Course Overview
OUR SPECIALTY
The AFF Instructor Rating Course is likely to be one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences you will ever undertake in skydiving! Complete information regarding the AFFIRC is provided in the USPA Instructional Rating Manual (which you should read), but hi-lights are described below.
With each of our AFF Instructor Rating Courses, we include the AFF “pre-course” in a proprietary format developed by Skydive Ratings where we will build up your AFF specific skills progressively over 7 training jumps.
Free fall skills
In the course you will learn techniques for flying hard exits, stabilizing a student, rolling-over an inverted student, and techniques for stopping a spinning student. The AFFIRC is not a belly camp. Candidates are expected to arrive at the course as highly competent belly fliers, able to maintain their slot relative to an unstable student.
Instructor Procedures
You will learn AFF specific procedures such as how and when to give signals, how to determine when you need to redock with a student who is in need of assistance, what to do if the student loses altitude awareness, and of course, assisting with deployment including pulling for the student.
Ground training​​
Because ground training is a core responsibility of the skydiving instructor, you will be taught instructional methods that build upon your training as a Coach to help prepare you to do comprehensive ground training for skydiving students all the way from the First Jump Course through the A license check dive.
Student supervision
Like ground training, student supervision is another core responsibility of the skydiving instructor. This course will expand on your training as a Coach to make sure that you are effectively supervising students both on the ground and in the air.
The pre-course training is intended to give you all of the knowledge and practical training to prepare you 100% for the Course evaluations. The evaluations are all about fair, clear and measurable standards….all of which are detailed in the IRM and will be explained thoroughly during the pre-course.
The evaluation phase of the course has two parts: the air evaluations and the ground evaluations.
During the air evaluation phase of the Course you will perform all of the duties of an instructor for a Category C jump (acting as the main side instructor), a second Category C jump (acting as the reserve side instructor), and a Category D jump. To score “satisfactory” on an evaluation jump you must score 75% satisfactory on the AFF in air evaluation form. You can find the evaluation forms on the USPA website, in the downloads section. The scoring will be explained to you during the AFF pre-course training so that you will know exactly what we are looking for.
During the ground evaluation phase of the Course, you will prepare and provide complete ground instruction for a Category C jump and a Category D jump to one of your fellow students acting as a stand-in student.
Throughout the evaluation phase, you will be evaluated to ensure that you are providing satisfactory student supervision.
Finally, in this Course you will actually deploy the parachute for an evaluator who is acting as your skydiving student.​