This year, my wish list is all about the basics that make skydiving safer.

Half-braked canopy flight is a useful and life-saving skill, but recent incident reports (including the non-fatal incident reports in this issue of Parachutist) show that it is highly underutilized.

Jumping—usually from a structure—accounts for 5.8 percent of all suicides in the United States, and has an 85 percent success rate, which is similar to suicide by firearm.

For more than a year now, USPA has been on a crusade to increase incident reporting, not only by instructors, but also by the everyday jumper.

Many jumpers are confused about the term “hard deck” and how it differs from the term “decision altitude.”