gjhdiver

Motorhead are playing the Warfield, San Francisco on Sept 11th, and there's a new documentary film playing in town about The Ramones.

The narrow chest strap is more comfortable for the, how shall we say, well endowed ladies. It can be sewn a little lower to stop that upleasant habit of riding up on opening. Otherwise, it's just a matter of taste. I used one for about 1000 jumps, then went back to the larger type. It's more comforatble, I can mount an altimeter on it for AFF and large ways, and it's easier for people to grab on launches.

Which is sort of nice of them really, to say it before you buy the product. Most US companies take that line after you buy it and there's a problem.

If they were naked and waving a chainsaw.

Plastic Buckets.

It all depends on how invested you are in the sport. When people get too heavily involved inthe sport, usually when they first start, it's all they thnk about, and all they want to do every free moment. Whilst this is exciting for them, it unfortunately makes skydivers possibly the dullest group of people to hang out with if you don't share that enthusiasm, or are a non skydiver. This is one of the reasons that you see so many disasterous relationships in skydivng. People make partner choices based first and foremost on the activity, rather than the qualities of the person involved. If you meet someone you like outside of skydiving, you're really going to have to make them the priority, rather than the sport. it's a comporomiose that you're going to have to be comfortable with as time goes on.

Er, you probably mean Sept 24th-26th.

My bud Pip Redvers from Z Hills has about 15,000 jumps and zero sport cutaways. He does has one on a Strong tandem rig that someone else packed for him though.

Thank you.

No Way ! The organizers have only just got him trained. We can't break another guy in now.

I hope you're not suggesting that I am somehow militant in my stance towards my eating habits, as nothing in my post should have given that impression. I really don't care what other people eat, though they constantly seem to want me to justify my not eating meat for some reason. I also agree that it's possible to have a healthy diet that includes meat, but to be honest, for the effort required to ensure that you can trace your meat back to a healthy source, it's easier just to go vegetarian, at least for me. I live in Berkeley, the macrobiotic capital of the USA it seems. I'm more than well served for a healthy meat free diet. Now, when I was living in Z Hills, that's a different deal. There's only so much salad bar you can tolerate. By the way, I'm not anthropomorhphising animals with the face comment. It just seems to be the easiest way to explain why I eat certain seafood to people.

I became a vegetarian some time ago, and I haven't drunk milk in years. There were a number of reasons for that. 1. Health. As I get older, my body doesn't tolerate the vast array of chemicals and hormones introduced into commerical meat. I found that eating red meat actually made me feel like crap. Chicken is produced under such unsanitary conditions, that it's no surprise that eating it is that leading cause of food related illness. I just decided to stop eating stuff that made me feel lousy. 2. Weight. I used to be able to eat anything I wanted in any quantities and stay rail thin. As I hit my mid 40's. my metabolism slowed to the point that I couldn't do that any more. To continue to stay at my ideal jumping weight without silly dieting and lots of excercise (I'm lazy), cutting out fatty meats and dairy worked like a charm. 3. Energy. I have far more than I used to on a meat and dairy diet. 4. General Wellness. Once you have to actually start thinking about what you eat and put effort into preparing it, you tend to let that general attention to health spill out into other areas of your life. I actually went to dentist and got my teeth fixed, went to a doctor and got a proper health exam, went to a dermatologist and got shit lazered off that I burned on in Florida etc etc. 5. Ethical. The more I read about the waste of good food resources that go into making food animals, and the ways in which they are treated, I no longer wanted to part of a system that brutalizes animals. Now here's the funny thing. I actually liked meat, and it was hard at first to give it up. However, once I'd been off it a while, I can't really stomach it any more. It's like my craving for cigarettes. It was hard to give up, but once I did, if I give in to craving, it makes me instantly ill. I'll still eat certain seafoods though. Basically, I don't eat anything that has a face.

I doubt it. That's Tom Steiro, an SAS captain from Norway I believe. His jumpsuit legs are exactly the same color as the bottom of the C-130 in that shot. If you look closely, you can see them.

I've been a pilot for close on 15 years now. I hardly fly any more though, because to be honest, it bores me rigid. If I could afford to get into aerobatics though, it might be different. For all other intents, I can get to where I'm going faster in my car most of the time.

I didn't mean to imply that. I think the real differences come out in turbulence and the last part of the landing flare. In flight, I don't see a whole lot of difference between comaparably sized airlocked canopies and ellipticals, but YYMV. The Hercules boogie was a riot as always. I just submited the article for Skydiving magazine, so hopefully it will be in the next issue.

Nope, not at all. I'm just saying that they are very much a niche design now. I'm sure that there are people who prefer them to non airlocked variety for their turbulance handling and minimal washout in the landing flare. However, they do kind of fall in that area between the ellipticals and the tri-braced designs, and I suspect that the Katana will be corning that market pretty soon, based on avaliablity and price. I did a lot of jumps on the test beds for these when Brian was developing the Jedei for Air Time when I was working at Z Hills. Quite a nice parachute really, but with unpredictable behaviour in dynamic stalls, and a rather annoying tendency to stay inflated and buger off over the horizon after a cutaway.

I know. And someone couldn't fit the damn thing in his luggage and had to leave it there. Bugger.

I have to polietly disagree with the assement of the airlocked canopies. If you dont like one or want one that is fine but I do think they still have a place. The Samurai is not a Jedi by any streach and is most assuradly a better performaning canopy then the Stiletto. It is comparable to the Katana. I say that from jumping both and though I do see some differences, these the canopies are in the same class IMHO. Both canopies will fall into a position well above the performance of a Stiletto but w/o some of the good and bad characteristics that have been associated with a X-braced... The X-fire 2 will fall into this category as well, above a stiletto class but below a X-braced class. Scott C. Er, I think we're actually in agreement if you re-read my post. I think that whatever performance benfits you get from airlocks if offset by bulk issues and the fact that newer designs can deliver very comparable performance. There really isn't the desire for airlocked canopies out there now after the fad of a few years back. They did fill a performance gap in the market for a few years though. PD will still make you a Vengeance, but you don't really see them advertised any more. I would suggest that anyone who really wants an airlocked canopy consider getting one sooner rather than later, before they become unavailable.

Funny you bring that up! My dad has to keep 2 chairs by his computer in his home office. Annie (aka Orphan Annie the lost kitty who is now pushing 9 years old) takes over the chair he was sitting in. Even if he just stands up for a couple seconds. She's curled up like she was asleep. If he tries to move her, she gets pissed off. So he'll switch chairs to sit down. Not 10 seconds later he'll get up again for just a second or two, and she'll be in the chair that he was just sitting in. That exact same sequence happens atleast 75 times a day. Atleast. For me, clean washing = cat magnet

If you really want to stay with an airlocked canopy, you can still order a PD Vengeance, or go to the source of the Jedei, Brian Germain's Big Air Sports, and get a Samurai. Personally, I think that the day of the airlocked canopy has come and gone. They are outperformed in the high wing loading stakes by the tri-braced canopies, and out performed in low speed handling by the Stilettos. I've been jumping a Katana recently. That's a nice compromise between the ellipitcals and the tri braces. Try one of those if you can.

I'd clone my cat if it was about $50-100. I wouldn't care if it wasn't the same personality. I just think he's a remarkably nicely marked tabby. For $50K, I'll go to the shelter and get one that looks like him. Fuck it, I might just have him stuffed and put on the couch. That's what he does for most of the day anyway. As far as it goes, cloning is here to stay, so we might as well lead the world in it. You can't push knowledge back in the bottle. It's going to get done done somewhere, and for all the bad sciance, there's going to be good therputic benefits in the long term I would say.

What sort of clothes ?

I'd love to see how good well funded public education, good health care, low crime rates and social stabilty hold people back, but there you go. Now, as for Henri and myself, we came came here for two reasons. Jari probably just came because he saw something shiny and wandered off. First off, we were married to US citizens, and we wanted to work in skydiving, At the time we came over in the mid to late 80's the US was really the only place to be to do that. If it had been Australia, we would have gone there. The fact that you see so many people thrive form Western Europe here is precisely the result of our good fortune of having been brought up in societies where good education and health care was take for granted IMHO. Plant us in the more fertlie soild of a country with vast wealth and huge natural resources and for a European, it's a buffet. You also have to look at the economies of scale. Sweden has less people in the whole country than in Greater London. It's dark for the half the year. The populace is continulally ravaged my savage moose attacks (apparently). If they didn't co-operate and educate themselves, they would be poor and totally isolated. Just look at the world level companies that that nation has produced in relation to it's population base. Ikea, Saab, Volvo, Eriksson, Nokia etc. That's makiing the most of your opportunites I'd say. Add inthe rest of the Scandinavian companies, and you have soem serious playes. I'd also like to give a shout out to my homies ABBA here. Different environments require different solutions. The European model works well now. America hasn't been around long enough to get into that mindset, but it may be in it's far future once dwindling resources and growing populations impose it.

I'm always helpful and courteous. I'm an English genteleman remember ? It's just that some people mistake my natural European reticence for arrogance and rudeness. I'm actually thoroughly lovely as you well know.

As another poster pointed out, PDF decided around the time of the Blue Track roll out in the early 90's that the chance of product liablity or spurious lawsuits generated by asshats was not worth the risk of the small amount of profit that could be got from selling in North America. The Zodiac corportaion is massive, and has seriously deep pockets. it just wasn't worth selling here. Funnily enough, some of the PDF people and designers of that time are now working for Aerodyne, and you can see the design lineage of some of their products such as the Icon pointing back to systems like the PDF Atom. When I was a European jumper, I used to jump PDF gear a lot. I still have my Blue Track in a box at home. Very well made stuff.