Skydiving book - 1962

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Sellick's book is a classic. Old time jumpers (including me) tend to romanticize the good old days. I started jumping in 68 and have made plenty of jumps on the worst rounds (worn out old porous surplus C 9s) and a few jumps on the best (Paracommanders and their various imitations). The surplus rounds sucked in every way except price. The PCs were fine canopies but expensive. The only things I really miss about surplus rounds is the silence (from lack of significant fwd speed) and the beauty of looking up at your canopy illuminated by the sun above it (ram airs with zero P and two surfaces just dont light up that way). If you want to experience a round canopy get trained on a PC. Don't let someone talk you into jumping the trash I cut my teeth on. I did like one surplus canopy, the Navy 26 ft conical reserve that saved my butt on a capewell cutaway. I have nothing but praise for that particular canopy and it only cost me $25. Ram airs rock, and you'll never truly know just how much unless you compacted some dirt and cartilage landing surplus rounds.

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Hear! Hear!

I didn't do a lot of round jumps, maybe 50 - 100, but I sure as hell ain't scared of them!

Strangely enough I find a lot of jumpers nowadays are scared to even jump an old F-111 7-cell in order to do crw with. They look at them the same way older guys look at rounds....

I guess if it ain't zero-pee and zippy they don't want it.

A big difference I see, is that under a round the skydive and intence fun was over when you opened, it was gental afterplay following an intence freefall. I was rarely worried under a round, nobody was likely to hit you. Now opening is more intence, and the canopy ride is more fun, with what you can do under a modern canopy, but you have to be so vigilant and on the lookout. Nowadays most injuries and fatalities are under canopy. It never was that way under rounds. People got hurt because you screwed up in freefall back then, for the most part. And for that reason, with all of the lack of regulation, wildness, and daredivilry of the 60's, I think there is something to be said, that for a jumper that got past there first 50 jumps, it was safer back then. Because most people never experienced a high speed malfunction, and people would often walk away when they had a line over, the most common malfuction back then. Now a new jumper can't wait to get a mini wing over head, so they can thrill-scare the cround with their daring do. Besides, today, you have hot proficient canopy pilots with thousands of jumps that would just as likely do a hop and pop, instead of skydiving. The emplasis has shifted lately from freefall skills to canopy skills, something unfathomable in the 60's. Just my 2 cents.

SCR-21