tbrown

And you're hoping your insurance company will pay for making you a more cunning linguist ??? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Ha! It's probably because we're mammals and we're not supposed to be doing this kind of stuff. I don't know if the fear ever goes away. The fear of the unknown gradually goes away as you gain experience and competence and find your place in the jump world, but the root fear, falling and hitting the ground, doesn't. Before tunnels came along the best approach was to find a good instructor/mentor/coach and make 20 or 40 jumps really close together, but these days a good instructor/mentor/coach and a tunnel could be an even better answer. Some tunnel time will help you a lot with confidence in your technique, but the falling to your death fears will never really go away. You either learn to cope with them or you don't. Most of the time they won't bother you much. But sometimes they come back at you no matter how much experience you have. After a cutaway, if somebody else has an accident. Or sometimes for no apparent reason. But if you learn to cope with, understand, and control your fears, you can use them for the heightened state of alertness they give you and that's a good thing. It also teaches you something about what's inside you, and that's priceless. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

A modified wing passed ultimate load testing the day after the AD was issued, Hébert says, and the directive has been revised to restore the 3,400kg take-off weight after operators have modified the wing. And that's generally the purpose of an Airworthiness Directive, to make everybody happy and punch fewer craters. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Can I expect Google thugs to kick my door in and whip me with my firewire untill I give in and tell them all that I know? Probably not, but you might get flown to some secret Egyptian torture palace because you searched for "Naughty Bondage Fairies Whip Dick Cheney's Buttocks". Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

1.) Bush stupidly invades a Middle Eastern country his father at least had the sense to get out of & stay out of. 2.) Bush is re-elected, 3.) Iran elects a president every bit as stupid and belligerent as Bush, 4.) the oil markets go fucking ga-ga over talk of Iranian nukes, sanctions, and an Iranian oil embargo, 5.) Israel decides to teach their asshole neighbors another lesson, 6.) Bush decides he's been annointed by God to wield the "terrible swift sword", 7.) Brad knocks up Angelina before the divorce with Jenn is final. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

The Pakis are a bunch of two-faced cocksuckers and no fucking allies of ours. We shovel dinero at them while they shelter al-Qaeda and sell their nuclear secrets to the world. Hell I'll nuke the fucking city and ask them if they'd like some more. I mean their fucking presidents is named Perves, who the fuck names their president after preverts ? Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I know that some people think that since they are "experienced" that a hanging harness is not cool....Well I happen to think funerals are much less cool. A great reminder as DZs are planning their Safety Day activities. My last time in a harness was last year's safety day. Of course, I'd just gotten my A license the day before, so my first two times in the harness were still fresh. This year it'll be a great refresher. There's at least one (smaller) dropzone on the east coast that requires a suspended harness drill at the beginning of the new season before the DZO will let you on the plane. That's not practical at the big places, but his place is small enough to make it stick. I got into the harness last year and got into an argument over whether or not I should be using one hand or two on the cutaway (instructor insisted that two hands is the ONLY right way). All my real life chops have been single handed and that's what I'd probably do again, if only out of habit. But I'm gonna do it again on Safety Day. That and I still need to try to find my handles in freefall, which I never seem to remember to do. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Check for the "Easter Eggs" hidden in each extended version. Very funny extra scenes that are not listed. For each movie, go to the first disc, to the chapter selection and then at the bottom of the list to the "*Extra Scene". To get you started, the Fellowship movie has a howlingly funny hidden scene with Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Check it out ! Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Due to being winded out at Perris this afternoon I spent an hour watching the most fascinating thing at the Perris Wind Tunnel. Children learning how to skydive. There's a Sunday afternoon program for kids under 18. Some of the kids were teenagers, but the ones who were really taking to it and making progress the quickest were in the ten and under age group. There were kids as young as 5 years old who were picking up on controlled tunnel flight at an astonishing pace and they were loving it, just beaming from ear to ear. Although the Kid's Class has a lot of the usual kid party trappings, like pizza at the end of the session, it was a lot more. These kids are learning how to SKYDIVE. They're learning how to FLY. And they REALLY like it. Now just imagine what one of these kids is going to do when they turn 18 and can put a rig on their back and jump out of an airplane. They'll still have to learn about safe parachuting; altitude awareness, emergency procedures, and canopy control. But that's going to be about it. Because they're going to have SOLID and 100% coached years of experience with everything from 4 Way to Freefly, and probably both. They're going to HUMILIATE us. They're going to be a radically different generation of incredibly skilled skydivers. This is going to be a bigger shakeup than the transition from static line to AFF (who knows, we might decide we need two of these kids to hold the AFF Instructor in the middle...). This is so radical it's subversive. And it comes with a pizza. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Somebody needs to housebreak this dog....and maybe FIXED as well !! What I saw at Perris today was 5 - 10 year old kids learning how to SKYDIVE. And they pick it up really quick. They're good at it and they really love it. Now just look ahead 8 - 13 years, when these kids are old enough to put a rig on their backs and jump from an airplane. They're going to HUMILIATE us because they'll already be so good. All they'll need to learn at that point is safe parachuting, things like altitude awareness, emergency procedures, and canopy control. All the rest, like 4 Way or Freeflying will already be old hat, they'll just have the sky to play in instead of a small glass and steel chamber. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I prefer the Otter over the PAC due to my own large size (6'4", 220 lbs). The PAC is a great plane and I don't mind at all if I can climb out for a floater slot, but I have to drop to at least one knee if I'm inside the door, where I can still crouch inside an Otter. Plus, with all the people onboard, losing one engine on an Otter means we've still got the other engine for a bailout, with a PAC it's getting out of a glider. And if it becomes a glider below a grand, well that just sucks.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

And this has just exactly WHAT to do with the gummint's new crusade against poen ? Or are you just picking another fight with anything that moves ? Is there never going to be proof of a growing, prospering economy that will satisfy you? I guess things like industry measures and the stock market index don't matter, even when they break records. When the economy sucks and bullshit chicanery shows a "surplus" and it's a Democrat administration, the left says that the economy's booming. When economic indicators say that the economy is humming right along, and it's a Republican administration, the left suddenly disavows that traditional methods of showing that the economy is doing well are worth anything at all. Seems to me that creates quite a credibility problem. - - Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Oil prices closed Friday at Katrina levels due to this latest Iranian crap, so for starters expect a return to $3 gas, if not much worse. Might be a good year to take up BASE jumping..... Haven't looked at a map either, so I'm not sure if Iran still borders on Russia the way it used to do with the USSR. But I'm sure it's close enough for Vladi Putin. If anybody out there wonders how the first and second World Wars got started, this is a frightfully good example. It took one Serb with a revolver to spark the powder keg that became WWI. Israel's going to do what they have to do. What would YOU do if your neighbor started talking about wiping you off the map and called the historic basis for your existence a lie. And was developing nuclear weapons for "peaceful" domestic use when they're one of the world's largest oil producers ? Does anyone actually BELIEVE that Iran needs nuclear power for its domestic energy requirements ? This president of thheirs was personally one of the assholes who seized and held the US Embassy in Teeran back in 1979-80, he's been positively identified by two of the Americans who were held there and remember him. The State Dept hasn't pressed the issue because it's not really that important given the gravity of the present situation, but I believe it's true and it gives us an insight into whhere this asshole is coming from. There's some serious shit coming down the pike people and it's going to make the last few years look like nothing more than prelude. Make some more skydives while you can. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

You know Bill, being the great skydiver you are still does not make you the ultimate Biblical authority. The King James Bible is in fact partly the basis of Modern English as a language, the other influence being the plays of William shakespeare, who also lived at the same time. there is also new eveidnce that Shakespeare himself may have served in a consulting role in the KJV translation. However, on a parallel track, Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, and like the KJV, Luther's translation is a literary basis of the modern German language. It is not however an English to German translation of the KJV, as Luther used existing Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts himself. My family has used the NIV for years, which is accepted by both Calvary Chapel and the Assemblies of God, so what's your beef ? It's not just a matter of modern translations being more understandable (do we REALLY need to figure out what St. Paul means by "kicking against the pricks", or can we just read a modern translation ?). I'm not down on the KJV either, in fact for Christmas I just bought our family a beautiful Family Bible edition of the KJV published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bought it for a family Bible, bought because KJV is so widely accepted, bought it for the beautiful medieval artwork, bought it for the birth, death, baptism, marriage and family trees a family Bible should have. The King James has earned its place, but it's not the last word. The plain truth is that the Holy Scriptures were never written in Enlish in the first place, so ANY English Bible is a translation. And by the way, King James was a notorious homo. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

So now that the economy's stagnating, the war in Iraq is a disaster, and Social Security "reform" has failed (thank God), Bush is resorting to the old standby of attacking porn. I thought the Republicans were about government staying OUT of people's lives. Oh well, I've been wrong before.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Damn, at times like this I really wish I had a job so I could refuse the day off and go in and work. Cheers, Jon S. Well go out and get one. The rest of your rant is not worthy of comment. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'm glad you bring this up because it's easy for people to say they'd go for silver. But how do they know if they've never really found themselves low in the basement?Quote Haven't seen the video yet (is it at skydivingmovies.com ?), but will try to find it. Friendly little Mr. Hackeysack is easy to find, so easy we don't even look for him because we already know where he is. Compare that with your reserve handle, you have to actually LOOK for that. Pulling the reserve handle is NOT a part of normal events. It's one reason why there are so many two out situations. You can train for it, you can practice, but when the shit hits the fan, who knows ? I don't honestly know if there's even an answer to the dilemma, because we're talking about instinct taking over. And instinct trusts muscle memory more than looking for something else. Curious creatures, we humans... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I get a lot of bad leg cramps too, but thankfully not in the air (yet). Haven't figured it out yet, but am drinking a lot more water, eating bananas and broccoli too. Good luck. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

Done. (El Capitan #159) Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I remember Para Plane Clouds from my student days, there were a couple guys & girls at Seneca Falls who jumped the things. They stick in my memory because they looked more like a "mattress" than any canopy I've ever seen. In those days they had the old "ropes & rings" reefing system that went around the top of the canopy, not under like on the Strato Clouds & Stars. Used to watch the openings, which went from one side to the other and made a "ba-whap !" noise you could hear on the ground. When they opened at all that is, which they usually did, but cutaways were frequent. More than a few people would buy a Cloud in the springtime and be trying to sell it by August, because they couldn't take the brutal openings and had enough fun with the cutaways and decided their old PC wasn't so bad after all. In those days of course you had to have over 200 jumps at most dropzones before they even let you try a square. But when I finally got around to it, my first square jump was on a Cloud that had been relined and sliderized to Strato Cloud specs. It still had the old hard plastic toggles too. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I never had to cutaway from a round canopy either - never. I had a Paracommander and later a Sparrow, which was a mini 21' lightweight sort of a PC clone built for RW. Also tried one jump each on a Starlite and a Piglet II, didn't really care much for either of them. You couldn't really "flare" a PC in the sense that you flare a ram air, because rams are wings and PC's are rounds. But I used to get fantastically soft landings with my PC and acceptable standups with my Sparrow by pulling down on the rear risers. The PC landings were so soft that I gave up on wearing paraboots (that's right kids, we used to wear paraBOOTS), for sneakers. Never tried burying the toggles, as it didn't make sense to me. Pulling the toggles down would not only stall the canopy, but would do so by releasing more air out of 6 side slots (3 on ea. side). That never sounded to good for landing a round, so I never did it. I will admit in those days I was a bony 155 lb 6'3" scarecrow, noadays I struggle to stay below 220 lbs and much as I'd love to jump one again am just too heavy for a round. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I've been wearing glasses under goggles, and long ago just glasses only, with a leash. But this thread has actually got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'll try contacts. My wife's been nagging me about it for years and I need a new prescription whichever way I go. Contacts don't need expensive frames either. Hmmmmm....... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

I'm too lazy to hit any of these links, so would somebody just please spit it out ? If I can see the dropzone, I'm jumping. Unless the pilot won't allow it of course. Just hope there's not a 747 or a C-17 lurking down there under the clouds.... Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

If the risk isn't worth the reward, why would you jump ? The only two or three reasons I can think of are: 1.) to escape from an aircraft that's on fire and/or breaking up midair, 2.) professional/occupational (military, smokejumper, etc.), or 3.) because you LOVE it and it makes you a more complete person. I actually did leave the sport in 1980 because too many people around me were going in or having close calls and I wasn't enjoying it anymore after six years. It was no longer worth it. Now I'm back all these years later because it's revitalized my life and because I believe I can be safe and because it's too beautiful not to jump. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !