champu

I was talking about this difference in distinction with a friend of mine yesterday. It's for this reason that I believe VFS will do less to bring freefliers to competitions, and more to bring competitive belly fliers to freeflying.

On one hand I'm not a fan of the bungie + rubber band method of stowing the slider. On the other hand I'm not a fan of having my slider catch air and fly into my control system while I'm in the middle of a 270. So... I had my rigger sew a couple wraps of webbing around my front risers a few inches above the rings and that's all it takes to catch the slider grommets and keep them down. I've seen more elaborate tabs added to risers, but it really doesn't take that much, and these are very unobtrusive.

How open are you to heeding a recommendation that you not waste your time?

- Thanks Amy and company for putting on a great meet. - Thanks Keith for the stills / outside video on our round six. - Thanks Sara for explaining a better way to shoot video of a B. - Thanks Eliana for putting Jedi up this weekend. - Thanks everyone who traveled for the event. - Thanks to the judges for putting up with our dive pool. - Thanks to the Case Grande carnival operator for the goldfish.

Don't worry, small rat-like dogs all go to hell in the end.

Hey now... Mel's actually pretty good with names. I, on the other hand, have been failing miserably lately. Too many wonderful people. I've run out of room.

Congratulations to all the new record holders! I know it was a long weekend for all of you, so [frap] hats off to your determination.

A truly elite skydiver is too busy getting better at something to spend time thinking he or she is a badass or belittling others. It's okay to think you suck from time to time. In fact, it's probably good for you.

By far my most violent malfunction has been under a Katana 107 loaded at about 1.7. It had 5+ line twists before the canopy was even inflated, and when it did inflate I was on my side looking at a canopy crossing above and below the horizon. I think I chopped it at 2500 ft because there was absolutely no point in trying to fix it. This past weekend my Velocity 90 (loaded at about 2.0) had only 3-4 line twists. As it was sniveling I could see/feel the twists so I did my best to hold the tops of the risers even in the hopes that the canopy would inflate flying level. I got close, but it was still in a gradual/medium turn to the right. I started to kick out but even the gradual turn made it hard to pick up momentum and I was passing though 1800 ft so I chopped it. So in my experience, you can make line twists a less-severe malfunction by being proactive during your opening. Not necessarily fighting them, but just making sure you stay even in your harness and holding the risers even while the canopy inflates. In the end, though, it's like another poster said, it's all about knowing your canopy. Could I have salvaged the Velocity opening last Saturday? Maybe. But when you fly a canopy where you do 270s from 600 ft, you have to appreciate that from 1800 ft you're potentially only a few revolutions from the ground.

28 mils? what is that going to accomplish? At the very least it also needs 5 mils of silver plating.

No one ever told the cables that the signals they were made to carry were digital. That said, yes digital interfaces, particularly at the distances, bandwidths, and data rates associated with A/V equipment are going to be much more robust against signal distortions than are analog interfaces. The main problem I have with all the different cable pedigrees out there is the lack of knowledge / intentional misinformation about what actually makes a cable any better than another one. It's not uncommon to see a cutaway diagram of the cable body proudly displayed on the front of the package with eleventy thousand layers of crap surrounding the conductors, and meanwhile the cable has been folded up inside the package producing kinks all over it and the terminations were swedged on by a machine stamping them out as fast as it could. No one's home theatre / computer set up is under attack by cosmic noise forces conspiring against them that can only be stopped by space age shielding. Cable-related quality losses are introduced by phase and amplitude ripple which are, in turn, caused by discontinuities in the transmission path. (e.g. crappy termination of the connectors and kinks in the cable that distort the geometry of the transmission line)

Didnt look either I'll wager 1) It's difficult / impossible to tell how fast the props are actually turning from watching video due to temporal aliasing. 2) If the power is cut to the engine but the prop is still spinning and you hit it, it's still going to ruin your weekend. 3) I'm not a twin-rated pilot, but my understanding is that cutting the power to one engine forces you to fly in a slightly wonky orientation to maintain level flight and probably puts people trying to climb around on the roof (and the whole aircraft as a result) at more of a risk than if you just left the thing running. /edited to add: 4) Given the stability issues the skyvan airframe experiences with both engines running and CGs moving about inside the fuselage, I'd consider experimenting with even more bizarre CG configurations with only one engine running to be, pardon my French, fucking stupid.

I worked at a CompUSA back when I was in high school. Cables were the big ticket items for stores (even more so, if you can believe this, than extended warranties.) It was not uncommon to see 1000% markups. Later in life I interned at Motorola and had the fun and rewarding job of pulling and terminating dozens and dozens of cat5 runs through labs full of test equipment. Based on what they were paying me and the apparent lack of anyone else in the department who actually knew how to put an RJ-45 connector on correctly, I'd say they got those cables at a steal. Today if you want to talk about what I consider "really expensive cables", I could point you to high-speed digital wiring assemblies for spacecraft whose applications are so complex and demanding that designing, building, and testing them costs over a million dollars.

Plus, doesn't the IOC classify skydiving as a "motorized sport" making it ineligible? It's no more a motorized sport than bobsledding or skiing. Unless you make the team carry the sled or the skiers hike to the top of the run each time. We've switched over to calling it VFS. The rule sheets, dive pools, and whatnot have always referred to it as "VRW/VFS" to the best of my knowledge. We also jokingly refer to FS as "HFS." ...but then why isn't CRW now CFS? What happened to the "S"? Did they forget they're skydiving cause they're not in freefall very long?

"Since you're new here, let me familiarize you with the rules. Left handed landing pattern at all times. First person down sets the direction. Exit order is Atmonauti groups, largest to smallest. ... " "Where do I get out if I'm doing RW?" "R What?" "Belly flying." "Largest to smallest... Atmonauti groups." "I'm not flying Atmonauti." "It says in your logbook you've made 1200 jumps, am I to believe that in no point during those 1200 jumps you learned about following the rules of exit order at a dropzone?" "Yes, but-" "Well have I not made the rules perfectly clear to you? "Yes, but-" "Good. Now enjoy your jumps... but don't test me on my rules."

I don't believe such organizations are representative of Middle Eastern culture, any more than the KKK, Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski are representative of American culture. If we blame the actions of extremism on an entire culture, we should not be surprised if we are judged the same illogical way. I think we're in what is sometimes referred to as "violent agreement" regarding that point. My post was actually intended to disassociate the cultural concerns and goals of many non-western people (again, not just in the middle east) from the statements and actions of extremist groups (again, not just in the middle east) which generally have deeper roots in less noble power struggles and territorial disputes. The discussion was started about whether or not they are only attacking us because we're over there. The answer, and ramifications of that answer, depend heavily on what you mean by those italicized words.

This is true, and it's cause for a lot of general disgust for the United States in many countries, not just middle eastern nations. I guess I can empathize with that, there's a lot of things about American "culture" that disgust me. But I think saying that that's what organizations like Al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, and Abu Sayyaf have set out to put an end to is giving them too much credit. I believe they've intentionally defined their goals such that they can't be met reasonably, and their resulting plan is carrying out what you can only describe as random attacks on the interests of states that have developed diplomatic or economic ties to peoples that they've grown to hate for other reasons. We're just dopey bystanders.

Hmmm. I'm not convinced that if I had some canopy trouble (knotted brakelines etc) and was not sure what it was (even if I was sure)... that getting extra landing speed or front risering the canopy would really be my priority. I would probably have taken a straight in landing. Just my thoughts... My same impression. Poor trade off if you ask me. The problem with doing a high performance landing when you have a broken brake line or bound up brake lines is that you can't bail out of a turn very effectively on rears. Even if you've done a particular turn hundreds of times, you are under more stress this time. If you misjudge your turn and find yourself digging on rears you're going to stall your canopy and break yourself. Also (and this applies mostly to the broken line scenario as it sounds like his hands were in the bound up toggles during the turn) if you hesitate / fumble when going to rears from fronts and don't have your hands in your toggles you're going to break yourself. In a situation like this, with 15 mph winds and a 1.6 wing loading, it should be a piece of cake to have a nice soft landing on rears with no induced speed.

Another, albeit less noble, reason to wait it out in high winds... If the winds are strong from 3000' all the way to the ground and you have a malfunction, you may never see your main again. That said I'll usually continue to jump in 20-25kt winds if it's pretty steady and from a direction free of obstacles. However, if it's a hot day, the wind keeps changing directions, and/or dust devils are in bloom I have no problem waiting until it calms down later in the afternoon. Around here that tends to happen at lunch time in the summer when I could use a break anyway.

I look back at my elementary school education, and the various special programs I found myself funneled into, as a bit of a curiosity. (btw, if there was any doubt, it's remarkably difficult to play down how big of a nerd you are during unpleasant encounters with large groups of "cool" kids when even the school administration has labeled you thus.) I remember being given sudoku puzzles in first grade. (although instead of numbers it was different colored bears to be pasted onto a grid.) I remember all sorts of logic puzzles and homework assignments such as, "invent something" in third grade. In fifth grade (I'm getting to my point, bear with me) we had an interesting exercise that your quote reminds me of. We'd read the first chapter of a story, then answer questions about what we thought was going on or what we thought about particular characters' traits. Then we'd read another chapter and answer another round of questions. At the end of the story we'd have to write a paper not about the story, but about why we thought our answers changed. The curiousity I have is why I loved all this kind of stuff and completely ate it up while my contemporaries (even many who were in the programs with me) didn't seem to enjoy it.

A like study in which the vast majority of subjects routinely relied on nylon and nickel-plated steel (or stainless for the fashion conscious) to dissolve a peril they've indtroduced themselves into might yield some interesting results. All that aside, I can't help but picture a researcher rapping his or her fingers on a desk thinking, "How is it there are so many people that think they know everything and allow arrogance to mask themselves from their own shortcomings? I must create a test to study these unfortunate creatures and better understand this phenomena."

There are a handful of people here, left and right, whuffos and thousand jump wonders alike, whose posts boom with a lack of insight, humor, tolerance, and creativity. I'll assert (without proof!) that we'd all be better off if we shifted even half our time spent being crass towards those who don't share our views to drawing in the reigns of those who represent our views in a virulent manner.

Hey, just be happy it's not a cross-braced canopy. They are so short and so dense with all that extra material in there that packing a new one is like folding a greased volleyball.

My experience has been similar with engineers in the aerospace industry.

Absolutely. If you look at the training that went into, and the scores that came out of, the top open class teams in both VRW and 4-way FS at the 2007 nationals, you'll find that open-class skydiving is open-class skydiving no matter how you cut it. However, getting five people together on a team and rising to a level of "sucking horribly" (which I'll define as a 1-point average) is, indisputably, a much more difficult proposition with VRW. I did both last year, and I am doing both this year, because they are both incredibly fun and I apparently have too much time on my hands.