lurch

Is he? Tell HIM that. Then he's the first white man in history with characteristic negro kinked hair. Race is completely, utterly irrelevant. It'd be the same if we gave the job to Arnold, a Japanese or a 2nd gen American Armenian. The birther debate is a ridiculous sideshow which serves to distract from the fact that right or wrong he is at the helm now and happily steering the ship straight into the same iceberg GW and those before him set course for. Doesn't matter whos running the machine. The machine's function remains the same. GW happily mowed down freedoms left and right. Obama has done the same except he's after different freedoms. Between em both they're cleaning house. Repubs and dems aren't really fighting its all for show... the repubs are just patiently waiting for their turn again. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This is I think a bit more than "liberals". People still buy into the idea that if we just vote liberal or conservative, repub or dem it will somehow fix this. They're both on the same side. How many times do we have to swap one for the other and back again before people get the idea? Go ahead, vote. Good luck with that. Vote the bums out... you just voted in a set of bums who do the exact same thing. We got sick of old rich white guys for president. What did America do? It tried electing a young rich black man instead. Who, amazingly enough, acts exactly the same as the old rich white guys. Fucking brilliant. Got any better ideas? Captain Hopey Mcchange just declared every American to be effectively the property of insurance companies. Simply being alive obligates you to pay them. Regardless of whether Obamacare actually comes into effect, it has served its purpose already... conditioning the public to think the government is well within its rights to mandate that you purchase a service of its choice, pay an equivalent fine anyway or go to jail. This taxpayer unit is not generating or surrendering enough wealth for us. Put em in a box and make them. I'm actually going to get to see the return of slavery within my lifetime. I can't wait. Their vision lasts no further than the next election cycle and whatever they have to do to fool people into buying into the goddamn system long enough for them to get another term and all the goodies you get when you have a lot of pull. I'm sick of this. Let it fall. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I don't think there are enough of -anybody- to tax enough to make this stupid pyramid-scheme system work much longer. Theres no money left. They took it all. And spent it. I've watched the prices of everything quadruple since I was a kid. When I got my first real apartment at age 18, a simple 1-bedroom cost $400/mo. My rent here in an identical apartment has been stable for years at $800. When I considered moving and searched I could not replace this apartment for less than $1100/mo or so. Its gone up another $300 just while I've been living here. Startup costs, utilities, associated fees, first/last and security deposit would bring the base price of just getting an apartment to $3-4k and I'd take a permanent hit to the tune of another $300 a month for the same damn apartment. I'd be back to living paycheck to paycheck again the next time the car breaks and unexpectedly eats another $1200. I make what once would have been a pretty good blue collar middle class wage and I can't even afford to move. Or replace my car. Or pay even just the deductible on one single significant medical procedure. I have no idea how people on minimum wage are surviving now. In another 10 years at this rate I could be making $75,000/yr... and living in abject poverty paying $14.00/gallon for gas, $10/gallon of which will be taxes intended to force me to make "healthy" choices about my driving habits or buy the nice little Ecomobile I can't afford which won't get me to work in a blizzard anyway, living in the cheapest possible lodgings which will cost $2500/mo not counting phone gas and electric. I just finally quit worrying about all of this. I expect scrimping scrambling and gray-market barter to be a way of life for the foreseeable future. I already do a lot of technical work in exchange for favors, services or equivalent trade in value. Some things are predictable in chaos. Those responsible for the mess will continue the behavior. By now its too late to fix it. Irrevocable dependencies have been established. Revoke ALL taxes and fees and permits and the billion and one ways the government picks our pockets, and it'd fix half the problem... suddenly a $50,000/year job would actually BE middle class again... and the other half of the system dependent on taxes would disintegrate. Starving millions. No roads. Back to the middle ages. Government has become rather open about its view of the citizenry... the fact that people are mostly referred to as "the taxpayers" or "votes". To a politician we exist only to put them in power and produce wealth for them to confiscate and spend. Want change? Kick back and wait awhile longer. The people responsible absolutely will NOT surrender their grip on the world until and unless it disintegrates around them. Until we actually see starvation in what used to be middle class America. Revoke a few taxes? Stop the wars? Make government actually earn its keep? Not gonna happen. So we're just going to have to wait till it breaks. Take a good long look at Detroit. Get used to the view. Detroit is coming to you. After it all falls apart, maybe, just maybe, people with hammers and saws and actual useful real world skills will be able to rebuild after. Maybe. Assuming they haven't starved before the mechanisms for tax collection have failed. Those mechanisms will be among the last to go. Meanwhile, if and when the system falls, millions dependent on government goodies will be very hungry. No matter what happens, it won't be pretty. I think we're headed for The Big Reset... may take another decade or two to play out, but it seems pretty obvious the whole megatrillion dollar shell game isn't going to last in its present form much longer. They're ripping out props just to use the pieces to hold up other collapsing parts in a wholesale lootingfest that will continue until the entire thing is ashes and theres a small wealthy class who got out with the cash living in Barbados enjoying sweet, sweet success, the apotheosis of the American Dream. We live in interesting times. I'll be very interested to see how America handles being self-demoted to 3rd world. China will be SO disappointed... we won't be able to buy all the suburban consumer culture goodies they industrialized to make. Hopefully they'll be able to just consume it all themselves... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think this debate is absurd. We are talking trillions here. People agonizing over cutting Johnny's Glee Club to save a few bucks or whatever is like trying to build a levee with a teaspoon. How bout we talk to the military and see of they can manage to get by on a budget of, say, ONLY 250 fucking billion instead of the 500+billion they get every year. I'm sure we can still easily intimidate and dominate half the planet on 250 billion. And I'd bet dumping that other 250 billion back into the pockets of the citizens it was taken from to spend on food gas and housing instead of guns and 5 billion dollar stealth killer whizbangs from Raytheon would do more for the economy than all the stimulus in Washington. But theres vested interests in keeping military budgets this big. Whole towns and regions dependent on military contracts and industries. Ain't gonna happen. So we're gonna do without decent roads and basic services so they can get a couple more carriers they don't fucking need. Welcome to America. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Whoa hold up a minute. Hey Sandman. Did you ever see a wingsuit guy at Clark? Had a "Birdman" hat? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Choking to death on puns having bit off more than I can chew I cannot rise to the occasion with anything Grand or Original but I too am willing to stay in the kitchen and see if anything fresh is poppin' up. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

THE CAKE IS A LIE THE CAKE IS A LIE THE CAKE IS A LIE Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yeah... I had this big rant up, then decided I'm just sick of participating in the debate. Fly whatever, just have fun. Screw the numbers. I'm sick of thinking about it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Someone, somewhere, right now, is reading this for the 302,471st time. Whoever it is, their head just exploded. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I swear by em myself. Basic Sabre 135, 28 inch PC, no mods, flake it and stuff it, very small line bites, 1/3 of the lineset freestowed in 3 neat coils on bottom of container, packed grommet up. Zero twists in 1000 jumps, quick but not brutal openings at wingsuit speeds and I scrunch up wicked small after the throw to make sure the PC clears an S-Bird sized burble. Quite possibly the best WS canopy around, although you may find a modern canopy as good with some trial and error. I recently picked up another cheap used 135 just so I have a spare. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Alright, I'll be more positive then. That wasn't an attack so much as a humorous observation... The objective was to point out that the whole thing has become rather over-the-top. The reason so much ribbing is happening here is because of the excessive and often inaccurate ways Atmo is being presented which does even less for -their- credibility. Making a big deal out of what little lift anyone is generating at a 45 degree angle and claiming that flying around the effect is some kind of massive sport-changing revolution in skydiving is what causes the atmo enthusiasts to be taken less than seriously. I'd be into Atmo if it were done around here because as I said, I've been playing around with variations on linear-airflow type skydives and they're an absolute blast. Up and Down start becoming very relative concepts. Flying anywhere within about a 90 degree wide cone from true headdown vertical opens up some VERY thrilling possibilities for movement in unusual speeds and directions relative to others on the dive. Since its not truly linear airflow once you tilt off vertical what you get is a situation where the relative wind's direction is always head to foot but the planar airflow you're "leaning" on can come from either front or back depending on which way you're facing and which way you tilt relative to vertical. To me this beats hell out of plain old headdown because its a lot less static and introduces strong side forces making for a VERY dynamic skydive. If they wanna promote Atmo, cool, I'd like to see more creative jumping happening. But promote it for the fun factor and with actual accurate descriptions of the things you can do. Putting up incoherent and inaccurate charts and complicated wacky jargon full of grandiose claims that does look like it was taken straight off a crackpot website is the problem. Seriously, the image they project is so out to lunch I'd be embarassed to admit I WAS actually doing atmo just because I wouldn't want to be associated with the hype they put out. I'd just tell people I'm doing a bunch of steep dives to explore diagonal stuff and leave out all the noise. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I hate to say it but the pics you put up look an awful lot like people without wingsuits flying like they had wingsuits combined with Timecube, which can be found here: http://www.timecube.com/ Are you sure you don't really just wanna get a wingsuit? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now, see, that was elegantly put. These days I'm doing more and more of what might be described as "wingsuit atmo" I.E. sustained skydives at all degrees of dive from flat to 100% headdown, wings either unloaded or reverse loaded because I drifted all the way over and technically now I'm headdown backtracing or something except its also wingsuit headdown backtracing or maybe its really just normal wingsuit backflying except its also headdown. Whatever. The dynamic begins to feel very tunnellike and develops some bizarre forces on the wings from really weird directions I'm still learning how to handle, but I'm at the point now where I can join the freefly guys if I want, without ditching the wings. Only thing separating me from the rest of the freefly crowd is, I can move in directions and speeds unavailable to everyone else on the dive and even regain a couple hundred feet of altitude at breakoff if I do it right. We're talking way beyond zero here, same as a high speed exit, you get a massive boosted climb. A wingsuit taken to freefly speeds in a full-blown headdown develops godlike power to change directions. I actually think the Atmo guys sort of have the right idea except for the scientology-ish presentation. Personally I intend to continue pushing my own efforts in combined wingsuit/freefly/atmo hybrid type dives until I can basically get on any non-RW dive I want with a wingsuit and totally hang with the sitfly and headdown crowd. If we HAD an Atmo crowd around here I'd be flying with them already, because a wingsuit makes an Atmo dive look like a bunch of one-legged guys running a marathon. No different than chasing a fat guy with bad body position flying an Intro and just as easy to stay with once you get used to the sensations of a wingsuit loaded up in really funny directions. You got to give the Atmo guys credit, they're making an entire discipline out of what I just thought of as "flock/student pursuit mode", mostly just a way to get somewhere. I have a group of 4 guys want me to video their Sitfly train from a wingsuit and I will next chance I get, I'll be able to orbit them in orientations and directions that don't even EXIST and divide by zero anytime I damn well feel like it. I didn't do it this time cause we were in the Caribou Boogie and it was an awful crowded sky. With wingsuit freefly you need a couple cubic miles of clear space because you can unexpectedly catapult yourself several miles horizontally in a few seconds from a 160 mph headdown. Last time I did that near others I pissed off Scotty Burns so bad I could hear him furiously bitching me out in freefall so bad I thought he was gonna scorch my feathers off. I'm still a bit embarassed about that one. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Wow, the tongue in cheek humor in here is getting thick enough to spread on toast. I see the giant elaborate speeches posted here making such a big deal about revolutions and lift, and these people dont even have wings or any significant lift by Bird standards. There already WAS a major revolution a ways back that introduced actual lift into freefall- wingsuits. I mean, seriously, it just looks like the atmo guys are trying to make an entire discipline's worth of stew out of one very small oyster. Not to say there isn't a lot to learn about flying at all variations of steepness, just seems really overwrought to be making up all this jargon and debating what is or isn't actually "atmo" or angle flying or how much "tracing" your headdown has to have to qualify as Atmo or whatever its enthusiasts use to justify claims that this flying is new or revolutionary. As a winger I'm used to covering large distances by default. So seeing a bunch of wingless people quibbling over lift and tracing and angles just kinda seems a bit silly, pardon me. Normally I would never ridicule the passion of another and I won't here, but all the grandiose jargon-loaded elaborate claims of revolutionary status do tend to invite it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

For a guy your size thats freaking outstanding, man. The best heavy birds I know can get roughly those results. Only tip I can offer to up a game which is already that good is, your G/R is a little low for that time which tells me you were relying more on wing-hang than speed. Getting your head a bit lower and running a little faster ought to get you a few more seconds, and add maybe 1.5 to 2 miles to your potential distance covered. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

To a hardcore Birdman this debate is bizarre. 2 days ago I was doing "atmo" chasing a fast falling student like a homesick cannonball. I frequently freefly the suit as well. A steep but slightly angled headdown is a basic tool for catching things in a wingsuit. To me this isn't a separate discipline, its just a maneuver. A wingsuit can also be effectively sitflown (I call it a "kneelfly") even backwards. You get funny looks when you approach a formation from above, in reverse. Its really just bad sitflying with more fabric than usual and a lot of backslide. I haven't bothered to invent a catchy name for this stuff. Its all just wingsuit flying. Not many fly their suits this way but I've been flying a long time and I've had time to get bored and creative with it. I know better than to think I'm the first to do this stuff. There are others. The other day at breakoff I had a LOT of extra speed and used it to execute my own planeless high speed exit at 5K. Planed out flat, got my wings to maximum droop and while I still had speed, rocked back hard on my heels. Result: I went back up a ways. VERY fun rollercoaster zoomy-uppy elevator sensation followed by gradual stall and zero-G hover at the top for a few seconds. Now what the heck do we call THAT... Omta? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"Every Athiest I'm aware of wants all signs of religion remove from public property" Well, thats easily fixed. I'm an atheist and I totally don't care. In some areas in fact, where others demand such removal I would demand it be left the hell alone. In fact, I don't even have a problem with...(gasp) Christmas decorations. In fact I even like them. The whole seasonal vibe thing, heavy religious freight and all. Including the corny christmas songs and stuff. Regardless of how I view the belief structures behind it, Christmas itself, minus the commercialized elements, is culturally self-justified just because people and especially kids, love it. So what if there is heavy tie-in to some silly myths. My lack of interest in Pokemon does not lead me to demand references to it be removed from my sight, why would the religion of others get harsher treatment? Amazing thought, this: being an atheist while being tolerant. Who'da thunk it was, like, even possible? Even more amazing are the lengths people will go to in order to come up with something to tweak out about. Yawn. How... boring. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Am thinking, your basic range is ok but the range of birds and suit sizes means 40-50 is an "ideal" thats not actually going to happen all that often in practice. Get a bunch of birds with roughly matched suit scaling and/or experience, sure. Scott Bland is one of the best flock leads alive and he usually tunes his flocks taking into account what all the birds in it can do. I've been on flocks with him where everyone was capable of the 2-3+ minute range, he opened it up gradually and we had some 2.5 minute tight flocks. Unheard-of. I was thinking "Now THATS more like it!" Only flocks I've been in that actually made my arms burn. Being a light endurance pilot, for me in typical flocks I've got my arms behind my back. For vertical flocks I prefer to downsize the suit, an S-Bird is just too much wing for that kind of "precision dirty flying" where nobody cares what the resulting fallrate is just so long as the formation is tight. Anyway a more typical flock, we've got a mix of everything from S-Birds to Vampires and the buddy flying my ragged out old GTI. Experience and ability ranges from thousands of flights and sub-30's to the guy in a used T-Bird with 35 flights who is just now getting used to the suit and happy to get it into the 40's at all, let alone be able to cruise and flock at that level. So, your 40-50 is reasonable but I wouldn't expect it much in reality. When I GET a flock that goes that way its cool, but most of the time to keep it in everybody's range its more like 50-75 and theres sometimes some heavy guy in an old Raptor without a hell of a lot of wingsuit experience who finds even THAT challenging. Since the goal of most flocks at this stage in the game is to have a lot of fun, include everybody and let guys like that build the experience they need to be able to DO 50's and 40's, our "typical" flock rates are all over the map depending on whos in it. Variety is GOOD... besides. Armed with an S-Bird, for me the leftover speed at breakoff is good for another minute and a half, maybe even two till pull time. I'll go off to one side, clear my airspace and shift to "God mode", STAND on that sucker till the suit planes out to near-zero, watch the others drop 1000 feet and pop canopies, then buzz the canopies when I get back down there. High flock rates are not necessarily a bad thing...

(*) Here you go. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

If our weather hadn't been crap I'd have said come on up to Skydive Pepperell. We've got RW crowds in several flavors, a small but happy wingsuit crew, and a bunch of crazy freeflyers if you're into that sort of thing. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now we're talking. Who's in it this year? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

What little I can find on the net about these puppies says this is one of the last working Caribou left in existence. I wonder how it climbs... Howie, you always seem to know everything about ancient jumpships, what can you tell us about this thing? Is this somebody's private museum piece they brought online for this, or does this thing just earn its keep running around doing whatever a big old tailgater is good for when its not dropping jumpers? How the heck did they get ahold of this thing? I mean, Casas and Skyvans are common enough, but I've never even heard of an active turbo Caribou let alone expected to ever get to jump one. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

My minimum is 50 but I prefer more as well, and it depends on the jumper. Took a girl once a bit under that. Turned out her airskills and awareness were a bit raw. She could not handle being in a burble. Soon as we got flying cleanly, she began instinctively seeking airflow, flopped her legs off one side and began doing her best to flip us upside down into a spin. I scrunched wings, flew under her, shrugged her neatly back into the saddle, and resumed carrying her home. She promptly flopped both legs off the other side. I repeated the midair reset and resumed flying. She flopped off the other side again. This went on for the entire skydive while I'm thinking "Come on girl, gimme a break, I'm trying to get us home and theres nothing but trees down there, willya just stay put already!" We didn't have far to go but she ended up landing out anyway. I was able to get us close but not directly over the DZ... impossible to cover much ground while constantly transitioning between Rodeo mode and wingsuit freefly mode every 5 seconds with her trying to yank us both all over the sky. Then under canopy she was also inexperienced enough that she was unable to make it back from a distance everyone else managed easily because she did not appear to have any idea which way to fly. She could have made the distance easily... just a few hundred yards and she pulled at 5000, but she appeared nearly helpless under canopy the way students sometimes do, letting the canopy start carrying her away from the dz and not doing anything about it, finally flew an odd angle that was only vaguely headed towards the dz (in no wind) and ended up in a nearby field. I've been a lot more selective about who I'll take for a rodeo ever since. Everything turned out alright, but it might not have. If they're too young, they get overload. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This sounds like the kind of story bad examples are made of. Who is this new manufacturer? No facts=can't judge. Seems terribly unlikely though unless somebodys info is inaccurate. Nobody bright enough to be involved with a new manufacturer is likely to be dumb enough to do a thing like that. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jarno: Best breakdown of color schemes EVER. Laughing too hard to type straight. I've been flying blue and white the last 6 years myself. Its bright, friendly and cheerful without being quite as entertainingly obnoxious as, say, pink and fluorescent yellow would be. Its a subtle, tasteful sort of boast that just says, "Yes, I actually know how to land." Flashy, but not ostentatious, with plenty of visibility, so when you smoke some sucker talking trash and flying a PHI, he knows who dusted him and how badly. Word. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.