tbrown

Unfortunately, if you dropped the ripcord, it would sometimes entangle with the reserve. I witnessed a fatality in 1977 where that was exactly what happened. It was really eerie too, because we had talked to the guy just a week earlier about his Jesus chord being attached to his reserve ripcord. Even in those days it was already accepted that the Jesus chord, if you had to have one, should be attached to the chest strap and not the ripcord. Next bad idea was a manufacturer who used a "disreefing pin" instead of a diaper on their line of round reserves. It was one pin, on one line that would unlock a strap, rather than a diaper, where an entire group of lines would unlock the diaper. The combination of the ripcord attached Jesus chord and the disreefing pin killed this jumpmaster who was making a short delay after putting out a load of S/L students. He was a nice guy and I watched him go in after he cutaway a garden variety mal on his Strato Star. The effect on his students was horrific. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Well hey, blue skies, fun & safe dives to one and all. I have a very high respect for anything Bill Booth has to say, didn't know this was a quote from de man hisself. I'm keeping an open mind on the topic because I'll be putting together my first rig in 22 yrs. However, if you're going to post a poll and a discussion thread on an issue that has a lot of varying opinions, it would be better to keep the line of questioning more neutral and not get so hacked off if someone questions your foregone conclusions. I once partied with a bunch of Skydive Oregon jumpers at a Grateful Dead show in Eugene. You guys are alright. Hope we'll make a load together one of these days, up there or down here. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Special rules for "Special People" Maybe we should carry sidearms ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

What about the old big wing suits from the seventies ? I've got a beauty of a 1979 Silly Suit with BEEEG wings. I just returned to the sport and use a nice Tony Suit for RW, but would the Silly Suit be good for sitflying ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'm brand new to ZP canopies, but am under the impression from what I've read that the current hot swooping canopies wouldn't be possible without ZP material. F-111 type is low porosity, something like 0-3 cfm, which is pretty darn low. It's what most reserves are still made of. But ZP is ZERO porosity, it doesn't let any, or darn near any air bleed through. I've been hearing that before ZP, wingloads over 1.1 were pretty much out of the question unless you enjoyed thumping in, but that ZP - and new airfoil desings - have made high wingloads and hot swoops possible. Anyone care to shed more light on this ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Like a Magician who pulls a tablecloth out from under the china,,,, I use a quick yanking motion, to snatch the bag, under and around the Stacked canopy... He used to get us kicked out of more restaurants doin' that.... That sounds really cool actually, I've packed a few Spectres so far, but not any new ones, so I haven't come up against the slippery fabric yet. In the old days I used to side pack a Viking Superlite (a 230 ft seven cell, for you kids...) and it opened just fine. But at Perris they taught me how to pro pack and it's easier and makes more sense. The openings are wonderful. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I saw RFK too, I was eleven, saw him in the little subway station in the basement of the US Capitol. Waved at him, he waved back. Have also met Jerry Garcia & Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, Daniel Ellsberg, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Rod Serling, Gene McCarthy, mostly by going to lots of lectures at college. Oh, and R. Crumb at a book signing in SF. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Not to be even pickier, but there was no option for those who don't have one but want or intend to get one. The questions seem skewed towards an anti RSL bias, i.e. "that silent killer". Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I got my D back in 1980, when the Feds briefly granted permits for El Capitan. A D license was req'd for the permit. There was such a rush of "expedited" applications that USPA eventually threw up their hands and said "enough already, you'll get your D when you get it". I was lucky enough to get mine quickly, got my permit and legally jumped the rock. It seems almost laughable nowadays to think that anyone with 200 jumps could be deemed an "expert". But back in the fifites or whenever it was, 200 jumps was a lot. I mean the first baton pass was when, 1962 or something ? A lot has happened in forty years. I know I'm no expert just because I hold a D. I'm just coming back from many years away and I have so much to learn about the new squares, and all this vertical hip-hop skydiving. I feel like a student all over again and am loving it ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I don't care for the plane ride myself. Otters are a nice plane, but they feel sorta fragile. I used to work as a final assembly inspector for Boeing on structures and body join and I can tell you, those babies are built. They can take a lickin' and keep on tickin', there have been 737's and even a 767 that were dead sticked to landings after losing both engines. The 737 was struck by lightning and landed on a flood levee, the 767 (get this) ran out of fuel (oops...) and put down on an abandoned air strip in Canada. But it's true, all you can do is sit there in those miserable little seats, cinch your seatbelt down tighter if that makes you feel better, and use the little yellow maks to help muffle the screaming. At least skydiving you're out of the plane, have two canopies and a hook knife and can scream just as loud as you want. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

570. Started in 1974, got out in 1980, got back in again this March. It's nice to be back. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Aw c'mon, not even with your hot new rig ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

(that's a pet peeve, I can't stand it when people preach AT me. That's one of the reasons I don't go to church anymore. Not the preacher, but the "do good know it alls" that try to judge you.) Yeah, me too. If you want a short quick read between now and Harry Potter, check out Ann Rice's "Vittorio the Vampire", it's about a teenage kid in 15th century Florence. Would make a fabulous movie. Something really scary is "The Hot Zone", forget the author's name, but it's the true story of an Ebola outbreak in a monkey house less than eleven miles from the White House in 1989. The Army had to send in a germ warfare team from Ft. Detrick to neutralize the threat. If you like history, I'd recommend anything by the late Barbara Tuchman, especially "The Zimmerman Telegram", which is how Germany tried to get Mexico into the First World War on their side. For a major commitment to a novel, maybe after you're done with Harry, you should try Tolstoy's "War and Peace".. Seriously, the biblical size of the book scares a lot of people away, but it's very readable. All the chapters are 2 - 20 pages long, so you read it in bite size pieces. It's fantastic, I promise you by the time you reach the end you'll feel sad there isn't any more. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I think the sooner there are seperate states of Israel and Palestine, the better. Until it happens, this stuff is just going to go on and on and on and on. Israel's able to deal with all their other neighbor states, Syria, Lebanon, etc, it should be no different with a Palestinian state. These people are going to hate each other forever and there isn't much we can do about it, except tell them ALL to keep the noise down. That's the real reason we're in Iraq, that and the oil. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Standards for canopy coaches can be defined and there are plenty of good canopy pilots at the small DZ's that can't support a regular canopy school. This does have to be flexible enough to be fair to the small operations, we don't all jump at turbo heaven DZ's. Here's another question though, at what point do we lift the regulation ? At 500 jumps ? At a D license ? Is there a point where we finally throw up our hands and say, "by now you oughta know what you can handle" ? Or do we set a hard standard, "if you want to fly a WL of 2.0 you WILL demonstrate proficiency, regardless of whether or not you have 5000 jumps" ? Another question is whether we can get PIA into the act, will the manufacturer's support regulations that on the face of it restrict their potential market ? Anyone here own a really hot little sports car or motorcycle ? These are just some questions to consider. I'm for some kind of regulation, the fact that over half our fatalities are happening under open canopies should really be an EMBARRASSMENT to us all. I jump a 230 Spectre with a 1.05 WL, for now anyway. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Doesn't it keep the cars fresher ? You wouldn't want the cars to spoil, they'd smell awful. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

That's basically it, you can sign the thing or hit the road. Perris has a video of their lawyer telling you how totally screwed you are if you ever try to sue, Videos are a good idea, the attention span comprehends them better. What are you going to do anyway, bring your own lawyer with you to argue with the DZO ? Actually, sections of a waiver can be disputed in court if they're construed to not be in the public's best interest, but better not to even go there. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The Dead. That's officially their name now. They're four of the ex-Grateful Dead guys, plus a new lead guitarist, plus two new keyboardists, plus Joan Osborne for the summer tour. Greatest show on earth and the audience is as much fun as the band. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Of course on the other hand, every single round of 5.56, 7.62, .50 and 20mm you fire does come from the place I work....... Can you make them with peoples' names on them ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'll be taking one soon as time & money permit (I mean $$ to jump at all, the $280 price tag for the course is going to be spent). I've got a couple hundred jumps on the old squares, but the new ones, even the student canopies simply blow the doors off what we used to use. There are just too many canopy safety issues, too many people getting hurt or even killed. The other thing is that I'd like to learn a lot more about how to ENJOY a canopy and really milk it for performance in a safe & sane way. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

**The 2000 fatality rate was 1/70,130 skydives **The annual domestic fatality rate averaged over ten years is roughly 1/903 members of USPA **Death rate for motor vehicles reported by NSC in 2000 is 0.0156 per 1,000 participants. **Fatality rate for skydivers based on USPA numbers over a ten year period is 1.1 per 1,000 member skydivers. QuoteI tell people that skydiving is basically a safe enough sport, but that things can happen. I still hear the old saw that, "the most dangerous part is driving to the drop zone" and I don't believe a word of it. Flying in general is only safer than driving if you're talking about flying on a scheduled airliner. Flying in a private non-scheduled airplane is actually considerably more dangerous than driving (forget where I read that, but supposedly airliners are 20 times safer than cars and cars are 19 times safer than private planes, or something like that). I do tell them that it's safe enough that they shouldn't worry about it and should definitely go make that skydive they always wanted to try and they'll be just fine. But I tell them that if they really want to take up skydiving, that they will lose friends over the years, will probably see it happen sooner or later and that it could just get them in the end. But that we accept that and we jump because it's too beautiful not to. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

A young lady on her 23rd jump, or thereabouts, in So. Cal. went in at the local sewage treatment plant, right up to her chin in you-know-what. She hadn't pulled any handles and apparently had no AAD, so hit at the full advertised 120 mph. She lived, with multiple fractures and internal injuries. Talk about professionalism - a big hand for the ambulance crew that jumped into the doo-doo to move her onto a back board. I hear that she was wearing a Timex watch, which also survived. She got her picture in a Timex ad for her troubles, but they left out the part about landing in sh*t. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The first time around, back in the seventies, it was a total lifestyle thing. Then I got tired of the whole thing, got married (my wife never even asked me to stop), and rediscovered life on the outside. Now after many years I'm back. I think I would at least like to keep life more balanced between jumping, family, and outside interests. But I'm finding jumping very seductive again, the place I turn to for comfort. When I'm home, I log in here every day. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

That was the Green Star Express rig. Green Star had been a respected rig maker up until then, but those two fatalities pretty well did them in. There was another rig maker who put the reserve ripcord housing too close to the pins (older 2 pin reserve), some poor soul on the U.S. Army team cutaway and jammed his first pin in the housing, resulting in a total mal fatality, this was in the early eighties. Most manufacturers expressly do NOT warrant their products and remind us in all kinds of legalese that skydiving is inherently dangerous and we might kill ourselves anyway. One of the biggest rig makers even added "uninsured" to the legal registered name of the company (a good move, since money is the deciding factor anyway). American law is case law, it's not just what the statutes say on paper, it's how the courts interpret the law in actual cases. Which makes every lawsuit a crapshoot more "exciting" than your average cutaway. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Some dealerships have "demo" programs, which are basically layaway plans that allow you to use their demo rigs. The nice thing about demo plans is that you can try a bunch of different brands and models of canopies and systems and see which one you really like before you spend your money. The downside is that demo plans are probably not as available at smaller DZ's, I'm spoiled living here in So. Cal. with big DZ's and gear shops with demo plans. Of course you could just buy a rig the American way - use your plastic ! Pay it off sooner rather than later, establish yourself a good credit rating, and do your patriotic part to help boost the economy. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !