Quagmirian

If the brake lines had as much slack in them as student rigs I've jumped at one dropzone, then setting them to half would have done bugger all in the first place.

Speaking as someone who lives a few hundred yards from Dennis Nilsen, I'm happy for people like this to be locked away for eternity, although I'm not saying that life in prison comes without its own problems. I'm just saying that it's the preferred option.

Just looked at my log book. I am recently qualified and it took me a total of 15 static line jumps before I progressed to freefall. Some people just have a knack for these things, and I got very annoyed when people qualified in 18 jumps, but a way you can think of it is that every jump counts as more experience. I also needed 10 mins of wind tunnel time to help with my 10 and 15 sec delays, but the advantage of that is that it made my turns and unstable exit really easy later on.

This, and passion.

Acceleration is a change in velocity; both acceleration and velocity are vector quantities, they must have both magnitude and direction. A body moving at speed in any direction which changes direction must experience acceleration in the change of direction. This is A level physics people. Even wikipedia knows it, and no, that's not my source. Anyway, I got a massive dropping sensation on my first static line jump, but never since then, on any kind of exit or body position. Aerodynamics tells us, like above, that a body falling from a moving aircraft will simply not accelerate as fast as a body falling from a fixed object. The 'two bullets' thought experiment doesn't help us here because it ignores the powerful effects of aerodynamic lift and drag. I may as well say that the tracking position has no effect on my forward speed, or the head down position on my terminal velocity.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

As some of you may know, I am a real parachute bore with aspirations to go into the manufacturing industry as a career. I'm posting this with the hope that all the riggers and company staff out there with their vast wealth of knowledge might be able to point me in the right direction. I'm looking for anything remotely educational, like books, documents, websites, expired equipment to take apart, materials, people to teach me things, anything really. A while back when I posted some rubbish I made, I got a lot of replies and someone very kindly emailed me the 3 ring construction manual. This is exactly the sort of thing I would love to have a look at and I really appreciate it. Thanks in advance. Just a note, I am also a student skydiver and I have asked dropzone staff and riggers for this sort of stuff, but they have decided to go down the 'don't mix business with pleasure' sort of route. In other words, they don't want to fill my head with equipment knowledge while I forget what I should be doing on a jump, quite rightly some would say. Let me make it clear that none of this is related to my skydiving career and I don't intend to be an armchair rigger around the dropzone.

Apologies for the bump, but something doesn't make sense to me. How are you wearing a full face helmet with only 25 jumps?

Yes, thankyou, I almost did that on my very first jump! Out of all the things that were going on, it was the colour of the canopy that completely threw me.

I had the pleasure of jumping here last summer, and on the whole it was great. Everyone is very friendly and helpful, and you never find yourself without someone to answer your questions. The only problems I had were the coastal weather (sea frets are common in summer, and high winds too), the lack of local facilities and accomodation for someone without a car, and the aircraft, which at the time I was there was a cessna 206. With the best will in the world, Grindale isn't the busiest dropzone in the country and is not suitable for a newly qualified skydiver who wants to do fifteen jumps in a weekend. Will definitely be going back!

More of something I first picked up after flying, but I am no longer afraid of 0g or falling. Also, I don't have nightmares about falling down liftshafts, and I can fly in my dreams too.

@BIGUN Kinda like a skyhook, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqtC5w4vrZg @Phreezone I just used polyester from the shop, for what I assume you mean is the pattern on the main lift web below the big ring @theonlyski Jeff sent me a manual on how to make proper risers, and I had to sew it on a home machine. The webbing is just polypropylene from a craft shop @airtwardo I should have explained, the 3 rings are for cutting away in high winds, the rig itself is just for ground launching or towing

Here's a little something I'm working on. It's an all in one system for amateur aviation, like parasailing or ground launching, not skydiving. It doesn't even have a deployment method for either of the wings. Cutaway video [URL "http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/HPIM4062.jpg"][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/th_HPIM4062.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL "http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/HPIM4061.jpg"][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/th_HPIM4061.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL "http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/HPIM4060.jpg"][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/th_HPIM4060.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL "http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/HPIM4059.jpg"][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/th_HPIM4059.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL "http://s172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/HPIM4058.jpg"][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w35/quag_04/Parachute/th_HPIM4058.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

I've also done two dummy pulls, but been let down by the recent weather. I'm looking forward to my hopefully last dummy pull, but I'm still not completely fearless. The one thing that has helped me is practice. Practice your exits, arch, dummy pulls, whatever.

I know someone who said something about the first jump from a glider. Just to clarify, do you mean the first intentional jump or are you counting emergency bailouts?

I have no idea. The instructor made us do it.

I was the first one out, and I don't know why the link showed up in youtube tags, in the preview it was in url tags.

I know every dropzone does exits differently, but what do you think of my first SL exit? My second one was similar, but I may have had line twists, although I remember seeing the plane in front of me and the next student jump out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbqIQMVdhJA Edit: I was the first one out of the door, and I've fixed the link.

Just thought I'd update this post if that's alright. My first jump was absolutely terrifying, but it went very well, and after a few days I wanted to go back. Also, I really got that dropping sensation that everybody says you don't get. :P My second jump was much more fun, and the only scary bit was the plane ride. Again, everything went perfectly, but I made the mistake of doing a 360 turn at 1000ft. I had completely forgotten that the cutoff for spirals at the DZ was 2500ft. I looked at my altimeter before the turn, so it wasn't lack of awareness, I just flat out forgot. I got a telling off from my instructor as she thought it looked more like 500ft, but otherwise, lesson learned.

Hey everyone, I'm doing a sponsored static line at Bridlington in July and I'm hoping to get licensed after that. Is there anything I should know or be aware of that I won't be told on the day? Thanks guys.