ostrich

I watched that three parter and I'm unreasonably irritated we did not get a technical explanation on how those slinks were reached in the reserve container to be cut and the main packed with a malfunction in the few minutes the police say he was alone with the rig in a bathroom. Dang it, these are real questions that need answers.

Hi Mark! Good to meet you. Jump to conclusions much? This student was on her 24th jump. A self-supervised jump. Of course she gets 2 gear checks before she gets on the plane, and 2 before she leaves the plane from the person supervising her, but not the packing data card. Did she learn a lesson? Yes she did.

I'm the instructor who found it. I'm the instructor that was shocked at the packing data card and asked around till I found out what happened. The rigger in question had logged it but not filled out the card. End of story. No pencil pack. Complete lack of signature is what alerted me. This rigger takes care of 20+ rigs for us and its the first time I've run into this in my 6 years on staff at SOI. Move along now. --I'm also out at Skydive Orange every single weekend. My DZ.com handle is the name I'm known by everyone there, so feel free to find me if you have any concerns. I'm not hiding behind an anonymous name.

At our DZ we require all our instructors to wear jumpsuits. Our most experienced Tandem Master with thousands of tandems wears as baggy a jumpsuit as he can find for his safety and for his students. He's a bad ass at every thing else he does, free flying or RW, so I don't think he's using it as a crutch. That's the example I follow. Our camera folks wear big enough wings to stay with things when they go slow, and go head down or arch harder when things go fast.

I own a g3 and and Odyssey. My next rig will be an Odyssey. Sunpath has better prices, and better customer support. Just my two cents.

N/A

My favorite was the student who showed up the night before and got real testy around the camp fire. Its a bad idea to pick fights with the guys who are going to save your life on a tandem the next day.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/08/genesis.entry.cnn/index.html So who packed it?

Read up on FAR part 105 , particularly 105.15 http://www.uspa.org/publications/SIM/2004SIM/section9part105.htm

When Spectres were first out and I got a brand new one, I was convinced something was wrong with it because of the slow openings. I had transitioned from a Falcon 195 and was used to something more brisk. I had my rigger verify that the slider was the right size, I sent emails back and forth to PD. I was thinking using a heated coffee can to put a hole in my slider to speed things up. Then, after about 75 jumps on the canopy, it stopped snivelling for 1000 feet and has some of the nicest openings of anytighin I've jumped. Just give it awhile to break in.

Congrats! Now the students can start really educating you on what it takes. When I first got my rating I thought I'd never see a student as bad as what we had in Don's course. Boy was I wrong! Just when you relax, that's when they'll get ya!

I just had a very positive experience with a student who was having confidence issues on her Cat D's. On her own, she decided to attend an organized tunnel camp. She came back with a new confidence in herself and really nice turns. The tunnel coaches adapted their program to suit her, and didn't push the mantis on her. It worked out great.

When I first saw them on our Mirage RTS', I wasn't sure what to do with it and thought it looked silly But once a more experienced instructor showed me how the belly band made the rig fit better on smaller students, I really like it.

I fly me first, the student second. I find that just yelling "ARCH!" into their ear usually has better results than wasting time on trying to trap them (though I've had to resort to that a few times)

The first 20 or so jumps on my Spectre were just like that. Took about 1000 feet to open. Now its about 500-700 feet, but still nice and soft. I never roll the nose or push it in, just quarter the slider, and barely roll the tail.