Safety

[richardd 0]

I am new to skydiving and have done 14 jumps rapidly approaching my cat-8 A licence.

I have found what seems a large number of posts concerning injury and fatalities. I would like to take something constructive from these discussions but often opinions vary.

I appreciate my JM is keeping it simple for me in terms of emergency drills but do feel a bit daunted by my lack of knowledge on what is probably the most important few seconds of my life.

That aside i am clear and confident about my drills based on what i have been taught.

I suppose im looking for reassurance skydiving can be done safely with limited experience.

Sorry. Rant over.

Rich

[nightjumps 1]

Start here: http://www.dropzone.com/safety/articles/

[kitof1976 0]

My best advice when it comes to safety is to read and inform yourself as much as you can about skydiving. The more you know about gear, possible emergency situations, incidents that might have happened to some other people ect... the safer you will be and the more likely you will react correctly in an emergency.
I have learned a lot from my instructors, but I have also made the effort to seek the information on my own. This web site is a good place to learn about safety eventhough one should take everything with a grain of salt since some people may not have the experience to give the best advice. The USPA website is also a good source for accurate information.
The skydiver handbook might also be of interest to you as it contain lot of valuable info...

Bottom line: The more you know... the safer you will be.

"We see the world just the way we are...

[CornishChris 5]

Rich.

Good to see you are jumping - congratulations.

There are indeed a number of incidents and reports on here but try to put them into perspective - this website tries to cover all of the incidents that happen all over the world so we can all learn from them. If there was a website detailing the accidents and fatalities involved in driving a car or riding a bike it would be infinitely busier and would probably scare the shit out of you too. That said, don't delude yourself that what we do is 100% safe. It is not but the control and overcoming of the calculated risks is one reason, for me anyway, that we do this. It can be disheartening to read loads of incident reports, and this week has had more than it's fair share, nut hopefully by reading, and understanding, we come closer to eliminating them alltogether.

Blue Skies and enjoy.

CJP

Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people

[mjosparky 4]

Always keep in tha back of your mind that every skydiver with thousands of jumps started out with very little experience.
Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[tombuch 0]

Quote

I appreciate my JM is keeping it simple for me in terms of emergency drills but do feel a bit daunted by my lack of knowledge on what is probably the most important few seconds of my life.

As you make your first few jumps things do need to be simple, and your instructors make most of the critical decisions for you. As you gain experience, you will be making more decisions for yourself. Obviously, the more information you have, the better your decisions will be.

You are correct that there is often contradictory information on the web, and in fact, there are tons of opinions on every drop zone. You will need to take it all in and make your best decisions.

My suggestions:

1) Read everything you can..web, Parachutist, Skydiving. There is also a great book for people in training, or experienced jumpers, called Parachuting, The Skydivers Handbook by Poynter and Turoff. This book is due for a new edition in the next several weeks and should be on every jumpers bookshelf. It's available from most gear stores, and also from places like Amazon.com.

2) Watch videos...check out Fly Like a Pro and Pack like a Pro, available from most major skydiving retailers.

3) Talk about what you read and see with your instructors. Ask questions. If your instructor has an opinion, ask him/her why, then ask for the counter argument. The best time to chat with your instructors is after jumping, or on bad weather days when they aren't doing anything...buy them a beer, or lunch, and pick their brains.

Have fun!

Tom Buchanan
Instructor (AFF, SL, IAD, Tandem)
Author JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[billvon 2,990]

>I suppose im looking for reassurance skydiving can be done safely with limited experience.

There's no way to guarantee anything in skydiving. However, there are many ways you can stack the odds in your favor so that your limited experience isn't a big factor. Using a big canopy, pulling high, limiting yourself to 2-ways (or whatever) and choosing weather conditions carefully can ensure that you don't need to fall back on experience you don't have yet. To paraphrase an old saying, use good judgement on the ground and you won't need to rely on your lengthy experience in the air.

This will be true throughout your skydiving career. As a personal example, I have ~3400 jumps and normally jump a Safire 119. I just started wingsuit flying, and for wingsuit jumps I use a Silhouette 170. That canopy could care less about line twists and it floats for a long time in brakes, giving me lots of time to fix line twists caused by bad body position (or poor wingsuit pull sequence) and get out of the suit.

Could I jump the 119 with the wingsuit? Yep, and I've done that a few times. But since I don't yet have a lot of experience with the suit, I'm going to stack the odds in my favor until I have the experience with the suit to deal with both it and the faster canopy.

[Topcat 0]

Quote

have found what seems a large number of posts concerning injury and fatalities......
I suppose im looking for reassurance skydiving can be done safely with limited experience.

Look at it this way... dig through the incident reports and count how many of them involve students. They are not the ones who are smacking into the ground at high rates of speed!

-Sandy (being a conservative fuddy-duddy in the context of skydiving is not a bad thing)

[kenneth21441 0]

I must admit that I had seen alot of the accidents coming from those with over 200 jumps..... maybe its is this that causes them to get hurt or killed.....

I firmly believe that if the jumpers keep the pull rates at 3500 they will have plently of time to take care of any problems verses someone who pulls at 2000 and no time.... with all these jumps.... a high puller still has alot longer..... to take care of business if needed.......

be safe and enjoy the sport............keep your cool under pressure...

Thank you,

Ken...

Kenneth Potter
FAA Senior Parachute Rigger
Tactical Delivery Instructor (Jeddah, KSA)
FFL Gunsmith

[juanesky 0]

Please note that the greatest percentage are good canopies incidents.

HP landings, are the 1 reason most experienced people are in the incidents reports, not malfunctions.

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[billvon 2,990]

> I must admit that I had seen alot of the accidents coming from those with over 200 jumps.....

That's because most experienced jumpers have over 200 jumps.

>I firmly believe that if the jumpers keep the pull rates at 3500 they will
>have plently of time to take care of any problems verses someone who
>pulls at 2000 and no time.... with all these jumps.... a high puller still
>has alot longer..... to take care of business if needed.......

Depends where you are, what you're jumping etc. If you're jumping a wingsuit and flying a Crossfire 97, openong at 3500 (or even higher) makes a lot of sense. If you are jumping a Sabre 150 and doing big-ways, 2000 feet may be safer - especially if you're jumping someplace like the WFFC, where high pulls can be more dangerous than low ones in terms of canopy collisions,