riddler

And a few other things: 1. It sounds like Mile-Hi will be giving up a dollar per jump, as well as the jumpers paying a dollar more, to go to charity. That sounds like a good deal to me. 2. In addition to the things already mentioned, Mile Hi is building a brand new hanger that is big enough for the Otter and is right next to the landing area (no more trailer!) I guess an extra dollar a jump doesn't sound that bad. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I'd like to complain that I'm on staff at Mile Hi, and I'm always the last one to know these things Hell, WFFC is out in another state, and I learn everything about what's going on at Mile Hi from him. What's the charity for? Can someone forward me the email? Answers to some questions I read: 1. The field elevation at Mile Hi is 5050 feet. 2. Other dropzones are pretty far away - on the order of 75 miles to the nearest, or 120 to third other major DZ, which adds up in gas when you have a truck that gets 15 MPG. 3. The price was $20 about three years ago when I started jumping. Went up to $21 last year, and I guess $22 now. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

This has been the subject of a few threads on Scuba Board since last year. Maybe the solution is to not let lawyers engage in dangerous activities? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Yeah, our government, the pusher. "Don't use those drugs! Use these drugs!" Why can't they have a federal campaign to encourage more women to start jumping? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Wondering if it's safe to downsize your canopy? Read this, then see if you can do those skills. If you can, then it's probably safe. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Reminds me of a picture I took last weekend of a friend of mine landing. I snapped just as his canopy was framing Long's Peak (one of our local 14ers). Camera is a Canon Digital Rebel with the factory 18-55 lens. Image is cropped, zoomed and compressed, so you can't see the image quality very well, but this thing takes awesome photos. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

One note about that calendar. The format lists as DD/MM/YY, however, the tool expects MM/DD/YY, otherwise you will get an error. Any news on the dz.com calendar? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

That's a nice pic! Did you take that? What camera/lens? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Can someone clarify? This doesn't look like a particularly hard landing? Was it?? Or is this just a case of poor design or bad maintenance? Nice video - got that one saved. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I vote troll. Speaks good english, lists his DZ as "Santa Rosa", so I assume California. I know the DZO there and he wouldn't take a 14-year old. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

That may have been true when people jumped rounds, but with square canopies, you better have a pretty good excuse for landing in one. Especially if you're an instructor. Just my opinion. BTW - good excuse would be something like "I jump into a forest with a 500 square foot clearing for a landing area", and not something like "well, we were doing night jumps and everyone was so excited about it that we decided to jump even though the weather got really shitty". Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I'm not sure I agree with that. As your insurance does not EXCLUDE skydiving, or have a clause about aircraft passengers, or "extreme" sports, with no definition of "extreme", then I would say that you are probably covered. I think that skydiving or being a passenger on an airplane have to be specifically excluded for you to not be covered. An insurance policy can't ever say all the things it does cover, so you get into generalities. When I applied for my life insurance, I carefully read the contract, saw no exclusions for airplanes, outside of being a commercial pilot, and filled out the section of "hazardous sports" (boy that was long - I'm surprised what people consider hazardous). I wrote that I do skydive, and I discussed it with the insurance rep, who informed me that it's not specifically excluded, so I would be covered. SCUBA diving was covered, as long as it was not below a certain depth. Mountain climbing was covered, off-road biking. Interestingly, skiing was not considered "extreme" (maybe that's why I stopped doing it ). I listed them on the hazardous activities page, so the insurance company has a record of what I do and signed off on it. My health insurance is the same. Now my homeowners insurance is a different story - it excludes anything resulting from an aircraft incident, so if I damaged other property while skydiving, my HO would not cover it, but USPA would (thanks, USPA

I've done it on a Navigator 190 loaded at 1:1. Premature deployment at 7,000 feet, and I spun a lot to get down before the tandems. Of course, it didn't occur to me to land outside of the peas , but I had very few jumps at the time. So after doing several 360s in various directions, I managed to induce about 3 line twists at 3,000 feet. I spun 360 in one direction, then before the canopy stopped turning, a very fast 360 in the opposite direction. I think the resulting line twists were induced because I initiated a fast toggle turn on a canopy that was already deformed (from the previous toggle turn). Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Been there, done that. It's not fun. But it was on poorly maintained rental gear. BOC spandex was loose, on a very old rig that the DZ was too lazy to fix. And it was my fault in the first place for freeflying rental gear. Whichever system you get, maintain thy gear. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages, proponents and naysayers, but both systems work fine if used properly and maintained properly. On this: If it's the manufacturer's point of reference, then yes I do. What may work fine for you a few times may not work 100 times - they have the experience extensively testing the systems to know what works and what doesn't. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Hmm - I have a Voodoo, and I don't see this on my bag. But I know that RI changes their designs more often than some other manufacturers. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

You couldn't guarantee even stow-lengths for each stow, or over the length of the entire line. That would lead to one side attempting to deploy before the other. You also couldn't guarantee that the stows would come off at the same time on each side. Having lines pop off stows on either side at uneven intervals seems like it would cause the two sides of the lines to ball up into a mess. I think uneven bag deployment is a combination of the way the bag comes out of the container (not evenly, usually) and the stows themselves (each release creates an impact force on one side) that cause the bag to tumble during deployment, as well as AggieDave said about poor body position during deployment. Stows aren't even required for the main to open - they are there just to keep the lines orderly while you put the bag in the container. Reserves don't have line stows (except the two locking stows that close the bag) - the lines are just s-folded in a pouch in the freebag, and are otherwise "loose". It's cool you're thinking about ways to make the sport better, though. Keep at it and maybe you'll solve these problems. Have you considered splitting the bridle above the D-bag, so it pulls on both sides of the d-bag, rather than just in the center? You would also have to figure out a way to make the pilot chute not spin during deployment

Sorry, dude. Lying in bed all day hopped up on cold medicine, so don't have all my wits about me. Point was, I had too many DHCP servers and they were interfering with each other. Problem solved when I turned off the DHCP server on the Vonage modem. Sounds like we have slightly different versions. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Hey Steve - how about we redo the peas in the shape of a pentagram and do a night jump with candles burning at the corners and a sacrificial alter with a blood-stained canopy on it? You can swoop between two columns of people in black robes chanting "flare-or-die, flare-or-die" With a little erie music, it would make a sweet video. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Might not be a bad idea for everyone that starts skdiving to polish up their resume I know I quit my job not long after I started. The original poster isn't a jumper - probably just a junior network marketing person that doesn't realize you can't strap a rig to a 16-year old and push them out of a plane. But it sounds so great in a 5-seconds sound-byte! Maybe they should all come jump with us for a few months? Then they'll quit their jobs, and skydiving will be safe from the popular media once more. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Hey Jim - no worries, I still like the service a lot more than Qworst. I especially like the price, and it's a LOT faster

Somehow "skydiving" and "family television" don't seem an ordinary, everyday combination of words. I haven't watched television in several years - maybe it's gotten worse? I don't see how it could, but anything's possible I suppose. Get the ABC execs to hang out with us at the bonfire, and they might change their minds. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I don't know how relevant this thread is to gear and rigging, but I would say if you want a "cool" paintjob, just so you have something that looks "cool", it's probably not going to come off as "cool". OTOH, if you do some soul-searching and come up with a design and colors that are relevant to who you are and what you feel and your opinion of life and skydiving and the universe and everything, then there's a good chance that others will think it's "cool". Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Instead of just focusing on breaking, it seems more prudent to think about bending as well as breaking. Breaking is an obvious issue, and the results are obvious. However, a bent pin is more of a silent killer. It can easily go unnoticed on quick visual inspection and make it dramatically harder to pull the reserve when it's needed. Better QA in from the pin manufacturer seems like the most cost-effective solution. Increasing the pin diameter might be a good stop-gap, but how long before container manufacturers use that as an excuse to increase spring-force on the reserve PC? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Amen. Another classic gubberment mistake, thinking they could/should regulate that monopoly. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD