DrewEckhardt

Colorado has a lesser "Driving while ability impaired" charge at .05%.

I thought skydiving might be fun and could do a tandem without blowing 2% of that year's weekends.

I'd jump and land a parachute made in 1967, or approximately 40 years old.

There's nothing stopping you from you (LLC) hiring you (personally) as an employee, withholding taxes, giving you a steady paycheck at the end of the month, and in many states laying yourself off to collect unemployment if work gets slow. The situation also has tax advantages. For example, after you've paid yourself a reasonable salary (based on what it would cost for some one else to do the work, which could be some one with half the seniority and experience you have) everything left over is a profit distributed to the business owners as a dividend, only subject to your personal income tax rate and not employee+employers shares of FICA + medicare.

The island has Ginger and Mary Ann, only Gilligan and the Skipper for competition, and the professor is a smart man.

I was guessing a model 29, but it's good to change with the times.

Half of $1500 or $1650 (MSRP for fixed and articulated harnesses without options) is still $750 or $825, means that you won't be able to get a package deal price on a used reserve (used reserves and containers go together more often than not), and that you'll be spending more on rental gear (if you made a typical 40 jumps over 3-4 months and spent $25 a jump on equipment rental that'd make the new gear cost $1000 more). If your torso is not abnormally long or short you might just look for a used rig. That's likely to be the case.

Also note that you don't need to be under a small parachute to induce line twists - I did it jumping my TZ205 loaded below a pound per square foot. To quote Brian Germain, it's ballet not boxing. Yanking on the controls is not a good idea. I also think that pulling the slider down, loosening the chest strap, and letting the canopy spread makes for a more stable pilot + canopy interface.

Sure, provided that everything always goes well and you land straight in on a nice level field. You haven't made a lot of 90 degree turns below 50', down-wind landings, out landings in tight areas like fenced back yards, and successfully dealt with a few indcidents in which you've needed to change directions at the last second. Without that you don't have the information needed to declare you can "handle faster" when things aren't going well. If you've had enough of those events, your history of poor judgement also suggests not down sizing. At trim speed, velocity increases with the square root of wing loading. A 200 is only 7% faster than 230 or 20% faster than a 288 square foot student canopy. That's not a big deal provided that a mild tail wind won't have you going too fast to run. Things don't get interesting until you start turning, where a smaller canopy will be more sensitive to control input, start turning quicker, accelerate quicker, and dive longer leading to much more speed. While you can choose not to turn near the ground when things are going well, it becomes unavoidable when some one flies in front of you, the winds change so you're going to overshoot into an obstacle, you land out and don't see a farmer's fence until you're very low, etc. The same canopy which was a few sizes bigger than you could handle sudenly becomes a few sizes too small. Anecdotally, I think about 1 in 4 guys who exceed Brian Germain's WNE chart join the titanium club. Heavy guys do worse. Your canopies aren't as sensitive to control input at a given wingloading but you have more kinetic energy and your bones aren't proportionally stronger. They'll tell you what they think is safe which isn't the same thing. Relativism and a limited sample size means there's a reasonable chance they're wrong. Not owning a skydiving main bigger than a 135 in the last decade doesn't make 170s any slower than when that was considered small. Most drop zones don't have enough jumps happening to draw statistical conclusions about what's actually happening - with less than a fatality a year and only a handful of broken bones random variation of just an event or two per year will swamp out the trends. This is especially true for jumpers at either size extreme - at my reasonable sized home DZ (Otter and King Air in the air at the same time on busy days) there were only a couple of guys your size ("Big" Benny and "Big" Al). While a 200 or 230 sounds real big to most jumpers when you're not doing classic accuracy it does get some one weighing 250 pounds without gear a healthy wingloading. People with much more experience than your instructors and local S&TAs have seen more and have better ideas. Brian Germain has over 13,000 jumps, designs and builds parachutes, and teaches canopy flight at drop zones around the world. He recommends a 230 for you downsizing to a 200 by the time you get 200 jumps. http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf Buy yourself a 230 for a good price. Put 100 jumps on it with a reasonable exploration of the flight envelope out it for no more than $100 less than you paid. Do the same with a 190.

Colorado and California are made up of many local markets where the proximity to good things like skydiving and real ale varies from minutes to hours and house prices run $200K - $1M+. The preferred presidental contender may be Hillary, Obama, or McCain. It's that whole location, location, location thing.... Some idea of where in those states you're looking or at least your requirements for proximity to ski, skydive, surf, and sushi (I'm on a roll here) would help. People in Boulder, CO don't know much about Denver, CO (spending more time outside the country than across the county line isn't too uncommon) and there seems to be a difference between SoCal and NorCal and even East Bay and West Bay.

With the Stiletto and Spectre the maximums (your math is wrong on the Sabre 2) are around the limits where I'd want a canopy with better slow-speed flight characteristics when jumping with density altitude. I put 600 jumps on my Stiletto 120 with suspended weights between 170 and 205 pounds (mostly some where around 190-200) and density altitudes from about 0 to 9000 feet (100-150 sea level jumps; I think I did 3 big sea level boogies when I mostly jumped my Stiletto). I spent some time with a Spectre 135 with 200 pounds of me after herniating a disc at elevation (204 pound "maximum") and it was getting to the same place. Better than a square but not quite enough bottom end under sub-optimal conditions when approaching the limit. Anecdotally, guys at sea level where canopies fly over a size bigger often seem to go a size smaller before they complain. I suspect Dave's right on the expert column being where it gets interesting. Quote >or because they'd rather sell me the Katana? Given enough currency (a layoff after herniating L4-L5 sneezing and moving twice to someplace with mediocre weather were bad for my piloting skills) and a suitable landing area you can land many heavily loaded canopies (this is relative) with at most a couple steps (fly a low approach and pop it back up to the target, or slide to a stop on a nice grassy surface). Don't get that right and you'll be running, and most people don't want a canopy that leaves them with that either/or choice on every approach (it's too much work).

Until the seller accepts your offer, the earnest money is just an indication that they can accept that offer without worrying as much about eating the carrying costs if they sale doesn't go through. After they accept, if they change their mind you could sue them for damages or to sell you the property. Your offer should include a financing contingency so you get your check back if financing falls through. If they had not yet given you a signed sales contract what they did wasn't illegal or uncommon. In seller's markets the bidding even gets included in the sales contract as an escalation clause "$450K plus $1000 more than any offer in hand without contingencies before this offer expires, up to a total price of $500K." The offer could even have been at the same price from a buyer they thought was more likely to close. Having had one first time buyer fail to close and a second with a small down payment + 1st + second combination trying to nickel and dime on the inspection to make the property more affordable, I'd _much_ rather sell to a professional couple with a loan package more likely to go through and less financial pressure to screw with me.

If you're not dealing with anything special, are in a populous area with properties changing hands reasonably often, and not in a tight buyer's market where you need to know what'll be for sale before it goes on the market you don't need to be paying a good Realtor $7500+ to hold your hand through the buying and selling process. A lawyer will do at least as well protecting your interests during closing for $250 an hour. Many will even give you a flat price option for ~$400 for up to several offers. When selling a real-estate apraisal service will give you peace of mind on what it's worth for $350 when selling if you can't glean that from property tax records, Zillow, etc. The last agent I used as a buyer made $1250 an hour. The last one selling (paid for by the company who relocated me) walked away with $8000 for less than a week's work (appropriate updates and staging moved it when several near-identical units languished for months). The last time we bought without an agent we got a fair price and then subtracted what the seller would have paid an agent. The last time we sold without an agent we got the highest price paid for a property in that development and netted $12K more by substituting a lawyer + MLS listing + showing service.

Yes. Most people do not know how to design software which can be thoroughly tested. Most people managing software development projects aren't willing to pay the upfront costs to be thorough. Most managers aren't willing to spend money for tools which make the process more effective. The net result is that software is full of bugs that are especially likely to manifest when abnormal timing situations or faults occur. The professors are likely to find interesting problems that aren't unique to the company's products, but will have governments who've yet to buy looking at other market alternatives. That would be bad for a business planning on averaging $3000 per voting terminal, and bad for the investors who spend $25, $50, or even $100M on software companies before they see a dime of profit. The procurement process is largely political.

No, because the platforms which make canopies land nice at high wing loadings make them too unreliable to use as reserves. Some suck less than others though. PD reserves land well, swoop a little, and even have pleasant front riser pressure but they still suffer from being square. Companies have made rigs sized for small mains and reasonable sized reserves for over a decade (Reflex R300 for 150 reserve/97 main). They still do (Jump Shack, Mirage, Sunrise) but most people want something that weighs less than 19 pounds which can be mistaken for a school child's back pack. Before I broke myself I jumped a 105 main + 143 reserve (more like 150 square feet measured according to PIA), and would stick with that size or a PD160 even if I got serious about staying current and swooping (which would probably mean an 80 after I downsized my belly). The moves to cross-braced canopies (a 104 packs up somewhere between a conventional 120 and 135) and sail fabric (an 85 packs like a conventional 135) don't hurt here.

Eventually you're going to land it with a 5+ MPH tail wind. You really need to get over the fear of making adjustments at low altitudes. 100', roof top height, or ground level - it shouldn't make a difference. Eventually you _will_ need a course correction which may be significant (90 degrees). While front riser adjustments keep the canopy over your head they also increase speed which is exactly what you don't need close to the ground. You _really_ want to be making adjustments with both toggles, one to turn and the opposite to keep the canopy at trim speed (or slowing down as you reach flare height). You know you've got it when you release both toggles at the end of the turn and it doesn't speed up. You have none of the experience needed to make that call. Lots of people have discovered the hard way that they didn't.

No and even a 20% downpayment won't let you buy one for just $5K a month either :-( If you shop around you can find a nice one bedroom unit in a triplex with a garage so you can do wood working. Not caring too much about square footage and neighbors sharing walls does wonders for ones' housing costs :-)

1) Prices have gotten way out of line with rents. While I rent a property I'd like to live in for $1500/month, buying something would run $5000 for the mortgage + taxes. 2) The rate of decrease in prices is increasing. 3) There are still years of rate resets left that will force more sales and create a larger imbalance between supply and demand.

That's right. Ride your bicycle to work. If you live too far away, move. Move from a house to a studio apartment if that's what it takes to be within both city limits and your budget. Once enough people do that gas will be dirt cheap. McMansions in the suburbs will be cheap and deteriorate into the new slums. City living will be even pricier. OTOH, once you do that reducing gas prices won't matter much to you. Unless the demand is higher for their Little Guy Gas(TM) in which case they can keep their prices the same or increase them.

Yes. I have over 1500 jumps and usually jump a Samurai 105. After herniating my L4-L5 disc and being out of commission for six months I put a couple jumps on a 190, spent a while jumping a 135, and then longer on a 120 before returning to the105 I'd been jumping for the previous 2 years and 300 jumps.

That's your descent rate. Your total speed is much higher. I clocked 48 MPH on RADAR after plane-out from a conservative carving 90 degree turn under my Stiletto 120 at your wing loading. I had to be going faster before plane out and would have had even more speed under a wing that dives more like my Samurai or your Crossfire. You really don't want to be jumping a canopy you have to land straight in because eventually you're going to find yourself with more speed than you expected. Maybe you'll be low after getting back from a long spot and not turn as flat as you planned to. Maybe 450 jumps of muscle memory from jumping a canopy that doesn't do much when you yank on a toggle will lead you to apply too much input when some one "cuts you off." Jumping a bigger wing where you add speed only when conditions are right is a much better idea. It's like starting canopy flight all over again with the additional handicap of learned responses from those 450 jumps that will break or kill you when you apply them in the wrong place with your new parachute. Your bigger canopy also let you get away with a _lot_ when it came to landing. If you just fly the 129 all the way to the ground it's going to stop flying at about the same speed your old canopy had in full flight. Landing like that can be less than pleasant, especially if you have a 5-10 MPH tail wind because the wind shifted directions or a down-wind landing made the most sense for other reasons. You really should be comfortable starting with some speed and making 90 degree turns below roof top level. The skill is quite useful when you didn't notice landing area obstacles at altitude. It's a lot of fun too. The problem isn't what you intentionally do (being careful and all); it's what you do unintentionally. With a few hundred jumps under a 150 (especially with a similar planform) applying the wrong learned response would be less likely. Having skipped directly from something suitable for students to far beyond the placarded maximum wingloading when ellipticals were getting common (canopies are no slower today than they were 10 years ago) makes doing the wrong thing likely. The best idea would be to put 100 jumps on a 170 and really learn to fly it. I didn't do that and could understand some one else skipping to a 150. Before getting to the 129, you really want to put a few hundred jumps on a 150 in which you explore the full flight envelope. That would give you a wing loading where things "start to get exciting" as opposed to "the canopy has very sharp pointy teeth." Doing that in two steps - semi elliptical (50-100 jumps on a Sabre 2) and then on a more interesting planform (100-200) would be prudent. I thought the Crossfire 109 I demoed was somewhat unresponsive; so if you're looking for more control sensitivity when you get to the second step you might look at canopies like the Katana or Samurai rather than dropping a size. I think you're probably pulling our leg and there's only a small chance you're serious. Getting hurt sucks enough (even when your bones stay inside your skin) that I'll risk wasting my time on the off chance that you're not trolling and just don't yet know what you're getting into (it took me bruised heels which hurt to walk on for a few months to really respect small parachutes, although without 400 jumps on the previous size I'd have done a lot worse).

If your beer belly (drinking and skydiving go together when done sequentially; skydive first then drink beer) has grown too much since when you were measured for the suit street clothes don't fit. Otherwise they usually do. When it's cold, you may even be able to fit some fleece on in there. You can pay a drop zone a few hundred dollars for a first jump course which includes one or two instructors and the gear, which isn't really a discount from the < $25 an experienced skydiver pays to jump (airplanes are expensive). Upon completion of the student program, gear rental is often available for $25/jump bringing the total to $50/jump. Not-for-profit clubs can be less expensive for both experienced ($15) and inexperienced people.

Landing straight in there isn't a big difference - your 129 is only 25% faster than the 210. With a speed inducing maneuver (that may be untintentional) you could easily end up with twice the speed, four times the energy, and a canopy so sensitive to control input you can't keep it flying in a straight line. The perceived differences between canopy sizes and shapes are really non linear. I didn't have any problems going from a 205 to 155 square with a dozen jumps on 170s in between. The 135 @ 1.4-1.5 starting to get interesting and when I went from a 134 elliptical to a 120 elliptical loaded around 1.6 pounds/square foot with 600 jumps the thing didn't always go in a straight line. At your wing loading you should be able to get a ground speed in excess of 50 MPH with a 90 degree turn which is a bit faster than a Cessna 172 lands. The Cessna has spring-loaded landing gear with wheels to accommodate rough handling near the ground. You don't. Skipping a size and changing planform all at the same time is potentially a really bad idea. You run the risk of being unpleasantly surprised.

According to Brian Germain (who has 13,000 jumps, designs parachutes, teaches canopy flight professionally) 160 jumps are minimum for you to be jumping that canopy and 260 are the recommendation. His chart suggests a 230 for you. http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf The 210 is not that much harder to land straight in than a 230 because at its trim airspeed it's only 5% faster. One big problem is that without experience making low turns (that whole "no turns below x00 feet" you're taught as a student is unavoidable in situations you'll find yourself in) you're not unlikely to unintentionally accelerate it beyond trim speed when you turn to avoid some one who cuts you off in the landing pattern, land out and need to avoid a barbed wire fence you didn't see above 100 feet, or find yourself back at the DZ at 100 feet still flying down-wind. The smaller canopy will take less control input to do that, accelerate quicker, and accelerate longer creating much more speed and kinetic energy to deal with when things go wrong. While other people are jumping much smaller parachutes, you still have more than enough to break yourself - about 8 times the kinetic energy it took me to join the titanium club with just 185 pounds under a 245 with a half-speed accuracy approach (1.36X from suspended weight, 1.6X from the wingloading speed increase, and 4X because I broke myself at half speed). I've attached the X-ray for your perusal. You've got decades (perhaps 70 years if you're young) to jump smaller and faster parachutes. There's no need to rush things and plenty of reasons (swoop accuracy is largely about what you do above 1000' and that's easier to learn with more square footage, carving ground level turns are a lot less intimidating to learn when you have a bigger slower wing, and the larger canopy makes keeping your foot bone connected to your shin bone more likely because a disconnect stinks even when the pieces stay inside your skin). .88 is a fine choice for a first wingloading.

Although places like Countrywide pay 33% more interest (4.05% APY) which becomes significant if you've got earnings you can't spend or sold a house and are just sitting on the proceeds. If you don't like Countrywide (I decided I didn't like having them in charge of the money which was a home) and don't need to be that liquid, credit unions (who are not for profit) have some good deals on CDs. My credit union is offering 3.25%, 3.50%, 3.75%, 4.00%, 4.10%, and 4.20% on 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 month CDs. The 36-60 month CDs allow you to increase the interest rate to whatever is currently available once over their term. They also have no sub-prime or even Alt-A loan exposure. If you may need the money somewhat sooner, you may still do well with a CD at an institution that offers deposit secured loans - just take out a loan secured loan. With dropping interest rates, the spread between what I got my CDs at in January and deposit secured loans is about 1.2%. I can take a loan against a 3-year CD after two years and still net 4.3%.