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Hi Bill, Make them all unisex and this goes away; eventually. Jerry Baumchen

But...but...but, what if you drive into flood waters, and need to choose between getting electrocuted in your car, or jumping into the water with the sharks???

Yep. And I would add that diversity includes diversity of people, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of methods and diversity of ideas. One example: Up until about 1995 or so, all communications were frequency division (like FM radio) or time division (early GSM cellphones.) That was the way to do it. Everyone knew that. Qualcomm was founded with the idea of trying a third method - code division spread spectrum. It made no sense to many engineers - "you can't separate signals with a CODE!" - but two people made the seemingly impossible possible. And they were about as diverse as you can get. The first was Hedy Lamarr, an actress from the 1940's. She had a messy background - an immigrant from Austria who had been duped into making a pornographic movie when she was 18. She was also brilliant, and had been thinking about the problem of making military remote control signals for torpedoes resistant to jamming. She didn't get anywhere with her approach until she met George Antheil, a musician who was doing some bizarre musical compositions with player pianos. He had a lot of trouble getting all the pianos to start at the same time - and stay synchronized - but when Lamarr saw this, she realized she could use a similar approach to "spread" a radio spectrum out and use more of it. Two player pianos might initially select middle A (440Hz) before moving up to C (523Hz.) Similarly, two radios could exchange information at, say, 800KHz before moving on to 1000KHz, then on to another frequency, as long as their hops were synchonized. And if an enemy tried to jam any one of those frequencies, the system would still largely work, because the other frequencies would be clear. She even mentioned you could use this method to send _more_ information on the multiple frequencies as long as the system was coordinated. The Winsors of her time (and even as late as 2000 or so) claimed that she was a "DEI hire" (or the period-appropriate equivalent term,) that obviously George Antheil was the brains behind it and was just trying to get into her pants, that a movie star didn't have the brainpower to figure something like that out. George was just using her to get more attention for his patent! Lamarr was ignored for decades, consigned by misogynists to the only roles she could play in their minds. The next was Andy Viterbi, an Italian immigrant who fled to the US during World War II. As a professor at UCSD he developed the Viterbi algorithm to decode convolutional-code encoded data. From there, he developed the first CDMA standard for cellphones, a spread-spectrum, code division communications method. The "experts" laughed at him. "Errant nonsense" said one scientist I remember. One of the benefits of this - convolutional code spread spectrum communication - is that you could take a given "chunk" of spectrum, and since dozens to hundreds of code-division devices could use the same spectrum, you got a much larger number of conversations per band of spectrum. And because in the US spectrum is what costs money, cellphone companies could make more money per Hertz of frequency allocated. I learned about the Viterbi decoder in college. And when I heard that Andy Viterbi and Irwin Jacobs had started a cellphone company in San Diego, I moved out there. The Viterbi decoder was such a revolutionary and elegant piece of work that I thought Qualcomm's future would be bright. So I moved out and started working there. Early tests showed that instead of the 20x improvement they could get in frequency use, in practice it was closer to 6x - still a big improvement. So Qualcomm started building cellphones and base stations. And they worked. In the early days of this, the Winsors of the world would publish letters in EE Times, EDN and the other trade publications of the day, claiming that power control (important for code division) could never work, the 6x improvement was a lie just like the 20x improvement was, code division could simply never work, Qualcomm would never unseat telecom giant Ericsson and their TDMA system. But over time it did. And today everything from cellphone communication to wifi to satellite communications use code division spread spectrum communications, albeit at a far higher level of complexity and intricacy than our first simple 64-code "flat" CDMA schemes used. And this revolution was brought about by a 1940's movie star - "porn star" according to her detractors - and immigrant, and an Italian immigrant who fled World War II to work in the US in the 1970's. Woke madness, I know.

to his base? It makes zero difference. They have been making excuses for shitty & criminal behavior since 'grab em by the pussy'. If Donald Trump raped their children in front of them, they would find a way to justify it.

Hi Bill, It is ALL a nothingburger until it is your ox getting gored. I'm starting to think that short-sightedness is a human trait. I hope not, Jerry Baumchen

Hi folks, Hurricane Milton needs a job to do: Jerry Baumchen

From Stephen Colbert last night, (and Harris really was on his show). ;-)

It is almost like both have their pros and cons.

Funny, when I look up the definition of the words you have between apostrophes those are not the definitions that come up. Always amazes me how you want to be all scientific and precise when it suits you and abandon it all when that suits you better. I can tell you that my company tracks diversity and equity, but we don't have a policy about targets. We did have a policy at one point to only hire ENTJs, until we figured out that building balanced teams led to much more productivity. That led to understanding how diverse teams with resources adjusted to their needs led to even better productivity. Turned out that having only Winsors working for us was pretty disastrous, even if a single Winsor could be highly productive. Turns out being what you label as "woke" made us significantly more profitable and put a lot more money in my pocket.

When I was 13 my life expectancy was given in minutes and I was given enough pain killer meds to knock out a horse. I survived with some minor insight into addiction. One effect of those drugs is profound indifference. Things that should matter simply don't. Getting clean requires faith - not so much in a Prime Mover of the Universe as that the trials and tribulations of life can be faced with serenity. Things don't change but we can. My last beer was when Ronald Reagan was in office so my experience is dated, but the weird thing is that being clean and sober has precisely nothing to do with drink or drugs and everything to do with living life on life's terms. With a good support system and the willingness to change, he has a shot. Good luck, Winsor

Hi Ginked Re: I’m cool with HALO jumps but who did the first LALO JUMP ? In 1965, at a demo/competition near Las Vegas, three members of the US Army teamed opened their ParaCommanders at 300 ft, at terminal. How about them apples? Jerry Baumchen

Well, that post is 13 years old. Wendy P.

PD did some detailed research into this a while back but the report is no longer available on their site. Does anyone know why it was removed? Here's the bulk of it. Well worth a read. https://www.skydivemag.com/new/2018-06-06-two-canopies-out/

It's new container time. After eight years on a used container that never really fit me well to begin with I have saved up and am preparing to order a new one. I currently jump an Infinity, and while it's a great system I would like to try something else and have whittled it down to either a Curv or a Vector. Both are similar in price when you deck them out, both come from reputable manufacturers, both are aesthetically pleasing but the build time for UPT seems ridiculous to me and the Curv just looks like a stellar setup for a slightly lower cost in less than a third the time. The only hangup I have is the limited time that the Curv has been on the market and I have yet to see one in person. I will be in Eloy for two weeks next month and plan to try to get a good look at one then but was wondering if any current owners would share their experience as to how the rig has held up and what you like or dislike about it.

If you'll be in Eloy, you'll see dozens of them. Why not walk across the street from the DZ, visit Rigging Innovations, and see exactly how the Curv is made? Can't speak highly enough about the comfort of the Curv. For me, it also allows for improved backflying in my wingsuit, as it hugs my body more closely. Riggers have always liked repacking my Voodoo and now the Curv.

yea , hehe, and seeing all the possiblitys that wingsuits create, amazing.. but wouldnt more glide be desirable skydiving as well?? There probably aren t to many baser that need more glide to survive, how about more glide to out fly 10 ledgesinsted of 5, or lets fly around that knob, rather than pull at the base of it?

I think we are doing a fantastic job right now. As it is, there are very, very few wingsuiters regularly flying their high-end suits anywhere near their maximum potential. I would really like it if the average forward speed would increase on flocks and, consequently, the vertical speed to decrease. Without that, it's truly pointless to flock in big suits when a Firebird/Phantom/S-fly is fine. I am about to have a smaller Acro-type suit built for day-to-day flocking and cutting up; quite the opposite of what you envision the discipline going to. Chuck

Felix. And for the rigid parts, loads of birdman have died already as said before, the soft wings are the evolution of rigid (part or whole) wings, not the other way round. I don't see mylar ribwise as "stiff" as the wing is still totally collapsible. ciel bleu, Saskia

Dude, that's an excellent line to draw between a wingsuit and not a wingsuit. I like it. Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

The VKB G3 would already be quite a nice subject of discussion..with the rig forming a rigid airfoil with the body... But its still an airfoil constructed around a human body. When compared to the channel-crossing glider, that jumper is merely hanging under a wing (which would probably fly better if the jumper wasnt there) JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete?

Pilots fly themselves. For the same reason Felix's record was thrown out by the Guinness book. He fell into the same category as a fixed wing glider. Your skeleton needs to be your airframe if you want to call it a wingsuit. If you want to fly a fixed wing - get a plane. Put an engine on. Do inflight refueling. And don't bother with us mortals exploring the bounds of human flight. t Devil's advocate here, don't wingtip grippers and mylar ribs mean that rigid parts are already encroaching on our current generation of wingsuits? Shouldn't we expect the amount of rigid sections used in wingsuit designs to gradually increase design by design as gains in performance and possibly endurance become apparent? It may be that we will reach a point where an arbitrary line in the sand is drawn with 'soft' on one side and 'rigid' on the other seperated only by a matter of degree. Do you want to have an ideagasm?

That's what I said right? Those early birds all had variations of rigid wings. Wingsuiting only became "safe" (and allowed again!) with the invention of soft wings. ciel bleu, Saskia

there is the Stingray used by Felix there is Yves Rossy's wing www.jet-man.com scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

any body have any prototypes for rigid or semi rigid wings?