JohnMitchell

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Everything posted by JohnMitchell

  1. JohnMitchell
    Just curious if many of you are still jumping Vectors out there. I got my rating on Vector 20+ years ago. When the Sigma came out 10+ years ago, I made the switch and really fell in love with the cleaner system and better C/G of the higher drogue attachment. I'm really reluctant to switch back to Vectors. How do the rest of you feel?
  2. JohnMitchell
    I don't know if I've ever had a passenger have one or not. (And yes, I can usually tell if a woman is having an "O") but looking back I've have a lot of enthusiastic women passengers who couldn't stop smiling, giggling, etc. As much as I love jumping, I've never gotten an "O" from opening. Hell, that'd be cool.
  3. JohnMitchell
    Ahh, doing what they do best. God bless 'em.
  4. JohnMitchell
    Hard to disagree with that. From what I've read, it seems they reward risky, moronic behavior until the house of cards falls down.
  5. JohnMitchell
    I heard it was because they'd lose their Federal highway money if they didn't post speed limits.
  6. JohnMitchell
    Sure. But realize that wind direction also can change with altitude, often a little, sometimes a lot. That's when it gets complicated. You can calculate a vector for your time spent in each altitude block and add the vectors together. I think they get into all that for HALO/HAHO jumps. Winds at 25K can easily be 50kts. I've seen them in the 100's at 30,000'.
  7. JohnMitchell
    "No, it's 'After opening, get control of YOUR canopy'."
  8. JohnMitchell
    And if it only affected your ability to borrow money, well fine. But insurance companies are now using credit scores to set your personal rates, a good score being considered less of a risk. I just got over $1000 back from Geico on my car insurance because my credit score had climbed back to a certain threshold. Good for me now but bad that I had been paying extra for those several years.
  9. JohnMitchell
    Beautifully said, as always, Skratch.
  10. JohnMitchell
    Interesting viewpoint. I'll have to ponder that a while.
  11. JohnMitchell
    I would love for it to be perfectly safe. I've already seen too many people die doing it. I would like to avoid that in the future.
  12. JohnMitchell
    Nice job.
  13. JohnMitchell
    What he said.
  14. JohnMitchell
    No, the answer if 42. I learned that while hitchhiking.
  15. JohnMitchell
    I was carrying about $80K in debt on a rental home. One of my credit cards offered me $50K in cash for 9 months, interest free. I hopped on that offer like it was free beer. Then my credit score took a 100 point nose dive. The reason? I had one of my credit cards maxed out to the tune of $50K and I wasn't paying it off. It didn't matter how much money I had in the stock market or other real estate I owned outright. They were only looking at that small part of the whole picture. I paid off the whole amount at 9 months and never paid a dime of interest on it. Still it's taken me several years to bring my score back up.
  16. JohnMitchell
    Happy B-day to ya. We all know there's only ONE "The Don!" Hope you have a great time.
  17. JohnMitchell
    I like how you think. Jimi got me thru all those teenage years. I can never repay him.
  18. JohnMitchell
    Damn, all you need is cabin pressure and oxygen. Can it really be that complicated after almost 70 years of building jet fighters?
  19. JohnMitchell
    Very interesting point there. I still use an old school Alti-III as my main altimeter and use the digitals sometimes for the beeps and recording function. Our brains are analog. When the stuff hits the fan and your brain goes back to caveman, analog gauges really do get the point across quickly, don't they?
  20. JohnMitchell
    Very cool indeed. And as a physics professor, what a lot of great lesson tie-ins to our sport. Too many kids think science is boring. Hell, it's the $#it, Bay-Bee!
  21. JohnMitchell
    That's not selfish. It's your life. Live it your way. That's how we raised our kids.
  22. JohnMitchell
    Good point. Sooner or later every jumper will land off. How you prepare yourself mentally and practice for that day will determine the outcome.
  23. JohnMitchell
    You and I go way back. I know you know how to spot.
  24. JohnMitchell
    You, Dave and I are all very experienced and we've all thrown our share of WDI's. With that said, I'll go with Dave's assessment that all square rigs have made starting the day with a WDI unnecessary. Maybe for a tight demo, extreme weather or tight DZ with students, maybe, but I don't think I'll be hucking one at my present DZ.
  25. JohnMitchell
    I did for years.