#28 - Answering Your Questions Live

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Okay. Um, I'm going to be answering your questions live today. This is very impromptu and pet. Some people that have reached out to me, I guess, over the last three months, and they've asked questions, I haven't really had time to take a look at them, but here we are around the holidays and what'd, you know, there's some time for me to be able to do it.

So let's jump right here and here I have just gotten off of student status. What is. Uh, well, if you've just gotten off student status, congratulations, you have an, a license gives you a license to learn, right? It's a sport where you never want to stop learning, find yourself a mentor in skydiving and make sure that you're always asking questions, not just settling on what you learned when they taught you to, uh, to save your own life and give your all.

I would immediately fire you start looking for a canopy course to enroll in, and this is coming from someone with firsthand experience. Some are better than others. I would recommend personally going with the superior flight solutions they're based out of here, Rayford, North Carolina, and they're also a military contractor.

I've also read some good things, although I've never used them on access flight school out here. Again, I've never taken their courses before, but I've only heard great things. Megan, these questions are going to be particularly random. I'm just kind of going rapid fire here. What kind of helmet do you recommend?

I like the, uh, I like the cookie G4, which has been out now for what, a couple of seasons it's impact rated so long as you don't, uh, drive holes through the plastic outer shell. And you, if you want to put a fly side on it, I would just recommend taping and all with gaffer's tape or some type of electrical tape.

It don't puncture the plastic outer shell LCL, no longer be impact rated. I also jumped with a tone fly helmet, and I think it's a, what, it's a two X, 2.5 X that is more advanced and it's an open face and it's designed for shooting video. But my favorite helmet by far is the, uh, the cookie G4. What are your thoughts on the sky diving museum?

Uh, what do you mean by skydiving museum? The hall of fame museum? Um, yeah, I've got no comment on. What camera do you use? Uh, I like shooting on a GoPro max 360 camera mounted on his six inch boom arm. I'm also still shooting on my Sony, FDR X 3000, which does have the optical image stabilization and we'll shoot the 4k 30.

And it also has the audio for the external mic, if you want to hook those up as well. And again, it's a five-year-old camera, but it's still the best action camera out there in my opinion. And they're going for a lot of money used right now on eBay, like eight or 900 bucks. Should I go through static line?

Uh, I went through AFF and, uh, I would however, recommend going through static line IED as in my opinion, and allows you to focus on the most important and potentially dangerous part of skydiving, which is landing and flying or canopy. What are your thoughts on the AFF I rating? Yeah, this is another topic that we discussed on a previous show.

I forget which episode it was. But in my opinion, that rating is absolutely meaningless unless the instructor has a minimum 5,000 skydives, which isn't a lot and they have over a decade in the sport. And while we're at it, you know, these examiners who run all over the country, handing out these ratings like coffees, it's actually quite scary.

The number of instructors out there, teaching skies. Who don't know their gear and they haven't jumped at multiple drop zones and gotten themselves out of tight situations or suffered setbacks yet they're out there teaching people in some cases off the streets, how to jump out of a plan and save themselves.

So the amount of disparity that I've seen when it comes to skydiving construction is actually really sad. And I, uh, I recommend doing some heavy research, poor settling on a place to learn how to stop it. What is your favorite rigging tool? Uh, I like the 15 inch tapered aluminum pedal. I mean, if I was an island all by myself, I think I could figure out a way if I had to, to use that one tool in order to pack my reserve canopy.

Favorite skydiving photographers. Oh, that's a good one. Uh, two that immediately come to mind or Elliot bird. And air photography and Michael McGowen for candid on the ground photography. I also like Dennis, Sattler a lot as well to, uh, some of these photographers out there, you know, they shoot raw and then they crank up the colors and the graphic, et cetera, or afterwards, I don't really like that.

And you see a lot of that on social media and a lot of photos are just too oversaturated and they've bumped up the contrast in temperature so much. It's hard to look at and I'm not a fan of. I just got off student status, which two pieces of skydiving equipment should I buy? Uh, I'd go for a full face helmet again.

Um, cookie makes a great one and a digital altimeter I've really enjoyed using this past season, the, uh, LT two. And that will tell you your descent rate, which is nice because if you're coming back from a long spot, You know, you can figure out where you need to be on rears, which canopy do you recommend?

Uh, that's actually a pretty vague question. If you're just getting off student status that recommend a pulse, a Sapphire or silhouette canopy from performance designs and NCRO sports one that puts you at a one-to-one Winkler. Going no smaller than 150 square feet as you progress. And you want to fly a steeper canopy, then you can graduate onto a Sabre three or a storm canopy.

But again, just make sure that you're staying on a one O wing loading for the, at least the first 500 to a thousand jumps. Uh, despite the popularity I was. A fan of the saber tooth canopy. I just thought it had some really funky heart openings. What are your thoughts on the skydiving hall of AME? Yeah, like on the museum, I'm not really wanting to get into this too much on the show, but what I will say is there are too many people in that organization and I don't think that the USPA membership funds should go towards construction or curation of any hall of fame museum like that.

I don't think people, regardless of what they may have done for the sport of skydiving who have been indicted or convicted of any kind of crime at the state or federal level should be, uh, members of the skydiving hall of fame. I see it as a major conflict of interest, a double standard, and just an overall big problem.

What are your thoughts on the Sabre three? Oh, I did a podcast again on that. A canopy. I think it was episode seven. Yeah, seven bottom line. It's a great canopy, but it's not a great canopy for someone just coming off of student status. Oh, you definitely want to be careful with that. Where did you learn to skydive?

Oh, I got my license in Rayford, North Carolina. Paraklete XP. And, uh, my instructor was Robin. Favorite drop zones, uh, Scott to have the ranch and skydive Carolina, favorite trops zone owners. I like Billy and Joe Richards, uh, who owns skydive? The ranch in gardener, New York. Favorite skydiving movie. Uh, no movie, but my favorite scene was a Rick Sylvester's jumping the spy who loved me, the James Bond film.

Darn Roger. And you'll remember, he jumped off the side of this, a large mountain on snow skis up in Canada, man. That stunt was way ahead of its time. Biggest pet peeves, uh, yeah, charlatans and people out there who are on social media and other online platforms that think that they're hot shit. But in real life they never skydive.

And I'd never seen him at the drop zone. Favorite discipline canopy piloting. It's definitely, I think if the Olympics ever adopted guide diving, which I don't see them doing it. They did a, the whole swooping. Um, can it be piloting would probably be the most interesting do you like I fly? Oh, I've got some tunnel time, but I've never specifically been to an I fly and I like flying canopy, so I really don't see the need to go.

There is becoming a rigger heart. Uh, it was a shitload of work. I'm not going to lie. And for me it was real difficult at first to see the line. And that took weeks for me to get my head around and, you know, it's, it was pretty difficult. That's for sure. Have you seen point break? Yes. Oh yeah. I've seen both of them.

I didn't care for either. What is the best place to buy gear? Uh, lately I've had a lot of luck with para gear and that's primarily due to the fact that I think that they may be the largest skydiving. Gear store slash distributor in the country. Uh, most of the stuff I've ordered from them actually ships the same day and they have lots of stuff in stock.

I wish they would accept some other forms other than, uh, online credit cards. I kind of like paying through PayPal, but other than that, they're pretty good company. Which skydiving container do you recommend? Yeah. I mean, if you go back and listen to some other episodes, I've talked about it on the show.

Um, I would only recommend the sun path or a UPT, and you definitely want to make sure both of those companies offer the Skyhawk and then that should have the Collins lanyard. So some path in UPT, what is your favorite piece of skydiving equipment? A fly site without a doubt, which I'm surprised. I don't see more people doing.

These, but it's a GPS tracking and monitoring device, and what's pretty cool about it as I'm a big Google earth guy and you can export all the data into Google earth and charter skydives, there's just so much data in that little box and the technology is pretty incredible. How many times do you, do you skydive?

Uh, what do you mean? How many times have I gone? I've only around 1600 times, but, uh, back before July was jumping 40 to 50 times per week. Now that I'm into rigging, I'm probably gonna cut that back heading into 2022. What can it be? Do you think. Uh, right now I fly a saber three canopy. Um, again, that was discussed on episode seven on this past year, favorite skydiving plane, a Cessna grand caravan with a Texas turbine conversion kit.

It's nice for the owners as well, too. Right? It's one engine instead of two, it's got a nice big door on it. And if you put the conversion kit in there, you got 900 horsepower. You're able to go to altitude and like 13, 14 minutes, which is. And this final question, one place you want to skydive, but have not been to before.

Oh, that's actually a pretty interesting question. There's a couple of different places. Probably skydiving period Brava in Spain would be the one place that I'd want to go to. But, uh, with COVID I don't really do a lot of commercial flying these days, so I don't see that happening for a while. And that's it.

Just make sure to hit me up if you've got any more questions. I'm sorry. It's taken her a little bit longer than I anticipated getting back with you on these, but yeah. Feel free to reach out and uh, we'll talk to you on the next. You've just listened to send it a skydiving podcast hosted by Andrew Rawls on world talk radio sinned.

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