riddler

Glad to hear it Michael. Hope you get at least part of your house, other possessions back! Sorry to hear you're moving, though Hope they get you a nice cave there in Illinois. See ya at Safety Day tomorrow. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

This wasn't a sentiment - it was a statement. Regardless of how you I or anyone else feels, dz attendance will go down if things like this happen. As far as not having anything to hide, you can let whoever you want search you or your property as much as they want. Anyone does that to me, I'm going to make their lives Hell. Period. I got the money, sense of retaliation and I'll make the time to do it. And the funny part is I've got nothin' to hide

I was going to say good for you, until I read the part about becoming a manager. Eck. When I was in Astronautics, our managers decided we all should have Apple Macs for our desktop machines We spent all day terminal logged into our UNIX boxes from the Macs. I expect you to make such great decisions now that you're in management. I got out of it after three and a half years, and I still feel kind of stupid for staying in it that long. On the plus side, it's hard to find work in Engineering that's as glamorous. And the people are all pretty sharp. Congratulations on your promotion!! Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Right or wrong, legal or illegal, this is going to be bad for the dropzone and boogie. If I were the DZO, I would be raising hell with the police - getting lawyers involved, et al. If word gets out that you go to dropzone X or boogie Y, and the police might detain you and your vehicle all day just because they suspect you might have drugs, no one's gonna go to that DZ or boogie. Why waste your time? I feel bad that the poor guy - doesn't even get to jump while they are waiting. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

OK - lately, I've been trying to limit my posts to skydiving related, and this is kind of related, because my g/f and I are going to to see her family in California (bay area) and jump with her sister at her DZ, then her dad at her father's DZ. So we just bought two tickets from Denver to San Fransisco, and the taxes and fees are about 28% of the ticket price! Is it just me, or have taxes/fees gone up quite a bit in the last few years? Here's the breakdown for two tickets: Basic Fare (USD): 480.00 Tax: 76.00 Processing Fees: 19.00 Automation Fee: 37.86 (purchased on-line) So what's the deal? Obviously, with "automation fees", we're just getting blatently screwed - I make Internet apps for a living, and they can be cheap or expensive depending on how they are set up, but for the volume a travel agency does, it shouldn't cost that much per ticket. Have taxes gone up because of all the wonderful new security measures at our airports that work so well? I was hoping that since there's a lot of pilots and people that work in the industry here, someone would know why it's so expensive. Listen to me - I sound like an old person complaining about the price of everything! Why, In my day ... Side note: I checked on train tickets for the same weekend. They were actaully a few dollars cheaper, but it takes a little longer to get there

Agree - two fingers. I've heard much better freeflyers than me say the following - when you start free-flying, you control yourself with your arms/legs. When you get much better, it's your hands/feet. When you're REALLY good, you control with your fingers. I'm still working on the legs/arms thing. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

When a visitor comes to Norway to skydive, are they questioned/inspected about their wingloading? If a visitor is not within the regulations, are they barred from jumping their own canopy?

I've seen a lot of good posts on this thread and I have to believe that making recommendations like this is a great idea. Making it the law would be a bad idea. There are too many variables that go into canopy and landing skills. AggieDave mentioned coaching - that is probably the strongest factor, IMO. One person mentioned that lighter people have a naturally low wing-loading to begin with. I would also add that CanuckInUSA and I jump from 17-18,000 feet ASL and land at 5000 ASL. Higher = less air = go faster = land faster = different canopy recommendations. Also, I think many people have suggested that the same size canopies from different manufacturers behave very different. Guidelines and recommendations are great - they help us understand where we are in relation to the average and can maybe hint that we are too far out of bounds, or if we have room to play with smaller canopies. But the best information comes from our own instructors and mentors - you have to actually WATCH people fly and land before you can make a statement about what they should be doing. Our fellow skydivers and instructors that we jump with every weekend (or day) are in the best position to mention to each other that your canopy may be too small or too aggressive. They are also a great resource to ask if you are considering purchasing a new canopy - they've SEEN you land. I don't think this sort of self-policing is all that hard to do. We are, after all, a community, are we not?

Just an idea for you inventor types out there To clarify - by "reefing", you mean the way the lines come together in order to go through the slider grommets? That would effectively "bow" the canopy at the beginning of the opening, so that it helps to slow the opening itself. Also, the greater the reef, the more friction is applied to the lines during opening, due to the increased angle of the lines bending through the grommets - correct? I knew that engineering degree would come in handy some day

*cough* 15 year-old Vector 2 *cough* Still very jumpable

Why not just get a bigger slider? Would it take a lot of standard surface area to equal the drag of a pocket? Or maybe the pockets help stabilize the slider on one side as it's coming down? As a side note - on collapsing - if you really wanted to have one of these, it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to fork and extend the drawstrings of a collapsible slider through the inside of the pockets to the trailing edge. Then when you collapsed the slider, it would pull the pockets almost inside out so they no longer inflate. It would take greater strength to pull the drawstring, though.

U da bom, erno! Maybe you could show some yellow heave-age dribbling down the chin to distinguish it from the constipated icon.

Yeah, yeah. It all seems so easy when you're only doing 110 MPH. Get some tandem instructors to go with you - no drogue - and turn points at 200 - than you'll know what it's like Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I almost felt the grove once. It was a grove of trees. High winds on landing. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I get this one when trying to search from the "dropzones" page: A fatal error has occured: Unable to auto-create user: HASH(0x837a2ec). Reason: Failed to execute query: 'INSERT INTO dz_Users (Newsletter,Username,Password,Email,Name,ReceiveMail,Status) VALUES (?,?,?,?,?,?,?)' Reason: Duplicate entry '' for key 2 Please enable debugging in setup for more details. The last bit is my email address, as posted in my profile, but I don't like to post it directly in newsgroups, because spam-bots pick up on these.

Sorry - I was confusing "expert"with "professional" Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

o i c. So this usually refers to people that are attempting to dock, but unable. Count me in!! Kind of like getting in before a locked thread - you really aren't contributing anything, but it's nice to say you were there.

Yeah - I've done that a few times in Vegas myself. It's pretty expensive though. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

heehee - nice one.

k - I don't have tons of jumps, and I don't do big ways. Can someone explain this to me? I can understand why judges care if the dock is as planned and slot-perfect, but I don't get this first part. Do teams get disqualified if not everyone leaves the airplane? And is that a situation that happens a lot with big-ways? As the solo FF, I'm usually towards the back and I never see people ahead of me forget to jump out ...

Not that its terribly important, but I would love just one additional "puking' icon for some of the gross things I've seen in Talk-Back The little guy could be green, with crossed-eyes and bulging checks, as though on the verge of a hurl. The markup could be (bracket)sick(bracket).

Missed the lock by -->that

See - I had this plan for strapping 336 F class motors onto a platform, standing on it with my rig on and using it to launch me up to altitude where I could separate and freefall back to earth and open my parachute. It's not as cheap as a jump ticket, but I think the babes would dig me for doing it. Another perfectly crazy idea made illegal by the government. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Not gonna defend the tunnel people because it is expensive and it is hard to book time, but the demand is good for the business. More tunnels are being built, and hopefully the price will come down. I've been to the one in Vegas twice - it's the oldest and has it's drawbacks, but there's rarely much more than an hour or two wait. I hope you are able to book time in advance for your next trip - they are great fun!

I would say ask for oxygen anytime you think you need it. Better to be safe. But we do have a problem with SOME people using oxygen to recover from the previous night's festivities.