DrewEckhardt

No. There are more flat RW teams than you can shake a stick at. There are fewer just-for-fun flat fliers but you should still be able to make 4-8 way jumps. And the fun jumpers might be Parachutists Over Phorty. Mostly. It used to be that apart from a few style and accuracy guys everybody did flat Rw. Then freak flying begat sit flying which begat freefly and lots of people were doing that because it was cool and fewer people got all stressed out like competitive flat RW people. As the century dawned we got wing suits, which anyone can fly (no one on my first successful 4-way freefly formation had fewer than 500 junps) and give you minutes of freefall. So the same number of skdyivers (USPA has been about 30,000 people forever) are split across variants of 3 major disciplines.

The first post suggests the installation would be flat-rated at 350 HP "The aircraft targets would be 350hp to 13K MSl"

Hey, don't knock aft CG. That was the basis for one of my most vivid skydiving memories.. What, you don't like VMC roll-overs in King Airs when the DZO decides to let the tandems out early on their own pass, he throttles the left engine back, everyone makes room for them in the back... That was the most exciting plane ride I had at that DZ.

Poor Baby. Try running three tandems at a time out of a 205 for a season or three and then see how you like the Otter seats. That's a job. You're getting paid to do unpleasant things. If that wasn't the case you'd be paying the DZO for the privilege of introducing new people to the sport of skydiving. Fun jumping is a mid-priced hobby. You expect to be treated like a customer not cargo.

I've found jobs in other cities a couple hours away by plane twice while still working and a lot more in the same city. Forty five minutes talking on the phone is about the same as forty five minutes for lunch (while not optimal, a few Cliff bars will power you through your next real meal). A long weekend for interviews isn't any different from one for sport or romance. With flexibility in what 60 hours you work each week it still fits. More calendar time passes than if the search were full-time and it's onerous to be doing one job full-time plus (I live in America, where only the weak work forty-hour weeks) and another part-time. OTOH, some back-of-the-envelope calculations built around how much money I left on the table with the pay cut I took when I waited for one job to end (startups run out of money) before looking for the next and the counter-offer when I left a few years later and time spent looking for jobs (about a dozen worth sniffing each others butts for 45 minutes four of which are interesting enough to spend a half-day interviewing in person plus follow-ups) suggests that in my case overlapping the process pays over $500/hour for out of state moves and $750 for in-state before health insurance is considered. It'd be hard to match that with any other legal activity. I'm not going to leave a job until there's something seriously wrong (like the 72 hour notices to comply with the terms of the office lease or surrender the premises, sociopath executives who go to federal prison, etc.) but once you cross the time to leave threshold you need to protect yourself and your family through the increased leverage in compensation negotiation.

22oz micro-brew and your favorite flavor of high-end hydroponic chronic.

We need to pass Prop 19 1. To protect the children. It's easier for children to get marijuana than harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco since there's a smaller jump from making illegal sales to adults to illegal sales to children than legal adult sales to illegal juvenile sales. 2. To fight terrorism. With locally grown and produced marijuana we'll be funding local farmers not international terrorists. 3. To reduce gun violence. Mexican drug lords aren't killing people over legal substances like alcohol and tobacco.

Guaranteed jobs don't exist unless you're union or _way_ up the corporate food chain (just VP usually doesn't cut it but might guarantee X months of severance if they decide to merge your division and terminate you without cause) It's all at-will where either party can terminate the employment arrangement at any time for any reason or no reason at all. I did one deal where I would keep my signing bonus and not have to reimburse the company for relocation costs if they got rid of me within the year, although employment agreements usually stipulate that those things vest over the first year and that you'll pay the company back if you leave for any reason (theirs or yours).

Probably a really bad idea. Many decent paying positions are acquired through networking and most of your network is not in or connected to the city you're moving to. What you get paid is dependent on how much leverage you have; and an existing job goes a long way "I make $X at my existing position, and am not going to leave for your insultingly low offer." I've heard that for the average job search time you can divide your salary by $10K and that's how long it should run in months. Is $15K going to be enough for that? I'd look for a job, wouldn't expect relocation assistance, and wouldn't move until I had that nailed down. After getting there I'd buy a bed and pay extra for the shortest possible lease term (ideally month-to-month) and not move the rest of my stuff out until I knew where in town I really wanted to live and that the new job + location were going to work out long term.

If you can't flare well due to being stunned after hitting your head on exit or a dislocated shoulder, you're more likely to end your jump with broken bones under the 126 than the 143.

A moose once bit my sister... Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti.

What you might try ... is call around... and find out what student/rental gear all the DZ's are using. That would be a start... try the different rigs at a number of DZ's.... hell you are on the East Coast.. friggin dropzones are everywhere. Go visit Sonic at the Ranch But note that fit and canopy density (people buy tiny rigs, cram their parachutes in there, and wonder why it feels like a brick on their back) have a lot to do with comfort.

You have more energy to deal with on landing than a smaller person without having bones that are proportionally stronger so you're more likely to break a leg if you do something bone-headed. The forces on the canopy line groups need to sum to your weight, so it'll take more strength to pull on toggles than it would for a smaller person. This won't be a problem. You'll fall faster than a smaller person in the same body position so your instructors may put you in a baggier suit. Otherwise there aren't any real differences.

How people perceive canopy performance increases is non-linear. You really don't want to be skipping sizes.

The price of gasoline in the US is an incredibly poor indicator of the health of its economy. US gasoline prices are substantially lower than almost any other country with the exception of major oil producing countries in the middle east. How do we do it? Volume, volume, volume. Taxes which aren't punitive. When I looked in February 2010, US wholesale gasoline prices in some places were $1.85 a gallon while UK prices were 32p a liter which was the same $1.85 per US gallon. At same time UK gas tax was .5619 pounds per liter or $3.23 a gallon at the time. The UK puts a 15% Value Added Tax on top of the whole thing, which at February retail prices of $6.51 was $.98 a gallon for $4.21 a gallon in taxes. US federal gas taxes are only $.272 a gallon, with a state average of 18.4 cents making the average $.456 a gallon - 1/9th those of the UK.

My understanding, after asking the question to our HR reps, and our corporate insurance agent, is that group health policies cannot discriminate in any way like this, so, unless someone can educate me otherwise, cannot exclude any activities. Individual insurance plans are a whole other issue of course. Wrong. HIPAA requires group plans to cover participants in hazardous activities but allows source of injury exclusions so skydivers can join such plans but are only covered when falling off ladders but not jumping. Organizations for millions of horseback riders and motorcyclists (versus 30,000 skydivers) have fought this. As of 2009, the best they were able to do is require the insurers to spell out the limitations before you join a group plan. That said I've never had a policy with a skydiving exclusion.

HSUS Article including undercover video. HSUS Article and images. Why should horses be treated differently from other food animals like antelope, bison, cow, deer, elk, etc?

Sure - anything about people famous for being famous, "reality" TV, CSPAN....

That's the next step for California. The government was spending too much money and a tax increase from 9.3 to 9.55% wasn't enough so they decided to take out an interest free loan by increasing the withholding farther to 10.505%

And it doesn't mean that you want to. A softer container can be more comfortable in the plane. Any smaller than needed to fit a carry-on (like 22x14x9") doesn't buy you anything.

Solid colors are boring and it doesn't cost any more to get exactly what you want when ordering new gear.

I worry a lot more about eighteen year olds with cars. The body count is about 40X higher for automobile accident fatalities than firearms even though we have more guns in the country. There's only a 4:1 difference between motor vehicle accidents and firearms murders; although the later is still exceedingly unlikely when you avoid risk factors like being black, in a youth gang, or involved in the illegal drug market.

One of my friends had a reserve deployment on exit due to that. IIRC there were broken lines and broken bones involved. You need to replace the ripcord _before_ jumping.

Foreigners resent the US because of our interference in their affairs. We prop up monarchs and brutal dictators like Pinochet and Hussein. We provide military hardware and financial support for Israel's intrusion into the Middle East. That's enough to make people fight. Since they can't fight a military that spends more than the rest of the world put together it's not surprising that they occasionally come after softer targets including civilians. If we didn't maintain a military presence in the Middle East, support Israel, and have ties to local royalty that would be a lot less likely.

Except they have their own special keyboard layout with the function and control keys swapped so you need to undo decades of muscle memory (although some models purportedly have a BIOS setting for this). And they reserve 'performance' features for 'business' laptops so you can spend $800 more (buying your memory and hard disk from elsewhere) for the same configuration that you'd get from a less expensive Dell line.