Instructor Assistance

[JohnMitchell 16]

Well, I admire your determination. Seriously, people your age do skydive, but as we get older we lose the ability to learn and perform new tasks as easily as we did when we were younger. A 20 year old could maybe do okay jumping once a year, a 70 year old needs much more training and practice. Please consider that as bad as this jump was for you, it can be much worse in our sport.

[Andy9o8 2]

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Well, they say the most dangerous part of a skydive is the trip to the airport which I know about first hand, but I'm not going to quit driving.

I count at least 4 instructors in this thread who have given you advice (plus a couple more who are not instructors, but are well-experienced jumpers). In the face of that, this is a pretty obstinate response. Your posts have all the indicia of "student with a bad attitude" written all over them.

Nobody recommended you stop all skydiving altogether; just not AFF-1 once per year at (with all due respect) your stage of life.

Oh, and any skydiver that really believes that "the most dangerous part of a skydive is the trip to the airport" is a fool. Obstinance and foolishness often go hand in hand. In this sport, they can easily combine to produce dead skydivers.

[diablopilot 2]

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I'm 71 years old and not really interested in progressing beyond the first stage, Tuffy.

You're a hazard to yourself and a pain to your instructors. Go static line or tandem if you only want to do it once a year.

More than a pain, a liability. Who wants to deal with that possible outcome.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[tkhayes 348]

sounds like your dive went bad - I would love to hear the instructor's point of view as well.

[dickandsandy 0]

Thanks, John, but in terms of learning, I think experience trumps book larnin' - sit me down, give me a written on the fine points of aff-ing and I bet I ace it.

[dickandsandy 0]

I don't think I'm too obstinant or foolish, Andy, I was just speaking statistically when I said the most dangerous part of a sky dive is the drive to the airport.

[dickandsandy 0]

1. My instructor gave me some good advice that I will retain forever and I won't make the same mistake twice. Will all the readers of these posts who have never screwed up please raise your hand. Oops, I don't think I see any. But did you quit? Obviously not. Are you a menace to the skydiving community? I don't think so.

2. I think some of the advice I've been getting lately on this site and which I appreciate, really, is colored by my age. Look, I'm a champion chess player, I work crossword puzzles in ink, do water aerobics 3 times a week and work out 3 times a week. I can out think and am more physical than many people 50 years younger than myself. So don worry about me, amigo.

3. You seem to be discounting the 5 good jumps I had before this owie - how about those?

4. I watched a gal on TV last night death spiral into the cement. She was young, smart, I guess, and made it to the airport without running into anybody. In my inexperienced opinion, she screwed up. Plus, I think her hot shot thousand jumper boyfriend filming her screamed some bad advice to her. "Pump the brakes!", he kept yelling. O.K., but at some point, and I'm assuming here, she had a back up chute and she should have gone for the handles.

C U in the skies next year boys, look out below.

Blue Skies, Richie

[ghost47 18]

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1. My instructor gave me some good advice that I will retain forever and I won't make the same mistake twice. Will all the readers of these posts who have never screwed up please raise your hand. Oops, I don't think I see any. But did you quit? Obviously not. Are you a menace to the skydiving community? I don't think so.

I think people's point isn't that they never made mistakes. It's that the long periods of time between your dives makes it harder for you to learn from those mistakes. If you were jumping daily or weekly, I think the advice might be somewhat different.

You say your instructor gave you some good advice which you'll never forget, and I don't doubt that. But it's one thing to know what to do on the ground and one thing to remember to do it in the sky. And it has little to do with how smart you are or aren't.

To give an example from my own skydiving career, up until maybe jump 5, I didn't always remember to arch in the sky. How could I forget something so basic, so simple, so vital? Dunno. But I did.

When I was landing, I'd tell myself to flare slower. Time came, I yanked down hard, landed on my tailbone. I said to myself, NEXT time DON'T DO THAT. At the very least PLF. Did I? Nope, landed on my ass 4 times in a row.

Did I quit? No. But what I did do was decide to jump more frequently, until I had drilled at least the basics down.

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3. You seem to be discounting the 5 good jumps I had before this owie - how about those?

That's great. And perhaps you'll continue with no more trouble until you decide to quit. But skydiving is a very unforgiving sport.

On your 6th jump, you were knocked unconscious and only came to at 2000 feet. What if you hadn't come to? What if you had flown into a building, or worse yet, another student skydiver?

You say that your instructor bumped you and you violently flew across the sky and had a shoe fall off. You didn't regain stability, and an instructor had to pull for you. What if your instructor hadn't been able to get to you?

Additionally, 5 good jumps and 1 bad jump = 17% of your jumps have knocked you unconscious. If driving to the DZ is statistically more dangerous for you than that, well, you need to get off the road immediately.

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4. I watched a gal on TV last night death spiral into the cement. She was young, smart, I guess, and made it to the airport without running into anybody. In my inexperienced opinion, she screwed up. Plus, I think her hot shot thousand jumper boyfriend filming her screamed some bad advice to her. "Pump the brakes!", he kept yelling. O.K., but at some point, and I'm assuming here, she had a back up chute and she should have gone for the handles.

Sounds like you were watching the infamous Shayna Richardson. I haven't watched that video in a long time, and don't really care to again, but if I remember right, she did go to her reserve, and her reserve had some problem or something. And that was what the pump the brakes was about.


Ultimately, the choice to continue is yours and the DZO's (and S&TA's, I suppose). If your instructors feel it's safe to put you out there and you want to assume the risk, then that's up to you guys. After all, I'm not sure how it's any more dangerous to make your 7th AFF 1 jump (or 8th or 9th) than it is to make your 1st one.

The only thing I think is incumbent upon you is to research the statistics and the sport more. You've said several things in this thread (the car thing, the instructor staying with you thing, the "bump" causing a violent, uncontrolled tumble) that are either just not true or show a basic lack of understanding in what's going on in your skydive. And I think that's what has people worried.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do.

[JohnMitchell 16]

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Thanks, John, but in terms of learning, I think experience trumps book larnin' - sit me down, give me a written on the fine points of aff-ing and I bet I ace it.

But our sport is not about regurgitating test answers, it's about performing, real time, in a high stress enviroment. As an air traffic controller, I've seen plenty of people who can give a good book answer, but can't translate that into action in a life-or-death situation.

[Andy9o8 2]

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I don't think I'm too obstinant or foolish, Andy, I was just speaking statistically when I said the most dangerous part of a sky dive is the drive to the airport.

Sigh. OK, I'm done here.

[strop45 0]

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I don't think I'm too obstinant or foolish, Andy, I was just speaking statistically when I said the most dangerous part of a sky dive is the drive to the airport.

Do you appreciate the irony in this statement? If it was true that driving to the airport was the most dangerous part of a skydive, then statistically more skydivers would die on the way to/from the DZ than would at the DZ. In fact many more die skydiving than driving anywhere, let alone to/from the DZ.

Using this type of flawed logic would lead you to conclude than climbing Mt Everest was safer than driving, since less people die on Mt Everest than do in their cars.

Repeating myths doesn't make them true.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein