DrewEckhardt

Once done with our student instruction programs a lot of us started jumping without an AAD. The guys before us didn't even have them for the student progression. Jumping without an AAD is no more dangerous now than it was then. If you want cheap and an AAD, used rigs with older Cypreses can sometimes be had for under $2000.

You want the same neutral fall rate as your friends. If they wear tight jumpsuits and you're not extra heavy, you'll need a tight suit. RW suits tend to be tight. If they wear baggy suits or you weight 250 pounds, you'll need something baggier.

Assuming you only go down one canopy at a size, the jump numbers to get where the canopy is the limit are probably 3-5X what you're allowed to do according to the chart. The point of down-sizing is that smaller canopies are a lot more fun until you need to be too close to perfect on every landing and it starts to become work.

Mostly lucky. Flying at 9/10ths your ability isn't an issue when things are going well. The problem is when things go wrong and either the sensory input is too much or you need another 2/10ths to get yourself out. When you're lucky enough to avoid problems you get away with it. In hindsight this had a lot to do with my injury-free start to the sport. The exceptions I'd make for this are - Dropping the -.2 adjustment for canopies under 150 square feet past some experience level. A light person going from a Manta to a small canopy is likely to have problems with control sensitivity. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the muscle memory from hundreds or thousands of jumps and aren't going to over control. This is also design dependant - a small square is a lot less sensitive than a less agressive non-square design, the less-agressive design less sensitive than a more agressive one. I'd be curious what Brian has to say about this. - Maybe people who have a lot more currency than the typical fun jumper with a few hundred a year. I've had a 1.6-1.7 wing loading at 5000 feet MSL for the last ~800 jumps that haven't been on my birdman or BASE rigs. Although I've landed canopies at higher wing loadings up here and had no problems with stall speed this is pretty much the limit of what I want when things aren't ideal (out landings, idiots swooping in from above on final approach, down-wind landings, etc.)

You might try a Samurai. A lot of us Stiletto pilots (I put 600 jumps on my 120 before getting the Samura) like the control responsiveness and light pressures being there like a Stiletto, although it has a longer recovery arc and doesn't return to level flight without pilot input. It's trimmed steeper than a Stiletto, but flattens out nicely if you spread the rear risers a little.

How do you figure? Once you get past the 15% tax bracket ($29050 each) your income can be taxed at a higher marginal rate when you're married. As a single person the 28% tax bracket starts at $70,351. As a married person it starts at $58, 626. As a single person the 33% bracket doesn't start until you're earning $146,751. As a married person it starts at $89,326. As a single person, itemized deductions are not phased out until you earn $137,300. As a married person they start phasing out at $68,650. The child credit phase out starts at $55,000 instead of $75,000, you start loosing your exemptions sooner, the phase out on other deductions happens sooner, your Roth IRA contributribution limits are reduced sooner, etc. Traditional families with mom staying home benefit from this tax structure and get a marriage bonus. Married couples both well into their professional careers fare worse than if they were living in sin, especially if they live in an expensive location and one or both parties have children.

The instinct to throw your pilot chute is _real_ strong. After seeing ground rush (actually cliff on all four sides) I dumped at the top of Sotano de los Golondrinas and ended up flying arround in a hole not much bigger than a nice airplane hanger.

To be pedantic, lift is the component of aerodynamic force acting perpindicular to the relative wind. Your vertical speed and acceleration can be positive, negative or zero. Gaining altitude is doable and often useful. When flying small parachutes with a 10,000 foot density altitude I like to swoop low enough that my feet would be below ground level if I stuck them straight down. At the end I pop back up to a comfortable landing altitude which has the nice side effect of lowering stall speed and reducing forward speed. The same trick is useful for swoop accuracy - you can turn in too close to the target, pop up, hit it, and have reduced your forward speed enough to stop within a few steps. I've used it to get over obstacles like a pond bank. When changing from my Batwing 134 to Stiletto 120 I did it un-intentionally when digging out, got higher than head height, bruised my heels, and was lucky I didn't do worse.

Some companies rate them at the legal maximum and give lower recomendations (PD) Some rate them at a reasonable maximum, with different companies having different ideas of "reasonable." Some measure differently.

Private companies are free to treat things differently. Although we're heterosexual and unmarried, my fiancee's company considers us to be domestic partners for benefits purposes (you just have to live together in a monogamous intimate relationship for a year and plan to stay together indefinately). Unfortunately the (allegedly pro-marriage) government is going to tax us more once we tie the knot with higher rates and fewer deductions.

Never, ever remove the flash suppressor. That would make the barrel length too short, and could land you 10 years in prison. When sold to civilians and not acompanied by a tax stamp such guns have the muzzle appliance silver soldered or pinned and welded in place. Removing it would be difficult.

The heavier bullet has a higher sectional density so it takes longer to loose speed, although the lighter bullet leaves the gun going ~200fps faster. Out past 200 yards the heavier bullet is going faster although that's past the point where either has enough speed to fragment reliably and you want something bigger. Maybe .308? Every one should have sport utility rifles in both calibers.

Even my 93 Mauser has one of those. It left the Oberndorf factory between 1894 and 1897, which means legally speaking it's not a firearm and can therefore be shipped across state lines to a non-licensee :-) It was even updated to fire modern 7.92x57 for WWII. Schumer and Fenstein can put that in their pipes and smoke it. "We've got to close the 1898 loophole! Some of those guns could be used in a drive-by bayonettings! Look at the extra stabbing range you get from the 29" barrell and extra-length poker! Even the bullets are more powerful than a modern assault weapon! The sights go out to 2000 meters, over a mile away!"

I don't. For play an external M16A2 profile makes you eligible for NRA highpower; a compensator is more fun for plinking (you can spot hits through a scope); full length hand guards give you a better sight radius for iron sights; a flat top has more optics options; you need a floating fore-end for an AR15 to be consistantly more accurate than the shooter (10 rings, pop cans, and prarie dogs are lot smaller than battle field targets). You can argue the merits of barell weight either way - I'd take a heavy weight for formal ocassions in the 3 positions and off the bipod, light weight if I had to hump it arround (Nearly an inch of barrel under my handguard is a lot of weight to lug arround). It looks like a short barrel with a long flash hider added to bring it out to the 16" legal minimum below which you need to register, pay your tax, etc. Assuming that's the case I really don't like it. The terminal ballistics of M193/M855 are only interesting when they fragment. Fragmentation only occurs reliably when the bullet is going at least 2700fps. Effective ranges are therefore as follows: M193 55 grain round 20" Barrel - 190-200m 16" Barrel - 140-150m 14.5" Barrel - 95-100m 11.5" Barrel - 40-45m M855 62 grain round 20" Barrel - 140-150m 16" Barrel - 90-95m 14.5" Barrel -45-50m 11.5" Barrel - 12-15m The short barrel has drastically reduced your range and done nothing to improve gun handling. The permanantly attached muzzle appliance that goes with it also limits what you can change (muzzle appliance, front sight, float tube). A 16 (inside) or 20" lightweight (outside) / M16A1 profile (note that surplus 1 in 12" barrels don't work with M855) is therefore a much better choice for social use especially when you're stuck outside the NFA SBR length limit.

You need to move out of this COUNTRY!!!! The only thing separating America from the rest of the world is our Bill of Rights built on the idea that rights are inherent in the condition of man (god-given if you like) and that the governments have no power beyond that specifically allowed in the Constitution. Condoning violations of these rights is therefore un-American regardless of where those transgressions occur.

The real heros are Iraqi freedom fighters defending their home land against our occupying force. Their 14,000 plus civillian deaths bother me a lot more than 1200 Americans who volunteered and knew what it could lead to. Defending the Constitution and our Country is noble. Invading a soverign nation is not.

21.5. Same pant size I wore fifteen years ago and about 30 pounds lighter than at my biggest.

You go faster by about 2% for each 1000 feet of density altitude which corresponds to a canopy size decrease of about 4%. Traveling between sea level and mountain states can change your speed the same as 1-2 canopy sizes. There are also huge changes in your recovery arc - a disproportionate number of visiting flat landers who attempt high performance landings before they've figured that out do not fare well. Control sensitivity seems more a function of canopy size than wing loading. A 105 up here may have the forward speed of an 87 at sea level, although the smaller canopy at sea level is still going to be twitchier to fly. You may find that this restricts your wing loading more than stall speed. Interestingly enough this seems to be a good match for Brian Germain's WNE formula (-.1 / 2000 feet)

I used to have no problem doing that. As I gained experience it took more complex work to satisfy me thus reducing the number of available jobs. The number of jobs in my industry dropped. The labor market became flooded with people who'd lost those jobs. Before all that I could find a new job within a month of becoming unhappy. Last time I couldn't before things became intollerable, quit, and spent $30,000 paying my mortgage, car payment, living expenses, etc. until I had my next paycheck. After another six month lay-off I'll start spending my retirement savings. IOW, it's not practical. Things would have been _MUCH_ worse if I wanted a house like my friends (2-4X my current mortgage payment) or had children.

No. Although I feel like crap when I get home, I also want to eat, watch a movie or classic TV, and be with my honey. I live within comfortable cycling distance of my office, so I only have to getup at 7:30 before doing it again. I used to like work even when it meant 12-16 hour days.

Most defensive gun uses stop at brandishing. I'm going to tell the police "a criminal broke-in and then left" not "a criminal left when I showed him my gun" because I don't want to be charged with brandishing, unsafe storage, illegal posession of a handgun, or whatever other charges an anti-gun prosecutor wants to file because even if I'm innocent I'll be paying my lawer $200/hour to defend me. Where there's insufficient evidence to prosecute "A blond male road rager in a blue car started coming after me but stopped when I pulled my gun" reporting the crime isn't going to help while not reporting will be less likely to cause me trouble.

Eat some amphetamines.

That would be less anoying in a cubicle environment than people talking in person or on the phone, or enduring a boring grey environment lacking sunlight. Now that you mention it, that sounds like a great way to pass a few seconds every now and then. I'll bring some clippers in.

There's nothing wrong morally if they fit the harness. Legally it's not a good idea in states where parents can't sign away a minor's rights to sue.

Who ever caused the malfunction should pay for it although the gear rental waiver you signed may make it your problem. If a DZ packer gave you a line over, they should pay for it along with any handles you lost (safety is your first priority). If you packed it yourself, it's your problem. A Cypres fire means you were being stupid (whether you got there without another problem, didn't start trying to open at a reasonable altitude, or screwed with something too long) and should pay for the cutter and repack.