Ant - If Brinababy is correct that a skater is alowed to have a half turn on the ice for the take-off of a loop jump, it seems to me the skater is not really doing a complete loop jump regardless of the air turns. The jump should be called by another name or the definition of a loop jump should be changed.
Joe
Again i wrote i really long post and my computer crashed ARRRRGH!
If you are looking for a 360 degree jump loking at the blade of the skate then i don't think you'll ever see a "loop" unless it flows out in a different direction to which it flows in. The reason for this is simple...
By its very nature an edge skated on a blade is always turning - even the flatest of edges (contrast to being on the flat of the blade which means tracing both inside and outside edge of the skate at the same time going in a straight line) will eventually trace a circle. A spiral is so called because if you hold the position and keep going until you have no more speed, the tracing is that of a spiral going in towards the centre of a circle.
Looking at the loop (but the principle applies to the salchow too) if you sit on a RBO edge going into the jump - you are on the edge therefore are turning in the inherent direction of the edge. In order to jump at all, on ice or on land, you must bend your knee to get a spring and push off against the ice or land. If you are on a RBO edge, the action of bending your knee in order to jump will inherently deepen the edge you are on. That is the only way you can jump. BEcause of the simple laws of physics the loop jump will always have a pre-rotation of between 90 and 180 degrees, without one, you would not bend your knee and therefore not be able to jump. 3/4 of a turn on the ice is too much but somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees is good technique.
If you look in the John Misha Petkevich book he teaches both salchow and loop as "half revolution jumps". The body makes the 360 but the blade does 180. If you look at the tracing of a good loop or salchow you will see the tightening circle at the end of the tracing from the bending of the knee to jump and the shortening of the edge, followed by the graze of the toepick almost all the way round to forwards.
My coach has me think of the salchow as a waltz jump from backwards!
The issue doesn't come up as much for toe jumps because the technicuqe for certainly the toe loop and flip is to have as straight a three turn as you can and to pick straight back.
Ant