MakeItHappen

Search youtube for 'skydive camarillo' One example has several tandem jumps on it. Time of FF on the tandems is around 20-25 seconds, so they are exiting lower than what you can get at other DZs in the area. The view does seem to be quite nice. They land off the airport, NE of airport somewhere (Santa Paula area), outside of the Camarillo class D airspace. Started up in the past couple of months. Renting office space from another tenant, Camarillo Airport Service, at the airport. ~50 miles NW of LA, in Ventura county. Listed as a Group member on USPA Domain name associated with Luther Kurtz, as well as capitalcityskydiving.com skydiveharborsprings.com parachutesoverphoenix.com You might want to call the regional directors of those areas to get any information on the particular operations. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Sounds like Octamom . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

What you call bad mistakes are only bad if you do not understand the tax code and investments and go spend that money on expendables. I think that most Americans think that getting a refund check at tax time is a good thing. The best situation is to write Uncle Sam a check for your entire tax liability and give it to him at 11:59 PM on April 15. The longer you can keep your tax dollars, the longer you can earn money from those dollars. If you keep your tax dollars for as long as possible and invest in conservative, income producing instruments you can make money from the tax money before you hand it over to the government. If you pay Uncle Sam upfront and he gives a refund to you, you lose the income that could be made from that money. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

I know of a DZ that does this too - only they TO downwind up to 20-25 mph winds. I have friends that won't jump there at any time or when the winds are 'higher' because of that. The risk associated with this is that the ground speed is higher by an amount equal to the wind speed. That means that if the AC had to abort a TO or 'crashed' after TO it would have a higher speed. That extra energy because of the added ground speed would need to be dissipated. I don't know what the rotation air speed of an Otter is, but the calculation to figure percentage increase in kinetic energy is a simple high school physics problem. The speed that is important here is the ground speed. Whether it is 'safe' or not is a personal or societal acceptance of a given risk. FMI see About Risks Risk and Safety From a liability standpoint, a DZO/pilot would have a hard time justifying taking off downwind when the winds are high, especially if something bad happened. A pretty graph is attached. Example Comparison: Suppose rotation air speed was 100 kts and wind speed was 10 kts. The difference in KE between a downwind TO and an upwind TO would be about 40%. That is significant in an aborted TO or crash shortly after TO. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Hey Sam, Call or contact me. I can describe the terrain, no land zones, rising terrain etc. I can tell you anything about how such spectacular vistas came into being. I already have done interviews in Britain. See my makeithappen.com web site for links to the interviews. Just about anyone will say that I am a 'character'. ;) . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

I live in LA. I have basically 3 options in my area. Elsinore, Perris, or Camarillo. All of them are expensive except Camarillo and they dont offer the program yet. Elsinore and Perris are a 2 hour drive away too Camarillo has a DZ??? I don't think so. Are you looking at this url http://www.soaringsports.com/skydiving/Camarillo_California/index.html That page is from a booking agency - not a real DZ. If so, you need to go check out FunJumper.com and this sublink To find REAL DZs, not booking agents, go to CA DZs and type in your zip code to find the REAL DZs near you. The one I recommend is Jim Wallace Skydiving. It's located at the Perris airport too. Elsinore would be second. Perris third and Taft (to the north of LA) as fourth. . Jan I believe he's referring to this one....http://skydivecoastalcalifornia.com/index.html To the OP - go to Jim Wallace Skydiving. You won't go wrong there or get duped. Go look at this and pay attention to the photographs in the upper left and on the right, slightly lower on the page. PDF attached. Then go to this page and watch the slide show. jpgs attached for two of the slides. Notice anything similar about those images? I'll ask anyone that would have a spectacular view of the California coastline on a jump whether they would face the students to the east or to the west? The background ought to be the busy streets of the LA basin, not the spectacular view. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

I live in LA. I have basically 3 options in my area. Elsinore, Perris, or Camarillo. All of them are expensive except Camarillo and they dont offer the program yet. Elsinore and Perris are a 2 hour drive away too Camarillo has a DZ??? I don't think so. Are you looking at this url http://www.soaringsports.com/skydiving/Camarillo_California/index.html That page is from a booking agency - not a real DZ. If so, you need to go check out FunJumper.com and this sublink To find REAL DZs, not booking agents, go to CA DZs and type in your zip code to find the REAL DZs near you. The one I recommend is Jim Wallace Skydiving. It's located at the Perris airport too. Elsinore would be second. Perris third and Taft (to the north of LA) as fourth. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Jan, normally i agree with most of what you post, but this is like a nice big kick in the...well, i would say balls, but none of the JFTC jumpers actually have those, so how about this...a nice big kick in the boobies for anyone looking to raise money to participate in JFTC. If you personally don't agree with or care to give to any JFTC participant, fine, don't. But don't come in here and advise people to screw their friends and fellow skysisters out of their opportunity to participate. Yeah, JFTC has overhead, but that's, um, kinda the point. jesus. Lemme get this straight – You are saying that Person A has a better motive than Person B: Person A: Send me your refund checks and I’ll put them towards my JFTC entry donations. Part of that money pays for my jumps, jumpsuit, motel, food and other sundry expenses. Whatever is leftover, about $6 for every $10, will go to City of Hope. In the meantime, I get to jump for free, stay at a motel for a week for free and get fed twice a day for free. And I get to brag about a world record, when we set it, that raised money for cancer. Person B: Send your refund check directly to City of Hope, get it doubled by 3M. $20 goes to City of Hope for every $10 donated. I don’t know about you, but Person B seems to have the right mindset for garnering the most money to help fight cancer. Six dollars or Twenty dollars towards City of Hope to fight cancer??? . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

There is even a better opportunity for your SNM refund checks. I have contacted City of Hope about this today. City of Hope is the beneficiary of JFTC 2009. You can endorse your check, sign it over to City of Hope and send it directly to City of Hope. City of Hope 1500 East Duarte Road Duarte, California USA 91010 On the good news side of things, 3M is offering a matching donation for the first $100,000 donation in 2009. Mention that you would like 3M to match your gift and your refund check goes TWICE as far for the City of Hope. This is a much better plan than sending your check to a JFTC participant and having that money used for jumps, jumpsuit, motel, food and other things before the 'excess' is given to City of Hope. Your money gets directly to City of Hope without 'costs' subtracted from it and it gets DOUBLED by 3M - the maker of those cool post-it notes. Please send your money to City of Hope directly. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Use cable ties to 'lock' the baggage. Most places in the US will call your name for an inspection or you can watch your bag being screened. Then you can hand them some extra cable ties, the more colorful the better, to seal the bag. This way you know that only security checked the bag and that if the bag was compromised later, you have an evidence trail. Try to remember the names of the security people that inspected your bag. Their name is on their badge is case they don't tell you. You can always ask them their name. It goes like this: You: Yes, yes that's my bag. Sir, er what's your name? I'll stand here while you inspect it and answer any questions. Security: Thanks, we know how to do this. We do it all day long. We don't need your help. You: Uh Sir, I notice that you are cutting the cable ties off the zipper ends. I have extra cable ties for you to put on after your inspection. (Hold up a fist full of cable ties.) Security: Oh thanks. We can put those on after our inspection. You: Oh thank-you. Sir, er what was your name? Security: Mike, I am Mike. Thank you. We like well prepared passengers. You: Thank you, Mike. It is always a pleasure to travel through [insert airport name]. Thank you for the tremendous job you are doing to keep the skies safe. [Make a big smile. Give a thumbs up.] . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Even with just a coach rating you still cannot sign the card, except for 4 places on the 4-page card. There are two places on the 4-page card that a rigger may sign instead of an I. There are two places on the 4-page card that a pilot may sign instead of an I. All other items require an Instructor signature & license #. . (I wanted to discuss this in a PM before posting, but you no longer seem to accept them.) I've asked HQ about this and got an interesting reply. They said that the initialing requirements on most of the card called for an Instructor to be in full compliance with the ISP. Then they went on to say that compliance with the ISP isn't required; compliance with the ISP is optional. For all practical purposes, they were only interested that a rated Instructor signs the final qualifying signature. That Instructor has the responsibility to verify that the other sections were initialed by people who the dz accepts as qualified. So, if your dz lets coaches initial sections, that's okay with HQ. Yes all that is true, but from a liability standpoint it is not optimal. (There is a section in the coach IRM that discusses these issues.) Liability issues created a change in the BSRs that allow D licensed jumpers to jump with students under specific conditions. It used to be something that an S&TA could waiver. Some S&TAs did not want to do that because it put more liability upon themselves. The BSRs were changed to put what the S&TAs wanted to waiver into the BSRs. Coaches wanted to sign off the card because they said they 'looked incompetent to the student' when they had to go track down an I to sign the card. This situation can be avoided by making accurate records in the school's logbook as well as the student's, so that an I can sign the card off later. It seems that some people think that the card needs to signed right there in the post dive session. I know of several DZs that only let Is jump with students. They do this for liability driven reasons. In SoCal, we have an example that happened a few years ago. A jumper went through student training, graduated and jumped on and off for two years. After two years and with about 100-150 jumps, the jumper crashed and broke his body. I don't remember the injuries. The jumper sued the jump school because he claimed he was not taught how to avoid the obstacle (a desert bush). Proper signatures, according to the USPA gospel, can get a lawsuit like that dropped faster. It's up to the DZ, Is and coaches (USPA coaches or D license jumpers) what signatures they will accept. Everyone should recognize and accept the liability that it places upon them. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Even with just a coach rating you still cannot sign the card, except for 4 places on the 4-page card. There are two places on the 4-page card that a rigger may sign instead of an I. There are two places on the 4-page card that a pilot may sign instead of an I. All other items require an Instructor signature & license #. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

As many of you know I am no longer on the USPA BOD. It has been 15 months since the agreement between 1800SkyRide et. al. and USPA was struck. As reported in SNM #321, I was personally named in a cut-out clause. I do not know who leaked that confidential info and other confidential terms of the agreement to SNM, but it was not me. I still do not have a copy of the agreement to get legal counsel on. USPA would not even let me call my attorney to ask what the sentence with my name in it means. The sentence is a long and winding legalese type. Well, after been under the bus, driven over, backed up on, driven over a second time and then a third time when the bus drove forward again, and the bus is in reverse again to back over me again and then drive over me again in the forward direction, I said enough is enough. I put together the contract and other details as best as I can remember it for your perusal. There is also information on what certain USPA-types said or did to kick me in the face, release confidential info to others and still claim I could not cry out for help. I couldn’t even use a callout to 911, aka my attorney. For the full text on this please go to 1800Skyride v. USPA Agreement . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Maybe get a horse whisperer to train the horses not to freak out because of the canopy sounds. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Hi Jan, not exactly the case. I did an investigation last summer and interviewed both the pilot and the TM. I also did about a two hour phone interview with the FAA official who was in charge of the investigation. He told me that the FAA was initially not going to get invloved and let the ploice handle it as a suicide but later changed that decision after a complaint from a concerned citizen. When I asked him who the complaint came from he told me that was confidential but that it was "one of our own" (in other words a fellow skydiver) He said it would take about 2 or 3 months to complete the investigation and then he would turn it over to their legal department for a final decision. His opinion was that a violation may have occured but that it was not likely much would come from it. I told him to contact me as soon as possible when they came to a conclusion and that USPA would wait for their investigation to be complete before we would consider any action on our part. I discussed my decision with the staff at the BOD meeting in alexandria and they agreed that was reasonable approach. Well, that was 8 months ago and I never heard anything back from the FAA and as you know it is no longer my problem. There is a 180 day statute of limitations for any USPA disciplinary action. That has transpired, ergo USPA has done nothing about this incident. Self regulation is not exemplified by waiting for an FAA decision. Self regulation is being pro-active to get members to comply to the party line preferably without a disciplinary action taking place. USPA does not seem to do that enough these days. Instead, USPA threatens and admonishes persons and DZOs, who are not in the 'beautiful people' category, instead of educating them about the rules and the consequences of their actions. The people in the good ole' boy network, of course, have always had a bypass. But that has lead to USPA being more vulnerable. If USPA did what it should be doing, convincing and persuading dzos to follow the rules, then there would not be this polarization and antagonism against DZs. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Tom, you have been repeating that for years. Again, there are a number of cases where private pilots can fly skydivers and it is perfectly legal. Blue Skies, Ed The case Tom mentioned (the no chute suicide) was a scenario that did violate the FARs. To my knowledge USPA has done nothing about that incident. USPA has also not done anything about a GM DZ that had several people disciplined by the FAA by pulling airmen certificates, relating to the maintenance and operations of jump aircraft. The GM program puts USPA squarely in the line of sight of attorneys that sue the DZ that causes loss of life. USPA steps up and says it will self police activities of DZOs, pilots and manufacturers in order to keep the FAA out of regulation of skydiving ops. When something bad happens, USPA may be held responsible for the actions of others. Part of USPA's liability comes from not doing the right things and some of it comes from publicly assuming the safety responsibilities. USPA's inaction in the MO accident may lead to being named in a lawsuit. As an example, see page 71 of the Summer 08 Minutes and this issue of the Professional. USPA's statements lead to USPA being named as a defendant in a $50M lawsuit. USPA is in a 'sticky-wicket' position. It tries to fend off undue regulation by the FAA, but every time it does it places itself in the line of fire of lawsuits. If USPA had some more backbone they would be able to fend off the FAA and get out of the line of fire, simultaneously. USPA needs to focus more on the public welfare than protecting corporations, even if that means pointing a finger at a corporation. USPA needs to follow its own rules too, to exacting detail. The 'hey we don't have to follow (or enforce) such-n-such rule if we don't want to' may get USPA into more trouble. The FAA can certainly see that this MTV stunt (N445AP) and the birdsuit base-rig jumper that went in earlier this year are outside the domain of the USPA. The FAA can see that the Dwain Weston fatality and TP's chuteless jump were within the purview of USPA. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

So there I was at the PIA Symposium…. I sauntered by the USPA booth and noticed all the cool skydiving pictures from last time were not there. I asked Shonda about them. Oh – they still had them, but did not put them in the booth this time. Instead they had ‘this’. She pointed to a big board of text placards. What ‘it’ was, was a Jeopardy game on skydiving/USPA. There were columns that were different topics. I don’t remember all the categories, but some were History, Competition and Safety. The rows represented how many raffle tickets you won if you got the question right. It ranged from 1 to 4. The raffle items were a new SIM, a t-shirt or a USPA Hydration Pack. They had a special rule that you could only answer 1 question per day. I learned that the hard way by answering one of the first row questions first and then wanted to answer another question. The questions were changed from day-to-day. They ranged from obscure trivia to the obvious. Each day I was there I answered one of the questions. The questions I answered correctly were: What year was NPJA formed? How many elected board members are there? Who is C-1 issued to? One question that stumped lots of us was what was the exit altitude for style. Some smart-ass said ‘who cares?’. I managed to win a USPA Hydration Pack. It has a nifty USPA embroidered logo. If anyone wants this, lemme know. It was a cool game, but I wish we could answer more than one question per day. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

QED . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Consider this scenario: Customer 1 comes to DZ A and says 'I'd like to do my first tandem jump.' DZ A says 'ok fine sign right here' They go do the tandem jump. Customer 2 comes to DZ B and says 'I'd like to do my first tandem jump.' DZ B says 'Well in order to do that you have to be a member of USPA. It's a temporary thing - blah, blah, blah.' Customer 2 says 'You mean I cannot do my tandem jump unless I become a USPA member?' DZ B says 'Yes that's right.' Customer 2 says 'That's a tie-in purchase and it is illegal. You cannot force me to buy a product that I have no desire to have, nor do I need in order to purchase the first product. I can purchase the product from DZ A without this restriction. Your restriction harms competition.' . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Bill von you are so misinformed on this. The GM pledge states that the GM shall 'require' USPA membership of all licensed US skydivers and non-resident foreign nationals who do not have proof of membership in their national aeroclubs. I know of no other company that has a requirement to have their customers belong to a 3rd party organization in order to do business with them. There is no choice. They way this rule is 'violated, but not on purpose' is that DZs don't check memberships after an initial check. Years ago there used to be a TMMI program that the GM dz got to cover 3rd party liability and a small medical insurance of people that were not USPA members and were on student status. That program was discontinued in the late 1990's. Prior to that, when that program was operational, many DZs entered into a contract with the local airport authority that required USPA GM membership. The airport authority wanted every jumper to be insured. The only way the non-USPA, student jumpers could be insured was through the TMMI program. Once the TMMI program was discontinued, the DZOs may not have mentioned this to the airport authorities and they renewed their contracts with the airport, but they still had a clause to 'require' USPA membership. This requirement was driven by the insurance aspect. Today, GM DZs can sell a TIM liability policy to the jumper, but it is not required by USPA. The medical coverage has dropped off to the wayside. Next week USPA is proposing some sort of 'student membership'. This concept surfaced before in the late 1990's and was dubbed the 'tandem tax'. Essentially every student would be required to join USPA, if only for a short time period. There are two drivers in this scheme. One is the liability insurance and the other is to artificially inflate membership rosters. Think of it, according to USPA HQ the US has about 300,000 first time jumpers-mostly tandems each year. USPA would change its membership from 30K to ~300K overnight. The actual number would be less because the student membership is probably short term. USPA cannot continue down this trade organization path and require that amateurs, plain ole' fun jumpers to be a member of a trade organization. The vast majority of USPA members are not instructors, are not competitors, are not DZOs and are not demo jumpers. Most jumpers are fun jumpers with no professional benefit derived from the sport. USPA demanding that the fun jumpers, aka amateurs, support the programs of professionals (instructors, competitors, demo jumpers, DZOs) is not going to succeed in the long run. USPA needs to decide if wants to be a trade organization or a membership organization. It looks to me that there are several people pushing for the trade organization. In the late 1990's, the USPA President mentioned in Parachutist that USPA had become a trade organization. If USPA wants to go that route then the requirements for the non-professionals to be members is unjustified. If I want to learn how to play golf, I do not need to be a member of the PGA. If I want to play a fun round of golf with 4 associates, I do not have to be a member of the PGA. If I want to learn how to ski, I don't have to join the nationally recognized ski association. If I want to ski, for recreation with several friends, I do not have to join some national ski association. etc etc etc. It makes absolutely no sense to require a one-time tandem, AFF, SL or IAD jumper to become a member of USPA. It makes absolutely no sense to require a weekend fun jumper to become a member of USPA. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

What do you folks think about the plan for USPA to become a tandem/student booking agency? It's on the GM agenda already. They made a presentation at the summer 2008 meeting too. USPA gets a 20% cut of the retail price. The company that wants to provide the backend has set this up for companies in Australia, but they contacted each DZ directly. Their expansion to the US is attempting to use USPA as leverage. Instead of contacting each USPA GM directly, they get USPA to adopt the program and require GM membership in order to participate. This means that a non-GM DZ that wishes to participate cannot. This means that the USPA web site will preferentially promote participating DZs over the non-participating DZs. Does anyone else think the TC logo, now present on the DZ listings, is ugly? . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

I'll send you a couple of other things. Here's the 'argument' you should consider. Most DZs think that their waiver will get them out of a lawsuit, post haste. Waivers do not prevent a lawsuit from being filed, but it supposedly should get them out of it quickly. If Aerohio is really out of business, then the waiver meant to get them dismissed from a case did not happen. In addition, other entities (the AC owner, the pilot, the mfg and USPA) were named as defendants and are not able to get that dismissed by the court (supposedly this should have happened if the waiver did what most people think it should do). That tells me that the waiver is not as good as some might think. These waivers are apparently very dependent upon state laws, so a generic one-size-fits-all may not be the answer. If the interpretation of what a wavier is supposed to do for a business, does not really do that, then there is a problem. What can we do about it? Have you considered changing you screen name to LikesToArgue? ;) . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Are you saying that what Aerohio wrote in court documents is not true? If you want, I can email you the court documents. I already quoted the text from those documents. The documents were submitted by Aerohio. Their web site provides no indication that they went out of business on Dec 31, 2008. In fact, it was last edited on 1-6-09. . no. what the court documents say is that "AerOhio Skydiving Center, Inc." is not able to continue doing business. It does not mean that www.aerohio.com is affiliated with them. They could be owned by "Aerohio adventure corp", "Jerry's crash and burn, inc" or any other business Since you have seen the court documents, then my original post is correct, is FACTUAL and definitely not 'rumor mongering'. The web site I looked at was jumptoday.com as listed in Parachutist. Jumptoday.com is associated to a company called Aerohio Skydiving Center, Inc. in Parachutist and on this contacts page. (I believe aerohio.com is aliased to the same pages.) Whois searches for both domains list Tim Butcher as the owner of the web site. The web sites advertise a special for valentine's day, just two weeks away, yet they are supposed to have closed the doors. Their web site indicates that they are in business, the court documents say they are closed, so what is it, open or closed? . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Are you saying that what Aerohio wrote in court documents is not true? If you want, I can email you the court documents. I already quoted the text from those documents. The documents were submitted by Aerohio. Their web site provides no indication that they went out of business on Dec 31, 2008. In fact, it was last edited on 1-6-09. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

I have not made any accusations. Your conclusions are your business, not mine. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker