NickDG

When I was about 12 years old my father drove a bus in New York City. One night, with the bus empty, he let me drive it across Central Park. Let kids be kids . . . NickD

First the neocon fanboys wanted Ronald Reagan on Mount Rushmore (gawd!) and now they are pushing for him to be placed on the fifty dollar note. I purposely said "neocon" rather than republican because you true republicans totally had your party hijacked by the right wing extremists and left what traditional republicans that existed pandering to an extremist right wing base. My Julia is a true old school republican (small government, strong defense, etc.) and our dinner conversations are probably a lot like what goes on in James Carville and Mary Matalin's house, LOL. But the obvious irony of putting Reagan on the fifty is too plain. And saying it's the recent past crop of republicans who ran up the national debt is undisputed. It's so appropriate their color is red. It stands for red ink . . . Just look at the attached chart. Reagan ballooned the debt to 1.70 trillion dollars. Bush One raised it another 1.40 trillion and Bush Zero raised it a staggering 4 trillion dollars over his two terms. (And those are accumulative numbers.) While pretty much every democratic president reduced the debt, except for once in Clinton's first term. Numbers don't lie . . . And I gag every time I hear some neocon say, "Fiscal conservatives." This is over and above Reagan's other failures. Like selling drugs for arms in South America, kicking out the mentally disabled and closing the institutions that cared for them. That action single handily started the homeless problem in America. Not to mention Nancy Reagan and her astrologist were most likely responsible for most presidential decisions in Reagan's last couple of years in office. I actually liked Reagan from a personal standpoint. But he was a disaster as President. It's like the Bush Zero defense, "Oh, but in person he's a really great guy!" Someone else had a great comment on this subject I saw on another site. "Put Reagan on the $25 bill with the promise the other 25 bucks will trickle down to you!" LOL . . . NickD

So where do you get your news from? (That's the Galápagos Islands.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PReHvjIulcw&feature=player_embedded NickD

>>Marine boot camp is there to weed out all the weak links, and make those who are left as tough as they can be. Is that about right Nick?

Sorry, Qaude, I shouldn't have said that. I got a bit carried away there . . . NickD

>>I'm not a professor of anything.

Quade, I'll acquiesce to your intelligence, but it might help to recall that almost ever insurrection started with killing off all the professors. But don't worry, they'll have to get though a lot of pissed off high school graduates before they get to you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-xiX7A2LPE&feature=related NickD

I'm not a smart guy. In fact the one regret of my life is I didn't pursue an academic career. I think I would have been a good smarty pants. The whole point is I won't stand by and let you call ten's of thousands dead Marines brainwashed . . . NickD

Oh, and Quade, if this is brainwashing, then you can kiss my gray and gold ass. Let's see your students do this . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y90UPLLo6nY NickD

"War? What war? The Marine Corps is at war. The rest of America is at the mall." I see that written all over the internet. But it makes no never mind to Marines. Something all Marines learn, past, present & future, is Marines die. That's what we do. But as long as there's a Marine Corps, we all live forever. I've never forgotten that. So turn up your speakers - you guys back on the block. And pay attention to this: We are not your politicians and we are not your ambassadors. Nor are we Professor Quade's college class. We are stone cold killers. And like you put your faith in us, we put our faith in you. So be careful American. Be careful where, and on what, you unleash us . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwjHhJdhY0I&feature=player_embedded# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoMv-WAXxPs&feature=related I'm so proud of our current Marines slugging it out in that shitbox over there. It brings fucking tears to my eyes . . Oh rah Brothers . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1BT-LDno0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq0Yl6bpCm8&feature=related NickD

>>Assuming a 4 G accelleration would put them at ~9000 feet in 12 seconds.

>> ...woudl have loved to been around there in the Round days...But then I would only have more limps!

All right, as long as this can of worms is open . . . Maybe we should do something along these lines: Bill Booth and Ted Strong both said of tandem, "Now it's dual instruction! Just like how people learn to fly airplanes!" So maybe we should follow up on that. When a prospective flight student is ready to test he presents themselves to a FAA designated person for a check ride. We could do the same without the FAA part. We could designate a number of people to conduct these "check dives" plus other things like can you pack, spot (or whatever passes for spotting these days,) can you do a proper gear check, perform in the hanging harness, plan a small RW jump, have a clue about the weather, know something about airplanes and what to do when it all goes sideways? And if certain instructors keep signing off people for these check dives and their student's perform poorly it would be a clue to weed them out, or at least mark them for re-education. That's how it works if you're a certified flight instructor in airplanes. Send too many students for the check rides that flunk and you'll soon get a nasty phone call for the FAA FSDO. It's like we have the whole instructing dynamic ass backwards. We test prospective instructors instead of their students. Or, at least we used to. We've now totally blown the way we certify new instructors so the only thing left is to hold them accountable for the performance of their students. I've never liked, in total, how the "old" AFF certification courses were conducted. Even though I hold they were a 100% better than what's going on now. I always thought we should "teach" folks how to be instructors rather than have them just show up to be tested. I can't tell you how many times I watched otherwise competent AFF candidates blow their courses while biting my tongue. And I always got spoken to in those AFF Eval courses, for "sneak" teaching when I was just being paid to certify. Before going further it should be said I believe about 70% of the current instructor corps is excellent and totally outstanding. Fifteen percent could benefit from some formalized "How to Instruct classes" and the last 15% needs to be stood up against a wall and shot. Jay Stokes came the closest to a "fix it all" when he suggested some years ago a boot camp for prospective instructors. (Watch Professor Quade have a cow now!) But I think he was right. Prospective instructors should go somewhere where they live, eat, and shit skydiving instructor 101 for six-weeks at the hands of very experienced "sky-drill instructors." And the idea that instructors should be held to different standards depending on the DZ they come from is ludicrous. Sure, DZ circumstances are varied, but students are the same all over. The inverse of that flawed thinking is over or under jump-suiting a student to make up for lack of flying skill on the part of the instructor. Sure, there's Skydive University and that thing over in New Zealand but they aren't working, other than they exist. USPA can't do it either. Someone on their own dime has to take a chance and start up a boot camp for skydiving instructors. And sooner of later just like the FAA found a scapegoat to wash their hands of regulating skydiving (USPA) the USPA will defer and endorse this new thing. There are hundreds of us out here. Instructors with the accumulated knowledge of the last 40 years. I wouldn't mind rotating in and out of such courses as a part time retirement career. If it doesn't happen it means all that accumulated knowledge goes to the grave with us. Over my time as an instructor I've worked for the best and the worst in this sport, but I learned a little bit from each and every one of them. I learned about the sky from Frank Mott, Leo Orlowski, Don Balch (with him it was mostly how to get girls) but he did invent the "second check" so he gets a pass, from John Brasher, Al Frisby, Pat Works, Gary Douris, Bob Ceylia, Jim Wilkins, T Bird, and a hundred other guys. My dream solution is 50 young prospective instructors stepping off a bus at 'o dark thirty in some godforsaken Arizona desert. "My name is Sky Drill Instructor NickD! And for the next six weeks your ass belongs to me! Look at the person next to you! In three weeks they'll be gone! Yeah, we could fix it. If we just had the balls . . . NickD

I've got a jump ticket to 7.5 I paid seven dollars for in 1977 from Elsinore and every time I try to cash it in they give me a hard time . . . The nouveau bastards . . . NickD

When I worked for Frank Mott up in Ramona many of our FJC students were Camp Pendleton Marines so I know what you mean. Easiest students to teach ever. None of that, "Why," or "how come," and, "Gee, I'm not sure about this?" And when they creamed in under those T-10s there was never a whimper . . . just big smiles! When I went down to Otay Lakes after that and taught mostly civilians I had to wonder if they were even the same species. I never heard such whining and sniveling. NickD

You can see, from the smoke trail, where the shuttle begins its roll program and that's at about 12 seconds after liftoff. So someone should be able to figure out what that altitude is (where the roll begins) and then do some eyeball extrapolating! NickD

Yes, it looks too high . . . NickD

Yeah! And we could even get patches so other TB jumpers on the DZ would know us . . . NickD

>>and one of them, no longer associated with USPA, was such an asshole, IMHO.

I saw Chet shortly before he passed in Deland. He was doing odd jobs on the DZ like gathering aluminum cans. As soon as he made enough money he'd manifest for another tandem. A "jumper" right to the end . . . NickD

Besides. wearing glasses gets you the babes . . . NickD

You're right . . I went to "A" school for photography. Wash out and it was straight to being a grunt, and all that came with that . . . (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) NickD

You mean like this . . . ? It's because they are durable and not "fashion" statements." Being (whatever you are) comes from your heart, not your face . . . NickD

Try asking Larry Walsh, who runs the Airtrash website. He's drywalled most of Southern California, LOL. Scoll down here to where it says "Contact Airtrash" for his email addy . . . http://www.airtrash.com/ NickD

Semper Fi back to you, brother! NickD