ramon

But catching up...sigh..

Of course there is legislation in process of making it illegal to De-crypt anything...

If you are interested in congress dealings with MPAA (motion picture artists association) and other legislation since Napster and decoding of DVD then check this out. A lot of videographers use music. mp3s etc and this might be relevant. http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html. If not then please go to the next thread..no arm bending here.

Demo some other canopies if you are considering paying for a Safire. there is no reason to not demo unless some buddy has a used safire at some un beatable price. You can definitely find a used sabre at a good price. ramon

Hornet is the one to compare with safire. It is sort of like a sabre but slightly eliptical like a safire (flares like a sabre though). Heatwave is a really good stilleto knock off. both are made of South African Fabric like a triathlon and are easy to pack. added bonus is the line attachment points are different colors which aids packing (Alines on colore, b line attachment points another etc). Good parachutes..don't knock the price. ramon

Tomorrow think a little while what it will be like without your grandma and then do all the stuff you wish you could have done for her while she is here. my grandmas kicked ass. peace ramon

Just kidding jump it soon and when you open there wil be a slight dusty cloud as mildew is knocked off. Let it go a long time and...... how big is your reserve? If I packed it wet hoping to jump I would unpack and dry out when I got home. Going to SLand this weekend?

that's what I'm wondering. You're a pooh bah now? jeeze.

and some of that..Ate everything I could in the middle east excet horseshoe crab....jeeze I'm from Louisiana and even coonasses don't eat that. Beer preferences, no light unless drunk, other than that Shlitz to Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. Must be the time I did in the army ramon

This will make you a good canopy pilot too. in addition to flat turning and practice flares...that is common sense...Do this once a weekend you will learn your canopy and your friends will get better too. normal crew I've done a three stack when I had abuot as many jumps as you. Couple of good crew dogs took me up. Minimally do some high pulls with friends and try to stay close..really close. try and bump endcells..you might need to use, brakes, rear risers and front risers too if the canopies are mismatched..that is very good practice. Small canopy stuff. When Wane and I hop n pop together we usually touch end cells he Xaos 80 me FX 109 and all canopies since downsizing extremes, samurais, vengeance, alphas.). We did a two stack with an extreme 99 and my Vengeance 135, and did the first all cross braced crew at Spaceland (FX99 and FX109). We always do clear and pussl together and try and fly side by side alternating barrel rolls. then one of us will do a hard 180 front riser turn and the other will follow. we sort of dog fight. Swooping. We usually swoop highest wingloading first so that we no who is holding in brakes and who is hooking. We talk our complet swoops over on the plane quickly so no one is suprised or in the way. ramon

Levin, who may post here if he sees this has done a few. He can explain the ins/outs of actually jumping the tube based on his experience. As far as saftey during a tube jump. Our biggest lesson was one time a break off I was in a sit. Levin was head down and turned away from me he went to his belly when everyone broke off and because I was behind him in a sit and too slow to move rapidly, we collided. It was niether of our fault, we just did not anticipate that happening. And probably were ignorant of how to do a break off with a tube. 1. Break off should be like 5500 for the whole group, but the tube should stay free flying for 500 or so to let everyone get away. whatever you can do to get people behind him away before he breaks off. 2. Be wary of getting behind the tube jumper (if he is head down) as he may have difficuklty checking his airspace. 3. If you are in a sit (Levin weighs 120 and the tube slows him down a lot). transition to headdown before breakoff so that you can maneuver quickly to track away, making sure to clear your own airspace leaving the tube jumper in clean air. 4. Head down tube jumpers may have a little drive (if they are rusty) so it may be that they are constantly traveling slowly through the group. This often entices everyone to follow and go wave so the group as a whole may be moving as opposed to a stable big campfire. That is why it is important to clear your airspace as the jumper configureation may change alot and people who were in front of you may be behind you. 5. Sit tube jumpers can generally see everyone a little better, but opening might be a little tricky if not scary with a big tube. If you are going to suck it down tovideo an opening know that there is increased chance of the tube jumper having a mal or as is more typical a crazy opening with the tube dancing in and out of the lines. 6. On Exit the tube jumper will need clear air behind him on the hill for about 20 feet to let the tube open. Generally people sharing the camera step will need to leave on the "set" of the count to avoid a face full and possible entanglement. Other sit or hd jumpers can crowd the door in front float or inside the plane to chase out as long as no one is rear float. 7. Some tubes are made of ZP. The slightest tear or disturbance can cause them to fail catastrophically although Levin's survived a sit flier flying through it. If jumper flew through the tube (I mean pushing it out of the way, closing off the air exit) it could theortically bust apart because it would suddenly have restricted airflow. Good luck ramon

Since George was on Icarus board of directors before he resigned, I imagine they have at least some legal/finaincial responsibility for the canopies..at least older ones (mine says inspected by Precision). However depending on how they organized their business/partnership/jointventure what ever, it could be that George was just a consultant and he sold his services (manufacturing) to Icarus in which case things get tricky. I'm thinking an extreme with HMA line mods would be like having a Grand Marquis with Lincoln Continental labels (same car different options). but I could be wrong. I wonder if they service any old Icarus canopies or refer you to Icarus (other than converting "Extreme" canopies). ramon

Shouldn't have gone O.T. r

forgot jump numbers...very careful and I do not jump the FX at DZs with tight landing areas, and I do not advocate anyone downsizing as fast as I did. I have probably done a dozen clear and pulls at 14k with the FX to get aquainted with flight characteristics as I have with most of my intermediate canopies. I have downsized much faster than is normal or safe but only one size at a time, and at one point in my career upsized after an incident. I ask lots of questions and heed the advice of experienced swoopers. peace ramon

Stilleto 170 at 1.3ish is a great parachute. forgiving, flat glide, soft openings and makes it back from a spot from hell. ramon

If not just for heaviest wingloading.. but also for the wingloading range 2.1 I hope you stay skinny

Typical conservative arguement: "you don't have enough data to say positively with out a doubt that we are experiencing global warming" But the hidden agenda is lack of public transportation caused by auto makers more interested in selling new cars to every citizen every 5 years and lawmakers receiving huge canpaign contributions from industry...i.e Bush is trying to pretty much get rid of the EPA Clean Air Act. And also there are tremendous reports of persons working at Ground Zero with respiratory problems...The EPA said it was safe....hidden agenda...Don't upset the fragile economy still intact in NY Don't cause trouble, strikes, protests or anything that could turn into a big mess surrounding Ground Zero. Typical Liberal Arguement (unfortunately the scientists are lumped in here) "Ice core samples from antarctica can show what the environment was like for the past few million years. CO2 trending can be done over several million years and you can see upswings, followed by down swings (ice age preceeded by sudden greenery bloom in South America)..Current CO2 levels exceed any ever charted by a large margin and the scientists do not know if the diminishing rainforests will be able to have sudden growth to accomodate the CO2 swing. Hidden agenda...legislate controls on just about everything that emits CO2, raise taxes to help defray losses of companies that can't afford the controls..have the auto industry in upheavals changing to technology which was available 15 years ago, more taxes to defray costs and layoffs. manufactured goods prices go up industry wide to help defray costs of controls or fossil fuels replacements. And non of this would affect the rest of the world. With the possibility of companies like GE encouraging partners and clients to relocate entire facilites overseas to cheaper countries with less controls it is possible more Americans would lose jobs than from NAFTA. but I could be wrong. ramon

depending on gear and pizza consumed with beer during the week. back up is vengeance 135 at 1.67 (great canopy BTW) ramon

This has been hashed out already right after 9/11...on DZ.com in fact and other places. Very interesting arguments pro and con. I would certainly like a base rig to jump off buildings in touble or otherwise..obviously that is not "The" solution to 9/11 (meaning don't give the public little parachutes in case of terrorists..make the govt or the do something to prevent it). Here is one of the posts. you can do a search on the rest. By the way jet fuel..a lot of it burns very hot 1000s of degress..enough to weaken the structural steel to failure. ramon article posted with permission from author: Personal Parachutes: The Ethics of Safety Many of us since the attack on the World Trade Center have been asking how this could have been prevented. And if it could not have been prevented, how then could we have had more survivors? As daunting as it is to think of, a parachute appears to be a logical and effective means of escape. After all, Leonardo DaVinci conceived in 1485 the first parachute specifically for the purpose of escaping safely from fires in tall buildings, and there have been countless other inventors and engineers who have worked on similar ideas since his time. Why then have we never seen this technology in use? Simply put, it is not necessarily a good idea. The recent events have led the public in a state of helpless anxiety to seek protection, reassurance, and a means to escape. Thousands of gallons of water have been sold, as well as a multitude of flashlights, antibiotics, gas masks, and now, personal parachutes. Several companies have taken advantage of this new demand by marketing parachute systems to office workers, hotel guests, emergency workers, and high rise tenants. One example, ?The Executive Chute? is being advertised as a ?last resort? when fleeing a structure over 20 stories. While the idea of marketing an emergency escape system itself is an admirable idea, it is highly irresponsible to sell these parachutes to people without adequate training. Their web site makes it seem like anyone could just pop it out of their desk drawer at work and saunter out to the nearest ledge and leap to safety. Another company, Precision Aerodynamics, is marketing the ?Emergency Building Escape Parachute System?. They compare the need for an EscapeChute for people in high rises as similar to the need of a life preserver when traveling beyond swimming range from shore. People need to understand that this is not as simple as putting on a life vest. While their web site does say ?training required?, they also promote the EscapeChute as an easy and obvious choice: ?By following simple instructions, the parachute is automatically deployed for you. All you have to do to initiate deployment is to jump out the window and away from the building. Simple steering and landing techniques can deliver you to the surface with confidence?. A video is provided with purchase of the canopy, which may falsely lead people to believe that this is all the training they need. B.A.S.E. jumping, for the most part illegal in this country, is the extreme sport of jumping off of stationary objects (Building, Antennae, Span (bridges), and Earth). Buildings are the most difficult, even for a highly experienced jumper. Morpheus Technologies, which provides one of the only legal US training courses for B.A.S.E. jumpers, will not even let anyone sign up for their courses unless they are already a licensed and experienced skydiver with a minimum of 200 jumps. Even then, their training is intensive and rigorous. Kathy Gillespie-Jones at Morpheus says ?As a manufacturer of B.A.S.E. specific equipment, we feel a responsibility to the general public. There is no quick fix in this situation. A background in skydiving and a very thorough training course are needed to even begin to pursue what we look at as a SPORT. Even then, we can die!? B.A.S.E rigs contain only one parachute and there is no back up, as typically altitudes are so low that it would not be possible to deploy a reserve in time. Packing must be perfect as well as your body position when jumping off the building to provide for the best chance that the parachute will open properly, on-heading, away from the building and with adequate horizontal separation. There are so many other variables that need to be taken into consideration when executing a base jump just under good conditions, such as exit height, wind patterns, piloting the parachute, just to name a few. An experienced and trained B.A.S.E jumper under good conditions is going to be a highly different model than a panicked inexperienced office worker, who would in all likelihood be severely injured or killed using a parachute to escape from a building. For a novice even with training, the lack of conditioning would cause a sensory overload which could prevent them from being able to react and properly use the equipment. Fire within a building would take this to an entirely different level of risk. Greg Yarbenet, the inventor of the slider which made modern parachuting possible, did studies about fifteen years ago, researching the effectiveness of escaping from a burning structure with a parachute. ?Parachuting from a burning building has to take into account the very unusual wind patterns that develop from a very hot rising air mass that is being replaced by the cooler, lower air that is now funneling upwards to replace the hot air.? He clocked the thermal updrafts at over two thousand feet per minute at the top of a test burning building. Air near the ground began to swirl upwards in a small vortex that changed the velocity and direction according to doors, windows, and other building shapes that allow the air to find the easiest path to the flames. Rising thermals off of the top created sudden downdrafts on the leeward side. Yarbenet found that any normal size parachute would not function well in such turbulent conditions, and could be pulled back up in the strong updrafts or collapse in the multiple vortexes along the sides of the building. Daniel Preston, of the New York based parachute company, Atair Aerodynamics, has mixed feelings on the subject. When asked if he would work in a high rise without his B.A.S.E. rig Preston answered ?definitely not?. He believes that people should be given all the facts, allowing them to then seek training and make an educated purchase. However, he is against the selling of escape parachutes to the general public. As a New York company, Atair finds the ads for these products to be in horrendous taste, dangerously misleading and opportunistic. One company, B.E.S. even showed a banner of one of the towers being hit and people falling to their death. ?It is specifically the way these products are being marketed that is irresponsible?, says Preston, ?B.A.S.E. jumping requires training, period. It is not something you can just learn in a few hours from reading a book or seeing a video. The first step is to learn how to skydive. With a couple hundred jumps under your belt, you could consider learning B.A.S.E.? Preston estimated the survivability rate of some of these personal escape parachute systems to be less than 50%. That means that half of the people jumping would probably die. Other industry leaders estimated the survivability rate to be less. By comparison in skydiving where everyone is trained and licensed, fatality rates are less than one in one hundred thousand jumps. The majority of those fatalities are caused by pilot error under a fully functioning parachute. While it would be arguable that one should take any chance in the case of extreme emergency, the difficulty with that is determining what exactly is a last ditch situation. ?I could envision many situations where people would be likely to jump when they don't have to?, says Preston. It is estimated that 70% of the people in the World Trade Towers escaped the through the stairwells. According to Cliff Schmucker, president of the Parachute Industry Association, ?there?s obviously people out here trying to make a quick buck in a bad situation?.At least one person was looking into congressional relief for the liability issue.?. This would be disastrous, as it would remove accountability for improperly designed, tested and marketed products. Dan Poynter, a well known publisher and writer of educational and technical texts on sport parachuting, says ?sure, if you are a base jumper and on the 28th floor, keep your rig at the office, but for other people it doesn?t make a whole lot of sense?. Poynter believes ?a parachute could work for some people in some cases, but there are many, many questions to be answered with regard to practicality, cost, training and design.? Atair manufactures a B.A.S.E. parachute called the Troll and states that the parachutes accumulated one thousand live real world jumps before it was offered for sale. What is being marketed by many companies as escape systems, is untested technology. The way that it is being marketed is misleading and sensationalist. ?While I am not against the possibility of escaping from a building with a parachute?, says Preston, ?there are so many things that need to be taken into consideration, and which seem to be overlooked in these current products.? ?you can not just take an off the shelf para-glider reserve parachute, put it in a container and market it for a wholly different, far more complex and demanding application?its not safe.? The systems being marketed at this time have appeared on a variety of television shows and are gaining a lot of publicity. ?From what we have seen?, says Gillespie-Jones, ?The harness seems to be extremely awkward and the point in which the static line connector is located is very prone to cause an entanglement with the body. We witnessed complete failure by a company representative to put this system on properly. This was done on the Today Show in a controlled environment. There is no way that a person in a panicked state could begin to equip themselves properly in a timely fashion.? It is very frustrating to see the direction that this whole thing is going in. Companies seem to be jumping on the bandwagon, offering parachuting equipment that in any other application would take months if not years of research and development, drop testing and live testing in a variety of environments before there would even be a consideration to sell to the public. What transpired in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania is absolutely tragic and it was horrifying to see those people jump from the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, jumping with many of these escape systems that are being marketed in the aftermath under those same circumstances may not have saved lives, but only extended them by a second or two. written by Heather Sinclair ©October 19, 2001

Mommya freaks, don you let your kids grow up be like Levin. Kid ain't raht. Dang boy all red an yaller n got big ole cameras on is haid. Dat yung un broke is ankle on an Alpha (read an yaller) but got hisself a FX 74 to make up fer it. an its red an yaller too. Plus he got them frankenstein orthopedic boots which he thinks fer his ankle but reely fer kickin you out da formation. Boy jumps a racer...spelled R-A-C-E-R...red an yaller..like I had to tell ya. Legen has it he never change his velcro...jus a dying to wrap up some yung un..strangle da life out im. ya ask me..boy got a thing fer danger. like to crash in ta people when flyin dat dang tube o his.....yea it's yaller. just the oder day he was in chicago showin dem yankees a thang or two. dis smart ass suthern yankee wit ...git dis..yaller hair...try to take Levin's big yaller tube out. ...aint happening...not dat yaller tube, not dat day. Dat yaller headed jackass didn't know Levin hisself couldn't be taken out by a bad break off on a tube jump. Crazy boy like taking a big ole copenhagen dip on a 5 minute call fore he got his gear on...his dumb friends all awaitin on a load that they aint even mainfested fer... who wuz manifestin.....Levin... Boy goes to the bathroom fore every load. some people say hes using them toilets, but I know he's a tightening dem boots...an making them newbies sweat, while da plane pulls up...proly enjoying dat dip while he contempalits what exotic torutes hes goan do to dem newbies, raht fore he wraps up in a RACER cocoon of DEATH....and it will be on video , son. Some folks say he's dances with the spirits. just the other day in a fast freefly his podnahs goggles come off causing quite a ruckus. do Levins....naw...there yaller too. Lawd have mercy, boy ain't got no cypres either r

I talked to John in Chicago he really is a nice person who will take the time to talk/explain something to you. I was demo jumping a lot of his gear after I lost my main in the corn fields ramon

LMAO The same people that are pushing Emergency building escape parachutes for wuffos (5 minute BASE course). can't be expected to sew back an "Extreme" label if they replace the end cell/stabilizer?.. Actually I have'nt heard anyone ask if they will re-line the canopy with HMA without altering the trim and replacing the stabilizer ($400). I wonder if they would do it. ramon

I overheard the converstions with the only addition that it was theorized "possibly UV affected them more (i.e parapentes) and skydiving canopies spend much less time in the air." anyone know? ramon

Talk more about IT and shorten the other items. I'll email you mine. you might not like it, but it is just somehting different to look at. r

bye.