FrogNog

I am a big believer in the goodness of eating an animal's dead flesh being related to what that animal ate while it was alive. So vegetarian animals are pretty good. (But if people make them cannibals, icky things can happen. ) Lobster is a weird one. They're detritovores, and that means they eat whatever everyone else drops. Ewwww. I made the mistake of smelling a (cooked) lobster once and this theory was born in my mind a few days later. (They taste good, just don't smell them.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I called a nearby exotic meats seller and asked if they had any rat, or if they knew anyone who did. He said they have never had any request for it, so did not have any or know anyone who did. (I explained about the bird flu thing making some people in Asia turn to eating rats, and so I was trying to find some myself so my friend and I could give it a try.) Ah, well. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Vegetarians do taste better, from what I understand. Vegans can taste even better but you tend to have to wash them really well. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Yeah, I had to shake my Care-o-meter to make sure it wasn't just broken. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Better than me, I have to be at work by 10:00 and I can't ever seem to get laid before 23:00 on a weekday. Also, I don't have an audible. I hear they're cool. (Get that?) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Better to buy beer for the pilot, other jumpers, and DZO than to buy scotch for your orthopedic surgeon. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Ah, so you feel the weakening of the US dollar compared to the Euro is a good thing, yes? Because this makes imports more expensive (and exportation more profitable), encouraging domestic production. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Maybe the point was to attempt to increase the voting strength of her area, without actually increasing the number of voters. In England, isn't the number of certain kinds of representatives (MPs?) population-based, and they actually add more and more members as the population grows? As opposed to the US, where more people in one area could "steal" influence away from another, in the population-based representative entity, I believe called the "House of Representatives." -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I like our DZ's pilots - they never pressure us into exiting early or on some sort of rush schedule. So I can wait for the preceeding group as long as I want. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

This is a friend's Hornet 190, that he took with his camera. :) My (new!) Hornet 190 should be along in a week... Can't hardly wait! -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Someone hanging from a chest strap during an accidental high-speed deployment could probably greatly exceed this. One issue is the "telephone wire" effect - that tension on a line is related to the pull force perpendicular to the axis between the ends by a sinusoidal function that is much higher than unity for small angles (as formed between the bent real line and the ideal, straight axis between the ends). This means someone pulling 200 pounds on a chest strap (e.g. a 200 pound person holding onto the strap while an unexpected deployment results in 1G of acceleration) directly away from the sternum could conceivably cause a tension of a couple thousand pounds on the line, if the ends were held taught enough to keep the line from bowing much. I'm not saying something bad _will_ happen, but for some time now I've felt chest straps were designed with the assumption they would never be taking signficant loads. Attaching a human - even tenuously - to the chest strap and having a premature deployment may violate this assumption. (Particularly at hybrid speed, with a slammer on an already quick-opening reserve) As they say, "Skydiving equipment can fail and kill you in ways you never even thought of." -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I would always be concerned about making any untested modifications to a rig, especially in what I consider to be high-risk snag points (anything in the way of the lines and opening). And having that modification on/in/near the reserve system is even more scary - that's a low-use, high-stakes place. If the mfgr is willing to make these changes for you when you send your rig into them, maybe that would be the best way. Of course, then you would be asking them, not us.

I've used this method and am not 100% happy with it. The canopy I do this way has enough excess brake line that even looped in half and tucked in, it sticks out to the sides a few inches. The problem is after opening it can be tricky to get my hands into the toggles and release them without putting any part of my hand (or altimeter) through the excess brake line. Now, I know I'm paranoid, so I can't say this method is unsafe. I can only say it does not make me "really happy". What makes me really happy is the velcro wrappers that almost completely enclose the excess brake line, which is S-folded in thirds. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Can the lower brake lines be replaced without having to do any work on the rest of the line? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Quote...the drag started so fast that it wouldn't have mattered what they were doing with their toggles and risers...Quote I've always handled potential wind issues with right toggle. I landed once in high wind and went from standing to falling over backward to being dragged in just a couple seconds, and the toggle trick worked. I just let go of my left toggle and pull the right toggle (and then control line) in with both hands, reeling it in. The canopy turns into a jellyfish and stops causing trouble in no time, from what little experience I have. Can any canopy escape being tamed on the ground in high wind by this method? One control line pulled far enough can bring 1/4 of the tail all the way to the jumper. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The airplane doesn't know whether it's going with the wind or against it; think of the air (not wind) as a 3-dimensional homogeneous medium that is moving steadily in one direction. The plane pulls or pushes itself through this and generates lift by the motion of the medium past the lift surfaces. If the entire medium is holding still, or moving steadily in some direction at some speed, it doesn't matter to the plane because lift is based on the speed of the plane through the medium. The reason planes take off and land into the wind is mostly because the runway is of a fixed length in a fixed place, and the plane needs to be over that runway for a time while taking off or landing. Taking off and landing into the wind again has no meaning to the relationship of the airplane to the air, but it has a huge effect on how quickly the airplane moves across the ground and thus how long the runway is available for rolling and optionally braking. Also, a plane at rest on the ground does not have zero airspeed when there is a wind; the plane _is_ moving relative to the air. If the plane is facing into the wind when it begins its takeoff roll, its airspeed is positive before it even begins rolling. This means the airplane has to perform less total acceleration to reach takeoff airspeed. If the plane is facing out of the wind when it begins its takeoff roll, its airspeed is negative when it begins rolling. This is very not good... -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Yeah, he didn't see the second parachute icon on the sectional and he didn't see it in the list of parachuting activity locations at the back of the AFD. I thought I heard the problem is our non-airport landing area is right underneath a natural "highway" for people flying from some strips out East. The small airplanes down low scare me because they come so close so often, but the big monsters up high scare me because they're freakin' huge. I dunno about doing high openings in these parts. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Mine should be fully assembled and in my hands in .5 to 1.5 weeks! I've jumped a bunch of them as student gear, and packed a few besides that. They are gorgeous, but so are some other containers. They are comfortable, but so are some other containers. They have some awesome features, but so do some other containers. They are affordable, but so are some other containers. I will certainly post back with how mine fits, but I understand that in general, custom-fitted containers tend to fit like gloves. (With minor variations, of course, as with gloves.) Whether you would want an Infinity vs. something else probably comes down to personal preference. I like them because to me they're gorgeous, no-nonsense, nice and solid when packed, don't use any velcro for the (single-sided) RSL, have nuclear main and reserve pin protection, are local, and cost as much new-and-custom as a similarly-featured used container was going to cost me. I do lament the lack of skyhook, but I'll just work on cutting away higher.

Oof, is SSK going to fix the typo in the doc? I don't want a particularly literate TSA worker seeing "cabel" (should be "cable") and trusting the card a lot less...

I thought you were going to say "but my aim is improving." Personally, I don't miss my (ex-)wife. Dang, the longer I have been divorced, the more I think "I was married??" -=-=-=-=- Pull.

How about the film of that guy in Germany cutting bits off of, cooking the bits of, eating the bits with, and eventually killing (and I assume further cooking and eating) that other guy? The controversy, of course, is not just in the digustingness, but in whether he committed a crime, and which crime(s) he committed. Euthanasia? Entertainment? Murder? Dinner? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think "Arch! Reach! Pull!". Every time. After I pull, then I start thinking about feeling it lift. After I feel it start to lift, then I think "here we go" because I still jump a number of different canopies (don't have my own yet), and they let all sorts of different people pack them. Only my own pack jobs are reliably smoove. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

They are both effective performers of respiration. That is, they change O2 into CO2 (along with some other reactions). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The theory I heard was "black goes with mud". So I presume the all-black-rig crowd does a lot of dirty landings. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I'm confused - do people always dump sofas far from the road and power lines? Because in these parts, our dumpers are so lazy they will leave them on the side of the road. Or at intersections. -=-=-=-=- Pull.