tbrown

Just please do it safely this time with an appropriate rig. No flame, what's done is done. Best wishes to the young family. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Learned to drive on a stick ('71 Ford Pinto). It's like who's in charge ? You or the car ? A stick puts you in charge, all the time. Taught my wife how to drive on a stick, taught our older daughter and several of her friends how to drive a stick (I'm very patient and get a kick out of that first "rodeo" lesson at a big church parking lot nearby - I tell the kids the "f" and "s" words are okay and they'll laugh about this for the rest of their lives). Finally bought an automatic 2 years ago when I broke my leg, thank God it was my left leg or I couldn't have driven at all. I'll start #2 kid off with the automatic, then get her onto the stick as soon as she's got a little road confidence. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I think some new themes might be good too. Maybe somebody hooking it in under a hanky size canopy while a Cypres launched reserve p/c is boinging off their back. Or a head down freeflyer stuck in the ground like a fucking lawn dart. Or maybe a hybrid with a grinning skeleton hanging from a separated chest strap, or maybe flying a demonic looking batwing suit. Not to mention a laughing skeletal Tandem Instructor with a screaming student and a skeletal vidiot backflying to capture the sheer horror on a DVD. This stuff doesn't all have to be old, things are just as scary now as they ever were. I mean, whaddaya mean that sounds sick ? Of course it's sick, they're all sick. That's why we love them ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

1977 Easter Boogie at Z-Hills charged $7 to 10,500, $8 to 12,500, and had a SPECIAL $10 rate to 15,000. But I think the whole load had to pay the $10 in order to go. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Why? With airplanes going routinely to 15k, do we have to burn up every bit? Those still on a decision height of 2500 (As) shouldn't be opening at 3. Bill Dause, btw, uses 4k after 10s of thousands of jumps. People shouldn't view the min deploy heights like speed limits - as a starting point to be pushed. I don't want to push this forum off on a tangent, so will be brief. The reason people need to be comfy with 3 grand is because you will inevitably find yourself on bigger loads with more people where you will simply have to track longer - and lower. You may also find yourself at a really busy boogie with multiple airplanes on parallel jump runs disgorging loads all over the place and management may tell you not to open above 3 grand. If people want to pull at 3500 or 4 grand on routine small loads at the home DZ, that's fine & God bless. But safe separation is just as important, and the more people on a load, the harder you have to work at it. Maybe comfy's not the right word, maybe I should've said confident. You don't have to like it, but you should be confident of your ability to take it down lower when conditions warrant. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

At your experience level you really ought to reconsider and get one. Last year at the WFFC there were two (not one, but two) fatalities involving jumpers who cutaway below a grand without RSLs. Neither one pulled their reserve in time before impact. You should consider that an AAD won't activate after a low speed cutaway until you have fallen far enough to re-accelerate to 79 mph. An AAD can fire too low under those conditions to do you any good. You should consider that most people take several seconds to get stable again after chopping a good spinner, but that at the moment of cutaway release you are more stable than you will be for the next several seconds. If you're low enough, the difference could be between canopy inflation or impact. Bill Booth recently said that over 90% of the orders he ships nowadays have Skyhooks. Even a regular RSL, which isn't as snazzy as a Skyhook, is a lot quicker than the average unstable disoriented (and maybe just a bit scared) human. In the old days before RSLs I had to cutaway from a streamer mal. Then I had to play the tumbling head over heels "where's the damn ripcord" game. It wasn't fun, you wouldn't like it. Having a RSL doesn't relieve you of your duty to find and pull your reserve handle, but finding and pulling it under an open reserve canopy sounds like a lot more fun. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Nope, now that the one nutted wonder is gone it's just a bunch of silly Frenchman out for a ride in their undies. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

No fuckin' way. If I or my friends, as licensed USPA members can't go there and jump, they don't belong. They're doing nothing to advance ANY of these students into the sport - just taking their money and sending them on an "E Ticket" amusement park ride that might not be so amusing if something goes wrong. They're a fucking cancer. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

There was a really cool one of a freefall formation geeking a 747 that was coming head on from below. The same guy also did a fabulous T-shirt for the 1979 Rumbleseat Meet at "Perrish Valley", with a Lodestall that had a big grinning bearded face that sorta strongly resembled Joe Morgan at the time. A Perris team called Terminal Research used to sell a bright orange & gray t-shirt of The Reaper studying an 8 Way formation diagram under a magnifying glass. And there was another "boogie 'til you bounce" theme of a 4 Way going into electrical wires and phone poles. God how I miss those shirts. I simply HATE 99% of the skydiving t-shirts made nowadays, they suck. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I came up through static line, but that was thirty years ago, when there was no other way. Same as the prices, which if I told you would make you sick to your stomach, though it was a struggle for me at the time - it's NEVER been cheap. Licenses weren't strictly enforced in those days either and I took 3 years before getting a C license and have no idea what it cost me by then. I have one friend who was not doing well with AFF and only made real progress after switching to a SL program. And then I have another friend who went through AFF so fast he actually got skipped over a jump after taking a tunnel session and he just got his "A" last weekend. So I believe in "different strokes for different folks". That said, I'm also VERY impressed with how quickly AFF students learn skills that it used to take us a very long time to learn in the old days - f'rinstance I didn't make human contact with another skydiver in freefall until my 51st jump, which would be unheard of now. I'm making the hopeful assumption that SL training has come a long way over the years and that SL students are getting moved on & up to the good stuff a lot faster than we were back in the day. The biggest bone I have to pick with AFF is the residual paranoia it seems to breed of being in freefall anywhere below 5 grand. I'm told that SL has moved up from 2500 to 3500 ft, which I suppose is a good thing. But the BENEFIT you get from that is that you started out at 3500 ft and you're not afraid of it, it's like a baseline to your experience. Have any of your friends told you they don't want to pull below 4 grand yet ??? Bet some of them have.... I don't think it's intentional, but it is an unfortunate side effect that AFF has bred a whole generation of altitude weenies. And you've managed to avoid that. Everybody needs to get comfy with 3 grand if they're going to play with 6 or more of their friends at once, and you've got a real advantage there, so go get 'em kid. Oh and by the way, I checked your profile & that's one NICE rig you got yourself ! Way to go ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I just want to become an educated skydiver without fraying my nerves.Am I doing more harm than good by trying to learn too much? Should I put the books & articles down & just focus on what my instructors have to say? Is being way too analytical a bad trait in this sport? Though I'm not an engineer, I am a very introverted and analytical type myself, so I understand a lot about where you're coming from, as people like us can tend to let things prey on our minds. Nothing wrong with a little book learnin' either, but with a few cautions. Facts, figures, and intellectual comprehension will not help you with the fear issues. Fear is not an intellectual thing, it's your body and mind telling you it doesn't want to die. I think the actual intensity of the fear takes some people by surprise. They "know" skydiving is dangerous (as opposed to unsafe, but that's for other forums...) and they've made an intellectual decision to go and do it because they're satisfied it can be done safely, it looks really beautiful, and they've probably wanted to do it all their lives and used to jump out of trees when they were kids. But you get in the airplane and it takes off and you start looking out the window and realizing that THIS time you're going to LEAVE the plane and you'll be FALLING and the little "I don't want to die" voice inside goes batshit. You get dry mouthed with fear, because you've actually come up against the full realization of what it is you're about to do. Then the door opens and you can both feel and hear the wind whipping by as you watch the landscape 2 1/2 miles below. That's when part of you screams "FUUUUCCKKK !!!" inside. All you can do is jump and jump and jump. The fear will never completely go away, but it will get smaller and smaller and recede into the back of your brain. In a while you'll be laughing along with all the farting and rude sexual jokes that are going on around you on the ride up. I think of fear as "Vitamin F". It's an essential part of your diet. As long as it doesn't rule you, it will keep you honest and focused. It can be your friend, and like any good friend you should respect and listen to it, but not let it run your life. Oh yeah, as for the book learning and studying, maybe ease up for just a bit. It won't help with the emotional fear issues. Your instructors need to keep it simple for now, so they're spoon feeding you what you need to know. Very soon you should be able to dive right back into the books. I'm even hoping with a little luck you might be the next Bill Booth and invent some really cool shit that will save lives. But there's a real case to be made against getting ahead of yourself until you're a little more comfy in the air - and you can't get that from a book. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Sorry to hear about your accident. sounds like you did everything the best you could, but sometimes "shit happens" anyway. Especially in the So Cal desert in summertime, with temps over 100 degrees, higher field elevations, very high density altitude, and those delightful wind devils. Look at the bright side of things - it could've been worse, you will recover and get back in the air, and if you can handle summertime conditions at Perris or Elsinore, you'll be amazed at what a great canopy pilot you'll be anywhere else. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I don't understand why they get onboard crowded city buses and detonate a suicide bomb. I don't understand why they think they would gain a shred of sympathy from anyone by seizing the Church of the Nativity for two months and transforming the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ into a stinking urinal. Tell me Darius, what would YOU say if anyone did that to your favorite mosque ? Oh and then there was that Munich thing back in 1972.... Most Americans have NO fucking sympathy for Arabs or Muslims in general and it's almost entirely due to their totally unacceptable behavior and the fact that they tell a lie for every occasion. Israel's got some problems with the way tjey treat Palestionians, but people with their backs to the wall tend to have short tempers - because they have to. And until the Palestinians can learn to behave like civilized human beings - they can just fuck off and die. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Tell her you also have sex with people of many different races, that should help. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

An interesting proposal, though it would probably end up filed under "seemed like a good idea at the time", when it causes a World War complete with nukes flying every which way. Gotta give the author credit for originality though, I enjoy good fiction. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I just hope he's not seeing dead people. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

We got it back, patched up the new holes with more duct tape, and packed it up for my next jump. Students nowadays have it far too easy, if you ask me. Reminds me of my old Paracommander. I think the thing was actually MADE out of duct tape, but it kept right on truckin' until I got something newer & shinier. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

There's also a Pyramid brewery downtown, exactly across the street from Safeco Field. Redhook seems to have slid downhill ever since they signed their big deal with Anheuser-Busch (sell your soul to the devil, what do you expect though ?). I used to live in Marysville and had no trouble finding lots of great beer at Fred Meyers, in the grocery part of the store. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I understand completely. But I also used to work for Boeing as a Final Assembly Inspector and I can honestly tell you that the things are built and overbuilt and can take just about anything that can possibly happen to them. Which doesn't quite add up to a 100%, but is still safer than skydiving (something I don't concede easily either). What you don't like is trusting somebody other than yourself to fly the final approach leg. And like I said, I understand that feeling completely. But you really got nothing to worry about, it's safer than sitting home watching porn on your TV. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Rolling Stones' "Stray Cat Blues" (1968) "Oh yeah, you're a strange stray cat, oh yeah, I bet your mother doesn't bite like that, I bet she never saw you scratch my back". Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

That's alright, thinking is actually permitted around here. It's too bad that some DZs take such a minimal assembly line approach. Some places are overworked, other DZs could give a shit. Either way the only payoff is more calls to 911, which doesn't make much business sense to me. Makes a good case for USPA requiring canopy training. Coaches could be a good idea, these days just about anything would be a good idea if it meant more canopy training. If USPA allows D Licenses to jump with unlicensed newbies, they should at least consider allowing coaches to teach canopy classes. As long as there's some kind of qualifying procedure, because I could teach you myself, but I'm not sure you'd want that, as I have no credentials and am just another well meaning Joe Skydiver. No, it ain't rocket science either. In my own personal opinion there are a few things that could be/should be added, especially in the area of flat turns. But that's my personal - and constructive - opinion. The one other thing I got from the course was a personal commitment from our instructor that I can ask him anything anytime as issues come up and he'll take the time help answer my questions and advise me. That "post grad" commitment is an essential part of what you should be paying for beyond the single day class. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Seems like you won't have to wait too long to get the Cypres, so why not just wait another week for it to show up and get it and your reserve all packed up at once. Because even with the same rigger and even if he doesn't need to take your reserve out of the freebag, he's still going to charge you for opening the container, installing the AAD, and then closing everything back up again. I've made over 500 jumps without an AAD back in the seventies. Back then AADs were not considered reliable enough for wearing in the air with a lot of other people around (too many premature openings). The thing about an AAD is that it will never tell you on the box WHICH jump is the one you will need it. Nobody ever goes sailing out the door thinking "This is the jump where my Cypres will save my ass". In all likelihood, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor and you'll be just fine without it. So if you just gotta jump the new rig, go for it and pay your rigger more in the end, he'll appreciate the extra business. I use a Cypres and a RSL. Being married with kids, it adds to my family's peace of mind that Dad has a "magic gadget" that will save his ass if he fucks up. I understand the real limitations of both devices, and other than turning my cypres on in the morning I forget the thing's even there and jump as if it's not there. Finally, and this is for the record,telling people "If you can't jump without an AAD you shouldn't be jumping" is a bunch of macho bullshit. Go to skydivingmovies.com and watch piisfish's little adventure where he got all wrapped up on his camera site. The guy lived because he has a Cypres. Watch that video and put yourself in his place and think about what you'd have done. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Is Scott the only guy to offer this kind of instruction? Why doesn't every student coming off AFF-7 go right into AFF 8- 15 which would be learning to fly the canopy? Why doesn't every DZ have an official canopy expert? P.S. Yesterday I went to PD and borrowed a demo reserve and jumped it. I did all the stuff that Scott has ya do, stalls, hard turns, flat turns, etc. Just to get to know my reserve a little bit better, in case I ever have to land it in someones back yard. You bring up several excellent points. I took the Scott Miller course this winter, with over 700 lifetime jumps and learned a great deal from it. I should mention that 566 of my jumps are pre-1981, and even though I owned and jumped a 7 cell in the old days, it had nowhere near the performance of even the humblest student canopies nowadays, back then a Navigator would've been one "shit hot" canopy. So I needed a lot of catching up, especially with my landing techniques. Is Scott Miller's the only course around ? No, there are others. I imagine their quality varies from excellent to so-so. A lot of them sure cost a whole lot more. Price may not be everything and AFF alone is appallingly expensive these days, but at least offering a course for an affordable price gets a lot more people into class, where charging twice the price is going to keep some people away. Scott's affordable price got me into HIS class. Also Scott is expanding his operation and partnering with people like Jonathan Tagle, plus they seem to be qualifying more instructors so that the class is becoming a lot more available. You don't need to personally take a class from Scott or Jonathan (nice as that would be) as long as the instructor is someone they've qualified to their criteria. Yeah, every dropzone should have an official canopy expert. I think the place to start is with the Instructor staff, at least basic canopy flight should be folded into everything else they're qualified to teach. It's not even so much their canopy skills as their ability to TEACH effectively that matters. I think canopy training and demonstrating certain skills should be folded into A License requirements too. This stuff is every bit as important as knowing how to cutaway a malfunction and deploy your reserve - and you're likelier to need it sooner. I've got a friend right now who's within a jump or two of getting his A License and I'm really pushing him to take the next Basic Canopy Class. He says he's going to do it too. As classes become more common I think the price should come down, at least for the basic stuff. USPA has made big changes in AFF in the past, they can do it again and mandate requirements that can be reasonably accomplished. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

We have plenty of Mexican/Hispanic and Asian skydivers in So Cal, but still very few Blacks, which is just a shame really as the few who I've known have been just as much fun as anyone else to jump with. But your story is funny, because a black friend of mine years ago asked me "What IS it with white people that they have to do foolish things like climb mountains, swim with sharks, and jump out of airplanes ?" Never mind that history now finds that Matthew Hemsley (an aide to Admiral Robt Peary), actually set foot on the South Pole ahead of Peary. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Most of the time I'm not even aware of my wedding ring. I can't get it off for trying, so I don't worry about it coming off. I suppose a ring could rip my finger off, but I also consider the possibility about as remote as monkies flying out my butt. Most of the year I wear gloves, except for thhe very hot So. Cal summertime. But gloves in general are a good idea, as without them you will get all kinds of "mystery" cuts and abrasions, the kind that you have no idea how or when they happened. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !