goobersnuftda

Valinda------PM sent As for the insurance, yes skydivng is covered. The only exclusions are if you are being paid as a PROFESSIONAL, the boogie is not such an event.

I'm leaving for Thailand in 8 days and of course I have travel insurance. This situation may be unique because I'm Canadian but here goes. Get a CAA membership (like the AAA in the US). Then you may apply for travel insurance called Travel Gold. For my age, I pay $54/year and I get to travel anywhere in the world for up to 28 days coverage. $5 million in complete coverage. I don't have to notify anyone when I leave or where I go just as long as I am not staying out of Canada for longer than 28 days. There are other packages that let you stay longer etc. but for my traveles, it is the most afforable travel insurance possible. Comes in so very handy for those spur of the moment business trips into the great US of A. I hear they have some pricey bills if you are unfortunate enough to have to use them :)

I just see bad things hapening when there is no competition out there. Can you imagine what it would be like if there was only one oil company to get gas from?

Very true, I have a number of DVD players that are Region/Zone free and play anything from NTSC to PAL. Burn anything from the internet and the thing plays absolutely any DVD I can throw at it (Divx too). Now with the controlled HDMI Blu-ray, we are back to the same old controlling what region of disk you are ALLOWED to watch. I have one of those in line sound supression samplers that takes the edge off overly loud commercials and way too loud car chaise scenes in movies, with HDMI, there is nothing to accept that like the good old RCA or composite jacks. Now that Blu Ray won, I still see a 10 year gap in people upgrading to buy it. Normal DVD's rule, they are cheap as borsh to buy, burn and play on. There are a limited few that must be in the upper 99th percentile in performance but at that level, you pay for it.

Blu Ray CLICKY Looks like the last nail in the coffin came from a company called Wal-Mart. No more support for Toshibas HD-DVD format from means no more sales from the #1 retailer of DVD disks. I am glad that there is a winner but also sad and warry about there being no compeitition. With another player out there in the field, there is always the need to drive costs down on players, DVD burners and of the disk it's self. Let's not hope that the evil b*stards take advantage of their new victory and try to hose all of us to recoup their investment in a short as time as possible. Anyone find the best price on a burner and set top player?

The way I understand it here in Canada, at 1,500 hrs you are done on a Cessna engine. It is time to completely overhaul it. Last time I chequed after all the dingle widgits get done, $40,000 - $50,000. You can run it on condition but when you have to do something to it like replace a pot, low compression and do a top end etc. then engine is done and you lose your $4,000 - $5,000 engine core deposit. It's your new boat anchor. I started a thread a while back about how the US rules are different because they treat a skydiver plane under different rules. CLICKY

I believe the problem with the WFFC is the same as happens in all sorts of other businesses if you don't keep on track of things. If you are #1 you are only there until you mess up then someone else will take your place. Our company used to go to many trade shows. Eventually the promoters got so out of hand that they wanted to more profit from fees to be on display. They started at $400/booth then over 10 years creped up to $2,500. In the end, the only people who would be on display are the squeegee mop people, investment councilors and quickie food processors. And these are trade shows that started out as commercial equipment/farm dealers. The extra profit is to come from admittance fees NOT the displays. We all stayed away and the trade show suffered and never recovered because of the type of people it then attracted. So too is the situation for Norton Anti Virus. They lost focus and became way to huge, fat, bloated and overpriced. 120+ meg RAM for a memory resident program, are you mental !!! Along came AVG and picked up where the predecessor had failed. When I was at the WFFC and talked to many of the vendors, the majority of them were all complaining about the increase in price to be on display. Many said they would not come next year and true to their word, many did not. Once the skydiving companies stop coming, your “boogie” is nothing more than the same planes that are at other DZ but just at the same time. The overwhelming complaint was the WFFC attendance fee. Many people do not or can not show up for the whole 10 day event. Whether they were there for the weekend or just a handful of days, they paid the same admittance price as someone who was there from beginning to end. That kept people away as well. I hope the WFFC can pull it togehter but it looks like other boogies like Summerfest and Skyfest have taken over.

I would like to read that article but I sure am not going to pay the web site to read it. Do you have another link to something that can be read without shelling out $$$?

I have a question about jump aircraft in the USA. Here in Canada, our Cessna 182 has an engine life span of 1,500 hours.....thats it. You can run the engine on condition but once the slightest thing needs to be done on the over timed out engine, it is done right then and there and you loose your $5,000 core deposit towards a new engine. Likewise, just as soon as our Twin Otter's run out of their time by Canadian rules, the USA snatches them right up. The big reason is that here we are regulated just the same as Air Canada or West Jet. We are a commercial company carrying commercial passengers. From what I have heard and known in the past, the USA does not classify a skydiver as a "person" but they fall under "cargo" rules and therefore they can do much more with a plane or it's engines than we can in Canada. So shut up already and ask the question ...:) OK, how long can you use a Cessna 182 in the USA?

Our club too pays $5/hr for our 182. The biggest thing to all pilots as was mentioned here is for them to gain flying hours. What this does is have them use our plane and it costs them nothing to fly (flying club is $180/hr to rent). Many of our pilots have used us to gain hours and have moved on to full time commercial work because of that. Many of our pilots are from the military as the training base for the air force pilots is just outside the city. One of the current Canadian Snowbirds aerobatic team was one of our old skydive pilots. A symbiotic realationship that benifits us all.....oh that is what symbiotic means :)

There is competition out there for your skydiving boogie dollars and all that has to happen is for the current #1 event to slip up once and they may never be able to regain their glory again (Swedish Herc Boogie & WFFC for example). I believe that true large boogies are slowly being replaced by the smaller more efficent boogies filled with Otters, Sky Vans, Casas, King Airs etc. The boogies now seem to be focused on travel to smaller destinations that you can skydving at not because of the aircraft but because of the location (Caribbean during the winter). Some of the larger companies have been dissapointed with boogies that have fallen through. C-130 Herc boogie for the Galapacos Islands-Cancelled, C-130 Herc boogie for Shrilanka (I think)-Cancelled (military coup going on,sure that's bad but I guess people dangling under parachutes just gives the attacking troops target practice :) The large boogies, professionaly run are beginning to be far and few between and are not for the "just show up" crowd. Pay your $$$ in October for a boogie in February: Thai Sky Festival (Herc C-130, full and booked days before web page is even open in October) Exotic Sky Adventures (Casa in Dominican) Skydive Belize Vietnam Boogie AN 26 Then there are just some off the wall boogies that happen randomly around the world. There was a 7 day boogie with a C-130 Her for a few days in 2007 France then there are these ones if you speak the languague Brazil Germany Back in the good old days of camping in the trailer with the family, you could travel around the countryside and always get a camp site no matter where you pulled into. Now with the world being a smaller pace, the average income of people rising greatly to what our parents earned and the advent of the internet, our family has already booked our campsites for June-July. Skydiving is moving in the same direction. Those that have the $$$ and the ability to commit 5 months ahead will be the only ones going.

This news just came out: CLICKY

Yes it always is but I was wondering if there were any DZ people I knew from North America going so I could meet up with you there.

Christmas is over and the last of those oh so precious relatives are packing up their vehicles to leave so now it is looking forward to the next event. Is anyone here going to the That Ski Festival?

The only time my rig garnered attention was when a senior worker was working the X-ray/density machine. When my rig went through the scanner, he knew what it was but called all the lower worker bees over to show them the display. It gets their attention because of the high density metal on the 3 rings and hip rings. They didn't seem to be bothered about the wires and batteries. All they see all day long are cool blue and green screens on the scans but on my rig, that BRIGHT RED sure does show up and a dense metal. The next issue is Customs/Immigration......Welcome back to Canada Mr. Goober but let me get this straight. You are a single male in your early 30's, you traveled alone down to the Arizona desert but a few hours from the Mexican border. I see by the camping gear that you used your tent in the desert and did not stay in a hotel. Do I have that right? Yessss, sir. I went to a training camp :)

Yes I use to watch Exotic Sky Adventures but things have changed with that company. This is the original one that started the Thai Sky Festival I believe. As time went on, those that actually organized the Thai Festival (because they lived there for 30+ years) broke off and just do that festival themselves. Derek Thomas (Pres. Javelin) was part owner of the Exotic Sky Adventures company with a businesses partner from Europe but it looks like now that he is no longer part of the company. Exotic Sky Adventures was lined up to go to many kewl Herc boogies like Shri Lanka (military coop happened just before the event started) and also Equator and the Galapagos Island (looked like it never materialized). It’s hard to put on such exotic events with a Herc. Looks like this company has stopped reaching for such events and have kicked back to regular turbine planes in normal warm island resorts. That’s fine and everything, I’m just looking for something more unique. The skydive onto the base camp on Mt. Everest looks interesting but to land on the side of the mountain at 13,500 ft, OK but not what I’m looking for……I want a boogie with many jumps. It also seems that there are a lot of these companies that are based in Europe. Unless you live in Europe and are paid in Euros, paying for their trips sucks ($1.50 gets you 1 Euro). I think that for now, the Sky Thai festival is the only place in the world like it left. $1,600 gets you 20 jumps, all accommodations and transfers with a 2 day break in a 5 star hotel and breakfast every day. And at $25/jump ticket if you want to jump more from the Herc or even the Huey, beach jumps at the end of the day where the hotel staff come up to you with a tray of cold beer….can’t beat that.

I fly all over the place (and choose West Jet as #1 every single time). There are two things to take note of. (1) West Jet does not inspect bagage, the airport personnel do. Unless you blab to everyone that you have a parachute, the person at the ticket check in counter will know nothing. (2) That may not bet the greatest answer but how about this one. West Jet DOES allow you to have a AAD as cary on :) Click Here for the response directly from West Jet.

I know there are lots of get together Boogies around the world but does anyone know of some that are unique? WFFC is good but 80% of what is there is available just about anywhere in the US during the year. The Swedish Herc boogie has been a now show for the past 4 years and may never be again. Exocic Sky Adventures has downgraded to normal turbine aircraft at vacation resorts. The only unique one I know of is jumping from Herc C-130s at the Thai Sky Festival Does anyone know of a unique experience around the world that is in the top 5 skydiving adventrues to do in a lifetime?

I have a 20D and will be mounting a 580EX to my camera helmet. The flash will be mounted flat not the traditional "L" shape obvisously but the quesiton I have is the issue of the focusing transfering over to the IR sensor on the flash. What issues does this present for daytime/nightime free fall flash shots?

Yes do you have to clean your sensor. My 20D came from the factory with some gunk on it and the very first vacation I went on from changing lenses, dust collected. Sensor Brush Here is just one but there are tones of companies that have cleaning products and with web page instruction videos as well.

Just under canopy. We have had jumpers try to jump with a magazine to get a shot of them in free fall and its tough to keep it in your hands.

I finally D/L the demo and it works just fine. The Russian internet and their servers are very, very flakey. Why they didn't host it on a 1st work server to promote their program was a bad busines move. In the world of the internet, no one gives a crap if it is coming down from an actual Russian site or a Asian site. Anyways, eventhough you have the full demo, it still may be screwed because of the bad connections and the install doesn't CRC check the files like every other rational programmer on the planet performs before the install starts. A bad or corrupted file and f*ck up peoples computers just like what is being posted here. Game runs good, graphics are better than I expected and its pretty nice for a BASE game. Some crazy things that must only be Russian though like "expense hard drive" means how much room you have left on it. It is the only company I have even known that the Esc key is actually used to progress or start parts of the program and not "escape" out of them. Maybe the Russians want to just be different :)

Does anyone have a better link for the demo than this Russian company? They may be new to democracy but man, does their internet network suck-ski.

Sky Thai Festival 2006 What an awesome Boogie !!!!!!

As a new jumper with 55 jumps, you do realize that those landing/flaring bruises are called "temporary skydiving tatoos"? Those you you definately do earn :)