Leaderboard

I love seeing a poster mansplain why a thread was locked - to the person who locked it.

Both of them?

{In fond, loving memory of a jumper & friend who added a lot of “spice” to our skydiving lore} Blue Skies Carbone! always in “The Zone” ............ It’s never too late for a Scotty Carbone story; I met Scotty in 72, we were both novice jumpers rising through the ranks at the Stormville Parachute center in NY. We were both “City boys” and I knew in an instant that Carbone was a clever, street smart hustler. I also learned he was a very skilled & talented individual and had that certain charm about him,(you loved him or not-so-much at all). We became jump buddies and friends. Scotty never seemed to have a “real” job, a car or any money but he always managed to get by. Since I lived in Brooklyn and he was on my way to the DZ, I would often give him a ride and believe me, surviving the 90 minute drive was an act of significant personal discipline. But as you may guess, there was always a surprise or two w/ him, some nights the, (OLD DIAL), phone would ring, like 2-3 in the morning, I would answer; “you BleepN recti, you woke my parents up, F—Off, I’ll pick you up at 8...” and too many times he wasn’t even home but somehow made it to the DZ anyway. During the next decade we jumped, competed, partied and we’re on a 10-man, speed star team together;(The Spaced Rangers). One of our guys,(Wayne S)got us a DZ sponsor for our jumps; Lakewood Parachute Center,NJ. They had a DC-3 and needed/wanted us to fill every load to help lower their cost of putting out static line students, so for $3 a jump we’d take our 12-13 slots and practice from about 7-7500’. Lakewood was a VERY conservative DZ and The Rangers w/ Carbone, (not-so-much). Their DZ manager always kept a watchful eye on us and our coolers, one day during a hold for low clouds, our cooler lids were active and later when the skies cleared, we hustled our gear on then headed to the 3, but In our way, is the manager, he’d seen enough and points to,(you know who), and says, “I want to smell your breath!”... well of course Scotty obliges in spontaneous Carbone fashion; he runs up to him, puts him in a bear hug, and smoothers this guys face with his wide open mouth. Scotty breathes hard into his face for about 10-15 seconds, (while we are pissing our pants laughing), then says “was that enough?” and lets him go, the poor guy did not know what happened. We boarded, jumped, broke off above 25, landed and packed... We never got checked again!! I can tell you dozens of Carbone Capers but if you’ve spent any amount of time w/ Scotty, you probably can too, that one was special...

Keep in mind that the paper was from 2006 - so they missed a lot of the more recent work on positive feedback and albedo changes, as well as being able to get direct longwave observations from satellites.

I read his first post this morning, saw it had been cherry-picked, then saw the reference to the Wijngaarden/Happer paper and wanted to point out that it didn't pass the sniff test. I'm not going down this road with him again - was just sharing with you and Bill. .

Cute. Brent once again pretending he can read scientific papers.

FIFY

OK You're on the committee.

Dear a105r, I was joking about quickly cutting off a jump suit to prevent a fatality. I was being silly yesterday.

Brent shows how the problem isn't CNN or Fox or any of the media/entertainment companies providing news. The problem is people's inability to think about what they are reading or watching.

Old airplanes wear out or corrode out. I was badly injured when a 40 year old King Air suffered a fuel pump failure. A skipped inspection almost killed us all! After 3 -ish years, the factory's liability fades and then the reliability of any machine becomes increasingly dependent upon the thoroughness of the last mechanic. For example, if the owner does 1,000 jumps per year - in the Southern California desert - a parachute might be scrap after 3 years. OTOH Closet Queens might be in mint condition after 30 or 40 years. However, Closet Queens may need Special Inspections or Service Bulletins that were published long before the interweb became popular. That is why young riggers should not feel forced to repack any parachute older than themselves. As for the grey-bearded, grumpy old Master Riggers ... I refuse to repack plenty of gear that was fashionable when I started jumping: round reserves suspected of acid-mesh, first generation 5-cell square reserves, Sentinel AADs, pre-3-Ring canopy releases, etc.