gjhdiver

I thought you were seriously into Motorhead I am, but even I can't listen to them all day, although i have tried

The Rezillos - Can't Stand The Rezillos Any of the first three Ramones albums.

Don't worry, you'll have had plenty of practice changing Roy by then.

I have about 700-800 jumps on a BT-50. It was the first widely commercially available zero perosity canopy, and the first semi elliptical. It predates the Stiletto my many years, and was principally in competition in Europe with PD's Sabre. It was never sold directly in the US because of liablity concerns. It's a tapered 9 cell, with the outer cells on each end divided into three chambers. The rest are divided into two. There are no cross ports in the canopy. The idea was to increase rigidity, but the downside was uneven handling in turbulence. It flies very much like you would expect an elliptical to fly, but had much longer lines than the Stiletto, meaning that recovery arcs from toggle turns tokk longer than normal compared to other canopies of it's day. It gained such a reputation for hooking people in when it first came out that it was nicknamed the "Blue Smack", which was a take on it's market name, the Blue Track. This wasn't a feature of the canopy, but rather of the jumpers who didn't take the time to learn the flight characteristics of an elliptical. As for the lines, check what sort it has. If they are the original kevlar lines, have them replaced with the optima line set instead, or you'll just wind up cutting it away when they break, which they will. As it has no cross ports, line loss is more serious on the BT-150. The optima line set comes with a larger slider too, as the early BT's opened really hard. I still have mine in a box in the spare bedroom if anyone wants it

Throw the letter away. If anyone asks, you never received it.

The Stiletto was in development long before the Jonathan came out. It wasn't a reply to the Jonathan. Rather the European market was embracing the Parachutes De France Blue Track, a true zero P elliptical. The Stiletto was the first US elliptical to go head to head with it. I did 700 jumps on a Blue Track, and I have over 6000 on a Stiletto of various sizes. The Stiletto is still the gold standard in performance for size and reliability of any elliptical IMHO. That's not to say that a Jonathan wasn't a good canopy in it's day.

I've seen a few Woomera's . It's a great example of someone fixing something that wasn't broken. I wouldn't have jumped one on a bet.

It was/is a 9 cell elliptical canopy tht was designed and made by Tony Uragallo at his old Air Time Designs jumpsuit factory in Zephryhills, FL. Each one was cut and sewn individually ,and Tony tinkered with the design continually. They were very popular for a while with the locals and staff of Skydive City Z Hills. The individual nature of the manufacture and the floating design standard meant that consistency was variable. If you got a good one, you got a very good one, and the owners would never sell it and would keep it until it was no longer jumpable. If you got a Friday afternoon special, you might not have been as pleased. As I remember it from my time there, Brian came on board to stabilize the design and improve standards. The air locked Jedei grew from the original Jonathan. This in turn spurred the PD product the Vengeance, so the Jonathan, although not a world beater as a canopy, spurred a whole new growth in the development of canopies. Brian will probably add to this thread himself, but you can still experience the Jonathan/Jedei design philosophy with one of Brian's canopies from Big Air Sports. I believe the Samurai is the natural successor to these canopies. Brian of coourse, will be able to provide the definative answer to all of this, as this is all from my memory.

The best movie version of War of the Worlds is the 1956 version directed by George Pal. Go rent it. I got dragged to see the new one, and it just reconfirmed my opinion of Tom Cruise, namely, that's he's a buck toothed moron whose acting is so wooden that you could nail booksleves into him.

Honestly ? Not a one, and I'm usually as brutally honest with myself as I am with others who fail to meet my personal standards. (90% of the rest of humanity, the moron majority). My biggest fault is probably that I forget that not everyone appreciates good sarcasm. Therefore, if there was a category that said "total git" I would have chosen that one.

"I'm going to sink her with my pink torpedo" and... "That's a beautiful melody, what's it called ?" "Lick my love pump"

I was there Tuesday through Sunday, but I was in stealth mode and on my best behavior because I was there as a representative for Wings. I also got horribly sick on the last day with flu and just wandered around like a zombie. I did squeeze in 18 jumps and a hour of tunnel time though, and I sold a few rig so it was all worth it. There was also a crashed truck and gunplay, but we're not going to talk about that. Yet.....

I do one about once per day on average, but here's two that come to mind quickly. In London in a pub, and as is my custom, shitfaced, I see a guy with a hunchback enter. I turn to the stranger next to me and the following ensues. "Look at the daft fucker with the hump on his back" "That's my brother" "Suits him doesn't it ?" And now fast forward to Byron, where a blind girl is sitting on the couch with her seeing eye dog waiting to do a tandem. Me - "Why don't we just hang her in front of a fan and save on the pack job ?" Her sight not withstanding, there was apparently nothing wrong with her hearing. Oh yeah, if you're dating two women simultaneously, it's a bad idea to get them to come to the same boogie at the same time. Also, I have learned that it is good practice to never infer that a women might be pregnant unless you can actually see a baby emerging from her.

[replyThe problem with Monterey regarding skydiving is mostly one of perception. Even when they had an Otter, people drove further to get to Davis, Byron, Lodi, and Hollister. Which is precisely why they couldn't fill that large plane. Let's just say that the best plane in the world doesn't make up for a shitty attitude. In the end, drop zones are about people, not aircraft, and people want to jump where they feel welcome.

Usually 14 in each, unless it's a Grand Caravan which can take 16.

Stay away from Gareth, he's evil. He'll make you smell the shorts of power! I only bring those out for special occaisions now, as the mojo cannot be wasted. I am considreing using them to make soup. I will however allow you to sniff my arse instead if you're so inclined. I wouldn't reccomend it though.

Including that shitty ex-Mini Cooper clutch that would leave you stranded the first time that you did a racing start against a bike with a wet clutch ? I used to live half a block from Norman Hyde, the man who designed the Trident for Triumph. He had some cool stuff going on in his garage on the side of his house. He built himself a four cylinder variant of the Trident that he called the quadrant. It was a 1000cc motor that he stuck in a frame frame to go pootling round the village we both lived in at the time. Cool guy.

Thanks ! I'm not big on shows and magazines and things like that, but I might be tempted if I was in the right place at the right time. I like to ride 'em if I got 'em. I still get weird looks from people who can't believe I commute to work on the Knuck in rush hour traffic and lane split on it. BTW, there's only one color for a Norton. Black, with the motor and all alloys polished to a mirror shine IMHO. A nice shorty bobbed rear fenfer and a solo sprung seat and you're good to go.

There's not a lot else I can add to what's been said here. I had the honor of working with Don as a candidate for the AFF rating in 1992 at Perris, the DZ Manager of Skydive City Z-Hills as a hosting DZ for his course there, and in turn he mentored me and helped me to become an AFF evaluator, which helped me to pass on the skills he taught me to other instructors. I will always remember that when evaluating on a course, when the candidates would be worried about their performance, I would be worried about mine, because at the end of the day, Don would review all the video, and go over how we flew and how we scored. God help us if we went easy on a candidate, or went too far the other way and used advanced skills to fool them. He was ruthlessly even handed and fair to both the candidates and the evaluators. It's testament to his teaching that even though it's been years, I still think about how he would grade my performance as an instructor or evaluator on each and every AFF that I do. What he gave to this sport is immeasurable, and will survive him by many years. Thanks Don, for all the help.

A true suicide setup requires three things. 1. A foot clutch. 2. A hand or jockey shifter. 3. No front brake. It's called a suicide setup because you only have a rear brake. You can't stop at intersections on hills, because you can't put your left foot down because it operates the clutch. You can't put your right front down because it's the brake holding you on the hill. Your only options tends to be to blow the intersection, hence the suicide part of the setup, especially in a nice hilly place like SF. My 1945 isn't a true suicide setup, because I have front brake. However, it's a single leading shoe drum brake, so all it's good for is holding position on a hill anyway.

Here you go. It's a 1945 FL Knucklehead, one of only 681 made in the last year of the war. They has the most restrictions on any HD. No chrome, only gray paint, not even silver paint for the lifter blocks. As a civilian. you had to get special permission to buy one. It took me three years to restore it back to factory original, and it runs as good as any bike built today.

The Ford Edsel of it's day. Probably seemed like a good idea on the drawing board, but was complex and unreliable, and subsequently out performed by the PD Excalibur and the PDF Blue Track, the two high performance canopies that it was up against.

Quite simply, the most gifted man ever to kick a football. Simply sublime. Even Pele said he was better. I don't care what he did with his new liver. True genius always comes with flaws, most of them self destructive.

1. There's just as many idiots on litre plus superbikes as there are on freshly minted HD's. 2. The latter tend to fall over in parking lots, the former tend to convert themselves to stains on the side of buses. 3. It's not what you ride, it's that you ride. 4. If you get into the habit of giving the finger to large groups of HD's, one day you'll mistake the red and white on a club run for a HOG group. Don't worry though, they will be kind enough to instruct you on the fundamental difference between the two groups. 5. My daily ride to work bike is a foot clutch, hand shift 1945 Harley. You get the right to bitch about HD reliablity in 2060, when your bike hits the same birthday. 6. Any fool can pull a wheelie. Ride suicide shift in San Francisco for real thrills. 7. What was I talking about again ?

I actually have the soundtrack album from that movie. Great movie.