DrewEckhardt

No. Some canopies carry more weight on the front risers and brake lines than others.

Define "tendency", mine does not spin up and so far many of the people in this thread alone also testify that theirs dont spin up. Now i pack like shit and im not particularly fussy about body position on deployment. Mine tends to NOT have a tendency to spin up My Stiletto 120 openings were getting wonky by the time I put 600 jumps on a brand new line set (apart from the brake toggle lines which I wouldn't trust for more than 200 jumps and the lower steering lines which got replaced with the last set of brake lines). When I checked the trim the outboard lines had all shrunk 5-6" versus 1.5" for the center cell A lines. Given the number (lots - there was a time when Americans who wanted elliptical canopies could only buy Bat Wings and Stilettos) produced and age (back to 1992) I could accept that a lot of this comes from people jumping used out-of-trim canopies.

B-17, Bell 412, Pitts S2, 727, DC-3 plus a handful of more normal aircraft hot air balloon Bell 206, Robinson R22, Aerospatiale Lama Pilatus Porter (including one with doors on both sides) Casa, Skyvan King Air, Beech 99 Cessna 208, TU206, P206, 182

Social Security is also a progressive defined benefit retirement plan. Low earners and single income couples have a higher payout to contribution ratio than others. Low income individuals also make their Social security withdrawals tax-free.

18. I went off to college and didn't come back (definitely not for summer). Stopped taking money from them at age 20 (you don't control your own life if some one else pays for it) apart from the token check in birthday/Christmas/anniversary cards.

"open source" means free like air. writing software is a different skill set than learning proprietary web forum markup. if the software guys had to pay marketing guys to translate it into language people could understand it wouldn't be free.

Your argument starts off badly. "The American Dream" is not to be "rich." The "American Dream" also includes retiring and ceasing to work once you're old. Doing so with neither a drop in quality of living nor defined benefit pension plan means being "rich" when by "rich" we mean having a million current dollars in non-housing assets. To continue receiving the median household income of $52K in retirement that means accumulating $1.3M from which you can draw 4% annually. Someplace pleasant and therefore expensive where the number is $75K it means $1.9M. With optimistic assumptions (it doesn't become means tested, benefits increase at less than the rate of inflation, you and your formerly working spouse both die at the same time) the best case scenario with Social Security allows it to provide 1/3 of your benefits. $850K - $1.25M both round to $1M which most people consider "wealthy" This ignores the cost of long term care. With the average nursing home room running $70K/year you probably need more. 1. When the average job stopped coming with a defined benefit pension plan. In 1975 88% of private company employees and 98% of public employees ad defined benefit plans. By 2005 the numbers were 33% and 92%. or 2. When the economy broke meaning our children can't earn enough to live middle class lives on there own. Both our kids have under-graduate degrees. The one who graduated summa cum laude doesn't have a paying job and is back in school. The other one with a job using her degree only earns as much in nominal dollars as I did taking a year off between junior and senior years of college 20 years ago which is 37% less in real money. It's 61% less in inflation adjusted terms than I was earning two years into my career which is about as much time has elapsed between her moving from intern to regular employee. More money than you want to spend as a single person (take vacations with chartered helicopters for skiing and jumping, own European cars and motorcycles, dine out seven days a week) is barely enough to land a double wide trailer for yourself and wife plus help the kids live less than the American dream in one bedroom apartments with health insurance (assuming that you're also saving for retirement to sustain that lifestyle and carrying enough insurance that the rest of the family will if you meet an untimely demise).

If that was within the listed hours of operation. If not I'd go someplace else and let the owners + employees have their siesta. Some restaurant owners are hungry enough to be open almost always - my favorite Mongolian BBQ place is open 7 days a week 11:00 - 21:00 and Vietnamese Deli 7 days a week 9:00 - 19:00. Some are not - my favorite Spanish place is only open 12:00-14:00 Monday through Saturday and 17:30 - 22:00 all week.

Nope. I'd tell him that it's not safe. I know/knew a lot of dead skydivers and more that would probably be dead except for a learning experience involving orthopedic surgery (I don't know anyone who died after that and only one guy who needed a return visit because the first lesson didn't stick). If driving was as dangerous as skydiving 1 in 50 drivers would be dead after their first 20 years behind the wheel and that's not the case (for a long time there were about 30,000 active skydivers in the US and we were averaging about 30 fatalities a year or 1 in 1000. With small percentages simple multiplication produces a close enough approximation). I don't encourage people to skydive or BASE jump. If those sports are for you they'll find you. If not the lack of encouragement can't get you in there for the wrong reasons.

1. Yes. Smaller canopies are more sensitive to control input (intended or otherwise) and more likely to end up turning if you have line twists. 2. All modern canopies are elliptical to varying degrees.

Right! I can't abide by "Christians" who pick and choose which parts of scripture they'll follow while ignoring the rest. It's hypocritical to campaign against gay marriage while eating cloven-footed animals that don't cheweth the cud, wearing clothes made of mixed fibers, and allowing menstruating women to mingle amongst us. It' nice to see a Real Christian advocating society's conformance with _all_ God's wishes.

I bought a 3-year old off-lease Audi A4 in 2000 with 37,000 miles on it and finally made it past 100,000 miles this year (66,000 of my own in 12 years). Until I moved closer to work (was 12 miles one-way) I was putting more mileage on my bicycle for transportation purposes

Do you have investment savings, life insurance, and accidental death policies that total 25X your annual salary and without skydiving or general aviation exclusions? That's what your family will need to replace your lost salary if you die (they can draw about 4% a year indefinitely). Do you have health insurance and savings to cover co-insurance? A broken leg with complications can run up a $100K tab. Do you have short and long term disability policies that will cover all your living expenses? Broken bones and lost work are not uncommon. If you've got that covered skydiving may be a sport for you. Otherwise you made those kids and they're your responsibility. In 30 years even the youngest will probably be self supporting and you can live more for yourself.

If you have a choice between with and without white fabric choose without- I picked up a container grease spot on my jump (still very worth it).

Been there, done that. I took the walk through on the ground at Quincy, decided that the lift ticket price was worth it, and got on the last load. It was _awesome_. Sounds great with 4 R1820s 9 cylinder radials.

It's all relative. Anything too scary to do personally or do only once is "extreme." Anything you're willing to do on a regular basis is not. One time I was drinking with skydivers and we were joined by some rodeo guys. All of the rodeo guys who thought nothing of tying a rope around an angry 1000 pound bull and riding until it threw them off thought that what they did was pretty normal and skydiving extreme. The skydivers held the opposite view. OTOH my mother is too scared to take a commercial plane flight by herself. The general population is more like my mother than the rodeo guys.

Absolutely! We need that money to spend on teachers so future voters can learn simple arithmetic like this. How much annually is $9/month? $9/month * 12 months/year is $108 / year The standard exemption is $3,800 per dependent. Assuming taxmageddon does not happen, the lowest tax bracket for a new parent will be 10%. What will the minimum tax loss to the government for each new child $3800 * 10% = $380. How much less expensive is spending $9 / month for a woman's birth control than letting her give birth? I'll leave that one for the reader.

Due to the electoral college it can only help elect the worse of two evils if you live in a swing state. For instance, California will go to Obama by huge margin. As a third party supporter here who dislikes him more voting for Romeny instead of Johnson won't reduce Obama's 55 electoral votes. As a third party supporter who dislikes Romeny more a vote for Obama instead of Stein won't increase his 55 electoral votes. OTOH, a better popular vote showing for your party might lead to more people considering them viable and voting that way in local elections where they can win or some concessions thrown your way from the parties which can win elections for Federal office.

Victorinox convertible backpack/roll-aboard sized to the legal carry-on maximum. It's just big enough for a rig, jumpsuit, helmet, and accessories. It rolls on wheels which makes travelling very low-effort. I also have a couple other carry-ons sized just under the limit that don't loose any interior space to pack frame bits that work for even more stuff (like two packed BASE rigs each with a 240 square foot canopy fit in one) but they're harder to lug through the airport.

Right. Two parties essentially alike is the inevitable result of a first-past-the-post electoral system. Although their marketing messages differ radically (one of my friends speculated that they need to do that to get their jaded supporters to the voting booth), what they do once in office is about the same.

I broke my leg BASE jumping so I wasn't on the DZ plane when it went down five weeks later with no survivors. I'm still walking around because I had good orthopedic surgeons and didn't have a compound fracture because of a premonition I had on the commercial flight out that I needed to tighten my boots because there was going to be a crash.

Seriously. The Sushi chef has a better idea of which fish are tastiest that day than you do and enjoys himself more when given some freedom. Ryoko's on Taylor Street in San Francisco does a fine job of it with excellent fish and a hip young atmosphere (they have a live DJ and Atsushi is at the opposite end of the age bell curve from the usual excellent chef). I have not yet discovered a truly exceptional traditional sushi place in the Bay Area which compares well to the best of Denver/Boulder, CO (Sushi Tora, with yummy fish flown in from the tsukiji fish market although the selection was better before Saito San retired) or Seattle, WA (Shiro's in Belltown).

Yes. I had a tibial nail installed in 2007 and my ankle some times hurt near the screws until I had it removed in 2011. I also wanted it gone so that if I broke it again there'd be a weak spot in the middle where it would go instead of the joints at the end which give you arthritis. Doctor's orders were no weight on it for two weeks and no cycling outdoors for four weeks after that.

That's unlikely to happen given the National Association of Realtors (ranked first among PACs in terms of campaign contributions for the 2008 election), National Association of Home Builders (12), Mortgage Bankers Association, and a slew of other PACs which have made keeping house prices up a government priority. We are screwed regardless of who wins in November.

It's a ReaganBushphone. Can't you read? I can read just fine. Enough to know that the program nearly doubled under Obama and that many people now have several phones. In fact Obama has created a black market for Obamaphones. That's just because the Republicans (who had the majority in both houses for the 104th through 109th Congresses plus the 43rd presidency) broke the economy before Obama showed up with the resulting drop in prosperity making more people eligible for needs tested programs like that, food stamps, etc.