NickDG

>>Try leaving the excess line floating free, that way you can put your hand through the loop, release the brake and tie the whole brake line into a nice knot.

I'm using "ECG Success." It's nothing but test strips and is published by F.A. Davis. I also use this site: http://www.emedu.org/ecg/index.htm If you click on "ECG Quizzes" it pulls up a random strip from what so far seems to be a large database. NickD

Yes, you're right. I recall the tandem one now. And it was just two who lost alti awareness over the snow. The third in SA I'm not familiar with . . . Nick

If you are asking if it happened, it did. One jumper was a friend of mine that I jumped with at Littleton, CO. I have a video of it and it was brutal. I think it's the only triple fatality there's ever been . . . NickD

>>What is that a picture of? It's beautiful.

Come on, you're already living the Dream . . . NickD

You're blowing it . . . Forget ole' Blighty and move into the Perris Ghetto! I've a trailer for sale there right now cheep! You know you're thinking about it! Cash in that plane ticket to nowhere and live the Dream . . . NickD

That's right. But a funny thing is the people who do most of the parachute stuff for these missions is a company called Vertigo in Lake Elsinore. (Not the same Vertigo that used to build B.A.S.E. equipment). I asked around and none of these guys even jump. They use slide rules instead and all that math that goes sideways. I saw a film of a Vertigo test in a horizontal wind tunnel, the test was for a mission that eventually failed to soft land on Mars. The canopy was obviously squidding, a condition familiar to any older round parachute rigger. The load is simply going to too fast to allow the skirt to blow open, even though the apex is pressurized. I off-handily mentioned this to an employee at Vertigo over a beer at the Elsinore DZ and he ran back to the lab so fast it scared me. I'm sure now they didn't even know what squidding was . . . Someday, I'm sure an Astronaut, sent to investigate, will come across that failed parachute and its payload from that mission to Mars. I'd much rather Apex BASE were building the parachutes for these NASA missions. At least they are betting and not just dealing . . . NickD

Hi All, Below is a copy of a head's up e-mail I recently sent to family and friends. So I thought to include extended friends here too . . . Julia is my girlfriend of over 12 years and she's an Aerospace Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She's also an experienced jumper . . . Hi Everyone, The Phoenix Lander, the mission to Mars that Julia has been working on for almost two years, and that launched last year, will be landing on Mars on Sunday, May 25, 2008. It will take Phoenix seven minutes to descend through the Martian atmosphere and land, however since Mars is ten light minutes from earth, and the radio signals travel at the speed of light, we won't know what happened until the landing sequence is over by ten minutes. The first possible confirmation time for the spacecraft's landing will be on Sunday May 25 at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. If your cable TV provider carries NASA-TV you can see the coverage there. If not you can see it on the Internet on NASA-TV which is at the below link: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html NASA TV Schedule: May 25, Sunday 3 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels) 6 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Media Channel) 6:30 - 8:45 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Public Channel) 9:30 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - First Downlink of Data - JPL (Public and Media Channels) May 26, Monday 12 a.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Post Landing Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels) 2 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Update Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels) Here's very cool Mission Overview provided by NASA and JPL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524&feature=related Julia has been busy shuttling back and forth to the University of Arizona over the past few months. The University is a partner in the mission with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in Pasadena. Right now Julia is working with an exact duplicate of Phoenix spacecraft in Arizona and running it through all the moves it will have to make during the decent and also once it's on the surface of Mars. Julia is coming home this weekend and then goes back to Arizona for three months. During that three months as the scientists decide what they want the Lander to do as far as collecting soils samples, performing tests, and so on, Julia will be writing the commands, testing them on the spacecraft they have in Arizona to confirm they work, and then she'll upload them to the Lander. The reason the spacecraft is called Phoenix is because this is a second attempt at this mission. The first mission, called Mars Polar Lander, which launched in 1998 crashed into the surface of Mars. What happened was after the landing legs deployed, they bounced upward enough to fool the onboard computer into thinking the spacecraft had touched down. So it shut down the engines while the vehicle was still a few hundred feet off the ground. They have told the computers to expect the "bounce" so that shouldn't be a problem this time. And because this current mission is using all the spare parts from that first failed mission it's why it's called, "Phoenix, Rising from the Ashes." Hopefully we may catch a glimpse of Julia during the coverage this time. She normally ducks and runs when she sees the cameras, but I've been pressing her to not to do that this time, so we'll see . . . Another issue Julia and her team are watching closely is the Martian weather. It sounds funny as we are more used to Moon landings. There is no atmosphere on the Moon, so there is no weather. However, Mars does have an atmosphere and there is the possibility of high winds and even dust devils. But that's all they can do is watch the weather. They can't go on orbit around Mars to wait for better conditions as it's strictly get there and land. (In skydiving parlance, it's get in, or go in!) I always knew there was a lot of effort that goes into these missions but watching Julia work so hard has really brought it home to me. They've had some spectacular successes over the years, like the two Martian Rovers that two years later are still operating and taking photographs, and there have also been several other good landings and several spacecraft put onto orbit around the planet for surveying and communication purposes. But the few failed missions get most of the publicity, and from a future funding standpoint this is a very important mission. So keep your fingers and toes crossed everyone!!! Julia is feeding me information when she has time, so I'll keep you all updated. The latest updates on Phoenix are here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html NickD

I gotta go to one of these things. I could stroll around feeling young . . . NickD

Congrats . . . Now if we go to war with Africa your butt won't wind up in Gitmo . . . NickD

I thought there was something new out . . . NickD

No thanks, I'm still waiting for Gypsy Moths II . . . "When you turn on by falling free... when jumping is not only a way to live, but a way to die, too... you're a Gypsy Moth!" - the film's tagline. They'd have to get someone new to film the aerial scenes as Carl Boenish is gone. But at least the stunts in this movie were more or less real and even today are still considered hairball . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gypsy_Moths http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064397/ You can buy this film on Amazon for about $10. And just Deborah Kerr in that pearl necklace is worth that . . . NickD

>>We once had a guy try to "take his girlfriend through AFF" by falsifying a logbook for her.

The DC-3 had 33 aboard (jumpers + 2 pilots) and it was on its take-off roll when it threw a blade off its left prop. Skip managed to get the airplane stopped, but the left engine broke a fuel line and a fire erupted. You never saw 31 jumpers exit a plane so fast and they all got out safely. Skip and the other pilot went out the cockpit upper crew hatch, but couldn't just drop down because it's pretty high up, but mainly because of the fire below them. There's another photo of it somewhere, but they gingerly walked down the spine of the cabin roof with fire raging on both sides of the aircraft. The DC-3 pretty much melted into the ground and for a long time from under canopy you could see an almost perfect outline of the airplane on the ground. Everyone realized that if that prop blade would have departed a bit later the airplane would have been airborne and things might have been a lot worse. It was at that point that Ben, the DZO, realizing the potential for economic loss, leased out all the DZ operations to other people to run. The school, the up-jumper operterations, and all became individual concessions so Ben would be insulated. And that's how the short lived Perris Valley Skydiving Society was born. Yes, Skip earned ever dime he ever made at Perris that day. NickD

Walk in, throw down your credit card, get what you want (screw colors), walk out, assemble, manifest, jump, repeat . . . NickD

PC means pilot chute, at least on the DZ . . . NickD

>> are there any instructors out there who work in the industry who can remember when skydiving was fun.

Yes, Lutz was a putz, but more so for how he behaved after the jump. I was behind Lutz with another AFF student on that Perris Otter jump and I've written about it elsewhere here. He was a victim of a gear problem none of us foresaw. And although he was taught what to do in that situation, it's why they are called students, after all . . . But, someone upboard said something, about the in-thread video that needs addressing. It was they thought the AFF jumpmaster should have tackled the student to stop the spin. There's a fine line here and some things to take into consideration. The first thing is sure, you can stop your student from ever winding up in a mega spin but you are teaching him how not to spin. And you almost can't do that if you don't let it happen. If it gets to the point where the student is so out of control he should have stopped the skydive and hasn't, then if still high enough you do have to intervene. And this is where good ground training comes in. It's much better to drill into them on the ground what to do when everything goes south, than to have to fix them in the air. But if not and you have to stop them from spinning you can't approach on the same level. That's a buzz-saw. And even with a full face helmet you're just asking to get knocked out. We realized this many years ago when none of us wore helmets. So the best way was get over their backs, into their burbles, and drop down on them. But hey, guess what? That doesn't always work either. I did that successfully many times until moving over a mega-spinning level five at about 7000-feet and just as I started down she reached in and pulled her reserve handle. The reserve pilot chute popped out, inflated, and then took off like a bullet. It hit me square in the head and knocked me stone cold out. I woke up in a plowed field, spitting out dirt and broken teeth, with my Stiletto out and no memory of deploying it. I had no AAD in those days and can only think I must have done one of those dream sequence pulls. AFF is a tough business. I think it takes about five minutes to look good doing it, but at least twenty years to get so you can really handle anything on the ground and in the air. So go easy critiquing Instructors on YouTube. But on the other hand I think sadly, at least a third, maybe more, of the current Instructor corps should never be allowed to even talk to a student. And instead of addressing that problem USPA went and made the AFF rating even easier to obtain. The ones who really know how to do it should be teaching the majority of students and for more money. As it is now once they really get good enough they have to quit teaching skydiving and go out and get real jobs . . . NickD

That's cool, you sound very head's up, and I'm sure you'll do fine. And welcome to the club . . . NickD

Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut! Sorry, running . . . NickD

I read an interview, years ago, he did with some reporter before his show went on Fox. He said, "Someday, I want to be famous." And he made no bones about the fact that was all he was after. Some people just don't give a rats ass how they get there. So I'm pretty sure he doesn't even believe in the things he says. He's the worst kind of Glory Hound . . . NickD

It's amazing how many times I've heard that over the years. I too, had a malfunction the first time my Dad saw me jump. Never invite your parents out to the DZ I guess. As an aside, I remember another guy's father, out for the first time, was watching us dirt dive several formations and he said something pretty funny. "Jesus, it's not enough you jump out of the plane, you gotta do tricks too!" NickD

The highest time DC-3 still flying has 93,000 hours on its airframe. So in that regard, depending on its upkeep, this girl is middle age. I'm not sure what TBO is on the motors, but if they are Wrights then they are probably pretty close. And that's a big chunk of change . . . NickD