DrewEckhardt

With moderately small skydiving rigs (~135 main and reserve) and bigger the rig has enough weight to stay parked and keep tension on the lines when packing. Bigger rigs (288 main + 253 reserves) have a lot more mass and definitely stay parked. Smaller rigs might be fine too; I haven't tried one.

The tax cuts were pretty inconsequential compared to other things in the US economy. Over the Bush 43 presidency we've come to rely increasingly on foreign countries with educated workers with salaries 1/10th to 1/5th what we earn. Ten years ago mostly large corporations were setting up engineering shops in India. Now even startups have off-shore teams in China, Eastern Europe, and India. While long term home prices have just kept pace with inflation, mortgage industry changes artificially increased home prices through the bush presidency so they got out of line with wages (absolute affordability) and rent. I sold a property I bought in 2006 for 60% more than I paid in 2000 while I got paid less in 2006 than I did in 2001. While I rent an apartment for $1200 a month, buying the same sized condo would cost me an additional $2000 a month once after the tax deduction and loss of interest the down payment is earning as CDs. With declining property values that would be silly. Fewer people can afford homes and in a lot of places it doesn't make sense to buy.

Most start with a basic reserve pack job. Many are a lot more concerned about what happens to the nose, center cell symetry, and micro reefing to encourage the nose to open first all of which influence heading control on opening. More people are packing with the center cell tail on the inside of the pack job so it should be more likely to stay together as a bundle and less likely to have a line-over. Some pay less attention on bridges (heading control isn't an issue) over water (problems wouldn't be important). Low jumps are made without sliders (or with the slider tied down to the front risers) and mesh sliders get used for faster openings on terminal jumps.

Or more defense contracts to international corporations.

Every wireless AP within range of my office is encrypted or won't associate (perhaps due to MAC filtering, who knows). I'd expect the situation to be similar other places unless you have a local coffee stand or something that has free wireless.

It's pretty simple. If you're not a government which can print money, the amount you can spend is what you earn less all taxes and expenses. Consumers have to stop spending once their credit cards and home equity are tapped out. Business also have to stop spending once they can't borrow any more money. Prudent consumers and businesses cut back before they get to usustainable negative cash flow.

They can intercept all of the network packets coming out of your computer. Any web browser requests you make for internet sites can be logged. Any traffic to proxy ports can be flagged as suspicious. Without having a high speed cellular connection that doesn't go through your company's internet service provider there's no way around it.

At that point, I'd have been within $125 of having paid for my first rig (I later sold the various pieces, so I saved over $1000 over renting for that sort of time). Modernish sufficiently used skydiving gear depreciates about $1/jump for the main and rig until they get old enough that stops. Reserve repacks are about !2.50/month and Cypres depreciation/batteries/time on the inspection cycle about $12/month. Many places rental gear is pushing $25/jump. The math is not hard. Your first rig has to be big and safe. It doesn't have to be something you'll keep for more than a couple years. I made jump #13 or 14 on my own gear. You don't want to go too far in the other direction and buy new either. The average testosterone poisoned skydiver is going to go through 6+ mains and at least one rig before arriving at a size combination they'll be happy with indefinitely. If you buy the first setup brand new either it's going to sit for a while when you want to down size or you're going to eat a lot more than $1/jump selling it. New gear is now pushing $6000. There are lots of really nice nearly new rigs available (a few with under 100 jumps) for $3000-$4000 that are competing with $2000-$3000 gear that has some wear on it.

Wheel building is a relaxing (I have favorite beer mugs for the purpose, which each hold an entire 22 Oz micro-brew) and practical (You don't have to re-true properly tensioned hand-built wheels until you crash them which probably means a re-build, and can have a replacement by the next day) endeavor. Hopefully you got new old stock components that were shiny, silver, and not-ugly. Vechio's in Boulder doesn't suck either; worth remembering if you find yourself in need of G and thumb lever return springs and don't want to wait on USPS. Keeping the three right lever springs on hand as spares is a fine idea. I think I got 3-4 years out of each set before getting lazy. Peter's website was the only one on which I found has a seat post that's not ugly (polished silver in an aesthetic shape), short (not made for one-size fits all frames although my Super Sawzall could fix that), micro-adjustable, and with one tenacious clamping bolt. It's on my shopping list if I don't get an old used Campy part.

I made a PC jump. It was made in 1967. Hopped and popped right out of the Cessna for a low opening speed. It's a ZP vs. F111 issue. Porosity affects opening time (covered by the TSO) and descent rate (also covered by the TSO). People used to use coffee cans as templates to cut holes in their sliders with hot knifes to get quicker openings when the slow downs scared them. If you chop after some muppet flies through your canopy at 800' (this is a _great_ convention video somewhere between 1998 and 2000) you aren't going to have a coffee can sized hole (unless you're jumping a PD) and will be wanting a fresh parachute ASAP. There are 1200 jumps on my Stiletto 120; 600 from me and 600 from its original owner. You can't blow air through it and it flares like new when in trim. PD's cross-braced F111 Excalibur was allegedly too porous to land in 300 jumps even with lower than modern wing loadings. Reserves and mains operate to different performance standards. An F111 main needs to open reliably within 1200 feet (3000 foot pack opening to 1800 foot USPA cutaway decision altitude). Reserves have 3 seconds following a cutaway. Mains must survive 100 knot openings. Older reserves are certified to 135 knots (1.8X the energy) and newer ones 150 knots (2.25X). Mains shouldn't break anything if you land perfectly (after one girl sprained her ankle under ragged out Raven-2 on a hot summer day at 5000 feet MSL I insisted she borrow a spare parachute). The reserve TSO specifies maximum decent rates and forward speeds with the brakes stowed so uncontrolled landings with an incapacitated user are survivable. It's a separate issue but F111 mains are generally accepted up to 1 pound per square foot wing loadings (I think about .7 is ideal); while silly people try 2 pounds per square foot under F111 reserves (even as a member of the small main, big reserve crowd I think 1.4 works pretty well with sufficient experience). This also ignores that the main failing 1 in 500 times is fine with a backup while the reserve is your last chance. It's entirely reasonable that a canopy can be airworthy as a main but not as a reserve. They don't quantify enough but do want them back for inspection every 13 years. Remember, it's both strength AND opening/landing speeds with some wiggle room in the TSO (is it when new... or after repacked 40 times?) It's the design which was common at the time. The reserves which failed did not have span-wise reinforcing tapes across the A, B, C, and D line attachment points. The one which spun in in two pieces had a single tape at the tail. I think they would have survived (or perhaps had a blown up cell which is much more landable) with the modern construction techniques. Precision didn't add span-wise tapes until they got to the R-max series (-M had span-wise bottom skins where the seams may be better than nothing). PISA didn't add span-wise tapes to its Tempo until 2001. Square reserves started as mains with formal certification as "reserves" and mains didn't get span-wise tapes until we found they made for less wing distortion on high performance ellipticals (even my 1994 Stiletto lacks them). Historically, we used to limit freefall speeds to about 120 MPH so high speed premature deployments weren't an issue. If you got knocked out in freefall and didn't wake up you died while now you might have an unconscious head-down Cypres fire (that's what broke the 2&5 cell reserve). If you're doing hop-and-pops or wing suit jumps an old reserve is more likely to be fine. I have an old Raven 3 in my big rig which never sees over 120 MPH air speed, has no Cypres to save me if I get knocked out or do something stupid, and rarely gets used over 5000 feet AGL so a hard premature deployment from high altitude is real unlikely. If you're freeflying where some muppet might snag your reserve handle like most new jumpers or have a Cypres that might save you while you're falling fast (people think they'll be knocked out when this happens, but you might just be having too much fun. Check out the Frankie video from the ranch.) you want to look at newer designs. That means a PD or something made this millenium.

Modern skydiving gear is not conducive to making a career out of low pulls and there are more interesting places than airports to scare yourself with ground rush.

Sex is best with the person you love, know, and trust the most and who knows you most intimately. Sure, if you manage to die first or sufficiently soon after.

If we define airworthiness as meeting the TSO standards with respect to maximum suspended weight + deployment speed (you may have a head-down Cypres fire or premature opening exiting a fast plane flying at 18,000+ feet MSL), time to deploy (you might cutaway at 600'), and maximum descent rate (you might land while incapacitated and unable to flare). I would not be too surprised if the 60 repacks which go with 20 years use are enough to render a reserve unairworthy. I'd definitely want testing if the rig in question had been used as opposed to just sitting in the closet (in which case I'd jump it once for grins after 40 years). The materials are also less tolerant of wear than mains (People have reported Excaliburs loaded closer to contemporary standards being done at the 300 jump mark), and a _LOT_ more fabric manipulation occurs when packing reserves than mains. I take 45 minutes with a reserve pack job versus 6 for a main and like eight clamps on the fabric versus zero. While no one commented on whether the canopies would meet the original TSO standards, it's been studied a few times. The Belgian army found that after 30 repacks 0-5 CFM fabric porosity increased to as much as 18 CFM in the center cell, a third of their canopies had reached 9 CFM, and none were under 5. Precision found 4-12X increases in porosity handling parachute fabric as in a repack just 16 times. PD found "noticeable" increases in time+distance to open and difficulty in getting landing on reserves repacked just 10 and 14 times with one deployment each. This also disregards the relatively recent addition of span-wise reinforcing tapes. I would not buy a reserve for general skydiving use without them. I watched one guy spin-in under an older design split into 2 & 5 cell pieces connected only at the trailing edge. I'm aware of another which failed fatally.

And the Republicans don't either. If they did we wouldn't have witnessed the largest percentage increases in discretionary non-defense spending in history; far more than we got with "Tax and Spend" Democrats like Carter and Clinton who were both outspent by Bush 43. Especially with the accompanying tax cuts. I'm just trying for "not worse."

Bush 43 is pretty much the most despised US president in history, with an abysmal 69% disapproval rating largely due to his Mid-Eastern debacle. McCain is at least perceived as being more willing to continue there. Bush 43 was president when mortgage debacle broke, when foreclosures were at an all time high, the dollar is at an all-time low, and gasoline is at an all time high. Regardless of the actual responsibility the voters are going to blame the Republicans for these things. Obama's greatest strengths in the election are that 1) He's not McCain 2) He's not a Clinton and 3) He's not a Republican. Color has nothing to do with it. It's no surprise that places like Colorado which were solidly for Bush 43 before we knew what he could do (2000) and barely for him after (2004) are already in Obama's camp.

They're consolidating, moving their sport operations into the facilities they have in NC for military contracts: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/article522408.ece

Keep in mind that skydiving canopies are not always for swooping. Majority of the skydivers don't swoop. Parachutes where the initial flare height is non-critical are easier to land. One way to get there is with a canopy that lands nice in a sink. You can take a big F111 seven cell loaded around .7-.9 pounds/square foot, stop going forwards about 5' over the target, and gently sink the rest of the way in. Most skydivers don't want to jump boat-like canopies so that's not an option. The other way is with a canopy that swoops on landing. Pull on the toggles until it flattens out closish to the ground, descend to ground level, and keep adding flare until you finish. This works well out past two pounds per square foot. Something which doesn't offer either option makes getting the flare height and timing right much more important. Just watch people trying to land lightnings on hot high no wind days...

No scoop, but the US manufacturers' global miltiary sales are about 3X the size of their sport sales.

Provided that you're not going to commit suicide when you get here, you should worry about cars more. They kill 4X more Americans (40K vs. 10K). More like 8X if you have an above average chance of being white (while just 15% of the population, blacks make up half of our murder victims). Having an above average chance of avoiding murder-capitals like Washington DC with its strict gun-control laws will help a lot as will above average chances of not joining a street gang. As a white person, your chances of being shot are lower in Seattle where law abiding citizens are entitled to concealed carry permits and handguns without waiting periods than across the border in Vancouver, Canada with similar size but much stricter gun laws. Personally, I worry more about my neighbors' refridgerators than their gun cabinets because drunk drivers kill more people than guns and being a white non-criminal doesn't help my odds any with cars.

Source: Canada Free Press Yeah, close the gun clubs because shooting is safer in the wilderness with drunk idiots shooting at trash like dumped washing machines and TVs.

They don't have to weigh every customer, just offer a stock "one size fits all" rate that's more expensive and a per-pound discount people can voluntarily accept by actually getting weighed. To limit counter costs, they can put scales with computer interfaces in front of each self-service checkin; perhaps of the bare-foot fat checking variety to detect tamperring. Or they can rely on customer's honesty, provide a few cheap scales, conduct random spot checks, and have a contractual penalty for people who lied. If people don't want to pay up 5X the weight surcharge when caught, they can just stay home and skip their vacation or business trip. Even if they were to actually weigh every one, the effort would be far less than that expended to insure people can't hijack planes by threatening to curl the crews' eyelashes or do in-flight shampoos inappropriate for peoples' hair types.

In the last week I needed it Friday to carry stuff to the DZ and Sunday to get home. In a month or two things will be settled enough at our new location that a car could work about half the weekends, but we're not there yet. I needed it yesterday to take some stuff to recycle and to Goodwill. With some breaking down, I could have done that in two or three car trips. I need it tomorrow to take a mattress & boxspring to Goodwill. I need it Friday to take a rig rack (6'x6'x3') to the DZ along with my generator (plus fuel), dog crate, etc, and Sunday to haul my trailer into town and back to dump tanks and then return home with the usual stuff, including trash from the weekend. With the DZ 90 miles away, it wouldn't be economical to take a rental truck. Honestly, I currently use my truck as a truck at least a 2 or 3 times a week. With some inconvenience, I could probably reduce that by half within the next month or two. A rental truck would suck to tow the trailer to Prairie, etc, and I'd be stuck paying for a rental and going through the inconvenience of reserving, picking up, and dropping off the bare bones model of questionable reliability at least 2-3 times a month, plus cramming myself into some little car the rest of the time. It may be that I'll be able to justify an old Geo Metro or something with liability only coverage by the end of the season, but until then I'll be doing my daily commute in something I actually enjoy driving. Blues, Dave Goodwill does pickups. Trailer hitches (which will tow a utility trailer for Stuff) are available for most cars,. I knew one guy that used one with a stubby trailer to haul tires to the track behind his Porsche 993 Turbo. Many people who like driving have more fun in sporty cars that get 350+ miles out of a 14 gallon tank than a truck that does worse. What you already own is often cheapest to you, but most peoples' arguments for getting a new-to-them truck don't hold water (boat and horse trailers being the obvious exceptions)

Renting can be a lot cheaper than owning espceially if you stay away from (it) Hertz. I paid $19.95 plus tax to Home Depot the last time I needed a pickup truck. If you live in a sufficiently non-urban area that parking's not a problem, ownership may not be that bad. When I had more room and more toys I spent about $100 a year to insure a truck. List price on the insurance was about $200/six months but I got a ~$150/six month multi-car discount. Purchase price was $2000. With gas at $4 a gallon and 15 highway MPG difference having two vehicles wins not long after the first year in which you don't drive 8000 miles in the thirstier vehicle.

Eventually you'll want to acomplish something more than just looking at each other in freefall. Regardless of your preferred form of falling (under canopy, with wing suits, belly to earth, head down, head-up, back to earth) that's going to involve flyng really close to other people and taking grips. Every one on my first four-way free fly formation (4-way round/clown accordion in a circle) had over 500 jumps and at least a couple of us had 750+. I've made successful 4-way flat jumps where some people had under 50 jumps. It's a lot easier to master fine movements, approaching a formation, etc. when you aren't going so fast. It's all the same thing. Just the uniform and body position differ. Probably not too good according to competitive metrics. Good enough for 10-point 4-ways, 4-point 8 ways with pieces moving around, and any other sort of fun load you might throw together with random people at the DZ. Flat and stable is the greatest common denominator. There will be plenty of times where not enough experienced free flyers show up, people want to put something together for an x00th jump, the cloud ceiling is low or plane is slow so you'd rather fall at 75% speed, etc. It'll help you progress in freefly formations too.

Is there a road bike website like dz.com with classifieds and everything? I want a short single bolt road seat post that's micro-adjustable, not-ugly, and round shaped so I can clamp a rack on it for commuting if I have to. Exactly like my 13 year old aluminum Campagnolo part except circular. Having failed to find anything on the new market, I think a 10 year old Campagnolo Chorus or Record 27.2 x 220mm Titanium seatpost would be perfect. Suggestions? I've tried campyonly.com. e*pay might work in a week.