DrewEckhardt

Good software guys are still billing over $100 an hour or earning $100K plus as employees. People who could just spell "HTML" were kicked out when sanity returned. Unfortunately the market correction also took out decent people who've since had to deal with their resumes getting lost among piles of less qualified applicants used to the job titles and benefits. The market will correct for this. Artificial attempts to control it will backfire. Given a choice between paying too much for one local employee and a couple of equally qualified ones off shore companies will take the later option.

Running this sort of operation is necessary to keep the politicians in office. They need to do something before the next election so their opponent can't point out how soft they are in the war on terrorism. We'll have terrorism as long as we have royally pissed off people willing to accept the public relations problems that go with terrorism. Given the number of people who don't like us and lack the resources to fight us in a conventional war it's surprising we don't have more. Identification requirements, prohibitions on traveling with eyelash curlers, and bank account monitoring aren't going to stop people willing to risk death for their cause. We can't change this. Doing nothing won't have a real effect on terrorists. Passing no new laws and setting no precedent will make it harder to hold suspected terrorists on secret charges or ship them to foreign countries for processing. While today's suspected terrorist is probably a brown-skinned Muslim living here (Padilla) or abroad, tomorrow's may be a white patriot dissident citizen quoting Jefferson "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" or a European whose country will accept a few mistakes. This ignores the fact that terrorism is not a real problem for America. In the last decade we've lost orders of magnitudes more to drunk drivers than we have in terrorist attacks (notably 9/11, Oklahoma City, and the 1993 WTC bombing). Terrorism is less likely to hurt me than an over-sized SUV, renters contaminating my property with a calndestine meth lab, or even my own government kicking down my door. It's too bad the average voter doesn't realize this.

Hogwash. Most DVD players will handle a DVD-R. There's a DVD standard which calls for an ISO file system, specific file location, index+data file formats, and specific physical layout so DVD players can find that. Data files are MPEG2 video multiplexed with various audio standards. A handful of NTSC video resolutions are supported from 720x480 down to 352x240. NTSC GOPs are limited to 15 frames. All DVD players support 16 bit, 48KHz PCM audio. NTSC DVD players all support AC-3. You can figure enough of this out if you don't want to buy the specification. If you don't want to know all that, you can even get a Windows, Mac, or Linux program to handle the details for you.

I saved myself with my second reserve pack job. Do I need to buy myself a bottle?

Under the bigger canopy cross-sectional density is higher, the canopy+pilot have a higher terminal velocity, and it takes longer to slow down. Simple physics. It's also easier to swoop the big canopy faster because the longer lines make for a longer recovery arc. Approximating speed purely as a function of wing loading only works for larger canopies, with lower wing loadings, and without speed inducing maneuvers. With a larger canopy the pilot makes up a smaller part of the frontal area so sectional density is less affected. Drag increases with the square of velocity - going 60 MPH has 16X the drag as going 15 MPH. The effect of drag is much more pronounced at higher speeds from wing loading and front riser use.

No. Kinetic energy is 1/2 mass * velocity squared. When you have the same speed with more mass you have proportionally more energy. Empirically lighter people at the same wing loading as big people seem to bounce more often with minimal injuries. Heavier people seem to femur more often. Kinetic energy is also varying with the square of speed. Different sized canopies at the same wing loading have approximately the same speed in level flight although the differences increase at higher speeds (diving or at the start of a swoop) because drag is proportional to velocity squared. On people of the same build surface area is a function of height squared while weight is a cubic function. Adding lead or fat changes weight but not drag. At the same wing loading smaller jumpers have more drag compared to the canopy than heavier ones. While canopy height, width, and line length vary with size the line thickness doesn't. You get relatively more line drag on a smaller canopy. So a smaller canopy will swoop slower than a larger one and have less energy. Longer lines increase the recovery arc so the larger canopy would be going faster if you didn't get it to terminal. A longer recovery arc also makes it easier to start your swoop in the right place with less drag-inducing control input so you should be more likely to get it right. Smaller canopies are more sensitive to control input at the same wing loading, although the people flying them should have developed the skill to handle that before doing anything high-speed.

That's a bad idea. I own an original birdman suit and skyflyer. The skyflyer is pretty twitchy which is not good if you're the least bit tense or are a bit off on opening. It would be much easier to get an uncontrolled spin. Get a classic or GTI. Like Tom said your first suit won't necessarily be wasted. You really want people to fly with, and loaning my original suit to people was enough to get people to buy one. I'm thinking about taking the original off a cliff for the stability although there's no way I'd do that with the skyflyer because of stability issues and the bigger wing sometimes getting near the pilot chute handle.

The rigger can test strength with a scale and clamps.

I get congested from allergies at various points through the year. Was worse as a child. Sudafed is pseudoephedrine hcl, a mild stimulant. No problem. I eat it prior to skydiving when I have a cold or allegies. Keeping it in my system helps more than just eating some 4-hour pills before jumping. Benadryl is diphenhydramine hcl. Diphenhydramine is also sold as a sleep aid (like Tylenol PM or Simply Sleep). The 50mg recomended dosage to fix your allegergies is the same as what they say will put you to sleep. Not a good idea. Chlorpheniramine (Chlortrimetron) is less but still sedating - I'll eat it. There are less (non?) sedating anti-hystamines. You should talk to a doctor. Dramamine is dimenhydrinate which turns into diphenhydramine once in your stomache. A 50mg dosage is like 25 mg of diphenhydramine. My doctor told me 25mg of diphenhydramine is worthless for sleep although it seems to help some for my fiancee (whether as a placebo or her sensitivity).

Nope. I turned down a position which required business casual and got one job (with the last window office) after interviewing in jeans with holes. Some offensive T-shirts wouldn't be allowed by the sexual harassment policy, not the non-existant dress-code.

My using the light coming out your door does not decrease the amount of light available within your home. Packet traffic to/from the internet reduces the bandwidth available to you and may count against monthly quotas which trigger higher pricing or a cut-off. You putting your sprinkler on the property line and me taking the hose off so I could wash my car is a better example.

When you ask for a repack you get an Inspection and Repack. The inspection is the important part - F111 pack jobs are good pretty much indefinately if you don't get them wet, spill chemicals on them, etc. The inspection covers all the fabric and seams (both outside and inside - you can actually crawl inside canopies that size), all the bar tacks, the lines including finger traps and bar tacks on both ends, slider including grommets, slider bumpers, links... Service bulletins will be applied, any problems or oversights will be fixed, etc. You're also supposed to strength test the fabric every year. Permeability must be checked after 25 uses or 40 repacks. The same inspection can be done on the main, although ZP fabric does not become porous (leakage when packing comes from the stitching holes opening up). Some riggers will give you a check list with all the inspection points, tools in and out, serial numbers, etc. I think that's a fine idea

VSO on some (many? most?) jets is arround 100 MPH The problems I've had with depth perception skiing have come from poor light due to clouds or shadows which shouldn't be the case. Yellow and polarizing glasses help. Runway markings with dyed snow could help. Other visual indicators could be used. Lots of research needs to go into finding an appropriate site with outs, lots of technical issues like we've been pointing out need to be addressed, you need to figure out simulated landings, you need to prepare for the psychological stresses, ground effect should be an issue, etc. That makes it a huge project. While extremely dangerous, I don't think flying the final approach and landing are going to be where the skill is required. Objectively all the big problems seem to be in reducing the chances for and consequences of failures.

Those are accidents that often involve body parts or skiis sticking in and flipping the athlete onto the snow in a bad way. An intentional wing suit landing where the pilot doesn't dig in wouldn't involve that. Some sort of belly sled should prevent that. An elastic connection between pilot and sled would also accomodate terrain/snow variations better.

While it takes more than throttle and elevator trim, landing a Cessna 172 without cross-winds is not difficult. A feel for the sight picture from landing parachutes translates very well although the controls are very different. For your first wingsuit landing you also have experience flying relative to things other than the runway.

Who's theory is that?!? Mine by way of junior high trigonometry and however many wing suit jumps I've managed over five years. You want zero speed into the ground. We've flown 1.5 laps arround a 5000' long runway from 12,000 to 4,500 feet. That's 15,000 feet horizontally using 7,500 feet vertically for a 2:1 glide ratio. The inverse tangent is 26.6 degrees. You could fly next to a 26.6 degree slope with zero speed into it. While better fliers can get their decent rate down into the high 30 MPH range 45 MPH is not unreasonable for a less skilled flier in a big suit. With a 2:1 glide ratio this would get you a 100 MPH airspeed and zero speed normal to the corresponding slope. Docking is not difficult and demostrates the ability to control horizontal location within inches. Flying within a path the width of a green ski run would be much easier. Snow preparation for speed slkiers is well understood. On such surfaces they've stopped without injury with over twice the kinetic injury. A location that allows you to gain less than 500' of vertical off the hill (steeper thasn 26 degrees or followed by a steeper section) provides ample altitude to deploy a mesh-slidered free packed seven cell if you need an out. It's a matter of testicle size not physics.

Reserve freebags and main D-bags are very different equipment. The safety stow on reserve freebags can only create bag lock if the second bight manages to get inside the first that's aboout half the freebag width away. The safety stow can come out as soon as the first bight pulls loose. There are no more stows. The relative locations preclude a bag lock even with silly-long line bights. Main bag stows can be an inch apart. Large line bights can definately reach each other. The idea behind moving the stows in from the edges is to have equal mass between and outside the stows which can get you even longer line loops. You might have four closing stows and eight down the bag with six an inch from two neighbors and four an inch from the single adjacent stow.

In theory moderate skills and no additional equipment are enough to land a wingsuit on a ski slope of at least 26 degrees with zero speed perpindicular to the ground. Steeper slopes give you more outs. On flat ground a big winged suit should flare to a vertical descent rate which shock absorbers can handle. A wheeled undercarriage with brakes adresses the forward speed problem. If that doesn't workJeb's survived dying before.

Assuming he doesn't do it over a crowd absolutely zero.

So we have distance/speed swoopers wearing tight go-fast shirts, people adding lead and jumping bigger canopies so their drag is less relative to the total, and some people lean forward and pull up their feet.

Time, consuming most of most weekends until I met my soul mate and at least one day most weekends after. I don't snowboard any more. My motorcycle has sat in the garage awaiting engine work for a few years. My Chevy powered Toyota Land Cruiser runs but still needs a carb rebuild and new power steering box. The walls and ceilings inside have missing drywall from the home theater project (but I _can_ watch movies). I've wanted the room my sister painted blue to be an off white for a few years.

The standard conservative view is that the main and reserve are a size or two too small. People with a lot of experience like Brian Germain would say that you need a square foot per pound of exit weight. A rig that size will be over 20 pounds. 200 + 20 = 220 pounds out the door. You end up with a 210 or 230, will probably get bored with the canopy even if you can't use its full potential, and will probably get something smaller within a year. This is fine - what's appropriate in 100 jumps won't be now. Parachutes depreciate just $1/jump so down sizing in the future won't be expensive. And you'll be able to fit smaller canopies in your rig. As a point of reference when I started my exit weight was under 190 pounds and instructors were evenly split between 190 and 210 square feet. Sabres are no slower than they were 9 years ago.

10. Packing for myself. At Quincy. Outside. In 90 degree heat. With obscene humidity. Never again.

Selling price can be no less than what an item costs to produce including overhead plus some fraction of the startup costs. Smart companies look at the price:units sold curve and pick the point where profit minus opportunity costs (you'll make more if you use your floor space and staff to make squares instead of rounds) are highest. Reputation allows the per-unit price to be higher for established products and companies would be stupid not to take advantage of that. Companies unable to produce enough units can raise the price and get the most out of their production capabilities. Beyond that there's no connection between the selling price and production costs. The production costs themselves also vary with labor costs, overhead, quantitites of scale, vertical integration within a company, etc. There are enough variables that the coupling between these and quality is loose at best. After looking at enough parachutes you'll probably conclude that there's no connection between price, the reinforcing used, and quality control issues. Popularity and production capacity have more to do with pricing. Companies loosing orders because they can't build enough rigs fast enough have raised their prices hundreds of dollars. Companies with unpopular products that cost no less to build have run 40% off sales in an attempt to maximize their profit. The economics are not complicated.

BS...Skydiving is "uninteresting" to anyone that does not jump. Skydiving was around MANY years before swooping...I fit never happend, people would still have jumped....If it went away people would still jump. Different people have wildly different thresholds for what they consider fun+exciting and how much effort is resonable to get there, While I rode rollercoasters most summer weekends as a kid I was almost bored the last time I tried. A mild aerobatic ride in a Pitts S2B wasn't much better. For years I'd snowboard 60 days a year in any conditions (even sun spotted glaciers). I no longer enjoy less than powder, and generally think the drive to ski areas, crowds, and poor snow conditions are too much for the small reward. In the last four years I've spent two week long vacations in foreign countries and at most 5 days domestically (0 in the last two years) - it's just not that enjoyable or worth the effort. If my home DZ banned swooping tomorrow after they kicked me off I'd limit my jumps to those I made training for back country excursions or on an annual vacation. Without the fast landings skydiving wouldn't be fun enough to justify the packing effort, plane ride, wait, and lost weekends. Holding hands in the sky is a bit like dancing - ocassionally fun, not terribly exciting, and not worth the drive to a nice club. On the plus side if they do manage to ban swooping here I'll get a lot more done with my power tools and my racquet ball game will get MUCH better.