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I was wondering what happened to the virus that caused the Spanish flu in 1918 and found an interesting article. In the article, they dug up two bodies at different times in Alaska that had been buried and frozen in permafrost and took samples of lung tissue. It is a long article but worth reading. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html

I mean facts not third party claims.. Cooper claims are a dime a dozen. Draw up a Cooper suspect checklist,, Hahneman ticks more boxes than anyone by far.

Why would we have to do that?

Jeff Goldblum could have used some of that vaccine . . . .

yes indeed. I have to ask him directly. He knows, that I do Skydive but he hasn't said anything the last time, when I visited him, if I can jump. But weeks ago it wasn't a theme, because in germany we had the Corona-Shut-Down and nobody where allowed to jump and it seemed that this would be for a very long time. But in the moment we get loosenings and maybe in a few weeks we all can jump... First DZ has opended and were allowed to jump (but without students)... I hope so that I can jump, because only 5 Jumps (+ repetition, because of the break) and I have my licence...when I don't jump this year anymore my licence is lost :-( because of timing. But yes, I have to ask :-(.

Isn't that Ron Howard?

This Dr. John?

Ground hungry... I wouldn't list the Spectra as being a particularly ground hungry canopy. There are certainly other canopies out there that are steeper trimmed. Keep in mind that any canopy that is designed to land easily and be forgiving on the flare will have to have an excess of flare authority. It has to be trimmed a little steeper to have the ability to increase it's CL to give you that powerful flare. If you were to fly a flatter canopy, one with a flatter glide, less ground hungry, you would find that the flare is some what less forgiving. I actually prefer flatter canopies and the way you generally land them is with a little extra speed. Even just a bit of front riser, so in a since you trim it more nose down, ground hungry, to get an easy landing out of it. One thing that was noticeable about the specter, is the way it pitches front to back. It was noticeable on landing as you descended in to the stiller air near the ground. When you passed through a wind shear between two layers. Think end of the day as the ground cools off and the ground winds die but the wind is still blowing a couple hundred feet up. Well there is a wind sheer as you drop from one layer to the next. Some of your airspeed goes away. Interestingly the larger the canopy is for you the more noticeable this is. 5 knts is a larger percentage of your air speed and when that head wind dies you are 5 knts slower. The canopy wants to correct that. It wants to speed up. It feels like it takes off surging forward and down toward the ground. Flaring dosen't seem to help because the canopy is pitching forwards and can not make lift to support you till it pitches back above your head. The larger the canopy and the longer the lines the more dramatic this can be. You see it with student canopies. They induce it all the time. If you make a small turn with a break, the canopy pitches back and then when you let up on the toggle the canopy surges forward. Not a lot but enough to ruin your flare. Worse is the student that flares high and then decides to let up because miss judged it. When he tries to flare again the canopy is well in front of his body. These are more dramatic examples but the same thing happens when you come in to land. If the wind drops off you get a surge in the canopy. Some canopies do this more then others. Line length is one factor but I think the airfoil also plays a part in it. It really depends on the pitch stiffness of the canopy. I don't understand all of it. But it's noticeable in the specter. You might try a Triathlon. They are not as prone to this. Back when these canopies came out they were neck and neck and we had jumpers that went back and forth between the canopies. It was the same market. They loved the specter but had noticeable more trouble landing them under some conditions that they had no problem landing their Tri in. I would not categorize a specter as a bad canopy you just need to learn to land it. Under those conditions I like to carry a little extra speed, front risers, or a small turn but hook a bit high. The idea being to to have a bit more speed when you enter that still air. You could also barrow a saber 2 from some one and give it a try. They also have a forgiving flare. Or go up a size. But with the specter I think it may just be a mater of learning to reconise the wind conditions. Or just use it as an excuse to hook that bitch down wind on the last load of the day. That way the wind sheer acts in your favor. Or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Lee

In the past 6 weeks I've put 55 jumps on an X-fire 124, which I load at ~2.0 lb/sqft. I'm mostly an FS team jumper, no experience with or desire for competitive/serious swooping: my standard landing is a front riser 90 with toggles rather than rear riser inputs. I also travel a lot so having something that opens reliably regardless of who packed it is incredibly important. As background, I have >4500 jumps, most recently spread across the following canopy/wingloading combinations (from my log excel spreadsheet). 1036 jumps Zulu-132 @ 1.8; 326 on Velo-120 @ 2.1; 798 on Katana-150 @ 1.6 and once beyond that a couple of thousand on Sabre2's @ 1.4-1.6. My thoughts/impressions so far: Openings are generally quick but not hard, reliable, and on-heading. There is very little if any snivel, the initial inflation feels positive and well controlled. I did notice that the slider is quite a bit larger than the one on my Zulu, and had a tendency to hang up just barely above the slinks, which on this particular demo setup is about two inches longer than my arms, so I have to open up my chest strap for the slider to drop down to where I can comfortably reach/stow it. I only have data from this one setup so this may or may not be a consistent thing. I'd consider 53/55 openings to be "nearly perfect" with two outliers: I had one with pretty substantial line twists which I was able to recover without too much drama, the canopy inflated normally and was parallel with the horizon so I just had to wait out the twists. At this wing loading and planform I expect anything that twists AND dives will likely need to be cutaway VERY quickly. I also had one opening where the slider stayed up at the base of the inflating canopy for perhaps 7-8 seconds, which in hindsight isn't much longer than my Katana sniveled on almost every jump, but compared to the normally very-quick-to-start inflation of the Zulu and X-fire was definitely an uncomfortable exception. The jumps were spread across AT LEAST seven different packers (plus me) and the openings all felt more or less the same regardless of who packed it. Full flight seems flatter than my Katana, certainly flatter than the Velo, and probably a little steeper than my Zulu. Getting back from long spots didn't seem terribly hard - I couldn't tell much difference in glide ratios for toggles vs rear risers but also don't have a ton of data there. Toggle input is what I'd expect from a highly-elliptical but not cross braced - it will snap into a turn aggressively if you want it to, but it's not hyper-responsive to inputs, either. Harness input is similar - of all the canopies I've jumped this one might be the "most ideal" degree of harness responsibility for me, although this is obviously a highly subjective and personal preference. I can easily get it to go where I want just by shifting weight, but it also never felt "hypersensitive" or "harness twitchy" like some canopies I've jumped (I'm looking at you here, Mamba and Sensei). On one jump I actually stalled the wing (unintentionally, I was trying to stay with a much slower canopy to shoot some video) and the recovery was less exciting than I would have expected from a canopy this size and loading... but given those really short output chords I wouldn't want to let this thing get anywhere near a deep stall, either. Barrel rolls and aggressive toggle inputs gave exactly what I expected - at no point did the canopy ever feel like it was getting mushy or that it was running away from me. On landing, mine has what I'd call "really good but not phenomenal" flare power. I've yet to jump anything that flares like my Velocity did, but engineering a canopy is like everything else in engineering: a series of tradeoffs that people have to make. The flare seemed a little better than my Zulu (possibly because of the slightly higher wing loading) and probably about the same amount of "raw lift" as the Katana, although the sweet spot is in a very different location. My personal view is that the location of the flare shouldn't matter as long as it's consistent and you can find it on your particular rig/riser setup -- I contend that if you're experienced enough to be considering a wing like this you should be good enough not to care whether landing it efficiently requires moving the toggle four inches in one direction or another compared to a different canopy. But hey, I'm a judgemental fucker that way.... I jumped in density altitudes ranging from about 2500ft elevation and 85F temps down to sea level and ~55F... other than the slightly higher speeds it didn't seem to be particularly sensitive to this. I don't land/flare on rears so can't provide any input (pardon the pun!) there. Editorial comments: I really, really like this wing. I think it flies and lands a little better than my Zulu and opens better than my Katana or Velocity ever did. I travel a lot and team train many different places with a lot of unknown packers, so having something that opens consistently and is ... uh... "highly tolerant of suboptimal packing technique" is very important to me. As much as I loved my Velo, I eventually sold it because I couldn't reliably trust that the openings were going to be what I wanted and with the long snivel and inflation I didn't want to be solving those types of problems at 1800 feet. I spent the last 1000 jumps on Zulus in large part because they were easy enough to land, but mostly because I felt completely comfortable pitching a PC at 2200 feet with 200 other people in the air and not worrying that I was going to get some snilvelly, unsteerable during inflation, likely-off-heading ball of crap. The X-fire seems very "packer proof", in this regard it's very similar to the Zulu. It's definitely not a wing for the inexperienced, but it also never seemed truly unforgiving. If you're looking for a really good everyday wing and don't want to be bothered with the extra work that comes with really really high performance canopies, I can highly recommend this one.

Well, thanks all. This was much more about Shannon than about me. BAM! one of us is gone and then what? Well, we mattered to some people, and that's all anyone can axe. Shannon mattered. So many more of us do. I even do a little. You matter. Pull on time.