Archive for the ‘Skydiving’ Category

Those who can, do.

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Those who can’t afford to do, teach.

In an academic setting, the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher is Little Jimmy going on to university and getting a real job, or Little Jimmy following a career in IT – sure, it sucks for Jimmy, but he’ll probably live.

In the real world, it can be the difference between life and death.

I’ve had some interesting hobbies over the years, and many of these have needed training to one degree or another. I’ve had some fantastic instructors and some terrible instructors, and the quality of instruction has often made a difference to how I approach things and my long term progress.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that there is often no correlation between how good these people are at the job at hand and how good an instructor they are But what has always been an indicator of future performance is their level of relaxation – the more relaxed, the better the instruction.

A good teacher needs so much more than just knowledge of their subject matter. They need to be able to relate to different people, they need good customer service skills, they need empathy and they need to be able to inspire. Most instructors, specifically in the so called extreme sports have very few of these qualities – they’re normally people who are absolutely brilliant at the sport / hobby in question, but they teach only because they need the money to carry on participating. The good instructors are far outnumbered by the bad ones. The great instructors are truly rare gems, and you should treasure any that you find!

I’ve been fortunate to have some brilliant teachers over the last few years, and I’m grateful mainly for the passion that they instilled in me, and the deeper level of understanding that I walked away with. I’ve had some shite instructors too, and I’ve nearly walked away from things on day 1. Caveat emptor!

Posted in Motorcycle, Skydiving | 1 Comment »

No shit, there I was…

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

So for the last year, I’ve been trying to get my nominated landings for my B license, and I think I’ve hit the pit once in all those jumps. Of course, to sour the occasion, I dropped my glasses in the gravel on that one.

Fast forward to Empuriabrava, March 13 2008. It turns out that the advanced instructor is going away the next day, so I need to get as far as I can on day 1, before the canopy course starts. Jumps 1 and 2 are for setup, and I’m about 45m away from the pit, which is nowhere close, but I decide to declare on jump 3. I’m just an idiot that way.

Because I’m at Empuriabrava, one of my top 3 DZs of all time, I don’t have to go all the way to altitude – at 5k, the door opens and I fall out. About 220 seconds later, I’m standing in the pit with gravel under my feet, wandering what the hell just happened.

To make it even more amusing, the pit is about half the size of the target I’ve been trying to hit for a year. So I put it down to fluke, manifest for the next lift and go again.

Through jumps 4, 5, 6 and 7, the exit altitude just keeps getting lower because I’m in a rush to get done (and I love the look on people’s faces when I tell them I’m scared of heights and go early). Jump 4 puts me about 5m outside the pit and the CCI says it’ll do.

Jump 5 sees me stomping my way out of the gravel with my big dumb grin on, because now maybe this isn’t fluke any more – despite being a bear of very little brain, maybe I can be taught after all!

Jump 6 has the door open at 4000 feet and out I go for what turns out to be one of the worst jumps of the day – 8m outside the pit, but still acceptable under the rules. More importantly, a massive improvement in consistency for someone who normally marks his accuracy by how many fields I have to cross to get back to the D!
Jump 7 finally rolls around, and because of the time, it’s my last jump of the day – it’s make or break on this lob or I’m going to have to jump through hoops (sorry, no pun intended) to get the last landing logged and signed off. The door opens at 3500 feet and out I go. About 3 minutes later, I’ve got gravel under the soles of my shoes and it’s done!

The funny thing is that over a year, I managed 1 out of about 50 jumps. The rules require that I do 5 successfull declared landings out of 10, and I managed 5 out of 5.

I put it down to having read “The canopy and its pilot” by Brian Germain and my chat with Doug before I left for Empuria – those two gave me the skills to hit this target.

But it got better – by the end of day 2 of the course, I was landing within the area on every single jump without even thinking about it. For my 5 declared jumps I had to work my ass off, making adjustments at almost every step of the jump. After the course, I was hitting the target with absolutely no effort at all, just having learned a couple more key things to flying the pattern.

So the B is done, and I’m 72 jumps away from the C. Bring it!

Posted in Skydiving | 2 Comments »