DrewEckhardt

Yeah, my brain isn't what it used to be....

Although unless you're trying to calculate the street value of a drug seizure it's not relevant. What's the midpoint of a 7 and 3/16" wide board? 3 1/2 plus 3/8" on your tape measure. What's the midpoint of a 15.125 cm wide board? You have to think to come up with 7.5625 cm.

When I was young and living in a college town, I used to use the off-campus student housing office. Advertising was free and you just had to pay for the paper (like 10 cents a page) when searching their database with the usual critieria - pets, smoking/non-smoking, etc. I lived with friends a few times too. More stable but less interesting than being with people who went to the same rehab clinic as Jerry Garcia, the hooters waitresses bleeching the flesh off cow-skulls, the guy who put holes in the wall during kinky sex, the guy who thought jail was just like summer camp, the alcoholic who stole our everclear and mixed it with chocolate milk making chocohol.... Hmm. Come to think of it, you might ask people you actually know.

Could you expand on this? Because Brian Germain (in his book), Scott Miller (canopy course) and several instructors that I've spoken to say the exact opposite... "full glide until you're ready to flare" Sometimes accuracy is very important to prevent hitting something. Sometime you find yourself needing to be very precise, even possibly needing to sink your canopy down vertically due to the need to avoid trees and power lines or whatever that surround your only good landing spot. Or just end up too low to return to full-flight, because you made a low turn, waited in brakes for a golf cart to go by which decided to park where you were going to swoop, etc. It will happen.

You expect prarie dog burrows in Colorado and no problems in Eloy. Unfortunately, while the landing area is golf-course like skydivers don't replace their divots. I've crashed there while not expecting too. Sliiide....oof.

While they tell students to "let it fly" prior to landing and that gives you more energy to work with which makes flare timing less critical, it's not necessary and will eventually get you in trouble. It took me over 1000 jumps to realize that. The last 100' of a traditional accuracy approach is flown in 3/4 brakes with no return to full flight. You actually get to 100% brakes before touching down. Although I wouldn't want to land a small canopy in a sink, you can definately approach with a lot of brakes under a small (like 105 square feet) canopy and still get an acceptable flare. And a 288 is a large canopy. The other thing you want to note is that the effect of brake input on glide ratio varies with canopy type. Big F111 seven cells start loosing glide ratio with some brake input and are probably down to 1:1 by the time you hit 2/3 brakes; small ellipticals have a glide ratio increase with some brakes and some keep it until they're approaching a stall. If you're going to run into a building you may be better off doing a flat turn to avoid it. You'd have been better off just keeping the brakes where they were and finishing your flare because raising them causes the canopy to surge forward, increasing its decent rate, and putting you behind the canopy where flaring will have a reduced and delayed effect. With a bigger canopy you'll probably even land softly. At 210 pounds out the door with my J7 and 245 I'm loaded heavier than I'd like for accuracy, but still get comfortable landings in a sink. With a smaller canopy, accepting the lower airspeed and planning to PLF will suck less than going faster and still being unable to get a good flare.

Your canopy stalls when its angle becomes too great compared to the relative wind. When you apply brakes to the canopy it slows down, you continue moving forwards due to Newton's first law of motion, and the whole system rotates increasing the angle of attack. More abrupt toggle inputs magnify the effect, getting the canopy to stall with less total control input than if you gradually applied brake input which just changes trim and wing shape. Since landing requires you to achieve a zero descent rate while the gradual-input approach to stalling a canopy still has it descending (albeit slower), you can't use it on landing and being unable to slowly reach the stall point is not relevant to being able to get a decent landing. You probably want to be able to stall at the rate you apply control input when landing.

If the grass has been mowed recently enough, there are no gopher holes, divots from other skydivers.... It really friggen hurts when you snag something.

If you do that under a small enough (where "small enough" is a function of the canopy type and density altitude - you can get away with a couple sizes smaller at sea level than on a summer day outside Denver, and smaller sizes with elliptical planforms than square and cross braced vs. conventional construction) parachute and/or with enough tail wind you'll be going too fast to run, or at least fast enough that stopping is not pleasant. You need to be intelligent about energy management. Sinking so your feet would be below ground level if you extended them and popping back up to ground level before the canopy stops flying will set you down with less forward speed than if you tried to fly the parachute all the way into the ground and the same vertical speed.

and it rotates through your cow-orkers, manager, and manager's manager without anyone dealing with it? I tried to check on things remotely but couldn't remembered the restrictions that password had (maybe it's numbers only and 6 of them) and how it combined with the magic device. I'm sticking a post-it on the laptop for my reference and whoever mugs me on my way out of the office.

Looks like a hard opening could separate the two sides of the upper steering line cascade which would then allow the lower steering line to migrate towards the outside of the canopy which would put the reserve in a turn (definately bad if you were incapacitated) and give you an asymetric flare (not good landing on hard ground). Mel noted a spinning malfunction which resulted from the problem. That would really stink on a reserve. Especially with a terminal opening (likely to break things) which implies you're already low.

Your PLF won't naturally get better with time because you usually shouldn't need it. Should be a 1-in-1000 jumps sort of thing just like a cutaway. BUT not PLFing when you need to sucks. With about 600 jumps under my belt I had a bad landing that I stood up (hooked a Stiletto 120 too low, bailed out, popped up in the air, stalled hard) and it hurt to walk for months. So you might practice a little more.

With a $3T budget it's closer to 17%. Divided by the 130M tax payers in this country it's $3846 for each of us.

Skydivers each decide on what they consider to be acceptable risk/reward trade-offs where risk is often underestimated by less experienced skydivers who don't know what they're getting into and ignored by more experienced skydivers who've gotten complacent. Definately. Either they'll be content (I've met a few people who jump big accuracy canopies and do small RW jumps with people they know) or find some way to make things more exciting but less safe (I was wrong when I said I'd never hook turn or BASE jump)

Got a bayonet for your assualt rifle yet? You can

Appropriate sized canopies and affordability. $1700

Two beers will get a 180 pound guy to .04%; getting to .08 would take four beers in a row. 2 beers will get lighter people to the .05% driving-while-ability-impaired charge in Colorado.

$10 to board + $1/1000 feet + 12% fuel surcharge So $13.44 - $15.68 for accuracy and high performance respectively.

Some dropzones limit landing area access based on license. Where I've been jumping a C or D license and 200 jumps means landing on the airport and less means a bus ride back. In the United States The FAA requires a 'C' license for open-field demos. An A-license is required for self supervision, to jump in winds over 14MPH, make water landings, and do group jumps with people who do not hold a USPA coach rating or D-license. Other ratings have a license as a requirement. For example the pro-rating for demos into tighter areas requires a D-license; instructor rating a C-license; coach rating a B-license. Your license affects minimum pack opening altitude limits (3K for A, 2500 for B, 2K for C+D) and time between jumps before which USPA suggests recurency training (30 days for students, 60 days for A, 90 days for B, 6 months for C+D. Some DZs enforce this as a rule and some don't.)

Givi makes a 50 liter locking top case that fits at least medium sized rigs (150 main + reserve). A gear bag on the passenger seat with a bungee net works well too.

And how do you like your new reline then? (that delta of shrinkage is more than enough indicator for a reline) Since I'd shrunk my beer belly by over 20 pounds and wanted to stay close to the wing loading I had over the last 600 jumps I opted to buy a new Samurai 105 instead of re-lining my Stiletto 120 :-) If I ever move back some place where other jumpers would like to be on back to back loads I might fix my Stiletto and find out.

If you're jumping Spectra lines you're going to need a lot more than 2". I added about 6" the last time I changed the steering lines on my Stiletto 120 and had no problems with it flaring right. When I later checked the trim I found that the outer lines (apart from the steering lines) had shrunk up to 6" and inboard lines less than 1.5". While other materials don't shrink you don't know what previous owners did to the canopy.

I dont remember seeing this in the SIM, is that an absolute requirement of the USPA or the baloor operator? Another person up the thread said you have to have 100 jumps, so whats the story? thanks, I'm curious to try one of these at some point. The SIM is silent on the matter. Private businesses are free to impose whatever limits they want. The WFFC had baloons and required 50 jumps to get in the door. The big deals are that you should be comfortable landing your canopy off the DZ and will have enough judgement and/or altitude awareness to pitch if you're low and not yet belly to earth. Accuracy importance will vary with the local terrain and how well you spot.

He's a politician. That's what they do.

If you bothered to read the text of S.1300, you'd find that it'll never cost a C182 jumper anything ( because piston aircraft are exempt) and won't affect most otter jumpers (because most DZOs don't want their operations to be at the mercy of ATC they don't build dropzones that operate in controlled airspace). High altitude jumps will have to cary a surcharge, although a couple dollars (assuming a dozen jumpers) isn't significant compared to the ~$50 you're allready paying for a trip to 23,500. `Sec. 48115. Modernization surcharge `(b) Exceptions- `(2) GENERAL AVIATION EXEMPTIONS- A surcharge may not be assessed under this section for-- `(A) piston engined aircraft; or `(B) turboprop aircraft operating outside of controlled airspace.