mghanco

Thanks man, i probably am not going to be able to run up there this week. I was hoping possibly someone near wilmington could do it. Anyone know of a rigger's name at Skydive Coastal? I will call them tomorrow if I don't get any replies on here.

Anyone near or on Camp Lejeune who can repack my reserve this week? I need it back friday morning, quick turn around I know but could use the help and I will pay.

my s-fly expert has booties made for those tiny little french feet, i have a large and i am size 11-12. i was wondering if anyone has gotten bigger booties altered on theirs and their experience with it. the zippers like to come undone loading/sitting on the bench in the plane and it just wears on the mind alittle that my leg wing might come open in flight.

do what wuffos do best, show them 7 minutes of youtube videos.

Improper tightening of the straps on your rig. Specifically leg straps As was the case with myself many A licensees will improperly wear their rig with too loose of leg straps thinking it will be more comfortable under canopy. They then start experiencing "hard openings" when their chest strap keeps wolloping them on the chin upon opening and then they think, "Man, that was a hard opening." it isn't actually a hard opening just improperly worn gear. Just a lesson learned the hard way, this and the obvious previously mentioned reasons for hard openings.

Maybe this is DZ dependant but it seems to me like the depiction, "Landing On Parallel Runways" looks wrong. Given that the green area is representing a clearly marked landing area, like at an Eloy or similarly marked DZ wouldn't this depiction present some unsafe practices? Flying over the landing zone on anything other than the final approach, or crossing patterns the patterns in the way depicted just seems off.

There is however a slightly greater danger in constantly jumping with people you don't know. I learned that lesson quickly. I now prefer to get one relatively lax jump in with a person before launching a linked exit, turning points, trying something new, etc. That way I can check out their fall rate and/or deficiencies and compare them to my own. My warning is to take a little greater caution on the first jump with a stranger. I still look forward to visiting more and more DZ's as well and jumping with different people too.

It's about training. Being mentally prepared is in my opinion the most important thing. As someone mentioned earlier about military training it is all about proper repitition in training. When the yelling starts during military training you can witness the "coolest of cucumbers" freeze up and start stuttering or fail to react. By the end of training the recruit/candidate instinctually reacts instead of freezing and completes the task despite the stress. People touch every handle before a jump for repitition and sure it can be argued that many are only going through the motions but atleast they are building memory. It's the people that float through the sport hoping to never have a mal that freeze up and don't prepare for the worst. I have only had a few severe line twists but I snuck a peak at my alti, realized I had time and corrected it. It's all about situational awareness and the correct response to the situation. Condition your self for when you are going to have a malfunction and not if, because it will happen. For some it may take more training to be able to react to stress maybe because of their lifestyle or predisposition but anyone can be trained to react correctly. And things may still go wrong, be prepared. Since I have never had a highspeed mal or a cutaway I watch youtube videos of mals, think about what happened what should be done and what the person did incorrectly. It's why I read the incident and fatality reports so that what happened to another can be learned from. I don't just hope to react correctly, you have to mentally train to react correctly. On an off heading opening I had a near canopy collision in which the SIM response would have been to been to use the right riser to steer out of the situation. I used my left riser however, because of situational awareness, the other person was traveling cross face from left to right in my direction. Using the right riser would have brought us closer together and maybe resulted in a canopy collision. The other canopy pilot used his toggles and pulled so hard his canopy collapsed and resulted in a cutaway/aad fire. What did I learn from the situation? better tracking would have avoided this entirely and going "by the book" could have killed both of us.

I will tell you what I do on any given day I jump. When I wake up I tell myself how many jumps I am going to do obviously given appropriate conditions. If something comes up or I start feeling fatigued or frustrated I may scale back how many jumps I plan on doing. My only rule is I never do more than I was mentally prepared to do. If I mentally "check out" at any point in the day I am done, period. I started doing this when one day I showed up to the dropzone really tired and alittle hungover, made 2 or 3 jumps started feeling even more tired. I manifested for another jump just before I realized I hadn't ever turned on my AAD. I pulled myself off the load gathered my gear and went home. In my opinion even once ur off AFF and A- Licensed, don't push it to push it you will forget something or overlook a precaution. Pretty much everyone on here is more experienced than me (80 jumps)and can scold me for forgetting to turn on my AAD but I would bet most of them have forgotten something at somepoint.

Make sure you get a netbook with a full operating system. Sometimes they offer a Windows 7 starter edition with netbooks, don't get it. Starter Editions provide the majority of all functions but you can run across problems with installing/running programs and other odd little quirks that the starter edition limits.

http://www.bodyflight.net/u_s_a____canada.html Orlando, and Deland are your two Florida wind tunnels.

Set up a table outside your bar district. I can only imagine how many drunk idiots would make a reservation for a skydive with some beer courage in them. I don't know about the legality of it but I can't imagine there would be anything against them atleast making a reservation and putting a down payment on a tandem. If you could work something out with the DZ it could help earn your club some free jumps or discounts, something of that nature. So much off for every tandem signed up, plus more for every completed tandem. Plus it's always a good idea to advertise near hotties. Put some of the girls from your club in bikini's standing around in their rigs, always a good idea as well. I don't know if your DZ leans towards being a tandem mill or a fun jumpers spot but if they would be willing to send atleast one person out with your skydiving club one night and see how many tandems you can get signed up I think it's worth a shot. Guy to random girl: "You're so hot let's go back to my frat house to the 'after party'," Girl: "OMG skydiving, I have always wanted to do that" Guy: "I'll do it, we should go together" Bam 2 tandems down.

My parents recently told my grandmother about my new hobby of skydiving. It wasn't any surprise to her as she recounted a story about taking me with her to her beautician's house. Ofcourse me and the beautician's son didn't take long to get into trouble by attempting to jump out of the treehouse with grocery bags as our parachutes. He apparently had talked me into jumping at the same time as him and i was going to do it. We were stopped short of jumping with an ass whooping, or as my grandma used to tell me, "Cactus Pete, I am going to break your leg off and beat your dead ass with it." I had completely forgotten about this but now I know I was made for skydiving and hopefully soon base jumping since I was young.

I had line twists like this the other day, I consulted some of the experienced guys on the jump with me,(who were laughing on the ground cause they watched the whole thing). They said it was most likely body position, which I believe but I will have to seriously focus next jump because I am usually just sitting watching my alti till deployment anyways. On intial deployment i saw the main open pretty cleanly but immediately started spinning into the line twists until they got so bad my head was pinned to my chest by my risers. I kicked out since I had deployed at around 4k and had a good amount of time to fix it. Another suggestion by one of the packers (12yrs exp. they said) was to allow plenty of line between the last stow and the risers. This allows the d-bag plenty of line to get out of the burble of air around your body before the chute comes out. but hey, newb here just relaying what I have been told

The fear subsided for me when I started doing solo jumps. Then it returned when I changed DZ's due to weather/season and had to finish my A license at the new DZ. It subsided again once I joined the big boys club of the fun jumpers after getting my A license. It went away at that time because I had some cool guys to jump with and could always look back at the tandems/students and think about how I felt when I was in their seats. The fear seriously returned though the other day when the first load had to fly back in due to weather. Then the line twists started happening, due to what I am assuming is body position upon deployment. I made 3 jumps that day and 2 had some bad line twists and i mentally checked out and stopped jumping to take some time to think about what was going on. I had planned on making 5+ jumps that day but just couldnt get my self mentally up to jumping again. I head back to Eloy friday for the carnivale and hopefully a good amount of safe jumps (no more line twists, fingers crossed). I am taking a friend with me to do his first tandem, he is telling me that he thinks about it every night before bed and its getting to him. I told him he doesn't have really anything to worry about as long as it is something he actually wants to do. My reasoning is that its out of his hands anyways and in the hands of a super experienced jumper who is going to take care of everthing. He's a bit of a brainiac as a PhD econ student at ASU and I don't think all the number crunching helps his situation. I advised him to watch a tandem video on youtube and to observe how much fun the tandem student is having and how little responsibility they have on the jump. I don't really know what to tell him though because i never did a tandem and I think we just handle fear differently. Any Thoughts?

I had PRK prior to signing my contract into the USMC, so i did a lot of research on why they prefer PRK over LASIK, and require PRK instead of LASIK for pilots. While you won't be pulling the same g's that a pilot is during skydiving the pressure can add up and in some reported cases pilots had the lasik flap come loose during flight. Even combat occupations had reported cases of suffering an eye flap come undone after some sort of trauma. With that being said they are now allowing more and more lasik waivers to contract into the military as strictly non-flight contracts. I'd wait to jump just out of respect for the fact that you have a weak point on your eyes. You may feel comfortable in some protective goggles jumping but land hot with smack to your head and you can still be SOL.

I could hold my liquor at 14.... I was also driving... Some of the logic on this thread leads me to believe I shouldn't have gotten introuble for doing either of those things, but I did. I probably should have been drinking while driving at 14, maybe I would have gotten away with it then too.

I was in the same situation and decided on eloy which I am enjoying, great place with a wind tunnel. Not too big of a crowd and the weather is almost always cooperative. they fly an otter which carries loads of 23 and I haven't found it to be too crowded though there have been a couple of landing area issues on 2 loads I jumped, (there is PLENTY of desert to land in though if the landing area turns snafu). Cheap flight into PHX, round trip for roughly 250 depending on where you fly out of in the midwest. If I was you, which I was in a sense, I'd choose Eloy...

Off pattern or poor pattern choices can happen to even the most experienced jumpers. While I am only newly A licensed, the other day at Eloy in the North/South only landing zone all hell seemed to break loose. One jumper landed South, setting the pattern for everyone after. The next jumper landed north, resetting the landing pattern for everyone after(or atleast we all followed them, since most jumpers all saw that landing). And one group decided to land slightly into the Wind(west). Need less to say and no fingers to be pointed the entire fun jumping load was scolded over the intercomm to pay attention to how the landing pattern is set and if you can't follow it land off in the desert. Being on a larger canopy and pulling slightly higher than everyone else I only saw the one north landing and everyone else following suit, so I took their que.

M-G-han-co., kinda like a business M. G. Han Co., Thanks for the replies, and I guess I will be paying a buddy to drive me out there. Unless I am up for some PT getting my 3 mile run down to 18 minutes is a goal anyways. I guess I will also being spending a few nights in their bunk house while jumping or I may just never go home.

Per SOP I will post an introduction before I start proding with newbie questions and spouting anything uninsightful. My name is Garrett and I am a new skydiver. I jump out of Skydive Midwest in Sturtevant, WI. and have 17 jumps total. I look forward to trying to finish my A license there, hopefully before I move to Arizona Oct. 2. Jumping at Eloy will be a great experience though I guess my first question will be directed at the people who jump Eloy out of Tempe/Pheonix, is there a mode of public transit or charter bus compnay that regularly drives down there? I won't have a car while living in Tempe so I need to figure out how to get to the dz. Anyways Thanks again to SDMW for my "baptism" and learning lessons they have given me so far and to the rest of the skydiving community that will hopefully be just as accepting to a new face.