Steel

I wouldn't see it as old necessarily but instead as on your way to being a classic since its only one step away. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

damn your right I guess what I meant was 10,000-20,000 and 500- 10,000 If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Just wondering about the group, Poll I think speaks for itself. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

See you all I am not alone. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I think at that point the thing to do would be to cut away and run, loosening the leg straps simultaneously so that you're not restricted by them. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

WOW, what he said. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

lol, not exactly accurate but I must say you got me laughing at my computer. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Haven't turned thirty so my world has yet to collapse. But I have lived in 3 different countries (Spain, USA, Germany) {Y España es la Mejor} and spent a month in a fourth (Italy). Also I have lived in 4 different states (NY, NJ,FL, TX) and seen like 24 or something like that. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I understand that its tradition. Like I said as long as everybody is having fun, I think its really cool. I don't know why I see things the way I do. But I know I have always been that way. I remember when I was 9 years old I got promoted in Kunfu to the next higher belt. (I think it was a green belt). Anyway they always announced it after class and everybody would clap. There wasn't even the need to get dirty. I don't remember why but for some reason I got the new belt handed to me outside of class. I remember then being asked if I wanted to receive it in class the normal way and answering "Of course NOT I have it and that is all that matters". If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Am I the only one who likes to watch but not participate? I think its all cool when all the parties involved are having fun but I guess I am just a partypooper and heart cause I just don't like the thought. I remember after my first solo flight as I was walking back to the flight school I saw my instructor with a bucket of water. It took me about a second to figure out what he was about to do. So I ran like hell. In the end he was the one who got wet from that bucket of water, not me. I never got pied for my hundredth, D-license, thousandth, coach rating or anything and I am really happy about that. There is more that I have avoided but since some of it is retroactive I won't mention anything else. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I don't know if I would go so far as to call myself a chicken because of it. But it does sound like something I would do. When jumping off cliffs skiing with freinds, I was never the first one to jump. I always waited for somebody else to jump and make sure there wasn't a boulder sticking out without enough snow cover on it. Once jumping off a rock cory, the story was the same. There was no way in hell I was going to be first because I didn't know if the water was deep enough. But after another guy confirmed it, I had no problem with the 70 foot drop. Anybody who has ever been on a load with me knows that I check my leg straps probably six times on the average and about the same with the handles. If the pudd feels just a little strange like its not easy to grip it or I feel a little velcro showing, I will search for a rigger or somebody I know has jumped pullouts (a lot) or if I have time I will just take the rig off and confirm eveything is right myself. Oh this examples can't go without mentioning my bull riding annecdote. I remember The first time I saw a live rodeo in 93 in Florida. I thought I want to try that so I went and asked about trying. I will never forget the responses with their hick accents. "So you want to bull ride, well I am sure some of the boys here can lend you some equipment so you can ride" (my response) Good now if you can just tell me what I have to do so that I don't get hurt. (they response) "You want what??? you don't want to get hurt. Hell I have broken just about every other bone in my body in rodeo. I think you you don't want to get hurt then you just better not ride" I then thought about it as carefully as I could. But regardless I found it in me to ride and I got hurt on my fourth ride. Then I rode another ten times.Then I never got the opportunity to ride again. I would do it again but I don't have the burning desire for it. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

People that do well in stunt work know when to say "yes, I can do that" and when to say "sorry, but we have to shut down production today because the set up isn't right. No. I don't care if it's costing the production $10,000 dollars today to fix the problem, we're not doing the gag until we have a reasonable expectation of surviving it." -------------------------------- I can certainly see the right and need for the stuntman to be able to veto for any which reason and say no I don't feel comfortable doing this today. But if this is equally the job of the stunt cooridinator then the stuntman has two jobs in effect. Meanwhile the stunt coordinator is the one getting twice as much. Still, I understand if I were the stuntman, I would be doing what I love and that would be enough. But it just seems to me as if there has to be some kind of differenence in job description between the two positions. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Not that I think there is anything wrong with using one's intelligence figure out what is more or less likely to be able to be done. Quite the contrary, I love using my mathematical and physics knowledge to predict the outcome before doing things. However, in all honesty I believe that intelligence and understanding is more the job for a stunt coordinator, then for the stuntman himself. The stuntman himself needs talent and that I think comes from balls more than anything. The ability to stay calm and not freak out, so that he can deal with a potentially stressful situation. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I never hear about stuntmen camps but I do remember hearing about stuntmens' unions. I used to have the names and number of some stunt coodinators. I remember once contacting some guy that did work for Screen Actors Guild in Central Florida. But its been a long time since then. He said back then that I needed at least 5 skills. Like Scuba, flying (pilot), skiing, skydiving, and maritial arts. Oh well it still seems like a lost dream but with IT/Telecom being where it is, I find myself thinking more and more about it. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I have always wanted to be a stuntman ever since... Well I can't remember since when but definately long before I started skydiving. Many people have often told me without me or anybody else bringing the topic up that they think this would be the ideal job for me. Typically I smile and think if only you knew that I had an entire resume created specifically for that purpose. In anycase I finally gave up in the idea because I heard stuntmen have to live in a poor house. I also realized that my lack of political correctness would never get to in with the Hollywood crowd. I guess my point here is to see what the correlation is between the attitude required to skydive and desire to seek out adventure in the form of danger. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Ok... Right click this link and save as. ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com/public/icaruscanopies.com/vx46pondswoops.ram Sorry but you need Real Player to watch it. He does slide but heck so do I on my 78. As I said earlier, fly it how you wish. I'd like to fly it sometime. --------------------------------------------- The funny thing about videos is that even though they offer proof, people can be stubborn enough to watch it and still keep repeating the same thing. The link you post is the core of my arguement, when it comes to graceful lands. It clearly displays him running on every landing except on the ones where they cut it and go to the next one. (keep in mind that its normal to post the best they have to offer and cut what is not as good) It also shows that as he is sprinting away his canopy is dropping behind him. Bella proves my point even more. She looks at my pictures and starts by suggesting that if there was a 7th that it would have shown me falling. So I post a 7th and then she stays quiet because apparently she sees that her assumption was false. Then afterwards she decides to attack my video. Well being available to the general public its kind of hard to make people believe I have no foward movement. So she tries to suggest that if there was video of the same landing as shown in the pictures you would see me plant right down as if I was flying a round. When people get so stubborn about simple outright proven facts the disscussion becomes futile. For that reason this is my last post on the matter. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

He can fly it any way he wants. However Luigi can swoop the 46 coast to coast and then some at the perris pond, so it's not the wingloading. ------------------------------------ This is a totally inaccurate statement. I spoke with Luigi when I was at Perris and asked him why he didn't use his 46 on the speed runs. He answer was and I quote (indirectly because I don't remember exact words) " The 46 would fly very fast and give me an advantage in that sense but it would not surf long enough to complete the full 220 foot course." Since I have managed to surf the entire 220 foot course on my 70 but know from experience that my 55 can not go for 220 feet, I can relate. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Let me make this short and simple. You may be going out with one of the best swoopers out there but you come across like you really don't know what your talking about. You need to talk to Heath and maybe he can explain why what your saying makes no sense at all. You are describing my landings as if they were that of a round. Suggesting that my canopy comes straight in with no horizontal movement is just ridiculous. Suggesting that I or anybody for that matter can sink my canopy is ridiculous. But I won't blame you there especially if you are learning by reading this forum. Others have made the same silly suggestions. There has been a lot of unfortunate misrepresentation here but this post of yours is doing nothing to change that. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I guess all I was trying to say was that your body language in the harness shows that your not at all relaxed, but the opposite. Your legs appear to be very ridge, and pointing directly at the ground. Your hands (during the flair) are out in front of you, not in a relaxed position at all. --------------------------------------- Interesting you pointing out the legs. There is a reason for that actually a couple of reasons. The first one is that my canopy reacts to harness turns more than you can imagine. Even my 70 would react surprisingly to harness shifts. The same people you would consider to be the top canopy pilots of the world did double in Nov 2001, in Perris when I told them that my entire approach was done with the harness. Some initially reacted in disbelief thinking its not possible to dive your canopy that steep solely by shifting in the harness. But later looking at the video of my approaches they could see clearly that I was only using the harness. When the harness reacts this much and you just shifted to cause you canopy to turn and unshifted to stop the turn then your movements need to be pronounced. Crossing your legs for style points will probably cause an unintentional turn. When its time for touch down I usually slide it in. I used to do the cool slides with one foot in front of the other but after a couple of times getting my trailing foot caught with a high point on the ground and therefore twisting an ankle I found the cool points not to be worth it. I don't know what your talking about the hands. I have triple risers and most of my pictures show that clearly because my hands are typically flaring outwards. Personally I don't care where my hands are as long as I am not reaching for the ground, which obviously I am not. I don't believe anybody with over 1,000 loaded over 2.9 could possibly have made it that far without a broken arm if he was reaching for the ground. Re: [dgskydive] You mentioned earlier that you have surpassed Luigi's wing loading. Was that your goal? To beat his wing loading? -------------------------------------------- You know I do my best not to mention his name because everytime I do even if its just in response to a question, I get the yahoos that are looking for an excuse to launch a personal attack on me. What is the reason for this? Jealousy? God knows and possibly he cares. I on the other hand don't. I just try not to feed the trolls. However I will try to answer your questions. My goals have changed as time goes on for different reasons. When I started jumping people rarely spoke about wingloading. Most of the people on the dropzone with over 500 jumps were flying a saber 135. Some of the bold ones were jumping stilleto 120's. 97's were the smallest they made and only very small guys were jumping them. Back then my goal was a stilleto 120 never going any smaller. After getting there I thought a 96 was more like what I wanted. Never officially got it demoed a lot of other stuff inbetween and finally got a 79. I liked the way it flew and after 350 jumps on it I decided to go to a 70. I thought for a while that was the smallest I would ever go. I had a lot of fun with it. Swooped a lot of ponds with it, ran all the pro circuit courses including the accuracy course with the 5 foot windblades, set up my own courses at my home dz with cones (courses with a built in carve that was noticeably more than the carve on the pro circuit course), did intentional downwind landings with it. But after 450-500 jumps on it, I decided that I wanted to try to go smaller. I gave that a lot of thought with calculator pencil and paper and in the end I finally came up with the 62 figure and went with that. At this point I was already loading as much as Cani but that was that was definately not among my priorities. The main question in my mind was weather or not this was going to be a canopy I could fly comfortably and be able to land out with it or if in no wind I would find myself having to run like hell. Well on a couple of occasions I landed out with it and I had no problem whatsoever. Hell one time I even did a 270 with a 150 foot + surf a mile and a half away from the DZ on a certain instance in which I had to land out. I remember setting up to kick the ball once the wind blew it out of place. I could see from under canopy in motion and still I was able to alter course and kick it. I had a guy trying to capture a picture that day. Anyway since I obviously had this canopy under control downsizing was an option. I originally wanted to go smaller than a 55 I was thinking more like a 52 or a 50 but a lot of freinds (real freinds not pricks trying to feel better about themselves by bashing me) were very much against it and in the end I settled on a 55. I intended for this to be a specialty canopy one that I would only jump if the conditions were just perfect (no turbulence mainly). But as I have continued to jump with it I have gotten more comfortable with it. The question has been posed whether or not I will buy a smaller canopy. The answer is I don't know but probably not. I would definately jump a smaller canopy given the opportunity and the right conditions. But to actually lay out a couple of grand for that right now does not seem like something I wish to do. I think most likely my next canopy is going to be boat like something loaded at 2.4 so that I can do the truly dangerous stuff with it like swoop into hangers or land on top of it, land on picnic tables, kick a ball & lift up over a picnic table in the same surf. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Every HP canopy pilot turns too low every so often.... What are you going to do when you turn too low? ------------------------------------ I find it interesting that you admit that every HP canopy pilot turns too low every so often. I think most PST competitors would flat out deny this fact at all costs. I think you would be surprised at how much digging out power a 3.1 wingloading (on a 70) has or even 3.4 on a 62. Above 4 on a 55 has lost almost all its digging out power. Since I am aware of this I have come up with a solution for that. I purposefully start my 270 approach so that it will come out approximately 50-75 feet to high. Then when the canopy is already in a turn I go to double fronts which at that point are easy to hang on and keep a surprisingly steep enough dive to maintain the speed I got from my turn. I hang on those double fronts those double fronts until the ground starts to feel too close for comfort and at that point start easing them up smoothly and start with the toggle inputs just as smoothly (with no stabbing ofcourse). The solution here is simple. If instead of making my turn as intended to pull out 50 feet too high, I pull out 20 feet to high then I will simply spend less time on double fronts. If I pulled out 50 feet lower than planned or just in time then I don't do the double fronts at all. If I hooked lower than that then I deserve to get fucked up and will, just like many many people have flying much, much lighter wingloadings. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

But is it for the better or for the worse. Lets see. lx50: A young Bruno, 19, no real hairloss, 175 lbs, 42" chest, 235 lb. bench but hasn't worked out 2 days in a row in his life, wears 32 jeans but is slightly concerned at the possibility of having to upsize to a 33. His main goal is to get that mustang up to 140 and learn how to pump the clutch properly to win those street races that start when the light turns green. Has no real responsibilities and thinks he will be rich by the time he is 30. bevsoot: an old Bruno 29 pushing 30 with noticeable hairloss on the right and left side just above the forehead, 200 lbs. but a 44" chest 17" arms & 335 lb. bench to go with it. Would be great if it wasn't for that unfortunate 35" waist that follows it. Its even sickening to acknowledge that. Knows it is imperative to get the will power to run it off. Has gotten his camaro up to 145 and ninga upto 160 but really doesn't see it as a meaningful accomplishment more as an unnecessary risk. Has a ton of responsibilities and knows without any doubt that in 2 months when he turns thirty he will NOT be rich. I think I would rather be 19 again. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

yeah thats right but I like the using the nickname better. Skyhawk ====================== How do you exit one of those plane with a door in the side?? ----------------------------------- I didn't jump out of it, I just flew it. But anyway a skyhawk is so similar to a Skylane that I bet you could put the same exact door set up for jumping out of it. Its just not practical because it climbs to slow. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

There is my saved plane picture. I actually had to change the name I had it saved under because it was saved under the name of the plane. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

since this is not an extremely offensive post and for the sake of accuracy I will respond. 95% of my landings involve a 270 before landing. If you are suggesting that somebody who does a 270 followed by a swoop in which at the end of his swoop kicks an 18" ball can not handle his canopy. Then I would ask what your criteria for being ready for a canopy is. BTW the wingloading is over 4 and not anywhere near 3.5 If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Quotemaybe a short video is in order of one of your swoops so I can see why it looks like your sinking it in when youre really swooping? ----------------------------- I have a short video but even that is 36 MB. =============================== Also why did you lengthen your toggles 6 inches? Whats the point of lengthening steering lines past the point where a deep riser input does not deflect the tail? I don't understand ----------------------------------------- If I kept factory settings my canopy would buffet with any riser inputs. In anycase after a lot of experimentation with different lengths that I where I have found the best results. Its a personal matter because the length of somebody's arms alone can make a difference. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.