Jacques-André Istel Presented with the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award

One of the pleasures of my job is to meet and talk with some of our sport’s luminaries and pioneers. I enjoy history, and I particularly enjoy the history of our sport. So maybe you can imagine how privileged I felt last week when I presented USPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Jacques-André Istel, the father of modern skydiving in the U.S. See, Jacques, who had immigrated here from France as a boy and had begun parachuting here in 1950, saw on a visit to France in 1955 that French skydivers had learned techniques of controlled freefall. Until he learned and brought those techniques back to the U.S., parachuting in this country was simply flailing between exit and deployment—no arch, no control, no turns, and no stable deployments. There was no skydiving here until Jacques advanced it. He also coined the term, by the way. But he didn’t stop there. Jacques became a vocal advocate for public acceptance of skydiving as a sport, not a daredevil activity. Here’s an excerpt from an August 1957 issue of Time magazine:

” ‘You just let go of the plane and suddenly you’ve changed elements. You start to drop but you don’t feel anything—only a marvelous sense of control. It’s like being immersed in light water. Then you bring your right arm up and you make a turn, just as simple as that. It’s an incredible sensation.’

Thus runs the evangelical message of Jacques-André Istel, 28, a black-browed ex-Wall Streeter and dedicated prophet of parachuting in the U.S. His gospel: jumping….out of an airplane can be a safe, exhilarating sport, not a devil-daring performance…”

That’s not all he did either. Jacques advanced parachute competition, too, by forming the first U.S. team to compete at the 3rd World Meet in Moscow. With that, parachuting and then skydiving competition began to flourish here as well, with Jacques introducing our collegiate competition as well.

For these reasons, and many more, I was humbled yet proud to be joined last week in Felicity, California, (where Jacques is not only the founder, but the mayor) by board members Larry Hill and Scott Smith, previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Pat Morehead, previous USPA Gold Medal of Meritorious Service recipient Ted Strong, and many, many skydiving friends, in presenting Jacques-Andre Istel with his own engraved and mounted silver bowl. Like a true Frenchman and skydiver, Jacques used the bowl to toast his admirers…

Jacques-André Istel holds the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award surrounded by (from left) Pat Morehead, Larry Hill, Ed Scott, and Scott Smith.

BOD Meetings Wrapping Up

The board is finishing up meetings now. Some highlights include the election of new officers (your new pres is Jay Stokes), elimination of skysurfing from nationals, discussion of electronic voting for the next board meeting, and more that is a little difficult to type on an iPhone.

Keep an eye on the USPA website for the full, official minutes, and Parachutist for the article.

Next up is the DZO Conference which gets started this evening with registration and formal events tomorrow. We also start setting up our symposium booth tomorrow for exhibits tomorrow night. There is still a lot left, so if you can get to Reno, it would be well worth your time.

Exciting Meetings

That might sound like an oxymoron, but the new USPA Board of Directors is doing some great work here in Reno. There is fun and mayhem going on outside the board rooms (some sort of Chinese dragon/drumming team sounds like they are really living it up) but the board and some dedicated interested people are inside talking about things like election processes, how to best deal with disciplinary actions and other tough issues.

The Regional Directors are meeting now – these people are your first contact into USPA. Get to know them if you don’t already. They all list contact information on the USPA website, and some have separate forums, mailing lists or websites of their own for their regions. When they get home, ask them what happened at the BOD meetings, or try shooting them an e-mail or phone call now if you see something on the agendas that you want to know about. (They are quite busy this weekend though, so no guarantees on how quickly they’ll get back to you within the next 48 hours).

All Quiet on the Western Front

But not for long…we’re getting ready, along with a horde of skydiving manufacturers, USPA board members, riggers and more, to bring the controlled chaos to Reno.

First, there’s the USPA Board of Directors’ meetings. You only have a few days to read over the agendas and let your regional and/or national directors know what you think and how you want them to act before they start deliberating, casting votes and generally kicking it into high gear.

Next comes the USPA DZO Conference. This is for drop zone owners and operators to get together and learn just about everything related to providing jumpers with fun, safe and quality places to jump. Even if your home DZO isn’t attending, they’ll be able to get the recap and more information after the event. Tell them to watch their e-mail for the e-newsletter DZO Streamline with all the details.

Finally, PIA seminars and symposium. We’ll have a game for show attendees to play, but even if you can’t make it to the show, you can play along at home. Starting Monday, Feb. 9 – the first day of Symposium – we’ll have different quizzes every day on the USPA Pursuit page.

If you will be in Reno, please stop by! We’re in booths 106/108, in the first aisle (subject to change, check PIA’s website for the latest info):

2009 PIA Symposium booth layout (click to enlarge)

Ready for Reno

No, we’re not going gambling, or to shoot anyone like Johnny Cash sang about. Coming up very soon is a lot of activity in Reno, though – USPA’s Board of Directors’ meeting*, Parachute Industry Association Board meetings, PIA Symposium and Seminars, and, being skydivers, some cold refreshments after all those. Needless to say, if you’re anywhere near the area, you should come check it out.

Here’s the official schedule:
Feb. 5-8: PIA meetings
Feb. 6-8: USPA Board of Directors’ meetings
Feb. 8: National Skydiving Museum meeting
Feb. 9: USPA DZO Conference
Feb. 8: Symposium Pre-Registration open – afternoon
Feb. 9: Exhibit Hall open – evening
Feb. 10-12: Registration – all day, Seminars – all day, Exhibition Hall – evening
Feb. 13: Seminars – all day, Banquet and awards – evening

USPA BOD meetings are open to all USPA members in good standing. Please go and participate. It might seem intimidating, with a bunch of people you don’t know using terms you’ve never heard in a formal setting that seems oddly un-skydiver-like. In reality, those skygods you’ve heard and read about are just jumpers like you, only they’ve stepped up to take a tough role in leading our sport. Those funny words and procedures are all part of Robert’s Rules of Order, a way to have a controlled meeting in which everyone is allowed to participate equally.

Getting Board meeting materials ready for the trip to Reno

Meeting agendas are published on the USPA website, so read over them. If you have questions or opinions regarding anything on the agenda, contact your Regional Director or a National Director. If you think something should be on an agenda that is not, bring that up as well. Your Directors are there to represent you, but you have to let them know what you think.

Board of Directors’ Meeting Resources:
All meeting agendas and meeting information
BOD contact information
Robert’s Rules of Order

When the meeting’s over, official minutes will be published on the USPA website as well, both under the USPA Members > Downloads and About USPA > Board of Directors sections. You can come back regularly to check, or subscribe to the RSS feed and be notified when new minutes are posted.

Lastly, there’s the Symposium, which is basically a skydiving trade show. This is fun, and not to be missed if you have a chance. Skydiving companies all have booths with different themes, and their sole purpose is to meet the people who buy their products. (Psst, that’s you!) If you’ve ever wondered just how Bill Booth thought of the SkyHook, ask him.

USPA will have a booth, so stop by to chat with us, ask questions or just meet us. We’ll try to post a schedule of who will be in the booth at what times. Let us know if there’s anything you want us to bring or have prepared for you. It shouldn’t be hard to find us – just follow your nose (trust me, it’ll make sense when you’re there)

PIA also sponsors seminars on topics ranging from “Military Javelin & Operational Reserve Packing Demo” to “Dual Canopy & Entanglement Emergency Procedures” and “Wingsuits on the DZ – What You Need to Know”. USPA’s Jim Crouch will present “2007 – 2008 Fatality Report” on Wednesday at 11am, then again Thursday at 4pm. Visit the PIA website for more information on PIA meetings, seminars and symposium, and see you in Reno!

*edit to add: The next General Membership Meeting will be held in conjunction with the USPA summer board meeting in Dallas, July 10-12. The board meeting will be at the Crowne Plaza Dallas in Addison, Texas.

2009-2010 BOD Elections

Another board election is complete and the members of the 2009-2010 board have been announced. Congratulations to the 18 returning board members and the four new ones. With 3,503 ballots received, this most recent election garnered almost 1,000 more ballots than the 2006 election. (Of the total, just over 200 ballots were invalidated for the usual reasons—lack of signature, expired membership, or electronic receipt. We’ll assess how to make the instructions clearer on future ballots.)

A bit about our process: each ballot is date stamped upon receipt, validated, batched in an envelope of 50 and locked away. Beginning December 20, each ballot and each batch are separately counted by two different people. The two batch tallies must match; if not, the entire batch is counted again and the discrepancy is found. Then the batch tallies are combined on a summary page where the final count comes together. The final report includes counts for all candidates that were listed on the ballot. Viable write-in candidacies are also tallied and reported, except the few votes for George Bush, Mickey Mouse, Yo Mama, and the several voters who wrote in their own names. Altogether, the process consumes 125 hours of staff time, or a full week for three people.

Even more impressive than the increased voter participation was the increased candidate participation. This election’s 38 candidates set a modern day record going all the way back to 1990. (It may actually be the record; I got tired of researching it.) One year there were just 24 candidates for the 22 slots, two years there were 26 candidates, and the average number of candidates over the previous nine elections was only 30.6. We need to acknowledge all of this election’s candidates for caring about skydiving and USPA enough to step up and offer their time and their talent. Thank you for your effort. Your sport and your USPA are better for it.

Jacques-André Istel

We all have different reasons for starting skydiving, but why do we stick around? For me personally, and I know for a lot of you, it’s the people. Unique, eccentric, crazy, loony, loving, wild, different, open—call us what you will, but our sport has some seriously colorful characters. Working at USPA, I’ve been privileged to hear stories of some of the most amazing, starting with the father of modern skydiving, Jacques-André Istel, D-2. You may have read the News blurb about him this week, but his involvement in skydiving is only part of his fascinating life.

Mike Anton of the L.A. Times wrote a great piece on Mr. Istel last April, Desert monument captures history on stone. Read the whole article if you’ve got a minute, but here’s a quick excerpt:

Istel has always zigged where others zagged. He is a tireless wayfarer with an insatiable curiosity and no tolerance for boredom, who has pingponged through life like a character in a picaresque novel.

He fled Paris with his family in advance of the Nazis. He hitchhiked across the U.S. when he was 14. After a stint in the Marine Corps, he chucked a career on Wall Street to take up parachuting – which he learned by leaping from a plane with virtually no instruction. He eventually fathered the sport of sky diving [sic] in America. Later, having grown antsy running a business, he circumnavigated the globe in a twin-engine airplane, at times not certain he’d make it.

In the mid-1980s, he founded the town of Felicity on about 2,800 acres of California desert. He built a marble-and-glass pyramid the size of a large garage and proclaimed it the Official Center of the World; thousands have paid a couple of bucks each to step inside, even though it’s not even the center of Imperial County. More recently, Istel moved 150,000 tons of dirt to create the nearby Hill of Prayer on which he built the Church on the Hill – even though he’s not particularly religious.

“You’ve got to admit, that’s interesting,” Istel says.

Here’s a message from the man himself, to Executive Director Ed Scott, inviting you personally to his USPA Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony:

Dear Ed;

Many thanks. Reno is not possible for me owing to prior commitments. We have a nice program planned for 14 February 2009 at Felicity and I look forward to receiving the award then. Also I look forward to your visit, that of Larry Bagley and hopefully Chris Needels; as well as any parachutists old and new who care to join us. Perhaps someone could read this message at the Reno event..

Merry Christmas and all best wishes,
Jacques

Without Jacques-André Istel, and countless others just as interesting, we’d never be able to throw ourselves out of airplanes for fun. Without them, we’d never want to stick around after jumping was over, either! If you’re anywhere near the Felicity, CA area on Valentine’s Day this year, definitely take the time to attend. Visit the Center of the World, hear some amazing stories and thank the man who fathered our great sport, Mr. Jacques-André Istel.

USPA Offices Holiday Schedule

Wednesday, December 24: 9am – 3pm
Thursday, December 25: closed
Friday, December 26: closed
Wednesday, January 31: 9am – 3pm
Thursday, January 1: closed
(all Eastern Standard Time, EST)

We’re open normal business hours, 9am-5pm EST, the rest of the holiday season.

If you’re heading to a holiday boogie (hopefully somewhere warm) and need your USPA membership to be valid, please keep these dates in mind and make sure you’re current before you go.

Happy holidays, everyone – stay safe and blue skies!

180-Day Repack Answers

The new FAA rule implementing 180-day main and reserve repack intervals takes effect December 19, 2008. In consultation with the FAA and the Parachute Industry Association, USPA has developed answers to some obvious questions.

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Q: Is there any change prior to December 19, 2008?
A: No, up until that date, the reserve and main must have been packed within the previous 120 days.

Q: What happens on December 19, 2008?
A: Beginning on that date, you can jump a rig in which the reserve and main have been packed within the previous 180 days.

Q: Even if my reserve pack job had previously expired?
A: Only to a point. Beginning December 19, count back 180 days—if the reserve was packed within those 180 days, it is legal to jump.

Q: What about my AAD?
A: Good question. FARs 105.43 and 105.45 hold the “person” (the skydiver and the tandem instructor) responsible for ensuring that an AAD, if installed, has been “maintained in accordance with manufacturer instructions.” You can only comply with that regulation if you know the maintenance schedule and service requirements of that AAD. Do you know when the battery must be replaced? Do you know when the AAD must be removed for factory service? Do you know when the service life ends? If you don’t, prudence requires you to ask your rigger or the manufacturer before you jump a rig beyond its originally intended 120 days.

Q: What if my AAD requires servicing before the end of the 180 days?
A: Our interpretation of the FARs is that when a manufacturer-recommended AAD maintenance/service interval comes due, even if before its 180 days expires, the rig should not be jumped until that maintenance/service is performed. That’s why it is imperative that future AAD service dates are recorded by the rigger, preferably on the packing data card, and known by the skydiver/rig owner.

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Rig owners with specific questions about their rigs should consult with their riggers and/or the manufacturer of a specific component. Technical or rigger-related questions posed here will be forwarded to PIA or the component manufacturer, if USPA is not able to answer with certainty. PIA has also posted answers to FAQ on their website: http://www.pia.com/piapubs/PIA-180FAQ.pdf.

Nationals Champions

The 2008 Nationals results are up (finally!). Sorry for the delay, but we wanted to take full advantage of the new website to make it a bit more useful than just a static list. I think what we came up with is a nice balance of a quick loadtime and coolness. What’s really interesting is that you can click on any hyperlinked team or name and get the team members, plus any past Nationals medals they’ve won.

For example, clicking on “Airspeed” will give you a history of results for every incarnation of the infamous Arizona Airspeed FS team. Impressive, no?

So far, we only have results back through 2005 in that query system, but the goal is to get them all at least through 2002, when we first started publishing Nationals winners on our website. And, we’ll get all past results over to that cool new query system so you can start clicking away on 2005 and older results soon.

We’d love to know what you think, and what you use that page for. If there’s something you really wish you could do – on any page, not just this one – post a comment on the blog or e-mail us at webmaster@uspa.org.