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I had a little time the other day so I called and had a chat with one of the managers at Perris' school. To my surprise, it turns out that indeed they have changed their EP's to what David describes. It does vary from USPA. The rationale was that some time ago they had an incident where someone had a malfunction. After grabbing red, they looked for silver but could not see it. The person I was talking to wasn't sure if it was due to a baggy jumpsuit or perhaps a well-endowed female. The person apparently spent some time looking for the reserve handle before pulling the cutaway, and ended up cutting away lower than desired. The school decided to change the EP's to ensure a more timely cutaway. I suppose I can follow the reasoning, but I disagree with the decision. I can not see changing well established, logical, tried and true procedures for everybody due to an outlier event. Cutting away and going back into freefall is certainly not going to make it easier for that person to find the handle, and will make it harder for the normal student. This places a higher reliance on the RSL, which I think is a bad idea. I think the answer is more training. It should be stressed that initiating EP's in a timely fashion is crucial. For the person who might have trouble seeing the handle, whether it be a top-heavy female, or perhaps a larger, barrel-chested male, or a heavier person who wears a baggy suit to help with fall rate, I think that scenario should be predictably apparent. I think training should include that if one can't see the handle, they can still be familiar with where it will be and focus on that area at the appropriate time during EP's. For the baggy suit, part of the pre-jump routine can be to grab the suit by the armpits or inseam of the sleeves and pull the bagginess out from between the lift webs. If the bagginess were to return and indeed be covering the handle during EP's... Well, I'll borrow from Binary's knife-and-fork analogy: If you were sitting down for a meal, and your napkin was covering your fork, would you panic and think 'I can't find my fork, I'm going to starve to death!'? No, you'd simply move/reach under the napkin and grab the fork. So should be your reaction to suit material covering a handle. Skydiving requires the ability for that level of focus, even in the face of a high-speed spinning malfunction. Binary's idea of training for what you're likely to do rather than what you need to do is a horrible idea. You should train for what you need to do, and train until it IS what you WILL do. My advice for David or anyone else would be - While you're under the purview of a school, do what your live, in-person instructors train you to do. When you're licensed and on your own, think things through. Talk to several instructors and experienced people you trust, and decide what makes best sense, and adjust/re-train as appropriate. Safety's a skill. Survival's an art. (JS)

All 74 Million are angry and patriots? Not a pretender in the bunch? It was an election, Ron. 81 Million is more than 74 Million. We win. You are no Patriot. You hate America. You despise what it is. You reject her institutions. You long for a Theocracy and you get downright giddy at the prospect of pulling down those demonic, Luciferian liberals. The idea that you think you have the ability to counsel others is truly frightening. Get used to it: you lost.

No, it's not. But it is irrational to believe that any limits or regulations on guns will always and ultimately lead to confiscation of all guns followed by serfdom in a world where liberal elites jam their ill conceived socialist agenda down our throats. I have no problem being denied AR-15's with high capacity magazines that I can convert to full automatic. I have no need for one and further believe the reason I don't need one is because they'll never need me for the militia as long as we have our fancy Trillion Dollar a year Army. I also don't believe that limitation will further develop into a situation where my shotguns are confiscated and the gophers get the upper hand. I have zero problem with people like you who are trained and have vast experience with military weapons owning what you want. You're only a part of the problem because you fear the camels nose.

Is it irrational to believe that Biden will do what he promised to do? It is right there on his website.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/03/joe-biden-trump-transition-live-updates/ Wisconsin Supreme Court declines to hear Trump campaign challenge to election results

May I suggest that a wise DZO will invest in a half-dozen sets of batteries and re-charge them mid-week? By re-charging batteries during off-peak hours, the DZO can save money on electric grid rates. With solar cells on the hangar roof, the DZO might be able to save even more money .. or sell surplus electricity to neighbours. Finally, with those half-dozen sets of batteries fully-charged by Saturday morning, they can swap battereis and fly until noon before worrying about re-charging. Also the time spent swapping batteries might be needed to allow packers to catch up. I used to work at a DZ that had too much lift capacity with a King Air. After three or four loads, we would run out of tandem rigs. So we stopped jumping for a half-hour while packers caught up, TIs trained and dressed the next batch of students and the pilot refuelled the airplane. The other reason we flew three or four loads back-to-back is that it costs hundreds of dollars to shut down a turbine engine .... wait for it to cool ... then re-start. Every hot-cold cycle costs hundreds of dollars worth of life to a turbine engine. The number of hot-cold cycles becomes increasingly expensive as you approach the end of the over-haul cycle since turbines were originally designed to take-off-cruise-land only two or three times per day ... nothing like 3 to 5 cycles up-down per hour.

I like to grab and peel red before swinging my eyes to look at silver. Then I keep my eyes on silver as I pull red. Toss red. # Put both hands on silver and pull silver to full arms' extension. Resume arch. Look over shoulder to confirm that reserve pilot-chute is leaving. Footnote# I teach students to toss red to confirm that they have pulled it to full arms' extension. The only difference with my personal gear is hanging onto red. With tandems, I just toss handles with gay abandon until I have a landable canopy overhead. The School can worry about replacement handles.

Nobody wants to be associated with Thiokol. They take the blame in the public eye. But the fact is their people warned NASA and tried to stop the launch. But they would not listen.

Photos of helmet with Vufine HUD installed and connected to smartphone. The display of application running on phone is mirrored to Vufine. A lot of work to properly install it in helmet.