John Hanson Schuman January 19, 1951 to March 21, 1998
The JHS Internet Jump Report
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[Forward: This article is unedited and completely reflects John Schuman's views at that time. If there are any complaints about John's views being expressed in his memorial site, please, I hope you can bear with this and, at least, let John express his views from his Cyber Tombstone!]

FROM: John Schuman , edt. Southwind newsletter

3-D University videographer

Had a most excellent adventure in Eloy with y'all last ed-Sat(11 6-10 [1996]). 'Viva la revolutione de freefly. '

I learned a bunch of new stuff and discovered some big weak spots in my flying while doing the freefly boogie with everyone. Although I have along way to go in my skills prgression, I still have many years of rw experience and skydiving instruction to fall back on and feel qualified to pitch in a couple of observations. (Okay,Critique)

FREEFLY STANCE

I found 2 predominate styles of freeflying at the convention. The wide body and long body. This appears to be a West coast/European phenomenon. I'll try to explain simply.

The Europeans seem to have a tight jumpsuit tendency and consequently, they must fly with their shins stuck into the air, either straddle or daffy style, to damn up enough air to achieve a neutral fall rate. The arms also tend to be out-stretched more although not as pronouced as Tammy. I call this the WIDE-BODY STANCE. I filmed the french team (xfly) 5 times. Their cruising speed goes about 20-40 mph faster than the west coast style and I needed to thin my jumpsuit way down to keep up in a stand-up, my preferred camera angle. Once I got relative with them (my 3rd jump with the team) , I discovered they easily did docks and carves and wheels in this wide stance. It has a light, speedy look it. They move in quickly on each other and can stop on a dime. They can cover a long distance quickly head-down dispite the lack of material on the legs to push with.

The clown/flyboyz stance has more of a LONG BODY look to it. I believe this is a direct result of the baggy jumpsuit preference. The human muscle groups seem to have a limit on what they can press and hold for 45 seconds per jump, some pressure/second limit. After viewing the tapes I shot of the 3-way xfly team and seeing the clown/flyboyz 4 way video, I think I'm right on this dual stance trend. I'm not saying the west coast crowd does not use the wide-stance, only that it is not sustainable like the European style. There are advantages to each group. I think a big disadvantage for the baggy suit/long body thing may be the increased burble activity around large formations. I noticed alot of buffetting when more than 5 people began closing in. This is why I suggested to Charles the "Drill bit" formation for your 10-way. This involves a 5-way circle with 5 "shadow flyers" taking grips on both sides of the backpack at the diagonal backstraps of the circle flyers. When everyone is on, the shadow flyers release right or left hand and face a tangent to the circle to start the formation spinning...drill-bit. This formation layers the burble activity much the same way a 10-way snowflack flat formation helped ballon suit flyers in the 80's get around the burble of STAR formations.

PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS

In many ways, I have a lot of respect for the clown/flyboyz method of teaching. However, the pay-me-your-money, tell-me-your-problem, I'll-fix-it method only goes so far. I heard several players at the Convention whispering about the lack of hard material to study. Freeflyers need to know where they're going. They need to study the overall view of freeflying. They need to know how to re-create muscle memory exercizes, how to debrief their dives, all the safety and jumpmaster notes, the types of formations possible, and they need to have pictures and videos of the right and wrong things to do. Studying can all be done in between the wait for upcoming loads or after they go home from Eloy or Perris.

Until the creation of some sort of standardized text/manual/whatever/, a lot of freeflyers will spend a lot of time developing bad-habits and trying to break them. In short, I think there is a good reason to get a more organized situation going, some kind of Freefly/Skydive U. thing happening. If there is interest in this, I know a source for a manual and video and proven ground training methods which will work with either long or wide body style.

blue sky jhs/dzp

November 96 Jump Report
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