champu

I would strongly urge against pulling your slider to the bottom of your risers after you have released your brakes. It takes even longer than doing it with the brakes stowed, you run a greater risk of inducing a control system malfunction, and now you're doing it with more airspeed. This is not to say newbies should be collapsing their sliders and pulling them down behind their heads before they do a control check, but rather that they shouldn't bother pulling them down at all. I would also strongly urge people who choose to simply collapse their slider and leave it at the top of their risers to use link bumpers or slink hats or something to keep the grommets at the top of the risers so they don't creep down and interfere with your control lines or access to your risers.

This depends on the specifics of the designated pattern direction, landing area layout, and any nearby obstacles. Whether you're doing a 90, 180, 270, or whatever, you don't want to start a turn you "have to finish." So picture whatever pattern you are going to fly to your initiation point, then picture having to stop your turn 45-90 deg early and landing straight in from there. Are you pointed at obstacles? For example, at Elsinore the swoop area is separated from the 90s only area by a runway which makes for a nice unambiguous barrier. If I set up to do a 180 deg turn landing towards the lake that means I'll be doing a left-hand 180. If I have to abort my turn 45 degrees early I will fly diagonally across the runway and into the aircraft loading area / main landing area (not cool.) If I set up to do a 270 deg turn landing towards the lake that means I'll be doing a right-hand 270. If I have to abort my turn 45 degrees early I have several hundred feet of run-out room to work with. I don't know if that was his thought process when he brought up levels of commitment to turns, but it's something to think about when choosing a pattern, turn direction, and type of turn.

When we would book lecture halls to do on-campus presentations for my university's skydiving club these two topics were usually what we'd talk about. They're both informative and accessible.

What if she had a petite female build, but broke out mad wushu skills to do the ass-kicking?

I would get rid of dollar bills, pennies, nickles, and dimes. Just have quarters, dollar coins, fives, and up. ...and can gas stations stop with the 9/10 of a cent bullshit already? C'mon people, the 1930s are over.

I clumped your, Ron's, and jaybird's contributions to this thread together, sorry for the confusion. My point was simply that not all internal struggles are universal, so not everyone is going to need or appreciate the tools that others use to get through life. This is especially true if one of those tools involves telling people that all internal struggles are universal, and the tool they are using is the only way.

One adjective.... ah ah ah Twwwwoo adjectives... ah ah ah Threeeeee adjectives... ah ah ah Four! Foooooour adjectives.... ah ah ah /edited to add: But in all seriousness... In this thread the few of you have stated you think things like having desires for women and not men or not lusting after women besides your wife are some kind of horrible toil placed on your back. There's also admission of sexual deviancy at a ridiculously young age and acting out violently against people deemed "prissy" because that was the only tool in your bag. Last but not least, there's an inability to differentiate homosexuality and promiscuity demonstrated by use of terms like "homosexual lifestyle" which we all know is code for, "picking some different person up from the gay bar every week and sleeping with them." The fact that you guys project all that crap, your crap, onto the rest of the world and conclude that there therefore can't be any moral compass besides Jesus would be more more terrifying if it were not so amusing.

I learned the alphabet, basic arithmetic, and how to sing, "row, row, row your boat." Maybe that's why I'm an atheist.

Table-breakin' twice in one page... ...seesh.

It's bad, but it's not "just as bad as leaving a temp pin in the reserve." Good grief, what is it with the crappy analogies surrounding this incident? As I said before, I've made about 2600 jumps where there was a cypres in the rig, and it could have been misrouted on every single one and I'm still here. I've also had four malfunctions, if there was a temp pin in my reserve on each of them, I'd be dead. End of discussion. The reason people are against 100% blame on the rigger is because such a decision sends a clear message: "don't be a rigger." The reason people are against any blame on Airtec/SSK is because such a decision sends a clear message: "don't try and make the sport safer."

Your reply to my post doesn't make sense given what I wrote and what it was in response to. But hopefully I can clarify... The student is dead. That is the end-all-be-all undesired result of this incident. No one cares in any direct sense that the closing loop wasn't cut; a cut closing loop isn't some fundamental goal of any given skydive. This isn't a "wrongful closing loop not cut case" it's a "wrongful death" case. Saying that "X party is 100% responsible for the closing loop not being cut" may or may not be true, but in either event it's a dishonest representation of the case.

If the student's actions were different during the skydive, then the student's survival would not have even been a function of the rigger's mistake. Therefore it does not follow that the rigger is 100% responsible for the student's death. I simply can't see your viewpoint as being defensible. My reserve closing loop could have been misrouted on all 2600 or so jumps I've made with a cypres in my rig for all I know and I'm sitting here, alive, writing this. So here's a thought exercise which is me being an engineer and not a lawyer... Given that this was a rig used by students and other low-timers and assuming this was a one time rigging mistake, what is the probability that this mistake would actually result in a fatality? For the sake of simplicity let's make the liberal assumption that if the loop was routed correctly and there was a cypres fire that it would definitely result in survival. To answer you'd need to know or estimate 1) total number of student jumps made for some period of time 2) total number of student jumps resulting in a cypres fire (or that would have if there was no cypres and there was a fatality) during that time period and 3) total number of jumps made on a repack cycle of the rig in question. Do you think you're going to calculate a probability anywhere near 1?

They've already axed three 10-11 figure programs from my industry, so... sorry, I don't buy that it can't be done. It doesn't take that many people to agree in order to get rid of something, it takes appropriation committees that don't have chairpeople with egregious conflicts of interest.

What's tricky is that when you overhear it, it's not always at a time where you can drop what you're doing, convince both the person who said it and the person they said it to to drop what they're doing, and hold an impromptu lesson in physics. I've found that the people who perpetuate things like the 45 degree rule also happen to be the people who like to yell a dozen reminders about god-knows-what in the middle of jump run when everyone has their helmet on, the door is open, people are trying to climb out, and they ought to just shut up (unless, of course, there is actually an emergency.)

If your whole group is right there in visual range at your break off altitude I would say break off as planned. If you really are only a couple seconds above the cloud base, you're still going to be able to locate the people nearest you pretty easily once you come out the bottom, so waiting around an extra second or two doesn't help you. If the cloud base turns out to be at or near pull altitude it's better to deal with maybe one other person than definitely four other people being near you. I would probably delay my pull a couple seconds after I exited the cloud and wave off a little more deliberately while looking around to assist in any last minute evasive actions. If the cloud base is below your pull altitude or your group is scattered out of visual range at your break off altitude then good luck!

This may just be unfortunately imprecise use of the word "program," but across-the-board percentage cuts often don't work out for the best. Buying 90% of a bridge, for example, is dumb for what should be obvious reasons. Also, what might take one person 20 hours could take five people 3 hours or could take ten people 2 hours. So while you can demand efficiencies in some cases, underfunding things can just as easily end up costing us more in the long run. Deciding on specific whole things that we just don't want and axing them outright is more difficult to defend politically, but is where we'll reap the greatest benefits. Demanding that "The Military" or "Entitlements" or some other non-monolithic category of spending be cut by x% doesn't really do anything but display a poorly thought out disdain for said category of spending.

If you were going to mandate the photo thing, I would leave it up to the manufacturers to have in the packing instructions that are already specific to the rig tell you what to photograph (rough angle and field of view guidelines) and after which steps. I'm not going to take that as you wanting to mandate pics. You'd have every rigger in the country hunting you down.! But! manufacturers doing something like pointing stuff out like that couldn't hurt, eh? In reality, they already do. Pics with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. You're correct, I don't think any policy or equipment design changes are appropriate as a result of this incident. I was just suggesting that if (and that's a big "if") you wanted things to be photographed that the best people to tell you what to photograph are the rig manufacturers. Anyone who went off and assumed that I actually think this should be mandated after reading my above post needs to calm the hell down when using the internet.

Glad I wasn't the only one. Indeed. And the first time I skimmed past it I read, "Drunken Church Handling Tips and Techniques."

If you were going to mandate the photo thing, I would leave it up to the manufacturers to have in the packing instructions that are already specific to the rig tell you what to photograph (rough angle and field of view guidelines) and after which steps.

I'm not talking about whether or not selling the certificate is screwing over the intent you had when you wrote "non-transferrable" on the certificate, I'm talking about whether it's screwing over the intent you had when you gave the certificate to the event organizer. Is it that you want to give out more certificates to advertise more broadly and you put non-transferrable on there to limit the number that actually get redeemed because not everyone who wins one wants a Vector? (or any new rig for that matter?) The purpose of the certificates is to help organizers draw people to their events. This often gets our company logo on advertising. It also offers someone a chance to get a good deal on a container. Our intent is not to have someone who knows very little about our company the opportunity to act as a "dealer" to sell one of our containers. We research people who want to sell our containers pretty thoroughly before we offer them a dealership. They need to be able to answer questions and help guide the person they are selling to through the process of purchasing a container. Someone who spends $1 for a raffle ticket at a boogie does not automatically meet these criteria. Mark Klingelhoefer Thank you, that was significantly more helpful than your other responses. I imagine when you're working with the person who won the certificate to redeem it you have to provide a lot of the dealer guidance you speak of. Whether it's the original winner or someone who bought it for a reasonable price at the end of the day the raffle took place, Vector/UPT logos made it into the event ads, and someone's walking around with a rig that they'll probably tell people they got a good deal on with a certificate. I can appreciate not wanting to see these things get sold online for hundreds of dollars because that encourages people to shop for rigs via certificates on dropzone, but I'm a little hung up on your apparent disgust for people who split it with a buddy locally and you talking about that like it's getting away with something nefarious.

I'm not talking about whether or not selling the certificate is screwing over the intent you had when you wrote "non-transferrable" on the certificate, I'm talking about whether it's screwing over the intent you had when you gave the certificate to the event organizer. Is it that you want to give out more certificates to advertise more broadly and you put non-transferrable on there to limit the number that actually get redeemed because not everyone who wins one wants a Vector? (or any new rig for that matter?)

If you sponsor gear in full or in part for someone, and they turn around and sell it, I can understand that you'd be upset, and I can understand why said person might have a hard time getting anyone to sponsor them in the future. If you sponsor an event and offer discount certificates as raffle prizes or awards (that's my understanding of how most of these certificates come into circulation) I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how selling the certificate (or using it to buy a rig for someone else and splitting the savings with them) screws over the intent of the manufacturer. Maybe I'm not as in touch with the intent of manufacturers when they provide these certificates to events as I think I am.

Yes, even quickly got us into counseling. was told nothing. And I get it constantly..."Wow what happened" Close friends and family have no clue. No one does other than her and she's not telling. So I as the dumb guy am left with no answers. After my previous relationship I came up with the 10% rule and imposed it upon myself. You take 10% of the duration of the relationship and tack that on to the date you broke up. After that expires you: 1) Stop bringing it up, because by then you're going to start straining your relationships with friends and family. 2) Stop letting innocent questions like, "how are you and so and so doing?" from someone you haven't seen in a while devolve into sob sessions about how out of the blue the break up was. 3) Decide whether or not there's anything about how you approach future relationships that you want to change. You can decide there's nothing you want to change at the risk of repeating history, you can make a bunch of huge drastic changes at the risk of an identity crisis, or you can opt for the third bowl of porridge. 4) Have some other positive focus. This is open ended... take up yoga, or cooking, or start a skydiving team, or go visit national parks, or go on a skydiving boogie tour, (or excitedly tell everyone you're going to do half a dozen things and then actually only follow through on a couple of them because you end up meeting someone and find things to do with her )

Steve Martin: I'll have two double scotches. Flight Attendant: I'm sorry I can only sell you two drinks, two double scotches would be four drinks Steve Martin: Tell you what, I'll have a double scotch, and my friend here will have a double scotch, but you can just set them both on my tray and I'll pay for them. How 'bout that? The certificate may not be transferable but the rig is.

If all rigs had the cutter in the bottom of the reserve tray (along with the issues that had) this design wouldn't be that horrible, but making a closing loop and attaching it to the cutter segment would involve even more steps and defeat the whole point of the design change. Given that many rigs locate the cutter above the PC, however, it would be awfully difficult to connect the portion of the loop that was going through the PC to the cutter segment while it was under tension. And once you wipe the sweat away you'll have proudly packed a reserve total... ...hence my joke in post #94. In summary: Trae hopes "we get better AAD's out of cases like this" whereas I hope we don't get shittier ones.