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You have long blonde hair, how about Rapunzel ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Hey Lizard, I used to do final assembly inspections at Boeing, on stuff like structures and body join. It's one hell of a huge responsibility putting your stamp on every job. I'm just fortunate not to have lost a plane that I worked on, but that could always change. You hang in there and trust yourself and the quality of the work you do. Everyone who's ever worked around you will know who the good people were and who the slackers were. I'm sure I'd be wracked with doubts and guilt if one of "my" planes ever went in, but that's only because people like us care about our work. Don't let them push you around, just tell 'em the facts and don't let them get you riled. You'll be alright. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Somebody's gotta put in a good word for Jerry Garcia. At least the younger Jerry at his peak, 1972 - '77. The guy only had 9 1/2 fingers and was a trained bluegrass banjo master (which explains a lot of his sound on electric guitar) and for a while was even playing some pretty good pedal steel. Whether he was playing acoustic or electric, he wove ragtime, jazz, folk, blues, and good old rock'n'roll into some some strange and interesting places. He went into a long decline with heroin, but some of us are old enough to remember Jerry playing the most beautiful stuff with this peaceful "alpha centauri" gaze in his eyes. I just loved the guy. The rest of the list, and everyone else's suggestions by the way, are right on ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You've got to be real. Skydiving is only one thing you do and it's not enough by itself. Whuffos get bored shitless with skydiving by the 17th jump story. So keep it real or no pussy for you. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The Comp PC was designed for competition accuracy and had larger vents and holes than the standard MK I model. They could land with a thump, but were meant to thump in pea gravel. A little practice would help you to figure out the landings. I had one of the original 1964 r/w/b PC's, I think I paid $150 bucks for it and was probably the 5th or 6th person to own it. I loved my PC. The landings were so soft that I switched over from French boots to sneakers and never went back (except in the wintertime, when the boots were warmer and better suited to walking through snow). Just give the back risers a good tug and if it wasn't tooo windy the stand up took care of itself. Did all the accuracy requirements for my C and D licenses with a PC and no, I didn't even have to downwind it. They were just different from squares. Much as I love squares, I'm so very fond of that old PC when I think of it. they opened quickly and softly, had decent drive for a decent spot, snappy response to the toggles and just looked beautiful. On the downside, they were bulky, weighed about half a ton (2.2 oz taffeta matl), and were a BITCH to pack. But I never had a malfunction with a PC, never. Which is more than I can say for squares... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Eventually Django got sued patent infringement over the line attachment points, the company changed and the canopy was re-born as a Fury. Yeah, Para Flite couldn't compete, so they shut 'em down. Then as you say, the Pegasus was reborn, with flares, as the Fury. Also Django went out of business, but started up again as a new company with a new name. They were really big in the eighties, with a whole line of mains and reserves. So whatever happened to them ? I mean they went from being the top of the heap around '85 to.....where ? What happened ? It's an up and down business, but I'd appreciate it if anyone can fill us in on the rest of this story and knows why such a successful company vanished. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Johnny Cash let go just four months after June Carter Cash, the love of his life died. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Years ago I knew 3 different jumpers who jumped a "Delta II Para Wing" Jimmy Parker and Paul Campbell at Seneca Falls NY both made many hundreds of jumps on one.....and Bob Peavey in Rochester jumped one for a couple of years Thanks again Jimmy, I remember all three of those guys, even remember Paul Campbell and Jimmy Parker jumping those things (Paul was my JM on my first freefall). After the Delta II's, I seem to recall Paul got into a shortlined Para Sled, while Jimmy got a 7 cell foil - he was also the first person I ever saw use a slider, which he brought back from the '75 Nationals. I remember Peavy, but he always had a Strato Star when I knew him. Wonder where those guys are now, they were the rock bottom salt of the earth types who made small Cessna DZ's happen in those days. Parker & Campbell were both Vietnam vets, so was Parker's brother Bobby (aka Dude), who set me up for my firstr jump on a Paracommander, a "Competition" PC the Seneca club owned. We'll never see the like of those days again, thank God (and you) for the memories. On the triangle subject, there was also a "double keel" dactyl that Jim Hanbury built, it was like a Dactyl or Delta II, only it had two keels and so was sort of divided into thirds. The Visions team was jumping sky blue DK Dactyls in 1980, which really stood out, as everyone else had gone square by then. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

No problemo, sorry to hijack your thread. I've heard so much about Smitty, can only wish I'd met him. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You're right, it WAS the Canadians who won both events. I wasn't jumping at the time, but was still taking a subscription to Skydiving Magazine and you've remeinded me that Canada had some really hot hot teams in the eighties. My goof on Abbotsford, goes to show you where a faulty memory gets you....thanks for the extra info! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Our kitty, an all black part siamese (really beautiful), who is so full of love and light with us, is an ass kicking neighborhood bully when she gets outside. We have a small yard with a cinderblock wall, which she gets up on, from which she surveys the entire alley. Lots of noisy altercations. She usually comes strutting back in for a nuzzle after her latest bootie kicking. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

What a pretty kitty ! I'm very much a cat kind of guy and so glad to see you've connected with this little beauty. Much love to you both. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I brought Smitty to Perris Valley Skydiving Center December 15th, 1985 where he made a tandem jump joined by the Mirror Image World Champion 8 way team sponsored by Coors beer. The Coors team was formerly known as Visions before they got the sponsorship. Visions/Coors was the world champion 8 way team at the 1985 meet in Yugoslavia. Visions had also won the 1983 world meet in South Africa, but all of the other heavyweight contenders like France, the Soviets, and China had stayed away because of the apartheid regime, so the "competition" was mostly a bunch of cream puff teams. At the Yugoslavia meet Coors won the old fashioned way, by beating the real competitors. Mirror Image was still around in '85, but had not been to a world championship since their win at Z-Hills in '81. Intereestingly enough, getting back to the 1983 So. African meet, FAI sanctioned a "protest" meet with Worl Cup status at Abbotsford, BC, Canada in '83. Mirror Image did represent the US at the Abbotsford Cup meet, where I think they finished second behind the French (?). Also the U.S. Army 4 way team won the Nationals that year, but were not permitted to go to So. Africa, but went to the Abbotsford meet and I don't remember whether they won or placed. With the Army not going to So. Africa, one of the Visions 4 way teams, either "Fire" or "Ice", which had finished second at the Nationals, went as the US 4 way team. Sorry, this wasn't meant to detract from the Smitty story, but the confusion about Mirror Image and Coors stirred up some memories about some interesting times for two really great teams. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

It was the Green Star. On of the people that had this problem, fired his reserve at Otay and went in screaming at the top of his lungs. He landed about 200 feet for where his wife and kids were sitting watching Daddy skydive. Sparky That was 1978. That fatality and another somewhere else pretty well destroyed the reputation of Green Star Systems and they soon went under. As a more humorous aside, Otay, or Borderland Air Sports as it was known at the time, had two Beeches, a blue one and a green one. We gleefully named them The Blue Coffin and The Green Star Express. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I hear a lot of those canards repeated at certain large DZ's in So. Cal. that should know better. Another of my favorites is that twenty years ago everybody jumped rounds. Actually, we didn't use anything, we just landed on our heads..... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

A while back I jumped a brand new Spectre demo canopy that was fresh out of the bag. Frank at Square 1 even showed me the line attachments at the canopy ribs, that they'd never even been pulled tight, so for sure the thing had never been opened. Skybytch talks about "slick as snot", but that doesn't even quite get it by half. The fabric was like dragon snot, it was horrible. For once I broke down and paid a packer to help me bag it, it was that or not jump, I just couldn't do it. Made me wonder if I ever really wanted to buy a new canopy at all, but of course we all want one. Next time I encounter a snotmonster canopy, I'm gonna try and go psycho with it. Had a long talk with a woman from Georgia who psycho packed for years. She even was the team packer for a 4 way team. They told her her pack jobs gave the best openings they'd ever had, anywhere, on any canopy. If it looks easy and seems to work, it probably is/does. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Either way, I'd rather jump a company's product who puts time in to testing every size of new canopy and with all sorts of wingloadings and in every condition imaginable. All this tesing takes a lot of time which makes PD look like they're slow. But, in my option, their canopies are worth the wait. I'd rather not be a test jumper.~Kim It's funny, if you go back twenty or so years, the leaders in the industry were Para Flite, GQ Security, and Pioneer. All three are gone now, at least from the sport market. PD was some upstart company in Florida that was marketing their 9 celss in small (like 1/4 page size or smaller) ads in the back pages of Skydiving Magazine, while the big 3 had full page color ads. Goes to show, getting to the top is one thing, staying there is another. It's tough either way. I'm glad PD tests so thoroughly too. In 1977 Para Flite released a 160 ft 5 cell called the Strato Flyer, billed as the first "lightweight" canopy. It did use a lighter weight pre-F-111 fabric. Had a lousy flare and two or three experienced jumpers I knew broke legs landing the damn things. It came with a lengthy questionnaire. Turns out the questionnaire was being used to help them develop the Safety Flyer - the first square reserve. Here you had the world's leading canopy manufacturer developing the world's first square reserve by using it's customers as test subjects. If that don't take the cheese....so hey PD, test away all you want and God bless! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Because elephants have a prehensile "finger" at the end of their trunk - a naughty elephant might be fun. DISNEY WORLD ??? Oh please.... I'd rather visit a really pricey Nevada brothel. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Whether we want to admit it or not, there's a level of underlying stress that we have to deal with in our sport. Most of us go a little tight in the gut when we open the door, but once we're out the door it's just too beautiful. Then we stress again at breakoff and opening. It's been documented over and over with pulse rates and stuff like that. So we do our best to be careful, watch out for ourselves, our gear, the other guy/girl and the gear they're wearing ("uh, you want to hook up your chest strap there ?"). The other thing we do is make the most awful jokes about it. It's sort of like Halloween, people blow off their fears of demons, monsters, and the undead by pretending to be one of them and misbehaving. One of our favorites - we would never get away with it these days - was to have one of us lie face down in the parking lot with all their gear on. The rest of us would come running with shovels and a wheelbarrow, saying things like "aw not again, that's the second time this week !". That was for the benefit of the FJC of course... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I just eliminate the need to roll all of it over... So you could call your method a "pre-frontal psycho", no ?? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I sure would like to volunteer to help out in one of these studies. since I've had a vasectomy, I guess I'd be in one of the "control" groups. But I could take good notes on what the ladies drink (or not)... "For science ! And humanity !" -Drs. Howard, Fine & Howard Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Jumped with a chest cold last week & I'm not dead. As long as you feel up for it. But if you feel like you've been hit by a truck or dizzy, then maybe not. Up to you... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Bet that's the last time those girls leave something yummy laying around the dz unattended. Unless those little girls get creative and leave some yummy Ex Lax brownies lying around. Could make for one really miserable ride up in the plane. And God help you on your opening ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Sort of eerie that you can sort of 'design' your kids that way. Designer kids and paid surrogate moms are both really frightening. As far as designing kids go, either they want to breed some kind of super athlete, or else on a mass scale they'll want to breed two kinds - slaves and soldiers. Paying a woman $10,000 - a really miserable pittance - to have a baby that's taken away is a modern form of slavery. I don't think we'll see any lady doctors, lawyers, or business execs having somebody else's baby for $10 K. Only women who are so desperate that $10K seems like a lot of money. And "seems" is the operative word, because $10K ain't shit - you can't even live on it (and you can't have more than one baby a year either). It's like the old days of plantation slavery, when a woman, her husband, or their children could be sold anytime and sent anywhere, so massah could have anothe $10K to wager on his favorite racehorse. Trafficking in human flesh ought to be illegal. I used to think it was. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I won't jump without one either. I made hundreds of jumps without an AAD back in the seventies, but back then nobody used them but students. We thought they were too prone to premature openings, and in fact they were. But the Cypres really is so much more reliable (they're not perfect, nothing is). Back then I was young and single, nowadays I've got a wife and kids. I don't think I'll ever need it, but neither did the guy in another thread who knocked himself out jumping out of a Beech that had feathered one engine. (His Pro-Track said he exited at 2600 ft, was in freefall for 16 seconds and opened around 600 ft. All he remembers is waking up hanging from a tree with a bad headache.) It's one more thing between me and the ground. I think my life's worth the $1225, even with sales tax. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !