FrogNog

I check my alti pretty much everywhere Reginald does: after opening, to start landing pattern, sometime downwind and turning base. I also use it to tell me when 2,500 feet passes so I can tell myself "no more stupid stuff under canopy", e.g. CRW or intentional stall fun. (I closed 2 end cells on my Sabre2 at 1,500 feet once and almost soiled myself before I got it straightened out.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I ought to ban you for a pun that bad. (But you're going to give him a break, just this once.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

We need to get some students to go through both progressions and tell us which one they liked more. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

BSRs aren't meant to be perfect, have no loopholes, make everyone happy, or keep people perfectly safe. They "promote practices aimed at eliminating incidents". Very mildly worded. I personally look at BSRs as "bare minimum recommendations" and "history written in blood." The canopy wingloading issue, bless that deceased and contused graminovore, is complex in that it involves issues of currency, raw wingloading, canopy type, DZ altitude, and individual jumpers' abilities. With that in mind, a BSR that addresses part of the problem, but not all of it, can still be a good BSR if it does the other BSR things right. One of those other BSR things is: could ALL USPA dropzones stand behind enforcing this as a required rule on themselves? (I suppose this brings up the question of the proposed BSR's waiverability, as well.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

If I were a rigger, which I'm not, my position would be that I wouldn't pack them, because I think they're unairworthy. I'm not saying they're unairworthy. I'm saying I have an opinion, and anyone with an opinion should be encouraged to act on it in polite, ethical ways. -=- My home DZ is in the fortunate position of not having and adjustable lift webs. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I was told the barrel nut side should be to the inside and the shorter end of the openable side of the link (the threaded end) should be toward the canopy. The reasoning that was explained to me was: 1. if the barrel nut should open and a line slip off, it's better to lose a center line than an outside line. 2. if the barrel nut should open and something slip off, it's better to lose a line than the riser. (Losing the riser is equivalent to losing ALL the lines; it's hard to do worse than that by losing one or more lines.) So the reasoning I was explained is centered around "if the barrel nut should open, mitigate the damage by locating the opening furthest from the worst things that could get disconnnected." -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I started out with Kroops over my glasses. It was ugly but it sorta worked. Then I went to Scott ski goggles over my prescription glasses. I got a pair of Scott goggles that had a lot of space in them for just this purpose. The first downside is they look funny - but better than the kroops. The next downside is they restrict peripheral vision; seeing handles is difficult. The upside is in the Winter they keep yer face pretty warm. Finally I chose some prescription goggles. I saw lots of goggles with foam ocular mating surfaces but I chose Barz goggles (from Australia, dealt to me by a local dealer) because they use a rubber flap gasket. The upsides are they look nice, I can see everything - vision like a bird in these - and I don't have much durability concern with the adjustable gaskets, although they have loosened enough that I have to be careful not to peel them off right before exit . The downsides are they're expensive like almost all prescription goggles, and inconvenient to alter the strap tension to balance the security needs of different jumps (H+P vs. belly vs. freeflying) vs. comfort and fogging in the plane. (Once the door is open, I've never had a fogging problem - the Barz hydrophobic fog resistance and fog recovery are great once there is any airflow.) Basically I would say $100 is about half what prescription goggles will cost, but $70 may you OTG non-prescription ski goggles if you go to a ski shop and try out what they have. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

My first dozen or so pack jobs for other people, I was pretty nervous too. I think once you begin to really trust your pack jobs, the parachutes themselves, and the skydivers who deploy them, that goes away. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The human body is so squishy that the internal and external pressures are hardly ever significantly different - they adjust themselves by making our cavities larger or smaller. (Except for a few unsquishy cavities where bad things can happen.) The squishiness of the abdomen lets the gas expand instead of remaining at higher pressure. At some point the limit of stretchability of the intestine (in the area the gas can easily move to) may be reached and that would be very painful; ask someone who has suffered an extreme lactose intolerance bloating attack . But typically before that happens, the door opens, and/or people get out, and/or Amazon starts spraying Ass-Be-Gone. Oh, and let's not forget that a lot of what we ate is water, and not all of it gets removed in the lower intestine, and the water that remains will dissolve methane under pressure at sea level and release it as the pressure decreases. So that's an additional reservoir of gas contributing to the air quality problem. Thinking about all this, maybe someone should make a "fart in the plane day" at their DZ. Everyone eats horrible stuff the day before (unless, like Tom, they are already on a specific nasty skydiving diet) and we try to strip the zinc chromate off. Still on this topic, I have decided that if I become a jump pilot, I'm wearing a mask with the radio inside and my own fresh air source. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

So on a high-pressure day a 13k-down-to-3k true AGL jump at a 0' MSL dropzone could have basically the same air density experience as a 12.5k-down-to-2.5k true AGL jump at the same dropzone on a low-pressure day? I don't know how we ever coped with this before. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

From that super-skytruck website (emphasis mine): Describe any jumpers anybody knows? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

So on this plane there is a cabin door before the actual tailgate opening? What is the "small nasty edge" about? Is it similar to the various rolled panel panel in a C-182 that has had the interior stripped? Or is it more sinister (e.g. sharper, or a deep channel that could catch fingers, ...)? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think a common one is to fart right at the start of turn onto jump run, regardless of altitude. I guess the reasoning is if the pilot kicks you out, you got all your altitude and you're over the DZ. Plus some people know they can make the stink so bad opening the door won't cure it immediately, it will just spread it around. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Your revenue numbers show tandems producing 4.5 times the revenue of regular jumpers (I will call this "excess revenue factor") on a per-slot basis. This supports the claim that tandems pay for the rest of jumping, but I'd like to see incremental cost added to the numbers to see what the per-slot "excess profitability factor" of tandems over regular jumpers is. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Sorry to post in the BASE forum since I only jump from planes, but out of everything everone has written, this is the post that says what I've been thinking. 2 or 3 jumps. One is my first on-video sitflying attempt, and he lent me one of his distinctive long-sleeve shirts for drag. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I bet that sound is a dc-dc converter. The backlighting doesn't run at 1.5 or 3 volts or whatever the battery is. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I'm glad somebody decided to make you police... Besides, everyone has to make a first post at some point, are we going to interrogate them everytime someone does? Sheesh... I see the light now. I offer an unreserved apology for asking questions about the poster I was unable to determine from his or her profile, and I regret the necessary implications any line of questioning would bring, plus any offense I caused the poster or - and this appears to be the real damage - the other readers. -=- Part of the point of posters filling in their profiles, I have come to think, is that when they ask a question we better know how to answer. The reason being the question is not always the entire question - the asker matters too. When an account was created so recently the bits aren't dry, and there's no information, and then that account posts a question, people may assume something. And I haven't commented on that situation, ever. In this case the account was nearly a year old, with zero posts, and now a first post. That looked like a unique and intriguing situation (as I originally said). Obviously something different from the "I have a controversial question and I don't want to use my regular account" fresh-empty-account frenzy. So, you're quite right that someone has to make a first post at some point. One could similarly say someone has to fill out their account information for a first time at some point, too. A true brown-shirt would say "almost a year - more than enough time to put some details down!" Damn my unpopular curiosity. Suspicion would be more in vogue. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Regarding pricing: It's nice to hear about a sub-$1m-new turbine jump plane. A less cynical economist's take on "as much as the market will bear" is that Cessna has at most a partial monopoly on aircraft in that size / capability class, although there is a significant barrier to entry to making and selling a new plane in that class to other manufacturers who don't already have offerings in that class, and even moreso to companies that aren't making planes at all yet. That barrier to entry enhances Cessna's ability to charge more for the Caravan by fearing competition less. On the other hand, Cessna paid to get through that barrier of entry, and clearly it wasn't cheap enough for all the other manufacturers to have seen it profitable to do so as well. Finally, price of goods in a free (or in this case, mostly-free) market is a signal between customers and producers. Cessna's output capacity is constrained by all sorts of things so if people want more Caravans per time unit, they're going to have to pay a higher price. If they don't want as many Caravans per time unit, they don't buy and Cessna lowers the price until everyone is happy making and selling the new quantity per time unit. (Or until a deal cannot be reached, and the plane is no longer made.) I understand Caravans are popular with a whole lot of users who have nothing to do with skydiving. We all know that's good because Cessna will keep making them, and that's bad because we have to pay good money to get the planes.

AADs are insurance for the unforseeable. And sometimes for the shoulda-forseen-able. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think Nazi is too harsh in this case. I didn't say anything was wrong, I just asked some questions. I didn't even imply that other people might act in a certain way because the poster's information wasn't filled out, either. And tell me you wouldn't be interested, without knowing anything else, to see someone who for all appearances may have registered a year ago but never made a post. That's some serious PWing restraint! However, now that I see he or she has posted a bunch of classifieds, yeah, I coulda tried harder to figure it out. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

How many jumps do you have? Where are you from? What size main and reserve do you jump? How much do you weigh? What's your real name? I am intrigued that this is your first post on a no-detail account registered almost a year ago, and you know or appear to know what a PC is and the difference between ZP and not-ZP. I jump the collapsible Cazer made and Infinity sold me with my rig. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

In Western Washington, you may find a compass is handier than bringing along a ruler to measure the depth of the moss all around the tree. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

If anyone can calculate an estimate for the drag of a small simple parachute of this size and shape, simple math will estimate how much is could slow a jumper down (it's just acceleration) in a given time. (More complex math can give a better answer by adjusting the drag of the parachute as the jumper slows - if the initial estimate says the slowing is even likely to be significant.) My guess is that if it takes several seconds for a fairly large partially-opened parachute to slow us down as much as it does, a smaller parachute allowed a smaller amount of time won't do much. However, there is room for real math to trump speculation. But with just a little drag in the right place, a jumper could be made to rotate head-up. I have heard part of perceived hard opening is the jumper's body whipping around. Perhaps this devices can make opening feel softer, which is what we really care about. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Aren't DZs often, to a large degree, up-jumper-financed skydiving clubs? Sure, the DZO makes profit or he/she wouldn't be doing it, but I wouldn't trade places with him and to jump without a DZ that's what I'd have to do. I'm saying if skyride hurts my home DZ, it hurts the jumpers who jump there. Add "USPA member" into a couple places and there we go. Maybe I see your point that USPA shouldn't be using much of the member money for this sort of thing. But can their assistance, and unique position to organize the DZs, be financed by any other mechanism? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

With the "overdue" poll options, does that mean it was jumped overdue, or it was just not repacked immediately at the staleness date? -=-=-=-=- Pull.