kjarv

On Oahu go to Dillingham field, there are 2 DZ's there you can jump from. Pacific Skydiving and Skydive Hawaii. Both are open 7 days a week. Pacific Skydiving has the better aircraft. Superfast Kingair, but during the week they are usually shut down by noon (when they run out of tandem tourists they go surfing...not enough fun jumpers during the week to keep the plane going). Winds usually kick up by afternoon anyway making landing quite sporting. Skydive Hawaii is nice too, they don't run their king air as often as Pacific Skydiving so you might have to ride their Cessna ... Clarence is a really nice guy though. Both DZ's have good guys hanging around. The DZ is small with not too many outs, so sharpen your landing skills. I have read that they cut down the giant trees that usually had nasty rotors coming off of them effectively shrinking an already small landing area, but I haven't been there since they cut the trees so I don't know. Jump tix were $18 a year ago... Both DZ's can provide full rigging services. You can't camp there anymore.... Have fun, the view is unbelievable! A solo belly flight is not wasted on just lookin' at the view!

I've always liked Heinlein's idea from Starship Troopers... In order to vote, you must have had served some form of military/goverment service...

My favorite quote from a rifle team coach (no, not flipping a rifle around like some sort of perverted decoration---accuracy shooting): "I'll teach you everything I know, then I'll beat you" Good on ya for helping them! -kjarv

I'm curious- First of all, I'm not a TM--- but I was at a DZ where I regularly saw Tandem's -freeflying-- headdown for a good portion of the skydive. I bought a friend of mine a Tandem at this DZ and they took her Headdown as well. It looked cool and fun, and the guys at this DZ had a TON of experience. I am curious though, what's the Tandem communitie's thoughts on doing this? After reading this thread about unstable exits, it would seem that this sort of practice would be frowned upon, if not downright dangerous. Thoughts? thanks! -kjarv

Lookin for some DZ.commers here in italy to link up with and do some jumping sometime. I'm calling my home DZ Skydive Salerno right now (In Pontecagnano). Anybody out here? -kjarv

Why does this thread make me think I hear someone sayiing "Don't play with your food"

============================ I started jumping my camera around 300 - 350 or so, and started off on a Triathlon (bad idea) ============================ Curious - why was the Triathlon a bad idea?

Reading Assignment: "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan.

Paint a picture of Marvin the Martian on it and call it the Illudium PU-38 Space Modulator

Why do we never assume that the TSA guy who did this wasn't just being an a**hole and isn't proudly boasting how he wrecked the most expensive piece of luggage of all his friends? -kjarv

Jeezus, 2.3 years to grad - that's a loooong way off and then you'll only be a lt. But you will get paid twice as much twice as often (at least that's what it was when I graduated) I'm currently in the USAF, Major (O-4), Been in since '92 ('88 if you count the USAF Academy). Stationed in Naples Italy with an IT staff of both Civilain, Army, Navy, and Air Force Italians, Army German, US Air Force, Chez Republic Army, and Spanish Navy. My job couldn't have less to do with jumping except for providing enough $ to jump

See Attached Zip file (with excel and html file) to get the numbers. The solution in the attached spreadsheet assumes that the average lap time for the first 8 laps was calculated over the entire 8 laps. The max speed of the car was limited to 96mph which over 8 laps yields an average speed of 90mph (assuming the race started at 0mph). This also models an engine problem that limits the car to some arbitrary max speed. In this scenario to finish the race with an OVERALL RACE average of 180mph, our friend Schumacher would have to make his car do 281.6mph. That's my final answer. OBTW, track distance does not matter as long as the track distance stays the same throughout the race, which is ideal as autoracers usually frown upon having to slow down for construction workers. Blue Skies! -kjarv

A friend of mine has 2 kids who were playing in his living room, spinning, getting dizzy. One fell and bashed his head on the coffee table - leaving an unhurt but crying kid. His quote: "That's it, no more spinning in this house!" my response: "Dude, do you realize you just BANNED spinning in your house? Can I spin if I want to?" He laughed, and I think the kids are free of any tyrannical parentally dictated spin oppression.

I just traveled from El Paso, TX to Naples Italy on the 28th of Dec with no problems carrying my rig on. The X-ray screeners didn't even give the rig a second look. I packed my rig in an inconspicuous black samsonite carry on luggage, along with my wrist altimeter, Audible... my rig has a Cypres too... Thank god I carried it on, my checked luggage didn't fare so well: after the TSA Screeners made sure they went through it the airline (Al Italia/Delta) lost it . It was found a day later--- I am GLAD my rig wasn't checked! Who knows what a TSA Screener goon would have done with it.

Go find your nearest freindly neighborhood escalator... it gives you a great sight picture. You can also 'mark' on the escalator where 9-12 ft is.... BONUS: Escalator rides are free and you don't have to repack! Please don't PLF from the escalator though

BMoore - Nice pic on your home page of the UV-18B Twin Otter: Primary Mission, Jump Platform :) Where do you get time to jump for fun--jeez, camp USAFA must be getting weak I've soloed Sailplanes and though it was fun, skydiving is WAY more fun! true blue '92

Come to Naples, Italy and I'll jump with ya.... but I'm NOT packing your chute =)

Hey! Have fun jumping out here! I'm living in Italy right now, and have only jumped at Salerno so my advice is limited to that experience. They have some strange requirements out here...bring every last piece of documentation you can muster--- bring your USAA license, your reserve repack card, your logbook AND: 1) a note from your doctor that says you are physically fit to skydive (I'm not kidding) The Italian gov't has a requirement for this medical certificate and this DZ is surprisingly difficult about having that piece of paper. I managed to talk my way through it b/c I'm military and I promised to bring one next time. 2) A copy of USPA's 3rd party liability insurance--even though they are a USPA DZ, they didn't seem to know that USPA had insurance so I had to talk through that as well! Make sure your reserve is in date--- if it expires here, the reserve repack process is confusing. If you have your reserve packed in italy, your rig has to be registered and treated like an aircraft....I'm not looking forward to my first reserve repack next month. Flying with my rig to europe was not a problem. I put it in a plain ol black piece of carry on luggage and---CARRIED IT ON!!! Air Italia lost my checked baggage for 3 days, but I had my rig with me so all was okay :) None of the airport screeners took a 2nd look at my rig. Skydivesalerno was very different than any US DZ I've been to (Hawaii, Eloy, Las Vegas, Mississippi) the pace is slow and they seem to run loads when 'they feel like it'...there seems to be no pressure to manifest or pack--- even though everyone is standing around doing nothing and the wx is beautiful----they just stand around. Then suddenly for no reason they'll start shouting out names of people who have manifested themselves on the chalkboard and off you go! Plan to spend more money on jump tix. I think Salerno's tix are $25 US. Prego -kajrv

Nope, when I did this (Feb '00--guess I should go back and edit the story) I only had 21 jumps :( The 170 was a Sabre, and I promptly traded that beasty in for my Tri-190 (hey I had plenty of time to shop on the web while the leg healed up!) I weigh about 180-185---200lb exit weight so I guess my loading on that sabre was 1.1 - 1.2. Added to that was the altitude of the DZ in Vegas, plus the no wind day--- too much for a beginner.... Easily doable now, and heck I coulda handled it at 50 jumps (looking back) but at 21 that was a DUMB maneuver I'm happy to say I've been accident free since then (couple close calls with "yeah, I think I can make it back" and maybe a late flair or two). Now the scares are...hey I'm head down WHOOPS, now I'm not hahaha! blue skies! -kjarv "The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground, and miss" - Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I weigh about 180 (200lb exit weight). I did this too myself about 2 years ago (guess I shoulda mentioned that) which is when I wrote the story. After the accident I bought a Triathlon 190 and it has taken me safely to 134 jumps. I'm far from bored with it... my advice would be go bigger, it's safer, when you get bored, sell it and go smaller!

How Jarv Got That Thing On His Leg In the interests of ensuring the story of how I broke my leg gets properly told, I figured I’d type up this little report. This will make sure that only the truth embellished as I see fit gets told, and everything else is, well, not what I want to believe is true. Besides, I can’t do much else and instead of sitting on my ass, I’ll make an attempt at telling the tale. The ‘halo’ on my leg has some fancy-shmancy medical name I can’t remember, so I will call it the thing on my leg. I’ve got to wear the thing for 3-4 months and my leg should be fully functional in 6 months. I broke the tibia and fibula down near the ankle. I will be on crutches for 3-4 months and should be working off of them for the remaining two. My trip to Hawaii has been delayed for at least 30 days, maybe 60. Most likely 30, as it turns out I can drive an automatic (even though I’m not supposed to, something about driving while impared). I can get around reasonably well…so take a moment and try to laugh at my great American tragedy: 19 Feb…it seemed like any other day in my life. I had a TON of stuff to do in order to prepare for my soon to be delayed PCS to Hawaii….all of which I decided to blow off so that I could go Skydiving. I had just purchased my own rig, the previous two weekends had been totally shitty and this was the first opportunity I had to jump this $2,600 piece of entertainment. The day was outstanding so I headed out to the dropzone, ready to jump my ass off. When I arrived at the DZ, I checked in with the guy who taught me how to skydive for some advice. The parachute I bought was significantly smaller than the rental rig I’d been using. This chute provided 170 sq ft wonderful parachute material, whereas the rental had 280 sq ft. Now, me being a beginner and all figured, hey, that’s a big difference in numbers so I better ask an expert about it before I do something stupid. What I found out was the smaller the number, the faster you fall when you are under canopy. Now, I thought to myself “why in the hell do I want to fall faster…I thought the purpose of a parachute was to slow my dumbass down enough so as not to become a grease spot on the face of the planet?”…so I phrase the question to my instructor “Am I going to be safe with this thing?”…and he quipped, “Sure you’ll be fine,” he went into some detail to remind me how to flare (flaring is the trick you do to slow your chute down so you touch the ground ever so softly and unlike what happened to me). So, I take off, confident that I am perfectly capable of landing my new ‘chute. So, I geared up, got on the next load and thought to myself “Kickass, skydiving is finally going to be cheap …$17/jump, no more rental gear, this is coool”. I should’ve been thinking “Skydiving is going to get real cheap, because after you bust your ass you won’t be able to do it for six months” but I’m not a very forward thinker, so that thought only crossed my mind a zillion times after this skydive. We get up to 13,500ft AGL and I hurtle my fuzzy pink body out the airplane door and at the earth. The skydive was mostly uneventful as far as skydives go…the typical stuff happened, I shit my pants on exit, watch the airplane fall away, think to myself “this is stupid, but MAN it’s FUN, get stable, turn to look at ‘Vegas, then turn to lake mead, then look down and notice the Earth moving towards me in a not-so-friendly manner. I futz around with this in freefall for a bit, then decide to dump (dump is a term skydivers use to mean deploying your parachute…remember I already shit my pants when I left the airplane) at about 4,500ft AGL. Typically you don’t pull that high, but I figured since this was a new chute and my first pack job (yes, I’d packed this thing on my own) I better pull high so I’d have more time to panic in case something went wrong. Fortunately, nothing really went wrong…YET….the chute opened up with a long snivel (a snivel is what a chute does when it is opening ‘softly’ it just kind of hangs up there, pretending it’s not going to open and just when you think “crap, I’m gonna have to pull my reserve” it opens up and you get to not have to wet yourself). Anyway, the chute opens up, I look at it…looks good, I grab the toggles (the thingies that let you steer) and try out the chute. I do the typical control check, make sure the chute can turn left, right, flare, and all the good stuff that I’m going to forget how to do on landing. The chute checks out, and I get to play with it for a bit. As it turns out, one of the reasons to get a smaller parachute is it performs a lot better than a larger chute…and MAN was this FUN! Turns were fast and quick, spirals were great…and I thought to myself “Dang, am I glad I bought this thing”. Once again, my lack of foresight showing…I should’ve been thinking “Ya know, anything this much fun is going to really screw me up”. Oh well. I started getting closer to the ground and at about 1000 ft I start getting setup for landing. Right about now I notice, holy shit, I’m HAULING ASS. I’ve stopped thinking about how much fun this parachute is and start worrying about how FAST it is. I still try to setup for landing, notice the wind is still out of the northwest (wind is good, it slows you down…but as I turn into the wind, God decides to turn off the wind machine so that I can fully experience this cool new fast chute). 800 ft sprints by, I turn base….400 feet, I think holy moly, that 400 ft burned up in about a nanosecond (brain is thinking….man this is FAST…it should’ve been thinking “dude, you can’t land going this fast, get your shit together”). Well, I setup on final approach and things only start to move faster (ya know, you get closer to the things you are about to hit, in this case the PLANET, and they start to move faster). Now my brain is in full “Oh shit” mode, and I do what any reasonable human in a life threatening situation can do…PANIC (remember, I already shit myself on exit…..too bad, I really could’ve used a second). Well, at about 20-25 ft I start flaring, because I just want to try to get something to slow down. Flaring high, for those of you insane enough not to skydive is a BAD thing. What happens when you flare high, is you slow down too high, you stall your parachute, then instead of touching down lightly, you get to plummet from whatever height you stalled and smack into the ground. I remember this, so I don’t do a full flare (don’t want to stall), and instead hold a ½ flare all the way into the ground. So instead of moving at going super fast, I was going half fast. In my brain I’m thinking, “I can still pull this off, I’ll just slide on my ass across the desert, look like a fool and I’ll be fine. Well the time it took to travel that last twenty feet was about a zillionth and ¼ of a second. Fortunately, the human brain has the amazing ability to slow down time when you are about to injure yourself in some grotesque way. It’s God’s way of making sure you don’t miss the good parts, so he equipped us all with slow motion( “oh-shit vision”). Unfortunately it seems to be only installed when you are about to screw yourself. So, as I approach the not-so-friendly earth, I place my right foot down. Notice I used the word place…I watched my foot touchdown then begin to get dragged…I’m thinking “Hey, I might be okay”….then as the dragging continued, my foot got turned from ‘straight ahead’ about 90 degrees so I’m dragging the foot sideways (I think my foot snagged an imaginary bump…probably had something to do with the fact that I put my foot down going ten thousand miles per hour). As it continued to drag, I felt pressure in my knee and had my first inclination that I was about to seriously hurt myself. As the pressure in my knee increased, and I anticipate some gut-wrenching popping sound. Your body also has the amazing ability to respond to your requests, so I was entertained with such a gut wrenching breaking sound. I was also treated to the visual of watching my leg break near the ankle in a Joe Theisman sort of manner. Shock is an amazing thing….I felt no pain at this point (That was being saved for later). At this point I put my left foot down (heck, that one seemed to still be working) and let the rest fall rest on my left leg, then my ass. As I said before, shock is an amazing thing. I’m sitting there, leg broken, thinking to myself “Maybe I just imagined that I broke my leg. I decide that I’m going to try to stand up, but as I sit up and get another look at my leg…I decide that’s a bad idea. It seems I’ve never seen my leg bent at quite that kind of angle before (about 90 degrees in my mind) and so instead of standing I decide to try to move my foot. Needless to say, my foot no longer works, and fortunately, the attempt didn’t cause any pain. Amazingly, I’ve still not felt any pain yet. I look at the injury again, and see my skydiving buds running towards me, so I decide I better get myself together before the pain starts, because after what I saw, I’m SURE it’s gonna start hurting sometime real soon. So I take off my helmet, goggles, altimeter, and gloves as my friends arrive. Now, a word about hurting yourself and your friends reactions. If at all possible, make sure you injure yourself away from your friends so that you can deal with it before they arrive. When they do arrive, the looks of shock on their faces, comments, shouts, general comments about how much that has to hurt is enough to throw you into a state of panic. However, be glad you have friends there, because they are a great distraction and help you through the disaster enormously. As they showed, one called an ambulance which only took 30 minutes to arrive. 30 minutes is about 3.5 years in broken-leg time. They gave me all kinds of great advice like ‘don’t move’ (no shit J) and gave me clothes to rest my head on in an attempt to make me comfortable. One of them mentioned, “We need to try to get his rig off”. This was met by a “no he shouldn’t move”….Now I’m thinking…when the ambulance arrives, they are going to cut every piece of clothing off of my body probably to include my parachute rig….pain or not, the thought of losing $2600 to some emergency technician with a pair of scissors was more painful so I told them to take the mo-fo off before the ambulance got there. Fortunately the process was relatively painless, and the rig was saved (so I can hurt myself on a later date). Well, the ambulance arrived about 100 cursewords later, and they gave pretty much the same reaction as my friends…..people in these situations are funny….same comments “that looks like it hurts” and “don’t move”. Then, as expected they proceeded to cut my clothes. I think they enjoy that, but I didn’t give them the pleasure, cuz I really didn’t give a crap about these clothes. As a matter of fact I don’t give a crap about most of my clothes….good thing I don’t do this more often or everything I own would be cut. Then one of the guys asked me if I wanted morphine (I wonder if anyone says no to that question). So he goes away into the magic ambulance and comes back with…nothing. As it turns out, he called the doctor at the Boulder City Hospital to get permission. Well Dr. Sphincterous (which will always be his name in my mind) didn’t let them give me any morphine because then they wouldn’t be able to do a drug screening. I don’t know what kind of bullshit call that was but I guess if I was on drugs, then I must be evil and deserved to suffer. So now the emergency guys have to load me on the ambulance without any painkillers in my body whatsoever. First they put some fancy shmancy splint on my foot (it was an inflatable jobber), and that hurt. Then they put somekind of stretcher under my sorry ass and picked me up. That hurt too. Then they carried my butt into the ambulance. My fun meter is now pegged. Now they inform me that they have to drive across the dry lakebed (the landing area). Those of you unfamiliar with dry lakebeds probably think they are smooth…well they aren’t…. every bump sends a shot of pain from my leg which now has a direct connection to my brain. I think what shock really is is kind of like the road blocks you see during construction of roads. No one is allowed to go until the pain super-highway is built. The emergency tech decides this bumpy road would be an excellent time to try to put an IV access into my arm. I think I yelled at him. I got no needles in me until the hospital. When I got to the Hospital, I get another healthy dose of ‘wow, that looks like it hurts’. Dr. Sphincterous looks very much like his name, someone takes blood and now the nice Mr. Morphine guy shows up. Mr. Morphine hooked me up, and let me tell ya, that’s great stuff. Interestingly, it doesn’t really take away the pain, it just lets you care a lot less about it. I get doped up, and as I am doped, people keep showing up and asking me to sign stuff. I tell you what, I don’t have clue 1 what I signed, and I’m not sure why they have you do that. Then Dr. Sphincterous realizes I am military and have to travel to Nellis’ hospital (a short 40 freakin miles away). Fortunately though, I wanted nothing to do with Sphincterous so I welcomed the trip. They hooked me up with some more morphine and sent me on my way. I get wheeled into Nellis hospital and the gernie ride was less than pleasant….even with the morphine, it still hurts when someone hits a bump just a little too hard. I get into the emergency room for more “wow that looks painful” and get to meet the doc who is going to fix my sorry ass: Dr. Sorenson. He gets a look at the X-rays that were taken at Boulder City, and kind of laughs at their poor quality. He gives me some options, says I can get surgery, or a cast, but he strongly recommends the surgery. He warned that a cast would not work, and me being about as close to being a doctor as I am to becoming an astronaut decided to trust him. Besides, I might as well get the full exp----DAMMIT, the nurse just smacked into my leg so I had to call her some choice four letter words…..where was I…oh yeah, the full experience. He tells me it’s going to be a couple hours because I guess they had to go out for parts. Finally I get wheeled into prep, where they give me the really good stuff that knocks you the hell out. Four hours later, I wake up in my room. Waking up from anasthesia is a scary sort of excorcist like experience. I can hear voices, and can hear them telling me to do things, but I can’t do them. It was hell. I think I was actually coherent about 0100-0130 when I woke up with an unbelievable pain in my foot. I asked for the nurse who just took her sweet time getting there (I’m sure she hurried, but pain time is much different than real time)….she then dawdled off to get me some morphine (yeah baby), meandered back and shot me up….unfortunately this didn’t work….soon it felt like my foot was on fire, I began to shout explitives (broken-leg tourets syndrome)…woke my poor roomate up, and made Clayton uncomfortable. Finally the nurse be-bopped back in, took off some stupid piece of rubber on my foot and the pain subsided and I went to sleep. Well, that’s pretty much the tale, there was a puking episode from the anesthesia, and there are certainly some interesting stories about me getting around with this silly device attached to my leg…but I don’t feel like telling you how I shower and/or take a shit. Thanks go out to all my friends and family who have schlepped my gimp ass around, brought me food and drink, and generally kept my spirits up. See ya skydiving!