Steel

Ok so I am Fu#*en philosopher but hey maybe somebody will humour me and answer here. If you think of it we are all many things. For instance I am a gun owner, pilot, skydiver, skier, etc. But the question here is how do you define yourself? IE. what matters most in your life? If you asked me 5 years ago I would have said without question I am a skier before anything. But the fact that I moved to Texas (a place where I can't ski) proves something had to change somewhere. Anyway I will name my top five. 1. Skydiver / sex addict (these two are tied at #1) 2. Overall speed frreak (motorcycles, cars, anything) 3. hardcore proud right-winger (by definition must be American or atleast want to be) 4.Drug-free bodybuilder 5.Deprived skier living in Texas 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.

3 reserve rides in my past 175 jumps. But wait all 3 of them were in the first 75 jumps on my most recent canopy. So I am am upto 100 jumps with no reserve rides with this canopy. Oh and there was one other one last year that was my first one ever with 9 years in the sport and well over 1200 jumps. 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.

My name is Bruno R. Rodriguez, thats Rodriguez by birth not by cult. Thats important to say because contrary to what some actually think, Rodriguez is a Spanish last name not some Mexican Aztec last name which obviously I have nothing to do with. Anyway I am a telecom engineer when I am working. 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.

you left out to much in your poll. I for one think shaving sucks and only shave my face because there is no other choice there. But chest, arms, legs and just about anything else (except genitals that arera is not to be messed with) will come out much better when you rip it out. 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 been doing 270's since 11/2001 before that I did 720's. I found that is was near impossible to get the accuracy I wanted from a 720. That makes me think maybe I should give it another shot see if I can kick a ball out of a 720. I just don't think you will get much more speed out of a larger turn but it can definately catch peoples' attention more with the noise it makes. It was cool hearing whuffo comments after a 720 while walking in. I remember hearing it referred to as the spin of death, little did they know that it wasn't anymore dangerous than the normal 180 everybody else was doing, well maybe just a little. 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 I still question how well he might do when pitted say against a boxer or wrestler of equal weight. I don't mean to be obstinate, but after taking quite a bit of karate, I wonder about how much of it would be effective in a real scrap. ] Ok the truth is I can't find for sure one specific reason for a desire to get bigger. But if I was to guess, I can think of one thing I like. I like to be able to have a girl push force down on her elbows and then military press her all the way up so as to put her head 8 to 9 feet up in the air. Then watch another girl ask her guy to do it and watch him try and fail. I guess I have seen that happen a lot and evil me I just get off on it. But if it came to getting into a scrap well that had meaning to me in grammar school and yeah probably high school too. But right now I realize that if I really had a problem my glock 45 would have more take down power than Dave Palumbo, Greg Valentino, Jay Cutler or anybody for that 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.

[i'm MUCH more impressed with the powerlifters, most are tiny guys (& girls) who maximize the potential power in the more "normal" amounts of muscle a human has vs a focus on increasing their size to superfreak proportions. ] I don't know about this. It sounds like your saying that one can increase his strength without increasing his size or increase his size without increasing his strength. I have not read much up on this but I do have my own personal experience and what I have seen in gyms to go by. I found that I was able to get my bench max from 230 (what it was before I ever lifted) to 315 without gaining any weight. My natural weight has always been 180. But when I kept working out and got my max to 340 my weight shot up to 200. Strangely/annoyingly enough my weight did not easily come back down when I took a break. But anyway from my experience I don't believe I could every be in the 350 bench range without weighing 200. And to me that would suggest that gaining muscle and gaining strength is mutually inclusive. 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.

Lets see. First of all he has 22 1/2 inch arms and we know he is not 6'8" or some huge height. Arnold Schwarzneggar had 22" and we all know Arnold was god but after years of denial after open heart surgery, truth was known and still he was 6'1" (way bigger than Jay). Jay here has 30" thighs Arnold had 29" again suggesting something is strange. He is shorter but bigger than somebody who we know was the creation of steroids, somebody who could not have existed as he did without steroids. 20" calves he tied Arnold on that one but again that is strange. 34' inch waist noticeably larger than than Arnold's 32" waist. But actually this is something that typically accomanies the use of steroids that is fat following it when you don't stay very very much on top of it. I guess I could possibly be wrong but from my knowledge of body building, which is not null, I would bet that he is on roids. 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.

If it wasn't because he is so obviously a roid monster, I would say being that since he is only 5'9" and 29 (my height and age) that he could be an inspiration. But he has obviously sold his soul to steroids and probably will be dead long before me. 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.

[the UK doesn't feel the need to remove this protective layer. ] Protective, NOT. I think that is as protective as hair, not very. I only see negative effects with both. Foreskin obviously heats that whole area up which is probably followed by sweat producing bad smell and I know for a fact it causes yeast infections. A problem we should not have as men. Hair creats a shadow to cover up muscular definition and hurts when you get it caught on something. So I don't see no protection there either. 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.

Ofcourse this reality but I find that going without cumming for more than a week is just a very very bad idea. So I am thinking no more than a week prepartion here. 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 wondered if I can earn my space in the guiness book of world records with this. 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.

[Don't like how things go? Vote for the people that you think will represent you as you want. That is the beauty of the system. ] The problem here in a case like Janet Reno (God saying that name already makes me sick) is that her being appointed may disgust many. But then you need to wait four years to make your statement against this appointment. Alot more can happen in four years. He/She might even send send a hit squad in full armor to terrorize a happy family in Miami so that her communist boss (Bill Clinton) can have his communist Comrad (Fidel Castro) happy with him. Then they could drug this poor kid to cover up the crime they have committed and just tell the stupid liberal idiots who don't know enough to find out the facts behind the story that the kid is happy with his father once again and they can all smile. 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.

D:Shoot back-death before disarmament 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 sure why you would do a harness turn with no riser input at all. There are people that do this, but I have found that you severly limit your ability to make turn corrections using "just the harness] Well there are a couple of reasons but first of all its important to prove it is not in anyway more difficult to hit on the dime accuracy with this method and for that just look to the left. Yes that is me kicking that ball using just my harness to manuver my way around in that 3.4 pound per square foot loaded canopy. Now to answer why? I started doing this because I was concerned with unwanted harness imput screwing up my landing in a painful way. So my solution was to learn my harness until I knew exactly what could happen from any type of shifting in the harness and therefore knew how to imediately correct any unwanted input. After mastering this, I saw the other advantages that follow it and one is your canopy keeps its form better that way. If you watch most swoopers' canopies closely you will notice while they are turning you will see a dent in their airfoil on the side in which they are pulling the riser down on. Does it matter? To me it does because that will add something else that needs to be corrected as the canopy recovers to normal flight. Also clearly if the airloil is closer to perfect, as it would be in an all harness turn and if the same bank is maintained for the same period of time, it would pick up more speed because of less drag. The key there is the SAME BANK for the same period of time. Because after all your speed comes from one thing and one thing only how steep your angle of descent is and for how long can you maintain it. This also means one other thing. If you do a snapping 180 turn imediately followed by hanging in you front dive loops and keep it in a dive (must be as steep as possible ofcourse) long enough you will be guaranteed to get the fastest possible speed from your approach with whatever it is your flying. I don't do this approach because I think its too dangerous. It requires looking straight down at the ground for a longer period of time then I feel comfortable doing. I would rather do a 720 because there is more going on and less likelyhood of fixation on one point on the ground. And in the end the only thing that is giving you your speed is for how long you keep a certain angle of descent. It doesn't matter if you turning or not. 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 had something like this happen to me in sept of 2001 on my VX-70 (@ 3.1). One brake line got jamned and I compensated with opposite riser and landed it that way. I must say I must say that was the stupidest thing I could have done and would never do that again. It hurt for a long time. 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 like the way you put all that together. Hopefully somebody will learn something from it. I think its all pretty obvious but some people need to see the numbers for themselves. Then again most of the anti-gun people will find away around the facts you just presented and next week not even remember having read it. I want stress something you brought up which addresses what Bill Von said. It was about dissmissing anti-gun legistation before even considering if it was reasonable. There is a reason for this. That reason is that all the anti-gun legislation is pushed foward by radical lobbies with one goal in mind, to ban guns one step at a time. Now they can't do this honestly because not everybody is that stupid. So they have to decieve their way through. Take the Brady Bill for instance. They sell this by saying all it does is create a 5 day waiting period before someone can purchase a gun. What a crock that is! This bill is actually 1100 pages long and there is so so so much more to it than that. It even has a clause in there that calls for taxing bullets 1000%. That means making my bullets cost me 11 times as much. That would assure that I couldn't afford to go to the range. I must admit I have not read the bill but I know what the people who wrote it had in mind and what they were trying to accomplish. All I can say is as long as we have the NRA the second amendment will have people trying to preserve it. Thank god for 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.

thanks Mike. When I started to read this thread all I could think was its a shame that even in the skydiving community we have a bunch of left wingers repeating this same obviously inconsistent anti-gun retoric. But atleast thanks to your post I realized not all the skydivers are lacking in common sense. I mean I just can't stand people who are so not able to look at the whole picture and therefore say such idiotic things like, "if we limit wingloading it will be worth it if we just save one life." I mean get real. don't you realize if you ban skydiving you will save plenty more? And there are people who would love to ban it but that is obviously not what you want done. I mean there are tons of statistics that support that if you lower speed limits, there will be less deaths on the highways. Are these anti-gun people in favor of lower speed limits too. But what is most funny of all is that if you look closer at the gun statistics you will actually find the opposite. Over all there is no question that if you look at states/districts with stricter gun laws that these places have very significantly higher gun violence statistics. Its funny how left wing thinking is consistent all the way across. Lets tax them higher so we can take there money and spend it where it will be better spent because we know better than them. Lets limit there capability to own there guns and protect themselves because they are too stupid to know enough to keep from hurting themselves. And then lets break them down into separate groups of victims we take care of them because they are just not able to take care of themselves. Ok so I have to deal with Elitists everyday in normal life. But damn it I thought the skydiving community was better than 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 strongly believe that which way your head is facing after your canopy has put you upright is pretty close to irrrelevant. However there are other things that one would never think about that are more significant and so I start my annecdote. There I was happy with my new canopy (my VX-62) I thought it opened fine a little hard but hey I am not going to fly a spectre just to feel comfortable on opening. I was even wearing weights from time to time, my openings were not at all a concern. Then suddenly my line twist rate started to increase. It had been at 1 out of four openings with line twists and suddenly it was one out of 2. Then before you know it, it shot above 90%. I had line twists more than 30 jumps in a row. I was getting frustrated I would be in the airplane dreading my opening. I even got my opening videoed and watched it in slow motion as I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. All I heard from people whose opinion mattered was its your canopy, its too small you have to either live with it or upsize. Well my intenion was to do neither. Somebody said it was my body position so I did what they said and picked a spot on the ground to keep an eye on my heading during the opening and even though I saw myself keeping a solid heading, still my canopy spun to the left. But this was the key, I finally realized it always spun in the same direction and now I need to find out what caused it. Well that didn't take long. I have a pull out system and I was extending my right arm all the way out and then releasing pilot chute there. So instead I put my pilot chute six inches away from my right hip and released it from there. I have not had line twists for more than thirty jumps. I went from more than 90% line twists to more than 90% on heading simply by releasing my pilot chute differently. 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 love to drag race the 250 lb guys on 900's!! >Smoke em all day long on my little 600... (but i >also cheat a bit, the bike's been tricked too.) I must say I have never drag raced on a motorcycle before. It kind of doesn't make any sense to me. See I know my bike does a quarter mile in just under 10 seconds (by professionals who have been racing for more than 10 years and who are damn good at it). I also know that the overwelming majority of riders would be flipped on their ass if they tried to take off that fast. But anyway the ability to take off fast on a bike is just something that comes with time, while working on what really matters. I.E. how fast can you take that swooping turn. And when your looking to see who is the fastest taking turns the power of the bike is pretty close to meaningless. Its all about the rider and almost nothing about the bike. Here the bike can always go faster its the rider with limited ability. Which is why I have a zx-9 R and not a zx-12R. 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.

my weight can actually vary between 180-200 ( your probably confusing exit weight with actual weight) I have never weighed more than 205. As for drag I am not extremely tall a little over 5'9". Considering that most people fudge their height a bit if I say 5'10" you will have an accurate picture. But since I am putting this information online its important that I clear up that I am not fat. 8% bodyfat, 17 inch arms, 44 inch chest. I do agree that drag is the most significant factor in slowing the bike's top speed. I have done 140 with a chick in the back and it did not seem to take significantly any longer to get to that speed than it does when I am alone and not tucked down. 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've still seen mine over 150mph! this always makes me wonder see the average top speed on a six hundred (R model or not) is about 135-145 that is just what this displacement can really do. The same way its hard as hell (but not impossible) to bring that front wheel up without popping the clutch on a 6. Anyway that is about the speed I got out of my Zx-6 (about 135-140). Top speed on a 9 is in the low 170's. I got my nine in the 160's [and although that went without incident I hope never to get the desire to do that again]. But anyway what I wonder is how every other 6 hundred rider I meet claims to have gotten their six over 150 and every other 9 hundred rider claims to have gotten their 9 over 180. Are there that many exceptional bikes out there? Or is it that the motorcycle racers testing these bikes are just pussies that don't know how to push these bikes all the way? Or wait I have another possibility: Maybe these people are just making themselves feel better by saying their bike actually goes faster than it really does. Aha I think that is 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.

wow that is some good stuff. you seem to have answers I have seeked. However lets just look at the theory because something is obviously missing here. It reminds me of standard temperature you know the temperature cools 2 degrees celcius for every thousand feet but hey the space shuttle that recently exploded was last contacted at 208 thousand feet could they have been about 400 degrees celcius below zero. (obviously not since that is below absolute zero) Now back to your formula. According to your formula as the square footage of a canopy approaches zero the speed goes to infinity. Now we know that is not true either. So where do you draw the line. At which point is the asymtope on your graph. Does you theory hold true between 3.0 and 5.0 wingloadings? One might think it holds true as long as the canopy is generating enough lift to sustain flight but I don't think that is true either because canopies are not really proportional. if you take a 210 square foot canopy and a 70 square foot canopy you will see that the 210 has no where near 3 times the wing span, and now where near three times the line length. For that reason, I don't see this equation as able to be linear. But I do believe you can have a linear approximation for a certain interval. That is what I think you have here and I am just trying to find out what the interval is. 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.

First of all on page 35 April/2003 is shows 54% of the fatalities with jumpers having over 500 jumps. But I realize this is all fatalities not just landings. With the landing fatalities they were not kind enough to break it down for us. (I wonder why) In anycase I don't argue for people with less than 500 jumps. But the fact that you mention that proves my case. Their rule is for everybody not for inexperienced jumpers. I don't have time right now to go to skydivenet.com and search every single incident to give you a full set of statistics for the past ten years of fatalities on the basis of jump numbers, wingloadings and intent. But I have done this in the past and I don't recall a significant number of jumpers planning to swoop and having it go sour to the point of a fatality. If somebody out there has more time they can do it themselves and they will then perhaps understand the truth. Blue Skies! 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 that is it I feel the need to put my two cents in here. As I see it wing loading control is like gun control. ITS STUPID!!! And ofcourse people with other interests in mind manipulate statistics and the stupid people follow them. I mean its extremely obvious that the people who commit the crimes are not law biding citizens. (like me who have there Concelaled handgun licenses and had to go through extreme background checks to get it). And that the people commiting the crimes with guns are not going to be controlled no matter what law you pass because they get them illegally. But decade after decade these freakin liberals continue to make the same stupid arguement. And the idiots who don't know any better and can't think for themselves just stay on the band wagon. Well this isn't any different. So a lot of people have died from bad landings, but look a little deeper for god sakes. Make a sensible statement, read the actual incident report and not just the conclusion made by the writer with another agenda in mind. Fact is the overwelming majority of them have very low experience and were not in anyway intending to make a high performance landing. They were turing back into the wind but were too low or were avoiding other canopies and because of there experience did not know any better than to make an aggressive low turn and met their fate for that reason. And last look even closer at what their wingloadings actually were. In my 9 years in this sport I remember one incident of a jumper loading over 2.0 who had a fatal accident with it. I believe it was in Deland with a velocity 84. Maybe I missed one. Maybe somebody else can metion one. But I am sure they can not come up with a significant percetage for their case to create wing loading policies. No for this they can only spin and play with facts and figures and fool the majority of people who unfortunately are stupid. 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.