Everything in skydiving has a disclaimer (if not a 19 page waiver), so I thought it was about time this blog got one. Please, let me know if there is something here I missed.
Above all else is experience. Nothing is more important about a piece of information than it’s source. I fully disclose my current experience level on my About the Author page. Most of my videos are also tagged with the current jump number as well.
Some of my posts could be interpreted as offering advice. They are not. I only offer advice or instruction to my students, in person. Anything you see here is merely the online opinion of one skydiver. At some point, I may say “and this is some advice I’ll give you…”, then you must realize two things: First, look at my current experience level. Secondly, what I really mean is “This is something you should discuss with your local Instructors”. Seriously, NEVER TAKE ADVICE FROM SOMETHING YOU READ ONLINE.
On the other end of that spectrum, if you’re a well seasoned skydiver or Instructor, and see something I’ve posted here, that even with the above warning, is likely to cause more harm than good to the sport or any person, please send me an email and let me know. I will not censor my content (or change my opinion) based on any single email, but I will speak with my local Instructors, S&TA, and DZO to see if the content is appropriate to be posted online or if it would be best kept around the bonfire.
Speaking of the content you’ll see here, yes, you can presume it’s all mine. All text, images, and videos are my original work unless otherwise credited, or unless otherwise completely obvious. If you would like to use one of my video’s or images, or would like to quote me, feel free – but please include a link back to the original content here.
From time to time I may receive free stuff: gear, jump tickets, etc. Yes, I will keep them. Yes, I will write a post about it. Yes, I will write only my own true opinion – good or bad – and include a link back to the vendors site where the gear could be purchased. If you’re not willing to accept the possibility of a bad review, don’t send me your stuff.
Skydiving, in my humble opinion, is the worlds greatest sport. I truly hope that everyone that reads this blog will be enticed to come and try it. You will not normally read in this blog all the bad parts of the sport, but yes, they do exist. Danger is a real possibility, death does occur. Bad weather happens, a lot in Michigan, and many days we stand around not able to jump. When we do jump and successfully land, we have to spend another ten minutes packing our parachute before we can do it again. In this sport, you will also meet some of the rudest, egotistical, and most talented people in the world.
Realize that I am very biased towards the sport. If you’re considering your first skydive, I highly recommend it, but do your research and make your own decision. Wouldn’t you feel stupid if you jumped out of a plane and got hurt only because somebody on the Internet told you to do it? Be educated, be safe; blue skies & see you on the plane!
I’m a beginning student, still trying to pass my AFF L3 jump after two unsatisfactory attempts. My instructors have told me not to take advice or instruction from other skydivers, and I try to keep that in mind. While I’ve never viewed your blog or videos as anything but entertainment, I appreciate that you’ve expressed your concern that someone might to so. Keep up the great work!
great post, dude. i’ve only gone in the States but i’m making plans to do it for PDSA (my fave charity here in the UK); they’ve agreed to sponsor me and i’ll try to raise a decent amount of £ for em and we’ll all benefit.
if i had my way (and the money and time), i’d go skydiving every day. teh funny (though i felt sad for the poor bloke): we went up and this one dude who was twice my size and about half my age, well, he refused to jump. poor guy had no idea what he was missing.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jeromy Alexander and skydive. skydive said: Not the most exciting post – but a necessary one I think. Feedback is requested.. thanks. http://bit.ly/240BE3 [...]
More honest than most people in the sport present themselves — and perhaps something necessary to say.
But really, should it be? It’s scary if it is. When I went out to make my first jump, nearly three decades ago, I decided I’d go out, take the course, look things over and if I felt it looked okay, sure, I’d make the jump. (… It was just borderline, by the way…) But I had a background in other high risk sports already when I came to skydiving.
There’s always this big dilemma between how safe the sport actually is and how safe it’s perceived to be. I always believed that if you asked 100 people on the street how safe they thought skydiving was, just about all of them would say it was less safe than it actually is. And yet, there are some remarkable instances of people believing that somehow, because someone is making a business of training students, that they’re somehow safe-guarded — sort of like riders on a carnival ride expect their safety to be assured, while they expect the thrills. Skydiving, however, is a sport — safety is a function of performance. It’s not a ride.
We had a very regrettable instance up here in Canada in which the parents of a young woman bought her a (traditional) first jump course on her 18th birthday. The father even drove her out to the drop zone and watched her first jump — which resulted in her death. She didn’t have a malfunction. Either one of her brakes came undone on opening or she managed to get one brake-line undone but somehow missed the other. In any event, she spiraled down to about 300′ and then cut-away. Her reserve didn’t have a chance to open. Her friend, who made a jump with her that same day, had a similar opening, but she rode a spiraling canopy into the ground, resulting in serious injuries.
It is very possible that the packing method resulted in openings in which one of the steering lines released on opening. The drop zone had most recently been forced to switch over from a IAD system to a static line system, and they were still working out the kinks. Still, this fails to explain why neither student reached up and released their brakes, as per their training, and checked their canopies. Both certainly could have landed without incident had they done so.
Was it the training? Ironically, many in the sport blame that. Yet I sat in numerous first jump courses across the country and I didn’t see anything amiss in the course at this drop zone. (For a while there, I think I might have been one of the experts on student fatalities here — yuck, I know! Some images you never forget — especially at 3 AM when you can’t get back to sleep.)
The parents of this young woman worked hard to get all skydiving shut down in Canada for years. Some of that may have been due to regional politics, but I think some of it too may have been due to an ideology in our sport that masks some of our risks. No matter what we do with respect to safety, the fact of the matter is that this is still a high speed, high risk sport — would we do it if it wasn’t? We shouldn’t take a pollyanna approach to promoting it to the general public. There will always be people who are willing to take the risks in order to experience the exhilaration — but I’ve always wondered, if we’d promoted ourselves more honestly, would the proud parents of a young woman of much achievement, just turning 18, have given her a first jump course for her birthday?
Transport Canada has since “regulated” student training in Canada. I’m not convinced that the methods they settled on do much more than create work for government employees and increase the costs of jumping in Canada. If I had to design a regulation for first jump training, it would have focused on points such as ensuring that every piece of marketing for first jumps included a warning from the federal government that, while serious skydiving incidents were rare, the consequences are significant including severe disability and even death; outlawing the training, equipping or facilitation of any minor in making a jump; and substance testing for all personnel involved in the training of students. Having met the young woman above’s parents briefly in passing, they were highly intelligent people, very much in love with their daughter. I think if they’d read a reasonable warning from the federal government on the first jump marketing materials, I think they would have chosen another birthday gift for her. I don’t think they ever would have risked their daughter’s life knowingly — they only chose to give her a first jump because they were lulled into thinking it was safer than it was. And let’s face it: what first jump training marketing material doesn’t seek to accentuate the safety?
But we skydivers all know the truth. We know the risk we’re taking every time we go up there. It’s only fair to let the general public know too. I don’t think it will stop anybody from jumping who really wants to. It’s just the ethical thing to do.
Nice job as always, Jeromy.