chembree

I dislocated my right shoulder many years ago while water skiing. Went to orthopedist, did some therapy and PT, and resumed normal activity. About ten years after that, I had a very hard opening that dislocated the shoulder again. Wow, that hurt, but was able to re-insert the shoulder with my left arm while still at good altitude. Did a controllability check and discovered that I could still fly the canopy if I pulled the toggles forward instead of to the side. Also discovered that I could sort of steer the canopy with both toggles in one hand if I moved the toggles left or right. Prayers for a soft landing were answered. Went to orthopedist again and was told that as we get older, these types of injuries are more likely to occur unless repaired by surgery. We discussed skydiving and decided to do some therapy followed by some additional physical conditioning that strengthened my shoulder muscles. Also recommended that I flex my shoulder muscles during opening in order to hold my shoulder in place. His last comment was that if it continued to be a problem, surgery would fix it. I jumped again in about six weeks after the incident. I discovered that a poised exit placed a lot of stress on the shoulder especially when my right shoulder went from airplane to airstream. There were a few other instances that I became concerned about, but don't remember now. The best solution was to strengthen the shoulder, make sure that your body position is good when deploying, and tense the shoulder muscles enough to hold the shoulder in place during deployment. I have not had another incident.

These are good comments and questions. Let me try to respond to some of them. Of course the percentages will change with a change in specifications. It should come as no surprise if the percentages were to change using the same specification but waiting until next month before requesting the quotes. The point here is that when buying gear, one should introduce competition in the quotation process in order to determine the best value. E-mail technology makes it real easy to analyze the vendor response time: Advertiser – Response Time Parachute Equipment – 1 hour – 0 minutes Para-Gear – 47 hours – 13 minutes Sunshine Factory – 24 hours – 57 minutes Para-Service – 0 hours – 40 minutes Chuting Star – 2 hours – 56 minutes Square 1 – 6 hours – 14 minutes Skydive Store – No Response Bad Dog – 21 hours – 27 minutes The range of response time varies from 40 minutes to 47 hours. Certainly all of these are within reasonable expectations. We must consider that Skydive Store might not have gotten the original e-mail – their e-mail address was only obtained after a phone call to them and then typed in manually (although I did not receive a ‘non delivery’ notice). An original RFQ was sent to each vendor in respect for the fact that each vendor will have to spend some time in order to respond. It’s not surprising that a vendor might put a mass-mailing request at the bottom of the pack. As you can see from the response times above, Sunshine Factory did respond to my request in a timely fashion. Although Chuting Star was not the successful vendor in my deal, dealings with them were very pleasant and professional. Thumbs up to all dealers who responded. Square 1 responded quickly that they no longer were dealers for Precision canopies and therefore could not discount them – hence their pricing was the highest obtained. No matter what you are buying, shop around. Make your purchases where you get the best value. Keep in mind that value includes more than just price. It includes service, availability, clear communication, and good customer follow-up. I agree with GravityGirl – “Shop for best service instead of lowest price. Usually that means start local where you can physically be measured by the dealer and get a personal gear consultation.” The sweetness of low price is quickly forgotten when the bitterness of poor service is tasted. Just be sure that you do your homework and select a dealer that provides the price at the service level that you want. In the current economic times, it seems to me that any information that anyone can provide to assist others in purchasing decisions might be helpful and appreciated by the skydiving community. I know that I appreciate it.

For those of you considering a new rig (or any other skydiving gear for that matter), I thought that I would post the results of my recent search. First, I gathered and filled out the manufacture’s order sheets for the gear wanted. These forms were then scanned into .pdf format so that they could be attached to a ‘request for quotation’. The ‘RFQ’ included a harness/container, main parachute, reserve parachute, AAD as well as the other details of the order such as assembly, delivery, and my shipping address. I then e-mailed the request to eight advertisers selected from the pages in ‘Parachutist’ magazines. Each quotation was divided by the lowest overall quotation, expressed as a percent, and summarized from lowest to highest in the following list: Advertiser -- Price/Low Price Parachute Equipment -- 100% Para-Gear -- 103.31% Sunshine Factory -- 106.02% Para-Service -- 106.07% Chuting Star -- 107.82% Square 1 -- 111.01% Skydive Store -- Did not Respond Bad Dog -- Does not Sell Rigs Most advertisers have an e-mail address listed in their ad or their website; however, some had to be called in order to get their e-mail address. All of the vendors that I spoke with were very friendly and helpful. Although there may be other ways to buys gear, this seemed to work for me. Would like to hear your comments regarding purchasing new gear. Blue Skies