FlyingRhenquest

TWO Gopros! GoPro! Be TWO heros! It's a small price to pay to make Occulus Rift users vomit during your skydiving videos! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Jesus, where did all the animosity come from... It takes mad skillz to drive a minivan and maintain your Y chromosome. I don't think it counts if you have the minivan before you come into the sport. In that case I think you just have the kid start packing for you and become a tunnel instructor at 16. If you really want this story to be cool though, you should start swooping the pond with a Nav 300. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

And if it does, you can always still have a "Your father's lightsaber" moment with your kid when they turn 18. You could be all like "This was your father's skydiving rig. He turned to the dark side of readily available VJ, a steady income and a minivan..." I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've been kicking around the idea. I love doing high pulls and just flying the canopy around. Seems like the right mentality for that sort of thing. There are three or four schools in Boulder and I think I'll probably at least want to do the introductory course in the spring, to see if I like it. I did hang gliding back in the '90's but never got to the point where I could soar on thermals. That was really the big draw for me. Trying to steer a tandem glider was not that much fun. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You could rule out everything except body position with a rental rig. Rent a rig you didn't pack, jump it, see if it happens again. If it does, there's your answer. You were tracking when you had that problem, so maybe do a bit of that before deploying. If it doesn't, you've more testing to do. I'd start with a quick canopy inspection to verify there's not a physical cause with your canopy, and then have a packer watch you pack to see if there's something you're doing that might cause that. Also, review your hard deck. It's difficult to remain altitude aware through deployment, especially when you're in a malfunction. You have a bad canopy over your head. Do you have the altitude to mess with it? If you deployed at 3500, you must have burned a lot of altitude resolving the malfunction. At what point would you have thrown in the towel and cut away if you weren't able to resolve it? Would you still have had room between you and the ground to safely do that? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah I had to go through the whole damn thread to find a comment suitable for my "Vibrator for men" comment! I'm glad someone dug it up, though, because I'm sad I missed it the first time around! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Vibrator for men. Google it. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

IIRC the USPA explicitly changed their wording so you have to be 18 now, ever since that one skydiver. Due to the legal system in this country, we can't have nice things. If you really can't wait 2 years (Maybe be a wind tunnel rat from 16-18 instead?) you could try Mexico or one of the Eastern European countries. I'm pretty sure everything's legal in Mexico! Or you know, just be a tunnel rat for a couple years. That's what I'd do, if I was 16 and had access to Mom's credit card. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Or, as they know it in the UK, "Thank God All The Pilgrims Have Gone Day" heh heh heh I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Dude, just get a probe thermometer, stick it in the thickest part of the breast and set it for 161 Farenheit. When it starts beeping your turkey's done. Also let your turkey rest for 10 or 15 minutes after you take it out of the oil. You never leave your turkey unmonitored, and you have a fire extinguisher suitable for oil fires on hand, right? I don't fry mine, but I do brine it and use Alton Brown's recipe. I've been doing it since he first aired that episode and it's made a perfect turkey every year. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah, in our practice rig even though you get dropped a foot and then stop, you still gotta find the other handle and pull it (Or get to do it again heh heh.) When discussing the potential for a cutaway in ground school the instructor said "The RSL will probably beat you to the punch, but go for the second handle anyway." On mine, my RSL did beat me to the punch, but I was reaching for the second handle when the reserve opened. I don't think it beat me by more than half a second. I'm planning to keep going for it in future cutaways. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

We have practice cutaway rigs you strap into. They do drop you about a foot and a half (IIRC, it's been a couple years) when you cut away, but it's decent experience. I went about 170 jumps before cutting away but when I had to, I went through the EPs as if I'd been doing them every day all along. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Hah! It didn't last long for me. I was gung-ho enough to jump at any temperature the DZ would fly at for my first year. Right now, if it's colder than 50 on the ground, I roll over and go back to sleep. Sadly they also drop back to reduced hours over the winter and about half the nice jump days are on days when they're not flying. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

"The Hill." The hill feels weird to you. Heh. Do it enough, it'll stop feeling weird. Sounds kind of like me and hosin sauce, back in college. I'd get the mu shi pork and couldn't figure out of I liked the flavor of the sauce or not. It was a weird flavor (Plum and five spice IIRC) So I'd try it again the next week. After 20 or 30 iterations of this I decided I must like it, since I kept ordering the stuff. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

That is easy. Remind them that sensory cues allow them to be more aware of altitude without taking much time. Also, you may remind them that by being more altitude aware, they will live longer. If you have a buddy who doesn't seem to be aware enough of his altitude, just talk to him. Explain that you'd hate to read about or watch him going in because he should have been paying more attention to these things than he was. Brian, do you know of any specific exercises you can do that can improve your altitude awareness? I liked the one they did with us in AFF was ask us what we were supposed to be doing at the current altitude while we were on the plane ride up. Would setting your break-off altitude higher help at all, if you have someone you're concerned about? If they get the "I don't want to watch you die" speech and the exercises and are still oblivious to conditions, at what point do you deliver the "bowling" speech? There've been a couple of times when the external clues (ground rush, light quality, etc) have told me the ground's a lot lower than my altimeter said it was. In those cases, I disregarded what the altimeter said and pulled. If my eyeballs tell me it's pull time, I'm pulling. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Ugh, it dropped 40 degrees in the course of two hours! Colorado weather is often psychotic, but this is in a class by itself! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It was very humid here after the flooding last year. I did a jump the first day the DZ was open again afterwards and it was like flying on silk. Didn't even have to collapse my slider, it wasn't flapping at all! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I see a lot of pretty terrible exits from people just out of AFF. I'm often in a position to watch them do their first hop and pop. About half of them go out ass-to-the-prop and end up flipping over. I'm pretty sure I did this too. So far they've all managed to get stable and pull! In case you don't believe we've all been there, Here's Mine, a couple years and near about 300 jumps ago. Personally, my exits didn't really start getting better until after I completed my A license and could do solo jumps. I felt they were so bad that I actually did five 5000 foot hop and pops one day to try to improve them. I think focusing on it as a problem did help a bit, and they're much better now. As you can see from the video, I had some problems with kicking, too. You can also see it in some of my early tunnel videos. My sister did as well, but her daughter didn't. I have a personal hypothesis that it's a bit harder to stop kicking if you're also a decent swimmer, because you're trying to override that muscle memory. My sister and I grew up in Hawaii and were swimming in the ocean while we were still toddlers. It'd be expensive, difficult and largely useless to do a scientific study on this, so it's just going to have to remain a hypothesis. I like having the video from the tunnel, because you can see a very clear progression of skill in my flying. It's pretty compelling to watch 4 or 5 videos of tunnel sessions and see clear improvement. That feedback may be one of the things that kept me in the sport. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

8500 MSL or AGL? It'd have to be AGL, otherwise you'd be getting out at around 3500. That's not a lot of altitude to have fun in. The Colorado Canopy Club takes a Cessna up to 5K (AGL) on Tuesdays or Wednesdays during the summer. The jumps are set up to average around $17 if you do 5 or 6 of them. It's actually a pretty good deal if you want to play with your canopy a bit. They have a turbine Cessna 206B they rent, so they can get up to 5 grand pretty quickly. 10 grand AGL (15K MSL) in that plane is not quite as much fun. I always have one foot fall asleep about halfway up. The air's noticeably thinner here too. I've only jumped at Eloy out of state, but even though they're only 3000 feet MSL lower than us, the air there feels kind of like jello. I remember looking at my altimeter at 9000 feet there and thinking I'd been falling for a really long time. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It'd be awesome if they could build a multi-story iFly tunnel up on the top of the Empire State building in New York City. If the city-facing walls were clear, I'd actually have to travel to New York City just to fly in it! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah they always tell you to relax. My position was "I'm about to jump out of an airplane and I'm NOT GOING TO RELAX!" Heh heh heh. Just relax, it'll be FUN! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'd never heard of that giant vacuum chamber before, it's incredible! I kind of thought it sucked... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Ah, but it does! My AFF instructors had a devil of a time keeping up with me, especially once I learned to arch. I was like "But... But... Galileo!" I hadn't thought about terminal velocity all that much prior to that point, but I can't fall as slowly as my floaty-pants AFF instructors because of wind resistance and surface to mass ratio and all that. I'm a bowling ball, they're a feather. If we went skydiving on the moon, it would be different. But if we went skydiving on the moon, our parachutes wouldn't do much good anyway. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah, we're starting a mile higher than everyone else most everywhere in the state. I can drive my car to a higher MSL altitude than many sea-level dropzones fly to. 12090 feet is the highest point on trail ridge road. You can park near there and try to walk up half a mile of stairs to get a view of the surrounding mountains. On the plus side, when we go down to sea level, we get super powers. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I keep thinking I should dress like Old Gregg but I'm pretty sure it would result in a sexual harassment lawsuit. I could have just phoned it in and worn my wingsuit, but I couldn't even be arsed to do that this year. Just as well, I only had about 6 kids come by my house. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?