A couple SSA 2020 convention presentations online...

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Because it is like practicing bleeding. Thirty- forty years ago a friend and I went through ground jump training followed by a jump. Having just had several surgeries on my left foot, I opted not to jump. My friend jumped and ended up with a broken ankle. I lost track of him after about 5 years but he was still walking with a limp.

My favorite story about this was a friend who had lots of skydiver friends and was a glider pilot so he thought he should jump for training. As he was standing in the door about to jump, he turned around to yell to his friends "This is crazy, it has to work the first time anyway!"...

Stephen Szikora wrote on 2/28/2020 4:40 AM:
Ground training is one thing, but why not do an actual jump. I went to a parachute school and during the class introductions everyone was asked why they were there. “On a dare, my girlfriend bought this package for my birthday, want to challenge myself“ ... were the usual answers. I said I wear a parachute and I want to know how to use it! I think actually jumping is a confidence booster that will help if and when the time comes. I also think most glider pilots will enjoy it because once the canopy opens, you’re gliding!

My impression is the training one jump gives you is almost irrelevant: it's done
under ideal circumstances, and in those circumstances, the glider pilot without
the one-jump experience doesn't have any problems. The problems come in situations
the one-jump experience doesn't cover, like Dave's experience: sudden emergency,
difficult egress, collision with the aircraft, high descent rate due to density
altitude, winds, mountains instead of flat ground, and being older when you have
to jump, maybe a lot older.

For those reasons, I long ago decided against doing a "practice" jump. But, I
suspect going through the ground training portion would be useful, and possibly
repeating it in 5-10 years. That appears to be Dave's recommendation.

Here's an only half-humorous solution to bailing out successfully: get a glider
that has it's own parachute, so you don't have to bail out. I'm taking my own
advice: my touring motorglider has a ballistic parachute, and the GP15 glider I've
ordered also has a ballistic parachute.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

As someone who spent their youth engaged in the parachute arts I don't think a practice jump is going to help. Tandem ground school and jump experience is useless, accelerated freefall is better but 99% of it is irrelevant. They are training people to be skydivers, not bailout survivors. Find someone that once jumped lots and now flies sailplanes and have them teach you.. Or a rigger, they have an idea of what our community needs to know. Which at its simplest is:
Look for the handle, reach for the handle, pull the handle. And as Dave said in the video consider a static line, if you do use a static line have the same mindset - Look, Reach, Pull. Have a goal of being faster than the static line. You won't be, but you'll survive if you forgot to clip it on.

I’m seeing a lot of nonsense rationalization here. Any jump is better experience than no jump at all. If nothing else, you will learn to fly the canopy including judgung the flare on landing. Besides, anything you do in life is first practiced in “ideal� conditions (other than a first kiss!)

After buying a square parachute, I went with the intention of taking the
ground training (I'd had the Air Force training in the early 70s) and
making one jump.Â* I was scared absolutely ****less, but enjoyed the
actual jump so much that I did 6 more, all solo with instructor aided
deployment.Â* It was expensive, but worth it!

On 2/28/2020 5:40 AM, Stephen Szikora wrote:
Ground training is one thing, but why not do an actual jump. I went to a parachute school and during the class introductions everyone was asked why they were there. “On a dare, my girlfriend bought this package for my birthday, want to challenge myself“ ... were the usual answers. I said I wear a parachute and I want to know how to use it! I think actually jumping is a confidence booster that will help if and when the time comes. I also think most glider pilots will enjoy it because once the canopy opens, you’re gliding!

--
Dan, 5J