DrewEckhardt

Sounds like he got the break you think he deserves. I'd have hoped for worse. People who do stupid things should hurt themselves just badly enough (but not enough to do permanent damage) to teach them judgement before they hurt some one else, do irreversible damage, or die. gixxer5223's post implied that this time he didn't hurt himself enough to learn. I hope that next time he only does enough temporary damage to learn judgement.

If you're not sure you should stand it up, PLF is the most appropriate method of landing. Think about it - they don't teach students to side-slide in FJC right?

You do know that Spectra line sets may only be good for 300 jumps before they loose trim? The outer lines on my Stiletto 120 shrunk 6" versus 1.5" for the inner lines in just 600 jumps. Openings were getting wonky at least a hundred jumps before that. Many of the big companies have made mistakes. IIRC when the Spectre was introduced we sent eight back at our DZ due to built-in turns (most in the same direction). PD fixed them all. Unless the canopy has been checked against the factory trim specs you can't say there's anything wrong with it apart from wear. You need to send it back to the factory before giving up. My Monarch 135 was built in 1992. While it started flaring nicer after I put a new line set on it (there were 300 claimed jumps at the time) there hasn't been anything wrong with it apart from a bunch of pink cells. I put a couple hundred jumps on it as my primary main, and ?00 on wingsuit flights after that. I don't know that I'd trade it for a Spectre and am not willing to spend the money to upgrade to a Sabre2. I owned a newer 155 in 1998. It always opened and landed fine too. The colors were a much more pleasant rainbow. While there are better newer canopies, there isn't anything that Monarchs do poorly that isn't shared with the competitors' rectangular mostly ZP canopies sold at the same time (Sabre, Turbo Z/ZX, etc.).

Different flight/landing characterics between the Spectre/Sabre II? Absolutely. VW compared to BMW? C'mon, dude - be at least a LITTLE less fanboyish, ok? It'd be a great analogy if there was something about the PD canopies which equated to "minor electrical problems" although there hasn't been anything wrong with any PD canopy that I've jumped. I jumped a Spectre 135 for a while after I herniated my L4-L5 disc in a horrible sneezing accident. Prior to that I put 200+ jumps on a Samurai 105, 600 jumps on a Stiletto 120, and 200 jumps on Batwing 134 and hundreds of jumps on Monarch 135 + 155s. While it opened a lot nicer than my Monarch 135 and stopped more completely (it's not square) it wasn't as swoopy especially without induced speed. Like a Volkswagen. It got me from point A to B with no hassles but just wasn't as interesting to land. Toggle turn sensitivity was better than a square. I could probably loose more altitude in a dive with a Spectre but getting and maintaining a good plane out takes more. VW vs. BMW. The VW may be just as fast but a 3 series will feel better. There's nothing wrong with a Spectre. They open nice. They land OK. They don't wallow like big accuracy canopies. Older ones are good values on the used canopy market. Without induced speed they just don't land like sportier designs. It's not going to be worse than an F111 seven cell or a ZP PD Lightning though. DIfferent than other modern canopies; some aspects better ( less likely to spin up if you have a bad Birdman opening) and some worse (I'd take Batwing or Stiletto landings over Spectres any day; with the date stamp on my Stiletto being 1994. Neither canopy is appropriate for a new jumper though).

Get video and some one who knows how to coach canopy control to look at it (that may be neither the best swooper on the DZ nor a rated instructor). If you can take a class with Brian Germain or Scott Miller that's a no brainer. Establish at altitude that the brake lines are short enough to let you achieve a dynamic stall if you apply them at flaring speed. Flare all the way. Don't touch the ground until the canopy won't support you. Don't start running and stop flaring if your feet touch the ground anyways. Flare faster and slide if the ground is even (don't face plant if it isn't). Realize that landing is an interactive activity. The goal is to get close to the ground (apply brakes quicker if the ground is coming up too fast; stop adding brakes if the ground stops getting closer; etc), stay there with zero vertical speed while you add drag and slow down, and then kill as much of your forward speed as you can before your feet touch the ground. It's smooth, like driving a car. You can't make a career out of driving deep into a corner, slamming on the brakes once you get into the shoulder, and then trying to turn. It won't look pretty, it's not fast, and eventually you'll crash. You have to look where you want to end up and gradually approach there. Brian Germain says it's ballet not boxing. You might break it into three phases - pull a bit to level out as you get to ground level, slowly pull more to bleed off speed, and punch it down a bit to put on the brakes. Plane out so that your feet would be below ground level and then rise back to ground level before you run out of flare. You'll have less forward speed than if you tried to fly the canopy all the way into the ground. That will get you stopped in a couple steps with an 8000 foot density altitude at 1.9 pounds/square foot. Don't land on your butt and compress your spine (you can get compression fractures) while trying to master landings. If you can land in the pea pit (downsizing when you can't do that consistently isn't the best idea) set up to land there and keep your feet off the ground until you run out of lift (if you screw up, the pea gravel is a nice soft place to crash). You'll probably be surprised at how far you go. Upsize or change canopy types if what you're jumping does not agree with your technique. Some time you're going to land with a tail wind. That might be on pavement because you're landing out on a street. Unless the canopy is overloaded (for the design and density altitude) you shouldn't have to run.

I moved to Colorado when I turned 18 and didn't leave until 15 years later. I used to get 60 days a season snowboarding before I discovered skydiving and the snow+traffic went to heck when they sold cheap ski passes to people over 21 and the small mountain towns got legalized gamlbing. I own an Audi with Quatro (center Torsen differential, electronic differential locks). I've driven Subarus. I drove my FJ40 (V8, low gears, 90 inch wheelbase) in snow and ice without bothering to get out and lock the hubs. With decent tires four driving wheels make it easier to get going but don't help to keep you pointed in the right direction provided you're not stupid about using your right foot. The ability to accelerate does lead a lot of people to believe they have more traction than they really do. Anecdotally, most of the cars upside down in the Colorado medians seem to be 4x4s. Where the real difference comes in is getting through unplowed snow and parking. I can park the Audi with the left side on an icy road, the right side on a snow bank, and not get stuck.

With a $300-$400 budget I'd find a Sabre 150 or Monarch 155 with jumps left on the lineset. Maybe a Triathlon 160 - they open softer, but are seven cells. You probably want to be flying a canopy that planes out and lands the same as what you'll be jumping farther into youor skydiving career (just slower). For $600- $800 I'd look at Spectre 150s and maybe Safire/Omega 149s with jumps left on the lineset. The newer tapered designs open nicer than rectangular canopies and are more fun to fly. Something ZP with 800 jumps that's on its second line set would be perfect; you can get a couple hundred jumps out of it, sell it, and the next guy can get a couple hundred jumps out before it needs to be relined. The big thing here is that you can get nice landings at higher wing loadings for longer out of ZP canopies. A tapered 150 might be a nice canopy for a really small person, a decent second or third canopy for a medium sized guy, and then a sixth canopy for a real heavy weight.

Provided you don'tget high centered, all wheel drive with the right combination of locking differentials, limited slip differentials, and traction control will keep you from getting stuck but won't provide any better directional stability than rear wheel drive. If you're worried about ice, which wheels are driving shouldn't have any influence on whether or not you stud your snow tires.

An Otter burns about 25 gallons a load. Even with jet fuel at $5 a gallon with 18 on each load only $7 of the $25+ lift ticket price was gas. Insurance and maintenance aren't inexpensive.

It depends on inflation. If it's bad enough that wages have gone up 10X I'll still be jumping with $500 tickets. Depends on what else I'm spending money on - it'll be nice once the kids graduate from college. The end of cheap petroleum needn't be a problem. Turbines will run on bio-diesel. There are already STC conversions putting turbines (Soloy) and diesel (Thielert) engines in Cessnas. Piston engines can be modified to run on cellulosic ethanol. Arbitrary carbohydrates (turkey crap, agricultural waste, etc) can be converted into hydrocarbons using thermal depolymerization or genetically engineered micro-organisms (LS9 in the Silicon Valley is making bacteria or yeasts which eat carbs and poop oil). There's also the potential for using electric power via fuel cells or better battery/alternative technology like carbon nanotube ultra capacitors.

Nope. I've aged a lot since breaking myself and my coworkers are surprised to learn that I was born in the 70s not the 60s. My wife first met me the last time I was big and big bearded (Think Grizzly Adams) and she didn't think I was that young either.

Unless you're comfortable landing down wind, cross wind, up hill, down hill, 90 degree turns from 50 feet, landing with some speed from the front risers, turning after starting to flare, landing on pavement, and landing in tight areas you really don't want to do that. Even then it's still not a good idea. Sooner or later a bunch of mistakes are going to stack up (get out with a long spot, don't open high, try to make it back, find a landing area at 1000 feet, don't notice the power lines at altitude because it's the sunset load) and you're going to be doing a few of those things in combination.

True. The number of jumpers is from USPA statistics showing 28 fatalities in a group of 110,000 jumpers. As you point out, most fatalities, according to the USPA, involve experienced skydivers with many jumps. So, perhaps I'll remain a student forever. It's safer and plenty exciting for an old fart like me. Thanks for the clarification of the risk. The tandem fatality rate is only 4.2 per 100,000 participants which truly is safer than driving. Limit yourself to a few tandems when the mood strikes and you'll do fine.

Only if you include tandem passengers and students who don't remain in the sport and have a fatality rate substantially lower than licensed skydivers (the tandem instructor is generally experienced, current, and using conservative gear to make basic jumps). Most boogies and DZs require you to be a current USPA member to jump. The popular destination DZs people like to visit when the weather gets cold require USPA membership. So nearly all skydivers in this country are USPA members. Since there are only 30,000 USPA members and about fatalities a year the rate is about 1 in 1000.

So why do they call it a "gun show loophole" when it would be more correct to call it a "private sale loophole"? Because "gun show loophole for unlicensed dealers" is easier to sell to the masses, just like "assault weapon ban" sounds better than "sport utility gun ban".

Wait a few decades for inflation to match real values with real-estate prices and for the real economy to catch up with where the fake house-of-cards credit based system was at its high point and hope that during that time we don't get killed by competition in the developing world where even skilled labor costs a fraction (1/10th) of what it does in America, the people are just as smart, and are far more numerous (2 billion in India and China alone) than all of North America and Europe. You've kept the economy (falsely) strong by borrowing - we've realised that you can't afford to pay it back, so we'll step in and underwrite you borrowing some more to keep the economy ticking over?

Because registration is seen as a step on the path towards confiscation. They can't take away what they don't know you have. I think that is a bogus fear based on the recent SC decision. Although Supreme Court justices get old, retire, die, and get replaced.

State gambling laws. Some states like to have a government monopoly on gambling (in the form of their lottery)

Because lots of governments (foreign and domestic) have changed their minds about what sort of guns the people are allowed to have and forced people to surrender their guns. When you live in a country where people riot during disasters, the police are under no obligation to protect you during those riots, and have a government that holds people on secret charges and sends them to foreign countries to be tortured you might not want to risk that.

Making it illegal to be in public without wearing a "kill switch" device like the remote controlled stun belts criminals get to wear in court would be a start. We can then apply biometrics to automatically detect potential perpetrators, activate their incapacitation devices, and dispatch the police when thought crime is detected. We could ease people into it, starting with requiring the devices for commercial air travel and progressing to public transport. If it saves one life, it'll be worth it.

The United States doesn't invade countries with nuclear weapons, and countries with nuclear weapons don't use them lest the be bombed back to the stone age by the other countries with nukes.

I've put 489 square feet of parachute including two harnesses in an airline legal (22 x 14 x 9") container. Most of the time the bagage screeners don't care at all. Sometimes they call over another screener for questions or to tell them that's what a parachute looks like. Sometimes they ask. Sometimes they want it open far enough to swab. A rig in a bag is less hassle than dealing with a laptop (always have to take it out of the bag and send it through the scanner) or wearing your hiking boots instead of checking them (gotta unlace them).

A lack of national firearms pre-emption means that may change radically if you move for work. Half my guns and nearly all the magazines are in other states because they're illegal under California law, the handguns are all registered, the local police don't have to give me a permit to cary even if I commute by bicycle through the city whcih once had the highest murder rate in the country (now down to a relatively modest 19 per 100,000). With a repeal of "all" gun laws including national pre-emption since the worst laws are all local I'd be all over that.

Sure if they were electable, could actually pull it off, and there wasn't anything more important going on in current events (like the Great Depression 2). With both of the electable parties in the United States being about big government and limited personal freedoms I might as well accept the situation and vote for people who are most accepting of my hobbies (cheap gas for airplanes, fewer restrictions on the sorts of guns I can play with, lower taxes to have more left after retirement savings to spend on said hobbies).

This is Incorrect!! You Never want to REACH while trying to dock you wil only find yourself everywhere else but docking when reaching.... Nah (being fully aware of the other posts and who wrote them). You just need to learn to compensate with the rest of your body. Reaching a foot or two in any direction is faster than accelerating and stopping all 200 pounds of you rig and beer gut so you don't have to reach. Especially if you're connected to one or more other people that you'd have to drag along with you. That's almost work.