FlyBear

I had 23 jumps when I got to my first winter break. The AFF jumps scared the shit out of me. But after the winter break, the fear was gone somehow. I think one of the main things that stress you during your AFF program, is the program itself. You are not "free" to do what you want. You have to do your turns, barrell roll etc. and that means stress. When you get to your first solo, you will notice, that the fear you had turns into intensive excitement. There is no free fall program any more. Of course, you should have a plan. But you don't have to pass another level. Some friends of mine told me, that they had that "door fear" for about 50 jumps. Other say 30 or 20 or 10... Whatever. It's individual. I remember, that every time the door opened during AFF jumps, I felt like I was walking on water. My knees were shaky and I thought I could actually "fall" out of the plane. Now everything's cool and you will get to that point, too, sooner or later. Don't worry about it. Have fun and let things happen

Impressing.

No. 4 Skydive Dubau Part 2

Yeah! I will never have to pay for a repack again! :-)

Thank you VERY much!!! That helped a lot!

May I ask a dumb question? AFFI = AFF Instructor, right? Where exactly is the difference between Instructor and coach? I always translated coach as Instructor/trainer and thought it had the same meaning. Would be great if someone could help me with that. Cause somehow, this doesn't let me understand the context of some comments. Thanks in advance.

Smooth opening

I hope we'll never be able to get younger. Look at the world's population. Growing and growing. Imagine how it would be if we'd live on and on. More people come, less people go. We're supposed to die one day. And for god's sake, we should not try to avoid that... We'd have to build skyscrapers as high, that skydiving would become impossible. I hope it will never get that far! But to refer to your topic. I've thought about it myself several times. For example, I can't believe that we are still driving cars which need that huge amount of fuel and work with such small efficiency. But then I see the connection between car manufacturers and oil groups and suddenly everything seems pretty logic to me. There is no interest in progress. Only if it's asked by the politics. If they'd involve cars that drive on solar energy, they wouldn't get the money which is left from our fossil energy reserves. Money is the key to everything. Sad but true

Wow! Amazing shot!!!

You've mentioned a very interesting topic. The point is: Statistics are not relevant in ANY way for you and me as individuals. Statistics analyze facts. Things that happened in the past. But they won't tell anyone how likely he is going to die jumping out of airplanes, nor will they tell us how many of us are going to die in the future doing it. "Risks" do not care about the number of total participants. If 4 of 10 persons die is the same risk as if 40.000 of 100.000 die. It just says how much you can expect to decease. Risks say: Multiply the number of participants by X and you can expect X times more fatalities. The risk stays the same. Risks are not that one-dimensional as people want them to be. I can turn my own risk to get injured or to die up to 100% by doing high performance landings which are totally beyond my experience. I can increase my personal risk to die by spending a day jumping although I don't feel healthy at all and maybe won't have the concentration I need for an emergency case. I can increase my personal risk by drinking a lot of beer before jumping instead of doing it in the evening, after I've made my jumps. I could turn EVERY jump into a 100% chance although statistics say that it is actually just 1 of 110.000 and therefore 0,0009%. The next thing, that you've already pointed out, is, that we don't know how these statistics were made. Do they analyze fatalities per jump? Fatalities per total number of jumpers worldwide? The same question for car accidents. Driving a car is VERY dangerous. But look around: People feel save driving a car. And thats the worst thing to happen. They will drive 200mph without even knowing that they're playing russian roulette. And when shtf there won't be enough time to react and their chances to survive sink to a minimum. If they had thought about that before, they'd keep their potential reaction time on an acceptable level and therefore they had decreased their chance to get seriously injured. But we all drive cars every day and therefore it will become routine. But routine kills. Today, skydiving IS quite save, BECAUSE it is dangerous and participants KNOW that it is dangerous. That seems paradox, but as long as people stay aware of the risks, they will not do stupid things which could make them pay with their lives. Unfortunately there are people and will always be, who don't get the point when experienced skydivers tell them that skydiving is not that dangerous at all. Its "save" as long as you play by the rules and stay on the save side of it. Its the same with scuba diving, snowboarding, paragliding, mountain biking... no matter which sport. Of course there will always be exceptions but in the end, every sport can kill you. Some sports just have more possibilities to do it and it's in our hands to look for and try to avoid them. On the other hand, sadly some accidents happen although the jumper did everything right and is not guilty at all but lets mark that as part of the activity which is usually very unlikely to happen. Nowadays we could get the "risk" of this beautiful sport to a minimum. A look at the incidents forum shows, that many accidents did not happen because of equipment failure. The "coolness" which comes with this sport often leads some individuals to a way of thinking which is not healthy at all. They will try to make a show for the tandemgirls by swooping into the landing area, they'll mount cameras on their helmets to record their jumps for facebook and youtube, just to get a bit more attention and pretend to be the "last action hero". All that beyond their skill level. But skydiving is a sport which wants you to respect it. And we should better give it to it or it will come for us with all its consequences... Thats what I wanted to say on this whole risk discussion. To get back ontopic: I think most of us would jump without an AAD. But people who say, that jumpers who do not feel comfortable jumping without an AAD or RSL etc. should quit the sport, have a strange view on this topic. It seems that they expect a jump to be perfect. But we should NEVER plan a skydive for the case that everything goes fine. And thats exactly what those people seem to do. We should plan it for the worst case scenario. There are several jumpers who died because they wanted to get stable after cutting away and therefore did not use a RSL. But unfortunately gravity did not wait for them to get stable. I'm not saying that its a stupid idea wanting to get stable before pulling silver but sometimes it needs more time than you actually have. And a parachute over your head has a bigger value than being stable when you impact. Others were knocked unconscious and weren't able to pull by themselves. And such cases are THE ONLY reason for such devices. An AAD could have saved them. Of course it's not guaranteed but the chances are much higher to get an AAD-fire with an AAD equipped, than without an AAD equipped. Everyone should think about scenarios like that before deciding for or against any safety feature. They do not only have advantages. It's always that way in life: With light comes shadow. All in all: If AAD/RSL/Skyhook etc or not. Every decision has its value and has to be respected as long they are evaluated well. We are all humans and we will fail. Maybe we'll have a malfunction someday which we will not handle that easy, make the wrong decision and fight it until we realize that it was not the best idea to not cut away. And in such cases, safety features could save our lives. AADs and so on are nice. But we should jump like we didn't have them. That would save much more lives than any AAD could ever save. Sorry, if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes. English is not my mother tongue but I tried hard to do everything right. Just my 2c PS: Why the hell does the "Check Spelling" function on a skydiving board mark the word "skydiving" as misspelled?

Didn't the bulletin itself say to check the device by pushing the button? If your cypres then responds with a blinking LED, it is in function.

Great post!!! Had to smile because it was nearly exactly the same as my experience. I don't know how often I said, that I'd be a better person, neither. Your text just makes me want to jump again... waiting for good weather... :(

Its Lana del Rey - Born to die (Gemini dubstep remix)

Totally agree with this comment. We have never had skydiving equipment as safe as it is nowadays. The statistics show, that gear-related injuries or fatalities are quite rare. Thats why I don't think, that a skyhook would change anything. As already said, it will maybe even cause more problems. Because jumpers will forget about some elementary things. Instead of cutting away at 600m, they'll cut away at 400m, because of the "skyhook"-promo-video which said that they'll be under reserve 4 seconds after chopping the main. Although I ordered a skyhook rig myself and I'm convinced of the whole system, I think it could cause more injuries and fatalities because of some naive jumpers out there. That would make the whole sport look much more dangerous than it actually is. Its difficult.

http://vimeo.com/56323048 Here it is... For the lazy ones..

Thanks for this great video! Watched it with a big smile on my face

A doctor may be able to answer your question ;)