IanHarrop

I found this with google http://www.yellowbot.com/cummings-rigging-works-manhasset-ny.html "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

For users of Paralog there is http://jumplog.net/ "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

The second picture on the web page shows the door partially open. Looks like the hinges are on the front not the top. Hard to get to get out of... "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Smart and Intelligent IS sexy

Thanks! A student flaring with their hands to the crotch is the one I want the most. Students with a half assed flare or hands out to the sides always make me shake my head when I am on radio. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

I am continually updating the first jump course presentation I use and I am looking for pictures I can put into the presentation before I have students practice flaring for landing. Ideally I would like two shots: - Student getting close to ground with hands all the way up (ideally with head not looking at the ground and knees and feet relatively together) - Same student flaring with both hands to their crotch just before their feet hit the ground. If you've got pics I can use it will be much appreciated. We have lots of great student landings but we never seem to catch exactly the sequence I want and its getting late in the season here... I don't want any snow on the ground in the shots! Thanks, Ian Harrop ian.harrop@live.com "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Unfortunately I could not access every chapter, I was only able to view the Overview. I have the book in my collection and I think its great. I've loaned it out a few times and the response has always been great. If I could access the whole book I would add a link to my personal web page and promote others to do the same. It would be a great way to promote newbies to give skydiving a try. Edit to add OOPS... spoke too soon !!! I was using Google Chrome and when I changed to Internet Explorer I could access every chapter. I tested Firefox and it appeared that I had access to every chapter but they would not appear. Looks like IE is the way to go with Google Books "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

thanks for leaving it on the To-Do list. The issue with just editing the subject line is that the person whose message you are replying to gets a notification that their message has been responded to. If that person doesn't notice that the subject line has been edited, they will still perceive that the message was directed to them. Currently the people that think about this end up doing two things: - editing the subject - making this first line in their response something like "this is not directed to anyone in particular, but just my thoughts" Unfortunately taking these extra steps doesn't occur to every one. So I think the original idea is still good.

See this from Alti-2 http://forum.altimaster.com/showthread.php?t=479 What happens to my Galaxy above 17,000' When you take you Galaxy above approximately 17,000' MSL the pointer will stop moving, you have reached the limited of the travel of the mechanism. If you go higher you will NOT damage the mechanism, when you descend through 17,000 the pointer will start to move again. It doesn't matter how much higher than 17,000 you go, or how long you stay there, the Galaxy will not be damaged. Please note that the limit of travel is approximately 17,000 MSL, if your DZ is at 5,000 MSL the you you will reach the limit of travel at about 12,000 AGL "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Do you really think that getting medical advice from a group of skydivers over the internet is the best way to make a decision? Perhaps knowledge of skydiving is not required for the doctor to decide that skydiving is not the best idea for someone with a heart transplant. Perhaps knowledge of this person's specific medical and physical issues is more important. What I don't know about heart transplants would fill a library. What I don't know about this person's medical and physical issues would fill another book rack in that library. Look for someone that has that information to help make the decision, perhaps that would be the doctor. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Mechanical - reliable? Have you ever looked inside one? The mechanics are very delicate and it is ridiculously easy to break one. The only aspect of reliability they have its the fact that you don't have to carry backup batteries in case the current ones run out. Experience over decades by many skydivers says that they don't break so easy at all. I have an Alti II purchased in 1976. It was new then, still works like new now.

If I use Firefox (3.5.2) or the latest version of Chrome (4.0.201.1) to access DZ.com things freeze up. Works fine in IE. Anyone lese having this issue? Just started the last few days. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

That has got to be the first time I have seen Western Union referred to as a safe way to transfer money in these forums. From what I have seen here, Western Union is usually identified as one of the ways to spot a scam. See this from the Security and Scams forum http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3461406#3461406 No matter what payment process is selected, it wouldn't hurt to ask a prospective buyer what DZ they frequent the most and then contact that DZ to see if they know the buyer. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

see this: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3641989#3641989 "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

I'll take "Who is Claude Castonguay" for a thousand, Alex. More details on who Paul Catongauy was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Castonguay You'll see that indeed back in the sixties we was a Quebec provincial politician and instrumental in the creation of the social medical programs in that province. Wouldn't the architect of Canadian Health care likely work for the feds? I googled "architect of the Canadian health system" and the only references I could find to this guy come from American news articles sources. To be fair he does now think that the system has problems and wants more private involvement, but again its a report commissioned by the Quebec government about its system and not a federal report by the "architect' of the Canadian system". Most Canadians will credit Tommy Douglas with creating the Canadian system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas#Medicare Having addressed the "architect" issue.... Before I get chastised for being entirely pro the Canadian system for questioning the validity of American news articles, I am one of the first to recognize the faults of the Canadian system. I think that a proper balance of private and public is more appropriate than what we have in Canada which is very heavily public. Most countries, other than Canada and Cuba, have systems where the model is more balanced. Why would the USA go from one extreme, mostly private, to the other extreme,mostly public? Why not look to the rest of the world for a better balance? Not all good ideas come from North America. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Good articles here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/safety/page.cgi?g=safety%2FBoogie_Safety%2Findex.shtml They may be dated but still good to read, especially the WFFC one. It applies to all boogies. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Sure its electrical? I am in no way a car expert.... http://www.aa1car.com/library/problem_hesitation.htm "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Read all of this and play attention to #9 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/safety/detail_page.cgi?ID=81 "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

The questions have been answered. Its just that some are not listening. "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

a different article suggests he is: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1794057 "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

On this site you will find a good packing guide http://www.sidsrigging.com/ "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

Damn I hate thread hijacking, but ... an interesting read. http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp NOW... Back to the original discussion! "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

An interesting read: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/64562 ---- Robert McNamara - the man and his legacy - the Vietnam War by Habib Siddiqui (Friday, July 17, 2009) "It took nearly 30 years for Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnamese catastrophe in which over five million South East Asian peasants were murdered, to confess that he was wrong. One wonders how long it would take Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to confess that they were wrong with Iraqi War! " When Robert Strange McNamara died in his home on July 6 very few people noticed. He was 93. He joined a diverse band of celebrities who died within two weeks of his death. It included Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, Steve McNair, and most notably Michael Jackson – the emperor of pop music.[1] Ed was famous for his work on television for the NBC late night show - The Tonight Show. From 1962-1992, he was Johnny Carson’s announcer and sidekick. Farrah was the Hollywood actress famous, not so much for her acting as for her sexy appeal, as private investigator Jill Munroe in the Charlie’s Angels. With a record of more than 12 million copies of her iconic 1976 pin-up poster sold, first published in Life magazine in 1976, she was an international sex symbol in the 1970s and 1980s. Billy Mays was a bearded advertisement sales guy who could hardly be missed by anyone watching American television for his loud, high-pitch voices. He promoted sales of cleaning, home-based, and maintenance products. Steve was a very talented American football quarterback who spent the majority of his NFL career with the Tennessee Titans. He later played for the Baltimore Ravens before retiring in 2008. He was shot dead by her girl friend who committed suicide after killing him. McNamara was the primary architect of the Vietnam War. In his capacity as secretary of defense during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, McNamara directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. He was also a key figure in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile confrontation with the Soviet Union. He changed the balance of nuclear forces in the world with the development of the multiple-warhead missile. The Vietnam War was a devastating and terrible war not only for the victims in Indo-China but also for America in which she dropped two or three times as much bombs in North and South Vietnam as were dropped by all Allied Forces throughout World War II against all enemies. When the war finally ended, there was over 58,000 Americans dead and some five million Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodians dead. More than 21 million　US　gallons of Agent Orange (manufactured by Dow Chemical) were sprayed across South Vietnam. 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects. During those troubling years, America’s national social fabric had been torn asunder. With rising casualties amongst Americans and forced conscription, the war became very unpopular within the student community. Thanks to the investigative report from the journalist Seymour Hersh in Nov. 12, 1969, the anti-war movement got its necessary boost from the revelation about the My-Lai massacre (1968) in which some 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed, majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people. Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated. The initial news reports suggested that "128 Viet Cong and 22 civilians" were killed in the village during a "fierce fire fight". Even General William C. Westmoreland, commander for the operation in Vietnam, congratulated the unit on the "outstanding job". While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their war crimes at My Lai, only Lt. William Calley was convicted. He served only three years of an original life sentence, while on house arrest. None of these should come as a surprise to all those who have been watching America’s War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan (and add now Pakistan). Like the whistle-blowers of the Abu Ghraib, three U.S. servicemen made an effort to halt the My Lai massacre and protect the wounded. Sadly, those brave soldiers received hate mail and death threats from pro-war citizens, and were even denounced by war-mongering U.S. Congressmen. Sick of the war and desirous of a change, the American population sent the Republican candidate Richard Nixon to the White House in 1968. Nixon promised gradual withdrawal of troops. In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. Finally, on 15 January 1973, soon after getting reelected, President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam. On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. As hinted earlier, McNamara was the primary culprit in America’s ill-fated military engagement in the Vietnam War. He was a brilliant guy, with a BA in Economics from UC, Berkeley (1937) and an MBA from Harvard (1939), who became the President of the Ford Motor Company in 1960. But what America needed during the Vietnam War era was not a whiz kid, but a leader of vision, moral courage and scrupulous honesty. And that is where McNamara failed miserably. Historians like Deborah Shapley (author of the book Promise and Power) point out that as early as November 3, 1965, the secretary of defense knew that the Vietnam War was "unwinnable militarily" and yet, according to Shapley, McNamara chose to deceive the American people by hiding the bad news while raising troop levels to 400,000, then 500,000, when he could have resigned, told the- ‘truth’ and stopped the American involvement. McNamara said that the Domino Theory, espoused by Eisenhower in 1954, was the main reason for entering the Vietnam War. If the West loses control of Vietnam, the security of the West will be in danger; i.e., "the dominoes will fall," in Eisenhower’s words. In an interview in June, 1996, McNamara explained, "The loss of Vietnam would trigger the loss of Southeast Asia, and conceivably even the loss of India, and would strengthen the Chinese and the Soviet position across the world, weakening the security of Western Europe and weakening the security of North America." [2] In that interview he also stated, "Kennedy hadn’t said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn." As Douglas Brinkley has said in a 1993 article in the Foreign Affairs, "The McNamara story is one of tragedy, for a dedicated public servant and for America, fueled by our frustration that a man of such promise chose, out of a misguided sense of mission, not to tell the American people what he knew about the dim prospects for victory in the Vietnam War when it might have made a difference." [3] McNamara left office on February 29, 1968. The President awarded him both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal for his efforts. McNamara then went on to become president of the World Bank, a position he held for the next 13 years. Shortly after McNamara departed the Pentagon, he published "The Essence of Security" in which he discussed various aspects of his tenure and position on basic national security issues. He did not speak out again on defense issues or Vietnam until after he left the World Bank. He did not even try to defend himself against critics of his role in Vietnam or to justify the escalation there. He became aloof and silent when he needed to speak out against war. Like most highly talented guys, McNamara was a very complex man. In his bestseller, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, Robert McNamara wrote in 1995, "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities." McNamara wrote that he and others had not asked the five most basic questions: Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the West’s security? What kind of war — conventional or guerrilla — might develop? Could we win it with U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops? [4] He is famously quoted to have said, "And the conventional wisdom is - don’t make the same mistake twice, learn from your mistakes. And we all do. May be we make the same mistake three times, but hopefully not four or five."　　 In the 1996 interview, McNamara said, "But there are certain things bombing can’t accomplish. They can’t break the will of people under certain circumstances. They didn’t break the will of the North Vietnamese." [5] He also said, "We have much to learn from them that can be applied to the world of today and tomorrow. How to avoid these conflicts is something the human race has to learn. This century will go down as the bloodiest century in all of human history. We’ll have lost 160 million people, killed by conflict. Is that what we want in the 21st century? I don’t think so. If we want to avoid it, we have to learn from our mistakes in this century. Vietnam was one of those." [6] In a 2004 interview with Toronto’s Globe & Mail, McNamara was asked to comment on America’s occupation of Iraq. He replied, "We’re misusing our influence. It’s just wrong what we’re doing. It’s morally wrong, it’s politically wrong, it’s economically wrong." He also offered his advice on how to prevent future Vietnam-like wars, arguing that the US should submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to govern wartime behavior and prevent atrocities, and that the details of US nuclear strategy should be publicly discussed and debated. [7] In his last major article, titled "Apocalypse Soon" and published in Foreign Policy magazine in 2005, McNamara expressed his concerns about the immorality and danger of placing reliance on nuclear weapons as foreign policy tools. He particularly focused on the United States and Russia having the weapons on alert. Those arms "are potent signs that the United States is not seriously working toward the elimination of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state should restrain its nuclear ambitions," he wrote. [8] A little over three months ago, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post met McNamara at one of his last public outings at the Cosmos Club. There, he sounded hopeful about initial steps taken by President Obama on nuclear weapons, but fearful about the US’s growing involvement in Afghanistan -- a situation so much like Vietnam. [9] If these be the after-war reflections of Robert McNamara, who sounded like the cold-blooded, calculating Dr. Strangelove, when he was the Secretary of Defense, it is obvious that America has learned nothing from Vietnam and from its architect. [10] After all, McNamara taught us all we needed to know about the folly of war, about aftermath and about regret. As columnist William Rivers Pitt, has rightly observed, "Nobody listened, nobody learned, except for the dead." [11] The soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan would recognize McNamara through his latter-day replacements – Rumsfeld and Gates, and the other Bush administration officials like Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rice, Feith, Rove and Libby. According to journalist Will Bunch, "The life of Robert McNamara was a personal tragedy, but it was also an American tragedy, our tragedy -- because even after McNamara spelled out everything that went so horribly wrong in Vietnam, he lived long enough to see a new generation of the self-appointed "best and brightest" in Washington pay absolutely no mind to the lessons of our recent past. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no plan for the proper military follow-up to a period of "shock and awe" bombing. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we totally misjudged the "nationalism" of the people who lived there and how they would react to a long American occupation. And perhaps most importantly, in Iraq, as in Vietnam, there was no real "public debate" as we marched headlong and foolishly into the 2003 -- with way too many "unexamined assumptions," "unasked questions," and "readily dismissed alternatives." [12] It took nearly 30 years for Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnamese catastrophe in which over five million South East Asian peasants were murdered, to confess that he was wrong. One wonders how long it would take Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to confess that they were wrong with Iraqi War! Would the world conscience demand trial of these war criminals of our new century? Or, should we let the likes of Hulagu Khan write the books of history justifying their wanton massacre and cruelty? [13] Notes: [1]. See this author’s article on Michael Jackson: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/63837 [2]. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Vietnam/mcnamara.html [3]. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/48974/douglas-brinkley /the-stain-of-vietnam-robert-mcnamara-redemption-denied [4]. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31760364/ns/ politics-more_politics/ [5]. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Vietnam/ mcnamara.html [6]. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Vietnam/ mcnamara.html [7]. http://www.nndb.com/people/387/000022321/ [8]. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php? story_id=2829&print=1 [9]. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2009/07/06/AR2009070603771.html?hpid=sec-politics [10]. The connection to Dr. Strangelove – the computer of death – was made by Douglas Brinkley in his 1993 article: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/48974/douglas- brinkley/the-stain-of-vietnam-robert-mcnamara- redemption-denied?page=show [11]. http://www.truthout.org/070709R [12]. http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Robert_ McNamara_1916-2009_--_and_the_tragedy_of_ disremembered_past.html [13]. See this author’s article – Fooled me once, shame on Bush: http://www.bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidRecord=26911 Source: by courtesy & © 2009 Habib Siddiqui "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

It's really windy once you step out

So Mahan died hoping that a skydive would cure his deafness... we will never know if it did... "Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy