lurch

You can judge the quality of a friend by how happy you are to see them. In the last year I've had a few times where I saw someone at a distance I thought I recognized, and for a split second thought, "Steve!" oh... yeah... guess not... I try to live life like the world could end at any moment so I have as much fun and treasure as many friends and loved ones as I can. This piece of music has a message that expresses that philosophy better than I can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjx3Yn31nlE Steve was one of the most relentlessly positive, "up" people I've ever known. Treasure every moment with your friends, guys. You never know how much time you have left with them. Adios brother bird, we miss you bro. It was an epic adventure to fly with you. And we're all really glad you showed up to the party. We just wish you hadn't had to leave it so soon. Tweet. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh, well now I'm not sure I'd agree with that Champu, after all, fantastic musings about this neat new force we don't understand yet in the 1800's eventually led to highly evolved and useful toys based on manipulating that force, like the computer you typed that message on. Electricity ring a bell? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Not sure we're on same page here... Yeah there have been plenty of attempts at gravity powered motion by lunatic fringe types, but none work because there is no actual imbalance. Can't extract energy from the existence of gravity because theres no way to set up a gradient. Gravity on all parts of device is the same. If you actually had a field though, one that just turned down the gavity on whatever was above it, then you could set up a gradient and have more gravity applied to one side of a wheel than the other, same way ordinary motors use magnetism. Am I wrong about this? If you could turn down gravity you could set up a situation where you get more energy from the descending mass than it takes to raise the mass on the shielded side. Now that I think about it though it'd be the equivalent of a gravity steam engine, a really weak motor unless it had a buttload of mass. Now what I'd REALLY like to see wouldbe inertial modification. You could do some neat tricks with that if you could just break that one law of physics since it would become possible to get near-unlimited accelerations of objects with near-zero energy input. I read a speculative scifi detective story about a guy committing a murder by a side effect of inertial modification nobody predicted. Story goes guy has inertial cancelling prototype gadget, demonstrates it on a pool table. Kills rival with it... Takes a shot, cue ball hits ball sitting in the inertial cancelling field and struck ball vanishes with a small sonic boom. Forensics eventually realizes the second ball, with all inertia briefly cancelled, instantly accelerated to beyond orbital speed, punching neat ball shaped hole in murder victim and was most likely on its way out of the solar system at that time. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well what I was thinking was a real-world exploit of any such gravity attenuation effect would obviously be far more evolved than the crude tabletop demo I described here. Could probably be done with a liquid now that I think about it. And yeah, "free energy" wasn't really the term I was looking for. I'd bet if such an effect actually worked, any energy you could get out of one end would match (or be just under, due to losses) the energy it took to do the effect in the first place. Intuitively though, something just doesn't look right about the idea, it strikes me as something like a lever with nearly unlimited leverage. A cheat, where for the energy cost of a given field the return is whatever the amount of force gravity puts on your mass minus whatever weight was left in the side in the field. Hell. For that matter it would work with a simple wheel. Put field under one side of the wheel. Wheel becomes unbalanced and "falls" by rotating in direction that is NOT in the field. As mass of wheel comes up underneath and into field, its weight vanishes, allowing heavy side to just keep pulling that side down. Wouldn't it just keep accelerating to the limits of friction and air resistance? Every which way I look at it, it almost immediately appears to break one or more unbreakable laws. The Inertial Thruster all over again. Bummer. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Here. Fairly concise article about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkletnov I'd really like to see this sort of thing happen but I have my doubts. There are implications of ways to use this effect that even more blatantly violate physics such as "free energy". The most obvious one would be a bicycle chain with weights on it mounted vertically. Half the chain in the effect, half out. The chain would spin because half the chain weighs less than the other. So now you have a generator powered by gravity. Implemented in a more sensible fashion on a large scale it would revolutionize really major pieces of the world as we know it... energy industry, heavy industry, transportation and so on. Billvon... Kallend... either of you care to weigh in on the likelihood of there being ANY possibility of an authentic subtle effect here? When they start talking about "frame dragging" I can vaguely follow the theory but not the math and to me it all still smells like bullshit until they can undeniably prove it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Gravity mod is old news. In the late 90's it was being called the Podlketnov Effect and there were one or two other efforts made to duplicate the results the guy claimed. Available info at the time says NASA's breakthrough propulsion physics think-tank took a good hard look at it too. Came to nothing. Results could not be reliably and documentably repeated. I'd had my hopes at the time. Just because Relativity sets the rules doesn't mean somebody might not find a way to bend those rules enough to produce localized exotic field effects that appear to blatantly violate fundamental laws, but in the 12 years since I first heard of it, its just become another "cold fusion" debacle. Bad science and hype. A shame. If somebody can do it repeatedly under scientific examination and somebody else can duplicate it, THEN I'll get excited. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'd never heard of either. I had to look up both the irenew and titanium necklace stuff. I could only facepalm. People really are dumb enough to buy into this crap? "Energy balancing bracelet"? The second I see "energy balancing" or "adjusts your biofield" I just have to shake my head at the gullibility of the species. It took 5 seconds glance at the claims and testimonials of either product to realize this is stuff sold to the stupid. Same kind of people big on pyramid power and homeopathic quack medicines. Ugh. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Agreed. Post deleted for cleanup. Miller if you ever get the chance come fly with us at Skydive Pepperell. You'll find us a warm and welcoming bunch and we aren't into uptight attitudes, we just goof around a lot and have a lot of fun. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Not to start a brand war here, just touching on the merits of features... The P2 is kickass for flocks, acro, and most general purpose flying. I fly an S-Bird mostly, its the nitro dragster of my little personal fleet. And if you're specifically after megaperformance flying and you want to have different suits for different uses I recommend it highly. The variable airlocks are a huge asset to the design and make a hell of a difference actually. For most general flying I leave them open because it makes the suit easier to fly, nimbler and more manageable during deployment. But if I'm going for a max flight and I don't need the wider range of open locks I'll close em up. The suit becomes far more rigid and FAR more efficient. With the locks open I can get 3.5 minute flights no problem but its fairly hard work. With the locks closed flights in the 3.5+ range become easy and the suit gets noticeably faster due to tight inflation evening out all the little draggy wrinkles and holding a firmer, more ideal wingshape, at the cost of a somewhat more skittery deployment because the suit resists being collapsed completely. Like any high performance gear it must be used with great care but its a very rewarding flight experience. Once you get used to what the locks are good for you can choose your custom level of pressure to suit the dive plan... I mostly just use one of three settings... open, half closed, or closed. You can also combine em... A few times I've flown with closed armlocks for power and open tail locks when I just didn't feel like dealing with the skittish tail during openings. I think the suit could also be tuned for tail heavy speed with closed tail and open armlocks but I haven't tried it yet. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

...You mean you haven't already? Rumor has it Twardo is, like, 9 months older than dirt. If I should die skydiving I have already instructed my family to burn the wreckage and get whats left to my friends in the sport... they'll know what to do with it. Take the dust on one last flight and leave it up there so I can ride the wind for eternity. Then, all the people I care about are to throw one HELL of a party and celebrate life like I do every single day. I'm talking about a no-holds-barred full contact laughing drunken celebration where nobody gets left out and everyone parties like the world is gonna end tomorrow and they've got more beer than they can drink before it happens. Can't see em wasting it... even if they can't drink it all, I expect everyone to put forth their best effort. Cause so help me if they don't, I'll come back, kick everyone's ass and pop their reserves, then laugh till I fall down.

Actually I judged you after just one sentence, because thats how many sentences it took for you to come off like a total dick. "If you consider floating as flying, then very well done!" Which is a bit of an asshole thing to say to someone who is happy. Saying stuff like that is called "bursting someone's bubble." He was probably hoping for a little honest approval, some "return happy" from others who fly wingsuits and know how it feels to accomplish a personal best. -I- know how it feels to want that, to share what I've done and what I'm happy about with other birds. Instead, in your first sentence you give him mocking "congratulations" and imply that what he was doing "wasn't really flying." All in just one sentence. Lets take your approach and apply it to something else... how about an aspiring artist? An aspiring artist shows you some of his work, hoping that it is good, and your response is "Well if you think thats art, well done!" Thats fucking cruel. This is not how you encourage someone. This is how you crush someone's enthusiasm and make them feel like shit. Trolling, I usually ignore. Bickering, well, thats typical too. But pointless cruelty, that I cannot allow to pass unchallenged. Is that how you want to be known to the wingsuit community? As somebody who gets off on knocking down someone else's joy? Is that how you want to represent the wingsuit community here? As a bunch of experienced birds whose first impulse is to mock the joy the newer birds get from their accomplishments? Because whether you put any thought into it or not, that is what you did. Yours was the very first response he got. A mocking one. NOT. Cool. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Good judgement call, man. Gotta develop restraint. For awhile there I was Pepperell's resident wingsuit low-pull artist. Worked out an unusually reliable canopy and packjob that let me get easy about it. I got away with it for quite some time and decided finally to knock that shit off before my luck ran out and I found myself trying to get a reserve out with only a few hundred feet left or some shit so I bumped my pull alti back up to 2300-2800 or a little higher. Its very easy to get complacent with a wingsuit because of how slowly you lose altitude in full flight, its easy to forget that the second you fold your wings to deploy you accelerate radically and suddenly, for the duration of the deployment sequence you don't have 20 to 40 seconds to impact... if the canopy gets a baglock and you're not in full flight, you might have 10. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Might I suggest Children of Bodom? They're a thumpingly enthusiastic loud melodic death metal band heavy on the harpsichords, drum machines and synthesizers whose lead singer alternates between screaming and growling. I swear the poor guy just sounds like he really needs a hug. I've been listening to these guys "best breeder" album for years and I swear to god to this day I can still barely understand a single word of the lyrics. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"The situation was as follows (this isnt 100% just my ideas): 1. main PC (it was cocked btw)entangles with bridle and therefore flies upside-down(thus no drag). 2. Attempted to a) catch bridle and pull pin via bridle by hand - attempt failed. b)hit container with elbow(been told it may help with pc in tow situations) - no use 3.since no main/or main d-bag out decided to go straight for reserve. 4.Reserve pc tangles with main pc 5. Since reserve pc entanglement with main pc ended up being by the bridle (I guess) - the drag from partially inflated reserve pc was transferred via entanglement to the main bridle and was sufficient to pull the main pin. 6. Main d-bag exits the container, reaches line stretch, reserve freebag(due to entanglement I suppose) follows main and lodges in twisted main lines. 7. Reserve freebag comes down as I kick it out from twists. 8. Reserve freebag is placed under armpit and held there until landing " WOOOOOW!!!! That has got to be the most awesome, creatively fucked-up, complicated and unexpected deployment sequence I have ever heard of. Having my reserve PC connect to and deploy my main is a possibility I have never even thought of. I'll bet THAT was a surprise, wasn't it? Damn. Congratulations on getting a canopy out and regaining control of the situation. Landing after that, I'd be all like "What the fuck just happened!" -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I don't care WHAT your freefall time is, flying a wingsuit WITH a canopy IS a personal best. Hope I get a chance to try it one of these days, I've buzzed enough slow canopies, having one flying with me would be EPIC. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Aw, rub it in, why don't ya? Gettin' cold up here, but in between wind and rain the flying's great. Gimme a holler when you get here, dinner's on me. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hmm, eloquently put. I sure as hell ain't gonna argue with THAT. Speaking of enthusiasm and smiles, when's the next time you're gonna be passing through this way, Spot? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You know guys, I see nothing wrong with teaching somebody how to fly faster forward or further, its just another useful set of techniques. I just have a problem with people copping an attitude like theres something wrong with flying for time and coming off like its "not really flying." Its the same attitude shown by guys like Yuri, trying to mock the flock disciplines as "f-ten-cking", and sounds more like the bitterness of a guy who thinks he's an expert but hasn't learned to use his own suit and can't get shit for freefall time himself. Hell. 3-4 years before wingsuits caught on here I had nobody else to fly with most of the time so I spent a couple years just mastering the art of longflight. Hundreds of solos before I got into flocking. There is an amazing amount of technical subtlety to be learned that way, and if I hadn't done those flights I could have had an entire career of flying suits totally oblivious to all the techniques I discovered that way. For me, then, freefall time said EVERYTHING about the quality of a flight. Taking my old GTI or S-6 up, feeling out a new technique, and staying up so long everyone else was landing by the time I deployed, then landing myself and seeing on my own Neptune the ever-longer flights I was getting from refining combos of techniques was VERY rewarding. Later I learned to combine all those tricks with various forward speed techniques for even longer flights and higher speeds, and the subtle art of it continues to keep me a happy flyer to this day. If it involves exiting an aircraft with a wingsuit on its flying, and thus it is awesome. -B edited for inaccurate statement Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

To quote Capt. Jean-luc Picard, "You're damn right."

Actually man, I should think perhaps I don't spend enough. I very seldom post here anymore, and in the process abandon the forum to the trolls and skygods. If I don't speak up when I notice this kind of thing being said, guys like Miller might think guys like phoenix here represent a majority attitude and quit, feeling bummed out and disgusted, unwilling to share our company because they want to fly, not be criticized. And that'd be a shame, wouldn't it? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yes actually, it does. It says that Miller enjoys flying enough to want to stay aloft longer, improve his technique until he was able to, and be happy about it when he has achieved it. And for all you know, he could have covered 6 miles in the process. Is there some minimum distance or speed which he must cover before you would consider him to be flying? 3 miles? 5? What exactly qualifies you to judge or scorn what other birds are doing, why they are flying, and whether they have earned the right to be happy about it? Attitudes like yours are what make some people feel rejected or judged, become disgusted and walk away from the sport. Here's a tip: If you find yourself stepping on somebody else, for whatever reason, it means your feet are pressing them down. And while you're stepping on someone else's joy, you are not flying either. Miller, you'll see a lot of these guys in wingsuiting. Ignore them or they'll suck all the joy and fun out of it for you. Whatever you do, for the love of flight do NOT let their attitude, approval or lack thereof decide for you what your standards should be, or consider their judgment binding upon you. Flying is not enough for them so they must invent complex technical reasons to elevate themselves above you, put you down and try to make you think you're not doing it right unless THEY say you are. YOU decide whether it was a good flight or not. Fly for whatever reasons you want to fly, whichever way suits you best, however you feel like doing it. If you just set yourself a new best, I'm guessing you're enjoying the hell out of that new purple P2... those things are great. Every additional second you're able to stay aloft, regardless of what patronizing guys like phoenix here might think is another second in which you were living really intensely and being wicked fucking happy and THAT, is the essence of flying. Right on! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh for christs sake not this skygod crap again. Flying is flying. Whether he went far enough or fast enough for YOU to consider him to have been flying is irrelevant. You have no idea how far or how fast he was going in the process of pulling that 133 seconds. Not that it matters. A guy does a long flight, his best ever to date, of which he should be proud, posts about it here because he's happy about it and your first response is to offer "congratulations" with the thinly-veiled subtext message that you could do much better and what he was doing wasn't really "flying" because it wasn't the type or way of flying YOU would approve of. F'king skygods. Can't you just be happy for the guy and leave out the criticism? If it meant enough to the O.P. for him to post about it here, guess what? Motherfucker was FLYING. To the O.P: Congratulations, man. Bet that flight felt pretty awesome, didn't it? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hoisting one for a friend of my own whos still here in spite of it. I bestowed upon him the nickname Chemosabe. It tried to kill him and he fucking LAUGHED at it. One. Tough. Motherfucker. To mutilate a Samuel L. Jackson line, "He's still alive, motherfucker!!!" Fuck Cancer. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok, now THATS cool. I definitely stand corrected, and retract my earlier remarks. The redbull people just got some major cool points in my book for this. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Bill, I understand and like your take on it, I just see it as too far "over the top" the way Twardo put it. I mean, -I- don't see it as "The REDBULL spacejump". I didn't choose to label and publicize it that way, THEY did. I'd be a lot more excited and enthusiastic about it if it was more about the jump and less about redbull. To cast it through your lens, I have no problem with people using sponsors either. I just find it annoying when it seems to be more about the sponsors using the people. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.