darkvapor

http://www.skydiveorange.com/parachute.htm http://www.kturby.com/skydive/groundschool/images/risers2.jpg edited: direct link doesnt work.. go to http://www.kturby.com/skydive/groundschool/groundsch.htm and scroll down..

Yea... I really wasn't planning to. Mostly, I just want them because they are less bulky and require less maintenance (or atleast until they need replacement). Mostly I was worried about wear and tear issues, as well as if the slider would stay up by itself without me worrying about it slipping down. I suppose that has already been addressed (that it will probably slip). I guess I can live with regular links, but just curious since I had an extra set of Slinks lying around.

Several Questions 1) Use of Slinks on a Lightning on Type 8 risers, mesh slider with stainless grommets. Okay with this configuration? Any forseeable problems? Do I need bumpers? 2) Where can I get a proper pilot chute for a throwout on a Lightning? I've never seen CRW specific pilot chutes for sale. I am not familiar with the Lightning (been doing crw with Prodigies). However, I would assume that a standard freefall pilot chute would not have the proper bridle length, bridle material, and closing pin attachment point. Also size, material suggestions would be appreciated too. I recall a few tidbits here and there in this forum discussing size and material, but a dedicated discussion might bring more information. edited: fixed typo

I lost a shoe on its 2nd jump. The shoes were less than a day old. Thats right! On my way to the dropzone, I thought, "hey... I'll get some nice shoes to jump in". I knew I would be doing CRW in them, so I looked for features that would be CRW-friendly: good fit, but will come off without breaking an ankle. No snag points... good sleek shape that won't be a bitch to grab lines with. Found a great shoe that fit all my requirements.. and hey! it was on sale for $30 down from $40. On the second jump that day, we were attempting a downplane. We couldn't get our legs locked together very well, and they were on the way to slipping apart just as the canopies were turning down. Well, our legs totally slipped apart and the other guy's leg brushed past my foot and ripped my brand new shoe off my left food. I saw it for a split second as it dropped away and fell for a good 8 or 9 grand... Oh well... go back together and turned a few more points with 1 shoe... had to borrow one of the shoes the dropzone keeps for tandems.. nothing like doing crw with mis-matched shoes..

Let me say I love dogs too. I've had a black lab in the past, I have a chocolate lab now. Both are excellent dogs. However, I would recommend a golden retriever. I lived with one recently and he was just the greatest dog... Goldens seem to be a bit more mellow tempered than labs. Both of my labs have a good bit of energy, and can be a bit aggressive at times (play rough, a lot of play biting and barking). The golden that I lived with was very gentle and never pushed any limits, although he had a lot of energy too. Ofcourse, every dog is different, so see if you can spend an hour or two with the dog before taking him home for good. But good choice. Dogs kick ass. Attached: Picture of Nestle™, my chocolate lab mix.

Can you cite some evidence? It's not everyday that I hear about catastrophic failure of ZP material compared to F111 material. Define "brittle." Polyamides (nylons) do not exhibit "brittle" behavior, as far as I know. I can certainly be wrong about it, since I am not a materials or textile engineer. (Again, see my comparison of PN1 to PN4 material properties). With that logic, shouldn't F111 degrade ATLEAST the same as ZP in that first 50 jumps? My guess is that the use of PN1 is primarily an economic one. PN1 is going to be much cheaper than PN4. So that the profits per canopy outweigh the performance decrease.

I would like to know the same. (See website with the specs I posted earlier). For all intensive purposes, PN1 is "standard F111" and PN4 is "standard ZP". How can PN1 have similar wear properties to ZP when it is lighter weave (about 10-12% lighter), over 10% thinner, and 2.5 times weaker in tear strength? If I am missing something here, I encourage you to educate me.

hit refresh.. if that doesn't help.. hit refresh again.. and if that doesnt help, hit CTRL + refresh.. repeat as necessary..

This might help. http://www.blue-fabric.com/sports_fabric_specs.html According to those specs, it is 0-3cfm, which would put it in the same class as F111.

That statement is very true. I think 220g/day is very very large intake of protein. There are a lot of factors involved... age.. body composition.. gender.. lifestyle.. (those other two big energy sources, carbs, fats)... and even how well people break down and use proteins. You are not the norm when it comes to protein intake and physical activity. If your average 40 year old Joe takes in 220g/day, along with his regular excessive intakes of fat and carbs, then he will be a house.. ;) edited to add some support to my claim: from the website i posted earlier.

Hehe.. yea.. your right. the numbers that i used in that post arent accurate, and conflicting with what i just posted 30 seconds ago. however, my point is the same. americans have too much protein intake, most of which is completely unnecessary and will be converted to fat.

First of all. That is pretty amazing. Most people don't need even 75 grams a day of protein. You might be an exception, there always are. I know I am making blanket statements, but if I tried to cite every exception, I would never make my point. Am I basing it on my own experiences? Not really.. I am trying to base it on my limited knowledge of the human body and how it functions. I just used my example as an isolated incident. Unfortunately, I didn't know enough about how the body functioned when I took an extra 50 g's a day of protein in addition to my regular (large) supply of meat products.

Yes. As I just stated earlier, creatine is one of the few that is. but it is a rarity.. it really is.. I did not mention it because we are not talking about performance enhancers. FYI: alcohol has 11 cal/g of energy.. thats more than fat... its easy to see why alchohol doesn't help keep that gut down.. ;)

Body's consumption of enegry is done in 3 steps. First: carbohydrates are used for energy. American's get so much of it, the body uses a lot, but the rest is fat. Second: the body uses fat stores. Since we get too many carbs, these are rarely depleted. Third: a last resort, your body starts using proteins. Your body uses all 3 of these energy stores throughout the day, but that is the order of preference. If you take in 100 grams of protein a day, guess what.. you are probably gonna put 95 of those into stored energy in the body.. in the form of fat... proteins only provide 4 calories of energy per gram... the body doesn't want to use ineffecient energy sources if it doesnt have to. by comparison fat has 9 cal/gram. carbos also have 4cal/g, but it is more easily converted to energy

Yes. I am not going to argue with you there. There is some science behind creatine. I did not mention it in my blanket statement about ineffective supplements, because, honestly, creatine is one of the few products that works. one of a VERY VERY VERY FEW! It is safer to say that none of them work, then to say that most or even some (more than 20%) of them work. However, creatine is not for everyone. Creatine is not an endurance enhancer, and only is very beneficial to people who have repeated bouts of high intensity excercise. Football players, weight lifters, etc. I will contest that statement about protein supplementation. It is pretty much useless. Americans get excessive amounts of proteins. Are proteins necessary? Oh yea.. but the daily recommended is much less than even light meaters get. Your body makes all the non-essential proteins it needs. If you are an extremely aggressive competitor or weight lifter, than yes.. maybe a bit of protein supplementation will help. But probably only if you spend 6 hours a day in the gym and another 4 hours in physical activity. Not if you just go to the gym 5-6 hours a week. Excess proteins are just stored as fat, so you do get bulk that many body builders like. I put on 20 lbs when I did the protein supplementation thing. A good bit of muscle, but also a good bit of fat from all that protein supplementation I was getting. 99.9% of the muscle I gained was from working out, not any supplements. edited: sorry.. i used proteins and amino acids interchangibly in that last post... i know the difference, but honestly, in the end it doesnt matter..

Exactly.. but go to any of these supplement websites, and they have "FDA approved" written all over them. That is just a gimmick, since what you said is entirely accurate, FDA has no control over supplements.

There is nothing effective out there. They are all gimmicks. Your best and safest bet is just to watch what you eat and get good levels of activity. Anytime you get into get-fixed-quick products, you are just asking for trouble. Some of them are even very dangerous. NONE of them are FDA approved. Even if they say they are, they are lying. If they have a statment such as "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are not intented to treat, cure, or prevent any disease.. etc" then they have **zero** FDA approval. They use name games to make themselves sound legit. If you do think something is promising. Do your research. I suggest http://www.quackwatch.org/. Don't trust most websites though, especially if they are not legitimate not-for-profit sites. edited: dont take ANY stimulants. they aren't good, and without FDA regulation, they have even caused deaths in recent years (think "ephedra" products). Take the best approach and limit your intakes of fat and excess protein (which americans get wayyyy too much of, and it gets converted to fat). Carbohydrates are the body's first source of energy. Eat healty and excerise.. only method that is guaranteed to work ..

What bothers me is the size of that lot. What was it? Something like up to 60,000 units in that possible time frame... How much manufacturing does Capewell do on the ripcords? Do they assemble them from stocked parts? Or do they actually have the processes and manufacturing capabilities to do steel manufacturing? If it is the latter, than it seems that their manufacturing process is flawed. One thing that is confusing. Are their field tests actually reproducing conditions that would cause a pin to fail as their service bulletin warns? They claim that some pins are susceptible to break. This would be caused by a tensile load. Tensile and bending loads are not identical. The mechanisms which cause them are different too. A pin that "breaks", breaks because of the brittle nature of one of the components of steel, probably the martensitic form of steel. There are several different phases of steel, with wildly different material properties. You can engineer the composition of steel by using different heat treatments. If you incorrrectly treat the steel during the manufacturing process, you will end up with a lot of brittle martensitic form of steel. Their field tests seem to test the ductile nature of another phase of steel in the ripcord. My only guess is that if you can tell that it is more ductile (deformable without breakage) than spec, then it probably does not have the right composition anyways. These are problems that should have been worked out long long ago. What happened to quality control? Samples from manufactured batches should constantly be tested for yield strengths.

Well... Once you have it, you essentially keep it. Or rather, all of your background checks are still in place. This makes them easier to hire you since it saves time and will allow you to get working faster. Having a preexisting clearance saves time, even if it is no longer active. They can easily reactivate your clearance as long as it is within the re-investigation period (every X years depending on clearance). But it also depends on who issued your clearance. If you work for any defense industry, it will be a DoD clearance.

This is also what I was told and read online. A civilian cannot just get one to have one. You have to have a need to know, and get your appliciation submitted by the contractor that deals with sensitive information. My secret clearance took a few months to get cleared to 'interim', while they completed a more thorough investigation. (usually takes about 5-6 months for secret, up to a year or longer for top secret).

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=563438;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

edited: ditto..

edited: fine.. if I won't say anything nice, I won't say it at all..

Hehe, I was just in the same predicament last week when designing my PD Lightning. Here are some of my designs. http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg096b/lightning/

Comon people! Hehe, I need to place this order soon. I've been pestering most of my whuffo friends, and the one that seems to get the best reviews is "Wes' Design 2" (designed by my whuffo friend Wes). I'll submit my order by 3pm today.. eheh.. last chance!