DrewEckhardt

I want a partner not a play thing. My wife was completely independent when we met and even brought her own tool box when she moved in. She was probably more ferocious than I was at work, we get the same Scrabble scores, and she far out did me athletically except on the racquetball court.

Measure your bag and ask jump shack how its dimensions compare to what they're supposed to be. Packing technique has a lot to do with how tight the fit is. Assuming you haven't been paying for your jumping habit by working as a packer you don't have enough experience to pack canopies as small as they could be, especially when new.

Just wait until you get 500-1000 jumps on the canopy. The stitching holes will open up so it's easier to get the air out and the surface coating will wear down so the fabric stays put almost like F111.

Media coverage is not representative of what's happening, presumably because defensive gun use usually stops at brandishing which isn't exciting enough for the news. Only exciting and uncommon events get covered. Each year under 700 fatal accidents (The National Center for Health Statistics reported 649 in 2007) occur, about 10,000 murders with guns (The FBI's Uniform Crime Report lists 10,086 for 2007), over 100,000 defenses are reported to authorities (National Crime Victimization Surveys), and 2,000,000 - 2,500,000 defensive uses are suggested by Kleck's random-digit-dialed telephone survey with callback confirmation. It usually stops with "I have a gun" Resistance movements have the advantage of not being easily identified as hostiles. and can operate for decades like the IRA which eventually bombed their way to the negotiating table.

My California company has two employees in Texas, and when I'm working with them I spend some time on the phone. Otherwise I use my phone as little as possible, mostly just to text message my wife that I'm riding my bicycle home so that if I get run over or shot and am lying on the side of the road in pain she can find me and call an ambulance.

I took three semesters of physics as an engineering student and still find Myth Busters an incredible source of knowledge. For example: After fifteen years in industry I was convinced that contrary to management, marketing, and sales expectations you cannot polish a turd. They proved me wrong, and gave me hope that the next time incompetence rears its ugly head we may still be able to put a customer-friendly high-gloss shine on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBj6PonX14A There's also the nostalgia thing where they make explosions and I think of the simpler times when I was a kid and liked to blow things up.

I've down sized half a dozen times and never spent more than a buck or two a jump on depreciation. With a little patience and awareness of used gear prices you're going to spend the same money regardless of how many canopies you go through. If you're a deal maker you'll actually make more money when you take more steps. My insurance companies and I spent about $40,000 on medical bills, lost wages, getting home, and things like that after I was stupid. At under a pound per square foot. It was painful too.

This is true but will be different for each skydiver. Talk to the people who know you best. Until people have successfully dealt with a number of abnormal situations there's no way of knowing how different it is for them. At 25 jumps people should be conservative because they haven't experienced a lot of those situations, or they should be conservative because they've experienced a lot of them due to bad judgement and need all the safety margin they can get. Read Brian Germain's wing loading documents. He knows more than you, your riends, and your instructors.

Try landing down-wind on concrete. Once your rig has been repaired try a 90 degree turn at roof top height. Once you get the cast off buy yourself a Sabre 2 210 and learn how to fly it. After 125 jumps total try a 190 if you're doing everything on Bill von Novak and Brian Germain's checklists and at 250 try a 170. Landing straight in is easy. Basic maneuvers aren't too exciting until things start getting wrong but that's exactly what you're sizing your canopy for - a down-wind landing on pavement following a low turn to avoid power lines you didn't see until it was almost too late due to low light on the sunset load where you are landing out due to a bad spot because some cute girls flashed the pilot, everyone got extra altitude, and your hypoxic friend got his foot stuck on the seatbelt so your climbout took too long.

I used to take vacations, making time for two one week trips a year. Some how life got too busy and I have taken at most two days off in the last 3.5 years (I spent a weekend each in Vancouver, Victoria, and San Francisco for my three anniversaries anmay have taken Friday off for two of those). There just isn't enough time to take holidays, let alone vacations. On Memorial day weekend Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I worked from some time between 11am and 1pm to sometime between 3 and 5am except for Sunday when I took two hours off to visit my father who'd flow 3000 miles to see me and a couple hours on Saturday and Monday to get food with my wife. When changing jobs it does make for a nice increase in savings though.

Depends how big you are. 40 MPH isn't out of line at the big end of the spectrum and can determine whether you jump by yourself or with other people. Dressing for success can bring together people like "Big" Benny (we can freefly with him at 150+ MPH when he is on his belly doesn't wear a slow jump suit) and size 0 women who would ordinarily fall at 105 MPH on empty stomachs.

Because for some people it's one out of two methods that work, with the second method usually requiring a trip to the emergency room and orthopaedic surgeon. >If they are downsizing too much... set goals for them to acheive first(goals with original canopy before downsizing) (and i dont mean 500 jumps in 3 years type of thing), like 20 jumps within the next 2 months, and goals like landing in a designated area (accuracy), cross-wind/downwind landings... The problems with this are that 1. It's not just about the skills. It's developing muscle memory and psychological familiarity and confidence with the speed and maneuvers so that when things go to heck (you land out because of a long spot, don't see the power lines because it's on the sunset load, and turn low) you're not over stimulated past where you can perform and have good chances of doing the right things. 100-200 jumps per size with more at small sizes, for the transition to fully elliptical canopies, and when things start getting really small aren't too out of line and perhaps not coincidentally match what Brian Germain has in his chart (in addition to 10,000 jumps, designing parachutes, and travelling around the world to teach canopy flight Brian studied psychology in school and has written a book on it). 2. You need to be able to make 90 degree turns from roof-top level, you need to be able to land with induced speed (because some time you won't make a flat turn correctly), you need to be able to land down wind, and you need to be able to fly around obstacles on the ground. A lot of people claim they "aren't hook turn type people," will "just be careful" and not try those things. Landing straight-in and more complex maneuvers are deceptively simple when nothing else is going on. 3. It's not linear or predictable. Although I'd be fine with 600 jumps under bigger parachutes with the last 200 under a 135 elliptical, when I switched to a Stiletto 120 at 1.6 pounds per square foot the thing didn't always land in a straight line due to pilot error. With a handful of exceptions your instructor hasn't seen a lot. He may just be used to 25% of the guys he knows going to the hospital. Unless his advice is more conservative than accepted wisdom because you need more practice you'd do well to go slower. Big people don't bounce as well as little ones do. Logic doesn't work too well.

Where can I buy one for $300? Where can I buy one for $300? Where can I buy one for $300? And if I want all three, where can I get a few hundred dollars knocked off for the package (the running total is $900 here, which is getting a little pricey for a complete rig; maybe the $700-$800 I'd have spent including a BOC conversion would be better?) I could have thrown my first rig in the dumpster after 70 jumps and come out ahead financially. With what I resold it for I broke even after a few weeks. And that was a _nice_ rig worth twice what we're talking about. As long as you buy airworthy gear for a fair price it doesn't matter. On a small student-budget, buying such a rig is likely to be a much better deal than renting.

Well then I will tell you. I am against same sex marriage. Marriage is a specific religious term regarding a man and a woman. My Gods say Marriage is for any number of adults who wish to form a union regardless of gender. With Congress being constitutionally prohibited from creating a national religion, my Gods' edicts are equally valid.

Skydiving is somewhat like sex, which can be fun by yourself but is much more enjoyable with other people. To skydive with other people, you need to have overlapping fall rates where you still have enough range of motion. The same neutral fall rate will make your life easier because it will let you focus on building formations instead of trying to fall at the same speed, especially before you've spent tens of thousands on jump tickets and tunnel time. Assuming people are built about the same, mass is a cubic function of size while cross sectional area is merely a square function so cross-sectional density and therefore terminal velocity increase with size. So if you're a big person you need more drag (baggy heavy cotton) and if you're a tiny one you need less (skin-tight slick suits) . Having handles to hang on to also helps with the process. Especially if you don't want some one pulling out a handful of leg hair. Looking good is why our suits are color coordinated and not just black (doesn't show dirt too much, but it's hot in the sun) or white (you better be good at landing)

Looks like a brain fart. Skysurf, belly, freefly, I'm sure he meant. RIght, it's a typo. Slow to fast.

Well the canopy had over 100 jumps on it and I don't know about you but I doubt I'll ever be able to land a Fox 265 as nicely as I can my Safire II 139... Newish is hundreds of jumps plural It's not a thousand jumps. I've personally put over a hundred jumps on my Fox 245 and it's fine. I can land my Fox 245 and Dagger 244 as nice as my Samurai 105 and Stiletto 120 at exit weights between 160 and 210 pounds. Nicer than the Monarch 135 since it doesn't like to stop like more modern tapered designs do. It's very different but not that hard - you just have to realize the canopy takes longer to respond and start flaring higher. On wingsuit skydives with my big rig I've landed where I want the rig for packing (at the end of the unoccupied half of a tarp). Takes more finesse but is also doable.

Nope, the existence of loaded guns in my house lessen the chances of a successful home invasion robbery. If you don't want a gun in your house-don't have one. The potential for loaded guns in any neighboring house reduces the chances for any home invastion, successful or unsuccessful. Criminals switch to non-confrontational crimes when they think their victims may be armed and become more bold when that's less likely.

No mystery. The same reduced drag that causes free fliers to fall faster means that they take longer to decelerate to zero forward speed when they get out. The increased speed means they spend less time in the upper winds than flat jumpers. Combine the two together and even 10 seconds of separation can become zero at opening altitude - and you didn't wait 10 seconds. Put the free fliers out last and you can get an additional 1000-1500' of separation which are what the USPA BSRS for solo and group separation respectively. This has been well understood for years and is the reason that the standard exit order is sky surf, free fly, belly. Even if the first group is opening higher. Put the free fliers out second. Or wait a real twenty seconds before the first belly group (count one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand, five-thousand, IGNORE the yelling, six-thousand, seven-thousand IGNORE the screaming to get out, etc. ) Free fliers who exit second opening first 1000-1500' away are safer than subsequent groups opening 30 seconds later in the same spot, especially if one of them opens high (accidentally or intentionally) or a belly flier opens low (accidentally or intentionally, perhaps after a ctuaway). Here are two illustrations: Free fliers exit first. Belly fliers exit 10 seconds later. Note that the yellow dot ends up in the same place as the red dot. Oops! http://www.omniskore.com/freefall_drift2.html Belly fliers exit first. Free fliers exit 10 second later. Note 1400' separating the two dots which is what you want. http://www.omniskore.com/freefall_drift3.html

Have it shipped USPS. It'll be less expensive than Fed-Ex/UPS and go straight through customs, subject only to whatever Canada is charging these days as import duty and VAT. Sometimes they loose things. The insured value is listed on the shipping forms. Listing the actual value would be prudent so you or the seller won't be out when that happens.

We have a military so socialize everything else. Good point. When you're spending more on your military than every other country put together and 30X more than countries with the same land mass and border length it's about public spending not defense. Without the cut we give to the paper share holders in the defense industry that'd be socialism. With America already being a socialist country, it'd be nice to see programs which benefit its citizens more directly and don't send a big cut to non-government owned corporations.

I will work 12-16 hours a day. Go work! Rah! Week days are days where I spend more hours working at the office than working at home. Week eneds are days where I spend nearly all my working hours at home. See that important distinction?

I think the majority view in Speakers Corner is Republican/Democrat which is a position I don't identify with.

When a generously sized newish F111 canopy lands you hard you've done something wrong. You should also be good enough that you can hit the pea gravel 10/10 times so that's not an issue.

I spent $700 on my last used rig and reserve together - a Javelin and Super Raven 3. Even if I need to have a new harness sewn on for $400 that would have beat a new baser. It's a bad idea. You don't want a belly mount reserve, you don't want to jump a round places where they can't spot (most) and the terrain isn't good, and you want an AAD. The baser is only a good idea for getting your low wingsuit openings dialed in from a plane without breaking any FARs (just the BSRs) so there's less stress when you fly off a cliff. If you just want to jump a BASE canopy to get some practice there are lots of nice used big rigs with square reserves so you don't have to spend as much time packing.