skybytch

Congrats, you get to be a mother-in-law! My son, who was 16 when I started posting here, is now 27 and is getting engaged next year. He'll probably get married before I do.

While the Vector 2 is a decent container - it was a very fine container back in it's day - I find it difficult to understand how any jumper who learned this century would prefer it when they have the financial ability (and desire, judging by some of your previous posts) to be jumping something built this century that is safe to use for all types of modern skydiving. That's like driving a 1995 car today. You're in a position to get rid of monthly payments, have a reasonably new car and have $400/month available to put away toward a modern container or spend on jumps. Seriously... at 100 jumps, how can you not be already filling out the order form and dreaming about stacks of jump tickets?

Twenty jumps plus a month (or a brand new container in only four or five months) vs the privilege of paying the same amount to be driving a "nice" car. To each his own, I guess. Most jumpers I know would choose the jumps.

I just got a 2001 Toyota Corolla with 120k on it for $2000. I can put another 100k on it and still sell it for close to what I paid for it. That's five years of driving a comfortable, reliable car with good gas mileage and - get this - NO MONTHLY PAYMENTS! You should sell what you have for what you can get for it, pay off the loan, buy something inexpensive and spend the rest of the money on jumps, beer and women. Or are you not really a skydiver?

I had a Barbie dream house. It's a good thing my parents never found out what Barbie was doing with Ken in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom... Which might help explain that whole single teenage mother thing...

Kinda like how we laughed at the guy who got a Prodigy for his first main. To the OP - you're going about it the right way. Don't be afraid to piece together a rig - you may find a container that will fit you and your canopies from one person, a reserve from another, a main from another... If you can't find a complete used rig that will work for you, focus on getting container/reserve/AAD first, then the main. You can get demo mains from many manufacturers and fly them for a few weeks for a small charge. You many also be able to borrow mains from other jumpers. That's also the best way to decide which main you prefer before you buy. Don't limit your search to the classifieds here. Call or email every gear dealer out there; one of them may have exactly what you want and some of them can provide excellent information and guidance on gear selection. And be sure that folks at your home dz know that you are looking for suitable gear.

That doesn't look good, that's fat. Or at least I was told I was fat when I was 5'8", 190. Now that I'm at 130 and a size 2, there's no way I'd date a guy who was my height and had 60 pounds on me.

We need some more D if that's going to happen. Gawd I miss Blake...

Pretty much as expected. The Sharks suck. Oh well, at least my fantasy team is doing okay...

There's a video out there that Aerodyne put out back when they were Aerodyne Research; IIRC it was even shipped with Tri's for awhile. It shows a method of packing that makes the openings much better. Ask a few jumpers who've been around for awhile, someone has got to have a copy laying around.

Fly free, Don. Thanks for the jumps and the laughs. Say hi to Al for me...

I got a trophy for accuracy once. Which is funny, because I didn't hit the peas once.

Joe showed up at Davis last year wanting to learn to skydive. He got about 11 jumps under his belt when he got hurt last spring. He was recovering well from the injuries, and then they found out he had liver cancer. He left us earlier this month. Joe was a really nice guy with a big smile and a bigger heart. He struggled with AFF but kept at it, always with a good attitude. He will be missed. Enjoy your new wings, Joe. I'm sure you'll have plenty to teach us about flying when we meet again.

Your home dz is the best place to buy used gear. Ask other jumpers if they know anybody selling something that would work for you. Check with the gear store, if there is one. Ask the local riggers.

Jello shots.

Sellout.

Not my logic. Yours. Fairly faulty, too. Which is surprising considering your profession. But you just keep sliding down that slippery slope, Prof. You know you're right and that's all that matters.

It's not a good thing. Without consequences for surviving something stupid, stupid will keep happening - "I did that and survived so that rule must be bullshit." Without an SOP that assures that every violator receives the same punishment, we end up with one person getting their ratings yanked for and another getting away with the same exact offense. It also needs to be transparent. If it's a big secret what actually happened to the offender, the membership has to wonder who is being protected - the membership or the offender?

Really? I know lots of people who would be stoked to get two student jumps a day and have the rest of the day to fun jump. The "rotation" system you describe means that if someone isn't willing to spend the entire day/weekend working and isn't able to do 5+ jumps in a day, they don't get any paid skydives. No wonder you have a limited number of rating holders; not everybody wants to spend all of their skydiving time working, but if they don't they won't get enough work jumps in to renew their rating.

Instead of having to rush things at the end of the day, why not have whoever is scheduling tandems and students do a better job of making sure there are enough instructors and rigs to cover the number of passengers and students they schedule for the day? Looks way more professional to the passengers and students if they don't see their instructors running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to get everything done in time. If you don't have enough time to pack your rig between work jumps, how much time are you really able to spend with the student? You're having to rush the ground training, rush the dirt dive, rush the gear up... What's the hurry? Tomorrow is another day. The dzo will survive if that one jump doesn't get done in time. By NOT rushing to make a load, you're showing the student that it's better to not jump sometimes. Is this not a lesson that we want new jumpers to learn without physical pain?

Kinda like the $664k fine, huh?

So he's provided cheap jumps for others and has racked up more jumps than just about anybody else. I can see the first point being "contributing", but what does one person making a lot of jumps do for the sport in general? And how does that stack up against using non-rated instructors while advertising the use of rated instructors (look at the website) or giving people FAA riggers tickets without making them even touch a rigging tool (I can vouch for that one, he gave me mine; apparently the FAA didn't think much of it since he's not a DPRE anymore), or not requiring the use of seat belts. And these are just things that I have personal knowledge of - I have secondhand knowledge of many other things that happen at Lodi that are sketchy at best and dangerous at worst. If it were only happening to experienced skydivers, I wouldn't be saying a word. I'd rather my friends not die, but they are all grown up skydivers who can make their own risk assessment decisions. Students and tandem passengers don't have enough information to make those decisions. Nobody has a right to put a tandem passenger or a student at increased risk just to make a buck. Anybody who does so as a regular practice is not contributing good things to the sport, no matter how cheap the jumps are or how many jumps the dzo has logged.

Please specify exactly what Bill has contributed to sport parachuting over the years. I keep seeing that statement, but no one ever seems to be able to come up with any supporting facts.

If I want to jump an aggressive canopy and/or an aggressive wingloading, then yes, I do want USPA to have the authority to tell me "no, you can't jump that 58 sq ft Icarus Ridicarus until after you've received additional training focused on the ability to fly that canopy without killing or injuring other people." How do we keep 100 jump wonders out of wingsuits? Someone on the dz has the authority to say no. Any S&TA that is worth a shit knows what the local jumpers are flying and which ones shouldn't really be flying what they have. A BSR would give them something to point at when they tell Joe Awesome that a 1.6 wingloading at 200 jumps isn't the best idea and they'll need to go on down the road if they want to jump it. Since when are instructors required to fly docile canopies? I don't recall that being part of the AFF cert course I took a couple of years ago, is it new, did I miss something? Good point. Where is a new skydiver supposed to get those tools, and what assurance does s/he have that the information s/he is getting is good?

Is asking USPA to live up to it's supposed purpose of "keeping skydivers safe" really so much to ask? Any one jumper can only "do something" at the local level. Most of those you see discussing this issue here have "done something" and continue to "do something" at their local level. And we've been asking USPA to support what we're doing for years now...