doogie

That was an awesome party yesterday! It was amazing who came out of the woodwork!

Yes - that's him Farmer was originally at Hinckley and then went to Morris (with a brief stop in Lansing) for several years before doing a year or so at Kankakee and then finally winding up back at Hinckley again. -D

Tom, even though you know I won't argue against your point, that was just one very small period of his life (in hindsight, I probably should have wrote 'Hinckley airport' instead of 'old DZ' for party location reference). Let's please take this opportunity to remember how he spent his whole lifetime reaching out and helping everyone who was lucky enough to cross any of the multitude of paths his life had taken. He will be missed by so many.... Doogie

Party will be at "The Farm" by the old Hinckley DZ. Sunday, November 6, 2PM-? It'll be the standard pot-luck/etc. If anyone needs directions, please PM me. Doogie

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4213536 Please post any replies to the thread above. I just wanted to include a single post here in the General forum so that Farmer's innumerable friends and acquaintances from around the US will see this news in a timely manner. Tnx Doogie

Farmer has lost his 3.5+ year battle with cancer. He passed last night while in hospice care at the Alden complex in Aurora/IL. There won't be a formal visitation or funeral. Farmer only wanted there to be a life celebration party after his passing. His daughter, Krista, will be planning that soon. I will post those details here when available. For those friends scattered around the country that may not have known all that has taken place, Farmer had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma -- the type of brain cancer that got the late Senator Kennedy. He had his first tumor removed by Northwestern University in downtown Chicago. The recurrences took their toll on him but his toughness enabled him to fight this for 3 years longer than typical for this particular type of cancer. Farmer's spirit for education and sharing of knowledge continued throughout his battle with this disease. Once diagnosed, he eagerly took on the role of "lab rat" and worked with the hospital on trying treatments and now that he has passed, his body will be sent directly to Northwestern so the doctors there can learn what they can from him. His remains will then be cremated. I look forward to seeing everyone at the party!

Interesting how this thread has gone from Ben and Cary over to Doug.... well.... totally makes sense... ;) Per link below, JCPenney just got caught with its hand in the web search cookie jar.... wonder if our brethren are also doing this.... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=BU-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-SOI-021311-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

It has been my experience that DZs like this do not survive in the long run. Sometimes inexperienced/bullheaded DZOs can only understand the direct $s from students instead of the indirect benefits of a fun jumper base to the DZ as a whole. Since this DZ is in the midwest, it is obviously not sitting next to a ready and willing pile of tourists to profit from. Unless the DZO can learn something from other long-time DZOs, he'll probably be gone soon enough....

I haven't looked at Midwest's reviews, but I've laughed when I've read reviews for another place. A bunch were obviously planted by the DZ itself! Anyway, Midwest is cool... a lot of them have been in the sport for years and years so they know their way around the sky!

I will get back into it but don't know when. Yeah... I prolly should say I'm "on hiatus" instead of "quit." I think what might motivate me to get back in the air is when my ex-DZ changes hands again (and connecting the dots in the rumor mill makes it seem imminent ;-) ). hahaha omg yeah.... I am a rigger/packer. I remember one day not too long ago when I was teaching a new jumper to pack and another packer freaked out thinking I was training someone else to be on the staff!

What made me quit? People... well.... people who've lost sight of why they got into this sport in the first place, people who develop a cavalier attitude toward the sport, people who turn it into a playground for their personal agendas.... I used to really enjoy heading out to the DZ and working hard all weekend. The last pair of DZOs I worked for completely took the fun out of it. I sometimes like to think my old pair of DZOs are something special but what I read on here and the PMs I get tell me otherwise.....

How come the AOPA only represents pilots/aircraft owners? I'll bet they already understand the COI issues that USPA is in the process of learning, oops, I mean, ignoring. ;-)

Besides what's already been discussed in this thread, I got a couple more issues here I'd like to bring up as well... 1) Maybe it is the color rendering in the pictures, but that doesn't look like the usual 4lb red for the seal. On my monitor it looks kind of, um, magenta? 2) I'm amazed that seal is still secure considering the lack of slack in the thread. Oh well. minor details ;-)

Agreed. That is a service to the general skydiving population. USPA should only be there to back the general skydiving population. Why does AOPA only represent individual aircraft owners and pilots? They need to have a group FBO program or something like that! ;-) I'll bet AOPA understands the conflict of intererst trap....

This "conflict of interest" seems to keep coming up over and over in discussions about the GM program.... I think the USPA statement itself is sufficiently conflicted in its own verbage that I would hope it is clear to the USPA by now that the GM program needs to be retired in its existing form; I can't see any reason for a DZ to be a part of the GM program because the statement reads such that a DZ can pretty much do what they want anyway. I know I've read this on here before, but it is also my own $0.02 as well: I don't think it makes sense for the USPA to both represent skydivers as a whole and DZs. If the DZs feel they need a trade organization, it should be completely indepedent of USPA and board members/mgmt/etc shouldn't be part of both organizations. November 29 2007 -- USPA GM program (RIP).

And now it turns into a double blast! Dick took my dad on a tandem out of Mr. D at East Troy, and... Hey Mike - How's my level 6 & 7 AFF JM doing?

I guess rampant enough. The last dropzone I was at is run by kids that were letting stuff like this go on and even encouraging it. Despite best efforts from some of the staff to prevent it (including me, obvi ;-), I finally decided to just give up, take a hiatus from the sport and get away from it for a while. That was about three years ago. They finally got called on the carpet publicly for some of their games. See "good idea bad idea" in the instructors forum. Mmmmm... I love the smell of sour grapes in the morning! ;-)

I'll put in my $0.02 here as well about the packing. I'm a retired professional packer. There are a lot of packers (and DZs) out there that do forget the responsibility that comes with being a packer: when a customer gives their rig to a packer, they are putting their life in that packer's hands. When I'm working, I'm first priority is in keeping my friends/customers safe and the last DZ I was at made it impossible for me to do that, so I quit. (I do have a real job and only packed p/t.) Ok... I could go on venting for along time here, so I'll stop now. Gary Peek's thread covered a lot of stuff I could start saying here, so I'll just leave it at this.

You know what... you are totally right.... this thread is done. The topic has been discussed ad nauseum and there isn't anything to be learned here anymore. Now let's just leave it to the authorities.... Have a nice day! ;-)

Tom said: When I posted those comments, I did it in such a way that people who knew me would know exactly what I was talking about (and now we all know) and those who didn't..... well, I got pm'd after that by people thinking it was their own dz. I even had someone pm me and think I was talking about Ottawa (I guess they saw my location). That really made me laugh because back before the old man put himself in, yeah, everything I said totally applied there. Now, believe it or not, I keep hearing about things changing for the better over there. Ok.... but the point is, there's questionable crap going at lots of places, not just at Hinckley... which leads me to what... ...Scotty said: Scotty, you've got a very important point here! Personally, being the old, jaded, crotchety, self-righteous, vindictive SOB that I am... I want 'em all swinging by their family jewels!!! hehehe.... Yeah, we know what happened at these other DZs. From the perspective of the authorities, all they have is hearsay evidence, which is insufficient for enforcement, although I think Jan had a still or something from CK, right? BUT, with the Hinckley case, even without the public lynching in progress, the videos alone show the magnitude of what has been happening that is so outrageous and over-the-top, that I really believe USPA and Strong's hands are tied here and there's no leeway for showing any forgiveness. And now I'm gonna write that again a little differently: when you have a single still or video from a DZ, you can argue that nobody else knew about this, and even consider the fact it was a one-time incident and simply warn the TI. Here, we have a hundred videos spanning months, that when taken together, put this in a whole new light, showing the systematic recklessness, and the number of people actively participating in it. It is a "whole new ball game." Scotty my friend, I'm happy to read your post where you say you haven't worked there in a few months so that way you aren't pulled into this mess. BTW, IMHO, Jan is doing the right thing here because her posting here is enabling her to get new leads for her investigation that she otherwise has no other way to get because dropzone.com has pretty much become THE way to reach the masses! ;-)

no problem whatsoever, i'm not arguing over this point and i bet they will handle it in the best way possible Ok... I think I structured the quoted stuff a little funny... just to be clear, I was backing you up with my post! ;-)

it has been mentioned already several times that strong enterprises is doing nothing about it. can we tell (afaik no strong-rep is posting on dz.com) for shure no action has been taken? no we can't. I'm sure something's going on behind closed doors.... Let's cut them some slack.... This has to be a very complicated situation for Strong. There is a staggering amount of evidence to go through, study, & document, the number of parties involved (including some of the videos having a Strong-rated cameraman behind them as well), potentially huge financial/legal implications for him given the two earlier fatalities and the inevitable litigation he will be facing from them, etc, etc, etc...... Ted, his staff, and his counsel have a ton of work to do to make sure they handle this the best way possible.

I guess I'm not done commenting..... Jan - thanks for compiling this! It was a lot of work! So, you see one video, and its crazy, but then I've watched a dozen or more and am thoroughly disgusted. Now I have to ask this: I'm not a TM , and aside from the stuff already addressed, isn't a T1 supposed to introduce students to body position and altitude awareness? Neither are possible when these students are being absolutely smothered by the Jacko and DK freestyle routine. Are these students actually customers or just a toy to play with? Outside the overwhelming safety issues, the sad thing is these students don't know what they've missed. Jan - your idea above is pure awesomeness. You've got my FULL support!

Totally!.... and in this case, the dzos CONDONED this activity by posting these things in their weekly updates over and over! They need to fire themselves! Ok... I'm done...

Do you mean like it did for the owners of Skydive Illinois in Morris, or like it did for the owners of Millenium Skydiving in Kankakee? _Am I sure picked a good day to stir up a hornet's nest!!!! Andy.... I'm gonna send you private email.... -D