GrayAnderson

(1) Thanks for letting me know I won't get a dirty look. (2) Thanks for the rec. I like the idea of digital as well...I saw a bunch of digital ones at Suffolk today, but that's probably down to Suffolk being the DZ of choice for a lot of military (one of my instructors being a Navy parachute rigger by day).

So I had a rough Cat B jump today that will be getting repeated sometime in the next few weeks. I can go in great depth on this if need be. In the meantime... I got an altimeter today that had a scuffed cover, which helped make today an experience I will not be repeating. With that in mind I was wondering (A) if it would be bad form to buy my own altimeter; and/or (B) assuming it wouldn't be bad form, if anyone had any suggestions for one to buy.

I live down in Newport News. I've gathered that the situation surrounding West Point's DZ is a bit more complex...there seem to be two operators there (one is tandem-only while the other is more full-service). That being said, I was not aware that the DZ operator out in Petersburg was the one who used to be at West Point (and/or that the West Point DZ had changed operators; the website for the old DZ still seems to be operational, but we all know how useful of an indicator that tends to be).

I did my first jump (AFF/A) down at Zhills in Florida this past weekend, amid some weather hilarity (i.e. it was in Florida). I was only able to get my A jump in before I had to head back home to Virginia...the day I did ground school (Friday) the weather disintegrated, when I checked the weather Saturday I saw little stormlets all over the map and didn't even bother going out (wise decision; the site didn't jump at all that day I am told), and so I was barely able to pack the jump in on Sunday before I had to head back to Deland to catch my train. I really liked the school in Florida and want to do most of my training there. However, as noted above, I live in another state. I'm actually down there enough to make this work (I'm in central FL about once a month meeting with business partners), though I'll probably need to manage at least one intermediate jump for recurrency purposes during training...being realistic, on the next trip (the result of a "happy scheduling accident") I'll probably get 2-3 jumps in, have a probable 5-week gap until Thanksgiving, get another 6-10 jumps in over a somewhat quirky Thanksgiving weekend...and then have all sorts of "fun" with Christmas scheduling. Thus, my situation poses a fun multi-part dilemma: (1) Should I try and schedule one or more intermediate jumps in Virginia, to avoid recurrency issues and training gaps, or just eat the recurrency costs? (2) If yes to #1, any recommendations on which of the 3-4 DZs in Southeast/Central VA I should look at? Suffolk, West Point, and probably one or two others are within a sane driving range. Dinwiddie and Orange are also doable in terms of drive time, but that's probably the outer limit of my driving range. (3) I'll deal with December a little closer in, but (hopefully being through my E-jumps) is doing a straightforward solo jump somewhere during this timeframe less of an issue? The bottom line here is that Christmas is the biggest threat to a regular training sequence anywhere since I'm going to be traveling out west for a few weeks.