DrewEckhardt

Tibia/fibula fracture. Better than the alternative - if I'd been well I'd probably have wanted to go to the Star, Idaho boogie and my wife would have told me to go play with my friends.

Technically it's a BASE jump and not a swoop, but I'd like to make a point to jumpers who still believe that a wing loading of "only" 1.5 or even 1.0 can't hurt them. .8 wingloading under a 245. Perfect 3/4 brake accuracy approach except for that part where a woody shrub or short tree grabbed my leg. About 1/16th the energy of a nice swoop. According to my wife it's important for the airplane to know where it's going to land before it takes off. I agree even more now. OTOH every guy would love to have a second rod. And it _is_ titanium. Tibia/fibula fracture, 12mm IM nail and four screws. Incident details here http://www.basejumper.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2877388 The creepy bend was in my leg when I landed. That's how I knew I really broke myself. The insurance company has the running total at $20,000 so far. Fortunately I'd already used my deductible on other problems (you can catch septic bursitis packing parachutes!) so I only had to pay 10% or $2000 which brings me to the in-network co-pay limit. Plus the $2500 in lost wages (even with disability insurance). $1000+ on lodging and getting rescued when I couldn't even crutch arround. I expected aches and pains for which there's Vicodin. There's even NORCO with less acetaminophen so you can eat more and survive leaving the hospital before you're done needing morphine shots for breakthrough pain. What I didn't know is opiates don't work well for nerve pain. After five weeks I finally talked to a doctor who'll did something (neurontin) about that.

You need both. It takes a longer than a year to become aware of our mortality and failability as humans and adopt the necessary attitude. My freeflying and canopy piloting skills definately suffer after a layoff.

Scotty's a low pulling dirty-old man who organizes great skydives, is a fine cook, and is fun to hang around... The dude sure livened up Colorado skydiving when he and Tammy where hanging around Brush.

The line trim has never changed. To quote John LeBlanc who designed the Stiletto: "We introduced the Stiletto in three sizes in July of 1992. Since then, the following changes have been made: In 1994 we made a change to the canopy logo panels to make them easier to produce. In March 1999, we added spanwise reinforcing tapes on the 120 and 135 sizes. These tapes were already on the larger sizes for extra durability, and we just added them on two smaller sizes. In June of 1999 we created the new style warning labels that have the skill levels with varying wing loading maximums for each category, with a far higher maximum wing loadings than the original 1.3 lbs/sq.ft. As you can see, the changes made don't affect the performance. The airfoil and trim changes that people believe occurred on the Stiletto have never occurred, and there have been no changes made in any way to "detune" the canopy. People's perceptions have changed over time, because our sport has changed so much. As the designer of the Stiletto, I can emphatically state that we are still using the same line lengths and cutting the exact original part shapes with our laser cutting machinery that we used in 1992 for the first Stiletto."

Good luck to both of you and get well soon! Hope there's some one else around not on crutches who's legal to drive. I feel your pain. Broke my tib-fib two weeks before you did yours http://www.basejumper.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2877388 . The bony bits are usually OK but the radiated pain from the posterior tibial nerve I kinked stinks.

Under the expired federal law a bayonet lug was enough to turn a semi-automatic rifle into an "Assault Weapon". Maybe he planned on a drive-by bayoneting? The grenades (if functional - it looks like they were hand-mande) and swords, knives would have been the only thing lethal. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/us/12plot.html?em&ex=1192334400&en=2319da34747b6831&ei=5087%0A

The article doesn't say that. It states that the rich have a larger share of total income and the poor less. Depending on what's happened to total income relative to inflation everyone could be doing better or worse. Over 98% of American households have a fridge, stove, and color TV. 85% have a car. Even our bottom quintile are wealthy by world standards.

Mentally unstable people and guns do not mix. We need better procedures in place to prevent such people from getting hold of guns. But with it being so easy to get hold of a gun in America, do you think it's bound to happen that some of the legally purchased guns are going to end up in the wrong hands (mental nut jobs) eventually? Definately. If it's the governments job to limit access to objects and substances which may be used legally or illegally, I just want them to go after the ones with the highest body counts first. Guns get used in 10,000 murders a year, while alcohol is involved in 20,000 traffic fatalities each year. If accidents are an issue, I want the government to go after the swimming pool, bathtub, and beach owners whose property claims 3000 lives each year versus 1000 for guns. If those bigger issues aren't worth addressing (no one needs to drink alcohol or go swimming) I want them to leave my guns alone.

A lack of Constitutional authority didn't stop him from going to war with Iraq...

Good example. Why has Linux worked? Because every self respecting geek needs a unix, operating systems are fun to write, college students have more time to write device drivers than money to buy supported hardware, it solves the chicken-and-egg problem of needing real experience to get a decent job and job to get real experiencet, and a code sample employers can look at goes farther than a personal reference. No self respecting geek needs a WYSIWYG word processor (their favorite editor with movement keys like hjkl and a text formatting language is faster) and they aren't fun to write so there aren't a lot. OpenOffice is free because it was cheaper for Sun to buy company which made it and such software is a context activity for Sun (per Moore's Core And Context) better handled by outsourcing it to the free software community which won't charge Sun for upgrades. Companies have to pay geeks to develop software they don't need personally. Getting less sexy software done which requires senior people (young engineers are easily amused) takes piles of money and stock (total compensation pushing double what a startup might pay when you disregard the stock options that have a 1 in 10 chance of paying off based on what the business people do inspite of your recomendations). The compensation is non-financial.

Do something which doesn't require making several S-folds outside the bag - psycho-pack, Wolmari pack, last S-fold first with the "first" S-fold once it's in the bag, etc. Take your pick. Or get a packer to teach you how to contain everything without using the bag. It'll take more practice to get right but be more "pure"

Shortly after which the Anheuser-Busch would lobby the government to shutdown the competition, it would become a class 1 controlled substance, getting a natural legal high the old way would be cheaper again, and the planes would be flying within a year. Brian's awesome.

I always thought that the DZ was the only place you should wear your skydiving and BASE T-shirts without being out of other clean clothes in which case a skydiving T was preferable to smelling bad since that saves you from discussions about perfectly good airplanes and duct tape. OTOH since I haven't bought a T-shirt in years and haven't been attending trade-shows, most of my surviving T-shirts are like that and we engineers are not known for our fashion sense.

Bidding even an extra $2 may not have helped in that case because E-bay uses a proxy bidding system where the maximum is private. An item with a current high of $90 and increment of $.50 may have a current high bidder with a $100 maximum. If I bid anything between $90.50 and $99.50 as a maximum they're going to win at $.50 more than me regardless of when I submit the bid.

What losses? Most of the taxes in this country are paid by the top 5% of wage earners. Cumulatively the top quintile pays 60%, two quintiles 80%, and 3 quintiles over 95%. For all practical purposes migrant workers don't pay taxes.

At wingloadings under 1 pound per square foot which few experienced skydivers do these days. 30-40 is a lot less than "hundreds" and the wing loadings there are usually still moderate (1.3-1.4) by contemporary standards.

1. They'd still be in the same boat with the government "paying" for health insurance since wages would have to increase to leave enough for housing and other expenses. Socialized medicine is only going to reduce costs if coverage is reduced (in which case some employers are still going to be paying for health insurance) or efficiency increases (we spend more per capita than other countries so this is theoretically possible, although it would require avoiding excessive pork and concessions to the medical industry) 2. The difference between our expenses and developing countries far exceeds even the $1000/month price of an excellent group plan. Chinese auto workers earn $150 a month, while the union contract with Daimler-Chrysler calls for $3000-$6000/month in America depending on pay grade.

Most of us manage not to break ourselves :-)

I get noticeably softer openings wing I psycho pack my Monarch 135 without rolling the nose compared to a pro-pack with rolled nose and tail. The only real disadvantage is on canopies smaller than the bag they're going in. It's easy to get a tighter pack job which ends up being longer and skinnier. On the ground the shape seems to catch in the corners of the rig. I suspect this leads to the degraded openings I observed, with less heading consistency and more line twists.

Urgent care clinics can also take X-rays and treat wounds, but have shorter waits because they're not required to treat anyone who shows up regardless of their ability to pay. With health insurance and money: Given bends in body parts where there aren't joints, I'm going to the ER in an ambulance shot full of morphine and versed so they can admit me and schedule surgery ASAP. Example: bad BASE landing, tibia/fibula fracture. When merely in too much pain for non-prescription drugs or faced with injuries that can wait for normal business hours I'll take the urgent care clinic. Example: septic bursitis with one elbow noticeably bigger than the other, herniated L4-L5. Come to think of it I've seen too many doctors in the last two years. Without health insurance or money: I'd head for the ER because they'd have to triage me.

Here's hoping everyone had an impromptu camping trip with canopies for sleeping bags and a quick rescue whilst the rest of us have our fingers crossed.

As long as an inexperienced wingsuit flyer isn't being reckless and flying by open canopies they pose no risk to you. Everyone should be able to track in a reasonably straight line after graduating the seven jump AFF program, and any one who can track should be able to fly a small-winged suit. People who've tried wingsuits are well aware of this. The problems with wingsuits involve situational awareness (your internal clock is wrong, ground rush is different) and having the presence of mind to stay relaxed and deal with the added problems (spins, suit malfunctions, being unable to reach your toggles) and more complex emergency procedures (you have 2 or 3 handles more to pull). Enough experience skydiving are needed to get there, and you don't know what you're missing until it's a problem. Enough jumps makes it more likely, but even experienced people sometimes have problems - with thousands of skydives, Skratch had a spinning problem, caused his Spectre to malfunctions when he dumped out of it, and ended up under a reserve with line twists.

The ring to riser top is standardized (4" rings a bell) which makes a lot of sense because the relation of the brake line to the other lines determines the canopy's opening characteristics. The differences are entirely in the user interface. Shorter risers are going to require more arm movement to get a full flare.

Features useful for student operations like an adjustable harness, release handle for the pilot chute pouch so the reserve side instructor can deploy for the student on AFF1-3, static line stow bands, AAD control located so that it can be turned off in the plane for descent on a jump that gets called off because the student CYPRES fires at a lower desent rate, etc. The average male skydiver goes through 2-3 rigs and 6-7 canopies before they get something they'll keep for a long time because they don't find their safely sized canopy to be exciting enough after 100-200 jumps. If you bought new you'd be kicking yourself for spending thousands of dollars more than you needed to and be likely to take a loss when you sold it. If you bought used, it would be sized for large parachutes that wouldn't interest you unless you're really huge (like 250 pounds) in which case the harness wouldn't fit or you like classic accuracy which requiers large slow parachutes. Nearly anything built in the last decade will be appropriate for whatever sort of flying you want to do and hold up fine for thousands of jumps. For your first rig, you're looking for something which fits you and your budget. If your budget is bigger you want to buy a newer canopy design that opens nicer and is more enjoyable to fly. Nearly all experienced skydivers use a bottom-of-container throw-out pilot chute which is pulled out by its apex (so it doesn't have a lot of drag) and extracts the closing pin at line-stretch. Some student operations use ripcords and spring-loaded pilot chutes. A few skydivers still like a pull-out where the handle is attached to the pin via a short lanyard and the rim of the pilot chute. Many people buy what's most popular at their home dropzone which means a Javelin. For a new rig I'd buy a Wings because of the flap configuration (the upward tucking main flap won't dislodge in freefall), delivery time, and price; used I'd get what fits.