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| FEATURED ARTICLE |  | Team Fastrax and
Start Skydiving Offer Wounded Veterans
Tandem Skydive Opportunity "Blue Skies for the Good Guys and Gals" Honors our Nation's Heroes Team Fastrax Professional Skydiving Team and Start Skydiving are proud to announce their new program, "Blue Skies for the Good Guys and Gals," to say THANK YOU to the men and women who serve our country. The program will provide a tandem parachute opportunity for those Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guard (active duty, reserve or guard) who have been wounded in combat and received a Purple Heart. Team Fastrax has partnered with the Wounded Warrior Foundation and The Thank You Foundation to reach out to Veterans around the country. "These are our nation's finest and brightest and we have an obligation to do whatever we can to lift their spirits and show them how much we care, said John Hart, founder of Team Fastrax and owner of Start Skydiving. "As a Gulf War veteran and 20 year Army service member, I am honored to sponsor an event that will have a special impact on these men and women." The program will kick off at Start Skydiving in Lebanon, Ohio on Memorial Day Weekend as part of the Thank You Foundation Boogie. Selection.com, the nation's premier background screening service, is spearheading the corporate charge to raise the funds to make these skydives happen. For more information on how to help and participate you can contact The Thank You Foundation at : 1-877-280-8893
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The Thank You Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to show appreciation and express gratitude for those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, both past and present. The Foundation accomplishes its mission though several programs and activities such as sending care packages, visiting Veterans in care facilities, providing complimentary tickets to sporting and entertainment events, and presenting Thank You Cards and Certificates of Appreciation to those who have served or are serving our military. Donations can be made directly to: www.thethankyoufoundation.org |
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| Dear John,
At Start Skydiving, we place our customers first in everything we do. This newsletter is meant to keep you informed about the latest events and occurrences at our Professional Skydiving Center. Please take the time to email or call us with any comments that will improve the services we provide at Start. You can help us spread the word about Start Skydiving by forwarding our newsletter to your friends. All you have to do is select the "Forward to a Friend" button to the left. |
What's Up This Week | Week ending 21 June 2008 We are now operating on summer hours: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 12:00 pm until sunset, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 8:00 am until sunset. With the rising fuel prices rising every day we have avoided raises lift ticket prices as long as possible. Tickets prices are now $23 to altitude; bulk ticket prices have increased as well. The weather is going to be great, so put your team together and come on out and compete in Meet #2 of the MESL. |
| | Safety First! | Things you need to know . SELECTING YOUR MAIN PARACHUTE Selecting an appropriate main parachute is one of the most important decisions a skydiver makes. When considering canopy options, you should choose one that will allow you to make a safe landing in a wide range of circumstances, such as varying wind conditions and air densities. You should also be able to maintain control when responding to changing situations, such as avoiding an unforseen obstacle, or another jumper disrupting your planned landing pattern. There are several factors to take into account when making the decision, including canopy size, wing loading, planform (shape), as well as your skill level and experience. In deciding what size canopy to get, start by looking at the manufacturer's recommendations. These are generally listed in the form of a matrix, taking into account the pilot's skill, experience and weight. Wing loading, measured as exit weight in pounds per square foot (psf,) provides only one gauge of a canopy's performance characteristics. Given equal wing loadings, a smaller canopy will exhibit a faster and more radical control response, with more altitude loss in any maneuver, than a larger canopy with the same design. Regardless of canopy size, a higher wingloading means, in general, a steeper glide angle and faster rate of descent; it also means harder landings. Because of this, USPA has issued some general guidelines about wingloading and experience level. For A and B licensed jumpers, the maximum recommended wingloading is 1.0 psf. For C licensed jumpers, 1.2 psf is the maximum recommended wingloading. And D licensed jumpers are strongly encouraged to keep their wingloading at 1.4 psf or below until they have demonstrated sufficient proficiency to assure safety. All jumpers should recieve formal canopy training and consult with their S&TA before exceeding these guidelines. Finally, different types of canopy fly very differently. Design, materials, and construction techniques can cause two equally wing-loaded canopies to perform very differently. Different planforms (square vs. elliptical) will exhibit very different handling characteristics. Regardless of shape or design, any parachute 150 square feet or smaller is considered a high-performance parachute and falls under the D-license guidelines, regardless of the wing loading.
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| Upcoming Events | We've got some great upcoming dropzone events. Meet 2 of the Mid-East Skydiving League - June 21st The second meet of the MESL will be held at Start Skydiving on June 21st, with Sunday the 22nd being a rain day. Free coaching is provided by members of Team Fastrax. Everyone is invited to participate and have a great time. Registration is Friday evening and 7:00am Saturday morning. First round is wheels up at 8:00am 4-Way Scrambles - June 28th Come and participate in 4-way scrambles at Start Skydiving. Teams will be organized on 28th; everyone is welcome to participate. There is no registration fee for this event, but we would like to hear from you if you are interested in attending at
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. We guarantee a great time. Bluegrass and Barbeque Boogie - July 4th, 5th and 6th Come on out and enjoy an awesome weekend with friends. Both Caravans will be flying along with the helicopter and skydiving events are scheduled for each day. City Barbeque will be catering dinner Friday and Saturday evening. The Ohio State Women's FS Record Attempt - July 12th Calling all RW women! Come on out and help set the Ohio State Women's Formation Skydiving record at Start Skydiving. Our minimum target is the unofficial record of 18; our goal is to build a 30-way. Currently we have 20 women registered. For more information or to RSVP, contact Joan Esson at
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or
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. We would like to have a head count by June 21st, so please let us know as soon as possible if you're interested. And please spread the word to all your female jumper friends! |
| | DZ Happenings | | Here is the scoop! It is time to put your big way plans together and let's set some DZ and Ohio records! Check out the Start Skydiving Events Calendar and mark your schedules accordingly. Big accomplishments this past weekend: Congratulations to Jeff Anderson on completing all the requirements for his A license. This is quite an accomplishment; Jeff did it in a little over a week. Additionally, Jeff celebrated by making a jump with his dad, Bob, a licensed skydiver, and his sister Lauren, a student working her way toward licensure. We had eight participants attend the recent CREW camp and each one made at least a two stack with several participating in three stacks. The next camp will be scheduled soon with a date in July. A special thanks to Performance Designs for sending us three Storm demo canopies. Everyone that jumped them, loved them and several are looking to purchase one. And always remember, If you're in the market for new gear, make sure you check out our sponsors on the left side of this newsletter. All the manufacturers we support are top-of-the-line. Ask manifest if you are in need of something; Kip or John will sit down with you and explain the benefits of having the right equipment. |
| Happy Fathers Day Photo by Justin Price |
| National Skydiving League |  Mid-East Skydiving League News Greetings Four-Way Junkies, The next several articles will be dedicated to mental training. It is one of the most overlooked topics, yet the important part of formation skydiving. I would like to thank Dr. John for all his help and input.Please contact me with any and all questions you may have at
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I. Team and Personal Time Mental Drills. Most of these drills can be done as a team and individually. You can apply these drills to many other aspects of your life besides skydiving.
1. The Director: Your goal is to modify your feelings and emotions in a positive manner, simply by altering the characteristics of the pictures you are seeing in your mind.
i. Drill: Experience the effects of altering the sub-modalities of visualization. You are the director and editor of your own visualization and imagery exercise. Picture a dive sequence and alter the sound, color, contrast, angle, speed, freeze frame, etc. and notice the impact these changes have on your attitude and outlook.
2. The Movie: Your goal is to end this mental drill with feeling like you just made a real skydive.
i. Drill: Picture the dive sequence and alter all elements of the dive, be creative. Change you're the angle you are imagining the formation from, the air temperature, the lighting, the feeling of the relative wind on your body parts, grips, your helmet, basically anything and everything.
3. I'm A Champion: Confidence building and identity modification.
i. Drill: Watch a video tape of a world class skydiving team and imagine yourself in being in the dive and flying your slot perfectly - like a pro.
4. Back And Forth: The goal is to perfect a movement or sequence.
i. Drill: Run the drill through your mind in forwards and backwards, at normal speed and in slow motion. Use imagery and visualization twice. Now go do the dive for real.
5. Focus-Distract-Focus: The goal is to improve focus, concentration and distraction control.
i. Drill: While creeping or walking through a dive have another team member attempt to distract team members in intervals, until and unless it becomes counter productive. Begin at a low intensity and then increase as you go. This was referred to in "Fight Your Fears", where they had kids yell, scream, clap their hands or whatever to distract each other during a round of golf. They eventually quit doing it because it failed to have any affect after a while.
ii. Adversity Training: Skydiving is not conducted in a sound proof room. There are tremendous distractions. Not the least of which is that you might need to save your life at some point during your dive. But you also have all the noise and the pressure of competition. Basically we need to train ourselves to be immune to all these pressures and distractions. We cannot train in a bubble. We have to constantly be mixing things up to create distractions and make things harder so that we build our self-confidence and have the ability to sustain our focus for long periods of time.
6. Focused Breathing/Meditation: The goal is to develop and maintain relaxed attention while learning to gently and efficiently refocus.
i. Drill: In a seated position, on the floor, in the airplane, in your car or where ever. Practice Yoga breathing and meditation. You will have mental and physical distractions. The thing is to let them pass in and out of your mind and continually refocus on your breathing.
7. Mantra: To strengthen and internalize a particular area of learning.
i. Drill: Repeat these statements - Quick & Controlled -Focused & Aware - Only The Team! Reinforce the most positive and important elements of the team. Come up with whatever works for you.
8. Smile: Instantaneous stress reduction.
i. Drill: Turn the frown upside down.
9. Secure The Anchor: The goal is to improve distraction control, arousal management and stress reduction.
i. Drill: Bring back a particularly strong and positive memory. At the height of these feelings make a fist or pinch two fingers together, (the anchor could be anything) and squeeze it for about ten seconds while you experience these positive feeling. With practice you should be able to do this without the imagery and create instant focus and positive energy.
10. Creating Presence: The goal is to live in the now and achieve a heightened sense of focus and awareness.
i. Drill: Prepare for training with a short presence drill. Sit in a relaxed position on the floor or in the plane. Focus on your senses using yoga breathing. Create an attention boundary, hear your breathing, feel any pressure on your body, see only one thing and focus on it and last smell what you can, Jet A, body odor whatever. Ignore everything else. Do not think our notice anything else. Clear your mind for what is about to happen. Whether it is an actual dive or a creeping drill. Once you have done that then you should likely go into some visualization exercise.
ii. The Can of Control: Control what you can. Blow off what you can't. Absolutely no whining. Visualize the "can" as an attention boundary.
MESL Schedule
Meet 2 - Jun 21 Meet 3 - July 19 Meet 4 - Aug 16 NSL Playoffs - Sept 20 - 21 Rain dates are the Sundays. If good weather prevails and the meets complete in one day, we'll have organized big(ger) ways on the Sundays. If anyone has an interest in doing some 4-way this summer, feel free to contact me directly at
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. We're here to serve. Here's to a great season in 2008! -Mike |
Thank you for making Start Skydiving the place where great people become skydivers and skydivers become great! Blue Skies, The Team at Start Skydiving |
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