DrewEckhardt

If you're worried about spending just $300, maybe you should re-evaluate the thousand extra you're spending to get a new container (or thousands on a completely new rig) versus used. Especially when you're likely to sell it in just 2-3 years (provided you downsize no faster than Brian German's recomendations).

3...2...1...Here comes AggieDave. Excuse me. "Regular" capacity.

That will work just fine. Lots of things are "different" in California.

Unless the same criminals who import hundreds of thousands of pounds of illegal drugs each year also include a few guns in the mix. I'd expect many of the imports to be high-powered military designs, either diverted from their "lawful" markets or proven simple designs (like AK47s and Sten guns) that get manufactured elsewhere. Or local people start making them, like the resistance did in WWII except now we have CNC equipment to make things easier. An open bolt submachine gun is the easiest repeater to make - just look at guns like the Sten and PPS-42 Personally, I'd rather the criminals be running around with cheap .25s than making or importing more interesting guns like the UK yardies who get caught with Uzis (full auto), Mac 10s (full auto), and Glocks. Plenty of countries like Jamaica (with one of the world's highest murder rate in spite of some of the strictest gun control) and the UK (with reasonable crime rates, but the bans have no real effect on the illegal guns circulating: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/95ap69.htm) have shown that controlling legal guns does little to limit the supply of illegal ones to criminals. America isn't going to be any different. If you want to fix the problem, figure out how to get blacks up to the same socio-economic level as whites. While only 13% of the total population they're responsible for nearly half the murders and die at six times the white rate. Kellerman asserted in "Handgun Regulations, Crimes, Assaults, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities" that high gun ownership caused higher murder rates in Seattle than Vancouver which share similar aggregate demographics, but neglected the makeup of ethnic minorities and socio-economic data. The raw statistics showed a white murder rate of 6.2 per 100,000 in Seattle versus 6.4 in Vancouver, with the difference coming entirely from the high black (36.6) and Hispanic (26.9) murder rates. Studies show homicide rates increasing with economic disparity. The 2000 census shows median black and hispanic per-capita income about half the white population's (18,328 and 17,216 vs. 35,641). With whites not killing each other at a higher rate in Seattle, minorities killing each other at a high rate due to the factors that go with a vast income difference makes a lot more sense as the explanation.

Excellent! Welcome to the club. Now all you need is a lifetime supply of high capacity magazines (I prefer the 20 round USGI model for clearance), a nice bipod (Versapod), optics and you can move on to the next essential addition to your tool box: a .308 sport utility rifle. Leaving your guns behind (most of my long guns are in Washington and most of the handguns Colorado) isn't much fun, but the weather is a _huge_ improvement (around here it's rarely cloudy more than a couple days in a row, and it wasn't until December that I stopped wearing shorts on a regular basis) Most of my long guns are in a storage locker in Washington, and most of my hand guns in Colorado.

Epoxy and white vinegar (cleans up epoxy without being nasty like acetone).

1. Who cares. Giving 535 congress critters a $4700 raise amounts to .0001% of our usual annual spending. It's a $2.5M problem when we have $2,500,000M problems. 2. They didn't vote for a pay raise. They let a scheduled pay raise take effect. 3. As kelpdiver pointed out, they couldn't vote themselves a pay raise if they wanted to.

Lahti L-39 in 20mm.

In over a decade and 1500 parachute landings I don't think I've ever experienced or seen an "unexpected gust" I have seen lots of people reach in the wrong direction (perhaps after starting to run) and claim there was a gust after they stumbled. If the winds are so unstable they're going to blow you over you shouldn't be jumping. I used to jump with a guy who rarely made stand up landings, and I was OK with that because he only had one leg. I tried a round parachute once and didn't land in the pea gravel. Apart from situations like that, you're doing something wrong if you get to where you should PLF. As long as you're still going forwards a bit you need better technique.

It depends what you're doing. If you're learning to make carving turns whlie landing you're probably going to get a bit low and run out of lift before getting back up to ground level a few times. You have to learn some time and it's not going to be before getting an A license unless you're real lazy about taht. If you're doing down-wind distance runs with a stiff tail wind under a small parachute you're probably not going to stand up. That's an intentional trade-off. You gotta make sacrafices to win. Otherwise, your landings shouldn't just be standups - they should be pretty. You should be able to jump a white rig without worrying. Obviously, landing safely is more important than looking good. It's a lot less painful to PLF a hard landing than trying to stand it up. You can have your rig washed within a few days but it can take months or a year plus for bones and soft tissues to heal (with surgical help).

If "more money than you've made in your life" is seven figures (where I'm not sure a million and change is enough as ordinary income) suck it up and retire in a couple years. Otherwise it's not worth it. If by "quite a bind" you mean "they'll be hungry" or "your kids won't get an education" you have obligations. If by "quite a bind" you mean they'll be stuck driving 10 year old cars and living in apartments instead of nice houses or they won't get cable TV that's not quite a bind. Get a better job whatever that means. Start a side business. Start interviewing. Start a "stealth" project with a dotted line reporting structure to a boss in a different group. Big companies survive by dominating their industries and not sucking too much more than the competition. While that keeps the billions coming in it's not too good for growth so they try to hire smart people who've done well elsewhere. They offer great compensation packages. But then they're still big companies, and won't let you do the things which you're good at and could make a difference.

I'll cheer any one who throws shoes at Obama after he runs an unecessery military operation which plunges a country into civil war resulting up to 100,000 Iraqi deaths, over 100,000 disabled American veterans, 4000 dead Americans, and a trillion dollar price tag.

22 x 15 x 9 is the size of the box at airports. Measure. Such a container will squeeze into the overhead bins on most full-size planes. It won't fit on regional jets, but a gate check is probably better than leaving your gear to the baggage handlers and TSA. Volume wise, big rigs are fine. I've carried on a pair of packed 245 BASE rigs (with dacron lines) in such a bag with space to spare. Sunrise claims 20 x 13 x 7 for their largest rig sized for a 280 reserve and 290-310 main so a big rig might fit. My Javelin J7 is a bit wide and long (Raven-III reserve, sized for a 288 main).

Perhaps, although if that's the case Javelins suck worse since Mike Furry designed them before he got to the Dolphin and applied what he learned. Both rigs have been around since non-belly to earth orientations became popular (just barely with the Dolphin), and have updates that make them more likely to stay closed.

I love it I'm getting ~700-800ft openings on my Sabre2, I just sit there staring at the snivel for a few seconds before it usually goes offheading

The 1911 is a nice 100 year old design of which everyone should own at least one example, but would not be my first choice for any sort of gun games and social situations where reliability is important. If you're not going to get combat Tuperware how about an HK P7M8 in 9mm? Good size, nice trigger, high cool factor.

yeah, I meant to ask about that too...it seems to be so. I tend to agree, however, I wont be jumping this main until around march when my rig comes in...I should have a bit over a hundred plus a canopy course under my belt by then. Which is only a bit less than two hundred fewer than you should have.

Sounds like Colorado. During the winter it can drop from 70 degrees to below freezing in that sort of time, especially if there's a chinook blowing.

PDs aren't legal after 25 uses or 40 pack jobs until they go back to the factory for inspection. Given the results of the German (or Austrian? my memory is bad) military study on packing wear that's probably reasonable. They're not certified to survive openings at up to 150 knots, open in 3 seconds, or have a reasonable descent rate even with the brakes stowed and a suspended weight 50-100% beyond where people usually load F111 canopies. No one packs one carefully redressing the folds and clamping everything together. Having seen one reserve separate into 2 and 5 cell pieces (people being unconscious and head-down when their Cypres fires isn't good for opening speeds) held together by the single reinforcing tape at the tail following a cypres fire, ten second reserve rides, and plenty of decent landings at 1.5 - 1.8 pounds per square foot I'd say that there are good reasons for TSO-C23 and standards higher than are applied to main canopies. I've also seen video of other interesting situations, like the year I was at Quincy when some schmuck flew through a guy''s canopy and ripped out a cell at 800 feet. He cutaway, dumped his reserve, and landed fine which he wouldn't have under a ragged out F111 main with a sail slider.

No. Most of the wear on a reserve comes from the pack jobs. If you accept PD's numbers each pack job does 60% of the wear that comes from a deployment. PD reserves need to be sent back to the factory for inspection after 40 repacks or 25 uses. For contemporary skydiving wingloadings that's probably a good idea. At under a pound per square foot I wouldn't worry if the manufacturer didn't make it mandatory.

12 gauge pump action shotgun with an 18" barrel and regular stock. Maybe a Mossberg 590 with the 8-round magazine.

After enough epileptic fit inducing animated banner ads, being unable to get away from things which blow up to full screen windows, and being unable to have a couple windows open at once on my small laptop screen due to the clutter, I gave up and installed the Firefox Adblock Plus plugin. Loosing the few small tasteful ads for products I might actually buy was a small price to pay to get rid of the crap.

The winds at altitude tend to be higher than at ground level and geography can make them _much_ higher. We'd get 60+ MPH winds at 17,000 feet MSL in Colorado and 10 MPH on the ground.

That's the easiest way to launch a raft dive out of a tail gate. You just need the pilots to get it right on the first try (not after several) so you don't end up landing waaay off the airport in a field with hungry cows.

Who knows. The last time the doctors looked at an MRI there was still a hole in my tibia. Mostly I just sit around and drink Arrogant Bastard Ale, but sometimes I complain too.