DrewEckhardt

Liberals have no core values. They have only strategies and tactics for political expediency. He is a disgrace to California and America. Jerry Brown is a hero upholding the US Constitution (that first amendment free speech thing and fourteenth amendment suggesting the states can't infringe on freedom) and this clearly demonstrates that the Democrats are the only ones left practicing founding fathers' principles (Bush 43 popularized free speech zones with protest cages keeping dissenters away from the media). In fact, Jerry Brown is far more of a hero than the schmuck soldiers schlepping around Afghanistan (who're doing nothing for American Freedom, but are keeping profits up for defense contractors).

It's supposed to open fast so you don't die when using it at a low altitude. No. No. Sometimes parachutes open hard. You put a few hundred square feet of fabric in 100+ MPH wind and things happen. Some canopies normally open harder than others, but it's not the normal openings you're worried about. Probably but you still have landings to deal with.

IIRC the galaxy pattern was more blue. Mine had purplish print fabric with abstract art patterns which may have been sold as Dali.

Spoken like a skydiver. From a DZO's perspective it's a brilliant idea to maximize profits. Half the tandem master pay, half the rig depreciation, and 33% increase in lift capacity. What's not to like?

Put a few hundred jumps on a 105-109 of some sort, do the same with a 95-99, and then start thinking about something cross-braced. While you could jump a cross-braced canopy at 1.6 pounds/square foot you wouldn't have much fun or gain from it. Max out what you can get out of conventional canopies and if you're not content with the speed you're getting then consider changing. The subjective differences between sizes get a lot more significant as canopies get smaller and you do not want to skip sizes getting to where a cross-braced canopy would be interesting.

The top-skin had conventional chord-wise construction while the bottom was span-wise so you could get some cool effects if you alternated light and dark fabrics. My 134 had the abstract purple print fabric on top and mostly white bottom with a green horizontal stripe.

After landing it down-wind, cross-wind, up-hill, down-hill, on asphalt or concrete, with consistent accuracy into a back-yard sized area, with 90 degree turns from tree-top or hanger height, turning during your flare, landing from a braked approach without returning to full flight, etc? That's a lot to fit into 20 jumps to say nothing of 5. Your instructors most likely only saw you in the best possible conditions, landing nearly into the wind in a wide open field. Either they haven't seen you landing out, down-wind, on concrete, etc. and haven't seen enough to recommend a smaller canopy or they have because you've been demonstrating bad judgement and shouldn't be under one. While they have a lot more experience than you, your instructors usually haven't been around that long and haven't seen enough to be making recommendations more aggressive than accepted practice. I don't need to think long to remember five dead instructors who didn't know enough about how to fly parachutes (only one who killed a student) and another five who are still here due to luck (not skill). Start with 1.0 pounds/square foot, learn all the survival skills, and then downsize no faster than Brian Germain's (xx,xxxx jumps, designs parachutes, builds parachutes, teaches canopy flight professionally, has the background to make suggestions ) recommended .1 / 100 jump rate (see his writings where deviations from that simple rule of thumb are recommended). If your instructors think you're doing an especially bad job be more conservative. Otherwise ignore them. While they might visit you in the hospital, they're unlikely to make a significant dent in your bills and definitely won't be the ones dealing with any of your complications. Forget your instructors unless they want you to be more conservative. Landing a canopy straight into the wind in a wide open field isn't hard. BZ Shaw suggested demoing a 104 when I had 500 jumps with the last year on the Batwing 134 he previously owned and I easily landed it fine in a sunny wide open field with a nice head-wind. Some time over the next 700 jumps I had enough experience to know that things weren't that simple, learn more, and be OK landing my 105 down-wind, cross-wind, up-hill, down-hill, in brakes, flying around and over obstacles on the ground, landing out, landing at night, etc. Getting into any of those situations before I had that experience could have been real messy even though I agreed with "experienced" jumpers and rating holders who thought it was fine earlier in my jumping career. Being more aggressive often works out OK, but you'll learn more less painfully when you put in the time at lower wing loadings.

It makes perfect sense. 100 jumps on the 210 before the 190 fits with accepted downsizing progressions and gives you enough time to learn how to really fly the canopy landing up-wind, down-wind, cross-wind, up-hill, down-hill, in tight areas, with turns from treetop level, etc. all of which will save your butt when you need to land out. Normally people would 1. Buy a used rig with a 210 2. Put 120 jumps on it 3. Sell the 210 and buy a used 190 for about what they sell the 210 for 4. Sell the 210 for purchase price 5. Put 150 jumps on the 190 6. Buy a used 170 7. Sell the 190 for purchase price - $1/jump 8. Put 150 jumps on the 170 9. Buy a new used rig with 150 canopies 10. Put 200 jumps on the 150 spending an average of $1/jump on canopies and $2 for rig and canopy regardless of how many times they down-size. If you're patient and negotiate good deals you can make money or spend a lot less. If you insist on having matching colors the total could be $5. Eventually you arrive at sizes where you'll be content for a long time. The cost of a new container and reserve spread over a decade isn't interesting without considering the residual value and you won't take a big per-jump hit putting 500-1000+ skydives on a brand new canopy in your colors unless they're ugly. At that point buying something brand new which exactly fits your tastes is a fine idea (although in the future I'd stay away from white leg strap pads).

I'm not opposed to sentencing guidelines generally, but I've always thought "3 strikes" laws are idiotic because their arbitrary threshold is determined, quite literally, by the rules of baseball. They make perfect sense. The 33,000 member California prison guards' union is a significant political force with an $8 million annual lobbying budget which goes into promoting policies that increase the amount of prisoners, prisons, guards, money, and political power they wield. They were the number two contributer to the Three Strikes initiative and spent a million dollars defeating the initiative limiting the crimes considered three strikes offenses.

A 0% recidivism rate for murder or kidnapping and 0.6% serious/violent crimes like burglary combines with California's $47,000 annual cost of incarceration and budget woes to suggest more parolees, especially lifers who'll be aging and be more likely to have medical expenses on the high side of the $12,442 annual average. Those numbers are from 2008; with inflation they should break $50K/year. http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3

Zero is surprising

No doubt and all true. Legalities aside, my logic says this: - riding in the road is dangerous - riding on the sidewalk is dangerous Meh....get hit by a car or hit a pedestrian... Nope. You get hit by cars where roads intersect sidewalks or bike paths (that's where I got hit) because they're not looking for vehicle speed traffic off the main road. I'd rather ride on a street with no shoulder or bike lane because it's safer. Although people think sidewalks are safer studies show that's not the case. For example, the Canadians found a collision rate of 15.8/10,000 kilometers on the sidewalk versus 8.2/10,000 km on the road with a major injury rate of 10.0/10,000km on the sidewalk versus 1.0/10,000 km on the road. http://www.enhancements.org/download/trb/1636-011.PDF The other studies I've seen have all been similar reporting sidewalks as at least twice as dangerous as roads.

It's an exceedingly bad idea. Both canopies should be large enough to land you safely. Given people's tendency to land reserves in less than ideal situations (like when unconscious after an AAD fire without a flare, otherwise injured, off the drop zone, etc.) when not current (about 1 in 600 jumps is a reserve ride) the reserve should usually be at least as large as the main. At low wingloadings, they end up at the same size. At high wingloadings the reserve should be much larger. I have a 150 reserve and 105 main, and could go larger on the reserve.

Oh, if ONLY it were that simple. Trust me, I've looked. There is a chart on a Charles Schwab web site for people that have contributed the maximum. That's "sort of" helpful but not exactly what I'm looking for. http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/research_strategies/market_insight/retirement_strategies/planning/when_should_you_take_social_security.html "Break even" also assumes 1) A zero percent inflation adjusted rate of return (it's actually worse than that since the cost-of-living adjustments lag true inflation). Comparison against TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, which are as safe as anything backed by the US government) yields would be more interesting. 2) That the benefits aren't taxed; although with Social Security replacing just 1/3 of a single or widowed high-earner's salary maintaining your standard of living requires drawing from other retirement savings which often count as income.

A good approximation of required main lift web length is to take your height in inches, subtract your inseam measurement, and subtract 20" At 5'10" with a 30.5" inseam I get 19.5" and not coincidentally jump rigs with 19 and 20" main lift webs. You could need a longer or shorter rig depending on proportions. The best thing to do after finding a potentially fitting rig is to have your measurements taken per the manufacturer's ordering form and call them with the rig serial number + your numbers to see how they should mesh.

22 MPH comes from the EIFF Classic manual which considers .7 to be the optimum wingloading for classic accuracy. With the same lift to drag ratio speed is proportional to the square root of wingloading. L/D gets worse with the same jumper under smaller canopies at higher wingloadings (the jumper's surface area isn't changing at all, line area is only dropping with the square root of square footage, and some aerodynamic effects are non-linear) but it's a close enough approximation that I used it for the 1.0 wing loading. The EIFF numbers are lower than what Paraflite claims for their military canopies with similar wing loadings (those are 9-cells with better L/D ratios and may be trimmed flatter for more offset capability) so 22 MPH is a worst-case scenario for the skydiving environment.

.7 or a hair lower is ideal for classic accuracy. The canopy is still responsive to input and will get you a soft landing from 3/4 brakes in tight spots where you can't crash in a pea gravel pit or on a tuffet. Forward speed at that wingloading is about 22 mph and about 26 at 1.0. There's a pretty small window where you'd be going backwards with one but not the other and very few situations (turbulence often goes with high winds) where I'd be willing to jump my 105 but not my 245. Spotting becomes more important with larger canopies (with an 18 MPH head wind you'll make it twice as far with the larger canopy) but you should be looking before you jump anyways.

You can't vote for real change. If we could there'd be 15 libertarian Senators and 65 libertarian Representatives reflecting the People's political leanings. We don't because the demand for real change doesn't fit within the geographic boundaries where simple plurality decides who gets a seat, with that first-past-the-post electoral system leading to a narrow range of electable candidates. Who's electable and what they can do while still retaining their seat is determined by the intersection of the people voting in elections and those paying for campaigns - with $8M needed to land a job paying $174K a year Senators aren't paying their own way. Less than .5% of American adults make contributions over $200 a piece, and the vast majority of many candidates' hard money donations are at the $2500 limit. Soft money contributions to the party and PAC influence aren't limited. The net effect is policies which benefit the < .5% and don't do much to offend the voters. The wealthy are kept happy with favorable capital gains rates, while 47% of American workers are left content with a zero or negative income tax rate. We get "reforms" that look nice for the people but primarily benefit key industries. In the health care arena the Republicans brought us Medicare Part D running up a 1T tab over 10 years to buy expensive drugs from for-profit manufacturers. The Democrats' 1T Obamacare program is to boost insurance company profits by requiring people to buy their product, providing government subsidies where that's less practical, and continuing to insure the least profitable directly. Real reform would be extending Medicare with the government using tax dollars to pay for health care instead of the government using tax dollars to pay insurance companies to pay for health care with profits skimmed off the top. Big differences between Republicans and Democrats are more about talk than voting records on bills that won't be vetoed. Opposition is more for its own sake than real ideological squabbles. Compare treatment of the Republicans desire to lower capital gains rates to Obama's proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes on certain venture capital investments.

Yup. As of the 2008 election, US Representatives spent an average of $1.4 million ($4.2 million over 6 years) and Senators $8.4 million to win jobs paying just $174,000 a year. They don't pay for their own campaigns and need to keep their contributors happy enough to come back the next time around and that comes in the form of legislation which passes. They also need to spin things for the unwashed masses in the form of complaints. Just follow the money. Medicare Part D from the Republicans is a trillion dollar (over 10 years) money funnel to the drug companies from the federal government. Obamacare is a trillion dollar (over 10 years) gift for the insurance companies from whom most citizens will be required to buy their product, which can no longer be a basic plan, and must cost the youngest healthiest individuals at least 1/3 that charged to the somewhat old (with the government still picking up the tab for the really old and unprofitable). Two nearly identical parties are the inevitable result of first past the post electoral systems.

Or a few decades. Deaths under fully functioning canopies skyrocketed as skydivers increased their wing loadings in the mid 1990s with the move to ZP (tolerant of higher wing loadings in spite of wear). Fifteen years of fatalities haven't been enough to put wingloading limits in the BSRs although USPA finally started making recommendations.

I ask for 2050' when jumping my accuracy setup so I can claim compliance with the BSR mandated 2000' pack opening altitude. With a careful packjob I wouldn't mind taking the same setup out at 1000'.

If you want Medicare and Social Security you should be voting Republican. The Republicans gave us Medicare Part D prescription coverage (costing $1000 Billion over 10 years). Obama cut $500 Billion in Medicare spending over a decade with his Obama Care and proposed an additional $480 Billion of cuts through 2023. I don't buy the New Speak suggesting a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts by Democrats are pro-Medicare and trillion dollars in new Medicare programs by Republicans are anti. Under Republican leadership Social Security tax collections continued to increase so we wouldn't run short. Obama cut the employee share by 1/3.

Republicans are today's poor codling big-government bed-wetting liberals. The trillion dollar (over 10 years, just like Obama Care) Medicare part D plan came from the Republicans, sponsored by Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and signed by President Bush. Not content with America being second out of the OECD 22 in income tax system progressiveness (we're now first), President bush moved people out of the 15% tax bracket into a new 10% bracket and made married couples' cut-offs for the lowest brakcets double single peoples'. For instance The second lowest quintile saw a 17.6% rate cut compared to barely 11% for the top. Democrats are today's Dickensian scrooges. President Clinton made good on his promise to "end welfare as we know it" with his policies reducing the rolls by 63% from 12.2 million in 1996 to 4.5 million over the next decade. In its first three years Obama's administration nearly matched president Bush's federal prosecutions for felony illegal re-entry over his two terms totaling eight years cruelly giving the boot to hard-working poor who couldn't afford to immigrate legally.

All my cars have been stick shift and my wife does a fine job driving my Audi (we've had her chauffeur us up winding dirt road switchbacks from the bottom of a canyon in Moab, UT where we took the fast way down).

It's statistics. Those are your odds given an average chance of swooping, jumping a small canopy, not being current, only jumping large parachutes sized for classic accuracy, jumping a wingsuit, being on a 4-way team, etc. You can choose to do things safer, although the community as a whole might not yet be aware of what that means (I know/knew dead people including instructors from before the idea of canopy instruction occurred to us). That also might not be too exciting. It's a lot harder to kill yourself under big F111 seven cells sized for classic accuracy (about .7 pounds per square foot is ideal, with the average 180 pound guy wanting a 300 square foot canopy like used for students) but most people aren't going to do that. Similarly fatal canopy collisions are less likely when you're at a 182 DZ with only 3-4 other jumpers on the load instead of a nice turbine DZ dumping 20 people at a time out of an Otter but that's not as much fun. The big thing to take-away is that there's a non-negligible chance you'll die. Being safer increases your odds but you need to accept the possibility and should plan for the contingency if you have family that depends on you.