brookowen

I have done about 1500 Tandems (from and Otter) and currently elect to wear a frap hat. I tried a Mindwarp at first and found that it was one more object that I had to juggle around in the plane and keep track of during hook up. Then I went without head protection against the sound advice I had been given by more experienced coworkers...sure enough upon deployment on more than one occaision risers have snipped my ears, kind of a drag to take someone for the thrill of thier life and bleed all over under canopy. I also like the frap hat b/c I can clip it on the students chest strap for the climb and un-clip the chin strap under canopy to hear better. Frap hat all the way for me. Brook

I am a SD local....grown up here and work at Sky Dive San Diego..Whaasup?

Wow there are soo many different jokes to ease the tension during gear-up and in the plane, a couple of my favorites are as follows and please feel free to use them... 1) tell the student 'oh one more thing, when we leave the plane and during the freefall please keep calling out "ORANGE HANDLE, ORANGE HANDLE" it helps me remember. 2) Casually introduce yourself to another Tandem Instructor gearing up thier student (of course so the student can hear) "you must be the new guy, and is this your first day?" when they reply yes nervously, say "welcome aboard". 3) last but not least when you land and are walking in, mention to the student so that thier friends and family can hear, "hey, thanks for taking over when I froze up-up there, shh lets keep that between us ok ...hehehe that usually gets them all laughing! Be safe, have fun

Thanks to Buzz for noting it all and thank you to everyone who was involved and helped out especially Ultralight Larry! Oh yeah...looks like we will be back in business soon....and a thanks to Norm as well....he wasn't mentioned he was one of the additional trucks used. See you all in the sky soon.Brook!