I passed? Cool! Now what?

[Newbie 0]

I'm new too, so i'm gonna offer up some thoughts, rather than advice
1 - enjoy doing solos. If you have a nice tight and freefly friendly rig, be happy going unstable. Enjoy being on your back. Experiment with exits by yourself, flying different slots (inside the plane, rear/front floater etc) and pretend you are diving with others. Visualise the others in your team then go out and pretend you are on a 4 way. Turn 90's/180's quickly and smoothly. It helps to jump with others, but it's fun trying stuff by yourself too.

2 - Like the other guy said, practice tracking. Tell the DZO or whoever you want to practice, get some advice on a heading to pick and see how far you can track in a hard track. Remember to stay 90 degrees off jump run, and if you find you are tracking like a demon, think about pulling a little higher . I used to love doing solo tracking practice, it's fun, and has been mentioned, a life saving skill.

3 - Jump in SMALL groups. We all get excited when starting off about being asked on a 2 way, then 3 way's then 4 ways, then ways which are too big and we probably shouldn't be on but what the hell, right? Well, aside from bigger ways being more dangerous (collisions, confusion, separation from one another at the end of the dive etc) you can actually learn a lot more if you have maybe just you and a mate together. I love doing 2 way freefly groups now - i learn a hell of a lot more when i can concentrate on just one another person without worrying what else might be going on. Find a good partner, and go jump together - start off simple and always plan the dive and dive the plan - giving yourself something to work towards instead of just falling and trying to get to each other is a good learning tool.

4 - Don't rush getting into camera/freeflying stuff. In fact, never rush anything in skydiving, it's generally not a good idea

5 - Find the fine balance between pushing yourself to improve and going over your limit and doing something too risky. Always evaluate that risk and if it's hard to see the line between the 2, err on the side of caution. Better to be safe than sorry, right?
Smile in the plane, breathe and always visualise your dive, both from an outside camera slot and from your first person view. Have fun!

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[AlexCrowley 0]

Newb, thanks for the comments. These are all things that are very useful to know, especially coming from someone who's a little further ahead and still has where I am fresh in their mind.

I realize that talking about where I want to be gives the illusion that I am in a hurry to go somewhere, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. For example: my rig is a Spectre 190, which gives me about 0.87 as my wingloading - I *might* downsize in a few hundred jumps to a 170, but for the time being the act of jumping out of a plane is enough risk - I just want to be very good at what I do (this is natural and fun for me).

I've enjoyed tracking so far - I probably tend to be a little too conservative in my solo dive flows, something I am going to talk to a coach about. I already have a series of coached dives prepared to increase various skills (which I probably mentioned earlier). I go thru my EPs obsessively, and agree with you that visualization is an excellent technique (i obessively visualize pretty much every activity :-/ I probably have a seratonin inbalance).

This weekend I'll finally get to jump my Infinity, which - once I've gotten used to it, would seem to be more secure for what you're suggesting than the student rigs i've been renting thus far.

I'm going to be making an active effort to make some more contacts at the DZ. I'm pretty small so I tend to float, and watch my friends plummet away beneath me , so messing with my fallrate is going to be pretty important.

Eh, rambling again......thanks for the comments Newbie.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[Newbie 0]

No worries - you don't seem in a hurry to me at all, in fact you remind me of me a few years back. There is a definate difference in knowing your limitations but also wanting to progress, compared to not knowing when you should be stopping and asking yourself "is this actually a good idea?". You definitely seem to fall into the former category. Have fun and enjoy, and congrats again

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[sd-slider 0]

Quote

does beer really help your arch?

I don't think so. I have yet to bring beer and I was hoping for just the opposite, "de-improve" my arch is the goal here. I gots-ta slooooow down so that I "can" have fun with others

Same as Twardo on the rest. I asked my instructor the same thing and he said "Have fun, and be safe!"

Anvil Brother #69

Sidelined with a 5mm C5-C6 herniated disk...
Back2Back slammers and 40yr old fat guys don't mix!

[NWFlyer 2]

You've gotten some great advice here. Another thing that an instructor of mine told me is "mix it up - jump with people who have WAY more experience with you and jump with people who have about the same level of experience as you." His reasoning - you will learn different things from both. Obviously, the lower the experience level on the jump the smaller the groups should be.

Also, constantly work on the "survival skills," as others have mentioned ... breakoff, tracking, awareness of others in the sky. I know for me, it took a while to develop that, and I'm still working on it.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[billvon 2,998]

>Everything Billvon said, and learn to track really well.

OK, now I feel sorta bad for giving not-so-serious advice. So here's some serious advice:

Accept plateaus. If you're like most jumpers, you'll experience an occasional breakthrough (i.e. suddenly you can turn with your legs!) but for the most part you'll be dealing with 'plateaus' in learning where nothing seems to be getting better. Good coaching can help with this some, but even with the best coaching there are times when you don't seem to be improving. Be patient. It's during times like these that you are learning altitude awareness, fall rate control, leg control and things like that; it will often be almost subconscious. Let it happen.

Learn your limits. At first it's hard to know what your limits even are, because often you have to fail at something before you know what you can and can't do. 2, 3 and 4 ways don't seem too hard until you try to do one and end up funnelling exit after exit. Some others are just plain too dangerous to "try and see what happens" - small canopies fall in this category, primarily because landing one without injury once does not mean much in terms of how safe you are under that canopy. Good advice is key here.

Push your limits. As soon as you determine what your limits are, start pushing them. If the problem is with exits, try different positions in the exit. Try changing your technique. Get advice. You might even want to try some different aircraft; cessna 182 exits are very different from cargo door 206 exits, and those are very different from otter exits.

Push your limits one at a time. This is probably the most important thing. Don't try a new jumpsuit on your first 4-way, because that's going to introduce _another_ variable to an already-different dive. Don't do your first night jump on a new canopy, or even on a canopy with 1-2 jumps. Get used to the canopy first.

Get your lie detector working. A lot of skydivers are just plain full of shit, and will happily give lengthy advice on subjects they know nothing about. Sometimes it can be hard to tell an experienced guy with good advice from one who's FOS.

Finally, don't feel bad about doing something you like - hop and pops, solos, whatever - even if your goal is something like 4-way. Remember that this is supposed to be fun, and doing jump after jump of 'working' dives trying to get one thing right can get frustrating. A lot of people quit at the 100-200 jump phase, and I think this is partly due to too much work and not enough fun.

[AlexCrowley 0]

Thank you Bill and NWFlyer, your advice is much appreciated.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[JohnMitchell 16]

Quote

>Everything Billvon said, and learn to track really well.

OK, now I feel sorta bad for giving not-so-serious advice. So here's some serious advice:

No, really, I liked your advice.

Good one, too, on the BS detector. There's a lot of it in any sport. Ours is no exception.

[Mike111 0]

Congratulations on getting your A.!