Kris

I just ordered that book and I hope to use it for myself and use parts of it to help some of the students I train. As for imagery, I am a big believer it it and it has helped me immensly. Right now, I try to tell my students not to just go over the dive-flow in their heads but to see themselves doing it perfectly every time. If they can imagine themselves being able to give a perfect performace then they are much more likely to perform better when they actually get out of the airplane. I am also a big believer in good breathing and smiling as well. With my 45-second delay students I use an exit count of "Ready, Set, Breathe!" and when we leave the step I want to see them doing it and smiling as much as I am. Kris

Heh, it was pretty hideous wasn't it? At least the new Stiletto is a bit more appealing and has lots of purple in it. I will definitely be at Skydive Dallas this Saturday, probably around 11'ish and depending on the day will probably spend the night. When you ask Brittany about me, believe NOTHING! It wasn't me! The camera footage was staged, it was my evil twin or my mini-me. (That should just about cover it) As for Houston, sounds like a lot of people are going to be there when I am, I look forward to meeting all of you. And, Zennie, we are definitely going to have to get in a jump together. I didn't know Waller was a CRW-friendly DZ. I might have to see about getting some coaching while I am there. I love the idea of CRW and have only gotten to go on a few dives so far. Hmmm, I seem to have this strange urge to have pairs of shoes that don't match, the ability to land miles off of the DZ, and lots of hook-knives... And I thought freefly was the dark-side.

Well, the paperwork for my business trip came through. I will be at Skydive Houston visiting Brittany and enjoying the weather Dec 7th (evening) through the morning of the 9th. Who else is going to be there? Kris

Heh. Between the Mirage, the Stiletto & the Tempo I saved $1000 easy. I knew being a staff monkey would come in handy some day... Seriously though, Mike the DZO has always taken care of the staff very well when it comes to gear. Kris

My new Mirage came with either a 26" or 28" ZP (I'd have to re-check) and I really liked it with my Heatwave and with my new Stiletto 190. I have the new freefly handle and that combined with how tight the spandex BOC puch is really makes for a secure pilot-chute even if it is ZP. On my old rig I had a 28" ZP with my Sabre 210 which was okay but probably needed to be a couple of inches smaller to help with the openings.

95% chance that I'll be there this weekend. I was going to go to the CSS boogie but I don't have enough vacation time yet at my new job . Just look for the bowling ball with an all purple Mirage w/ white trim and a purple / white-black-purple tie-dyed jumpsuit. That'll be me. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I think you owe me a coached dive, Ramon...

Bob Clark is hands-down the nicest guy you'll ever meet in the sport. His wife Judy is just as incredible as he is. Her idea of fun at the young age of 50-60 is to start with the rear wheel of her bicycle in the Pacific and ride until her front tire touches the Atlantic. They are both great skydivers and a great couple. Bob was always Mr. Advice when I was just starting out and I always thank him for that. Kris

Sigh, kids these days... Kickstart is the OS loader / kernal for the Amiga OS.

Will it run on Kickstart? (name that OS, kidz...) Kris

Yo, Watcher, was that Mirage you bought navy with greenish lemon trim? Maybe with David or Staff on the mud-flaps? Just curious... Kris

Merrick, I used Slinks with my old Talon rig with 2" risers for over 100 jumps with no problems. They are still on there now that Andy has it. I used the standard SM-1 Slinks for sport mains. Kris

Hola Pammi! Skydive Dallas has a full Skydive U program at their DZ. In fact, Rob Laidlaw (founder of SKydive U) is one of the DZ managers there during part of the season. If you plan on going for coaching, let me know. I just might tag along as I have been thinking about taking the course to help give me better skills when working with my students. Kris

Well, the way it was explained to my by Lee Fairbanks(?), the rigger at Skydive Dallas was that PISA has been known to lay the panels for the canopy exactly as they are cut instead of turning the fabric 180-degrees for the next piece. The gist of it as he told me was that by having the "grain" of the fabric the same across the canopy will cause it to torsionally pull (the fabric, not the canopy) the same and induce a turn. Apparently, other manufacturer's go against the 'grain' with each panel allowing even stress throughout the canopy. Whether that's a load of hooey or not it sure made sense to me. Then again, it could have been a simple problem with the stitching on one of the panels. If I ever find out the problem, I'll post it. As for the Stiletto, I agree on the proven design and as a consumer I usually follow the rule of "You get what you pay for" (you should see how many jump tickets I blew on my Sony ES / Velodyne / Magnaplanar home theatre system) but in the case of the Heatwave I went with the unknown. Funny how we do that with things that we trust our lives to... The demo Stiletto I tried a few months back was a 1996 model and opened / flew like a champ. I'm sure PD threw all the latest mods on it as they came out but I know what to expect from a PD product and I know it will be right the first time. What other problems had you heard of? Thanks Merrick! I can't wait to jump my new toy this weekend. Hopefully, I won't have to chop it on the first jump like I did on my Heatwave.

Also, if one fails, I would like it to happen on opening and with a Slink that is where it is probably going to happen. I have seen a friend land and when he went to gather his canopy, some of the lines slipped off of one of his rapide links that had busted open and bent on opening. He hadn't noticed it until then. If it had failed the teensiest bit more when he was too low to use the reserve he would have been a dead man. I used Slinks on my Sabre, my Heatwave and now my new Stiletto will have them as well. Kris

Geez you perverts, you only looked at this because you thought it was sexual, didn't you?

I had a hackey for a while then replaced it with a Monkey Fist. The hackey was okay but I loved the Monkey fist, especially in winter with gloves on. I haven't tried the "ganja" style. I now have the new freefly pud-style handle on my new Mirage and I really like it, too. It's not as bad with gloves on as I thought it was going to be. Kris

Allright, I ddin't want to have to go this far, Jessica... but: You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in your home state of Texas I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselfs in recognition of what they had done. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly. You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you ckoke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper. On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go. You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh. the only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you. Damn, I can't believe I just posted that... Kris Umm, we're still friends, right?

Here are mine: I use the same pen for my logbook. I have to "zerbert' my canopy when I pack it. (Pammi, you stole that from me!

Umm, ahhh, err... You mother's got a wooden leg with a kick-stand! Kris (Sorry, I was temporarily possessed by Eddie Murphy)

Sigh... I have to be in Tulsa until late Friday night setting up the LAN at a new location. You're gonna have to count me out of this one. Kris

Seconded! Pammi made me a great necklace. The girl rocks!

1500'

Hey Sis, if you want to learn how to Psycho Pack, I'll be at Skydive Dallas this Saturday. Find me and I'll hook you up. Kris

Heh, that story grows every time I hear it.

I put several jumps on a regular Mirage before I bought my new Mirage UNISYN. The difference to me was night & day. The UNISYN harness allows for an amazing range of flexibility and the comfort level is awesome. I can't comment on the backpad though. I do not have one on mine but it is still very comfortable whether I am just in the plane for a hop & pop or staying with the plane for four back-to-back loads pitching IAD students. Kris