Static Line/AFF Hybrid Program

[Ron 10]

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The part I would like to see eliminated is the solo freefalling at the beginning of their "skydiving" career

When I went through the program AFF was not at every DZ. And I am not AFF rated, so it was the only way it could be done legally (USPA).

I agree that students and up jumpers need more canopy training....It's why I am a big fan of testing before being allowed to down size.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[BrianSGermain 1]

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The whole climate of freefall skills taking priority over canopy flight skills is the problem. There needs to be more sport accuracy competitions, as well as a general proliferation of the hop-n-pop culture.

Interesting that you mentioned this. Skydive Elsinore is now hosting a fun sport accuracy competition held on the first Sunday of each month. 2 jumps, with an open and intermediate class. Judges are may also provide coaching and advice.

Rock on!
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[riggerrob 643]

Brian,
Most Canadian DZs have been doing a variation on your theme for decades.
In other words, you can count on one hand the number of of Canadian DZs doing first-jump AFF.

We just found that most students require two or three canopy rides before they calm down enough to learn freefall skills.

The standard is: "do two or three IAD jumps ... or until you demonstrate decent landings ... before we start teaching freefall skills."

As for using lower-skilled instructors ... hand me the can-opener ....Hee!
Hee!
The other reason that most Canadian DZs wait until a student's third or fourth jump before doing harness-hold jumps, is that our freefall instructors are humble enough to admit that we are not -god's-gift-to-skydiving, given our short jumping season, etc.

And sure, freshly-minted PFF instructors might be "certified" to do high-stress, solo release dives, but we try to ease them into the program with two-on-one dives, etc.

[BrianSGermain 1]

I have always held the Canadian program in high regard. This is why I required a few static lines before AFF at my own DZ.

The real trouble is, the customers always want it all right now. The question I ask is: "Who is the boss, the student or the teacher?" If we let the students do whatever they want as long as they are willing to pay for it, they will never get the skills they need to survive. It is our mentorship that keeps them alive, not their innocent desires. We need to guide them.

When we set specific tasks that the students must satisfy before moving on to freefall, we demonstrate what matters most to us as instructors. Pulling at a safe altitude and with good stability is important. You will never catch me asserting otherwise. My concern is that this task is so highlighted in the current training program that we are not successfully conveying the importance of flying the parachute.

If we set these asperations as specific tasks that they must demonstrate, they will understand that this is a priority. The skills described in my article entitled "Canopy Skill Drills" (DZ.COM) and www.bigairsportz.com describe some, but not all of the necessary awareness and control tasks that would fit the bill. Accuracy requirements are important, but exactly HOW they get to the target is also important. Flying a complete pattern with grace and confidence is essential to the goal of becoming a safe canopy pilot.

Without careful forethought and intelligent conversation, nothing is going to change. If that is OK with you, and the number is broken legs and lost lives is acceptible, then ignor all of this discussion and go back to business as usual. If you want to improve the situation, let's keep talking.



BG
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[Liemberg 0]

Hi Brian,

I am somewhat reluctant to discuss this in a public forum, because starting a hybrid program is exactly what did get me in a world of trouble. But here goes:

At my place I have been (and am) running a ‘hybrid’ program since 1992. The logic that did get me to this is the same as yours. Static-line students can enlist after reaching a certain level on their static-line jumps that would clear them for their first freefall in the ‘classic static-line training’ (in Holland this is minimum 5 jumps, 2 consecutive succesful practice ripcord pulls – we ad “3 consecutive stable exits before we give you a dummy”)
Instead of doing the 3” / 5” / 10” / 10”+ altimeter / altimeter progression, we send them up high with one AFF instructor. After showing “enough awareness” on the first freefall jump, the second jump usually is the release jump. The third one their main objective is turns-belly-to-earth and on the fourth they do at least one backloop which in their case means: “become unstable & save your ass”
Their fifth jump is a solojump from altitude, then 5000ft, then clear-and-pull at 3500ft.

It goes without saying that this is the bare minimum and if they fail a level they must repeat that jump. They are equipped with a simple Dytter set 500ft below their designated opening altitude and on every jump they must ‘beat the Dytter’ in order not to fail the level.

To make a long story short, it ended up with me and 2 AFF instructors getting their ratings pulled, although with our program we did not do anything that wasn’t allowed in the Dutch BSR. Re your motto (“lets keep talking”) I tried to do just that but was forced to take the KNVvL (= dutch USPA) to court, to continue the conversation...

(Hey, its my livelihood, what else can you expect when you pull my ratings)

I won (because what we were doing was allowed under our BSR’s; the judge ruled “that if something else than that what was written down was meant in the regulations in the future it might be a better idea to word those regulations in such a way that the meaning would be clearly expressed…”)

Since that time we gained a world of experience running the program and I really don’t want to give it up. (Hint: You are on the right track there, Brian…)

I got another suspension because I asked a German instructor/examiner (with also USPA – AFF ratings) to help us out with our German speaking students.

My centre got ‘stonewalled’ out of the National organization on a legal technicality.

They tried to pull my KNVvL-membership. (and as a consequence of course my instructors- and tandemrating)

Went to court again.

They lost again (Now, we are just bickering over how many euro’s they have to pay me – once you get the lawyers in, well, you know how that goes…and to make things crystal-clear: The first letter from a lawyer was RECEIVED by me…but for now it is a stalemate situation with which I am not happy)

My legal predicaments aside, now for the $64000 question:

Is the program safe?

Relatively speaking it is. We are well aware that you loose the backup of an extra AFF instructor but your student gets thoroughly instructed and has the benefit of his static-line experience.

Besides, with only one instructor you also loose a factor that could ‘screw your exit’. Two ways with at least one person that knows what he is doing tend not to funnel as easily as three ways with two persons who know what they are doing but – in the heath of the moment - may disagree on what has to be done…

Your student knows what it means to ‘anticipate a parachute opening on his own’ and also knows how to save himself once the parachute opens. (Indeed, being clueless when it comes to steering and landing the parachute deems you unfit for the program – my place has lots of outs but you can get into situations that require DECISIONS between 2000 and 1000ft. We do not hesitate to mandate extra static-line training)
Furthermore, the practice pulls during static-line training give the student extra confidence that he will be able to “pull for himself if need be” (and he NEEDS to pull or he fails the level…)
As I said before, the ‘watershed’ to get into the program is the same as it was in the good old static-line progression, i.e. you are cleared for freefall.

Next: Is the program economically viable?

Well it sure as hell isn’t what the customer wants (“give me freefall & give it to me now!”) but lets say that keeping him alive and in one piece gives good long term prospects. It is a marketing nightmare however since several times a year I have to ‘talk a customer down’ (“easy tiger!”) to first get into the static-line course, see how that goes, then – if it goes well – he might get into the freefall course. As usual it is not always easy to convince people that most of us first learned how to walk before we could run and people seem to want to ‘schedule their freefall course in order to be back at the party in Amsterdam this weekend’ …then again, this is the same for al other forms of skydiving, due to weather – their own abilities and accomplishments are just one more factor.
The thing is well suited for smaller DZ’s due to the economics of flying a C182. Also, with everybody screaming for staff nowadays, being able to accommodate the students with one instructor per student turns the logistics from a nightmare into an unpleasant dream – we should count our blessings even if they are few and far between… The student ends up with both more freefall time and more canopy-time for his bucks, so…

Three of my former students became rated tandemmasters, several are competing on the national level, one got her instructors-license in Germany, some get married and have kids and a few became accomplished camera flyers. More important: In the long run my students tend to stay alive and in one piece most of the time; I like to think that our training has something to do with that.

One of the most recent students – meet my 16 year old kid:

http://members.home.nl/pcamlnd/video's/video's.htm (click on the camera – “speel af” means “play”)

Actually, I had nothing to do with training him since al HIS freefall jumps in the program were made with former students of mine… however I do take credit for him being able to ride a bicycle …and he made eight tandemjumps with me before enrolling into the static-line course – a course I did not want to conduct, remembering how it was with the bicycle. The last jump Steven made last season he went ahead of me when I was doing yet another tandem.

Solid as a rock, pulled stable and on time, landed within 15 meters of the target.

As riggerrob often says: Hee! Hee! Hee!

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci
A thousand words...

[BrianSGermain 1]

Man, and I thought I wrote some long posts!
New ideas often find resistence. That doesn't make them wrong, just new. If you know you are onto something good, keep going with it. When we are on that kind of path, part of our job becomes that of a teacher of our way. You have to explain WHY you are being different. Roger Nelson was the best example I can think of in that category. He has new ideas, but he had thought them through. He spent loads of time passionately selling his ideas to the world.

That's who you have to be if yoiu have a new idea that you deeply believe in. Don't offend. Just teach your idea to those that do not understand it. If you are right, you do not have to speak loudly, just long...

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[Liemberg 0]

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Man, and I thought I wrote some long posts!

Brevity is the soul of wit?

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Roger Nelson was the best example I can think of in that category.He has new ideas, but he had thought them through. He spent loads of time passionately selling his ideas to the world.

I'll never ever manage the "throwing-your-rig-in-the-air-with-a-somersault-gear-up-trick" I once saw him do on video. No comparision...

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci
A thousand words...

[skykittykat 0]

Please, before anyone flames me, I am not an instructor.

I have thought about this a lot, not only from seeing injuries, etc, but from my own experience.

Quick background - I did AFF and I was 145lbs at the time and on a 360 sq ft canopy and had very little canopy instruction on the ground. I could not even flare the thing. I was told if I went on something smaller, I would kill myself. Incidentally, I finished my AFF in the UK and was put on a F111 210 and found it much easier to control, but did not know how to flare at the right time, plus having the mental thing of "you are going to kill yourself" goin on in my mind. Anyway, to cut a long story short, if I had had the proper instruction to start with, then I would not have had the struggle with canopy control to start off with.

From spending a lot of my jumping time in the UK, I could see the difference in canopy control between the static line students and the AFF - the static line students were way more proficient in canopy control and landings.

OK, maybe it was not that short!!! My thought is that during the AFF/A licence training, there should be a number of hop'n'pops to concentrate solely on canopy control which come after a certain level.

To keep the costs down for the schools/dropzones, these hop'n'pops come directly after the AFF hop'n'pop (solo) level and are coached accordingly (maybe another day in the classroom).

Liz

[pms07 3]

I guess I was not clear enough. The idea is to have a harness-hold level one type jump for the first few freefalls. Before that would be a fairly lengthy period of static line jumping with tons of canopy flight TLO's to earn their right to be cleared for freefall. Obviously the students will have to satisfy exit requirements, but the goal would be to get used to flying the parachute before doing any freefall, then havng the assistance of freefall jumpmasters for the first few delay jumps. ***

Brian,
The ideas you are suggesting will work in my opinion and you've obviously given this some thought. The part I'm not getting is why we can't teach the same canopy control intensive type course in conjunction with AFF, tandem, SL/IAD or a hybrid type program. I learned to fly an airplane, stall, slow flight and bunch of other stuff at the same time I was learning to land it. It's possible to do the same with skydiving...

pms

[skydiverjerry 0]

good luck in your battle

new ideas are what will keep the sport developing and as such should be tried.

re skykittykat post agin new ideas are great, and you are right when you say s/l students are better at canopie control in the begining and a hybride training system could be developed it is nice to see so many ideas being thrown around,


re pms07 post, lets try it post a suggestion on how to do it

the sport can only grow strong if we all work to come up with a system theat is continusly evolving to make skydiving safe, fun and educational.

life is a journey not to arrive at the grave in a pristine condition but to skid in sideways kicking and screaming, shouting "fuck me what a ride!.

[Liemberg 0]

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why we can't teach the same canopy control intensive type course in conjunction with AFF, tandem, SL/IAD or a hybrid type program.

Because all these type programs are already rather intensive and often 'conservative' when it comes to canopy control.
When training SL students (f.i.) most of us will setle for 'Have the student stay at or near the windline, arive over the target 1000-750ft, fly with the wind shortly, turn against the wind, from 250ft on let the canopy fly into 'an unobstructed lane', have feet and knees together and flare at your own discretion'...
This produces students that either land near the target from jump five on while others cannot come within 50 meters. So be it: some will stand up every landing, some will PLF dozens of jumps. Provided the DZ is big enough and there are no traffic issues this is enough for the limitted goals set. (I'm perfectly happy when everybody walks away on their own feet at the end of the day; the rest is bonus...that bonus maybe that I or someone else of the staff is at the landing area to produce 'constructive criticism' - if not, because we are busy with tandems or other students, it is learning by doing...) The phenomenon might be labelled 'the economics of teaching' where you set your goals realisticly and only look at 'these students, here, now, today'. Since we know about retention rate, we prefer not to say something or learn them something that would come in handy when they are downsizing 30 jumps from now, if that something is complicating matters during 'survival one-on-one'

We'll take it from there if they are still with us...

It is my firm believe that the TLO's of AFF training when it comes to canopy skills are either not met or only met rudimentary. No 'fault' of the instructor, just 'mice trying to swallow an elephants chunk'...
Just remember that there you combine what will happen with your body in freefall, altitude awareness in freefall, emergencies at or after deployment AND getting to the ground in one piece after you find yourself alone under a good canopy. Now if you work with a radio and the student listens to you, you'll be able to get away with a lot - but that doesn't mean the student understands WHY he has to 'pull left', 'pull right', 'put arms all the way up' and 'FLARE!'...

Visiting 'low-time'-jumpers untill now always enforced that believe; from my observation an AFF trained '20 jump wonder' cant fly his canopy, a SL trained '20 jump wonder' can, more or less...

Just my $0,02...

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci
A thousand words...