In the days of belly-mounted reserves, baggy mustard-colored jumpsuits and scuffed white plastic helmets, jumpers dreamed only of flying relative to one another.

Three board members and one staff member make up the Compliance Group, which conducts investigations on allegations of member misconduct.

Often, USPA receives incident reports that describe a chain of bad decisions that led to an injury. Many of these reports recount instances where a jumper spent far too long working on something that felt fixable but wasn’t. So, it is refreshing to receive a report that ends with the words, “I stayed altitude aware, trusted my training and had a safe, smooth landing.”

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.