dsaint77

Nickd, While I understand what you are saying this is not the case. Skydive Suffolk is very good at being safe. I have without a doubt that if a student must repeat a jump it is because it was a bad jump or freefall where the learning objective was not achieved. The instructors and staff are very good at what they do. I do not feel they are there to "take" your money. They are just understaffed. The website encourages appointments for tandems and Aff jump 1 but says nothing about appointments for coach jumps. When I get my license to coach I will coach. My plans is to help mentor students. It is my goal for skydiving. I really am sorry that I opened my mouth before talking to the owner.

Well, see, I don't have a reputation : ) Well, I guess I only have my own frustration to put up with then Wendy P. This thread can be deleted, issue and problem solved. Simple as talking to the owner, I talked to the manager, should have been good enough. I am not the only one, I am just the only one that said anything. Cant hate me for that.

Hi, Ok lets get a few facts straight because this becomes S Suffolk sucks. I have never said that, I said that it sucks there is no staff. Ok, you are telling me to call ahead, ok we can do that. Dicks travel in packs: Yes they do, I talk to people, I befriend people and I keep to myself. I really do not want to hear how XXX does his skydive or have him tell me how to do mine. XXX is not my instructor and I do not want to learn from anyone but an instructor. I do not vocal this but I still to myself, I talk to some students - oh my god you guys chastise the hell out of students trying to talk about skydiving all over these forums. and I generally try and help the staff out. If I am sitting there I might as well be helpful! I patiently wait my turn, execute my dive (always safely, always "heads up" stay away from tandem rigs and give them the right away even if I have to land away from the peas so the tandem is priority. Generally and excellent skydive and great awareness. I have never been told I need to do something like be safe or look around) I am a general all around "good" student. Skydive Suffolk is understaffed. They jump all year long, the plane, facilities, staff are all great. No issues. We just need more people there. I spent a chunk of change that I had saved up for this. I do not have the money at this time to go anywhere else. I could bring my own AFFI or Coach. Why should I get special treatment. If someone sees me jumping 5 times a day its going to make it look worse when the staff tells them "oh he brought his own instructor." The other students will feel bad. For now I will just take what I get.

Well I understand where everyone is coming from here. I am frustrated that things are not going a little faster. I personally refuse to sacrifice safety for speed. If I could get 6 jumps a week I would be extremely happy, or maybe if I could get my jumps prior to DZ closing that would be awesome. I do know that Larry is a good guy, I know people that he has helped because they cannot afford to jump as much as they would like. He uses them for manual labor and gives them credit to jump with. Its a win win situation. I know others have lives outside working the weekend dropzone. I have seen these people that they know shouldn't be there. Bowling is safe... I should have curbed my frustration and never posted this. The fact remains that during their busy season they are not staffed enough.

There are many things that are great about Suffolk. The folks at the DZ are awesome. LZ is great. Not a lot of air traffic. The safety is impeccable, they are extremely safety orientated. I am not looking to sacrifice the fact that when I go there I feel safe with the instructors. My point is that they know of this problem. They could recruit or add more incentives for instructors or coaches. There is normally plenty of room on the plane, even though his business is still growing, It would only benefit him by getting more instructors and coaches. I know that the season is dying down but everything that I have ever heard is the same way. if the problem was that he needs more planes I would not complain one bit. That is not the case. The case is there are no instructors. I have talked with the DZO, he knows there is a problem, but it seems that the line of communication is broken when it reaches the owner. Not too much you can do if that is the case. I love jumping there, its just 8 hours or 10 hours of waiting for 1 jump has to stop.

First off I will tell you this is a slam. Why did I ever come to this dropzone. It blows, I came here because it is the only area near hampton roads you can get aff. I did the class and waited... I have been here every weekend since Aug. I have 5 jumps. There has been two weather days durring this time. You get here at 8 am and you sit until dark. Maybe you get 1 jump in. They are only open on weekends. Fridays too, but they go away when the time changes. I purchased the 2 - 20 jump package. 1700 dollars. The first jump is 339. Skydive Suffolk took my 2000 dollars. Along with many others and we can get in jumps. They have 3 full time instructors, two of them do tandems so the other instructor deals with students. They turn away cat A students after they get their 339 dollars because there is not two instructors to jump them. There is no hope of getting your money back, it states that in the clause. I could have spent 3k and gone to fl and lived on the street and gotten my liscence in 5 days. What can I do about this? It seems they just want the tandem money because its easy. There is rarely a coach here, so I'm going to be doing the same thing for coach jumps. It happens with everyone coming here. I sincerly hope that Larry P. Sees this post so that he can fix the problem. He is an affi and I have seen him jump twice. You got my money, my friends money and we waste our weekends for nothing! Sincerly confused, D