DrewEckhardt

FICA is a regressive 12.4% tax from which certain state and federal government employees are exempt. Half of that is hidden from people who aren't self-employed and never shows up on their pay stubs. Sole earners in married couples with salaries of $60K - $90K a year and the rest of us earning $30K - $90K have a higher marginal tax rate on our salaries than single people and married couples taking in over $325,000 a year. Social Security is a bunch of government programs including disability insurance, life insurance, and a safety net for old people with insufficient funds to retire. With the government and the necessary tax burden at their current size, these programs need to exist but should be treated like other government functions, with a line entry on the budget and funding from general revenues. Currently Social Security is also a mandatory retirement savings plan with attrocious returns. Assuming the retirement age isn't increased, FICA taxes don't go up, and social security benefits increase with inflation I'll need to outlast my statistically expected lifespan by five years to get a 0% inflation adjusted return on my investments. If I took my current investment out, made the same contributions in the future, and got a 3% inflation adjusted rate of return I could get $134K a year for the same 15 years: over 4X my social security benefit $72K a year until I die at 100: over 2X my social security benefit $44K a year forever: nearly 30% more than my social security benefit with $1.5M going to my heirs As it stands the numbers are $32K a year with a big fat zero going to my heirs. Which would you rather have?

Zero. I'm not even equipped for TV reception. When I want passive entertainment I'll drop in a CD or fire up something worth watching on DVD. Only two out of the last 60 DVDs come from America within the last decade and all of the recorded TV was from the sixties (80+ Twilight Zone episodes).

No. Packing for yourself means you're not stuck waiting on a packer that will take time to get to your rig. That means getting on more loads, especially when you're jumping with other people who may or may not be waiting with you.

It depends on your local rental situation. I bought a rig at jump 13. I wouldn't have known any more if I waited because all the rental rigs all had Skymaster 295s. The general consensus was that I should buy a 190 or 210 preferably a PD (not a Sabre). Since AFF students had priority, that would mean making only 1-2 jumps a day. And I would have spent a lot more. While a main depreciates about $1/ a jump I was spending $25 a jump. In that situation you buy something that fits at an appropriate wing loading. With the delivery time on custom gear, if I'd gone that route and enough rental rigs were avaialble I could have dropped my first rig in the dumpster when my new gear showed up and still come out ahead financially. The original poster's financial situation will be more complicated because of the higher prices in Europe.

Boulder has few smoking bars left since bars which want a smoking area must seal it off from the rest of the establishment, provide a separate ventilation system, and not include anything that's not in the non-smoking section. A lot of places decided it was easier to become non-smoking establishments. The surrounding cities did not have a ban. Although Boulder bar revenues went down for a few months, they returned to their former levels when people decided it wasn't worth driving to smoke inside. The same thing has happened in other cities with partial and total bans.

No one would die skydiving if no one skydived. We're here because we think that wouldn't be much fun and are willing to take the risks which go with it. The best you can hope for with canopy incidents is people knowing the actual risks, applying judgement, and weighting the odds in their favor through training and experience in less dangerous environments (on their own pass without any traffic, at thousands of feet off the ground, incrementally increasing turn angles, etc) None of the above. I do no more than I plan, which is the most I feel is prudent for a given situation including the winds, traffic, landing area, currency there, parachute, and currency under it. I do less if the landing area gets too crowded, for some reason I don't get close enough to where I want to be before turning, or things just aren't right. When I've had 200 jumps on my Samurai, 800 at or beyond my current wingloading, done 10 jumps a weekend for a couple months, been playing a lot with swooping recently, am on the day's fifth hop-and pop at my home dropzone, and there's a steady 5 MPH breeze that might mean a nice 180 down-wind landing. I used a very slow deep brake approach when jumping into a 60x120' landing area with trees on three sides and a steep hill on the fourth. Last weekend I went home because the winds were all over the place between 15 and 30 MPH and that means turbulence. Good judgement starts before you jump. Usually I like a nice carving 90 into the wind. It's still plenty fast (about 50 MPH on RADAR) and enjoyable, lets me see everyone else, doesn't break the pattern, has my parachute flying almost straight and level near the ground, and is easily adjusted to provide enormous lattitude in starting altitude. That could mostly be "very conservative," but doesn't fit "no swooping ever". When things are right I'm less conservative.

Eat 100-200 mg of store-brand Benadryl (2-4 times the recomended dosage). Diphenhydramine is also sold as Sominex and Tylenol Simply Sleep. The store brand allergy pills differ only in cost (less) and color (pink). It's not habbit forming, and doesn't leave me hung over like nytol. Early - it might take six hours to wear off.

If it was made before 2001 you'd want a stronger reserve because older Tempos have no span-wise reinforcing tapes. After an AFF jump master got knocked out and had a CYPRES fire I saw him on the ground with his reserve (not a tempo) split into 2 and 5 cells connected only by a single reinforcing tape at the taiil. No tape at all would have been fatal. Strong span-wise tapes across all line attachments should have reduced the injuries. If I had an older tempo in my main rig I'd replace it. I'm thinking about replacing the one in my birdman rig to be more responsible towards my fiancee.

In other words: As BASE jumpers we need to send piles of money to the government so they can keep us off our land and then spend thousands more going to foreign countries where we can kick back and relax by making multiple jumps in a day without having to get up before sunrise? I don't agree. It should be legal although allowing helicopters year round would be obnoxious for the other park guests.

The lower steering lines get fuzzy much faster than the rest of the lines wear - you might go through a set every 250-300 jumps, less if you have velcro toggles and don't stow them immediately after landing. Spectra lines shrink and the steering lines shrink fastest - so spectra upper lines need replacment sooner than the rest too. Your favorite rigger can make replacements. I'd want the trim checked especially if your spectra upper lines need replacement (they've probably shrunk a lot) or the canopy has an unknown history (maybe the steering lines have been replaced before and the rest are in worse condition than you think). If an upper line broke I'd inspect the rest too - if wear from slider grommet burrs caused it other lines may be gone. New spectra upper lines need to be stretched. You may need to ask for all this explicitly.

Speed increases 2% for every 1000 feet of density altitude which is what you'd get if you shrunk your canopy by 4%. We go really fast in Colorado.

Although, sometimes it's not Dead that we get...it's Quad...then we're living in a wheelchair wearing a diaper... like grandma... Or only half way there after which we opt for a bullet in the head.

There's living where your being is completely focussed on experiences, your attention doesn't wander, and the intensity leaves a mental image behind with more clarity than film. Your days are filled with new challenges to overcome, each more substantial than the last. There's existing where you work, eat, sleep, screw, and play like a working dog herding sheep or sniffing for drugs. There are enjoyable moments although you can get through it while half asleep. You need to be half asleep to survive the monotony. You can live without putting your life in danger. Starting with a business plan, hiring 20 people you'd love to work with, cooking up enough material for a few doctoral disertations, and putting it all together to produce something novel can consume nearly all your attention and focus for years. While enjoyable simply skydiving isn't enough. I can remember seven jumps over the last decade with the intensity to fit in the "living" category. Nice cliffs are a lot easier to find than big marketable ideas and the $15M+ in venture capital it can take to make them real. Where I'm confident in my abilities and living requires accepting statistics which indicate a 1 in 1000 or 100 chance of dying I'll take it (although in those situations you don't have enough data to figure out what the odds really are). I'd much rather be dead tomorrow than exist for 90 years like my grandma,

All but one of my mains cost me less than $1/jump to own; the exception might have been my Batwing at $600 to buy $350 to sell after 150-200 jumps because I sold it to a rigless friend for a screaming deal. Lightly used canopies purchased from private parties at reasonable prices depreciate under $1/jump. I've seen people buy Spectres with a few hundred jumps for $950, make a hundred plus jumps, and sell them for $850 (Cost: < $1/jump). Heavily used canopies can cost even less per jump. You could buy a old Stiletto for $350 and get the same back after a couple hundred jumps (Cost: $0/jump). You can even get paid for jumping a canopy by having a little patience buying and selling. Femur, pelvis, tibia, fibia, scaphoid, coccyx, sacrum, cervical vertibra, lumbar vertibra. These are a few of the bones I've seen broken. The likelyhood of those incidents goes down when you defer down-sizing until you've made more than the few jumps you can on a borrowed canopy or a few dozen on a demo. While accidents under big parachutes are usually less severe than those under small ones people still get broken. A little prudence (you could buy a parachute and sell it after a few months) should reduce the risk for that. While I survived trying an Extreme FX @ 1.9 pounds/square foot at 500 jumps and change I've seen other people with more experience break themselves the first time they tried a canopy at lower wing loadings. I wouldn't recommend it or loan my 105 out to anyone not already jumping parachutes that size.

When I told my mom at first she didn't watch want to watch the video of my first jump. Then she saw video of other people on the trip jumping, saw that I survived, and watched. Mom would prefer I don't snowboard in the back country, ride motorcycles, skydive, BASE jump, etc. although she supports those decisions and has never done more than sigh a little when I start one of those things. She hopes all my dreams come true including Cerro Torre. I don't think Dad's said anything beyond noting the Malaysian government is very harsh on people who bring drugs there.

No but I do consider the protection I have when deciding how fast to go arround a corner. Loosing traction with four wheels means chewing up tires, getting the car dirty, and maybe breaking expensive parts. A ton of steel arround me reduces my chances of getting hurt. Loosing traction with two wheels means a low side or high side. A little fiberglass, foam, plastic, and 1/16" of leather won't do much against a guard rail. Although I wouldn't drive any faster with airbags the difference between that and what I'm doing is a subjective matter of degree.

In the last decade I've seen one skydiver with a reserve pack like he didn't have one - for a Mr. Bill jump with an intentional terminal opening below 1000 feet. Every one else I've seen is sloppy. They do little to control the steering lines and nothing to guarantee they stay behind the nose. They mush the canopy until it will fit in the deployment bag instead of folding it to keep everything in place. Loose standards are accepted for line tension uniformity. They do little to guarantee nose symetry. They do little to align the top and bottom skin center seems. Skydiver gear maintenance is horrid too. I've never seen a skydiver crawl inside their main. People take systems without reserves a lot more seriously - most get a thorough inspection every use, and many of the rest are gone through after a dozen jumps or at least yearly. There may be a few exceptions, although as a rule skydivers pack less carefully and are more lax about maintenance because we have reserves. We feel that's reasonable because the risk increase is acceptable and it lets us get more jumps than we'd have with hour long pack jobs and frequent hour long inspections.

Beyond that they mean experienced skydivers are filling fewer slots. When I can walk a few hundred feet between the packing hanger and landing/loading areas I can make every other load on a single turbine. With trailer rides I can only make every third load. Much of the time this leads to unfilled empty seats at $22 each, several on a load, on many of the 25 loads in a day.

Carefully packed low aspect ratio seven cell squares don't malfunction often enough to require a reserve. Reserves make jumping more tolerant of your packing errors just like an AAD allows you to survive your judgement errors. They also allow you to jump more exciting but less reliable mains without increasing the overall risk too much. Given a choice I'd usually take a reserve and open higher because I'd rather take 7 minutes than 60 packing and jump a 105 square foot elliptical over a 240 square foot seven cell square. I've also made skydives outside the US without a reserve because I didn't think humping another rig arround was worthwhile. Given a choice on those jumps I'd pick a rig without a reserve over one that had a tongue holding the closing loop or a spring loaded pilot chute. When given a choice opening lower is more exciting than opening higher, although when planning a skydive with an intentional opening below 1000' I don't count on a reserve to save me from a bad pack job or poor equipment choice. At most a few skydivers don't do anything they wouldn't without reserve. All the rest are therefore device dependant. A few do things with a CYPRES they wouldn't do without. The two differ in how the risks are perceived, how acceptable they are, and how common they are. Those differences are entirely subjective. Putting other people at risk is a different thing. Using an AAD as an excuse to go on a sit jump where you might cork and injure other people and is one thing. Going on a bigway you can handle because your AAD will protect you if some one else screws up is another.

I owned a Monarch 155 and still have a 135 I use for wingsuit jumps. They're square, open fine, fly fine, and land fine just like they did 10 years ago. Newer non-square designs open slowly, are more responsive to control input, and have lower stall speeds. Unless you need to be thrifty and are getting a good deal (say $300 with jumps left on the line set) you probably want one of those canopies instead. I think my 135 got a different slider when it was relined. You might call Precision and inquire about various revisions.

Although experience usually leads to better judgement. Safety comes from both skill and judgement.

Higher sectional density means you'll have a higher terminal velocity and take longer to slow down.

Which is more than offset by other factors. In freefall bigger people fall faster when they don't add drag to slow them down. Tiny people fall slower when they don't add weights or flexibility. The same effects of sectional density apply under canopy. Drag increases with the square of velocity so the effects are 16X as pronounced during a 60 MPH swoop compared to 15 MPH of forward speed in brakes. Thrust is proportional to weight. Drag is proportional to frontal area and therefore canopy size in square feet. With sufficiently similar body types frontal area increases with the square of height while weight is a cubic function. This would increase your drag with the square root of canopy size. Weight from fat has little effect on your area so the drag doesn't increase. The lines get longer but not thicker as the canopy grows so their drag is only increasing with the square root of size. At the same wing loading a big person has a better thrust to drag ratio than a little person so he goes faster. The bigger canopy also has longer lines which provide a longer recovery arc. That will have you going faster if you're not turning long enough to reach terminal velocity. It also gives you more altitude to work with which makes it easier to have a flat entry into the swoop without drag-inducing toggle input. For me sub-optimal piloting skills have more to do with my swoop length than my missing beer belly.

General Aviation Operations Inspector's Handbook Chapter 49. Issue a certificate of waiver or authorization for an aviation event Section 1. Background 15. Special provisions H. Special provisions for parachute jumps (12)With the exception of DOD-sanctioned teams,no hook turns will be initiated below 200 feet AGL. NOTE:A hook turn is a maneuver in any maneuver sequence that causes the canopy to roll at an angle in excess of 45 ° from vertical and/or to pitch up or down at an angle in excess of 45 ° from horizontal while executing a turn in excess of 60 °.

A front riser turn is a speed inducing turn. A hook turn is a speed inducing turn that some one doesn't like. Most people would say a low intentional toggle turn is a hook turn because it's more unsafe than a front riser maneuver. Some people would say it's a planned low turn that kills you regardless of what you did with risers or toggles. Some would include unplanned turns that kill people. The FAA defines it as a maneuver in any sequence that causes the canopy to roll at an angle in excess of 45 degrees from horizontal while executing a turn in excess of 60 degrees. It doesn't say anything about risers or toggles. If the roll angle never exceeds 45 degrees and you never pull more than 1.4Gs it's not a hook turn. The FAA does not allow initiating a hook turn below 200 feet on authorized demos except when you're on a DoD sanctioned team like the Golden Knights. I read that as saying you can't exceed a 45 degree roll angle below 200 feet (it's a maneuver that can be done at any point) when turning over 60 degrees.