R00tj00se

Maybe you didn't mean it to come out that way but it sounds like if I don't know how to fly my canopy I should blame it on the fact that I haven't been taught how. In reality, it is up to you to determine if you need coaching and if you do it is up to you to go find it. It is also up to you to decide if your canopy is too hot to handle. Like I said, maybe I'm mis-reading the sentence. As for Ron's stats in the initial post. Some of those wingloads vs jump numbers are ridiculous - I don't care how much skill you think you have, at 150 - 400 jumps you are still learning the simple things. What do I think is the answer: (i) People should stop being idiots with oversized ego's who think they can never get hurt. As this isn't going to happen then: (ii) Education backed up by proficiency certification. This would take balls and a lot of work to implement though. Disclaimer; I am an 'armchair general' so any opinion presented by me will not be backed up by positive action.

Just a quick one to say sorry we took over your batwing thread with a ZP topic - at least it's all information.

Why does your main become easier to pack over time? Becasue the fabric/coating degrades and it allows air to escape more easily - I think this would be called an increase in porosity. All other things being equal your canopy is going to take longer to open and handling characteristics will change. If I'm wrong then please correct me - no offence taken.

More important than anything else - do you know what crossports are???? (Sorry - I had to!) Regards the Batwing. I put a few jumps on a 135 but it had lots of jumps on it, was very porous (took longer than my spectre to open) and the lines were getting on a bit so my opinion of it may be slightly jaded. I only know 2 people who have jumped batwings and they both like them. Only advice I can give is if you want to know - go try it. However, jumping from your current canopy to a 116 at your jump numbers would be considered slightly excessive unless you are very skilled - but then again, that's not what you were asking, is it?.

As long as the Iraqi information minister is on our side. If you get anyone asking you if you just jumped through cloud, set the Information minister on them: "Jump through cloud. There are no clouds in Iraq - we drove them all out. They will never darken the skies of Iraq. Iraqi skydivers will have cloud free skies forever"

Compression fractures suck. I got one 2 years ago and am just about fully recovered - still need to see the chiropractor every 3 months. Mine wasn't from an instant canopy - it was a sniveller and then the slider went from the top to the bottom in no time. Had 5 months of physio - make sure you do all the exercises given to you. Then started seeing a chiropractor to loosen things up every once in a while. Best advice is don't overdo it. Don't try rushing to get back in the sky or you'll only mess yourself up even more. Be prepared for lots of stiffnes. Make sure you stretch before every jump. And if you don't exercise now, take up some form of exercise when you're feeling better. Even going for a run makes my back feel better.

I've got about 50 jumps ona spectre 135 and I've had one funky opening where right at the end of inflation the centre of the canopy seems to dip in middle and then reinflate and surge forward. I put it down to the fact that I rolled out of a back track and dumped straight away as I have not had this happen on any other openings. However, a friend of mine has 200 jumps on a spectre 170 and gets this problem quite often. He has also put it down to not slowing down enough after freeflying. Can't really knock the spectre though - awesome openings (apart from the one mentioned).

Nice work on the cut away. All this discussion reminded me of a 'minor' incident I had a while back. Check out the link for details: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=72134;search_string=interlude;#72134 Phew, got sweaty palms after reading that again. However, a couple of months back I had another cutaway from a rotating mal this time under a spectre 135 (I've had the p1ss taken out of me for not attempting to kick out of it, but if it's not flying straight with twists then I'm off it.). Cut-away, went straight on my back but my previous experience helped me to stay calm - so I just did a flip over sideways and pulled the reserve. Was slightly head down when I pulled and felt the freebag bang my heel on the way past and reserve opened with half a twist. The difference this time was that I had deployed at 3,500ft so I knew I had time to flip over -- whereas with the previos one time was running out fast. Not going to state any lessons here - you can all take away what you can from this. As for RSL's, I don't have the answer to that debate.

Well, not being in the military and not having had any training (and not having anything better to do on a Thursday night) I might be wrong but... Could we not just take the rest of Iraq (which should be easier as most of his troops will be holed up in Baghdad) and then lay siege to Baghdad. This might not look good politically as it takes time but would it not save more Allied lives this way?

Just out of interest what kind of weather do u guys get in Vancouver. Like in January/February time what temperature (celsius) does it get to at altitude? Is skydive Vancouver somewhere that you can comfortably jump all year round or do u hang your rigs up for a couple of months. May be making a visit to Vancouver around April time and might try to get a jump in while I'm there. P.S. I'm from the UK if it makes a difference.

I've just watched the vid a couple of times - looked a fun one. Any idea what caused it - was it just sloppy packing? I agree with what someone else said, the twists seemed to sort themselves out. It's hard to get a feeling for speed from the video but it did look slow speed. I reckon once I'd seen the line over I would have chopped straight away but that's because I'm a coward!! Nice job though. Once I figure out how to I'll post video of my mal in Empuria last week - spectre 135 got a couple of twists and started to dive. My rule with twists is if it's not on heading and stable it's gone (like I said, I'm a total coward).

Some 'interesting' stuff in there...

Hibaldstow, that's a bit of a change from Hinton! U moved house or something? Why don't you drop in to Sibson from March onwards and we'll do some FF?

Amen to that!

Just getting round to sort out some travel insurance for the coming year and wondered how many of you have made a claim and do you declare it on future travel insurance. Reason I ask is that just under 2 years ago I injured my back on a hard opening - anterior compression of my t5 if I remember correctly. Now I've no problem putting this down on a travel insurance form but what worries me is when they say that they won't pay out for any injury relating to the old injury. If I was to get a compression fracture of one of my other vertebrae would they pay out or would/could they say that it was linked to the existing injury? Do they have to get a medical doctor to back up their claims? If I was to have a bad landing and become paralysed would they just look at it as being a back injury and hence related to the existing problem? I've tried getting an answer out of a couple of the insurance firms but they just give out a standard answer of 'You would not be insured against the pre-exisiting injury or any claims relating to it' (or something like that). You just can't pin them down to specifics. Anyone work in the insurance sector or has anyone had a similair problem?

I can't believe someone hasn't said: 'I always wanted to be a lumberjack...'

Doh! Me read slow next time - Mungo stoopid

And what's his weight so we can work out the wing loading.

So if they don't find anything in Iraq does that mean Bush junior won't attack (stirs pot and runs like hell...)

What are people's views on the current wing loading trends amongst jumpers and parachute manufacturers. I see people in the 200 - 1000 jump range who consider a 1.3 - 1.4 wing loading moderate. To me, that seems slightly excessive no matter what you are jumping - unless you are going cross braced. I'm also curious about the fact that Icarus recommend that their crossfire be jumped in the 1.4 and upwards range. I appreciate that this is for experienced jumpers but what if you were to underload one of these canopies - would it have an adverse effect (for example, in turbulence).

Yep, that is why there has always been and will always be conflict. Now, I know this is definately going off topic but... There is conflict in every part of the animal kingdom. We are animals believe it or not. And no matter how evolved we may think we are we love to better our neighbour. Whether it be at work, in our social life or at a national/international level conflict reigns supreme in our lives. As you said, it is human nature. We just have not evolved sufficiently to put conflict behind us. While we have made tremendous technological advances in the past couple of millenia (or even just the past 100 yrs) we have not really evolved socially or psychologically. If we can get away with killing our neighbour who pisses us off we will (whether we are American, Iraqi, Argentinian etc). With regards to this thread, it is quite hard to decide what to write because every one is right (ok, I'm sitting on the fence) in their own way. At present the situation is 'kill, or be killed'. To move away from that would require every country in the world to trust everyone else. Hmmm, not gonna happen in my lifetime. As for the reason this thread was started. I think you would be naive to think that your communications (electronic, pstn) aren't already monitored.

Pardon me if I'm wrong here but doesn't the government tell the armed forces who the enemy is. The armed forces then goes off and kills said enemy. Would this not make them as much sheep as the general public. Please note that I am just playing Devil's Advocate. I do have a healthy respect for anyone that puts themselves in the line of fire. However, even though it may give you a unique view on issues such as this it also gives you a biased, one sided view. Just as someone who works at high levels of govt. will have a biased, one sided view because they have not been 'in the firing line'. On a separate note, I do feel that American patriotism (and , in fact, any kind of country related patriotism) is a double edged sword. What I'm about to say is going to sound like I'm a hippy tree hugger (which I most certainly am not - but maybe it's the way we should go??) but we are all humans sharing the same planet and until we learn to identify as one species rather than segregating ourselves into race, country, religion then there will always be divisions and conflict. Jesus, what would it take for that to happen?? Reading that through again it does sound as though I'm asking for some kind of Nirvana (not the smells like teen spirit kind) but isn't that what would be required before we could see an end to conflict? Have I gone too much off topic here? It just seems that this thread has evolved into a heated debate on patriotism, pacifism, tolerance, aggresion, hate etc. If that can happen on a relatively 'meaningless' discussion board then it is no wonder countries are at war with each other. Anyway, that's enough of me ranting on about a perfect world. In the meantime I suggest America does everything possible to remain the number one super power. If America were ever to become vulnerable militarily I suspect there is a queue of countries waiting to take advantage.

Don't know about Mandrake but I've just started on Red Hat 8. Try these: www.linuxnewbie.org http://www.redhat.com/support/resources/faqs/rhl_general_faq/s1-install.html Here is a link to a http site for the download images for rh8 (there are lots of FTP sites but FTP is restricted at work and I don't have access any more) http://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/8.0/en/iso/i386/ Also, if you have an old machine you don't really use try setting up a floppy based firewall using this; www.coyotelinux.com That enough to get you started?

Well, f*ck me, someone with some common sense! Deuce, glad you're ok, hope you've learned a few things. We all make mistakes sometimes - but it helps to have shit loads of experience at the easy stuff (straight in landings) before trying the more advanced stuff. I've put about 30 jumps on a Spectre135 so I'm no expert but those things can really dive if you want them to.

I thought you could set up a DZ outside of the BPA.