jerry81

I started paying more attention to excess brake line after reading about this incident. On the Wings I used to jump, I stowed it like Sunpath recommends. My new Voodoo has a keeper for it on the other side of the riser that shouldn't be too hard to sew on. As for canopy size- I'd say I jump a medium canopy (135) and I've caught myself once with two fingers already through the excess loop after jumping another guy's packjob. (One more reason why I always pack my own)

Yellow, white and blue. But it's borrowed- I haven't placed an order for my own yet, but I'm thinking about something like this:

Why, thanks!

I started skydiving because my dad bought me an airplane you'd shoot up in the air and it would come gliding down when I was four and I've been fascinated by flying ever since..because of all the kites and model gliders and rockets I've owned since and watched with joy and slight envy as they flew above...because of all the umbrellas I broke jumping off porches...because I watched PointBreak in fifth grade and knew I had to try how flying your body around for five minutes felt like...and of course, because I got a hefty sum of money from a minor car crash two years ago and found the perfect way to spend it. Now BASE jumping- I will start that someday when it feels right because of the surreal feeling of doing something completely unnatural to human beings I only learned to appreciate after seeing the airplane above me for the first time...because of the rush I get from pulling low...because of that infinite moment between pitching the pc and feeling the first tug of the opening canopy when I, even with a reserve on my back, feel suspended on the very edge of life...and because I felt something pulling me down while watching my first "live" base jump and realized my childhood fear of heights was perhaps not the fear of falling, but rather the fear of losing control and just leaping off.

I kinda already do that (help with teaching) to get cheaper jumps.

so far i managed to flare it to a full stop only a couple of times. at the same time lenghts of those "swoops" were also the longest. Is this what we should be focused on our landing, or is it something completely different? I think control is more than just that or landing accurately every time. We can discuss it saturday morning when we're driving to the dz. (yep, check the forecast

Yup, tell him to try to smuggle back some of that stuff.

Okay, I was half-expecting something like that. But I may pull off landings where it would seem that I'm in full control when I'm actually on the verge of losing it, so in the end I am the only person who knows exactly how much control I have over the canopy. (Given the lack of good coaches.) Knowing the approximate distances for different landings could, imo, provide me with an objective method of evaluating my performance...a kind of a safeguard- obviously, I don't want to progress to more aggressive approaches before I feel that I can execute every landing with the same high amount of control, but my feeling could turn out to be incorrect- i.e. I might start with carving approaches and do them safely, but I'd be doing so without first learning how to squeeze the, say, upper 15 percent of performance out of my canopy on double fronts. Does this sound reasonable or am I worrying just a bit too much? As for coaches...I could try, although I doubt I could get enough people inerested. In two or three years, perhaps, but right now I don't think there's enough interest yet.

Thanks a lot, Tom!

(hope this fits on the BASE board, since it's a base movie) The song is The Jumper by Third Eye Blind, starts like this; "Wish you would step off from that ledge my friend, we could Cut ties with all the lies that you've been living in" Okay, so maybe he says "step back", but "step off" just fits in better. And the refrain goes "[maybe today] We can put the past away..." I used to have it on my computer and now I just can't find the damn thing. I think I dl'ed it from headdown.net, but I'm not 100%. Everytime I play this song I start looking for the vid and it's slowly driving me crazy...

Not only that, they even had used panty vending machines... check it-no pics, though

I don't think we give that guy enough credit. After all, being unhurt after so many botched landings is an accomplishment in itself. (this is only meant to illustrate my position better, not hijack the thread)

I've decided to post this question after reading Spizzzarko's distance poll, although I'm not sure of its relevance to (my) swoop progression. I'm interested in some general guidelines on what would be thought as a good or excellent swoop (distance-wise) in no-wind conditions using - double fronts - 90° or less carving approach -180° carve -270° or more carve how much further you should be able to get landing in a moderate (say, 5-10 knots) downwind and additionally, how much distance do you gain landing on rear risers. Also, when would be a good time to start learning rear riser landings- before progressing to a more aggressive techique (riser turns) or after mastering all kinds of approaches. I'm flying an Impulse 135 loaded at approx. 1.6 and have barely started to learn what this canopy can do, so I'll be sticking to straight-in front riser approaches for now. Currently, I'm working on perfecting my flare so the canopy would plane out with as little toggle input as possible and I thought that knowing if my distance was good or not could help with my learning. Feel free to correct me if I'm thinking in the wrong direction. Canopy coaching is not an option around where I jump (which sucks, because the way things are going, it's probably just a matter of time before someone gets hurt) and while there are people who can offer me some basic advice, none of them come even close to some of those posting in these forums. Any input will be greatly appreciated. I'm flying at the border of my limits and want to be as safe as possible.

I'd say #2. And that's a Wings if I'm not mistaken.

While I've no intention of arguing with the above statement... ...it should be noted that the american "freedom" seems to have a very flexible meaning that does not necessarily at all times coincide with how the rest of the world understands the term.

yes they do, it's on fox. Not to get in another political debate, but that sure brightened up my morning.

That sounds almost too good to be true. Are you sure the price includes both slots?

Red Bull Flugtag. It's a competition of hand-made flying machines. Basically, you make a team with a couple of friends, design the wackiest possible aircraft (looks come before functionality) and launch it over water, hoping it will fly just a little bit, or at least look good falling. I think it also has to be manned. The perfect thing for bored skydivers.

That would be an impossible pull. A hard pull is just that- a pull where you have to yank harder than usual to get the pc out. [edit]In case the hard pull turns out to be too hard, don't spend too much time on it- try twice, then I'd say go directly to the reserve. If the pc is still in the pouch, it's less likely for your main to deploy than if you got it out and nothing happened.

Green with envy, are we?

Great idea, Uros, count me in! But I want Gi coaching me, too...

Wow, good question!! Anyone? Define "head down". Depending on the amount of surface you present to the wind while flying headfirst towards the ground, the speeds can range from less than the freefly "sweet spot", which is around 150 (actually, I have no idea what's the slowest you can go on your head, I mention this only to illustrate it better) to the record 330 mph. So talking about average speed can be a bit tricky.

Feed them hard liquor with their regular food. Supposedly thwarts their growth (and intellectually, I don't suppose they get very far past the "stupid&playful" phase either.)

Bwahahahahaha...I know, but didn't want to say it to his face.

This happened two months ago at the Mondial. After getting piss-drunk at the Icarius party (free drinks, who could blame us), having a photo session in one of the Porters they left around (not to mention the PC12 someone left unlocked) and making a total mess in out team tent, we decide it's time to go home. Four of us get into my car (in my defense, I had been drinking nothing but orange juice for the last two hours, our camp was less than a mile away and you rarely met a car on the shortcut we found, night or day), the others get into the van. We just about take off, when the drunkest of us all stumbles from the van and climbs onto the hood of my car. I drive off very slowly and then suddenly slam the brakes, hoping he'll roll off and decide it was a bad idea, but he holds on without a problem and then decides to sit on the roof instead. (Which is just rubber-coated fabric, as my car is one of those half-cabrio models that open at the top like a can of fish.) I eye the roof with suspicion as it creaks and stretches, but the decide it will apparently hold and off we drive, the four of us in the car howling with laughter and the guy on the roof yelling obscenities at more sober people staring at us in disbelief (luckily noone understood a word). The mile-long drive home is one of the stupidest, yet at the same time funniest things I've done in my life. Soon after we leave the dropzone, my friend on the roof leans down over the edge, reaches through the open window, grabs my head and starts shaking it vigorously, all the time yelling at me to drive faster. Laughing, but somehow still aware of the severity of the situation, I manage to keep us on the road while I beat his hands off me, which leads to him falling from the roof down to the hood again and splaying himself across the windshield. I am now driving with my head out the window and the guy blocking my view is getting soaked with windshield-cleaning liquid (my first reaction when he rolled down was, of course, to spray him). On one longer straight stretch of road we almost hit 50mph, and I open the roof to tell the fifth passenger he should hang on. He is sitting on the edge of the now open roof and does not understand a word I'm saying, but it doesn't really matter because right then we go over a speed bump and he falls over into the car with all the grace of a bag of potatoes and wedges his head firmly somewhere between the front and the back seats. His legs are now sticking out the roof and his ass is in a position that makes my steering and shifting gears a lot harder than before. (Actually, we almost hit a fence at that point because it was impossible to steer right without first pushing his bum out of the way). From then on our journey is quite uneventful, with the upside-down guy yelling out that he's stuck every ten seconds or so, and the other four of us giggling helplessly all the way to our camp. What we did there is another story altogether and qualifies more for the "regular" drunk stories, because the levels of stupidity never really reached those achieved on our little drive home. Oh yeah, and next morning; "Hey ***, do you remember how you got back last night?" Him: "Uh, we walked, didn't we?"