TI : Do you control the passenger

[martz 0]

When in freefall you are turning, how do you stop it ?

Turning on opposite side ? (Looks strange on video)
Getting his legs and trying to replace it ?
Getting his arms and trying to replace it ?

Something else ???

Just curious what everyone else do.

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Ourson # 5
impatient de sauter # 1

[TALONSKY 0]

Get big and out fly them. Always remember your legs are your biggest weapon so use them and out fly the student.
Kirk

[freefalle 0]

When I took my tandem instructor course, Jay Stokes taught us to fly our bodies and counter what the students were doing. During our trainning jumps he would do some crazy stuff with his body, and we were not allowed to hook his legs or touch his arms, the point of the exercise was to teach us that we could counter most issues during our flight by modifing our body position. If I don't like the students arm position for whatever reason, Ill re position there arms. If I don't like there leg position, rather than trying to hook there legs I will usually try to adjust my body position to counter what is going on.

[FlyinseivLP2 0]

As said, fly your body, you can out fly whatever they are doing. Don't worry about what you look like on video if you have to compensate for poor body position, your job is to bring the student down safely, not look good for the video.

[riggerrob 643]

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Get big and out fly them. Always remember your legs are your biggest weapon so use them and out fly the student.
Kirk

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Agreed!

[riggerrob 643]

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When in freefall you are turning, how do you stop it ?

Getting his arms and trying to replace it ?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When I was a new tandem master - 20 years ago - they taught me to grab the student's hands and fly them around the sky.
I used that procedure until 19 years ago, when a 13-year-old girl took a death grip on my left hand just before pull time.
Hint: Cypres was invented only 14 or 15 years ago.
Also remember that second-generation Tandem Vectors only had drogue release handles on the lower left corner.

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[Ron 10]

Ignore then and fly my body. I try to get them into the correct position so they learn something, but if they refuse I just fly my body and ignore them.

Wearing booties helps.

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

[skydiverton 0]

Fly your own body.
Do not rely on the pax for stability or directional control.

I only hook the legs in case the pax lets his/her legs blowing around, continiously slamming my legs. Not dangerous when a pax does this, but not very comfortable for me.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Using your droque to gain stability is a bad habit,
Especially when you are jumping a sport rig

[slotperfect 7]

I try to ignore the student's body position and fly my own. On rare occasions I will wrap their legs briefly to get them in position. Otherwise if there is something making us turn I counter it with my legs.

Arrive Safely

John

[SkymonkeyONE 4]

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Get big and out fly them. Always remember your legs are your biggest weapon so use them and out fly the student.
Kirk

Absolutely true. That's why, like I said in two other threads, I almost always do tandems in my bootie suit.

Chuck

[A2C 0]

Hook your legs, make them arch.

The most of reason you feel unstable in the drogue fall is their knees dropped. I agree we have no problem to get heading control with such student body position, but another reason is dropped knees or d-arch makes easier to their leg straps to slip down to knees and make the "hole" bigger.

Check their leg straps after the handles too, especially for those "Ohio shape" students.

One more reason to teach them skydiving arch is to be prepared for "trap door forever" type malfunction.
Imagine you get into the freefly speed after you pulled, if you barely get your stable, increased speed makes it harder right before you pull your last chance.

[rhys 0]

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The most of reason you feel unstable in the drogue fall is their knees dropped. I agree we have no problem to get heading control with such student body position, but another reason is dropped knees or d-arch makes easier to their leg straps to slip down to knees and make the "hole" bigger.

Agreed, and the dropped knees is alot of the time the instuctors fault for tightening the main lift web too much!

try putting a customer harness on sit on the floor against a wall like you would be in a plane and tighten the MLW to a snug fit. then try to stand up straight let alone arch!!!! I saw this far too often when i was full time camera, and try to give advice to a tandem instructor as a vidiot!!!!!!

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[bosco 0]

Good comments Rhys...
However, if you can control the student at the top end and fix up any issues they may have, chances are that you will have a happier FF. On exit the student is very likely to de- arch, wave about etc but you as the TM can use your own body to re work the pasenger into a better position by using your legs to lock or pull in that wayward arm or leg etc. Yes, of course, fly the skydive, this is a given, but why fight an unsteady freefall when it takes only seconds to fix a passenger who has legs out straight or knees to their chest. I find that if I fix a student at the top end than more often than not the student maintains that position. It makes for a better DVD for the passenger and a happier day for you.

I cant believe comments from an earlier post when an IE would not allow the candidate to not leg lock the passenger and trim up the skydive with their own body!! They are robbing the candidate of vital Tandem Master skills..
This isn’t a trim control contest but a tandem mastery essential skill. Use whatever techniques we have available to make the jump flow as smooth as possible.. It’s all about the passenger after all.

There is so much miss information out there!!!! Arggggg

[riggerrob 643]

Sorry bosco,
But I am siding with slotperfect in this debate.

... something to do with a 13-year-old girl getting a "death grip" on my left hand, long before Cypres was invented ...

[aironscott 3]

I'm with you Bosco.
I was reading all of the above posts and thinking the same as you were. It makes it soo much easier if you fix the student up top. Easier on the TI, easier on the Camera Person, and easier during opening.
To all reading this...... flying your body is important to be able to do but its much better if you fly both bodies.

Aaron

“God Damn Mountain Dew MotherFuckers!”

[slotperfect 7]

So . . . let's define "up top." I assume you mean after the drogue throw and check of handles?

I see so many videos of TMs trying to fix a less than perfect student body position right out the door and actually contributing to the instability of the pair.

I do "fix the student up top," on occasion, but I fly my body through the exit, drogue throw, and handle check.

Arrive Safely

John

[nicknitro71 0]

Second that.

Get a suit with booties. Fly with your legs and use your arms to check your handles and play around with the sudents.

If their legs are up your ass there is no way they can take control over the flying despite what they do with their arms.

Memento Audere Semper

903

[bosco 0]

Id like to see that same girl grip onto your legs!!

Are not our legs our most valuable flying asset?? If the student is causing problems is this not mostly due to the lower end of their body and not their arms? I have nevr had a great deal of success messing with thstudents arms and when I have its usually aquick in and out to amend the position slightly in the cse of the students arms being far back enough to
Like the comment re bootie suit earlier in this forum..
Yes I do use student control techniques pre drogue but this is usually a reflex action. 99% of the work is done post drogue. Comon guys this is tandem mastery in the year 2000 when we know a little more about flying. As an examiner I get to watch all the old footage of tandem masters riding their students and not flying the skydive. Just check out the free flyers that do tandems... Those guys can do the job...

[rhys 0]

i also find that moving the customer to the left, right or forward by thier hips is a great way of controlling turns etc.

never tried booties and havn´t felt like i have needed them either.

a not too short and definately not too long briefing is the BEST tool also. and it bugs me when TM´s frighten thier customers in the briefing and complain tha they were stiff and difficult.

a relaxed TM is a relaxed customer.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[AggieDave 6]

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never tried booties and havn´t felt like i have needed them either.

I've done a couple of TI jumps in my RW suit with booties. Typically a back to back after a coached jump. Personally I can't stand doing a tandem jump wearing a RW suit with booties. Anymore I'll take the booties off and let them flap in the wind. I don't feel like I quite have the control over the tandem pair with them on. Most likely that is due to me using large leg movements to control the tandem pair in freefall and I'm not used to simply puting a bootie in the wind to control it.

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a relaxed TM is a relaxed customer.

Exactly. Then again, too relaxed shows a lack of confidence and can end up with the same result. So I would say "relaxed but confident." Of course, confidence in personality is very typically found in skydiving instructors, so I guess it would have gone without saying.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[skydived19006 4]

My vote is fix it if you can, then fly it. If I have a student who’s shifted, and has one leg outside, or has shifted to the left or right, I’ll reach down and shift it back to center. If I feel knees down in free fall, I’ll reach down and pat the thighs, I haven’t “hooked” a tandem passenger since my first few tandems. I’ve had a couple of tandems where the student put their knees to chest, and when I forcefully patted/pushed/almost hit them in the thighs they just went harder into the fetal position. I simply stabilized it, and threw the drogue (actually hard tight fetal is fairly easy to stabilize to me, but I’m 6’8”). Funny thing with one of them, we got to the ground and the guy asks “did I arch right?” To which I answered “Well, lets just say it’s a good thing I’m tall!” Not that a small TM can’t handle anything a student can throw at him, but it’s defiantly easier when the TM is 12” taller, as opposed to the other way round. My guess is that if you put me in front of a 5’5” tandem instructor I could cause a turn you couldn’t counter. Again, fix it, then fly it.

Now, what’s the “dooms day plan”? If you’re in a turn that you can’t stop you deploy! In my opinion if the turn’s speeding up, do your best to stop it and deploy high, the higher the better. Worst case you use the main to stop it, then the reserve to get you down if you can’t deal with 20 turns of line twists.

Now what if you have a tandem you can’t get flipped over? Do you fight it, and how long? Again, my “dooms day plan” is I simply dearch until the student arches, unless I can turn it over, if not I’ll let it stabilize on our backs, and throw the drogue by 7k. If they’re 90 degrees at the hips, and legs straight it’s not going to flip over. I have 1500 +/- tandems, and have never been over 1000’ off the airplane without the drogue out from a stable position, and I front flip off a 182.

Martin

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[steveorino 7]

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a relaxed TM is a relaxed customer.

Exactly. Then again, too relaxed shows a lack of confidence ]

I'm not disagreeing, but please explain. What do you mean by "too relaxed?"

steveOrino

[bosco 0]

Brilliant stuff those last few posts.
:-)

[aironscott 3]

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i also find that moving the customer to the left, right or forward by thier hips is a great way of controlling turns etc.

This is something that I don't see people doing enough of. A simple adjustment of the student underneeth you by grabbing their hips and moving them stops virtually any turn. I get a crack out of watching TIs dive to one side or the other to counter turns. I cringe when I see examiners teaching the dive to the side method. You gonna hold that position through the opening?

I also hook the legs for the opening. Something about watching those feet fly up over their heads gives me the heebie geebies.

Aaron

“God Damn Mountain Dew MotherFuckers!”

[A2C 0]

ditto.
I use my knee to move them on center.
Just one push, what the key is your CG and student's CG should be on streight vertical, then you don't need any help by booties even if you are shorter than the student.
But I still hook their legs if I see them dropped, at least before opening.
Remember there are always TWO none drogue falls each jump.