DrewEckhardt

I'm asking because every time someone starts to toss out real world examples, they are accused of cherry picking and some NRA sponsored numbers are tossed out. The numbers being cited by Kleck and Lott originate from the US government Executive Branch Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics. Currently the source is the National Crime Victimization Survey, formerly this was called the National Crime Survey. Summaries remain similar regardless of whether you have liberal or conservative executives in power. The NRA and other pro-gun sources just like to cite them for obvious reasons. The other side likes to cite Kelerman which only examines homes in which homcides have occurred, only looks at a small subset of data (hundreds out of nearly two thousand reports), and only considers defensive gun use in which the trigger was pulled (brandishing is usually enough). It's not a random sampling and nothing is done to establish causality. You can sift through the original data if you really want to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm#ncvs More recent numbers suggest it's slightly safer to run away than to threaten your attacker with a gun, but the gun is still your best option when you're being assaulted and a better choice than everything other than running away when you're being robbed. Personally, I worry a lot more about people over 16 having access to suburban assault vehicles and people over 21 having legal access to cheap beer. As a white guy with no involvement in street gangs or love triangles I'm a lot more likely to be done in by a drunk driver (about 20,000 people are killed by drunk drivers while only 5,000 white people are murdered with guns assuming average chances of being a thugs, drug users, philanderers, etc) than some one else with a gun. When living in Seattle where any law abiding citizen could buy a handgun and get a license to cary it concealed I was statistically safer than when I travelled across the border to Vancouver, Canada with much more restrictive laws.

No. Your canopy is going to have whatever its foward speed is in no-wind conditions plus the wind vector regardless of which way it's pointed. Being small will maintain more forward speed (beter lift:drag ratio) for the same sink rate so you'll go farther even with a tail wind.

Half the murderers and half the shooting victims are black.

Yeah, but you can keep driving your 10+ year old used car to work instead of replacing it when many people would. I have a nice 11 year old car with 80,000 miles and my wife's 13 year old Honda is going strong at over twice that. It's about priorities. Cost of production has nothing to do with what the market will bear. Some of the manufacturers selling $2-$3K containers have 6 month back logs due to their rigs popularity. If you don't like it they'll keep their sewers busy working on products for the much larger military market. I don't like it and wouldn't buy one. IMHO some of the less expensive rigs are better built than some of the more expensive ones (ex, lined vs. unlined) with better customer service and fewer quality control issues. A Wings is still $1200 street price ($1300 articulated) which is surprisingly close to the the ~900 we were paying for less popular rigs in 1998 ($1160 in 2007 dollars) considering increased oil prices and the devalued dollar. Plus options. If you want something both functional and pretty you can spend spend spend.

The rigger who seals the reserve container assumes responsibility for the back job. Usually, that means the rigger who last repacked it will open, re-install a cypres, and re-close for a lot less than they'd charge for a repack. Any responsible rigger other than the one who did the last repack will do a full inspect + repack when asked to reinstall a Cypres.

There's plenty of affordable used gear out there. I spent $700 for my last used container+reserve and made my last used main sale for $350 ($1050 total). You can even get a nice used rig for $3K with Cypres. Cypres AADs run about $12/month in depreciation + maintenance + battery replacement; new or used just changes when you make the payments and who they go to (gear dealer, credit card, airtec for maintenance). Although the average new car is now $28,000 people don't seem to have any problems driving, although the average new car buyer is now 48 years old. And those buying used cars are averaging $13900 which buys 4-6 used rigs.

Sure. I took one out of rig #2 for its 8 year due in 2006 and I've become undecided if it's even worth sending it in. Never put one in rig #3 (when you skydive long enough, the gear in your closet breeds). Didn't have one at all on the first rig I bought (not Cypres ready or retrofitable). I wouldn't do AFF jumps without a Cypres. That's the only Cypres fire I've seen personally that didn't result from its owner being stupid by either not paying attention to their altitude or just deciding it would be better if the Cypres pulled (dislocated arm). If you're worried about getting kocked out a jump because the other people are muppets, you should be finding other people to jump with. If you're worried because you're in over your head you should be doing simpler or smaller jumps.

Sure, just like every other day. There seems to be something poetic in offsetting the calories I consume in the beer my job drives me to drink with bicycling to and from work.

Sure. We all screw up sometimes. You really only have control over when the screwup gets found (sooner is better) and what you do about it afterwards (making things right is better than making excuses). I'm a lot happier doing business with companies I know will make things right after something happens than cases where there's no evidence to suggest what will happen.

It's nice to see that Obama plans on improving our military to the point that we don't need to spend 30X what it costs for the next largest first-world country (Canada) to defend itself or more than the entire rest of the world needs.

The Macallan 18 year (I tried the 25 once and it was fine, but I wouldn't pay for it), Balvenie 21 year old, Lagavulin 16 year, Talisker 20 year, are all tasty but different.

Assuming the serial numbers were assigned sequentially, which would be silly since you want to catch typos in warranty registrations (to make sure you send recall notices to the last known adress or whatever) and may want some translation between production date and unit which does not require a database lookup. For example, a recall affecting serials 110-130 may only affect two units when the numbers have a check digit suffixed like 109 118 127 136 If some one had reported "117" on their waranty registration you could have called them back and found whether they actually had missed a digit by one like 118 or 127. You may have a recall for serials 81700004 - 81710003 which only affect the 21 units you actually built on the 170th day of 2008. Or you may have something even more horrendous that encodes all of the sub-assembly production dates. Even more interesting combinations are possible where you're not using entire base-10 digits for each field. I can't fit the original CYPRES serial numbers in the space provided in my rigging log book and hope they've come up with something denser.

Plus the span-wise reinforcing tapes across all line attachments that weren't even on Tempo reserves before 2001, Precision reserves prior to the R-Max, etc. When you're going to have hard openings it's nice to have the beefier construction.

I was not using an AAD, free flying, jumping wing suits, and swooping canopies loaded at 1.7-1.8 pounds per square foot as a student. I didn't bother to get a license for 10 years and 1500+ jumps when I was moving to a state where people didn't know me. I would have gotten a pro-rating to demo into my wedding sooner but some muppet landed on a spectator during our city's foot race so they turned down my request so I didn't need the rating. I'm only mildly cranky.

4-8 years inspection does not include changing of the battery, so you have to change or get it changed. If you have a Cypres-1. With the Cypres-2 the 4/8 year maintenance is all inclusive. http://www.cypres2.com/ If you're buying used this should be reflected in the purchase price. Before the dollar tanked, the originals ran less than $900 if you shopped although airtec should have seen similar total cash flow with the $85 battery replacements every 2 years.

Why???? Is there a reason you or any other women can not perform as good as the best male swoopers???? Why degrade yourself to that??? That is bullshit to say that... you have the ability to peform just as well.... except for the lack of experience... but no one should expect to bypass that untill they have earned it. Physics with average height males and females.

On average women are shorter than men and weigh less. Since weight is a cubic function of height and surface area only a square function women's shorter average height means a lower average sectional density (this shows up as small people falling slower) that limits their terminal velocity and hurts their L/D ratio. Added mass to compensate is limited by the rules for safety reasons and unfairly increases density without drag. Since line thickness and seam size dosn't decrease when canopies get smaller, at a given wingloading the average woman has a decreased L/D ratio compared to the average man from just the canopy. This could be fixed (200 pound HMA? Less space between the two needles of a double needle machine sewing seems) but hasn't been. This only addresses the physics of the situation. One could make arguments that short of the pro-swooping tour the difficulty in controlling a physically smaller wing at the same wingloading needs to be accounted for. Weight classes like boxers have would be gender neutral and fairer though because a guy like Luigi isn't going to go as far as a dude like JC.

I'd rather some one run 20,000 8 year old vigils run through ovens, freezers, and altitude chambers with measurements to see how they're still working because that's most relevant to whether one's likely to kill me. Airtec should have done that with Cypresses by 2006 (21,700 had been sold by 1998). If your AAD doesn't fire and you die, it's not a big loss because you would have died anyways. If your AAD fires when it shouldn't, your deploying reserve can break the plane and kill everyone on it. If you're filming a tandem pair it can kill them. If some is docking on you in a vertical formation when it happens you can all die. A required maintenance cycle provides more opportunities to avoid misfires resulting from electronic components and solder joints which have not aged as they should have that electrically look OK at a comfortable temperature with no acceleration or pressure change. It's a good thing for your fellow jumpers. Capacitors get leaky, electronics are damaged by static, vibrations break marginal solder joints, etc. The real time clock no longer works on my five year old laptop which has never been subjected to temperatures below 0 or 1000 5G shocks.

It should be noted however, that if these wires were truly "easily broken", they would be broken frequently, yes? I'm sure it has happened, but I haven't yet known anyone who has had their cypres wires break... have you? (that is not intended as a snide remark, if you have, I'd like the info). When the Cypres was still getting popular, people used to break the Cypres control unit wiring by standing their rigs on their yokes to pack the pilot chute. We learned that could get expensive and stopped. I know one rigger who managed to set the control unit on top of a hard tool while putting all his weight on the reserve container and had to buy the customer a new one but no other modern failures.

I'd look for a Cypres. Presumably during its 4 year inspection they test it while freezing it, cooking it, and sending it for chamber rides so they'll catch faults which don't show up in a simple self-test. I'd look to pay no more than $12/month of life remaining. That's what a new Cypres-2 costs (the higher initial purchase price is offset by no battery replacements at $85/pop) and what a Cypres-1 purchased for under $900 cost when the dollar was strong plus its 5 $85 battery replacements. Start with 147 months and subtract its current age. Ex: 147 - 10 years 3 months = 24 months left. Multiply by 12 = $288. Add the $80 tade-in. $368. Subtract your out of pocket battery cost (potentially $85) and inspection costs ($200 after you've shipped in both directions). A timed out Cypres with less than 30 months on it pretty much only has its trade-in value. I don't think I'll bother getting the 8-year on my 1998 Cypres and I've seen slightly older units offered free to new jumpers if they'll let it be sent in for service on their dime. Cypresses nearing their 8 year inspection are also usually not a good value because they'll require the $200 4-year inspection and then the $200 8-year inspection for not much over 4 years of life. They may even be worthless to you as a buyer wanting an AAD tomorrow and not in 3 months when just a 8 year will suffice. I'd also look for a PD reserve especially if I planned on doing any freeflying because of the reinforcing. They've always had span-wise reinforcing tapes across all the line attachments (I've seen an over-speed reserve deployment from an unconscious Cypres fire split a reserve into 2 and 5 cell pieces held together by the single tape at the tail; that was not pretty), land nice (you may be landing on an asphalt parking lot), and have good quality control (I've never heard of a built-in turn). PDs are definitely better built than pre-2001 Tempos and Ravens before the R-max series. Smarts are allegedly nice too but I haven't crawled inside or demoed one. More wear occurs during the repack than use and PD requires theirs to be sent in for porosity testing after 40 repacks (or 25 uses) which would be about 13 years although lots of gear just sits on shelves (I haven't jumped any of my rigs since getting broken 9 months ago, and one hasn't been jumped or repacked for a couple years since I relocated to a more relaxed state where there was no way I needed to make back to back loads).

Right! ONLY if it's an over-under, the one true double barell.

That's disgusting. Looks like the mall covers more acreage than the airport.

An AFF rating just proves that you have six hours of freefall time, passed a few classes , and are more than competant at belly to earth freefall. I know one AFF-I instructor who nearly died because she lacked the training and skill to land short or turn before reaching a barbed wire fence. You'd be better off starting with the advice from accepted authorities (national governing bodies, Brian Germain, etc.) and then being more conservative if your instructors thought you were having problems than starting with their recomendations which are likely the result of a lot less experience. According to Brian Germain (10,000 skydives, designs parachutes, teaches canopy flight) an exit weight of 230 pounds allows for a minimum canopy isize of 230 square feet for the first 40 jumps with adjustments up in size for higher elevations.

http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf

Upsize to a 135 and learn to fly it.