Fast

When shooting video I find RW tandems with someone who "really just want's to skydive with their friend" to be the most terrifying jumps. They don't break off at the right time, they run into me, they get into/wreck the video, they go places they shouldn't, they just generally do crazy stuff. I don't get it. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

With two average skydivers doing the rodeo it falls at a pretty comfortable sit fly / head down speed. The biggest trick is having a base flyer that is able to realize what is going on and deal with how the person is moving around on their back. They tend to be moving forward or backwards while in the rodeo. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Dave you touched on something that baffles me about this whole thing and really skydiving in general. What I wonder / want to know is how we are going to secure some kind of corporate sponsorship in a sport that we can't even get covered on TV. I mean, every year we hold a national championship, serious stuff for the people involved and we can't even get an hour long show on ESPN / any other sports channel / national tv, nothing. At most it shows up on the local 6 o'clock news in the town that is holding nationals. That baffles me. If we can't even get that how on earth can we expect a company to pony up the kind of money that has been mentioned in some of these other posts. IMO, if we were gonna start somewhere on trying to generate publicity and sponsorship, the answer is trying to get nationals recognized as a real sporting event that the public cares about. If that's not possible, then no company can possibly care about us, cause they only care about what the public cares about. Lots of people might go to airshows, but I would wager being on ABC/NBC/CBS/ESPN (pick one) for an hour on a Sunday once a year would generate substantially more publicity than the 6-12 airshows they are talking about. Sorry, just one of those things I never understood. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Have you tried reaching out in another way? If you're doing online submissions your just a drop in a bucket of water of people applying for a job. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Analog altimeters are completely worthless for pattern flying. Just need to do it a few times and figure it out. Practice makes perfect and all that. I have had a few students of mine who had problems figuring out how to fly a good pattern. Once I got them to stop looking at the alti and look at the ground, things got a lot better. I know someone who has many thousands of jumps w/o an altimeter or AAD, it's doable if you're capable of paying attention to what's going on. I will jump without one if needed, but i prefer to have one. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Come jump with us at Sky Knights. We have a paved runway so we don't have to deal with snow issues or anything like that. We jump as long as the weather isn't too cold for the plane to fly. If you want - come hit up a few jumps while we are still flying the PAC to get used to the area. Hope we see ya! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

The DZ that I am a part of running finances getting into skydiving for people. When you have a winter that you can't jump, it's easier to just do the class, the jumps and get your license and think about paying it off over winter when there isn't much other jumping going on. We don't charge anything either, but the person needs to be regularly jumping with us, have a job and a credit card. They have to have mad an AFF jump too. This program has created a lot of skydivers. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

The site is practically unusable for me: ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I believe that the answer is that it is stuck in boot loader mode. I have one stuck that way too, but don't have the tools to try and fix it. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Which really is just another form of greed. Everyone wants everything for nothing. The reality of the USPS is that in order to be successful they have to reposition themselves. They need to modernize their package shipping methods and tracking. They also need to have the ability to grow and shrink based on demand. Email and UPS/FEDEX have made the demand for the USPS much smaller. The service they provide is something that has to happen. There are a lot of things that depend on the postal service that many people take for granted. There are legal reasons (outside the constitution) that you have to have a certifiable mail delivery system that is essentially equated with the government. It serves specific purposes. They need to be able to adjust on a yearly basis as needed the number of days a week that they are delivering mail. They also need to honor the deal that was made with the current workers. They also need to reposition with new workers to something that is fair and reasonable. Don't take out past problems on new hires and don't continue to make the problem worse. Everyone needs to be a lot less greedy if there is going to be any positive change in this world. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Thanks again everyone who came out and made this boogie such a success. I hope to see all of you again next year. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

At the end of it all, the thing to remember is that if you don't try and take things that don't belong to you, it's a whole lot less likely you will be shot dead, imprisoned or severely injured. If you're convicted of committing a crime I don't think you deserve any rights to claim a judgement against someone for you getting hurt or killed. I think that should play into things in these cases. You were doing something you know is wrong, there are risks associated with that, much like jumping from a plane. You should take what you get. What's next, addict sues dealer cause the drugs were an inferior product? ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I just can't deal with analog altimeters on any kind of regular basis. It always seemed like the needle was all over the place. IT may take a fraction of a second longer to read an interpret an 8 on a digital altimeter if everything was equal, but it isn't cause I spend a whole second trying to figure out which direction the thing is even pointing. I mean, I never really associated a direction to a number well. For me it's like looking at one of those watches that doesn't have any numbers, just hands, I know it's kinda sorta around 2:15, but it could just as easily be 1:15. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Mostly that people in this world will continue to get worse. Selfishness, entitlement, lack of respect for others and just an overall negative attitude. I don't know if it just feels this way cause I am getting older, and I know I'm not perfect, but ugh- It's hard to go from one day to the next without running into one of those problems. It's not just the politicians either. Everyday people, dudes driving down the road, etc. Everyone is so in a hurry to get wherever they are going, make more money than the next guy and people just don't care about anything anymore. I feel like people are running around going "I want! I want! I want!". I more and more understand why my dad moved away from the city and doesn't really like being around a lot of people. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

See ya there! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

It's a DZO's place to allow or not allow whatever they want out of their plane. You want to do CRW at an airport where the DZO doesn't like CRW, get a plane and convince the airport manager to let you jump there. That's about your only option. For what it's worth, I think banning CRW is silly. Come jump at our DZ we have lots of CRW people. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

A PAC would also be a reasonable aircraft. It has very competent STOL characteristics. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I have a few different shots from this jump. I hope the picture provider at least gets a case of the beer :P ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I have been working on the right balance between too tight and too loose. If I leave a student MLW at the exact length that it is when they are standing up, under canopy they are sitting about 5-6 inches lower. I don't really like that cause they end up way down below me and it makes it substantially harder to deal with on landing. It doesn't really bother me in freefall if they end up a bit knees down, so I don't feel like I'm giving up that much if I make the harness a bit tighter than looser. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

You wont need the tickets - it's just part of the system that does the registration. We haven't really found an elegant solution to boogie registration quite yet. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Event Registration is open, if you want a boogie t-shirt you need to register by the 21st. See you there!!!! http://skydivemke.ticketbud.com/2011boogie?NHQY ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

FWIW- To be clear, I'm no racist. However the section of the state fair that this all started in is heavily dominated by african americans. I think that's what a lot of the media spin is coming from. I have walked through there at night and I felt like I was in the hood. The number of police in that section is ten fold what it is in the rest of the park. I also think that the story is somewhat blown up by the media, cause I was at the state fair that night and didn't even know that had happened. I read about it in the news the next day. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yeah. I also teach new skydivers that there is a subtle distinction between types of waveoffs. All of them mean, pay attention something is happening. Typically speaking though, big two handed waves over the back of your head means I'm about to deploy. Small waves under your face with one or both hands means, it's time for breakoff. In all seriousness, if I'm able I just leave when it's time. If I am the organizer or if I have people holding on to me, 2 quick waves under me typically gets the point across. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I completely disagree with you. If experienced skydivers want to go have fun and do crazy stuff, they are more than welcome to do so wearing their own gear. They can leave tandem rigs out of it. "Four dead in tandem skydiving accident" reads the same to wuffos and regulatory agencies regardless of who exactly the passenger was. My DZ's ability to operate (and likely yours as well) is dependent upon people not mucking things up with tandem fatalities. It's selfish and irresponsible, period. I support people doing stuff for fun and to push the limits. I participate in most of the disciplines this sport offers including swooping. I also support qualified people who choose to be on the edge in many cases, but a problem here would be too damaging to our sport. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yeah, a poor body position student who isn't even thinking about thinking of looking at instructors can be woken up with a reasonable rap on the helmet. I have experienced that they always look at me with a "wtf did you do that for" look, and then realize where exactly they are. I gently will tap tandem students on the top of the head if they spend the whole time starring at the ground and never look at the camera too, saves giving refunds for "omg you didn't get any pictures of my face.' ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka