), you'll have no problem doing an entire AFF course in a week. Good luck, and welcome to the sky.

Kim! Congrats on getting your TI. I did my course the week before the Work Stinks boogie, and did my first four tandems at the boogie. After laying off for four weeks (bad landing on jump 4), I just finished up my probation. The funny thing is, after all this work and experience to become a TI, I almost feel like I'm back to being a student again. I wish you the best!

Thank you all for pointing me in a new direction. This was a tandem jump, loaded at 1.0, with a fully inflated, square, and level canopy, only we were flying backwards because we were twisted up about 4 times. I had plenty of altitude, but the problem was we were flying away from the DZ. I couldn't make a riser turn, and I was afraid to make a toggle turn. It was shaping up to be the least dramatic cutaway ever. By the time I kicked out of it, I was exhausted. I will try pushing the risers together if the same situation happens again. Has anyone done toggle turns under a stable, but twisted canopy? Tandem?

His first jump was IAD. Then he did 4 PFF jumps. His IAD jumpmaster is at least a Coach1. Perhaps he was following him out on an IAD progression jump. I don't see a problem switching from AFF to IAD and back, but I do see a problem with a coach chasing a dirty low-puller below 3 grand. The original poster made the right decision to save his butt for another jump. I would say that an AFF jump would be better for teaching stability and recovery vice an SL/IAD/Coach jump. As for the tunnel training, just a word of caution. I spent about 4 jumps trying to "unlearn" a student from the slowfall technique he had been taught in the tunnel. (Not to mention he had an AAD fire and 2-out on the prior jump). Welcome to the sport. If you ever make it to Ottawa, your positive attitude is more than welcome to jump with me. Jonathan

When I teach a first jump course, the solution to linetwist is always "spread risers, kick out of the twist". This weekend, I had my first linetwist under an Icarus 365 tandem. Then I saw this video of Brian Germain using the toggles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-17AHJQQ8fA to get out of a linetwist. Has anyone done this? Do you need a high performance elliptical to do it? Is a docile canopy too docile? What about steering lines getting stuck once you pull them? Jonathan

Obvious and easy to find out? I've used my USPA membership card to jump in Thailand, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and never had a problem. There are at least a couple DZs in Ontario that won't accept a USPA membership. They require CSPA. I'm trying to find out why. Anyone have an idea?