The last flight was SIV à-la-carte. You could do any exercise you’d like to repeat and even, if you liked to, try the SAT-manoeuvre high above sea-level.
I liked to : )
Jocky also proposed another manoeuvre to be tried by the pilots who wanted to. It was the maximum amplitude spin, kept in for at least two rotations and leading it out by a full stall. It sounded like it would really kick some ass so I immediately opted to do it. I was the only one... (that should have rang a bell)... My final sequence now would look like this:
Spiral dive – max amp spin leading out to full stall – SAT and finishing off with some wingovers.
To be honest I was a little bit nervous, but like every drive to the take-off, in my mind I kept imagining the movements I was going to encounter during the exercize and the actions I was supposed to take. Arriving above the flight zone I turned myself into a nice but short spiral so I would not lose too much height. After that I went for the max amp spin + full stall which proved to be quite a nasty sun of a b*ch. At trim speed I janked the right brake all the way down to get the strongest reaction of the wing. And it got spinning around strong for a couple of turns when it was time to stall the bastard out. It all went great and I descended in a nice full stall. After being in this stall for some time, I let my hands up to lead it out in a controlled manner, but while the right hand went up perfectly, my left hand was kept locked down and I was not able to move it at all. First thing I did was slamming the right brake back under my seat to keep the glider in the full stall and figure out what the problem was. When I looked at my left hand, I saw it was caught by the bottom loop of my speedsystem. It was probably wrapped around my left wrist during the rough movements while I went from max amp spin to the full stall. Anyway, while the brake pulled my hand up with force, the speedsystem loop kept it down. I was not able to let go of the brake so I had to find a solution. By leaning further to the left and pulling my left hand as far down as possible, I was able to wrest my left hand out of the speedsystem loop with some force and lead out the full stall. This was not really anything I expected to happen, but I could control my stress level, keep thinking what was going on and what to do, which made it possible to land under my wing on the beach and not under my reserve in sea : )
Fun was not over yet because I really liked to do the SAT, so after the little ampmax adventure I was able to pull off a nice SAT-manoeuvre which I kept in for quite a while. I mean: if it turns in the right manner, let’s enjoy it !
I ended the SIV with some lousy wingovers, but I forgave myself, looking back at the spectacular flight I had !
A couple of months after doing the SIV course I went to Grand Bornand in the French Alps and had a great time flying with a lot more confidence in the wing and my wing handling skills. I pulled high wingovers and spiral dives for a hobby, exceeding -19,9 m/s (at that level the vario goes off-scale) descent rates with full control and no problem at all. A course like the SIV Jocky gave, 
really is a
‘must-do’ for every paragliding pilot ! The level of difficulty is not that high as long as you do what’s told to you. My personal opinion is that you’d be better off doing this course with about 20 hrs of airtime, then only doing it when you’ve got 100+ hours in the air. All that time you could have learned so much more to keep you safe while flying. The course is not very cheap, but when I observe the way my piloting skills were boosted and the safety added to my flying performances, it really was worth it ! And get real: You’re flying, accompanied by the SIV-guru himself.
More about Jocky and his S.I.V. course you can find at www.escapexc.com.
“Knowledge dispells fear”
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In May 2004 I finally could join the SIV (Simulation d’Incidents de Vol) course given by the well known Jocky Sanderson in Oludeniz, Turkey. With the mountain Babadag just next to the sea and 1900m to play with, it's the perfect place to do such a training.
While working in his own outdoor centre, Jocky got involved in paragliding in 1988 what became his schools main activity. He went on working as a test-pilot and contended in the Paragliding World Cup where he ranked 3 rd in the world in 1995. Due to all of his experiences as a competition pilot and coach of the national team, as well as being involved in the European Testing Commission and BHPA, he made the video “Security in Flight”, in which he shows techniques to recover from a variety of potentially dangerous flight-situations.
The video was very usefull to give me an insight in what might happen while being airborne and what to do about it. But I also realized it was mainly theoretical, so I set my mind on a course with Jocky himself, to learn me all about flying safely and recovering my wing in extreme conditions.
While flying the SIV you'll need to wear a life-jacket which 'll keep you floating in case of a (hard) water landing. The type of jackets you get are quite big and bulky, stuffed with massive foam. You will certainly be able to do all the exercizes that 
come by, I also did, but you can imagine that it could be much more comfortable without the bulky jacket. In that case I can strongly recommend you buy or borrow a self-inflating life jacket. It gives you an enormous advantage in manoeuvrability. These devices have melting-capsules which automatically inflate your life-jacket as soon as you hit the water. When you, for whatever reason (i.e. too strong G-force due to a cravatted spiral) have passed out, it will inflate and keep you floating anyway. I bought myself a Plastimo Family 150N with automatic inflation and the possibility for inflation by hand. Because I want to explore some more radical movements above water like in Turkey, I decided I'd better buy one.
Oludeniz - Turkey I arrived friday 21th of May and when I walked to the beach was treated on an acro-show by Félix Rodrígues and some other pilots like Arif Kemal Buhara. Gave me immediately an opportunity to get a picture with the famous Red Bull Vertigo champ Félix. Later that week they did another stunning show with some SAT-ing, tumbling, loops, asymetrics and an awesome ground spiral. But enough about that, back to the SIV.
Going for it
In a briefing with Jocky and Chris, who assisted Jocky, the exercizes were explained to the detail. After that the group went up for the flight. We began with B-line stall, big (really big) ears, doing dynamic frontstalls and practicing wingovers. Because making good wingovers is a quite technical manoeuvre, we finished every flight by doing some series of them.
Later that day we made some asymetric collapses (70%), at trim- and accellerated speed, and reacted by both counter-weightshift and counterstearing, as well als leaning into the collapsed side to make it dive faster. Rather scary when you do it for the first time, and not being used to do stuff like spiral dives. But after all, it was nice to experience the wing wouldn’t react as radical as I thought it would. We also practiced hard 90 and 180 degrees turns and turn-reversals.
Full Stall
After that we went for the real stuff: Full stalls. I did about 5 of them. Two points were very clear for me when I started: never, ever, let the breaks go when the glider’s behind you and keep your legs fixed under your seat, knees spread. This will give you a more solid seating position while the harness is moving around quite a bit due to the full stall forces the wing exerted on it. You feel weightless 
for a moment when you pull through the break resistance and enter the full stall falling backwards. Then there’s some moderate violent movement in which you really focus to keep your arms with the brake-toggles locked under your seat while the wing tries to regain it’s normal flight. Then, when you see the wing pulsating to the front, you release the brakes, but in a controlled mather. A little dive to get some speed and you’re flying again !
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