DrewEckhardt

the country is broke and now we get to pay for other countries abortions? I am pro choice but not pro " lets pay for everyones mistakes ". why can't we just focus on us for a while? As long as we're in the business of winning hearts and minds with food, we'll do better with a lower birth rate. One dose of RU-486 has to be far less expensive than the years of rations needed to get people through their expected 50 year lifespan.

Seems like a great Republican idea to me. Republicans want to limit spending on programs like aid to families with dependant children. Unfortunately, their turn at the reins left us with the economy in tatters with skyrocketing un-employment. Upping the abortion rate will be a much easier way to slow the increase in spending on such programs than undoing their unemployment problem. Hopefully the stem cells won't go to waste, and we can put what comes out of the increased abortion rate into getting our medical advances back on track.

Although you'd spend $1200 - $1500 more than if you put the same amount of money into a complete used rig and made 4-5 jumps a weekend some place that charged $25/jump for rental equipment

You guys should be modern and cross-name. You can be the Shermanpocket and she can be Hollynator.

Fedex changed their rules so that you can't ship a gun to yourself unless you have a FFL, and federal law means that you have to tell them you're shipping a gun. I haven't learned the hard way whether UPS rules have an exemption for shipments to yourself although they claim FFL on the sending or receiving end. Maybe I should get a fresh C&R license.

F111 fllare power degrades after 300 jumps (PD's cross-braced F111 tri-cell was allegedly used up at this point), it's significant at 600, and by 1000 jumps you're in ankle-spraining territory at high elevations on hot summer days if you're not really small under a really big parachute. This assumes that the previous owners were honest about the number of jumps and those jumps didn't occur in a sandy environment which causes higher wear.

Bid $5 on the 9-cell. It'll make a cool looking car cover once you cut the lines off that costs less than what you get at Pep Boys. With a total exit weight under 200 pounds that might might be a nice first (but not terribly exciting) canopy. I paid $700 for my last used Javelin + reserve. I think I sold my last canopy (ZP) for $300 and have seen Monarchs in the same ball park. Unless we're talking about "under $1000" for the whole rig plus a few hundred for an old CYPRES or a couple hundred for the main by itself you can still do better when money is tight. Keep in mind that a good used ZP main depreciates about $1/jump provided you don't get close to the end of the current lineset's life and that you're going to have a hard time selling an old F111 seven cell that's on the small side for accuracy use. Long term it may cost you less to get a newer parachute even if there's more money out of your pocket now.

Most employment situations are at-will. They can let you go for any (or no) reason that isn't illegal (like they find out your religion) an you can quit for any reason. The more likely response is that you get excluded from important meetings, have less responsibility, or are more likely to be let go during lay-offs. With a competant manager, you'll be evaluated based on your skills and contribution to the bottom line and it won't matter but you may not be invited to the manager's social events. Good manages act on criticism. The company wins when you use resources more effectively. I've been to meetings where they burned better than $5000 of peoples' time directly (more if you count what people didn't get done because their brains turned off). Repeated for a week - $25K. With bad managers getting the position by being good at being artificial, and good ones reacting emotionally at the time and then reconsidering there's know way to figure out what's actually going on until it's too late so you can't really worry about it.

No, but you can use a technique where the exact altitude or a 3000 foot difference in density altitude just doesn't matter. You can split the pieces up into pieces where you establish roll angle to start accelerating, a turning phase where you adjust turn rate and vertical speed to end up where you want in all three axis. A 50' altitude distance becomes much more apparant as you get closer to the ground.

Although I found Parachutist being about skydiving and Skydiving about parachuting a bit confusing, I always preferred the current news in Skydiving over the same regurgitated articles and generic boogie/competition coverage in Parachutist. That stinks.

They were all the rage back in the early to mid nineties when we were making the transition from freak flying (or that thing French people did with single winged sit suits called something like chutasis) to freefly with baggy suits. The wings only addressed right-side-up fall rate and got you a slow fall rate that may be close enough to fast 4-way that you could turn points on mixed loads. Once you have a stable sit, you really need to have the same neutral fall rate as everyone else so you can start taking grips and doing the social things that make skydiving fun instead of just playing with yourself. Sit suits probably hinder you as much as helping in that situation (provided that everyone else has one; if they don't you need to match their lower drag), because they mean more of your lift is coming from your arms so it's harder to take grips. You really need to be able to get lift off your legs and back. Pulling was allegedly a problem but didn't seem to cause issues for me - no one told me I was supposed to collapse my left wing by turning my palm up when pulling until I had a bunch of sit jumps and sky-surfs with the thing. While a nice stepping stone (like the batton pass) they're not where you want to go. I think mine came from DLT designs not Tony; but there were a bunch of companies.

What is your exit weight? A Raven 2 is 211sqft. You may need to go bigger. F111 canopies don't fly or land like their ZP counterparts. In other words, they're not as forgiving. Probably. Being able to sink (accuracy style) into a landing area without returning to full flight is eventually going to save your butt in BASE jumping, either because something bad happened (the muppet you jump with having a wall strike, landing first, and lying on the ground in the middle of the landing area while the guy you call Big Benny for his size is telling Mr. Stupid that he'll keep you from landing on top of him is distracting enough you might make it halfway accross the landing area before deciding you need to land before the trees and boulders. Really.) or you decide that skydiving sized landing areas aren't enough fun (There doesn't seem to be a good future in scaring yourself with lower objects, but small landing areas are more a question of skill). More square footage makes it easier on hard ground. About .65 or .7 pounds per square foot is real nice without comrpomising on responsiveness for avoiding obstacles. Higher wing loadings work in a skydiving environment if you can consistently land in the middle of the pea gravel - that stuff is fairly soft but gets in your shoes. Landing just off the end of the packing tarp a foot shy of the pilot chute hanging off the end (stepping on it wouldn't be nice) is more practical - you land the canopy on the tarp and start packing.

The deflection circuits and CRT heaters run the same regardless of what's being displayed. Beam current varies from 0 to perhaps a few miliamps depending on what's being displayed. 1 mA * 35,000V * 3 guns = 105W for white versus nothing for black. With total power consumption of a couple hundred Watts, easily half a CRT's load could come from what's on the screen. Power supply sag is visible on old cheap computer CRTs, wher e a mostly bright screen causes the image to shrink horizontally because the power supply sags and can no longer get full deflection. Televisions got over-scan where the edges of the image are off the screen so they could get away with weak unregulated power supplies without visible efects. With the screen in standby (not displaying a pretty picture) there should be a lot less power consumed because you're not dumping enough power into the inductive horizontal deflection yoke to run it across the screen 100,000 times a second (that whole dv/dt thing)

"large" tube stoes for dacron lines are the same size as "small" locking stoes. You might also look at your closing technique - if you're using the stoe to close the bag it's going to wear out a lot quciker than if you pull the closing flap around the bag to meet the tube stoe.

As long as fresh American graduates cost $50K/year and Chinese, Eastern Europeans, and Indians can be had for $5K/year jobs are going to move overseas. As long as we're paying over $100/hour to US body shops for the fully burdened cost of a contractor versus $20/hour overseas jobs are going to move over seas. They have problems hiring people with decent problem solving skills (the average US graduate with BS and MS computer science degrees is pretty bad too but doesn't get hired into jobs where it matters) but will get around to fixing that, just as they've built academic programs which compare to US schools. Some companies are bringing over senior staff from the US and continuing to pay them US salaries in places where $5K/year gets them live-in domestic servants. They should be able to make the same hiring choices we do in the US. Our salaries, prices, and material possessions are going to go down, theirs are going to increase (private cars are becoming a big thing), and we'll meet somewhere in the middle. Those are facts that presidents and congress people have no control over. All they may be able to do is soften the impact. 100,000 H1B holders coming in each year as indentured servants aren't good, but the larger number of people staying home where they can live off substantially lower wages are a much bigger problem.

That's some funny stuff, I assume you meant laying the canopy on its side not landing it on its side. Landing would be when it first touches the ground. You land (preferably gracefully). Then the canopy lands. If it lands on its nose or tail you're going to run the slider up the lines, grab it by the tail, shake it, and still not get as much air out as if you turned sideways after stopping and landed the canopy on its side.

So what. The world's greatest aerobatic pilot with an FAA waiver to perform maneuvers down to 0 altitude isn't going to get out if he clips an obstacle or simply breaks the plane (Sean Tucker had to bail out after breaking a linkage in his Pitts) when exercising those privledges. We accept much higher risks in that environment provided that an airshow line is in place, and shouldn't be differentiating between the different sorts of pilots.

The budget is THREE MILLION MILLION dollars which makes a $150M party .005% of the total. It doesn't matter any more than $40M mattered, which is not at all. If you want to worry about money, you have to worry about things that matter. Like ONE HUNDRED FIFTY NINE THOUSAND MILLION spent on the optional war in Iraq last year (not counting indirect costs like the surge in payments to disabled veterands). I use million instead of billion because it's accessable (save enough to retire as a middle class person and you'll be a millionaire) and people seem to confuse trillions and billions with millions to easyily.

Landing the canopy on its side so it collapses on itself like a flat pack will get most of the air out, with what's left being not much worse than any other ZP canopy.

Washington is a free state with shall issue concealed carry permits and no worthless laws which serve only to comfort bed-wetting city dwellers. Of course you don't have to register your guns.

More than a sleeping bag in a pup tent and your own car aren't necessary but they sure are nice. With working 80+ hours a week and wanting to sleep and have fun on the weekends, a house keeper makes a much bigger difference in my life than a nice cable package I rarely watch, extra bed room I don't use, newer car, etc.

It really depends on who you want to work for and what the position is. I've worked for startups where we start with $X from venture capitalists and people get hired and fired ASAP because the work needs to be done before the money runs out. I've worked for and talked to companies with lots going on where some time in the next year would work just fine. Some positions take 6-12 months to fill. Some positions take just a phone call. If the company + position combination you're looking for is in the "hire fast" category and you don't have obligations like finishing school, you might re-evaluate your priorities. I've moved and worked out of long-term stay hotels (monthly and weekly rates are way more reasonable than over-night, and some states have sales tax exemptions on hotel rooms used as residences). As a tangent, you need to be looking at more than just what sort of apartment you can get. Retirement would be one big one. Starting your 401k conributions at 22 instead of 30 could get you twice the income to live off of in retirement. Putting 20% gross in an index fund could have you retired in 23 years. Before that, you might want to buy a home and should have enough cash reserves that a lay-off or injury doesn't mean returning home to live with your parents.

Having worked six hours today from home so far today, I'm going to take a nice bike ride into the office. It will be a very nice, sunny, warm but short ride. While I'm at the office, my wife will pickup my standing order for 4 cases of Arrogant Bastard Ale. I'll work another 8 hours, come home, have a beer and home cooked meal (turkey noodle soup, with home made noodles. Favorite honey is a wonderful cook!) and then work until midnight. Then tomorrow will start and I'll work until after I need to sleep.

Anyone doing CRW What's the reasoning behind it? Retractable pilot chute system so some one doesn't get tangled up in your bridle. A circular piece of fabric with a big gromet in the middle can then be used to kill the pilot cute.

Don't change planforms and wingloading at the same time. Either go to a sabre2 (or pilot, or safire, or lotus, etc) 135 or stick with a 150 and change the shape. Other canopies aren't as twitchy as the Stiletto (John Leblanc intentionally made subsequent designs less responsive because he observed problems with jumpers keeping their Stilettos stable about the roll axis on landing), but it's still prudent to not do more than one thing to add responsiveness at once. Changing from my Batwing 134 to a Stiletto 120 I had problems keeping the things going in the straight line on landing. It would have been worse coming from a 135 square. Putting a hundred or two jumps on a Sabre 2 135, and then moving on to a Katana 135 would be the smart choice.