kjarv

Hadn't thought of that--- a tax on nylon--- I need to get a chute made of somethin' else Actually, my understanding of italian law (what I can determine from my extremely weak italian translation skills) is skydiving gear is treated and tracked exactly like an aircraft (I would get a maintenance logbook, similar to one for an airplane) I'm sure the money goes into paying whatever beuracracy that is their aviation system (or maybe it's just funnelled directly to aliatalia to try to bail them out If I was a lifer here in italy, I'd probably just pay the tax and be done with it, but as I'm just here for another 6-10 months, I can't help thinking it's a waste of dinero. ------------------- to hijack my own thread: It sure would be nice if USPA would publish foreign country skydiving rules/laws especially if the DZ's are claiming to be USPA members.

I've had my rig inspected/repacked here in italy for the past 1.5 years--- it's the 2 year point that's the problem. Per italian law, I gotta get a logbook here or get the rig inspected/repacked once every 2 years in the U.S.

I am currently living in Italy and came up on a silly italian rule. As it turns out, in italy, they will only allow your rig to be used for 2 years from when it entered the country before your rig has to be 'registered' with the italian government. Trouble is, this registration costs 140 euro, and I'm generally opposed to spending money for no return on investment. All you get for your money is an italian log book that is pretty much just an equivalent to a US packing data card. So my options are: 1. Go back to the US and get my rig inspected/repacked--- trip back to the US will cost at least $500 so not a great plan. 2. Ship my rig back to the US for an inspection repack, which will cost money in shipping, and expose my rig to the US postal system and leave me without it for untold weeks :( 3. Follow the rules and waste 140 euro. 4. Fake an entry on my packing data card to make it look like my rig was inspected/repacked in the US--- FREE! To be clear, I have no interest or intent on skipping any repack cycles. This came up at my italian DZ doing my last repack and the DZO informed me that he wouldn't be able to do another repack or allow me to jump there anymore when my rig reaches the 2 year point in italy (this Dec). Is there anything I need to know before I do choose option 4? Any tips on faking an entry? DZO requires that we operate the handles on a reserve repack so I could kipe the riggers seal before they get their hands on it. Is there anything that gets done on a reserve repack in the US that they might not do here in Italy? thanks -kjarv

Oh god, the Shave Ice---I MISS IT (hold the beans though) Dang, 3 years there and no one clued me into Breakfast in a Barrel---sounds excellent. I need some Loco Moko too, and some Poke! Dammit, I miss hawaiin food. I need a Kahlua Sandwich from Da Kine (the buggas are loaded)! Screw the hawaiin beaches, I'm gonna have to go back just to get local kine grinds :) -kjarv

Spam Musubi's from any 7-11 in Hawaii.... damn I miss those things.

HH, Great idea, having to hunt DZ's in Europe has been a challenge :) ============== 1 - N 40.62567 E 014.91562 2 - LIRI 3 - Skydive Salerno 4 - Italy 5 - Pontecagnano ============== ============== 1 - N 41.6654 E 012.74682 2 - (Not sure it has one, small grass Strip) 3 - FreeFly Nettuno 4 - Italy 5 - Nettuno ============== ============== 1 - N 42.25853 E 003.10958 2 - LEAP 3 - Skydive Empuriabrava 4 - Spain 5 - Ampuriabrava (Airport listing is spelled with an 'A', not sure why) =============== Coordinates were taken by me while on the DZ itself (not on the runway) Hope it helps! -kjarv

Great DZ! I took a week off to do nothing but jump and found a gem of a DZ in Italy. Staff is friendly and professional. DZO is a great guy and overall DZ vibe made you feel like you were jumping at your own personal family DZ. The weekend skydivers were friendly and welcomed the 'new guy'. The bar serves great italian food...there was no reason to leave the DZ! Loads were well paced with quick turnaround times even when they were down to a single Porter.... and oh, the glory of 15,000 ft jumps makes the 23 euro jump ticket (european standard) seem reasonable. If you're in Italy this is the place to go!!!

My rig is worth more than my '91 Toyota Celica AND my '94 Alfa Romeo T-Spark...

Yippeee! Got a week off, takin a train to BFU, reggio emilay Italy. I'll be there sat 29 Aug - 5 Sep... any dz.commers gonna be there? -kjarv "Pudge controls the weather"

The best practice I've found for learning canopy flare 'sight picture' is find your nearest escalator and ride it down... While I'm sure this won't work too well for high speed landings (I haven't found a 'hook turn' escalator that planes out at 40mph for 50 ft!) it does provide a nice slow descent so you can learn what the ground is supposed to look like as you approach (except of course, you won't be landing in the mall---at least, not on purpose) You don't have to pay for your trip up, You can practice judging 12ft and you can practice the 'accuracy' trick as well. Leave your jumpsuit and rig at home though, someone might ask questions :) -kjarv "Good afternoon, we're gonna have a great jump today!" -Squirt

If you're in Hawaii, this is the DZ to go to. Kind of a tandem factory, but they don't 'ignore' fun jumpers like some other tandem places I've been. Staff is professional, friendly and very experienced. There is a 'clicky' vibe when you first start out, but that's probably a function of most people going through there being one-time tourists. Once you get to know everyone it's easy to find someone to jump with/make friends. It's open all week, but you'll likely jump alone if you go M-F; local funjumpers are usually only out during the weekends. But don't turn your nose up at a solo jump, the view alone is worth a solo belly fly just for the best view going! Their King Air is super fast to altitude (often giving you more than 13.5k) They have the Fastest aircraft of the the 3 dropzone operations there.

Was on holiday in Barcelona and saw that Empuriabrava was a mere 1.5 hour drive away so I took a day to go there--- Empuriabrava was outstanding. DZ staff was friendly, helpful, and professional--- I swear everyone on the staff spoke 5 languages (luckily for me, on of the languages was english) Going to a DZ only for a day, I figgered I'd end up doing a few solo's and going home, but the people funjumping there were very friendly and I was doing 2way sit flies after only 1 solo (solo was by choice---new DZ familiarization jump) The planes fly constantly---loads were easy to get on. DZ brief was throrough, paperwork was easy to fill out and process was fast. Landing area is big enough---even when winds are not favorable... They do have wind limits for jumpers and they announce them (50, 100, 200, 500 jumps if I remember correctly--- but the winds only grounde 50 jumpers when I was there) the wind for 50 jump limit was pretty light, but I think it had more to do with wind direction than strength in this incident. There are plenty of outs, but I didn't see anyone land out. I loved it... go there!

I got brand all brand new gear because I had the good fortune of having some sphincterous break into my apartment and steal (among other things) my first rig (used) Replacement cost coverage rules

You're in the UK--- go 2kComposites and support your economy

Ripley's should have consulted with Kallend before trying that--- I'll bet he KNEW it was gonna do that and could have shown them the math... But then again, maybe they just wanted to smash up this guys rubber band ball

Fair enough, haven't seen the pic... be careful and stay out of the hospital!

This is way off topic but, why should taking such a picture be illegal? Agreed that it's in poor taste, but why do so many people think they have some "right to privacy" while they are in public. I haven't seen the pic, but I'm assuming it wasn't taken in a hospital emergency room (where you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy) If you are out in public as long as someone doesn't physically hurt you, they should be allowed to look at you or listen to you (and yes, that includes looking at you/listening to you with recording devices). And yes, they should be allowed to share those recordings (I'm undecided on whether they should be allowed to profit from them) In this case, I would think it should only be illegal if the picture taker is taking pictures INSTEAD of rendering assistance... But I'm just a caveman, your fancy picture devices, they frighten me. -kjarv

If ya ain't cheatin' ya ain't tryin! -kjarv

Go to the Big Island and go SCUBA Diving with the GIANT Manta Rays (night dive)... The guides plant a bunch of lights in a bay which attract plankton which attract the Manta's--- Those Manta rays are freakin huge! Super cool to see/have a giant sea creature swimming just inches away from you! -kjarv

Got great tech support from Airtec as well -- their response: I have to admit that this was indeed an unusual flight. Thank you for clarifying the exact altitudes AGL of demo aera and DZ. To answer your initial question: Your Cypres would have worked as designed if needed. Only if the plane flies below the elevation of the airfield of departure, the Cypres would be affected. You find these infos on page 32 of The Cypres 1 Userd Guide or on page 30 of the Cypres 2 Users Guide. On your flight, this was not the case because the demo area was higher and the plane always stood above take off altitude. To explain what would happen: When you fly below the departure elevation, the Cypres will recognize that. It will recalibrate to the altitude where the plane is flying. If the plane ascends again, the Cypres will take the lowest flight altitude of the plane as new reference for the ground. The advice to turn the Cypres off and on in a flying plane is wrong. If you would have done so, the Cypres would have taken the flight altitude as ground reference, and the activation altitude at your DZ would have been higher. If you would have switched your Cypres off and on in the circeling plane at 1500 ft above the Demo area, your activation altitude at the DZ would have been at apx. 2400 feet AGL ( 1500 ft "ground" + 750 ft activation alt. + 150 ft elevation level difference between Demo area and DZ ) This is not funny. If in doubt, please have a look in the manual. If still in doubt - drop us a line or give us a call. It's a pleasure for us to help you evaluating if a certain jump plan is feasible or not.

I wear contacts and have had great success with a Z-1. I've put about 150 jumps on it, and I've done RW, Sit, HeadDown, and tracking jumps with it and have no problems with my contacts or even noticing wind on my face. I have had it open in flight once, but when that happened, I had no problem reclosing it and had no problems with my contacts when that happened. I also flipup the visor after opening and have no problems with my contacts then either... Hope that helps and enjoy your new helmet whatever your choice! -kjarv

All, Alti-2 just contactetd me and let me know that my Neptune would indeed get confused in such a situation. They also said that putting the Neptune in Manual mode would resolve the issue! Kudos to Alti-2 for monitoring these forums and taking the initiative to contact me! That's great customer service! -kjarv

Lister, Yeah, I would have loved to have been warned, but it's at the very least partially my fault--- I don't speak nearly good enough Italian! I thought they were joking when I noticed that the flight plan was different and I asked them in my best italian what was going on and they told me we were going to Naples! Heck, I was relieved that they didn't MAKE me join the demo jump when whe got there hahaha

rigerrob, Yeah, I'm gettin' the feeling that I got lucky that the CYPRES didn't do anything strange, but I'm also comforted that it DIDN'T do anything strange. Salerno sold it's Caravan, don't know why it's still on the website--- not enough skydivers there to support it It sure was nice to have the Caravan while it lasted.... I kinda thought it would've been a better idea to drop us off first too, but I'm selfish

Hi all, Just had an interesting skydive. Got on a load that unbeknownst to me had 'demo' skydivers aboard, which meant a long aircraft ride from the DZ (Pontecagnano, Italy) to the Demo area (Naples) then back to the DZ. The ride: aircraft ascended to about 1500 ft, cruise 30 minutes to the demo area, DESCENDED to about 500' to find the demo area, Climbed back to about 1.5k circled for about 30 min, Climed to 3k, let the demo jumpers out, descended to 500ft for a flyby of demo area cruise climbed back to DZ to about 17k (30 more minutes) then descended to 14k as one of the older gentleman left on the aircraft started to feel bad. exit at 14k for a normal jump BUT: My question is, what in the hell was the status of my CYPRES, Neptune, and ProDytter after all that climbing and descending. The Neptune: The Neptune/Pro-Dytter were both in sync when we left the airport. Then the Neptune 'beeped' at me when we descended through my 1500ft warning altitude at some point during the series of climbs/descents. When we were back on the cruise climb I noticed it gave me the 'active' beep as we began climbing from the 500 ft flyby and I knew I couldn't trust my neptune for this jump. During the jump my Neptune gave my first alarm about 1000ft high(I have it set for 5k). The alarm surprised me, I did the trigger 'turn and track' then got that funny 'this ain't right feeling' cross checked with hand altimeter--yup, 1000 ft off... whoops. The second alarm also went off about 1000ft high. after the jump, I noticed my Neptune has an extra jump registered on it, with an exit altitude of 2k and a deployment alti of 1100 ft. The neptune also reported my skydive with an exit altitude of 12k and a deployment alti of 1200ft. I know we jumped at 14k and I dumped at about 3.5 I'm pretty sure it's off unless my Altimaster was off as well--- I have to assume that the Neptune got confused with the long ride and reset it's 'dz' altitude to the A/C altitude while we were either cruising or circling. I don't know if there is a way or even if it's a good idea to fix this in flight... The Pro-Dytter The Pro-Dytter behaved like a champ, it didn't alarm on our aircraft climbs/descents and it only armed on the first climbout from the airport. Its warning alarms went off as normal (5k and 3.5k respectively)---good to know and way to go L&B! The CYPRES The CYPRES didn't do anything strange (WHEW) but after the behavior of the NEPTUNE, the thought crossed my mind that it too could have become confused and thought I was lower that I actually was. I was concerned with all the descent/ascent stuff might activate the CYPRES, but I'm pretty sure that it won't go off unless your descent rate exceeds 78mph (6,900 fpm), but I was unsure. There was also advice going around the DZ after this jump that we should have all turned off our CYPRES while we were circling then reactivated it after the demo jump and to our cruise ascent to 14k. I am pretty positive that this would not be the thing to do, but people with far greater jump numbers than I have were giving that advice... I was tempted to just turn the CYPRES off and leave it off when I realized that it may be 'confused' but was unsure so I did nothing--- and it worked out -whew- Should I have turned off the CYPRES and left it off? Should I have turned off the CYPRES then turn it back on in flight? (I really thing that would be very bad) Should I have/is there a way to reset/calibrate the Neptune inflight---is it a good idea? After this, I know I'm glad I'm using a non-electronic altimeter on my wrist (good ol Altimaster) and the Mk-I eyeball got more use than normal as yet another crosscheck on this jump. Thoughts? Edit: Neptune Version 2.1.1 (no previous problems) Aircraft - Pilatus Porter At no time did the pilot go below the original DZ altitude (Pontecagnano is right on the coast) thanks! -kjarv "Have you slipped the surly bonds of earth?"