DrewEckhardt

How many low turns have you needed to make to avoid people or immovable obstacles you didn't see until you were too low (say because you had a long spot, winds aloft were different than expected, and you had to land out with low light that made it hard to see farmers' fences and power lines)? How many down wind and cross-wind landings have you made? How many out landings in small areas do you have? How many landings have you made on concrete? If you're having problems landing in "no winds," you're going to have much bigger problems the first time you land with tail winds. On concrete. In a small parking lot. With cars all around. You haven't made enough jumps to build the experience to conclude that wingloading worked for you (let alone generalizing to other people) unless you have a chronic history of bad choices (like not spotting and opening low) in which case wing loading may be the least of your problems.

280. Never smaller than a 260 for the first 100 jumps. You will get tired of it but used skydiving mains only depreciate $1/jump regardless of how many you go through. 6-7 mains and 2-3 rigs before you have something you keep indefinitely is probably typical. Getting something to grow into won't be a bargain if you and your insurance companies need to eat > $40K in surgeries, lost wages, bone stimulators, nerve specialists.... Brian Germain knows a lot more about parachutes than y our instructors and other posters here. His wing loading never exceed formula is also consistent with the regulations in some countries. http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf

Human rights are never a local issue. The northern states were right to stay off the side lines when southern states were still denying civil rights to blacks in the same way the rest of the country is right to stand up for Californians with our repressive government. Apart from that with air travel nearly everything has become local.

Exactly my point... Fewer jumps. The the DZs have less loads, increasing overhead per load, driving costs up even more, not being able to afford the larger planes when they can't be filled... Then gear manufactures have less sales as no one needs back-to-back rigs or two rigs for training... Nor do skydivers rigs wear out as quickly, so sales volume goes down in gear sales... So as that trickles thru, everyone loses. Answer me this? How many DZs are in Canada (at $35 per jump) with two or three twin otters running all day long? How many have one otter that will fly 25 full loads a day? How many DZs are in Canada with temperature and cloud coverage that let people jump comfortably year round? Don't tell the Nortwesterners but you can count on blue skies year round at Mile Hi. In ten years I never saw a month without one weekend over 40 degrees on the ground (it's a dry cold). Empuria Brava in Spain with better weather claimed 135,000 jumps annually while Frank only admits to 35,000 at Mile Hi. That's in spite of ~$36 jump tickets at current prices, higher taxes, and lower wages. I'd bet weather has more to do with the Canadian skydiving situation. In Colorado, people jumped about as much at Brush as they did in Longmont even though we were spending $25 more in gas to get there when jump tickets were only a couple buckets cheaper at Mile Hi. Think of it as a land premium. Most DZs "near" urban areas are an hour away (or worse). The only time it took me anywhere close to that getting to Mile Hi was when I put my rig and case of beer on a BOB Yak trailer and rode my bicycle out. At a moderate 20 jumps per month, the $4-5 a jump more you spend to jump near Boulder or Denver is nothing compared to what you're spending to live there versus most other places (California obviously excepted). And $6*20 jumps/month over five years isn't that bad compared to the other price increases we're facing. My health insurance went up $100/month just this year; last apartment rent increased > $200/month in less than a year; my town house in Boulder costs its current owner over $500/month more than it would have run me 5 years before that with a 30 year loan; etc.

I call the dropzone and ask whoever's working in manifest who's there and don't leave home until enough people have arrived ESPECIALLY when living an hours drive or more from the DZ.

1. The next load leaves in about 20 minutes. It takes 6-7 minutes to pack, a minute or two to grab a drink and pee, a few minutes to dirt dive, and there isn't much time left to dilly dally walking around the landing area. 2. There are no prarie dog holes right next to the beer line or in the pea gravel pit.

Which is why, they're called DGIT's~ Fortunately most of them don't make it to the big leagues. 2/3 of the guys I knew were going to kill themselves actually didn't. OTOH, all of the survivors needed at least one trip to the hospital and only one of those trips didn't involve broken bones (heart problems from doing too many drugs).

I had my first rig in time to jump for the weekend, even though the seller sent it UPS ground COD. I could have thrown my first rig in the dumpster after 70 jumps and come out ahead financially over renting gear. As it was I got most of what I paid back selling the main and container+reserve.

It's like a skyboard - you have it connected in freefall so it doesn't fall on any one, disconnect it on opening, and just keep it hanging on your toes until a few feet before you land.

Yeah, the bad feelings that go with being elected by a small margin within a small fraction of the population speaks much louder than the power which goes with spending $3,000,000,000,000 each year. Not voting sure sends a message to those politicians.

What happens to the team if your guys break themselves jumping canopies that are too small? Getting new jumpers up to speed is going to be a lot more expensive than the depreciation you'll take on new containers and canopies. Most containers sized for 170s are going to be safe down to a 135 which is a nice (but not the funest) size for a 200 pound exit weight.

That's changing. There are two billion Chinese and Indians with increasing automobile ownership. They even have traffic jams now. Of course, with more total oil usage and the same sort of supply the price is going up, up, up...

Absolutely. Rack of lamb. Mmmm. Leg of lamb. Mmmm. My mouth waters as I image a nice broiled lamb shank falling off the bone with a little thyme and coriander for flavor. I feel hungry.

There are usually local issues on the ballot where my vote maymake a difference; I at least vote for that. In national elections where I favor a third party candidate who won't win I cast my vote anyway, and hope that the Democrats or Republicans (who have won or lost with < 1% popular vote margins in recent presidental elections) try to snag some of the votes that went to the third party with policy changes.

I take it that you liked Bush's endorsement of corporations outsourcing high paying US jobs to (mostly) Asia, so Americans could take low paying service jobs instead. That's what happens when you over-tax businesses - they move to where they can do business cheaper. While having the second highest corporate tax rate in the OECD doesn't help us compete, the biggest problem is our grossly higher costs of living and salaries needed to afford them compared to the developing world. You can hire well educated Chinese and Indians for 1/10th to 1/5 what it costs to get Americans. Eastern Europeans are also inexpensive.

Broken bones requiring surgery can cost tens of thousands of dollars and the insurance companies would rather keep your premiums as profits than pay you back for those damages. One way they do this is by suing to recover their costs. Part of the fine print in your insurance policy gives them the right to sue on your behalf and collect any proceeds from lawsuits you initiate. It's called subrogation. Your friend may have the choice between paying $10K out of pocket and letting his health insurance company sue your home owner's insurance company. A realistic but well meaning neighbor would cover your deductible if that happened.

A compulsive liar knows when he's not telling the truth.

Welfare is still the largest outlay in the budget. How do you figure that? In 2007 our budget included $294B spent on welfare and unemployment. The Defense budget appears bigger at 481B even before you mix in > $100B in supplemental spending for the war on terror. On paper we spend more on Social security, but that's just giving people back their forced savings with minimal interest thrown in for low wage earners (the rest of us get a negative rate of return).

We currently have a gross disparity between wages in America and the developing world, notably China, Eastern Europe, and India although there are plenty of smart and educated people living in the countries. Unfortunately those countries are all halfway around the world in different time zones. Until we have wage normalization (it's coming; they're making more and their property values are going up) we're going to have to work with those guys. IM meetings from home after dinner definitely beat being stuck in the office.

Except for more homes dumped on the market as option ARM resets increase through 2011, the banks stop playing games with all their REO properties, reality sinks in and the people who have to sell convert their paper losses to real losses, condo conversions come on the market because rents aren't keeping up with property values thus making rental properties a poor return on investments, the baby boomers retire and move into smaller more easily maintained properties, fewer people move into subdivisions located based on $1.50/gallon gasoline when they relocate, well-payed professionals who can afford homes get replaced by well-educated Chinese and Indians who cost 1/5 as much....

You can set an upper bound based on the number of I&R entries on the reserve data card. During the next repack you can set a lower bound by counting the number of slash marks on the warning label where PD instructs the rigger to put a "/" for repack and "X" for repack after use. The two may disagree because some of the "repacks" did not involve actually opening the container or (less likely) a blind rigger didn't see the warning label during his canopy inspection and therefore neglected to mark it. After 40 repacks PD reserves are unairworthy until sent in for permeability testing.

The usual reason would be to get out of the sport while you still have your money, your girlfriend and your "real" job. Skydiving tends to be a little addictive. There are lots of people who sustain 150 jumps a year, have normal financial lives (you can always defray the costs with packing parachutes), a significant other, and "real" job.

Your marginal tax rates are 5-12% higher than ours which would be more than enough to pay for health insurance if our employer's didn't provide it as a benefit. Example: earn $34K, pay 30% in Australia versus 25% in the US. Earn $80K pay 40% in Australia versus 28% in the US. Earn $180K pay 45% versus 33% in the US.

You have to see _Bullit_ with Steve McQueen. Arguably the best car chase in movie histort. Big block Mustang Fastback (McQueen) vs. Charger (crooks) through the streets of San Francisco. The movie is halfway decent too if you like cop movies.

I cancelled my satellite subscription including 100 channels and 10? of HBO after I realized I actually hadn't turned it on in six months. That might have been 2000; haven't had cable since. I did have a really nice video store and t hen got Netflix. You can do classic films -the first tarzan movies from the 1930s, Frank Capra and Humphrey Bogart films from the 1940s, Hitchcock from the 1950s and 1960s, films like Serpico/The Conversation/Taxi Driver/Logans Run from the 1970s. Pick genres like sci-fi classics; directors like Stanley Kubrick or Akira Kurosowa; classic TV like the 42 Twilight Zone DVDS; it's pretty hard to run out. We're currently at 380 on the queue.