Gators1240

I am somewhat of a perfectionist in a lot of things and when it comes to maximizing tunnel time this is no different. Lately I have found that I start learning something new I spend a ton of time working on it where I would probably be ok to move on to other things. My belly skills are pretty good, my back is decent and recently I started working on belly to back transitions. So far ive spent about 40 minutes working on strictly back/belly frontflips and belly to back backflips. They are pretty smooth but not 00% where I want them to be as far as being perfectly smooth and without thinking before I do them. Am I wasting my time by continuing to work on these now exclusively or should I be working on something else?

I havent been to the farm but I did my AFF and first 30 jumps at DeLand and loved it. Everyone there was great! Carl is a great guy, I remember while doing my aff there was a group of argentinians there and one of the girls was pretty good looking and just wearing a sports bra, walked over to carl and asked him how hes doing. He looked at her with a straight face and just said "well now im horny" the look on her face was priceless

Well to be completely honest im learning it all. Im somewhat of a tunnel rat and im learning all the freeflying stuff there right now (starting sit right now) but when I go jump im sticking to RW. Its challenging and a ton of fun. I eventually plan on bringing my freeflying to the sky as well but not for quite a while. As for the camera......I would love one but have to wait my time out for it. I dont "think" that it will be a huge distraction for me once I get one but others have thought that as well and hence the reasons there are jump limitations for cameras so I think I will wait my time till I get one.

Elsinore is a pretty good DZ, sucks about the weather, I was planning on heading down this weekend as well. Ive only been there a few times but the times I have been there they were pretty busy and running both otters.

Mine was about 3 hours for the AFF FJC. I am a very quick learner and had studied the SIM relentlesly the few weeks before doing my FJC so I had a good bit of information going in and it was easy for me to grasp. I didnt have any problems at all either in freefall or under canopy. I think it really depends on the student and if its a 1-on-1 like mine was or an actual class. I can see it taking much longer with a bunch of people doing it at the same time.

its all good, I do have to say though skysystems has some great customer service. I got a reply from them way quicker than I imagined and they are taking care of it.

ok so forget my last post. Everything seemed well until today when on my first jump, pretty much as soon as I hit terminal it opened again, tried to close it and it wouldnt stay closed and then ended up ripping off completely in freefall....

I got a PM regarding this issue and found a solution. I guess skysystems ships the helmets with the visor screws a little loose. A small allen wrench and about 30 seconds of tightening the 4 screws took care of the problem

Thanks for the info, ive never had any issues with the guys at SkySystems and ill see about the hinges. I dont really intend the helmet for freeflying right now, im mainly doing RW, but they bumped up the speed in the tunnel for some drills I was doing. I put some tape on it after it opened and it was fine after that. I was thinking about maybe a cookie or a factory diver later down the road but I havent decided yet.

Ive had the oxygen for about a month and a half now and have had no problems with it until today. I went to the tunnel with it as I have several times before but onced they bumped the windspeed up a little bit it kept coming open. Ive never had a problem with it before either in the sky or in the tunnel and was wondering if it just isnt designed for higher windspeeds like that or if there is something wrong with it. Anyone have any ideas?

That may actually be a bad thing. I spend the majority of my money at the DZ now and the closest one is about an hour and a half away. If I lived that close to a DZ I may end up doing some unspeakable things for jump money because I would always be broke

I did this and it made a world of difference. The tunnel helps out tremendously and I would recommend it to anyone trying anything new. The amount of immediate feedback you get and visual reference of the tunnel cant be beat. Ive since become somewhat of a tunnel rat (tunnel once or twice during the week, dz on the weekends) and my progression is amazing. I did most of my time on my belly in the tunnel starting out but recently started working on freeflying. It took about 30 minutes in the tunnel to learn to backfly and start sitflying. Now my sitflying is that great but im doing it and in what would have taken me 30 jumps with a coach to accomplish had I not used the tunnel.

Even this is clearly not all the information needed to clearly present your account of what happened. You say you received the rig in July. What was the original estimate for delivery? You shipped an AAD to Chuting Star for him. Why did you do this? Was it something you offered to do for some type of discount? In my experiences a company does not ask customers to ship things to other customers for them, but I could see how such a deal could be worked out given the nature of the skydiving community. As stated before YOU were the one that brought this up and are trying to convince people not to do business with him. Claims like this have the potential to run a dealer out of business and should be taken very seriously with all of the information present. By being cryptic and dancing around answers like this it makes it seem like you are an immature 12 year old who is upset because mommy didnt get you ice cream exactly when you wanted it. If you truly have a legitimate gripe with Gary and how your transaction was handled then I dont see why you wouldnt present precisely what happened from the get go instead of asking people to email you so you can send them 100+ emails of you two bitching back and forth. If you truly did get the bad end of the stick and paid for equipment/services that were never received nor got refunded for them then people should know about it, but the way you have presented your case and with each following post you have made make it seem less and less legitimate. Contrary to popular belief people are not that stupid and wont believe everything that they see on the internet. They are also smart enough to look at the facts of a situation (without your opinion or "feelings") and come to a conclusion about whether they will do business in the future with said individual, IF they actually know what happened.

I dont think that the majority of the people on here want to sift through 100+ emails to get the nuts and bolts of what happened. Yes it might shed some insight to the level of professionalism (or possibly lack of) that went on but it just isnt worth it (for me) to read through that many emails to find out what actually happened. Im sure it would only take a few minutes to post in a chronological order what was agreed on, when payments where made, and when/if you received the products and what issues you had receiving them. I dont think at this point anyone cares about your squabbling with Gary and just want to know the FACTS of the deal. If you truly where screwed over and have a viable claim as to what happened then this should not be a big deal for you to do. As it seems now you keep changing details of the story(i.e. you originally got nothing from gary after paying him thousands of dollars, and now you say you got everything except a deepspeed suit and he owes you around $300) which will lead people to believe you are full of shit.

Yeah we have met, in fact we are friends on facebook (brandon lassiter) lol I didn't jump with you Sunday though and I got there right after your jump with Emily

I have and will continue to go down to Elsinore there are some great people. I was at excel last week with Andrea and dsans and did a few jumps and learned quite a bit about fs but like I said there is still a ton to learn

I've been searching and searching and can't seem to find a good source of information for someone starting out in rw. I've found the random and block dive pools and I know that learning to fly well on my belly is a good start but I can't seem to find any information as far as what each slot is called, and information regarding exits. Does anyone know where I could find this information?

+1 Also make sure to ask them a million questions regardless of how stupid it they may seem, the information gained from said questions could end up saving your life. and as always have fun!

+1 Emerald coast is one of the reasons I started skydiving. I did a tandem there about 6 years ago and the place was great. Been itching to get back there at some point.

+1 I remember on my AFF Level 1 we had a long spot (which I didnt really know of at the time) and my AFFI gave me the hand signal to pull at about 7500 ft and I had forgot what that signal was. It confused me because I had just looked at my alti and knew it wasnt time to pull yet and we were already done with everything we were planning on doing that jump. Needless to say my AFFI ended up pulling for me and in the confusion of what was going on after they pulled and let go of me I went into a little bit of a spin which ended up in some nasty line twists. But I kicked out of them and all was well. I never forgot that handle signal since

One thing to take into consideration as well is what the weather will be like. I took a month off back in september and went down to florida and did my aff/a license and I thought I could get everything done for my a license in about a week maybe 2. Well it ended up taking me about 3 1/2 weeks to get my a license because of weather. It would get really windy in the afternoons and I would get grounded. With that being said if you do decide to go for the complete package I would recommend trying to take a little more time off than what you would need if the conditions were perfect. Theres nothing wrong with having more jumps than you planned to instead of less during the trip.

Good for you. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you're not seeing big improvements, you're doing something wrong. The nice thing about knowing close to nothing and having everything to learn is that it's not hard to top your last performance, or notice something new on every jump. That's the nature of the learning curve, very steep in the beginning, and then tapering off to more of a gentle slope down the road a bit. Think about it, if you have 50 jumps right now, that's twice the jumps you had when you got your A license. Even though it was only 25 jumps ago, you've doubled your jumps since then, and should expect to see a vast improvement in your skills. To put that into perspective, I have had several occasions where I have done 50+ jumps in a week. While I may have had a ton of fun, I'm sure that I learned less in those 50 jumps than you learned in the last 25. What you are feeling is the brith of a tiny little 100-jump wonder in your brain. That's where it begins, with the steep learning curve, and mountain of new information and experiences you have in front of you, and sooner or later you start to get 'ahead' of yourself. Get too far out there, and you get hurt or turn into a dickhead. Keep it in check, and it serves as an internal motivator, pushing you to try harder and do better, while your good sense remembers that you're the F'n new guy. Thank you. That actually makes a ton of sense and really puts things in a perspective that I never really thought of.

First off I never intended this to really be about whether I should or should not give advice, that kind of just came out in the end a little bit. I am not looking to blatenly go up to people and tell them they are doing things wrong/need to change anything it was just kind of a side thought (I tend to drift off and stray a little when im posting things). And the advice I was really referring to wouldnt have been my own but passing on advice that was given to me by more experienced jumpers and helped me improve. I make no claims whatsover to say that I am great in anything regarding skydiving or that I know more about anything than someone else does. I know I am inexperienced and have a ton to learn. Regarding the tracking jump yes I realize that the purpose is not speed and because I was faster on that specific jump doesnt mean anything. I simply noticed what I believed to be a big improvement on my tracking(althought I could be wrong). The weekend before I did a bunch of tracking dives with a group of really good trackers and got left in the dust. This past weekend my track seemed faster (could just be relative to the group) and much flatter (before this one I was dropping out, and now I kept level). Since I started skydiving I have been told by many people that I was picking it up very fast (yes including people with over 1000 jumps). This thread may lead you to believe I am developing a skygod complex but its actually quite the opposite. I am a bit of a perfectionist and criticize my own ability much more than anyone else does which tends to make me think I am a lot worse off than I usually am (after my first 6 AFF levels I thought I had failed each one of them but passed and on one of them I didnt really get a debrief and was just told "that was perfect, get ready for the next one"). What I am really just looking for is someway to tell what I am lacking in and what I am doing well in so I know which areas I really need to concentrate on.

I am very new to the sport and dont consider myself an expert or having "mad skillz" or anything like that but I am curious how people evaluate their own personal skill level relative to experience. I know there is a metric ass ton that I still need to learn but the more jumps I do it seems to me like I may be progressing faster than other people I have seen. For example this past weekend I did a group tracking dive and as far as jump numbers go I was by far the most inexperienced. My track was pretty fast and I had to slow down considerably so that I didnt leave the group behind. We did some formation loads as well which most funneled out the door and myself and a few others stayed away and waited for the base to try and reform which never happened. I had a blast on every jump and will continue to do so regardless of the skill level of people im jumping with but it does seem to me that im getting better with different things and I was wondering if it would be too taboo with my low jump numbers to suggest advice to more experienced jumpers about things I have done to improve certain abilities.

I always do gear checks and am somewhat paranoid when doing so. I do a full rig check prior to putting on my gear, and once on and in the plane I am constantly checking my handles and straps on the ride up. Its just too easy for something to get snagged on something a little bit without noticing it. I Will generally get a second pin check from someone on the load but sometimes I dont. I always make sure to get one if I have tandems sitting behind me. Theres just something about someone with no experience or knowledge of the gear sitting that close to my rig that makes me a little paranoid