DrewEckhardt

Because the industry told them that Velcro was too 1980s. It does provide a nice place to stick your toggles and provided you bother to stow your toggles on landing has no effect on Spectra line life (Spectra lines have shrunk too much after 300 jumps. You can just replace the brake toggle lines to get some slack but that doesn't address the impact on opening speed and stability with the brakes stowed so you might as well replace the lower steering line plus brake toggle line with a single piece of line with a cat-eye for the brake setting) and does little to other line types (They might get a little fuzzy at 300 jumps so you replace them for $.10/jump including shipping. Whatever). It allows for bigger harness-steering inputs and makes the canopy more resistant to developing pilot-induced line twists. I like being able to spiral faster than most other canopies just picking up one leg and leaning the other way. Sure. I've opened at ~300 feet above the landing area (the trees made for somewhat less room) and still had plenty of space for a nice 180 degree turn into the wind. I've made a 90 degree turn around hangers at 10-15 feet (it's fun to fly around them at 40-50 MPH). With the proper technique it's just not a big deal. If you're not doing AFF (the only Cypres fire I've seen where the owner was actually unconscious was an AFF where the student was a little weird at pull time and the instructor got conked) you only die if you get too busy having fun to pull or do something really stupid. That does happen fairly often, but it's skydiving not golf right? That wouldn't be much fun. Please let us know how you feel after 500 or 1000 jumps. Skydiving is pretty simple. Start with what you learned as student 1) Pull 2) Pull at a safe altitude 3) Pull stable Add what you should have learned shortly thereafter. I made some jumps with a dude from the ranch (Paco, Yo!) at the convention who put it most succinctly "We touch our friends gently" (in free-fall)

Our tax rate is 9.3% (plus surcarges for state disability insurance and wealthy people) AND we're not afraid of deficit spending.

So what. While that may have meant something when we were out-spending the Soviets into cold-war defeat, the landscape is different now and we're outspending an impotent #2 (they want to sell us stuff) to the tune of $4,000 per tax paying family annually. Instead of bragging rights I'd prefer that in a retirement account. Canada and countries of Europe are no less free due to a foreign invader in spite of radically lower military spending during modern times. In spite of having a similar land mass to defend the Canadians are making do with 1/30th of what we bleed each year. For most metrics of freedom (speech outside designated free speech zones, types of firearms we can own like machine guns, sex with prostitutes, soft drugs, open markets, name your metric) there's some place spending a fraction of our budget and having more freedom. OTOH, the next two countries rounding out the podium are China and Russia so maybe more military spending means less freedom. I don't have a moral problem with people who kill other people who've decided to use force against them. Scum that don't want that sort of attention can keep to themselves. While some of the rest of the world gets their panties in a knot when the dirty work isn't done on behalf of a government, nearly every one's all for a good ass kicking when that's what it takes to keeping their city streets free from terrorists. We band together when necessary. We came together against Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Forty countries sent troops to Afghanistan. Insisting on doing it alone is just an expensive matter of pride when you don't have ulterior motives. Compare the three million million dollars (that puts it in perspective) spent each year by the US government to the paltry sums controlled by industry giants and the ulterior motives are obvious. Microsoft only clears sixty thousand million before they pay their suppliers and share holders. Exxon-Mobile only moves 404 thousand million. They're babies compared to the US government in terms of the money they can spend and resulting power they can exercise. That's what the defense budget is about - guys getting their rocks off in a way they couldn't sitting on the board or acting as CEO in the Global 100. Rather than having to send out dividends, the guys running the Global 1 get the share holders to pay! Hogwash. The few countries who still refuse to realize war is bad for business (the McDonald's theory of diplomacy is interesting) have piss-assed little military forces the rest of us can crush with impunity when they push us. Big standing armies are only useful for maintaining an empire (all of which have fallen) and controlling your own people. Conservatism means the Monroe Doctrine and Federalist Papers, not getting in-line behind guys who look like fiscal bed-wetting liberals when compared to Clinton. Ahh, those were the good old days for a Conservative. Wellfare reform AND a balanced budget (according to accepted accounting practices)!

Long term? Short of obvious idiocy like buying lottery tickets or putting your money in a low-yield savings account (Wells Fargo is paying .2% (note the decimal) woo-hoo!) Social Security is the worst retirement plan out there. The universal retirement part needs to be gutted with investments directed towards the stock+bond market as a whole (loose half your retirement savings and you still beat Social Security) with a T-bill component to ameliorate risk. The life insurance, disability insurance, and safety net can stay as hallmarks of a civilized society. Getting there? The government should honor its obligations just like private pensions do. With a private pension you're guaranteed certain payments even when the company folds. With Social security you should get your minimal (replacing 25% of your pre-retirement income) payments even if the government is going out of business. People who've paid into the system should get a pro-rated return for their years of servitude. New contributions for the retirement plan should go into something with a yield that can't be raided to make the budget look better. Payments for the insurance policies should be normal budget line items paid for out of "tax increases" instead of promises or slight-of-hand where it's off your pay stub but on your employer's accounting books where the average person doesn't know to look or care to complain about.

A service life is not a big deal BUT if you want to calculate total costs of owernship compared to other AADs you need to know what the service life is. If you don't fly rediculously small canopies (nearly all jumpers don't), don't run a high risk of water landings (nearly all jumpers don't), don't make over 500 jumps in 2 years (most jumpers don't), there arguably isn't a reason to upgrade to something "new and improved" beyond the 17 year old Cypres-1 (apart from the first five years' production being timed out and ones enough past their 8 year due date effectively worth only their trade-in value). The newer AADs don't provide solid evidence to suggest a longer service life, but have experienced more teething pains than the mature Cypres.

Original Cypresses only ran under $900 brand-new when you shopped around. Unlike the Cypres-2 they require new batteries at $85/pop every two years or 500 jumps and aren't water proof (a $200 retrofit) which would bring the price to $1525. A better plan is probably to consider what a new Cypres will actually cost (bearing in mind that some DZOs will sell you one at cost, since they think everyone should have an AAD), add what it will cost to maintain over its life time, subtract the $80 trade-in value, and multiply that quantitiy by the fraction of life left. Add the $80 trade-in, subtract what you'll send to Airtec over its remaining life, and you have an estimate that may be high (you disregard the time value of money on the battery replacements and maintenance that will happen in the future) or low (a lot of people will pony up more cash than they should now so they don't have to come up with a lot more than they'd like to even though the total cost will be lower). When the dollar was only trading at $.60 on the Euro, Cypresses cost about $12/month to own under this variation whether you got a brand new Cypres 2 or 9 year old Cypres 1. Cypresses close enough to their 8 year would be worthless under the formula to a new jumper wanting to have an AAD now.

Well, duh. If BMW can get a 1-series to the states by wooden ramp, we can send something with a much bigger less technologically advanced motor in the other direction.

Would you be able to point out DeBeers on a map of Africa then? Those guys mostly do business in Amsterdam, which I could point out because it's a nice place to vacation which happens to be a short train ride from Germany. I could find South Africa too.

that the whole African continent is missing from the map. Room for "expanding American minds" :) Right. We don't import much from Africa except diamonds which we think come from DeBeers and could just as easily be satisfied by the Russian diamond fields, don't vacation there, and don't see it much on TV or the silver screen now that Wild Kingdom is no longer on regular TV and Johnny Weissmuller doesn't play Tarzan. We also have enough depressing things to worry about (like how much our houses are worth) without thinking about brown people killing each other.

My local flying club rents their Cessna 152s for $90/hour plus fuel surcharge. The 182s start at $170/hour and I can't imagine what they'd charge for a Caravan, King Air, or Twin Otter. The DZOs I've known actually PAID pilots to build time in their aircraft. Where hour building options are "pay lots of money" or "pay nothing, get a free lunch, and something towards the gas it takes to get you to/from the airport" plenty of pilots will do what the DZOs ask them to.

Are you sure you went to Victoria Island? Victoria, on Vancouver Island. They say the mind is the second thing to go.

I took my wife to Victoria Island for a weekend aniversary get-away by sea plane. Caught a turbine Otter out, and R985 powered Beaver back. Least hassle I've ever had travelling internationally. Show up at the terminal a half hour before the flight, the pilot decides every one is there so we can leave early, walk through customs on a dock in Canada with eight other passengers eh? What did that cost? IIRC it ran about $250 for each round trip ticket in August, 2006. Fuel and the weak dollar probably mean it's more now; you can do a web search on Kenmore Air. They're the Beaver People. Parking at the terminal was free.

I like Beavers. For about a year I lived in Seattle in a 14th floor apartment in the North Eastern most high-rise downtown (you can see it out "Fraiser's" window and on some of the Grey's Anatomy introductions). The Beavers landing on Lake Union usually flew the base leg of their approach outside my window. I took my wife to Victoria Island for a weekend aniversary get-away by sea plane. Caught a turbine Otter out, and R985 powered Beaver back. Least hassle I've ever had travelling internationally. Show up at the terminal a half hour before the flight, the pilot decides every one is there so we can leave early, walk through customs on a dock in Canada with eight other passengers eh?

No. Newspapers are about selling advertising. Advertising goes into entertainment, like reality TV and bad television shows. So news papers are mostly about entertainment, especially now that ownership has become increasingly consolidated into large profitable companies. The most important thing for a newspaper is to be entertaining. Facts don't enter in to it. It doesn't matter if a correction is needed later. It's especially good when the entertainment comes with minimal staffing costs. A staffer looking on line is way cheaper than sending a reporter out to dig up dirt. Especially when that would involve driving with gas at $4.50 a gallon.

You also want to account for time left on the batteries or inspection cycle. A new Cypres comes with 4/4 of it's inspection and (for the Cypres 1) 2/2 of its batteries. And the $80 trade-in value. Total cost of ownership should be about $12/month. Some goes to the original owner and some goes to Airtec over time.

Grandma still dies. If she wasn't a nice grandma her heirs might be happy with the money they get from you and your insurance company.

A different topic on swoopers. What about that highly loaded canopy - gets out in the front (first RW group out) gets to the bottom of the traffic (since he has a Vel 87 loaded heavily and "should" be on the bottom and landing first). then He sits in 3/4 brakes while trying to set up EXACTLY at 1200 feet precisely over his initiation point and floats the entire descent and everybody gets crushed into a lineup above him. What do we do about that guy? The same thing you do about people who insist of flying their 135s at only full flight. You go around them or wait. (I'm guessing here; I know that under my non-cross braced 105 in full brakes or a lot of rear risers I can just keep up with some one the same size under a 170. The cross-braced design is two sizes smaller, can fly at least a size slower, but isn't at full brakes so it probably ends up being about two sizes faster) I see it a lot - Hot rods riding in brakes at the bottom of the lineup.

Soon as you involve lawyers in ANYTHING, the only thing you can be certain of is that EVERYONE is about to get screwed. The lawyers on all sides always win (for themselves that is).

A real estate agent did manage to sell a 3-bedroom unit in our complex for $444K versus the $440K we got as a FSBO so agents may yield higher prices. OTOH, the competing unit having a 3-car garage versus our 2 and not being located on the main street may have had more to do with it. And although they got a "higher price" we only paid about $1200 for the lawyer and MLS listing versus $13K for the selling half of the market's defacto standard selling commision so we came out $8K ahead inspite of the lower price. We were on the market for less time, so not having an agent didn't hurt or time on market like it did our sales price. Properties need to be priced right and marketted enough to sell. You need legal advice to protect yourself. But when the property is one of 100 similar units or tract homes an agent is the most expensive way to accomplish that.

Right. Which is why you hire a real-estate lawyer to review your contracts and write counter offers. We did a FSBO on the last property sold and hired a lawyer. The company that relocated me hired an agent to do the one before that. The lawyer had a few interesting paragraphs to include in our counter offer. The real estate agent didn't. Lawyers spend years in law school. In some states Realtors start with 60 hours of training total, renew the first time with 30 hours, and do 15 hours every couple years in continuing education. There just isn't a comparison. We paid our last real-estate lawyer about $400 in a flat-fee contract. The company that relocated me paid our last real-estate agent $8500 less its kickback for the referral. There's no comparison in price either. I think we paid the last on-line discount brokerage an extra $75 for the showing service where they gave out the lock box code to buyer's agents. All three of the properties we've sold in the last five years were priced right (we hired appraisers in two cases where pricing might be complicated, in the other we had close enough comps we could figure it out ourselves), had the right "updates" (more like repairs. For example white painted cabinets with new hardware instead of worn 70s brown), and were under contract within weeks with only a few showings in spite of buyers' markets in at least two of the cases. You could count the number of people we had to see personally on one hand for each of the FSBOs. If you're selling the property in good condition (this is relative. If the competition has new rental carpet, carpet you'd want to live on for a couple bucks more a square yard and details like new wall plates beat it) for a fair price (which isn't based on what you have in it or want) and it's in an area with a lot of traffic there may not be much in the way of showing. With more training and focus on the legal aspects of real-estate, a lawyer specializing in real-estate should have done as well.

....to speak in public ....to have children ....to vote I don't think any of those activities have led to mass murder. Voting and public speaking have. It's just that after a certain point we call it "genoicde" instead of "mass murder."

Your canopy has the speed of one a size to two smaller at sea level depending on temperature. On hot summer days it's a lot warmer than standard temperature, with density altitude measuring 8000-9000 feet. You lose a lot more altitude in turns. Visitors who don't listen and "go big" anyways get broken.

For what purpose? Interest, skill, and organizing provided in various disciplines varies depending on where you are. If you're not affraid to introduce yourself you'll probably have fun at any DZ. Personally I'll pick turbine DZs over ones with just cessnas - I like the shorter ride to altitude and there are more people to jump with. The party vibe varies too. Sometime you should probably hang out wherever Scotty Carbone happens to be. He organizes fun flat jumps, cooks a mean meal, and is generally incorrigible.

A real estate lawyer will look at your contracts for $400/hour if you don't negotiate a flat fee of < $400 for up to N contracts. An appraiser will look at each property for $300-$400. Your buyer's agent is asking for 3%, which is $7500 - $36000+ for the price of a town house or nice 1500 square foot 3-bedroom home someplace where real-estate ranges from not cheap to downright expensive (lesee.. 36000 is over 1400 skydives at 200 per year which is 7 years+...) If your buyer's agent is getting more than $1000 for their services, you're getting extra special hand holding and ought to pay for it yourself instead of expecting the seller to pony up for it. Smart sellers will have the sense to list it as a discount though - 3% comission, 2% rebate to buyers without an agent. Buyers without agents are more likely to flake-out so they don't get the full commission themselves.

It depends on how you have the property listed. If you list it in the MLS with a 3% commission to the buyer's agent it comes out of your pocket.If you don't list it in the MLS, the buyer's agent (who is already upset they didn't have a chance at 3% for doing nothing) might not bring their people by or may prefer that their buyer go for something which pays 3% (Personal experience says agents shun FSBOs, but that's just me) If you don't have a listing arrangement and the buyer's agent doesn't manage to talk them out of the deal (You've talked to the guy once. They've driven around with him to see a number of properties. You give them nothing. They get 3% for some other property. How likely do you think the deal is to go through? If it doesn't go through the agent is out nothing and may gain 3%. If it doens't go through you may be out the taxes, insurance, and mortgage costs. ) , the agent gets nothing from you. Their contract (if any) with the buyer might specify something from the buyer. My wife (she's smart and an awesome negotiator) has sold two properties without agents. We'd have sold a third that way if the relocation contract didn't reimburse us for expenses incurred by one of their agents getting a kickback but not FSBOs - that one sold at less than 1% off asking price the week it went on the market. And we bought one without agents too. We're very big on hiring real-estate lawyers and paying for listing services with fixed costs independent of however sensible or insane the local market is. Appraisers are more accurate than agents' comps and a lot cheaper (at a flat $300-$400) when you're looking at 200K or 400K times .03 or whatever. Practically speaking it's a racket. A buyer's agent is unlikely to bring their guy by when you don't have an agent, but if you've agreed to the bribe they're not going to talk them out of the deal. It depends on what contracts you've entered in to. If you've said 3% (typical ) to licensed agents representing a buyer and he has a Realtor, you give them 3%. If you've said that or "2% off to buyers without an agent" and they come without an agent they get 2% off. There are companies who act as "agents" and kick a percentage back to the buyer which you want to beat since the goal is to maximize the amount of money _YOU_ get and not the magical sale price listed in county records. If you have no contract he pays you what you agree the sales price is and might have to pay his Realtor if his contract stipulates that. If the contract doesn't say anything about the Realtor's cut he might get talked out of entering into a contract on the property. Your state laws might be more interesting - the Realtor's lobby is a powerful one. You should have a real-estate lawyer that you've hired on a flat fee basis to answer your questions and look at up to X (3) contracts. He can give you better answers to these questions than those of us who've only traded in a handful of properties.