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Do you wonder what kind of person would jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Have you done a tandem skydive and want to do it again? Are you a skygod with thousands of jumps? Are you intrigued by the adventures of Jeb Corliss?  Or the powered human flight of Yves “Jet Man” Rossy?  Did you see Felix Baumgartner fall from the edge of space and say wow?  Are you a 100 year old granny thinking about doing a Tandem Base Jump?  Or did you just watch Point Break one too many times? If so, this might be the thread for you. This is the skydiving megathread and this is the place to talk about the incredibly crazy act of throwing yourself at the Earth with only a few small pieces of nylon to save you. If you want to talk about places to jump, events, skygods, gear, if you want advice on buying a rig, if you want to talk about whuffo law makers or noise abatement people griping about airports that have been there longer than they've been alive, if you want to post gruesome accident video, or awesome competition video. Although it’s titled the skydiving thread, this is the place to talk about all forms of sport parachuting, including B.A.S.E. jumping, paragliding and speed-flying, too. We can even talk about tunnel flying if you really want to. If it's remotely sport parachuting related, this is the place to talk about it. Who am I? I am a USPA licensed skydiver with close to 150 jumps as of 24 Jan 2014. I've had my license since July 19, 2013. I did my first tandem jump in 2005, then went on to start skydiving solo seven and a half years later (April 2013). I've bought my own gear, moved past beginner into novice stage and am starting to smell the bottom of intermediate. I've been in the sport less than a year. I still suck at many things. I have never gone (and probably will never go) B.A.S.E. Jumping, but I have several friends who do. I am not an expert and I do not know everything. I have tried to be as accurate as I can with this, but I'm sure I screwed one thing or another up. I'm not here to be the expert, I'm here to share my love of skydiving with other skydiving goons and goons who are interested in skydiving. Before we start talking everything cool about these sports, I’m not trying to scare you away but I want to address this up front: Skydiving is a dangerous activity. Every time you partake in any form of sport parachuting, there is the very real possibility that you could die or suffer serious injury. No amount of safety innovations, experience or training will remove that danger. You could be on your 8000th jump, do everything right and still suffer a life-altering or fatal accident. No matter how good you are, You will never be good enough to not die in this sport. Despite this very real danger, Skydiving is the safest of the “extreme” sports. Skydivers enjoy the lowest premiums on life insurance of all technical sports participants. In 2013 there were more than 3.1 million skydives performed world-wide, but only 51 resulted in a fatality, and in the U.S., there were only 915 injuries. If you choose to engage in skydiving, you need to be fully conscious of the dangers involved. Contrary to the public image, there are very few real adrenaline junkies in Skydiving. Skydivers are deadly serious about safety. Those who aren’t are quickly ostracized from the community -and it’s a small community- because nobody wants to jump with somebody who will deliberately put other people in danger. True adrenaline junkies don’t last long in skydiving before moving on to something else. The Basics The question I hear most is Why would anybody jump out of a perfectly good airplane? People always ask this of skydivers, but they rarely ask pilots if they like being passengers on airplanes. I do it because tucked into that container on my back are two perfectly good inflatable wings that I can control, fly and land myself. So what is it that we actually do? Skydiving is the same no matter where you go or what language you speak. You put on a parachute and altimeter, cram into a tightly packed airplane and ride it to 14,000 feet above the ground, open the door, throw yourself into the wind and fly. After about a minute of total freedom, you slow yourself down, relax and then deploy a parachute. When you have a functioning parachute over your head, you then fly back to a holding area where you are free to do acrobatics, or just sit and enjoy the view until you descend to a certain altitude at which point you enter a pre-determined landing traffic pattern, turn your canopy downwind, cross-wind and finally into the wind for landing. The whole experience, from exit to landing lasts just a few minutes, but it is the biggest rush you will ever feel. Most of us love the rush we get from Skydiving, but contrary to popular opinion, it’s not an adrenal rush. Skydivers are not usually adrenaline junkies. Students will feel the fear, panic and adrenaline, but somewhere along the way, the panic goes away and the adrenaline stops kicking in. (The fear doesn’t, it just gets less intense). One friend wore a heart monitor for a day of skydiving and found that his highest heart rate occurred while he was running the 30 yards to the plane. The rush comes from overcoming your fear and being in total control in a situation that you have absolutely no business being in control of. There are almost as many reasons for jumping as there are people who jump, but a common thread is that skydivers always dreamed of flying. My reason is that freefall is one of the few times in life where absolutely nothing matters except for the moment you’re in. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, not two minutes from now, but right this second. The level of focus is unlike anything else. The love of the sport comes from being in total control. And you are in control. Once you hit terminal velocity, the air is pushing against you as fast as you are falling which gives the sensation of floating. Small movements of your body, even as simple as turning your head can cause changes of direction, pitch, or attitude. Once you learn to control those movements, the sky becomes a playground. What kind of gear do you use? This kind:  All modern skydiving parachutes are single-harness, dual-parachute (or canopy) systems (or rigs) containing one main and one reserve parachute. All modern canopies, both main and reserve are ram-air parachutes, which are essentially an inflatable wing which responds to control inputs using all the same principles of flight as a rigid wing. The canopies are composed of seven or nine cells -which are independent air chambers in the fabric of the canopy. Seven cell canopies tend to be slightly softer, more docile and more forgiving than equivalently sized, shaped, and loaded nine cell canopies. Reserve chutes are always seven-cell canopies.  Seven Cell Canopy (Reserve)  Nine Cell Canopy Despite what you see in GTA V, only the front of the cells are actually open. the back is completely sealed – air enters the cells in the front at the speed of your descent, which produces enough pressure to keep the cells inflated and keep the wing some-what rigid (and they are rigid. A skydiver in freefall impacting an inflated canopy is going to suffer some serious decelleration injuries). Ram air canopies are safer than the old round canopies in every respect. Ram Air parachutes commonly come in three different shapes: Square, Semi-Elliptical and Elliptical. When viewed from above, a square parachute is rectangular, while an elliptical parachute is tapered and a semi-elliptical is somewhere between the two. This isn't entirely accurate, but it is the commonly held view. Performance Designs, one of the leading canopy makers refers to its canopies as square or tapered, because no tapered canopy is trully elliptical, and the taper differs from canopy to canopy. The taper of the wing improves airflow and reduces drag, making the canopy faster and more responsive, so typically you will hear of advanced canopy pilots using 'Elliptical canopies'.  PD (Performance Designs) Navigator, a square student canopy. Note that the end cells are just as long as the middle cells.  PD Sabre 2, a semi-elliptical canopy. Note the gradual taper of the end cells.  NZ Aerosports Icarus JVX, an elliptical canopy. Note the deliberate taper of the end cells. Far more important than the taper is the canopy size and wing-load. Canopy sizes are measured in square footage of the surface area of the canopy. Or something like that because no two canopy manufacturers measure exactly the same way. Skydiving canopies measure from an experimental 39 sq.ft. canopy to a massive 400+ sq.ft tandom canopy. The larger a canopy, the more docile it will be, and the smaller a canopy, the more quickly it will react to input, regardless of the wingloading. This is partly because the lines of a smaller canopy are shorter, so the distance between the wing and the pilot is less. Never-the-less, wingloading is an important factor in selecting and flying a parachute and is the leading factor on how fast and responsive a particular canopy is. (ie: of two equivalently sized parachutes, the one with the higher wingloading will be more responsive and reactive to control inputs, and will have a higher descent rate). The Wing Load of a canopy is a ratio of the pilot's exit weight over the size of the canopy. Exit weight is the weight of the person and all of the gear they are wearing when exiting the aircraft. Typically gear can weigh anywhere between 15 and 40 pounds. So for example, if a person has an exit weight of 190 lbs and they are flying a 240 sq.ft. canopy (a typical student size), they have a wingload of .79:1. This is usually just expressed as .79. The goal -until you become a much more proficient canopy pilot- is to be below 1:1. (that's a little hypocritical of me to say, since I've been flying WL of 1.15:1 since August, but downsizing too quickly and taking on a higher wingloading than your experience dictates is the leading cause of injuries in the sport. 32% of all injuries and fatalities in the sport occur during landing. Not all of those are related to wing-load, but it's definitely a contributing factor in the vast majority of them.) The Harness-Container system is a specially made backpack which fits two canopies in separate sealed trays which are held closed by small nylon closing loops which are helt in place by metal pins. All containers have two shoulder straps, a chest strap which links the shoulder straps together and two adjustable leg straps. Somewhere on the shoulder straps will be a cut-away handle and a reserve deployment handle. The reserve deployment handle links directly to the reserve pin. It's also frequently what you see movie skydivers pull as their "Rip Cord". Although some containers in use today do still have a rip cord for their main canopy, it is rare to see one except on student and Tandem containers. The canopies are attached to the container by nylon straps called risers. The main canopy is attached using a three-ring system which allows the skydiver to detach (or cut-away) the main canopy from the system by pulling the cut-away handle. You would do this if you had some malfunction that rendered the canopy unflyable. The reserve canopy is attached to risers which are part of the harness and so cannot be cut away or lost. The canopies are folded and tucked into small bags, (The Deployment bag for the main and the Free-bag for the reserve). The canopies are typically slightly too large for the bags, which desperately want to slip off, thus ensuring that the canopies do not get stuck in the bags and fail to inflate. Modern parachutes are opened using a hand-deployed pilot chute which usually sits in an elastic and cordura pouch on the bottom of the container.  The pilot chute is a small round parachute with a long lanyard, called a bridle, which is is attached to the pin holding the main canopy tray closed, and also attached to the deployment bag and main canopy. It is pulled by hand and thrown into the wind, where it inflates rapidly and decelerates above the skydiver, pulling the pin and allowing the main canopy flaps to open.  It continues to pull until it has pulled the D-bag from the tray and the lines -which are typically held on the d-bag by rubber bungies- reach 'line stretch'. Once the lines go completely straight and taut, they pull the main out of the d-bag, allowing the main canopy to inflate. Depending on how the canopy was packed, it could take between three and ten seconds for it to start to inflate, during which time you are still falling at near terminal velocity. It is quite common for the skydiver to lose a thousand feet of altitude between pull and inflate.  The reserve chute is deployed using a spring-loaded pilot chute, which fires as soon as the reserve pin comes loose, and causes the reserve to reach line stretch sooner, thus more rapidly inflating the reserve. New parachute rigs have a number of improvements and safety features over rigs of just a decade ago. The first, and most important, is the Automatic Activation Device. Essentially a small computer with a sensitive air pressure gauge linked to an electric cutter attached to the reserve closing loop, the AAD monitors altitude and descent rate. At a preset altitude (say 700 feet AGL), if the skydiver's speed is above a preset limit (say 70 mph), the AAD will automatically cut the loop holding the reserve tray closed, which allows the spring loaded pilot chute to escape, deploying the reserve. These devices are not without their flaws, for example, some have gone off despite the skydiver flying a good main canopy, resulting in a two-out situation.  Notice the reserve inflating behind him as he approaches the pond, also the spring loaded reserve pilot chute and free bag looking like a balloon behind him. The other issue people don't consider is that the device will not activate under a certain minimum altitude, so if they do have to cut away a malfunctioning main canopy for some reason, they're pretty well hosed. (Better in that case to not cut away and manually deploy the reserve. Better two have a two-out than a no-out.) The other important safety feature is the Reserve Static Line or RSL. The RSL is a small lanyard which connects the reserve pin to the main risers. In the event of a cut-away, the main risers will pull the RSL with them as they fly away from the harness, and pull the reserve pin automatically. A newer form of this, available from only a handful of container manufacturers is something called the Skyhook. The skyhook works like an RSL, but instead of just pulling the pin, it is also attached to the reserve pilot chute and freebag. This has the effect of using the main canopy as the pilot chute for the reserve, thus speeding up deployment even more. All modern containers come with the RSL, and have pouches for the AAD, but for whatever reason, older  skydivers tend to eschew these devices as uncool or unnecessary, regardless of the tens of thousands of lives they've saved.A discomforting percentage of the 'failed to deploy the reserve' fatalities in the last ten years were found with their RSL disconnected. So who runs this show? or Can I just buy a parachute and go? Skydiving is a world-wide phenomenon. There are more than 1200 sport parachute drop zones in 81 countries around the world. Belarus has one.  !!!! So do                  and of course  Even Cuba has a drop zone. Individual countries frequently have their own parachute associations which regulate skydiving within their country, here’s a short and not comprehensive list: United States Parachute Association (USPA) Canadian Sport Parachute Association (CSPA) Australian Parachute Federation British Parachute Association New Zealand Parachute Federation Deutscher Fallschirmsport Verband Dansk Faldskaerm Union Fédération Française de Parachutisme Confederação Brasileira de Paraquedismo Parachutespringen Holland Swedish Parachute Organization Parachute Association of South Africa Swiss Parachuting Association Österreichischer Aero-Club Norwegian Airsports Federation Skydiving world-wide is generally governed by the International Parachuting Commission, a bureau of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Individual countries’ associations are typically members of the FAI/IPC. As members, they agree to common standard requirements for licensing, which allows a licensed skydiver to participate in the sport at any FAI member’s affiliated drop zone, anywhere in the world, regardless of which association issued the license. Some, like the one in Interlaken Switzerland, accept different licenses, but require a certain number of jumps. As a note, affiliated dropzones are DZs that belong to a particular association, not necessarily in the same country. For example, there are USPA affiliated DZs all over the world. Some DZs are affiliated with multiple associations. So how do you get started? The first thing to do is find a dropzone near you that is a teaching center. The USPA maintains a listing of affiliated drop zones around the world, which you can access online here: http://www.uspa.org/FindaDZ.aspx The British Parachute Association maintains listing of BPA affiliated drop zones here: http://www.bpa.org.uk/where-can-i-jump/ If you don’t live in the U.S. or Britain, or don’t want to pursue a USPA or BPA license, your country’s association website or magazine will have similar listings for your area. If you can’t find it there, there is an unofficial listing on Dropzone.com, here: http://www.dropzone.com/dropzone/ If you don’t live in the U.S. or Britain but do want to pursue a USPA or BPA license, you’re in luck. There are USPA and BPA affiliated drop zones around the world. Except in Britain and America. That is, there are no USPA affiliated drop zones in the U.K., and no BPA affiliated drop zones in the U.S. Don’t ask me why. (This doesn’t really matter for the USPA, all you need is one USPA licensed instructor at the drop zone to do your coach jumps and sign your log book and proficiency card, even if the DZ itself isn’t affiliated. I’m not sure if the BPA is the same way). No matter where you are, there are three methods currently used to teach skydiving. These are AFF, IAD and Static line. Some places will suggest or require a tandem jump before starting one of these, but many do not, so strictly speaking, it’s not a requirement. Some people like the IAD method because it’s cheaper and you go solo sooner, some prefer AFF because you start freefall at altitude right away. There are benefits and drawbacks to each system. Suffice to say, all of them teach you to skydive using modern sport parachutes and prepare you to safely skydive on your own. Both styles put you through the ground school on what your equipment is, how to use it, emergency procedures, how to fly and land your parachute, and how to get stable in freefall. Accelerated Free-fall  AFF. There are seven levels to AFF after the ground school. Each level is a test with specific requirements. If you fail, you have to repeat a level. For every jump, you ride to normal jump altitude (between 10,000 and 14,000 feet above ground level, depending on the drop zone, the aircraft, and the weather conditions), and deploy your own parachute. For levels 1-3, you and two instructors, one on each side of you, holding on to your harness and handles on your jumpsuit, exit the plane. They hold you, watch you, give hand-signal instructions, make sure you can get stable, have altitude awareness, and can find the deployment handle on your chute (by doing three practice pulls) and deploy it yourself. Some people don’t deploy by themselves on the first jump (although as long as they exited the plane, didn’t panic, maintained some altitude awareness, and landed the parachute, they usually pass the first level. On the second level, they may not pull it properly themselves either, but as long as they made the effort to pull it, they usually pass. To pass the third jump they must be able to fly stable and to pull it themselves). On the second and third jump, depending on how well you do, one or both of the instructors may let go of you during freefall (although they stay close enough to grab on again if you start to go unstable). On jump 4, the one instructor still holds on to you as you exit the plane and get stable, then lets you go and you do a controlled turn, 360 degrees in each direction. On jump 5, the instructor jumps out with you, but doesn’t hold you. You demonstrate that you can get stable on your own, do controlled turns at the cue of the instructor. On jump 6, you jump with the instructor, show that you can go unstable and then return to stable again, do exercises at the cue of the instructor, then track for five seconds away from the instructor, get stable and deploy the chute. Jump 7 is essentially a solo jump. Your instructor is there, but he or she is only there to watch and film you. You and the instructor leave the plane at the same time, then you demonstrate that you can do everything you learned on level 1-6 without being given any cues, while maintaining altitude awareness. Once you do, the instructor may swoop in to give you a :hi-five: or some other celebratory gesture and play around with you until you reach the break-off altitude, but you’re basically on your own. Instructor Assisted Deployment and Static Line IAD/SL. Static Line and IAD are virtually the same method. IAD is replacing Static line because it’s generally safer, but it’s the same principle. With static line jumping, you have a lanyard attaching your pilot chute to a cable in the aircraft. When you exit the plane, the static line becomes taut and then pulls out the pilot chute, thus automatically deploying your parachute. Static line is what militaries all over the world use. With IAD, the instructor sits in the plane and holds your bridle and pilot chute as you exit the aircraft, then throws them out after you.  There are five levels to IAD. I did AFF, so I don’t have experience with this, but in IAD, your first five jumps are from a lower altitude (typically 3500 – 5000 feet above ground level). You exit the plane and your chute is deployed automatically for you. On your first and second jump, you leave the aircraft and your chute is immediately deployed for you by either the static line or the instructor assist. On your third, fourth and fifth jump, you simulate finding and pulling the deployment handle, but the static line and instructor still deploy your chute for you. On your sixth jump, you do jump on your own, but you do what is called a hop-and-pop (that is, you deploy the chute as soon as you clear the aircraft), so you only get about 2-5 seconds of freefall. On jump seven, you jump from a slightly higher altitude and wait ten seconds before you deploy. On jump eight, you go higher and wait twenty seconds. On jump nine you go higher and wait thirty seconds, and so on until you get to full altitude. Whichever method you choose, once you complete the course, you are a qualified skydiver and are cleared to jump on your own from any altitude. Getting licensed Although you are a qualified skydiver, you are still considered a student until you obtain your license. As a student, you can do solo jumps to your heart’s content. However, you cannot jump with another person unless that person is an instructor and you are only permitted to jump in optimal wind and weather conditions. Each association has their own requirements, but generally they involve the same things. You must take a test, complete 25 skydives, including at least one low altitude hop and pop, show some measure of canopy handling ability, including the ability to land safely within a designated area, and complete a series of 2-way coach jumps where you demonstrate that you can control your body in the air on all axes and move in the air relative to another person. USPA SIM posted:A License Next Steps If you’re a German skydiver, congratulations, you had a few more requirements than the rest of us, but you've now completed all the schooling and licensing you need to jump to your heart’s content. There is no further required schooling or licensing unless you want to become an instructor. The German A license is valid for any and all forms of skydiving and has no restrictions on group size. For most of the rest of us, there are further licenses to obtain. The USPA system consists of licenses A-D. A requires 25 jumps, B requires 50, C requires 200, and D requires 500. There is no requirement to obtain B-D in order to continue skydiving, but if you want to progress to become a coach or instructor you must get them. While most DZs only care about your A License and how many logged jumps you have, some drop zones and events require a certain license to participate, regardless of your jump numbers. Furthermore, you do not have to get the licenses one after the other. If you get to 200 jumps without getting your B license, but meet all the requirements for B and C, you can go straight to your C License. USPA SIM posted:B License The BPA also has licenses A-D, but they are stricter about the requirements and have a more complicated system of ratings that you must obtain for each discipline outside of normal solo jumping. A and B can be obtained at 25 and 50 jumps respectively, while the C license requires 200 jumps. The D license requires 1000 jumps. The B license requires a specific Canopy Handling course and a Jump Master course. BPA certifications include FS, FF, CF, IS, CP, WS and SS. FS1 is Formation Skydiving level 1. This is belly-to-earth relative work with increasingly large groups. FF1 is Freefly level 1. This is head-up freeflying. CF1 is Canopy Formation 1. Flying in close formation with other canopy pilots. IS1 is Individual Style 1. This is classic solo ‘freestyle’ skydiving. The C License requires 200 jumps and at least one further qualification from the list above. This license opens up new disciplines, including WS 1&2, SS 1&2, FF2, and CP 1. It also allows you to begin coaching and begin using a camera when you jump. WS 1&2 are wingsuit flying. SS 1&2 is skysurfing. FF2 is Freefly level 2. This is head-down freeflying. CP 1 is advanced canopy piloting, which prepares you for smaller parachutes, higher wingloads, more radical maneuvers and faster landings. The D License requires 1000 jumps and is a requirement to become an AFF or Tandem instructor. CP2 (Canopy Piloting 2) is the final discipline certification. This chart explains the British system: 
My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Disciplines, or,what to do when you're getting bored with simply jumping out of the plane, opening and landing the parachute? Before I started skydiving, that was the extent of what I knew about it. People went up in an airplane, left the airplane and came down under a parachute. I was vaguely aware of formation skydiving, the idea of four or eight or eighty people coming together in mid-air to make shapes, and I was aware of canopy accuracy but that was the extent of it. I certainly didn't realize these were specialized disciplines. Turns out, there's a lot more than that. In freefall there are several different methods available. You start out learning in the belly-to-earth orientation, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's the most stable and relaxed position, and the first thing you learn when learning to freefall. It's also the position which produces the least turbulance behind you, so it is the ideal position to be in when you deploy your chute. There are several freefall disciplines to learn Relative Work  This is classic belly-to-earth Formation Skydiving. You jump with other skydivers. This will be the first thing you do after getting your A license or FS1 certification. If two of you are jumping, it's a 2-way, if there's 3 of you it's a 3-way, 4 of you a 4-way. There's a certain threshold, usually in the world records range where they just call it a big-way. You'll start out with 2-ways, usually someone more experienced than you, once you learn to keep stable with that person, you will learn how to adjust your levels, that is, speed up or slow down your fall rate in order to get on the same horizontal plane as the other person. Once you've mastered that, you will move on to what is called turning points. Points are where you take a grip on a person in mid-skydive. Usually it's part of a pre-planned and rehearsed sequence or formation, and each time you completely let go of the other person and take a different grip, that's considered a point.  Turning points is how RW competitions are scored. The more stable you can fly relative to the other person, the easier it is to turn points. It is highly recommended by just about everybody that you get confident with RW flying 2-ways and 3-ways before moving on to anything else. Freeflying  This is a more recent invention and it's what all the cool kids do. Freeflying is basically any controlled freefall where your body is not parallel to the ground, belly-to-earth. This includes flying parallel to the ground back-to-earth, which is loving hard to do. When most people talk about freeflying, they mean vertical flying, either sit-flying, head-up or head-down, with your body perpendicular to the Earth.  But it also includes things like Angle flying or Atmonauti, and Tracing. Angle Flying is holding a stable position somewhere between vertical and horizontal flight and Atmonauti is doing that in formation with other people. Tracing is a combination of angle flying and tracking which is both a common basic skill and a separate specialization.  Freeflying typically results in higher freefall speeds than belly to earth, and the less of your body you present to the relative wind (that is, air coming from your primary direction of movement - when you exit the plane, the relative wind comes from the prop, as you transition to freefall, it comes from below you, i.e. between you and the earth, regardless of your horizontal movement.) As you decrease the surface area you present to the relative wind, your terminal velocity increases.  In a belly to earth orientation, depending on your weight and how much you're fighting the air beneath you, you typically fall between 120 and 130mph. In sit-fly, you approach average speeds of 150mph, in straight head-up vertical (ie: standing) you can easily hit 160 or more, and in head-down you get close to 180. (You can increase that by streamining your body. I've gotten head-down speeds of close to 275 mph., and the men's world record is 330mph.)  Vertical Formation Skydiving  A specialized subset of competition Freeflying, essentially vertical relative work. Most of the people who do this are professionals, sponsored athletes, or rich as gently caress, because it takes many hours of tunnel time (which runs about $1000 per hour) and in-air practice to gain the stability to be able to move in the close proximity this specialization demands at the speeds involved. Having said that, it's absolutely beautiful to watch either on video or in the tunnel. Tracking When you are learning how to skydive, you learn how to do tracking. Tracking is basically adjusting your body to decrease vertical movement and increase horizontal movement. You learn it while still a student because when you jump with another person, you want as much distance as possible between you and them when you deploy your parachute, so that you don't end up flying towards eachother at 35 kts. before you can take the controls. Canopy collisions are bad, every time. But the discipline of tracking requires more skill than simply flying away from somebody for 5 seconds. Tracking dives are meant to basically split your entire dive between vertical and horizontal flight, that is, covering as much ground as you can. Some people say this discipline is the one that feels the most like pure flight outside of wingsuiting. I disagree, I think that's tracing (angled-tracking), because you gain more speed and therefore more distance over the ground. Tracing also has the benefit of looking much much cooler:  Once you become sufficiently proficient at tracking (or tracing), you begin jumping with other people. Typically a minimum of three and a maximum of what's safe for the least skilled person in your group. One person becomes the rabbit and the rest of the trackers follow him in a formation and try to catch him as he flys a pattern around the drop zone. This one can be incredibly dangerous, especially because many newly licensed skydivers confuse the skill of tracking away from a formation with the discipline of tracking within a formation. Many misjudge their own skill at tracking, which can result in their being included in a larger formation than they are prepared to deal with, which can cause a hazard to other jumpers on the dive. It is also very easy for novice trackers to get disoriented and end up flying back along the jump run, thus endangering other groups of divers. Freestyle This is also a subset of freeflying. It's done solo (or two-way with one person just filming), but is essentially doing a gymnastics routine while doing vertical or angle flying, that is, turning very specific body positions as quickly and as stable as you can. It's impressive to watch videos of it, but that's really all I know about it, other than it is loving tough. Classic Style This is what freestyle grew out of. Style is also done solo, and is essentially doing gymnastics in the air, but from a horizontal orientation you perform a set routine of turns and loops. Wingsuiting  This is putting on an inflatable suit and pretending to be a bird. Wingsuiting is what it says on the tin. You wear a jumpsuit with large built-in wings between the arms and the torso, and between the legs. This has the effect of rendering your body incredibly aerodynamic, allowing you to fly like a bird or a glider over incredible distances. Wingsuits tend to slow the diver's fall-rate to 50mph or less (slightly more than a third of normal belly-fly terminal velocity). Some wingsuiters have been able to stretch out their flight time more than four minutes. One british stuntman was able to actually fly and land a wingsuit (along a special cardboard box runway) without deploying a parachute. Wingsuiting is awesome to watch when they're flying in a group formation, and a lot of B.A.S.E. jumpers use them to really stretch out their freefall time. That said, it's also one of the only disciplines to come with a high minimum jump requirement. You can't even take a wingsuit class until you've had 200 jumps. Camera flying Less of a strict discipline now that GoPros are ubiquitous, but being able to capture a skydive in midair using helmet mounted still and/or video cameras. This tends to require the user to be very -very- proficient at RW work. Most associations have minimum required jumps to use a camera, even a GoPro, in large part because it can change your profile to the wind, thus affecting your learned movements, and it presents a real hazard of being entangled in the bridle or the lines of the parachute during deployment and potentially cause serious injury. Most require at least 200 jumps, although Germany requires only 100. There are also canopy flying disciplines. Canopy flying these tend to be the most spectator friendly of all skydiving because it's the part you can actually watch live from the ground instead of seeing a video replay. These involve putting a canopy on a precise target, or flying the piss out of one in order to get the most speed and maneuverability you can. A note here: All canopies, regardless of size and wingloading, have a normal forward speed of 35 kts. Wingloading affects descent rate, but not forward movement. This speed can be controlled by manipulating the wing using risers or brakes to induce a dive or turn, or flattening out the wing in order to extend the horizontal glide, or sharply increasing the angle of attack in order to bleed off energy. By pointing the nose of the canopy down more than it naturally is, you can increase forward speed, and by pointing the nose of the canopy up more than it naturally is, you can decrease forward speed. -as a note, you can very easily bleed off too much speed or too quickly and induce a stall. Put simply, increased speed adds lift (which improves responsiveness and stability in flight, and is essential for landing). Decreased speed subtracts lift (which hurts responsiveness and stability, and can potentially cause the canopy to collapse when the air pressure on the front of the cells ceases to be enough to keep the wing pressurized.) Canopy piloting in general is another place where people seriously overestimate their ability and can put themselves and others at risk (even without taking up one of these disciplines). Many people think that because they've had a few good stand-up landings that they understand everything they need to know about flying and landing a canopy, and that's how 32% of injuries and fatalities occur during landing. As for the disciplines: Accuracy This is the oldest canopy discipline and was performed even under round canopies. It's what's written on the tin. The goal is to land on a 2cm metal target.  This grew from trying to guide a round canopy and land on a 16cm target 35 years ago, to a 10cm target in the early 90s to a 2cm target today. The canopies they use for this are extremely large and docile 7-cell canopies with low wingloads. Canopy Relative Work or CReW.  This is flying canopies in formation with 2, 4, 8 or 16 team members. Team members take grips of other canopies, stack jumpers on each other's canopies and generally fly in very close proximity to each other.  CReW pilots tend to use larger, slower canopies to reduce the chance of unexpected movement, and also because they can maintain lift longer in slow flight, which is essential for aligning your parachute with everybody else's. XRW I think that stands for crossover relative work, or possibly experimental relative work. It's basically relative work between wingsuiters and canopy pilots. It requires the canopy pilots to be on small, fast and agile canopies, which are put into shallow dives in order to gain enough speed to stay with the wingsuiters, who are also in a slightly braked shallow dive in order to match speed with the canopy pilots. The goal is to turn points. Either the wingsuiters will try to touch the canopy while it's in flight, or the pilot will attempt to stand on the wingsuiters' backs.  Either way it looks awesome, which is really all it gets down to! And finally: Advanced Canopy Piloting or Swooping.  This is the coolest of the cool. (and also my favorite of them all)  Basically this is the discipline of diving your canopy at the ground in order to pick up speed, recovering to normal flight at the last possible second, and levelling off so you are flying horizontally just inches off the ground in order to cover as much distance as possible.  There are subsets of this that are used in competition, but each one is just a variant of diving the canopy, recovering it and trying to get maximum distance. There's also a form of slalom, pond swooping and distance and style competitions and so forth.  This is also the largest injury producer.            
My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 19:50
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Donald Kimball posted:Awesome thread! Dove or skydived. What an awesome place to do it! Did you keep your eyes open for the exit? On my first tandem I made the mistake of looking straight down when we were getting in the door. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until we were tumbling in the air. quote:I would love to skydive again, but I have a herniated lumbar disc, and I am worried that landing could be very problematic. Do you know anyone who jumps with a similar injury? I've heard people talking about this and it gets down to your level of fitness. People can and do jump with herniated discs and other back injuries, but you have to take precautions. You need to focus on stretching and building up your torso strength to make sure your spine stays in alignment. This means doing a lot of core exercises, especially back extensions. Aerobics helps. Unless you're on a small, fast, diving parachute with a high wingloading, landing is not so much the issue as opening is. You're not coming straight down, so even if your feet hit the ground and you don't flare (pull the brakes) enough, the canopy is still going forward and will pull your body along with it. You'll end up landing feet, knees, hands, face, but there's no real shock to your torso. If you learn to fly and land the canopy properly though, landing is as simple and easy on your body as taking a step. Sassafrasquatch posted:Love it.  Nice! Was it a tandem both times, or AFF?quote:I'd love to do it all the time, but it's an expensive sport to get into. Can you talk a little about the pricing relative to how much experience you have? I saw that once you are qualified you can just pay for the flight up which is like 25 bucks. Does that include renting a chute too? Or do most people buy their own personal chute? When I first started writing the OP a few days ago, I'd meant to include the financial portion in there. That's exactly right, there is a very steep initial cost which gets really cheap after you're qualified. The $25 would be for people who have their own gear, but chute rental is usually only about  on top of that. People who stay in the sport long enough buy their own gear eventually, either because the rental gear doesn't fit what they want to do, or they outgrow what their DZ has for rent.edited so I'm not Triple posting my own thread My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 11:50
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Costs When I started skydiving, everybody I met said "Say goodbye to your money". I thought they were joking, but honestly it's worse than cocaine. Last year, I spent more than 25% of my income on skydiving. Skydiving has very steep entry fees in the form of training and gear, after which it gets very cheap -relatively speaking. A Licensed skydiver who owns and packs their own gear will typically pay only about $25-30 for a jump ticket, which gives them a ride to altitude. Of course, you will still end up spending quite a lot of money just to go as often as you can, but that's on you. Training and licensing The AFF course, with instruction and seven jumps can run between 1400 and 1600 in the states. In Europe the average is about 1600 Euros. The IAD course, with instruction and 13 jumps runs about the same. This is assuming you pass each level the first time and don't have to repeat any. Dropzones offer these courses as individual jumps, where you can pay for each level at once, or as package courses, where you pay everything up front. The average IAD first jump is about $200, and the average AFF first jump is about $300. To get your A license, you need 25 total jumps. You will need to do a series of coach jumps, as well as a license test jump, each of which costs more than a regular jump. The total cost to an A License runs between $2500 for IAD and $2800 for AFF. Fly Free skydiving in Festus Missouri has a handy chart showing the cost breakdown here So that's $2500 - $2800 to get licensed. IAD is a cheaper, but AFF gets you solo in the sky faster, your call. Once you're cleared to jump solo, things start to get cheaper. Most dropzones in the states charge between $25 and 30 per jump ticket, and most Dropzones in Europe charge between 25 and 30 EUR. But there's still gear to consider. Rentals add to the cost of the jump ticket, anywhere from 10-20 dollars per jump. A $20 gear rental usually includes to price of the pack-job when you're done. Some places will charge you the higher amount and then refund the cost of the pack job if you pack it yourself, while some places require that one of their packers must pack their rental equipment. So getting licensed is the first hurdle to get over, but there's one more. Gear This is the really painful hurdle. If you stay in the sport, especially if you want to get into any discipline beyond Belly-to-Earth Relative Work, eventually you're going to want to get your own gear. Most dropzones have rental equipment, but for many of them, their rental equipment mostly consists of student gear, which tends to be one-size-fits-most, fitted with larger canopies, and tends to have certain safety modifications which make it safer for students and instructors, but also makes it unsuitable for freeflying or style jumps. A complete rig can cost more than a decent used car. A new rig can run between $5000 and $8000. Chutingstar.com offers a wide selection of gear packages, just to give you an idea. Most new equipment is custom built, and depending on demand can have wait times from 6 weeks to 6 months. Most manufacturers also offer in-stock options, which reduces the wait time, but not the price. Skydiving is such a niche market that most manufacturers and dealers sell for only slightly above cost anyway. All of the companies that cater to the industry tend to be made up of skydivers anyway, so most of them are in it for the love of the game and not for the money. Used gear can cost less, but a lot of people get really excited when they first start going solo and want to rush into buying their own gear, so the demand for used novice rigs is usually higher than the supply. Having said that, if you buy a new novice rig, you will get more of your money back when it comes time to sell it. Two options to buying gear, whether new or used, are to buy complete packages or complete used rigs, or to buy piecemeal. Most people end up buying piecemeal. Altimeters One of the first things a new skydiver will buy is an Altimeter. There are several different models of digital and analog out there, and one hybrid model with an analog face and mostly digital guts. This is a matter of personal preference for people, some like being able to see digital numbers and some like being able to see the position of the needle. Most digital altimeters have the advantage of being accurate to within 3 feet, while analog altimeters require an estimation if you're not on one of the needle marks, especially below 500 feet. Digital altimeters also have the advantage of being able to record your jump for review. Some track your exit altitude, your freefall time, your opening altitude and your max speed in freefall and under canopy for every jump you make with them. Some keep more detailed records of each individual jump. The L&B Altitrack is the aforementioned Hybrid, offering the appearance of an analog altimeter with the logging abilities of a digital. Helmet This will be your first purchase if you didn't buy an altimeter. Despite what Jerry Seinfeld said, that helmet is not just along for the ride. There are many times where you need a helmet during your skydive. The first is on exit, you don't want to stand up into the aircraft's door-frame or smack your head on the wing at 14,000 feet. The next is in doing jumps with other people. You don't want somebody hitting your bare head at terminal velocity. The last of course, is on landing, the ground can hurt. There are lots of different models and styles to choose from. Some people like the feeling of the wind on their face and so buy an open face, some people like the cool factor of a closed face. Closed face helmets can set off claustrophobia in some people. It gets down to personal preference in style. Some people who do RW work use closed face helmets to prevent their getting kicked in the face when doing in-close maneuvers. Some people who swoop like them because the margin for error that close to the ground is very slim that close to the ground and a face-plant can break a nose or a jaw at those speeds. Having said that, only one helmet used in skydiving is actually rated to really protect your skull in the event of a hard impact and that's the pro-tec skateboarding style helmet most DZs use as the student helmet. All the rest will protect you from bumps and scrapes, but they don't have the foam or steel reinforcement of the Pro-tec type. Having said that, I don't use one of those, and neither do most skydivers who aren't students. It's rare -though not unheard of- to get hit hard enough on exit, landing or in freefall to get hurt. Jumpsuits Some time before, or around the same time as you get your rig, you'll probably look at getting a jumpsuit. There's a wide variety of options, both stock and custom made, ranging from One to several hundred dollars. The kind of discipline you want to follow will inform the type of suit you get. Suits generally come in four styles: RW, Freefly, Camera, and Swoop. RW suits typically have handles built into the arms and legs to make taking grips easier. They occasionally have booties which slip over the shoes in order to reduce drag. Freefly suits are standard jumpsuits with either elastic or velcro wrists and ankles, and stirrups in the pants. The stirrups are worn inside the shoes and keep the pants from shooting up your legs in head-up freefly. RW and Freefly suits usually come in three different fits which affect your fall rate: tight, normal and baggy. The tighter a suit fits, the less resistance it provides to the air. Larger people will generally want baggier suits if they want to jump with other not-larger people, while very skinny or small people will want tighter suits so they can stay with larger people. This isn't always the case. Camera suits are usually built to be baggy and have a wing-flap from the arms to the torso which help to keep them in a stable shoulders-and-head up position while wearing more weight on their heads. These are used only by pro camera flyers. Swoop pants are built to reduce drag while under canopy. Swoopers are obsessed with reducing drag. The canopies used by most swoopers have a detachable slider, called a removable deployment system or RDS. Swoop pants are sometimes built with a pocket on the back of the leg for the swooper to put the RDS after the canopy has opened. Canopies New main canopies will cost between $1800 and $2300. Prices vary based on size, shape, material and purpose. New reserve canopies will cost between $1200 and $1600. Prices vary based on manufacturer and material. Canopy fabric usually comes in one of three flavors. Older gear was made from Low Porosity material, commonly called F111. Most modern canopies are either Zero Porosity or a Hybrid of ZP and Low Porosity material. F111 canopies allow air to pass through the material, which degrades with use and is less aerodynamic than ZP material. ZP material is relatively new by comparison, and is essentially F111 material with a silicone based coating which prevents air from passing through. This makes ZP canopies more aerodynamic and extends their life. F111 has the advantage of being easier to pack and having a low pack volume, so some manufacturers create canopies today which use a combination of ZP and Low Porosity material. This is called Hybrid or ZPX, depending on the manufacturer. "F-111" is actually a brand name for a fabric that's not made anymore. Skydivers use F111 to refer to low porosity fabric like most people use Kleenex to refer to tissue paper. Most people skydiving today have never actually jumped a canopy made from real F-111 fabric. A canopy will degrade with use. Usually you can expect an average canopy to last about 1000-1500 jumps with average use. Some can last many more jumps than that. Canopies can wear out faster when exposed to water and sand, and a canopy that gets wet can deform or shrink, reducing its performance and causing it to fly off-center. A canopy can last 15 years or more depending on how it's treated, but the material starts to degrade around that time, and there's no telling how the previous owners treated it. On top of that, many riggers won't even bother inspecting or fixing gear that's more than 15-17 years old. In particular, reserves degrade over time, even if they are never actually deployed. The lines on the canopy wear out faster than the canopy themselves. Manufacturers recommend changing the lines every 400-500 jumps, or sooner depending on how they are treated. Brake lines may wear out sooner than the main lines. A canopy reline job will cost in the neighborhood of $300-$400. Used canopies vary depending on age and number of jumps. Stay away from anything that is more than 10-12 years old, no matter how good a deal it appears. People selling used always ask for more than the canopy is worth, so you can usually negotiate down, unless it's the aforementioned novice gear with high demand. Usually a used main in the 170-190 sq.ft region will fetch the seller's asking price, provided it's <10 years old with <600 jumps on it. Containers This is the fun, hard decision. Containers have two sizes to consider, Harness length and container size. When people talk about container size, they're referring to the size of canopy it will take. Containers will have a name and a model number. The name is the type of container and the model number is the reference for the size of canopies it will take. Most manufacturer's sizing guides typically list three sizes of canopy based on pack volume, which extends its usefulness to you. (Some list only two, but that model can still accomodate three) This is listed on container sizing guides as tight, normal (or "optimal") and loose (or "soft"). The tight and loose sizes will be either one step up or one step down from the normal size. For those that only list normal and loose, one step up will still fit as tight. The sizes are based on standard pure 9 cell ZP canopies. 7 cell and Hybrid canopies typically pack one size smaller, while cross-braced canopies back about 25% larger. (If you're looking at buying a cross-braced canopy, you're already worlds ahead of me in knowledge and experience, so I won't elaborate on that one). New containers start between $1600 and $2600. Although manufacturers do frequently have stock containers available immediately, a custom made container will have the longest wait time of any new gear that you buy. Custom containers are made to your measurements and with your choice of options. Additionally, they can be made to your color specifications, with your designs embroidered on them. The most important part of a container is the harness. You can frequently find stock containers in a variety of colors which may appeal to you, but the harnesses tend to be stock lengths, which means it isn't made specifically for your body, so you will have to get measured and then pick one that's close enough. You may get lucky, I bought a new stock container that turned out to be slightly too small for how i was measured, but is still comfortable and keeps the container tightly against my back, making it better for freeflying. It also gives me more immediate response for harness turns than others I have used. This gives you the option to downsize your main (and/or reserve) canopy without replacing the whole system. A lot of people look at the size of canopy they want to fly now when choosing a container, without thinking about what they'll move on to afterwards. I bought a container sized for 135-170 ZP canopies, but I have a Hybrid 190. With room to downsize at least three times, I expect this container will last me quite a while. Used containers run the gamut of prices and there are really good deals out there. Some older containers can be modified with the newer innovations, extending its life. People looking for and selling used containers typically say something like "Fits 5'11" 190lbs" when talking about the harness fit, but that's not very accurate as two people who are 5'11 190lbs may have dramatically different torso lengths, shoulder widths and so forth. It's better to ask for the harness size when looking at used containers. AAD There are three AADs that matter on the market: the M2, the Vigil II, and the Cypres 2. Anything else is garbage. It's either old, or it's unreliable. The Cypres 2 by Airtec is the industry standard, engineered and built in Germany. A new Cypres 2 costs $1400. It will last for 12 years, but has required factory maintenance every four years. They charge $160 plus shipping for the scheduled maintenance, however unscheduled repairs are covered by the warranty. They also offers a $90 credit towards a new Cypres when you turn in an out-of-date model Cypres 1 or 2. The Vigil II by Advanced Aerospace Designs costs about $1300 new. It will last for 20 years, and the battery will last 2000 jumps. There is no regularly scheduled maintenance on it. This is fairly reliable, Adv. Aero Designs is a Belgian company started by former Airtec empoyees. The M2 by MarS is the newest and cheapest. A new M2 costs about $1000. It has a life of 15 years and the battery will operate for 15,000 jumps. There is no regularly scheduled maintenance on it. MarS is a Czech company, and it's reliability is not well known yet. Of the three, Cypres is hands down the most reliable and has the best track record. You can buy used AADs for less. Things to be aware of when looking at used AADs are the age and whether the maintenance has been done. Airtec has a helpful calculator to show what their used AADs are worth here: https://www.cypres-usa.com/usedcypres.asp There are older models of the Cypres 1 still being sold. The last Cypres 1 was built in 2002, and so will still be operable until the end of this 2014, but it's worth at most $150. Someone is out there trying to sell it for more. You don't have to get an AAD, but most Dropzones require it these days. Maintenance Once you've bought your container, eventually you'll want to upgrade or downsize, but in the meantime you'll need to pay for periodic maintenance on your equipment. Reserve Repack: Although different countries have different rules for this, every country requires that you have a certified rigger open, inspect and repack your reserve parachute after a certain period of time. In this US this is every 180 days, in Germany it's once a year. You repack according to the rules of country in which you hold your license, regardless of where you're living. So an American in Germany must still repack every 180 days, while a German in America can go on repacking once a year. A reserve repack typically runs about $60. Canopy Reline: In accordance with Manufacturer's guidelines, you should replace the lines of your canopy, typically after 400-500 jumps. You may also have to replace the lines if they break at some point. You can also choose to get a reline if you want to change the types of lines on the canopy. People do this to reduce pack volume and increase the life of the lines. A complete reline will cost between $300 and 400, depending on where you get it done, and whether you use the same kind of lines. You can have a partial reline if only the brake-lines need it. Canopy inspection: If you've just bought a used canopy, you've left your canopy sitting in storage for a long period of time (particularly in a non-environmentally controlled storage area) or if you ever land somewhere other than the designated landing area, you will want to have a rigger inspect your canopy for damage. This is faily inexpensive, maybe running $25. Before you buy Before you even consider buying gear, talk to your instructors, the Dropzone operator, and other experienced skydivers at your drop zone about what's right for you. You need to consider your goals in the sport as well as your experience and skill level. A lot of people (me included) get in a big hurry to get gear once they get their license, only to find that in less than a hundred jumps, the gear they bought isn't right for them. The enthusiam is palpable. New jumpers want to hurry into other disciplines that they can't do on rental gear, and they want to just pay for the jump ticket so they can get more jumps in. They also think they already know what they want to do in the sport, even though they're still learning about it at an exponential pace. Especially as you're just starting out, You are not the best judge of your skill. You should let the experienced people at your DZ evaluate you and make recommendations. When I got my license, I was on a 220 sq.ft canopy and was sure I would be on it for another few hundred jumps. In less than fifty jumps, I was on a 190. I'm still on a 190, but I expect that I will downsize again, maybe twice, by the end of this year. If I had rushed into buying a container, I would be looking at getting a whole new system by then. I did a canopy piloting course after I got on the 190. My fellow student was on a 240 and was sure he'd be on that for a while, so he was looking to buy a rig that would take a 240 with the option to downsize to 220. By the end of the course, the instructor had him on a 200 and was recommending that he downsize even further in the next dozen jumps. Be Patient! The sky isn't going anywhere. It's worth it to spend the money renting gear early on, rather than on used gear that you'll be trying to sell after a hundred jumps. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jan 25, 2014 |
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Jan 25, 2014 12:06
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troubled teen posted:Awesome. My avatar is actually me in muppet form skydiving. Submitted a picture of me from the first time I went into a thread here a while back and that's what came back. That is gorgeous, I think jumping on the coast, any coast, should be mandatory, even if you're only going to do one tandem in your life. quote:I actually just started up a thread at work to try and get a larger group (about 8 people) to go with me this year. I want to continue the trend of going at least once a year. I might try to go a second time this year as well. My grandfather was in the Army Airborne and looked so happy and went straight into stories when he saw the video of my first jump. Still in good enough shape that a tandem could work out well for him. That's very cool, and it's awesome that you can bond with your grandfather like that. Absolutely I think you should get him to do it too! And you're never too old. That picture of the old lady in the first post, that actually is a 102 year old lady who did a tandem base jump from a bridge. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1IEJp5OXoo) I wouldn't necessarily talk you out of doing AFF or getting your license, because I think once you start, your plans would change (mine certainly did), but it's really down to what you want. If you really only can spare one or two times a year to go, there's no reason not to stick to tandems. A lot of people do it that way. Tandem hobbyists are a thing. People do just Tandems for any number of reasons, and that's great too. There are people with dozens of Tandem jumps who would never consider strapping on their own parachute, they just enjoy the experience. Some do tandems because they don't have the time. Some do because they don't have the money to get licensed. Some don't because they just don't have the interest in actually doing it by themselves. Some of them do it for health reasons, there are a number of elderly and physically and mentally handicapped tandem hobbyists. Skydive City in Zephyrhills Florida even offers a "$99 Tandems for Life" deal where after your first tandem with them, if you buy your next ticket that day it only costs $99. Then whenever you decide to use that ticket, the next one is $99, and so on. Sassafrasquatch posted:Both my jumps were tandem. The next one is going to be AFF. Pretty stoked about it. Awesome, it really is a great time! Do you have an idea of when you'll do it, and will it be at the same place you did your tandems?
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Jan 26, 2014 03:12
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A little  for your weekend!
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Jan 31, 2014 14:24
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Donald Kimball posted:loving excellent. How the hell do you land in a wing-suit? There are two ways, the first is pitching out a pilot chute with a longer bridle which catches clean air. When you see them doing close-to-the-ground maneuvers, called Proximity flying, they are flying along a planned course on the side of a mountain where the ground descends at approximately the same angle as their flight, but then drops off, giving them free air to deploy in, like so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37YROdTDfOU The second I think only one person so far has actually done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEP8juRSBRo, and he was a stuntman wearing extra protection. There are videos floating around of people landing a wingsuit on water, but that's STDH.avi, At the heights and speeds we fall, the surface tension of water may as well be concrete.
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Feb 2, 2014 11:44
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Hahaha, that's about right! That malaise is generally how I feel during the weeks between jumping: it's a horrible addiction. Utah sounds beautiful. I've only jumped in Germany and Ireland, where it's green fields in every direction, and on the coast in Portugal and Spain, which is beautiful in a different way. Your analogy sums it up precisely. Eventually you get used to the anxiety or it goes away, but the memories of that feeling are quite vivid and familiar. nyquil posted:question: are the higher altitude jumps mostly a gimmick? The one's from 18,000 + oxygen or whatever? Generally, yes. Outside of the military, where they do it for tactical reasons, there's very little reason to jump that high. Some people do it to set different records, and some people do it once or twice for the experience, but I don't get the impression that it's a regular thing for them. Some of the largest formation jumps go from higher than 14-16,000 feet, but that's just because there are so many people involved and they need the extra freefall time to get everyone together and safely apart. They usually jump between 16 and 20,000 feet, I believe, and they don't use Oxygen (outside of the plane) in that case.
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Feb 5, 2014 12:02
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^^^ Cool, welcome to the thread! Having someone with a little more experience will help us all recognize when I'm talking out of my  Mux posted:Finished my AFF training last weekend. It was a blast and probably the most fun I've ever had. Ever. Spending the entire weekend at the dropzone, and sleeping at the bunkhouse was probably the best decision I made. Being able to have access to talk with instructors and experienced skydivers all day long was awesome. Plus all the people I met were amazing people. I feel like my information retention was a lot higher than it would have been if I broke it up into several weekends. Here was my view of the California coast on my graduation jump: Nice! Well done. Now say goodbye to your bank account. That's awesome that you were able to get it in over a weekend. I definitely agree, getting it all in one continuous dose is the way to go if you can manage it. quote:EDIT: Oh also quick question. Say you own your own rig. How hard would it be to get it through security checks at an airport if you're traveling domestically/internationally? I do own my own rig  I've taken it through airport security once, the way I'd packed everything, my checked baggage was 6 pounds over, but the only way I could reorganize everything on the spot was to take out the rig and put my carry-on into my checked bag. I took it through security at Munich airport and they freaked a bit. The guts of the parachute appear organic on the scanner, in the same way that explosives do. Add to that the electronics and pyrotechnics in the AAD and the metal in the reserve pilot chute, and they were quite insistent that I open it up on the spot so they could inspect it. I was quite polite but insistent that it would be impossible unless they wanted a huge mess. I won't go into detail about how, but eventually I was able to get through and carry it onto the plane. It wasn't easy, but it's do-able. I will say I'm glad I got to the airport a few hours early.If you are going to check it, I would recommend a hard-shell suit-case to prevent it getting crushed, dragged on the ground, or punctured by something during the process.
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Mar 10, 2014 01:31
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Thrasophius posted:Awesome thread thanks for taking the time to put it together. I've not been skydiving myself though I plan to in future. For those experienced divers out there any tips on summoning the courage to actually jump the first time? Don't look down, and trust your training. On my tandem jump, I was so focused on aligning my feet in the door that I ended up looking straight down at the ground and had to close my eyes. I didn't open them again until we were out of the plane. If you do a tandem as your first, try to pay close attention to the instructions and trust the tandem master. After I had learned to jump and to trust my training and equipment, it took somebody saying "so what if you fall out? That's what you came up here to do" for me to get over my nervousness of the open door. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Mar 10, 2014 |
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Mar 10, 2014 17:17
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Greyish Orange posted:Fascinating thread, thank you for this. It's encouraged me to look up costs in the UK! This is a chance for me to plug my friend's company: http://www.absoluteskydiving.com/ Nigel is a first rate skydiver and an excellent instructor. He's also based in Spain, so it would be require a holiday, but you'd have a better chance of completing it in short order. Folks I know who have tried to do it in the UK have had spotty luck because of weather holds, and can end up taking months to get through AFF. It's a lot of money up front when paying per AFF level in the UK is more cost effective, but if you choose the right time period to go to Spain you can knock out both your AFF and your console jumps in a week and walk away fully licensed. (I know a lot of UK Skydivers who did their courses at Empuriabrava, Seville or Madrid for that reason). mitztronic posted:Shouldnt you wait until a minimum of 40-70 jumps before getting your own rig? even if its used, isnt it a bit soon to be going all in? that is what my DZ recommended to me anyways. Everyone has different income levels they can spend on this, so that changes it significantly It depends on your disposable income. But yeah, most people recommend waiting at least 50 jumps. I got mine at 100, about 6 months after I started. I'd already been jumping a 190 for 30-40 jumps by the time I got it. I'm already looking at downsizing to a 170 by this summer. It's easy to get starry-eyed when you've just started, but early on you really should be patient because it's a lot of money and while you will be able to sell it to other starry-eyed new jumpers, you don't want to shell out thousands of dollars for a rig that you'll end up selling less than a hundred jumps later. I would say that unless your home DZ has really crappy rental gear, look at the cost of renting vs. depreciation of your gear before you buy something that you'll just get rid of. Here's the thing: You don't know what you don't know (And unless we've seen you jump, we don't either). You may end up buying a rig that's great for you at 25, 35, or 50 jumps, but your experience and expectations can change in as little as ten jumps. I was on a Navigator 240 for 20 jumps, then a 220 for about 30, then a 210 for about 10 jumps, a 200 for about 15 jumps (with odd days on a 260 and a 230), and finally onto a 190 (wingload of 1.15). Each time I stepped down, I was sure that's where I would stay for a long time, so I started looking at gear for that size of chute. The advice I got when I started looking was to wait until I was on a Wing-load of between 1.0 and 1.2 before buying my own rig, so I will echo that here. Wait until you've taken a dedicated canopy course and ask your instructor for advice before you consider buying gear. We're all starry-eyed and excited when we start, so we've all felt what you're feeling. If you must spend money on something other than rental gear and jump tickets; buy your own helmet, jumpsuit, altimeters, gloves and goggles before you buy your rig. When you do eventually buy your rig, don't buy anything more than 15 years old, no matter how awesome they tell you it is. Also, when you buy a container, look at longevity, each container will take ~3 sizes of 9 cell ZP canopy. Buy something that will take the canopy you're on and still give you room to downsize once or twice. mitztronic posted:By the way, this is what it's all about Haha, look at that grin! That's what it's all about! Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Trembley / My Q-Face: Have either of you HALO jumped? There's a dz near me that offers them about once a month, so I'm planning on going in August or September. I've jumped from ~16.5k, but never done HALO. I imagine doing it with a Wingsuit would add a whole different dimension to it, but I'm not a wingsuiter. Tremblay posted:I might have the opportunity to do 35 or 40k in the next couple weeks. Still waiting to hear. My arms are gonna be shot after that wingsuit flight. Bring Video! quote:Thirding that, the Skyvan is an awesome plane to jump from. I'm missing a nearby Pink Boogie because I have to work this weekend (and also because I had a reserve ride a few weekends ago and my rig is with my rigger), or I'd be jumping from The Pink right now!  Tremblay posted:"Common" wisdom in the sport to have fairly identically sized reserve and main canopies. I personally think this is poo poo. I like having the biggest reserve I can in my container. I agree with this. I have an Optimum 176 in my rig. My main is a hybrid 190, but my container will take down to a 135 ZP. Supposedly I can even put a Velo 120 or a Nano 115 in it. I intend to keep this reserve until it wears out, no matter how much I downsize my main. Speaking of... Trust your equipment and practice your emergency procedures!  andrew smash posted:Do any of you guys know anything about hang gliders? I've never been gliding. There's a Glider field not far from my home DZ, and I've seen gliders, para-gliders and hang-gliders in the sky at the same time as us. I've seen a few bust NOTAMs and overfly our landing area trying to get updrafts. Kind of put a bad taste in my mouth to see one coming at me while I was in freefall.  (At least it wasn't a Jumbo Jet on my AFF!)Having said that, we're all lovers of the sky, so what's your question? My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 14:07
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Mux posted:Did that actually happen to someone during AFF? It did. I think the student was completely unaware, but the instructors and the camera guy sure saw it. I will try to find the video when I get a decent internet connection. Although it probably won't pull on its own, It's actually quite easy to accidentally pull the cutaway handle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwc4oHB0RS0&app=desktop I may be the odd guy out, having only jumped in Europe, but I've never heard the term release used before deployment or after. You deploy your chute or you cut away. Thrasophius posted:Ah that's good to hear because knowing my luck I'd be the unlucky sod that releases his main and reserve. Sky diving has always been a pipe-dream of mine but reading through the thread with all this information I think I'll go give it a shot once I have some funds behind me. Before I think you used it to mean cut-away? For what it's worth, you can't cut away your reserve
My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 22:11
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DSauer posted:Is it possible to gain altitude while under the canopy if you fly into a thermal or is the glide ratio to poor for that to work? It is absolutely possible. It depends on the size of the canopy, the wingload and the strength of the thermal. In some places the heat can produce thermals which can do it, people have caught these updrafts and gained 500+ feet. Also, certain types of clouds produce what's called Cloud Suck, which is the effect of updrafts going at upwards of 1000 feet per minute through the cloud, although you shouldn't be jumping anywhere near these kinds of clouds/conditions.
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Mar 22, 2014 10:16
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Thrasophius posted:When dropping through the clouds do you not end up sopping wet and freezing cold from the air rushing past? Not sopping wet, but definitely cold. Especially in the winter time. The last time I jumped in a cloud, I came out with white spots of ice all over the front of my jumpsuit. I've had a fair few cloud jumps, it was cool the first few times, but after falling through 2000 meters of complete white-out cloud once though, I'd just as soon avoid it in the future.
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Mar 22, 2014 23:15
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Thrasophius posted:What are the kind of conditions where you'd say "gently caress that" to going on a jump? For example is there a wind speed threshold where you would cancel a jump? Normal winds above 20kts are generally not fun, I've caught a 25kt+ tail wind which sucked. I opened about 600m west of the landing area and in the process of doing post-opening housekeeping (that is; stowing the slider, loosening the chest strap, leaning back and sitting in the leg-straps, and pulling the brakes) which took less than 30 seconds, I was 400m east of it. I was blown a full kilometer from my opening point before I even had full control of the canopy. I couldn't make any headway to get back to the holding area, and had to fly a bad pattern, entering my cross-wind leg early and at an angle. Fortunately the winds died at 150 feet, so I was able to make it, but I almost didn't. Intermittent but strong gusting winds are really bad, winds that are not stable from a single direction on the ground are bad, winds that shift dramatically at different altitudes can be a pain if you don't spot properly for them, really strong winds at higher altitudes (like, if you can see the clouds at 10000+ moving fairly quickly), cloud ceilings below 2000 ft, any real possibility of precipitation, complete cloud cover where you can't see any blue (unless the clouds are fairly stationary and above 8000ft for hop-and-pops, and 15000ft for freefall jumps). Best bet is if your DZ has on-the-ball manifest staff, they'll tell you when conditions are good, marginal, or poor. Some places put a minimum jump limit on with certain conditions. When you have low numbers, it sucks to watch people with higher numbers going. I know when I had <50 jumps, I was always anxious for the limits to come off and wanted to get enough jumps to jump despite the limits. Once I surpassed the 50 and 100 jump limits, I realized that if a 100+ limit was thrown on, I wasn't so anxious to get into the air anymore. It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground. A Hop-and-Pop is also called a "clear and pull", essentially deploying your main as soon as you've cleared the aircraft. It's used for emergency bail-out practice at altitudes under 5000ft, or for Canopy Piloting exercises. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 14:44
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Thrasophius posted:Ah so that's a hop 'n pop thanks. You mentioned having to spot winds shifting dramatically at different altitudes how do you go about that? Do you have to observe the cloud movement like you said you do sometimes at 10000+. What kind of areas do you generally jump in? I understand it's obviously going to be fields but does the area have to have a minimum space to allow for errors/emergencies like when you where blown 1km off the landing point. The DZs I've been to usually are in more remote rural areas with plenty of out-landing areas available. Not always, but usually. Empuriabrava Spain and Alvor Portugal in particular are both adjacent to vacation towns and are fairly built up, but they still have good out landing areas. In every case, your DZ should have maps and satellite views of the DZ with landing areas and hazards marked, along with possible out-landing areas marked. Always get a DZ brief from the S&TA or the DZO before you start jumping there. When I get a chance, I'll find and post sat views of the different geography of the DZs I've jumped at. You can learn to spot things that way, so if you're staying near the DZ, you can decide for yourself whether to bother going down, but generally a decent DZ will be tracking winds using instruments on the aircraft, weather stations and ATC reports, so you can usually check with them. If things look borderline or questionable, they might have the pilot take a test run before letting anyone but the most experienced TMs go. Generally the winds changing direction above 5000ft isn't an issue you need to worry about, it more affects how the pilot will fly the jump-run, and possibly the exit separation between jumpers. It's only when it's far more severe at exit altitude than opening that it gets hairy. Even then, a good check before takeoff, a good spot before exit and situational awareness in freefall will keep you from getting too screwed up. Like I said, the DZ will monitor that stuff and usually won't fly if things are too hairy. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 19:18
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Tremblay posted:Max weight for students is going to depend on the dropzone and what they have for gear. No one likes putting students out first go at higher than like a .8 wing loading. The Max single canopy size is 300 sq.ft, which puts a 260 lbs. jumper with 40 pounds of gear (and the larger rigs weigh probably 30-35 lbs alone) at a wing load of 1. I think 250 might be the max for beginners, but I'm not entirely sure. IMJack posted:Any advice for overcoming the panic of free fall and relaxing in the sky? Ways to offset the half-hour-long trip to altitude where I tend to psych myself out? No laughing here. You tried and want to try again. Heck, if you'd tried it once and decided it wasn't for you, few people would laugh. If you bought all your kit brand new before you even got your license, and then gave up the sport a few jumps later, everyone might laugh, but then you deserve it. Anyway, you hurt yourself, you haven't failed at the sport. Look around at the other people during the ride to altitude and force yourself to smile at them. Even if it's the most awkwardly forced smile ever. Everyone will understand why, and most will smile back or make funny faces, or just close their eyes and go back to listening their music. At some point, forcing yourself to smile, try to think of something really funny and you'll find yourself relaxing a bit. It doesn't necessarily work thinking of something funny without first forcing the smile.
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Mar 24, 2014 20:34
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crowtribe posted:Do you wear ear-plugs or listen to music or anything? I've never worn them, but I learned to leave my helmet on until the last few thousand feet. I only take it off to put my goggles on at the two minute call. It's tight fitting enough to block out the engine noise.
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Mar 25, 2014 10:48
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Thrasophius posted:How often do you find your ears popping because of the rapid descent or do you prepare for that somehow? I occasionally feel it on the climb if I had a stuffy nose that morning, and I've definitely had my ears get clogged up during/after the jump, but I've never had them pop during the descent. I don't know if it's because of something I've done unconsciously while I'm occupied with other things in freefall, but usually I don't realize it until I'm on the ground.
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Mar 26, 2014 12:24
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DreadNite posted:http://www.skydivemag.com/article/fly-it-forward No, but one of my Irish drinking buddies is part of that one. I've done two 6-ways and neither went very well.
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Apr 1, 2014 19:37
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Back in the air. So six weeks ago, in late February,I managed to have a reserve ride and lost my freebag. Since it was down anyway, I had my rigger do a reline on my main while waiting for the new parts to come in, so it was like jumping all new equipment when this weekend finally rolled around. Many of the DZs in Germany are opening up to go full time again,and for many, the season kickoff was this weekend. I have to say, between the reserve ride and the long wait I definitely had a return of the fear when it came time to jump again. Five jumps on new lines later, and I was ready to go with other people again, and it's like the reserve ride never even happened. I did manage to lose my slide catcher mid jump though...
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Apr 7, 2014 07:53
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Thrasophius posted:What piece of equipment is it that's beeping in the beginning of the video? Don't know. I'd say it was an audible altimeter, but that's a paraglider, not a parachutist. Slightly different dynamics going on, not the least of which is his forward speed and descent rate aren't very high. For what it's worth -and I'm not saying it couldn't happen- the sound of a chute opening is quite loud, and the wind-noise of it cutting through the air is more than a paraglider's, so I would imagine it warns birds off a lot better than floaty there. Would not like to find out though.
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Apr 11, 2014 18:52
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Mux posted:Got my A-License last weekend. Excellent! http://youtu.be/oiXaT_1I-vwGreat work. If you got a copy of the video feel free to share!
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Apr 19, 2014 22:44
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My Q-Face posted:In every case, your DZ should have maps and satellite views of the DZ with landing areas and hazards marked, along with possible out-landing areas marked. When I get a chance, I'll find and post sat views of the different geography of the DZs I've jumped at. To talk about Spotting your jump and planning your approach, and because I finally got around to it, here are some sat views of the DZs I've jumped at with landing areas marked. Some are deceptive, what looks green and flat from the sky could end up being hedges, deep corn, or worse: an Orchard with wires strung up everywhere that you can't see until you have no other outs. Speaking from experience, I had to do a Tony Jaa/Jackie Chan through a small gap in some 7 foot high apple trees held up with fence wires about three feet apart to keep from being decapitated once. That could have been a bad bad day. If you don't know the area but have to put down, it's best to look for brown earth so you know it's not potentially hazardous vegetation. So here are the DZs I've jumped at, landing areas are marked in Orange. The first few are the ones in the more built-up areas. Empuriabrava, one of the best in Europe:  To give you an idea, every time you see a straight green line on one of the fields around there, it's a fence line or a tree line, or both. There are apple orchards and olive orchards and horse paddocks everywhere. But this is what it looks like from higher up, so you can see the appeal of jumping there:  This is Zell Am See, which does offer Tandems from time to time, but doesn't really have Skydiving on a regular basis. Occasionally there will be a Pink Boogie here, with the Pink Skyvan coming down from Czech Republic.  Zell sits right in the middle of a valley, surrounded by several mountains which are approximately 3000 meters high, and is a very popular tourist destination in the Summer and Winter. The Airport sits just outside of the main town, but right in the middle of all of the mountains. It wouldn't take much to track from the release point into a very bad situation (And your Audible and AAD aren't going to pop based on altitude above ground level). Having said that, it's amazing to be in freefall and be below the mountain tops, and to look out at the two minute call and still see mountains out of the windows of the plane. To give you an idea of how built up it is:  The last of the built-up areas I've jumped was Skydive Algarve:  Algarve's landing areas are deceptively large, which is good because pretty much everything outside of this picture is built-up. Most of the rest I've been to are fairly rural. There's the Irish Parachute Club, with its massive Bog just over the trees from the landing area:  If you really wanted to go Bog hunting, you could probably find all kinds of helmets and cameras and other cut-away gear in there. And in Germany in particular the DZs tend to be well removed from built-up areas:   This one is notable because it's one of the few that is open in the winter, but it's also where I had my Reserve Ride. What you can't see from this picture, is that outside of that one patch of trees, it's pretty much farm fields for miles and miles around. Guess where my reserve pilot chute and freebag went...  You also have a really nice view of the Alps from altitude.
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Apr 21, 2014 11:27
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Thrasophius posted:Is there any reason you choose a particular field to land in considering how many there are in one picture or is it simply a matter of permission? I assume you have a tracker on your reserve if you're having to try and find it from time to time? One field belongs to or has an agreement to be used by the DZ as the designated landing area. They are well marked with landing direction and wind direction indicators which you can see clearly from the sky before beginning your approach. They're also usually quite well maintained, flat and obstacle free. All jumpers use the same field with the same traffic pattern to ensure a safe approach and landing. All of the other fields are potential out-landing areas in the event that you cannot make it back, but are not maintained for the purposes of landing a parachute, and as such may have uneven or hazardous terrain and have obstacles such as rocks, roots, hedges and gopher holes, which could cause injury on landing even if everything else goes right. Realistically, you could choose any of them, provided that you are skilled enough to put your chute down safely in the available area. When you realize that you cannot safely make it back to the designated field, you make the decision for which alternate landing area you can safely get to with enough room to fly a safe approach and stick with that one. That's also a decision you need to make early, especially in the event of a bad spot (that is, the aircraft was too far away from the designated landing area when you exited, or you tracked way off course and did not open reasonably close to the holding area). You don't want to wait until you're at 1000 feet/300 meters to realize you cannot safely get back to the landing area. You need to keep in mind the wind direction (which you would have checked before you went up), and which is the most free of obstacles such as fences or livestock, and consider that when choosing which landing area you can safely reach. Legally, you have the right to land anywhere in an emergency, even on private property, because as an unpowered "aircraft" your first obligation is to land safely. As to the tracker, I considered getting one of those flat gps tracking tags to mount on different parts of the rig, but the company could not guarantee that the tags would survive immersion in water, or being stored for long periods of time (six months or more) in a confined space without either the adhesive material or potential battery leakage affecting the parachute material or function. As much as I'd like to find my stuff if it got stolen or lost, I'd hate to have to pull my reserve handle only to find out mid-air that my reserve pilot chute had a chemical burn in it, or that the adhesive stuck parts of my reserve chute together and it won't open anymore. crowtribe posted:Is anyone able to give any insight into the licensing system used in Australia? I'm struggling to find information on the Australian Parachute Federation website that outlines it clearly. I don't know a lot about it. All the few Aussie skydivers I know have either USPA or BPA licenses. I will try to find some detailed information for you. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 14:40
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Thrasophius posted:How often are you able to land in the designated field? It's all well and good saying here is where you should land, but with unpredictable factors like the wind I imagine it's easier said than done. The wind is usually very predictable, and it's actually quite easy: The pilot lines up the jump run over the holding area/landing area, so you're always jumping out almost right above where you're going to land. When there's more than a slight breeze, the pilot will adjust the jump run so that the wind carries you back to the landing area. For example, if the wind is coming from the west, he will drop you a bit further west. As the licensed parachutist, you have the final say in whether you're lined up properly and in the right spot, not the pilot. Of all of the "out" landings I've had, only one was not self-induced. (And in the 60-odd jumps that I've had since taking a canopy piloting course, I've had no out landings. Even when I had to use my reserve, I was still able to get back to the student landing area pretty easily). Of the 165-odd jumps I've done, I've only landed properly "out" twice. The first time (non-self-induced one) was because of an extra long run by the plane. Even that was a little bit my fault because I should have looked at the exit lights and done a spot check on the ground before jumping out, instead I just watched the guy before me go and then counted to ten. The second was during my canopy course and was because I was doing eyes-closed canopy work with my back to the wind and ended up over the next town before I realized I was drifting (Even then, I almost made it back). Other than that, I've had a fair few short or over-shoot landings at my regular DZ (the second-to-last picture with the arrow and the red/orange box), but in those cases I just ended up in the next field over to the designated LZ, not somewhere in the boonies.
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Apr 23, 2014 15:59
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mitztronic posted:once I am not current, do I just have to do a jump with a USPA instructor and they can clear me? Is there anything else I'd need to do? It should only cost you the price of two lift tickets if you have an available coach or instructor on the DZ with the time to do it. You will have to do a check-out jump, essentially a repeat of AFF level 7, but without the formal instruction portion since you've already passed level 7. How much more it costs I guess depends on your instructor/coach availability, but it won't be terribly expensive. Unless they're really swamped and you're costing them another job, I can't imagine that it would cost anything more than their lift ticket. There are usually guys on the DZ whose job is specifically to do check-out jumps. Talk to your DZO/S&TA next time you go. mitztronic posted:I cant even imagine jumping a 120, I have only jumped 240 and 230 (which are both really slow and I'd like to downgrade soon). I've had 3 standup landings on 11 solo jumps jumps You're actually doing pretty average for your level. Some people take to landing right away, and some people don't. It's actually better that you don't, because at the early stages, stand-up landings are about 90% luck anyway, unless you had a really good canopy coach during AFF/pursuing your license who also happened to film your approach, go over how to set and adjust your traffic pattern, and how to fly in variable wind conditions, something most AFF instructors skip because most students aren't ready for that yet. People who "naturally" get stand-up landings early on tend to overlook the need to get additional training. They think they know everything they need just because they've gotten semi-consistent stand-up landings in good to moderate conditions. But you throw a few unexpected variables at them and they'll quickly learn that luck is not a method. Youtube and DZs around the world are full of those kinds of jumpers. You'll find them blaming the wind for why they crashed into the only hard object in a huge open landing area. I would recommend getting a good flight-1 canopy piloting/handling course as soon as possible, like as SOON as you can after getting your license, before you even consider buying a rig or downsizing to that 1.0-1.1 WL. I did my canopy course after 95 jumps and it was eye-opening. I really wish I had taken it sooner. The other guy in the course with me had I think 27 Jumps when we started. He had literally just done his AFF earlier that month before and had gotten his license maybe two days before we started. (He'd basically taken a month of vacation to learn and get licensed in Spain and had enough left over to get in a canopy course). Before taking the course, I was still counting stand-up landings as anything where I didn't end up on my hands and knees or otherwise with my feet in the air. Hard arch-aching stomp? "Stand-up" Having to run it out fifty feet after touch-down "Stand-up", flaring too high and sinking to the ground, "stand-up", going down to one knee for half-a-second and then coming back up? "Stand-up". Not kidding, by 95 jumps even with that kind of loose criteria, I still only had about 50% stand-up landings. While taking the course, I learned what a stand-up landing actually is, how to always get it and how to set up your pattern in any wind conditions to always land where you want. Before taking it, anywhere on the field (the greater orange box on my home DZ sat picture) was an "on target" landing for me. Now, 65 jumps after I finished the course, I'm picking out 2-3m wide circles in the grass and putting down within 5 meters of them. I've had 3 not-stand-up landings and I can explain in detail exactly what I did wrong in each of them to fail (And none of those 3 were hard landings either) If you can get a good canopy coach to sit down with you, give you exercises to work on, film and review video of your traffic pattern, approach and landing, you will find the whole world of being under canopy changes. If you don't have any dedicated canopy instructors on your DZ, or they only teach one or two classes per year, have a look and see if The Icarus Canopy School or Brian Germaine might be teaching a course near you. The instruction costs about $200, plus the cost of 8 solo jumps, but it is TOTALLY worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De_zXrhF4dc&t=36s http://www.thecanopyschool.com/ http://www.bigairsportz.com/canopy-course.php I did mine with one of the instructors from The Canopy School and it was fantastic. I'm not kidding, my skill shot up exponentially. It was like night and day over the course of 8 dedicated canopy handling jumps. I'm actually looking at taking at least one more canopy handling/piloting course this year and thinking about doing one at least every 100 jumps or approximately every downsize/planform change, because I literally only just scratched the surface. DreadNite posted:I ended up having to turn downwind and land at the far end of the runway. Amen. There are three priorities when landing your canopy, in order: 1. Land under a flat and level canopy 2. Land Into a hazard free area 3. Land facing into wind If you can't get all of them, the first one is the most important, followed by the second. Never sacrifice the first one for the second or third. Never turn low just so that you can face into the wind. When I have time, I can prepare a brief overview of basic canopy handling with graphics, pictures and video, but when I do, I will reiterate: I'm just some guy on the Internet who is happy to share and talk about what I know; IANAP. In the meantime, the BPA's manual for their Canopy Handling 1 and Canopy Handling 2 courses can be found here: http://www.bpa.org.uk/assets/Training/Canopy-handling/chmanual.pdf I highly recommend reading this. This is not a replacement for taking a course, and just reading about -for example- a two-stage flare in a cross-wind situation may not be sufficient to prepare you to do it it, but it will help. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Apr 25, 2014 |
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Apr 25, 2014 22:00
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Minus Pants posted:I've done a few tandems, and now I'm ready to go all in and get my license. Any Chicagoland goons have comments on CSC vs. Skydive Chicago? I've heard a lot of good things about Skydive Chicago, and it's certainly the world-famous one, but I've never heard of CSC except that there was "another DZ in Chicago". Having said that, It might be worth it to go just to get the Freefall University swag and walk around with "FU" t-shirts.  Then again, looking at their prices, $60 per pre-license solo jump after AFF? That's about what I paid in Germany, but only because I was paying for Packing tickets. Considering you have to learn to pack to get your license, I'm curious what that covers? And $60 for your mandatory hop-and-pop? Then again, their package deal includes three tandems and the cost is spread over their AFF jumps. (In my case, it was something like $250-$300 for level 1-3, and then <$200 for level 4-7). It looks like it balances out in the end, because it would cost ~3000.00 USD to get your A-license and that's what they're offering. Maybe it's so they can offer than 10% off on the license package deal?
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May 11, 2014 13:35
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grunthaas posted:Cool, a skydiving thread again Thanks! I know I'm still a hundred-jump-wonder (closing in on 200) and still trying to learn, so it's great to have a veteran and a pro join in too. crowtribe posted:Is anyone able to give any insight into the licensing system used in Australia? I'm struggling to find information on the Australian Parachute Federation website that outlines it clearly. I'm still looking around a bit. The BPA site was great, everything you wanted to know was right there with graphics and all, but the APF site is a little more pdf heavy. For what it's worth, I just met my first APF skydiver Saturday, but he was doing camera for a competition so he was doing back to back jumps all day and I didn't get a lot of time to talk to him. Don't quote me on this, but I think the BPA is the only one that does proper certifications for the sub-disciplines, others require the courses but don't have certification requirements (check for the required jump numbers though, I think Wingsuiting is 200 jumps no matter what country you're in). Oh, and personal news. As I close in on 200 jumps, I've just gotten a new Parasport jumpsuit, which fits better, looks nicer, is more colorful, and is of better quality than my Pittz stock special. I've also just purchased my first non-student downsize canopy. I'm having it relined now, as it's close to 550 jumps on the first set of lines, but in a couple of weeks I will have a clean crispy Safire 2 169 with shiny new lines. Fun thing about buying a new (to me) canopy, is I got a great deal on it, and already have a buyer lined up to take my old one for about the same price (although I just relined my old one, so he gets the better deal). And having missed my Undie-hundie (because I opted for a six-way jump with friends instead), I've ordered one of these for my 200th jump. Pictures may or may not follow in a couple of weeks. My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 13:37 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 13:29
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I am so loving not current Managed to have work pull me away from Skydiving for a couple of weeks, so I spent last weekend catching up, then with weather this weekend, I managed no jumps. I'm sitting at 195 now. Might get a new plan for #200, as my banana-hammock arrived and even at 6' 190lbs, the one I ordered is a horrible fit.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:11
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as long as the weather doesn't go to poo poo, refresher and coaching jump on Thursday to fix that.
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DreadNite posted:Any thoughts for ever getting a wing suit, or no? Not sure what the requirements are exactly, but was always told 200 minimum jumps is recommended. I did my 200th Jump on Sunday, so I'm now qualified to do that if I choose. In order to, I would need to take a wing-suit course. I don't know about everywhere, but the WS instructor at my dropzone has those things for rent for students. It wouldn't make sense to buy one until you know both how to use it and what kind of flying you want to do with one. The minimum recommended is not a rule, but a strong recommendation. In order to do it, you need an instructor, and I can't imagine an instructor allowing somebody with fewer than 200 jumps going unless they had specific training leading up to it. In Germany the rule was changed recently from 200 jumps to 200 jumps or 50 dedicated tracking jumps. Personally, I'm not sure about wingsuiting. I'm sure I'd like to try it at least, but at least half the appeal of jumping for me is flying the chute, which is complicated by wingsuiting. I'd much rather work on freeflying, CRW and eventually high performance landings. On the subject of CRW, I recently took another canopy course, 11 jumps this time, to work on fundamentals of slow flight, working up to formation flight (as well as cross-wind and down-wind landings). It was awesome and made my 200th jump even more exciting.   (The yellow and blue is my new canopy, I went from a Pulse to a Safire 2 and downsized a step, and it is  )Automatic Retard posted:It was an awesome rush. Nice! Welcome to your new addiction and kiss your money goodbye!
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Jul 11, 2014 14:19
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The APF: http://vimeo.com/96571020 I use Cypres, in part because all of my student gear ever used it, and in part because I was able to get it inexpensively. I think Cypres used to be the best, but Vigil is almost as good. One problem with Vigil is that its modes can be set by the user - it's one more thing to complicate the jump if you switch back and forth between dives, although if you just set it and leave it alone, it's fine. With Cypres you have to send it in to get the mode changed. If you're looking to buy one, I would base it on the price you can get for it rather than the brand. Cypres has a better record of saves (due primarily to its popularity/ubiquity), and it definitely has better PR. Airtec's claim is that "the unit functioned as designed" or "as intended", which is a nice way of writing off the times it failed to function as "not the way it was designed".
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Jul 30, 2014 22:35
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Was reading a discussion on Facebook recently, Vigil vs. Cypres. A few years ago, there was an incident where the pilot apparently pressurized the plane on the ride to altitude and opened the tailgate, resulting in a rapid depressurization of the passenger compartment. Everybody who didn't have a Cypres 2 had their AAD activate (Including Vigils and even Cypres 1s). So points in its favor?
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Aug 3, 2014 23:36
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Went skydiving in the Czech Republic recently, four Skyvans! Something about the Skyvan is really unsettling to me, I wonder if I'm the only one. From the moment I stand up at altitude until I'm clear of the plane I feel queasy. I don't know if it's the vibration, the slight pitch to the floor, the way the plane shakes when the 20 person formation in front of you jumps out at once, or the fact that as you walk to the door with nothing to hold on to and so much space around you, that this is the view that greets you:  I've flown on Otters, Caravans, Dorniers, 206s, 182s, 172s, Porters, and I don't get that feeling in any of them. (Well, maybe just in the door of the 172 because there's no handle or step and it's going so freaking fast) But once you clear the door, it's just freaking awesome! 
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Aug 14, 2014 14:24
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I think it's the noise combined with actually standing up. I noticed a similar ear-loving the other day when I went to a tunnel. I was in the locker room next to the pipe and had a similar queasy feeling when I didn't have ear plugs in. Weird. Does anybody else train in a tunnel? I prefer jumping directly, but I found after one hour of training with a coach that I have a much much better feel for the wind now, especially on my back. I was able to backfly stable enough to lead a track dive and actually got a grip during one, not to mention slow my fall rate to a sustained <90 mph on a non-track jump. Something just clicked with it. I don't want to become a tunnel rat or anything, but I'm doing another tunnel camp next month. I recently put in my paperwork for my B-License and talked to one of my instructors about doing the C license test soon. After a recent scramble event at my DZ, I'm thinking about doing some flat jumps with some low timers and maybe even pursuing my coach rating. On the one hand, I can't believe how much money I'm sinking into this sport, but on the other, I can't think of anything I'd rather do! In other news, I will be leaving Europe soon and moving to Southern California. I'm a bit nervous and leery about jumping in the states after hearing how "relaxed" Europe is in comparison.
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Sep 3, 2014 08:06
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Tremblay posted:Drop me a PM with where you end up. Back in the states now, getting my reserve repacked on the east coast, I'll be out in San Bernadino county in a week or two. Thought I'd do some DZ hopping along the way. The tunnel was definitely helpful and a lot of fun, but the canopy is still my favorite part. I've done two canopy courses now (20 jumps total) and loads of hop and pops. I plan to keep going with that because it's just so much fun. In other news I've done a wing suit course now too and feel a phantom 3 tugging at the hole in my pocket. It never ever ends!
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Nov 5, 2014 16:44
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Oh good. Two hours on a North Carolina DZ before I hear somebody arguing racial inferiority. Stay classy America. 
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Nov 5, 2014 17:36
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spoon daddy posted:Sounds reasonable. I'll ask if one of those half ski masks which leaves the top half of face exposed is acceptable. It really made the free fall less fun than I hoped. Thanks for the feedback First of all, congrats on your jump! Sorry the cold spoiled it a bit for you, But that begs the question. What were you wearing? Most tandem places don't let the passengers use helmets. If they do, they're usually the soft bullet ones and not a hardshell with foam padding and insulation. Hardshell helmets definitely retain more heat and might make it more enjoyable for you. And there will probably be another difference between doing it tandem and doing it AFF besides the helmet. Your mind will probably be too absorbed in what you're doing to notice the cold when you're not strapped to somebody else. 63 isn't terrible to jump in as long as the plane is warm before you open the door. Keeping in mind you lose about 3.5F per thousand feet, so it's about 20 outside of the plane at 12,500, but you're falling into warmer air the whole way. That's about standard for April-May and September-October in Germany. I wouldn't expect them to let you use your own gear on AFF, but it doesn't hurt to ask. A neck gaiter might be okay, but they might want to see your whole face. They won't let you use your own helmet until you finish level 7 at least though. Most places have specific helmets with a radio pouch for students. Personally I wouldn't recommend a full face early on, but that's because every FF helmet I've jumped has fogged up when my parachute opened and one time I fogged up right at exit. Bad news if you're still a student or novice. Tremblay posted:Hey Sorry just saw your PM. I'll be at Oceanside this Sunday if you're still around. I love my P3. Probably ordering a Funk or Havok Carve. But the P3 is sticking around for sure. I will be around the area for a while now. I managed to get to Oceanside for one jump last weekend after the winds got really bad at Perris Sunday. Got in one jump but I bought ten tickets so I will definitely go back. It was amazing. So far I've jumped at Perris and Taft as well. Oceanside was definitely the most gorgeous! I'll PM you if I end up swinging that way this weekend. My P3 arrives in January, I'm renting one in the meantime, though I don't have enough experience on one to jump at Oceanside yet.
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Nov 27, 2014 20:59
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I noticed a little bit of extra Oceanside special language in the waiver, that makes sense. And yeah, I'm renting from Darren.
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Nov 28, 2014 00:39
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 21:58 |
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Okay, I'm curious. How what now?
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Nov 29, 2014 22:46
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