NickDG

Here's an earlier one, from 1992 . . . NickD

>>she would nudge me with this look as if to say, “See what I mean?

Here's a pic of an advert Shoobi ran in my old BASE magazine . . . early 90s. He brought the first Extreme he built down for Anne to look at, and it was indeed rough looking, but it was sound. I've been a rigger for twenty years and I can fix stuff, but making it look pretty is still another thing. His later stuff was very nice. NickD

>>I would like anyone's experienced opinions on the Troll MDV vs. FOX Vtec vs. Rock Dragon(vented).

>>Aerials are sooooo 1990'

Stitch for stitch, M. builds the most beautiful rigs out there . . . When he started building rigs back in the day, I remember a small group of us looking at his first efforts. He started at a skill level most riggers wind up at . . . Cool pics, too. NickD

Be Careful . . . There's another angle to all of this. If we launch BASE jumps clad in impenetrable armor, and then spread our wings and fly like sailplanes, is it even BASE jumping anymore? Fly your body, man . . . Nick, (Working on Naked BASE)

Hey Bro, Just from the standpoint of what you've written maybe you won't make any jumps in the next few years, or maybe even the next five years, but you will always be a jumper, like a lot of us, until the day they bury you . . . And, I think, before that, you'll be back . . . NickD

Goodness to Gracious . . . He said, "we have 38 to go to #1000, I just got #962 " He means he's BASE 962, and there are 38 empty slots before we reach BASE 1000. Gee, I even understood that. NickD

This is coming. But it's not that easy. I know there are BASE Manufactures thinking of this, but the problem is, they don't want to over complicate the rig. After all, what good is being perfectly intact, when your dead . . . NickD

>>So we have 38 to go to #1000, I just got #962.

Not to be Martha Stewart, but this is a good thing . . . Nobody was much interested in Battle Gear (as we called it) before Dick Pedley hit a building in downtown Los Angeles. . . #19 Richard (Dick) Pedley, BASE 263, 1989 http://www.basefatalities.info/ After that helmets, pads, and boots became di rigueur for BASE jumpers, even while we still skydived wearing only frap hats and sneakers. I mean, I'd already been jumping for twenty years when I bought my first helmet. In the early 1990s, I wrote a story about battle gear for BASE that included a reference to a pair of shoes, I termed "Ranger Evaders," and I got an e-mail from a Park Ranger that said someday those shoes would fail me, and they'd get me. Well, they haven't gotten me yet. . . NickD

>>It would be nice to be able to download it, without having to login. Especially since my old username and password don't work anymore. Maybe that's why I don't go to blinc anymore?

Hi Mick, I voted for you, Bro (because I love you, man) although I don't like DJs, as they take away from working musicians, no worries, it's a generational thing, and I'm a bass player . . . (This is funny, it's so hard to type the word bass without capitalizing it.) NickD

http://www.urban75.org/photos/newyork/ny100.html http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/Coney/coney.html Also, you can Google for many more . . . http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=coney+island+parachute+jump I would love to BASE jump this tower, as it would be so full circle for me . . . NickD

There's a thread over on the BB that should be of interest to all, especially to skydivers considering BASE jumping. Until the author posts it here, I'll leave you with this: http://www.blincmagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22449 NickD

>>riggermick on here.

Does anyone have any contact info for Mick Cottle (spl)? Thanks, NickD BASE 194

Some smart east coast BASE jumpers should start submitting proposals . . . I fondly remember my father and I riding this many times in 1960. BTW, it's 250-feet, I believe. There is a history of the tower here: http://bayridge.com/jump.htm NickD

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2004-12-01-big-booster-chutes_x.htm Cleaning booster chutes no small task By Chris Kridler, Florida Today CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA knows how to do laundry. The Parachute Refurbishment Facility at Kennedy Space Center cleans and repairs the solid rocket booster parachutes after a shuttle launch. NASA "It's got the biggest washing machine in the world," solid rocket booster project manager David Martin said of Kennedy Space Center's Parachute Refurbishment Facility. If you put three one-car garages end to end, you might have something the size of this washing machine. It's used to clean the parachutes that ease the fall of the space shuttles' solid rocket boosters. When the chutes come to the facility, after they and the boosters are retrieved from the ocean, they're soaked with salt water. They've been through a lot of stress. When a shuttle launches, it gets about 80% of its launch power from the twin, reusable solid rocket boosters. Those boosters separate from the orbiter about 30 miles up, then continue their upward motion for more than a minute before falling. On each booster, a small pilot chute pulls out the 54-foot-wide drogue chute, which stabilizes the booster. Next, the three 136-foot-wide main chutes are deployed, trailing 204-foot lines. The boosters hit the ocean at more than 50 mph, and the retrieval ships wind the parachutes onto large reels. At KSC's parachute facility, workers hang the conical ribbon chutes in loose folds on a long rack. "You get to play junior engineer and run it around on the monorail, and bring it into the washing system," said parachute facility manager Terry McGugin, of shuttle contractor United Space Alliance. The track extends into the garage-like washing machine, which fills up with about 30,000 gallons of water. The parachute stays in the machine for at least an hour, usually half a day. Then it goes into 140-degree heat in a similar-sized dryer for six to 10 hours. The parachutes are moved onto the long tables in the building and repaired with industrial-strength sewing machines, if necessary. Main chutes are reused as many as 15 times; drogue chutes, 13. When ready, workers fold them into packing canisters. "It folds back and forth to get an orderly program," McGugin said. "If you know anything about parachutes, you know you don't just wad them in there." A chute has never failed to deploy, but there have been other failures, he said. On an early shuttle flight, the onboard system thought the nozzle separation was the water impact and let go of the chutes. The result? "Artificial reef," he said. More than two dozen people work in the facility, which also processes the drag chutes used by orbiters when they land. "It's a complex vehicle that we fly and refly, and we're all real proud," McGugin said.

>>So with this in mind - would you say that someone with alot of paragliding experience could be a good candidate for a FJC just as someone who has the prereq of 150 skydives?

>>Could you be referring to Jacque Charne who went in ,up in Oregon, in the early 80s?

I don't do this much, but I want to take back something I said . . . I used the term "Johnny Jump Latelys" and now I wish I hadn't. My retraction is not prompted by the one fellow who called me on it, as I knew full well it was wrong when I wrote it. Being a knucklehead in this sport is privilege only to the very old and the very new, so to you guys in the middle, I apologize . . . This December's issue of Skydiving Magazine carries my Bridge Day 2004 article, and I hope you like it. I'm sort of filling in for Robin as he convalesces, but otherwise, I didn't mean to become him . . . NickD

>>I hope that we are not getting into TSO'd rigs, US BASE Association approved instructors, and memberships.

>>"The one thing we learn is we never learn."