PST Student Guide
A Guide for the Development of Skydiving Skills
This document is intended for supplementary reading and reference for progressing skydivers. The guide is always a work in progress, and as such, it does not contain an exhaustive level of detail on the subject. Further details, updates, and corrections on subjects contained in this document are available from PST instructors. Working with an instructor before attempting any of the activities described is mandatory.
This document is copyright Ó 2007-2013 Parachute School of Toronto Limited.
Parachute School of Toronto Limited assumes no liability for loss or damage, however caused, through the use of this document.
Void where prohibitied by law. Some conditions apply. Some assembly required.
Introduction 1
Content 1
Self-Directed – and Fun! 1
Structure 1
Safety 1
General Points 4
Drop Zone Courtesies 4
Referral credit 4
CSPA membership 5
Helping Out – Regular Operations 5
Helping Out – Not-So-Regular Operations 5
Your special skills and resources 6
The Bottom Line 6
Reference Materials 6
Equipment 6
Student Progression 7
CSPA Skills Grid 7
Overall Guidelines 7
Beer 8
Progression to Freefall 8
Exit Skills 8
Basic Canopy Skills 8
Basic Ground Work 10
Progression in Freefall 13
Freefall Skills 13
More Advanced Canopy Skills 13
More Advanced Ground Work 14
Skydiver Progression 15
After Hours Activities 16
2
Introduction
Pardon me if a lot of this guide is presented as my opinion. I’ve been around a while, and I’ve seen a lot, but I’m still human, and it’s distinctly possible that some of what I say in here is wrong. If you think I’m wrong, then please say so! I don’t mind talking about why I’m right. And I like to see that people are actually thinking.
Content
The aim of this guide is to help jumpers progress from having completed their first jump to getting their Solo Certificate. As such, it does not contain much of the content of the Solo First Jump Class. Maybe some day I’ll put together a similar guide for first-timers, but really, all of the class content is covered at once in the class, so it would be a far less useful guide than this.
Self-Directed – and Fun!
Your skill progression depends primarily on you - and not just on how you perform on jumps, but how focussed you are on developing your skills. It is up to you to seek out the training that you will need to work on the next skills in your progression. And the time to do that is well in advance of the jump, not when the load is called to gear up. It is also your job to get an instructor to work with you on the ground-work seminars – preferably with other students, so as to make the instructor’s work more efficient.
This guide is here to help you with your skill development. Your instructors and the reference materials mentioned later are also useful tools.
Try to stay focussed on the task at hand. Reading way ahead is only marginally helpful. It can even be counterproductive – you need to build skills in order. If you’re thinking, even in your subconscious, about things that come later on in your progression, you’ll lose some focus on the task at hand.
Make sure you’re having fun. If you define having fun as challenging yourself to develop your skills as fast as possible, so be it. If, on a particular jump, you just want to have fun by flying your parachute around the sky, rather than learning a specific skill, that’s fine, too. There’s the story from a couple of decades ago about the jumper who was still on static line jumps – after over two hundred total jumps! He wasn’t particularly interested in freefall; he just liked flying his parachute. An admirable attitude, in my opinion.
Structure
This guide is presented in a rather casual format. I hope that’s not a problem. I have my suspicions that it’s not.
That said, there is some real structure to the format. Most of that structure is intended to make reference to the material fast:
Key points come first in bold. Further description of the key points follows. Makes the whole thing faster to skim.
Safety
Skydiving and being here can be dangerous. You have all heard what is euphemistically called the “video waiver” – the introductory part of the Solo class in which you’re told that skydiving can be dangerous. Just in case it’s not obvious, that still applies after your first jump. It applies if you have 5000 jumps. It applies if you’re not jumping, but you’re still here.
There is no insurance for jumpers. It’s not available. The insurance in place around here takes three forms: aircraft hull insurance (brutally expensive, but a really good idea – if, say, a stray dog ran out in front of the plane and was hit by the prop, the insurance would cover the ~$55,000 repair costs, and I’m not kidding about the cost, that would otherwise leave PST closed permanently), aircraft third-party liability insurance (to cover damage to property or people on the ground if the aircraft had an accident – but not to cover any damage or loss to people in the plane!), and third-party liability insurance for jumpers (to cover loss or damage to people and property on the ground in case a jumper has an accident – but not to cover loss or damage to the jumper him/herself!).
That’s it, apart from the obvious stuff: OHIP coverage still applies, of course. Life insurance coverage can be a bit tricky. Talk to your broker, or (oog) read your policy. If your policy is in place for more than two years before you think about doing something silly like SCUBA diving, skydiving, or race-car driving, your policy may well be in effect. If you’re looking for life insurance coverage that will specifically cover you for skydiving, your best bet is Clarica – they charge $3.00 per year for every $1000 of term coverage.
If you jump outside Canada, get travel insurance, for crying out loud. Blue Cross, for example, is cheap, and will help avoid you having a $40,000 bill to pay off (no, I’m not kidding) if you break a leg doing something stupid in Florida.
Your safety is your responsibility. Sure, your instructors can help a bit. But most of it is up to you. If you’re not comfortable with how safe you feel, tell us, and don’t jump.
If you see someone else doing something that you think isn’t the best idea, the most effective thing to do is mention it to an instructor. The instructor can either explain the situation to you or pursue the matter further with the jumper.
The odds. The most recent stats I’ve seen from the USPA (that’s the United States Parachute Association – www.uspa.com - who have enough jumpers and accidents every year to put together half-decent statistics) say that they expect one fatality in every 100,000 jumps. That’s a decent improvement over the 1970s, when they expected one in every 20,000 or 25,000 jumps.
“You would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year” (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/skydiving7.htm)
Complacency, however, kills. The fact that you’ve seen someone else do something spectacularly silly and walk away from it, or you get away with something once or twice yourself, does not mean that it’s safe! Ask any experienced jumper if he or she has ever been hurt jumping. Odds are good that they have.
The rule of thumb in the sport is that, if you’re hanging around jumpers for ten years, some jumper with whom you are acquainted will die jumping.
Of course, my personal experience is that I’ve met as many jumpers who have subsequently died at their own hand (not jumping) as have died jumping.
4 fatalities in 220,000 jumps over 36 years is PST’s experience. In line with the USPA stats, and leaving room for improvement. The rate of injury, obviously, is much higher – these days, I’d guess one in every 1000 jumps results in an injury requiring medical treatment. Maybe even more than that.
Screwups causing injury are going to happen. Every jumper I know thinks that they’ll walk away from every jump – that they’re not going to make a mistake. Until they screw up. Even a small screwup on landing can dramatically affect the likelihood of you walking away. I know guys with THOUSANDS of jumps without injury – followed by one that put them on the sidelines for six months. Trust me on this:
You’re going to screw up on a jump. Sooner or later. Try to plan your jumping such that you have a safety net; let’s have it so that the screwup doesn’t cost you more than a little ribbing from the other jumpers.
Blue skies,
2
General Points
Drop Zone Courtesies
No smoking in buildings or near aircraft and fuel storage. Great way to get Adam really annoyed. When you are respectfully smoking outside, please dispose of butts in the receptacles (and not on the ground…)
No alcohol during operating hours. Obvious. You can’t jump safely with your reflexes dulled. Same applies to prescription medicine that affects your brain and/or motor skills.
No drugs. Use of illegal drugs on the drop zone will get you asked to leave.
Sort garbage. Bins are there for: recycling (cans, bottles, plastic tubs), burnables (paper, cardboard, thin plastic, food waste, dog doo – really), and garbage (propane canisters, vinyl waste, metal, and other stuff that won’t burn nicely or recycle). Please use them appropriately. Garbage day can be decidedly unpleasant if people aren’t thinking. If you can’t figure out where your waste goes, you may want to reconsider whether you have the judgement to skydive…
Please be tidy. I’d ask people to treat the drop zone as a home away from home, but I’m afraid of finding out that their homes are worse pigsties.
Don’t be afraid to pitch in with tidying up after the usual slobs, and please don’t leave a mess.
Please return tools etc. It’s hard to maintain the joint when people “forget” to return critical tools. Please put them back where you found them promptly.
Don’t leave your stuff lying around, especially at the end of the day. It happens a lot. If you value it, put it away or take it home. I’m pretty forgiving about stuff like this; Pam is not, and she has a habit of showing up unannounced and pitching or giving to Goodwill anything she thinks doesn’t belong. She has even tossed some of my stuff. Be warned.
We don’t charge an annual membership fee. Don’t make me change my mind about that, so that we have the money to pay some high-school student to clean up after you.
You are an ambassador for the sport, and for PST. To a first-time jumper, someone with three jumps is a superhero. How about trying to impress them with your level of courtesy and professionalism? I know I’m dreaming, but hey.
First impressions are crucial. If you see a new face, a warm greeting is appropriate. Even a “Hi” will do. I can’t believe how often I see someone new walk past everyone sitting on the deck on the way to Manifest without anyone even taking notice of them. Their first impression of us: we don’t give a hoot about them. Not good.
Referral Credit
$15 credit for each first-time jumper you send up here. Make sure that they know to let us know when they register that you referred them.
We usually have referral cards around Manifest (you know, the office where you tell us you want to jump). You put your name on the cards and hand them out. Any first-timer who brings your card up here gets a $10 discount off their first jump, and you get the $15 referral credit.
CSPA Membership
Required after 10 jumps or one year. With fewer than ten jumps and less than a year in the sport, you are included as a student in PST’s jumper third-party liability insurance through the Canadian Sport Parachuting Association. After ten jumps, you need your own membership to have coverage. Coverage is mandatory.
Helping Out – Regular Operations
Your assistance in regular operations is appreciated – even vital. Unfortunately, skydiving is very expensive, especially the aircraft. Our philosophy is to do our best to keep it affordable, so that as many people as possible can enjoy it. But that means that the operating margin is very slim – too slim to afford to be able to pay full-time staff for most positions. So we rely on volunteers to help out where they’re qualified, in exchange for credit towards jumps. That applies at all levels of skydiving experience – even first-timers can help out. Some examples:
DZ improvements. There are always renovations and other projects to be handled.
Maintenance. Lawn mowing, tidying up, managing trash.
Manifest. Even answering the phone (in professional, informed manner) is very handy.
Class assistance. Reconnecting 3-ring releases during harness training, for example.
Gearing up students. A short seminar can have you up to speed quickly.
Packing takes longer to learn but is instrumental to operations – and is well-rewarded.
Helping Out – Not-So-Regular Operations
In the spirit of helping out, the following subjects pop up occasionally and often unpredictably, but they are areas in which you can definitely help out:
Driving a pilot to or from Oshawa. Regular maintenance is done at Enterprise Airlines in Oshawa. It’s an hour each way. You get compensated for mileage at a good rate.
Injuries. If someone is hurt and you have First Aid training, your help can be useful. If you can’t help, or there are enough capable people on the scene, please don’t crowd around.