yoink

Those two sound oxymoronic to me, Chris. An 'everyday canopy that can be used for everything' but also a step up from a JVX - a designed-to-be no shit swooping machine. Don't get me wrong, I like the JVX and love the GLX that was based on it- but they're not everyday canopies for typical jumpers. They're at the end of the spectrum as I see it. You're saying 'steep dive and long recovery' - the only discipline that I can think of in which those would be a bonus is dedicated swooping - certainly not everyday jumping. I know nothing about the canopy, but the way you're describing it sounds like the commercial version of Petra, where the little kinks have been ironed out. It sounds to me almost like the PD Peregrine but you've taken the opposite tack on marketing - saying it's a extreme do-everything machine for everyone. I'd love some clarification - who should buy the Petra Lite? Who's it aimed at and who shouldn't be buying it? Again - nothing personal in any of this. But to me looking objectively, the marketing seems too good to be true...

that's the point Airtwardo is trying to make - it isn't just about the individual with something like this. If a half dozen adults go in on a dz over a year, the world isn't going to care more than they do now. It likely won't change the scenery of skydiving much. If a half a dozen minors were to go in on the other hand, the press would go crazy: If you can't see the potential headlines, you've not been around long enough. The likelihood of big, powerful organizations stamping their whuffo boots all over a sport they know nothing about increases drastically. Risk / Benefit - there's basically NO benefit to skydiving as an industry to jump at a young age. There's a huge increase in risk...

Age is a crappy metric for judging capability. the only thing it's good for is tying into liability / waivers. It sounds like this particular girl just screwed up on dealing with a relatively simple malfunction. A brake fire on a lightly loaded student canopy from a SL exit at 3500 feet should give minutes of time to deal with the situation, either with a controlability check or a emergency drill. There is no good way to assess how someone will react in a stressful situation - it all comes down to performance in the classroom. My experience (as an extremely general rule) is that the older one gets, the more likely people are not to freeze under stress, and the less light-hearted they tend to be in the training. It's certainly not always that way, but if that is a fair trend maybe we need to hold younger people to a higher standard on the ground - you can jump when you're 14, or 16, but you have to be flawless in the classroom and take this shit seriously. The corollary to that is that instructors have to have the full backing of the DZ to say 'no, you're not ready based on what I saw' much more readily for a 14 year old than for a 30 year old who's signed a waiver themselves. Personally, I think young people jumping should be the exception rather than the rule because it takes maturity to understand the situation - some people mature earlier than others or with exposure to different events but it's difficult to tie down to a specific age. So allow it, but only if they're exceptional... ...of course, that opens up a whole 'nother legal can of worms.

What makes it the 'lite' version of the Petra? Will you guys be putting up more of the test jumping videos? Those were awesome!

Why do we have to solve it all at once? Surely 20% is better than 0%? If more of the public moves to electric, maybe that indicates to the political parties that it's something they should be interested in as a policy... Maybe legislation is then introduced to limit commercial emissions in order to win votes. Maybe then industry starts being limited and some masive differences start being made. While it'd be great to make the biggest difference first, it's not necessarily the only way.

But you don't have mad skills or years of riding unicycles, or feel that it's other people holding you back because they're slow to learn, so your opinion is invalid....

You could try turning him off and on again...

Well yeah. The government says it is what you should do, and its part of Obamacare, so why wouldn't you? Congrats. Your tirade against obamacare has sunk to a new low. The vaccination question has been around long before Obama was - are you still capable of having any opinion that doesn't relate to the current government? If not, I could replace all your posts with a very simple script that Meso could just plug into the website and save you all this repetitive typing nonsense.

He's citing a site called 'jihad watch'... Do you really need to ask?

If people think what the NSA does is going to change then I've got some moonbeams to sell 'em. The only thing that will happen is that they'll get better at keeping their shit private - until the next time they're caught doing it. Dammit - Andy beat me to it.

At least it's your summer! I got home today and it was 96F... January is still supposed to be our winter in San Diego!

Schoolboy error. heal fast fella!

Years ago I saw a guy who had a small tube taped to his shoe with some sort of nose maker inside it... It made him sound like a Stukka dive Bomber when he was in a dive.

Fantastic! Best of luck! Mucho awesome video uploaded please! (as a personal thing, I'd LOVE to see the 'making of' videos that go into one of these sort of things. The practice runs etc...for me, that's as fun to watch as the 1-off result!)

you, Sir, are a fucking arsehole. Just when I thought I'd got rid of my fixation for flying stuff, you go and show me that? Now I need paraglider lessons. Much WANT.

So when it's a school we get outraged, but when just one guy it's ok to make jokes about it, huh? Classy, guys. Real classy. The guys was SHOT for being annoying. By an ex cop, no less. If people insist on owning and carrying guns then it should require full on psychological evaluations every couple of months, because shit like this is insane.

this is something that should be covered in Safety Day training. Not just 'what to do if you see someone get injured', but a whole section on 'what to expect if you see YOUR friend get injured'. You'll be in shock. You probably won't be thinking clearly. For 99% of people the best thing they can do is hand off the scene to someone else.

Sounds stupid to me!

Yup. This particular hotel is in the Cayman Islands where (if memory serves) we used approximately 15c/KWH. Bit of a multiplier there! But all that cheap coal, oil and gas in the US WILL eventually run out. Probably not soon enough for our generation to see a return on a change to renewable fuels but it'll make a difference to my kids... The storage issue is a good question. Batteries suck... My preferred solution at the moment would be for the storage to managed by the energy companies and you feed power back into a grid that they manage. They should be able to minimize the costs over massive amounts of storage for thousands of people, rather than trying to do it individually. I'm sure something better will be developed eventually.

We agree, allot of money= 500 million dollars, stupid shit = solar panels. I am not a proponent of any particular form of energy, I am a proponent for what works. I would LOVE to slap a couple solar panels on my roof, buy a Tesla and disconnect from the grid. Nothing would make me happier. I'm just finishing up the design of a hotel which is mostly solar powered. The ROI is projected at 13 years, after which, minimal energy costs for the owner. The numbers suggests it works, so how are you defining 'stupid'? Just residential buildings? Just residential buildings in your area? Just for you? Eventually I'll be designing and building my own house. You can bet that if I'm still in southern California it will have a large component of solar. Makes sense to me at the moment.

RELAX. You're overthinking it. If you're trying to beat a clock you'll probably screw it up. I'm not an instructor, but I seriously doubt they'll be putting you against a stopwatch. I think they'll want to see that you can exit stable and pull while staying stable relatively soon after exit- there's LOADS of time for that. If it helps, I was taught to count my movements out loud like this: Exit ONE THOUSAND - stay in a really good arch position. TWO THOUSAND - move to your pull position, staying stable THREE THOUSAND - pull and recover to boxman. see? Loads of time.

Because he can't conceive of a situation where he doesn't have enough time to get stable. Bluebird - You have a canopy collision at 1000 feet. It tears your main and throws you into a spin. Your AAD won't save you. Regaining stability won't save you. An RSL might. Your 'universal' algorithm has flaws. Too many to suggest it's the best way of doing things. Particularly for beginners.

'He's going to scare the hell out of these people!' suggests the people on the beach aren't part of any ground crew, or even know he's coming. It's tough to see how far away they were with that angle though, they may well have been fine, but anytime you put high speed swooping mixed with unaware members of the public, the risk factor shoots up. All it takes is for one to panic and run and it's problems. Super cool flying, although to my mind not quite as cool as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0o6gJmjlEQ Just got to make sure we're making smart decisions when we're doing stuff like this. Not just getting our swoop on!

The flying is cool. The swooping near random people is most uncool.

And the majority of skydivers in those programs don't care... I'd even go so far as to say that probably less than 5% of licensed skydivers actually check the winds aloft and then check the spot. As Ron pointed out, it's become about TIME - how FAST can I get my A-license? That's seen as a major selling point for AFF, so it could be translated as 'what's the bare minimum I need to do for my A license?' It took me a year to get my A through static line, but man, I learned a shit tonne in that time. Packing, spotting, catching tandems, driving the pick up bus, running the bar, how manifest works, how dz control works... there's no end of stuff to learn.