NickDG

The most quake prone place in my neck of the woods is this place . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkfield,_California NickD

Naw, that's the only aircraft I've experience with that if you can fit in through the door it will fly . . . NickD

>>when we found a Poke, We took the cash, and threw the rest in a mailbox

His screen name isn't Van de sloot is it? . . . NickD

That's the parallax of general aviation flying. What the hell do you do when you get there? Most small GA airports don't have a Hertz so you're stuck. Some do have beater cars for loan or else you drag a collapsible bicycle around with you. It's why some guys spend a ton of money keeping a Cessna in license and all they do is fly fifty miles to some airport for lunch once in a while. They call it the 300 dollar hamburger! LOL!!! On the other hand, with some help, I'm sure I could get Nina into the back of cargo door C-206 . . . NickD

Just can't stop myself sometimes . . . ! NickD

>>they expected students to flip them on landing

Yes, the guy in the front seat, a reporter of some sort in this case, normally has access to full controls, but the rudder pedals (and the brakes attached to them) along with the stick can be easily removed and that's what most operators do when giving joy rides to non-pilots. Either the passenger braced himself with his feet at some point after touchdown (and activated the brakes) or the pilot was trying to land short, or keep the tail in the air, and just blew it. But that sounds unlikely. And so does mechanical failure. Those brake systems are fairly simple and when they do fail it's always in the no brake direction. And since they didn't swerve it would be a million to one both brakes locked up on their own at the same time. Yeah, they almost surely tweaked the crankshaft, so that motor is toast. NickD

So which one of these morons stabbed the brakes? http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/08/wwii.biplane.flips/index.html?hpt=T3 NickD

What's that thing they wear, oh yeah, a passenger harness . . . NickD

Too cool, bro . . . I grew up on Seahunt and Ripcord on TV. I could have easily gone either way. NickD

Wow, Gypsy, I never pictured you as scuba diver! "Get your Hooka running . . ." NickD

Yes the Vholdr CountourHD comes up in every thread I see comparing these cameras. I guess, preference wise, it's a Wonderhog vs Racer kinda thing (showing my age!) . . . NickD

I ordered the Go Pro HD yesterday! I even sprung for the two day shipping! I'll let you all know what I think after I get to play with it . . . From all I've seen and read it's a pretty cool little POV rig. It was this "fanman" guy's vid that convinced me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvxk9YCcVY NickD

John Kay is, I think, the only original member of Steppenwolf still around and if there was an easy Paypal way to send him five bucks for my one time use of the song, I would. But there are so many thirty year punks in suits involved in that music now (none of which they created or could come anywhere near understanding) that they can all go F themselves. Let 'em pull it . . . Besides Steppenwolf stole their name from a Herman Hesse book and never paid him for that . . . NickD

I've been pondering that HD Go Pro. I might just go for it. After all, when I get arrested for raising hell, it should be in HD, right? NickD

I've got about 50 clandestine miles on her now and so far nothing has fallen off, LOL . . . I also edited the first ride vid and added some cheesy music but watch it quick as YouTube will probably pull the tunes . . . If you have decent speakers CRANK IT UP !!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yx1VDsakfs NickD

There are a lot of angles to the age old practice of "sealing" reserves with lead. But it's my opinion they are a solution in search of a problem. They are first and foremost anti-sabotage devices that do on some level offer comfort to newer jumpers looking for anything to hang their courage on. But just to see if I could I've opened and re-closed more than a few rigs without breaking the seal thread. It's how I learned to seal rigs so someone couldn't do that to my own pack jobs. The trick is to get it setup tight enough so the pin can't move far enough (without breaking the thread) to clear the loop but at the same time not so tight just the act of wearing the rig breaks the thread. On the other hand when I first became a rigger I'd actually never heard of any cases of actual reserve sabotage. And all these years later, unless I missed it, I believe there's only been one. I think there's been three documented cases of rig sabotage. One was a lover's triangle and the second a suicide. And neither had anything to do with seals as those involved cutting risers or bridles. The third one was when a disgruntled Army rigger cut the lines on some mains before packing them. Some riggers feel the seal protects them more than the jumper/customer. But the final arbitrator of who packed what (and when) is not the seal, or even the packing data card, it's the rigger's log book. After a terminal impact seals are often lost anyway and packing data cards sometime get "updated" right there at crater-side. So the logbook is the most tamper-proof and official of the three. When the BPA (in 1985) made sealing rigs optional we all thought, oh boy, there go those wacky Brits again. They were, it seemed to us in the States, always too quick to change things in response to accidents that were caused by user error. I believe in this case some Brits were mistakenly using seal thread that was too strong. It’s funny how in Britain they can change things almost too fast and here in the States we are way too slow. If we started a vigorous campaign today I doubt the FAA would change the reserve sealing rules in what’s left of my lifetime. The OPs seal jam illustration, at a glance, seems to be a mis-rig. And herein is the real problem. There is no fail-safe mechanism to deal with that. The first step is the in-house rigger to rigger phone call. “Hey, Bob, I opened one of your pack jobs and found “this” and I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it.” Now how that goes is one of two ways. “Holy shit, thanks Nick, I’ll make sure that never happens again.” Or, “Hey Nick, go fuck yourself!” If it’s the latter response now what do you do? In my case I had the advantage of my long time girlfriend being the local DPRE. And although I never had to take it to that level in some very egregious cases I’ve seen her offer a few riggers a choice. Voluntarily surrender their tickets or she’d start proceedings to have them pulled. But some DPREs can be un-responsive, or friends of the offending rigger, or whatever. You could go right to the FAA but that’s extreme and they wouldn’t know what you were talking about anyway in most cases. The king of finding mis-rigs in reserves certainly had to be the late Al Frisby. We’d be sitting outside in the Perris Ghetto having a cold one after jumping and we’d hear a loud “Ah Ha,” from Al’s loft. And we’d laugh, “Frisby found another misrig!” Ninety nine percent of the time the reserve would have worked it was just wrong according to the packing instructions. But wrong is wrong, right? Not really as there are a lot of riggers who think they know better than the manufacturer. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish as some of them really do know more and some just think they do. Personally, I’ve only seen one “real” injury caused by a lead seal. And that was to Ben Minnich the fellow who owned the Perris Ghetto. One day somebody cutaway above the Ghetto and the falling lead seal beaned old Ben right in the head. And for the next fifteen years (and until the day he died) Ben never went outside without wearing a construction type hard hat. We’d laugh and say, “Gee Ben, what’s the chances of that happening again?” And he’d say, “Pretty good I think. If you set up a movie camera and let it run for a couple of years, and then play it very fast, you’d see it’s raining lead around here!” NickD

You don't put the thread through the closing loop. You half hitch it around the cable where it enters the swedged section of the pin and the other end of the thread goes under pin itself on the other side of the grommet. The only thing going through the closing loop should be the pin itself . . . The next time you encounter a table total like that jam you elbow into the side of the rig like a jumper in freefall would do. If it doesn't open after that you have to take it to the next level. A talk with the rigger about their misrigging or with the manufacturer about their building death rigs. NickD

Sometimes "justice" is correctly adjudicated and swift . . . http://www.viddler.com/explore/failblog/videos/583/ NickD

There are only few dozen offshore oil wells here in California mainly because every time they want to sink another one us "liberals" get up and vote against them. There are hundreds and hundreds of off shore oil wells in the Gulf. And now all you gun toting flag waving rednecks are crying the blues. "We've been fishermen for generations and we don't like big gov'er'ment," but now you've all got your hands out. "Cleaning up the oil is making me throw up, I need a check!" Well, cry me a frigging river tough guys. BP will certainly go bankrupt in the coming weeks but don't pine for them as they'll come back under another name. But I'll be damned if one dime of my tax money goes to bailing you morons out. You wanted to live by the drill so now you can die by the spill . . . So suck it up all you wannabe John Waynes - literally! NickD

On my Evo that cover houses the alternator so you can pull it off with your hands. I had Gennie Shovel back in the day and they are sometimes a PITA. Those generators could, and would, go bad just sitting on a shelf . . . NickD

For sure, a stone cold killer and a pussycat. You can't do any better than that . . . NickD

Yeah, I was on the ash dive. We took the Otter down the runway at 500-feet and I dumped a box of roses out the door before we went to altitude. Damn, we were all squirting 'em that day . . . NickD

I was there for Jerry's last call. We were suiting up a FJC students when the Perris PA system blared, "Jerry M, phone call, your country needs you!" He never came back . . . NickD