Kris

Count me in for that trip, Pam! That gives me an excuse to go to Texas and get some more Fat Tire beer. But you still got much respect from me this weekend by showing up with a six-pack of Flying Dog. And Freaksis, It was nice having you at the DZ this weekend, even if I didn't get to see any tattoo licking. :) Kriszilla

A SIM's fanatic, eh? And how is Miss Bobbie, Mike? Umm, I mean, Anonymous? Bwahaha Kris

Guys, I can vouch for Mike Farmer. He's definitely, umm, err, passionate (yeah, that's the word) when it comes to skydiving. And truth be told, who can blame him or the rest of us. The best line I heard about trying to explain what we do went like this, "Trying to explain skydiving to a whuffo is like trying to explain sex to a virgin." It just can't be done. As for the sunset loads, Mike was on the load with me last night and when we exited the airplane it was 10 mintes from dead darkness. Ground was supposed to have some cars ligthing up the landing area and when I got under canopy they had just started driving them to the field (slow pokes). The view was incredible... So was the ground-rush on landing. I was about to kick a 70-degree carving toggle turn to surf up the headlights of a car when a little voice in my head went "check". I looked over to the hanger to re-assess my altitude and immediately started my flare. Dead-of-night isn't dangerous, it's that odd window of late twilight that can really throw your depth-perception off. Be safe & have fun, Kriszilla

Heh, thanks for the props on the Unix to 'Princess Bride" humor. I wish I could take credit for it but I found it on the net. As far as the P4 is concerned, I'm not really impressed. Intel may be on top now in speed, but the lower MHz Athlons will still beat them in some areas. The AMD releases the new Palomino core Intel will have to go back to the drawing board. If you thought skydiving took a lot of money, the specs for "Beast" my rendering / video editing box are below for your amusement: Athlon 900 OC'd to 1050MHz and going to 1100+ when I go water cooled. 768MB in three 256MB sticks Diamond Max 40GB ATA100 HDD for pre-process Adaptec AHA-2940U2W with: Two 18GB LVD HDD's 9GB UW HDD These bad boys hold my OS, MP3's, movies & games Teac 32X SCSI CD-ROM Plextor 8x32 SCSI burner DDS-3 SCSI DAT backup (12GB/24GB) DPT UW RAID w/ 64MB cache with: 3 9GB UW HDD's for rendering & non-linear editing in a RAID-0 in an external enclosure. Two 3Com PCI 10/100 NIC's GeForce2 Ultra w/ 64MB DDR (New Toy) SB Live Platinum Dedicated Sony STR-D725 Dolby Digital reciever w/ Eosone satellites & 10-inch powered sub for surround-sound gaming goodness. Windows 98SE for games Mandrake 8.0 Linux with the new 2.4.4 kernel (Using KDE and BASH, of course) Since my rig has been feeling neglected, I'm upgrading it to a new Mirage G3 and a 190 or 170 elliptical (depends on if I can keep losing weight like a madman like I have over the last few months) this July. A guy can go seriously broke with these hobbies...

As a man, to make up for the fact that we're generally not multi-orgasmic I just learned to lick the alphabet in sanskrit. I might as well make somebody else happy. :) Kris Doing my part to help humanity...

My PID is Inigo Montoya. You kill -9 my parent process. Prepare to vi... Oh geez, I really am a UNIX geek! Remember this boys & girls; Microsoft bad - SGI IRIX, SUN Solaris , SCO OpenServer, BSD and Linux are your friends. Kris "I luv the Penguin" Martinez Okay, maybe I'm stretching it a bit with SCO...

So, April... When are you coming back to Cushing to visit Pammi? I need to make sure I have the video camera ready this time. And Merrick, if you're lucky I'll let you have a copy. :) Kris Welp, there goes all the good karma I was saving...

Huffenmoose, Since I don't use full arm extension in a delta track I just kinda' "throw" myself into a roll by using my upper body and if I want to roll right I try to bring my right arm in as far as possible to my side. Kris

My Sabre 210 is a royal pain in the A$$ when it comes to openings. I finally had to put a slider pocket on it and start psycho-packing it to make it manageable. I'm putting a few more jumps on it to make sure I'm ready to get rid of it and then I'm going to demo a Heatwave 190.

I have one jump on my Dash-M 249 after a cutaway. It flew beautifully and the landing was fine. Kris

be prepared to put one hand on your slider to get it off of your face and the other on a rear riser to avoid someone if you need to.

Also, keep in mind that going from a hard spin in one direction by releasing one toggle and immediately burying the other can sometime kick you into some pretty nasty line twists depending on your canopy. I can do it pretty easily on my Sabre loaded at about 1.3:1 and I've seen it happen at 1:1 on another. Have fun, experiment, but be safe and when in doubt ask a JM, instructor or a CRW-Dog... Kris

Hola Pammi, Solo's are good for enjoying the view and working on tracking. A fun thing that you can try that will help in the future is learning a good, hard, flat-track and then being able to kick a barrel-roll in the middle of it. I use it to make sure my airspace is as clear as possible before I flare-out to deploy. If it's not clear then I just change direction or hold my track a bit longer. Kriszilla

Ramon, Dave & Merrick, Thanks for the great advice. Looks like I'll start making some calls early Monday. As for trying a 170, I'm coming off of a Sabre 210 that I was jumping at 1.3:1 all last year and now I'm down to almost 1.2:1 on it so I wanted to put a few jumps on a 190 elliptical before I tried the Cobalt 170, I want to purchase with the new Mirage I am getting in July if I like how it flies... Thanks again! Kris

Congrat's Pammi! You looked like a kid who just got a shiny new bike. :) It is a really nice rig and I think it will suit you very well once you get a bit more experience on your Triathlon, but the Sabre really will be a different animal. Get with Tony or Mike before your first (BEER!!!) jump on it so they can give you an idea of just how different a 9-cell is going to be from a 7-cell, especially with the wingloading change. I didn't know it was your birthday. We'll all have to go out to dinner next weekend or something. Be safe & Blue Skies! Kris

I would but I'm at a small DZ in Oklahoma where almost everyone jumps PD canopies. I would try a Cobalt but the biggest they make is a 170 and that's too damn small. :( Kris

I'm looking for a new canopy and have heard good things about PISA's elliptical, the Heatwave. I can find no address information for PISA. Does anyone know where I can get my hands on a Heatwave 190 to demo? Thanks! Kris

Damn! Say it isn't so. That would get rid of its 'mojo'! You can't mess with the 'mojo'!!! Kriszilla Froggie Said, "kris, sorry to disapoint you but rumor has it that Franki might be getting a paint job. Nothings gaurenteed, in fact, i dont even remember where i heard that from. But if we do paint him then I think we should all roll around in paint and throw ourselves against the sides of Franki. Can you imagine? We could hold eachother upside down and press against him. Dont know why i have this big wish to brand Franki, but if hes going to get painted, it might as well be by his most adoring dropzone."

In my short time in skydiving I've jumped from FrankenOtter, C-182's, a Caravan, Casa's, a Skyvan and a Bell 412 and here's my breakdown: Best plane: Casa! Bomb that exit! Best ride: Bell 412 at Quincy. "Damn! Is that a tree branch stuck to the skid?" Best 'pimp' factor: FrankenOtter. We had that badboy down at Oklahoma Skydivng center some time back for a visit when I had about 10 jumps off of student status. Before I started skydiving there was no way in hell you could have got me in there. When I saw it as a jumper, I couldn't wait to get inside and see what that mish-mash of parts could do. That beast can climb! I hope they never paint it!

If it is a consistent problem, talk to your rigger about having a pocket put onto your slider. There's a reason why it's also called a 'camera pocket. My Sabre 210 went from instant openings to consistent 400-600' footers and if I really try I can pack 1000' of snivel into it. I think my rigger here charged me all of $40 to do it.

Youch! I really hope he has more balls than you or you'll have some explaining to do to Merrick. :) Might I suggest the book "I have two daddies" for your children? As for seeing Kevin naked, I'll be there in spirit but I'll keep a red-hot poker ready for my retina's in case I don't look away fast enough. Too bad you & Merrick don't live in the city. I just got back from Dinner & pool with Kevin, Larry & Tony. You and Merrick really should have been there, it was a blast. See you this weekend, Kris

My wingloading off of student status was right at about 1.25:1, then up to 1.3:1 and now with the diet I'm down to around 1.25:1 again on my Sabre 210. The reserve is a Raven III and it is 39ft2 larger than my main. As Lisa said, the reserves are usually smaller to make the rig look good but if I'm unconscious I'd rather live with maybe a few broken bones under my larger reserve and a big rig than look good while I try to kill myself with a small reserve. I knew it was a bit high of a wingloading on my main to start with but with my size and the deal I got on the rig I couldn't pass it up. The ground-rush was amazing compared to jumping an F-111 student canopy but once I learned how to plane the canopy out I really enjoy the landings now. I just make sure that I remember to respect what my canopy can do to me at that wingloading if I botch and I practice braked turns and flare turns on almost every jump so that if something happens to pop up at me on final I can hopefully try to avoid it without having my canopy hit the ground before I do from attempting a low, radical toggle turn. My canopy has already pimp-slapped me once when I timed a flare just a hair late and I ended up badly spraining my ankle the week before Quincy last year. I still went and had fun, but it would have been a lot more enjoyable if I didn't have a reminder of the rectal-cranial inversion I had pulled the week before. Check with your jumpmaster's and other instructor's on the DZ as they will know your flying abilities better than we would. If nothing else, it never hurts to be a little conservative. Just my $0.02

Start with learning a solid sit, it is a survival skill just like tracking and altitude awareness. It's fun too. That's what several freeflyers at my DZ drilled into my head last year when I got serious with it. It is a relatively easy position to learn to hold (moving it is another matter :) for getting you used to flying other than on your belly. Once you have a good, solid sit down and you've moved on to playing with it in regards to fall-rate, forwards / backwards movement, turns and basic transitions (cartwheels & loops) then move on to trying head-down. This is where sit as a survival skill comes in. If you cork out of your head-down attempts, and you will, several times (Sometimes I think it will never end... ;) and other people are around you, your first instinct should be to go right into a sit, not to your belly. If you go to your belly when you cork the deceleration can be pretty insane depending on your build and how you fly. If I'm flying head-down at 170-180 and someone below me corks and goes to their belly and does 120mph we now have a nice closing speed of 50+ MPH between us. Not a pretty picture. Going back into a sit helps keep your fall rate up and you have a better view of what is going on around and above you. Try to stick with two-ways with an experienced freeflyer so that they can help you be aware of things you might not notice if you are by yourself such as not being able to stay in your own column of air (tracking forwards or backwards). As always, your mileage may vary, talk to the experienced freeflyers at your DZ and check the net for other good info such as Pat Work's site at http://www.works-words.com/vrwhome.htm as this is the producer of "The Art of VRW" books & videos. There are also a few great links at http://www.ground-rush.com/freefly.htm under 'Tutorials'. Good luck, be safe & have fun!

BWAHAHAHA! Thanks Pam, that was probably one of the weirdest things I have seen in a while. Well, except for the time...errr, ummm, ahem. Nevermind. :)

Hey Pam! I usually check out this website for the news & gear reviews and finally decided to check out the forums. There are a lot of really good discussions going on so I'm sure you'll see me around here from time to time. Tell Merrick I said, "Hola" and I'll see you guys at the DZ next weekend. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and you can finally graduate. :) Then the real fun begins!