Grogs
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Everything posted by Grogs
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Yep. Sis's is on the 14th. Mine is tomorrow the 12th. I won't be making any birthday jumps unless by some twist of fate my DZ is open when I meet Chip out at the airport. But I will be driving down to Louisburg for the Boogie on my birthday, so that's almost as good.
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Haha. I know that feeling. I was doing about 400 crunches a day last Summer plus some leg lifts and such, and lost 30 pounds, all the way down to where I was just plain skinny (6', 150lbs) and I just never could get rid of that last little bit of 'padding' so you could see the bottom 2. Oh well, 4 is still better than nothing.
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Yep. I'll be there Thursday night. I might have to get a white T-Shirt and a Black Marker and make myself a Dropzone.com T-Shirt for easy identification.
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Congrats Kelly. Sounds like you had a good day. And way to deal with the wind and the trees. Other than my friends burning in, the only skydiving related 'nightmares' I have involve me backing up under canopy toward the treeline. So you did good.
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I never had the pleasure of meeting Jan either, but based on the outpouring of posts here and on rec.skydiving she was much loved in the skydiving community. I was looking at the bio she had posted on the web, and I realized we both had the same birthday, which is this Thursday, April 12th. So for those of you that would like to remember Jan, perhaps this weekend would make a good time in honor of her birthday. Blue Skies, Grogs
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Don't worry. I'll be bringing several cases of beer. I'll also be bringing some pies with Stacy's name on them.
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Well, along those same lines... When I was in college (I use that term loosely - it was one of those military colleges ) I had a friend that was a sport jumper. I didn't jump at the time, and I thought the guy was a nutcase because he spent $3500 for a parachute! Anyway, he went to Airborne school one Summer and did his 5 dope-on-a-rope military static line jumps. People would see his wings and ask him how many jumps he had. He'd say 5, and they'd invariably start on about how he was a 5-jump-chump, and he wasn't cool because he hadn't done any 'real' jumps in a unit and those sorts of things. Usually something like "Oh yeah, well that's nice, but I've got 23. Those jumps in the school are really nothing like the real thing. Then my friend would tell them he had 150 free fall jumps and they'd shut up and walk away. I always loved seeing that.
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Damn Tee. Sorry to hear about that. That really sucks. I know how you feel. I was out for a month in the fall because I did something stupid and jumped when the winds were too high. I hope you have a speedy recovery, but just make sure you're completely healed before you even THINK about jumping again. The sky will be there when you're ready for it. Blue Skies, Grogs
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Hey! You took my name! j/k Welcome aboard Tracy. I was afraid we'd run you off. I hope to run into you at a DZ somewhere in the not too distant future.
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Hey Tefkros, I can totally relate. Not that I've had the exact thing happen, but in my time in the US Army I saw lots of the same type of behavior. It's especially common in the young male soldiers, but even some of the older ones still have it. It starts right from basic training when the drill sergeants are telling them that the civilians are soft because they're not doing what they do. And then they get in an elite unit (most airborne types are elite units - especially the freefall types) and now not only are they better than civilians, they're better than most other military members. So when you try and challenge that superiority in any way, it tends to end in a case of one-uppmanship, like what happened to you. So, while I don't know about the Greek Army specifically, I'm betting it's the same type of situation. You can't blame them too much, they've probably been indoctrinated with that attitude. "I left my wife because she was a leg!" - SGT Airborne Blue Skies, Grogs
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Hi all! I'm sitting at my desk at work counting down the hours until I can go home (actually I'm going to swing by the DZ today and try for a jump). Anyway, I'm stoked about the Easter Boogie at Carolina Sky Sports (Louisburg, NC) next weekend. I know Stacy is coming down from CK (and Froggie too! right Kell?), and Kingy mentioned he'd be there. I'm going to be there Thursday night-Sunday myself along with some other folks from my DZ. Any other DZ.comers planning to come? I'm always interested in meeting more of you and we should be having a hell of a good time. Blue Skies, Grogs
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I just drove from Cross Keys back home about a month ago, and I passed through Baltimore and DC on the way back. I want to say it was actually more like 3 hours. Still not too bad though. Froggie - I don't know about 'any given weekend' It's about 7 hours and I'm not as tough as Sis is when it comes to that type of thing.
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I think El Snore and Perris are both right around there, so you shouldn't have a problem finding a good DZ in the area. I know a lot of the posters here jump at those 2 Drop Zones too. They should be able to give you some good advice about them.
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I saw this the other day on skydivenet.com. I hope this isn't too depressing for this thread, but it really opened my eyes to the dangers of shadowing a tandem. Unless I'm flying camera some day in the distant future or I feel VERY confident about my flying abilities I don't plan to jump with a tandem. Description: An experienced jumper gave his mother a tandem for Christmas. He filmed it. At pull time he found himself "next to the drogue". He hit the deploying main and became wrapped in it. He worked his way out of the mess but snagged a line with his foot. As he fell clear, the line broke and he hit the Tandem pair. He continued in freefall and deployed his main. He landed safely. The tandem master and possibly the passenger were knocked out. The tandem slowly spun into the ground. The Tandem Master is alive and in the hospital. The passenger (mother) was killed.
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Definitely do the Uncle Bennie idea rather than actuall jump WITH the tandem. I highly doubt that they'd let you go, but I think it's a bad idea anyway unless you're very certain of your flying abilities. Personally, I wouldn't want to fly with a tandem. I don't really think I'd mess it up, but there's always that slight possibility, and if you were to accidentally get tangled with the drogue or something it could be real trouble.
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HAHAHAHA. I love it. Don't feel bad though. We all suck at it in one way or the other. As a matter of fact, I really feel like my skydiving sucks right now. I need to do about 10 jumps this weekend to work on it.
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Nah, that's not all that bad. During my 9 years in the Army I moved in and out of my parents place a few times between assignments, so that's not too weird. Now I've got 2 places, one of which is a dump that my ex- picked out and left me with (since it's in my name), and the other is a nice new house in Texas I used to live in, but can't manage to sell. I live in the crappy place, of course. So yeah, while living with the folks may suck if you're like me and get bored as hell there, but on the positive side you've got a lot less tying you down.
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Well, my favorite so far is an Otter. You can do so much more with that door than with a King Air or a Cessena. I have a feeling that'll change when I try a Casa. Should be next weekend at Louisburg as long as the weather is decent.
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You might try calling some of the other nearby dropzones, even if it means a few hours drive some weekend to check it out. A lot of times the DZO/Rigger/etc at the fairly large dropzones will be an authorized rep for the canopy manufacturers and have one or two demo canopies on hand. I know my DZ does this with Cobalts, Icarus (I believe), and PD. I realized this last weekend when I was mentioning getting a smaller container and my rigger offered to hook the demo Cobalt-150 he had in his shed into mine.
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I wouldn't really call it unsafe. You really have to work with what you have on a dropzone. Their LZ is only 50 or so feet wide, but it's a mile long, so as long as you can line the canopy up you're ok. The long part runs east-west, which is the prevailing wind direction. It just means that the DZ has to drill the students a little harder on the dangers of crossing the runway/taxiway, avoiding planes (there really aren't many - it's a tiny airport), not crossing the runway below 1000', etc.
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Yeah, a lot of them do. At my DZ the landing area is pretty close to a runway, although the landing area is fairly big so you don't have to land close to it. At Louisa on the other hand, the landing area runs between the runway and the main taxiway, and it's only about 50 feet wide, so you really don't have much choice but to land near the runway. But no matter how far away the actual landing area is from the runway, a bad spot can leave you landing near it. Stay heads up. You can maneuver the parachute a lot better than the pilot on the ground.
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Well, I jumped a -1B (round, non-steerable) chute in the military. I don't know the date my particular chute was made, but I'm pretty sure the -1B is the same (or very similar) model used to air drop troops in WWII.
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I've never heard of one around there. To the best of my knowledge, there are only 3 permanent ones in the US: Pigeon Forge, TN; Las Vegas, NV; and Orlando, FL. So none of them are really close to you, but you're not too bad off. I think the one in Pigeon Forge is probably a bit closer to Atlanta, but from everything I've heard the one in Florida is much better (designed for skydivers rather than tourists) so that would be my recommendation.
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A dandelion
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LOL, I've been down that road before. While it's nice in theory, from my experiences you're almost always better off doing the hourly thing. The problem is that, while the salaried job may only say '40 hours a week' your boss probably has different ideas and starts asking questions about why you're 'not a team player' and ONLY doing the minimum number of hours (instead of working from 6AM-9PM 6 days a week). Also, as an hourly wage slave, if my boss calls me and tells me to come in on Friday night or Saturday, or whatever, they have to pay me overtime for that time period. Since my company's budget is run by a bunch of tight-asses, that makes it very unlikely I'll ever have to come in during my off time except for a real emergency.