DrewEckhardt

The FAA requires your AAD to be maintained according to the manufacturer's directives and that's what SSK says. The price should have reflected that. Simplistic on-line calculators do not. A Cypres should cost about $11.25/month to own regardless of when you bought it. Paying more means you're covering for some one else's bad shopping habits or picking up the tab on their wear. For example, I paid $875 for one of mine (The DZO thought everyone should have a Cypres and therefore didn't charge MSRP) and will have spent 5 * 85 on batteries + 2 x ($140 + $20 + $20) for maintenance and shipping - $80 for the trade-in, or $1620. Divided by 144 months that's $11.25. You should have expected 5 years and 3 months of life life from that Cypres, 3 battery replacements, 2 inspections, and an $80 trade-in value and given the seller 63 months * $11.25 + $80 trade-in - 3 x $85 batteries - 2 x ($140 + $20 + $20) maintenance $133.75 The seller should have waited until it was 7 years and 9 months old and sold it with four years of useful life left with 2 battery replacements and 1 inspection 48 months * $11.25 + $80 trade-in - 2 * 85 batteries - ($140 + $20 + $20) maintenance $250 The inspection timing (+/-3 months is allowed) and end of life (+ 3 months) means a buyer with a seasonal lay off could leave it with no battery for six months. The same thing works for the Cypres 2. They cost more to begin with but have no separate battery replacement so total cost of ownership is nearly identical. An out-of-inspection Cypres with dead batteries and less than 18 months left is only worth the $80 trade-in value.

It depends on the canopy. Most modern designs land with an interactive approach where you achieve level flight, add toggle until they're about done flying, and give them a final pitch increase to arrest your forward speed. You shouldn't have to run unless you have a tail wind or are overloading the canopy. Most people don't do a good job managing their energy. While not critical with large parachutes and/or a head wind doing things right becomes essential for a comfortable injury free landing with a tail wind and/or smaller parachute. F111 accuracy canopies and some of the mains used for students land best when you flare in one motion.

Brian Germain's Wingloading Never Exceed formula is built around how fast things happen and the experience you need to handle that. He subtracts at least .1 pounds per square foot per 2000' of density altitude. Don't forget that although standard temperature is 59 degrees F at sea level, it decreases at 3.5 degrees per thousand feet, so at 5000 feet MSL the standard temperature is 41.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Every 10 degrees above standard temperature adds 600 feet so density altitude somewhere like Mile High skydiving (5050 feet MSL) is 8000 feet on a 91.5 degree summer day. We've seen 9000-10000 feet reported from the airport weather unit.

in Many Realtors(TM) earn a decent living on 3% or less.

While you can take a Section 179 deduction today you'll need to pay the IRS later if your business use drops below 100% over the next five years. And you still need to come up with the 70% of the purchase price which is not tax...

Exit weight will be closer to 185 pounds (my main rig with a 105/143 main/reserve weighs 19 pounds, my accuracy rig with a 245/253 29 pounds). Assuming consistent accurate stand-up landings with jumps on intermediate canopy sizes, a 188 would be appropriate now, downsize to a 168 in 100 jumps with enough interest and training, and a 150 at 200-250 jumps total. Around the 400 jump mark (2-3 years) you sell everything and buy a new rig with a 135 main. What will be interesting down the road isn't safe to jump now. Buying used and selling for $1/jump less than you paid for mains and rig will be less expensive than starting new and taking a bigger cut out so you can sell quickly when downsizing.

It's workload dependent. With spinning media you have to accelerate and decelerate the heads to line up with the cylinder of interest and wait for the sectors to come around. When you're interested in random disk locations even a fast disk and reasonable queue depth are unlikely to yield 150 operations per second. With no moving parts its the same cost to hit any address and you might get 15000 IOPs out of a solid state drive. At 4K per IOP (as in database B+ tree pages for small records) total bandwidth is under 60M/sec and you have a 100X speedup. When your workload consists of large sequential transfers you're going to bottleneck on an IDE bus and would spend less per gigabyte achieving a desired transfer rate by striping across more spindles. In a PC running bloated software you need more RAM. Things have gotten so big that you can have a 1000M memory foot print. When available RAM is smaller than the working set things get copied to and from mass storage which is much slower (flash) or much much slower (disk - you only get 400K/second vs 1000000K/second)

- Build significant pieces of The Product for my latest startup to improve scalability and reduce costs for internet companies. - Hire some exceptional minions of evil to help because I'm too old and married to have work hours defined as "when not sleeping" - Walk down stairs normally. Broken bones stink. - Get better at welding because there should be a lot of it in my future. - Build a set of Pitts 12 ribs. 52 ribs and 52 weeks are NOT a coincidence.

Fliteline used to build Reflexes with a 150 reserve container and your choice of a 100, 120, or 135 main tray. I own two. Sunrise says they'll build a Wings for any combination you like but "won't promise it will look good" Jump Shack builds Racers in any combination. You just can't have a Javelin or Vector like that.

Because it makes landing at least as much fun as the freefall portion of the jump.

I don't disagree with you; however, the great majority of skydivers will never be in a situation where they will be jumping a canopy of that size. For the select few that are in that group I have already stated that people are free to make their own decisions and I respect their right to do so. Everyone weighs their perception of risk differntly. The great majority of skydivers are loading their F111 seven cell reserves beyond the pound per square foot that was acceptable when such canopies were jumped as mains, with much less experience on that type of canopy, and with a higher chance of landing out on sub-optimal terrain due to longer jump runs with more groups (up to 24 jumpers from an otter with lots of 2 and 3 way freefly groups versus 14 from a twin beech and bigger groups) with a similar fully-open altitude (you can end in the same place as a 2000' container opening with a 200' main opening when you start at 3000', snivel for 800', and spend a little while dealing with a spinner). The reserve's lower porosity gives us some added headroom although at some point they just don't land well enough especially on uneven terrain where you can't run or slide. Somewhere above a pound per square foot nearly everyone agrees that reserves land fine. Somewhere below two pounds per square foot nearly everyone agrees the stall speed is too high. Where the cross-over happens is up for discussion. With a field elevation of 5000' MSL and density altitudes reaching 10,000 feet (standard temperature is barely 40 degrees F) I think tall aerofoil rectangular seven cells don't land well enough much above 1.3 pounds per square foot versus 1.5 pounds/square foot for rectangular 9 cells, 1.7 for older ellipticals, and 1.8 for newer non-cross braced designs. I've only made a few hundred jumps at sea level but suspect an extra .2 is about right. That puts the point at which a larger reserve becomes prudent below the wing loading of many less experienced jumpers and something that as few as 11% of dropzone.com posters can ignore http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=921140;search_string=wingloading%20poll;#921140 A two out situation is nearly avoidable by following accepted safety practices : planned container opening high enough to meet the BSR specified 1800' cutaway decision altitude (2000' for a canopy that opens in 200' and then descends slowly, 3000'+ for one that might snivel for 800' and then dump 90 feet per second until you decide you're not going to kick out of the line twists) and enough reminders to open so that actually happens (multiple audible altimeters for disciplines where the ground is less visible like VRW). A simple cutaway is almost certain when you're spending 6 minutes of a pack job (not the 60 you'd use on a reserve) and jumping high-aspect ratio non-square planforms that tend to spin-up and quickly loose altitude. Its better to optimize for the more likely later case. A 135 canopy for a 175 pound guy is arguably neither "a mega small main" nor "reasonable sized reserve." With the possibility of higher density altitudes he'd be better served by a 150 reserve (PD143) regardless of how far he downsizes in the future. I liked a 150 when I regularly jumped 135s as mains and still think its a fine choice with my Samurai 105.

What if a person had $50K in credit card debt, did a cash-out refinance into an ARM, and then had the $50K forgiven when the ARM interest rate increased? What if a person spent $50K in cash on cars and consumer goods to avoid credit card debt, got a 100% ARM for the same house they would have bought living a less extravagant lifestyle, and had that $50K forgiven after they learned they shouldn't have done that? What if an otherwise frugal person spent $50K on housing more than they should have, couldn't make the payments after the teaser period, and had the $50K forgiven? Although the timing and mechanics of the financial mistakes vary in all four examples, it's the same over-spending problem which deserves the same treatment. Forgiven debt should be taxable income or not. I'd suggest that the lenders get the collateral (house) or proceeds from sale of goods purchased on credit ($0 in the case of non-durables like vacations), take a capital loss just as if they'd invested in the stock market instead of an individual, and there isn't any retroactive income. It doesn't hurt people who were just down on their luck, is fair, and doesn't cost much.

You have to get more involved than that, with marinating and sauteeing. Or at least use exotic meats. Example: Make a sesame oil, orange, ginger vinaigrette. Marinate chicken thighs over night. Grill. Combine with mayo, avocado, roma tomatoes, and pepper jack cheese on the bread of your choice. Example: Start grilling your basic high-grade. Flip your burger. Carmelize yellow onions with some nice mushroons and maybe garlic. Melt emmenthaler swiss atop the burger, toast the buns, and mix with sauteed vegies. Example: Thinly sliced ostrich, red onions, roma tomatoes, emmenthaler swiss, on sour dough. Example: Beef tongue boiled in mild seasonings, minced white onion and dill pickle mixed into mayo... Yum. I feel hungry.

With some lightly loaded canopies you're not going to get any benefit trying a 2-stage flare because you need all the lift you can muster out of 1 strong single-stage flare. So don't beat yourself up over it if you're following all advice & not seeing results. It may just need to wait til you're flying a different canopy. I started with a Turbo-Z 205 (ZP topskin 9-cell) with a suspended weight that was probably around 175 pounds for a .85 wing loading. It took a 2-stage flare to land well. My 245 square foot F111 seven cells don't at the same wing loading.

Heck no. I like sports where your chances of injury are determined more by what you do than some other animal does. Angry 2000 pound bulls and invincible 4000 pound Volvos scare me.

In terms of control sensitivity (intentional or not) the Stiletto is "more elliptical" than newer designs like the Crossfire and Extreme FX. My Stiletto 120 was more sensitive to control input than the Crossfire 109 and Extreme FX 104 I demoed at the same wing loading. It's also more likely to require user input to avoid a spinning malfunction. The big change over the last fifteen years has been the in recovery arc shape (the Stiletto achieves level flight with no control input following a speed inducing maneuver instead of remaining in a dive until returning to trim speed) and length (the Stiletto recovers in a relatively short distance compared to other aggressive wings of the same size). Lots of us find the newer behavior more user-friendly - while you can maintain roll angle and stretch the recovery arc of any canopy, you can get away with arriving at your intended heading early when the canopy continues to descend while not turning. The longer recovery arc also gives you more time to get your position adjusted.

That's certainly more sporting than shooting fish in a barrel.

Most drop zones require jumpers to belong to USPA because membership includes liability insurance that pays for property damaged by jumpers, like the fragile expensive airplanes typically parked around landing areas. USPA has about 30,000 members. There are about 30 fatalities a year. So your chances of death are probably about 1 in 1000 from skydiving itself. This is pretty comparable to motorcycling at 7 per 10000 registered vehicles. You're also exposed to risk from general aviation which is harder to quantify in a skydiving context, since skydivers rarely fly in instrument conditions, rarely land with the plane, and can get out when some problems occur above a few thousand feet. Accidents are relatively infrequent but kill lots of people when they happen - the Otter crash in Perris, CA killed 16 people.

Very good. My Entreprise STG-58 is _not_ that accurate and I figured it was the gun which I should trade in on a HK G3 or AR10. I even swapped in a DSA floating fore-end (partly to get my US parts count up). Should I blame the ammo (Hirtenberger), iron sites (the FAL puts the rear site on the lower receiver, so switching to the dust cover scope mount on the upper receiver avoids the problem), barrel (Austrian STG-58), muzzle appliance, or what?

Once on a load I found out that they'd moved the landing area without telling me. Shortly thereafter signs appeared on the door to manifest and plane.

Its more fun than other hobbies and sufficiently different than others that you want the variety.

No, although that limits how small a canopy you can fly as you become more experienced. I know a one-legged BASE jumper who does not use a prosthetic. Normal landings are soft, no worse than stepping off an escalator. When things go wrong you need to do something with the energy. Usually that means a controlled parachute landing fall. Obviously getting that right is more important when you have physical problems. Not too much. People with all sorts of problems compensate. The Pieces of Eight team are all amputees. There's one guy jumping with a birth defect that left him with a partial arm. You might track with your feet rotated out to the side instead of pointing your toes like people wearing stiff paragliding boots for bad landing areas beneath cliffs.

Short-term? Sure. I'll spend less on gas driving my 10-year old petrol powered paid off car than I would fuel + depreciation on a new alternate fuel vehicle. Long-term? No. Brazillian ethanol is $1.80 a gallon.

there-in lies the rub. how do we weed the truly unfortunate from the stupid or plain fucking lazy? You don't because that's too hard to get right when you run into things like mental illness. Instead you keep the level of assistance low enough that while basic needs are being met (food, shelter, clothing, medical) the specifics encourage working (no convienence foods like TV dinners or candy/soda/chips, dormitories not apartments, etc.) and are inexpensive enough (a 100 square foot dorm room with four bunks has to beat a single person's 500 square foot subsidized apartment) that it doesn't hurt to not differentiate between the needy and choosy.

How low? Somewhat under 200' you still have time to unstow your brakes, make some turns, and get a nice landing. With a contemporary wingloading it will increase the need for precision. With a comfortable .7 lb/square foot accuracy loading you might just PLF in. Yes. It takes more time to grab both your brakes and pop them than just pulling on one rear riser.