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I started in '97 and I think USPA were calling it about one in 100,000 at the time. There are good years and bad of course, and lots of theories about AADs and safety. There are definitely some envelopes in the sport where AADs are not a great idea. (ie: Head Down/Freefly, for example.)...

Great to hear! Say hello to the ladies of Waypoint Cafe.

Yes. The XL-2 will definitely tune up your landings, which is a good thing. My RV-7A is much more forgiving than was my Liberty that way, but the Liberty is not difficult to land well once you get it figured out. If you get a landing that's not working out, you've got to park the ego and go...

Standard ops for airports with co-located LZs. Overflights/Teardrops can be very dangerous if dropzones and landing zones are proximate to runways. Keep in mind that skydivers don't have things like thrust available to make sure they're going to get a spot landing. One bad spot out of the...

Ivan Shaw designed both airplanes to be sure, and the XL-2 is certainly very similar to the Europa XLS Tri-Gear, but it's different in a lot of ways too. Notably, the laminar flow wing of the Europa is gone from the Liberty, and it's a shame. I don't know for sure, but the FAA probably balked...

I find myself at CMA often. Last time I did the CAF walk around, I was told that China Doll wasn't going to fly again. If it's no longer on the ramp at CMA, it likely left on a truck.

Enjoy your jump. (You probably don't have a choice!) Skydive Dan Diego is great. When I finished college in the 1990s, I gifted myself one jump at Perris. I had made two more by the time the weekend was over, and nearly 3,000 jumps by the time I decided spend more time in airplanes than out...

I'm glad you visited Perris, and did your homework first. It was my home and my hangout for several years. I still visit on occasion. Incidentally, here are the remarks from the 2021 AF/D: AIRPORT REMARKS: Attended dawn–dusk. Fuel available for emergency use only. Parachute Jumping...

Yours is perhaps the exception... Most students don't learn in and around active DZs, but I can't tell you how many we times we had some brand new pilot come bombing into the wrong pattern right in the middle of a hot sky, and this was at L65, which is one of the most active DZs in the United...

Honestly, this is your CFI's mistake. He should never, ever have allowed you to choose an airport with a co-located DZ as a waypoint on a student solo.

Wow... SFGate is bad, but there are lots of people on this thread who are commenting without knowing the first thing about skydiving. 1) I think it highly unlikely that a KingAir 90 that had been a part of four jump related stab strikes would be flying any longer. Such events are generally...

I'm not sure it "needs" a Rotax, but if TCM sticks to guns and insists on large orders, that's probably what will happen. (Personally, I'm not a fan of geared engines.) Apparently the airframe was originally designed with a Rotax in mind, and they had one at Osh with a Rotax 912 in it many...

Believe it or not, it looks like Discovery Aviation/Liberty Aerospace may rise from the ashes yet again. They've established the website at a different URL: https://www.discoveryaviation.us/ and my old user credentials still work. (I sold my XL-2 for an RV-7 last year, but I still believe the...

The factory numbers were fairly good ones in my experience. My Liberty flew an honest 60% Power/120 KTS @ 6,000 feet on a standard day. (I'm in Southern California, so we don't have a lot of those.)

Good to know! Fly fun. Fly safe.

Tirekicker... Pardon me for saying so... (and I suspect that you may be the fellow who strung me along for weeks saying you'd be buying my XL-2 last year)... but the Skycatcher and the Liberty are not even in the same league in terms of performance, fun factor, or capability. As far as I know...