robinheid

Steadman Clinic. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_19706239 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Is this where they got the name Gunsmoke? 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

From the altimeter, it must have been a high-altitude fire -- or in Death Valley. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

NO. For 15 years, I've been pushing the notion of accommodating EVERYONE who wants to jump out of a perfectly good airplane -- not just those who can or want to take the plunge and get licenses and buy gear. Tens of thousands of people enjoy skiing and scuba diving without buying gear or becoming "proficient" at it. They are perfectly content to use rental gear and enjoy those sports under supervision. The fact that parachuting has a Moonie mentality is one of the things that most hurts its growth -- and by Moonie mentality I mean we as a sport demand that prospective jumpers either do one jump and get the hell off the drop zone, or drop everything they're doing, give up all their discretionary time and income and first-born child and become a "skydiver." What you are doing is in fact cutting edge and something that perhaps will give parachute center operators a little bump off bottom dead center and start thinking about how to provide their services to people who love skydiving but have neither the time, inclination or disposition to do so either on their own or on a stay-current" basis. You in fact are doing what one static line student said to me years and years ago after landing on his first jump: "Skydiving is a happening thing to do. I'd like to do this four or five times a year." Doing it the way you're doing it allows you to do just that -- and to enjoy it more than you did when you were on your own. And if DZ owners would bother to do the math... imagine how many tandem jumps you could buy with the $$$ you save by not buying gear? And how many more people this sort of practice would open up the sport to? So keep on keepin' on, guineapiggie 101 You're blazing a new trail and maybe it will help this sport that you love so much. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I "met" Ted about 1975, when I bought my first new gear -- A Navy blue Strong Starlite (loaded with a used blue/black/white Stratostar and a 26-foot Navy conical). Loved the rig. Loved the man too, when I met him in person a couple of years later when I was editor of Parachutist and went to the Z-Hills Turkey boogie in 1978, when it was basically still the biggest boogie in the world. When I started BASE jumping with Carl Boenish the next year, Ted was keenly interested in this new variation on parachuting and we talked regularly about technique and gear developments therein. So it was no surprise that Ted showed up at Bridge Day 1984 with (IIRC) his still-experimental tandem parachute system, held up the tandem harness to me and said with his famous wry grin: "Interested?" I said "I'll watch you do one first," and while he went just a touch head-low, he was fine and so on the next "load," we jumped together and made history doing the world's first-ever tandem jump. (http://www.mywvhome.com/bridge/Bridge2/tedstrong.htm) Later, people asked me how I could trust my life to another person on a BASE jump. My response: "Ted Strong is the most reliable piece of parachute equipment I've ever had on my back. He's worked perfectly 5,500 times, and he's the only conscious parachute system with automatic self-preservation mode that I've ever worn." Two years later I got my Strong tandem instructor rating, and many times during the ensuing 25 years Ted and I spent time together in person or, more often, on the phone, talking parachuting and other subjects. As others have said, Ted always seemed to have or make time for pretty much everyone, no matter what he had going on. Ted Strong was indeed a visionary and a pioneer, but even more importantly, he was a gentleman and a first-class human being and we in sport parachuting were honored and blessed to have him as long as we did. And while of course Ted would've loved to have another 15 or 20 more years with Marcie and parachuting, I'm sure he's content that it ended with a cool jump story: There he was age 75 skydiving hard at the cutting edge test jumping one of his own creations on a beautiful autumn day with young-enough-to-be-his-children/grandchildren friends and colleagues who all lived to tell lies about his last jump. Cheers, old friend. We'll miss you but you lived large, long and with a heart full of love and you can't do much better than that. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Passionate prose, fact- and reading comprehension-challenged though it may be... Let's start with "major fataltiies." Unless I'm missing something here, Lodi's accident rate compares favorably with other drop zones of similar size and, if I recall correctly, imposed a 90-degree-landing-turn rule years before most other big centers. And then there's this, on which you base your claim that the Parachute Center "has yet again been handed a hefty fine." August 29, 2011 FAA Press Release LOS ANGELES – The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is proposing a $269,000 civil penalty against The Parachute Center...] Oops. And for what, BTW? A crash? A fatality? A "major" injury? No, it missed a routine inspection by 13 days. You also assert that "(l)ast year Lodi was handed what had to be the largest fine ever to a skydiving center ($664,000)." Passionate prose again, inaccurate though it may be; last year the Federal Aviation Administration proposed a $664,000 civil penalty against The Parachute Center. I don't know its current status, but I do know that one poster with knowledge of FAA practices in this area said that in most cases the difference between the proposed fine and actual fine paid is significant. Finally, you denounce as improper the fact that USPA's president and another national director jump there when, in fact, you should it take it as a hint because there's a lot more where those two came from; some of the most accomplished and experienced parachutists in the world jump there, come from all over the country and the world to jump there. And then there's you. Hmmm... SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Interesting thread. Of course BASE jumps should count in your overall PARACHUTE JUMP numbers because they are parachute jumps. PERIOD. Whether they can or should count toward PRO or other USPA ratings is a different question -- you know, sorta like whether tandem pilots get to log their droguefall as freefall time, and whether static line jumps should count toward licenses and ratings. The comments about mostly BASE v. mostly airplane jumps as a measure of parachuting skill is silly on its face. There are 10,000-tandem-jump wonders who cannot freefly to save their lives; there are world champion CReWdogs who couldn't do RW to save their lives, and there are swoopers who couldn't do CReW or RW to save their lives. The days of parachutists who could do every sub-discipline at a high level of proficiency are gone, so it is always important to ask someone about their parachute jump breakdown if you don't know them or their skillset in the sub-discipline in which you are about to participate. One final note, directed mostly at the John Rich-BASE 283 "discussion:" John, I love ya, man, but you sound like a whuffo -- and a USA-centric provincial whuffo at that -- when you discuss "average" BASE jumps and talk about high cliffs not being accessible to most BASE jumpers. Why don't you check out some youtube vids of proxy fliers doing 2-minute-plus flights down mountains? That's one end of BASE jumping; the other is peeps hucking off the Potato Bridge and various other locations that are even lower. Bottom line here is that in The Land of the Free, the Nazi Park Service prevents jumps from all but a few big cliffs not under its armed occupation. In Europe and Asia, this is not the case, so the "average" BASE jump is much higher and longer. Then you have landing areas that vary from wide-open spaces to ridiculously tight, obstacle-intensive LZs. As I like to say, accuracy means I can land on the hood of your car. Canopy control means -- no dents. Some BASE jumps require exceptional accuracy -- you better hit the spot or you're toast. On the other hand, some sites are so gnarly that it doesn't really matter where you land -- but it does matter big-time HOW you land. BASE 283, please cut John some slack. He obviously has a lot to learn about BASE and seems very willing to do so -- and he does in fact make a stellar point about airplane accuracy v. BASE accuracy: Hitting the beer can from 3,000 feet opening altitude is a much trickier parachute NAVIGATION task than doing it from 200 feet. On the other hand, the BASE accuracy jumper needs to respond lightning-fast to a very complex parachute LANDING problem, which the average demo jumper does not have to do. John, let me put it to you this way: demo accuracy is like being a long-range shooter, whereas BASE accuracy is more like being a short-range gunfighter. There are crossover skills, but in general, one takes more careful thinking and calculating and the other takes fast analysis and exceptional quick twitch muscles. Finally, SPORT PARACHUTING encompasses any sporting activity performed with a parachute. PERIOD. People who try to insist otherwise remind me of the old Star Trek episode where these two half-white, half-black guys from the same planet were fighting like cats and dogs and Captain Kirk couldn't figure out why to save his life. He even said "You're the same people; what is the problem?" And they both looked at him incredulously and in unison shouted: "Are you BLIND? We're as different as night and day!" And Kirk was like "What do you mean? You're both white on one side and black on the other." And one of them says: "You really ARE blind; I'm white on the right side; HE is white ON THE LEFT SIDE!!!" Or as the oldsaying goes: to cows, other cows look different. We're all SPORT PARACHUTISTS, and all of sport parachuting's sub-disciplines deserve respect and appreciation, as do the people who participate in one or more of them. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Most docs have no clue about theforces involved in parachute openings and landings, so a better way to phrase the question than "Can I skydive?" is to ask how high a platform you could safely jump from to land on grass -- anything that gives the doc a real-world reference to which he can relate. If he says "the roof of your house," then you're good to go. If he says "You need to be careful stepping off a curb," then you're not. Most likely, of course, he'll tell you something smack-dab in the middle of the yes-no envelope and you'll be right where you started (minus the deductible). Best of luck with whatever you decide and FYI, I have a cervical fusion (broke c-5, have a plate fusing 4-5-6) and I have had zero problems, including on slider-down base jump openings. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

The most important thing is: You recognize that you have some issues that need to be addressed and are willing to go either way depending on how that comes out. I can't emphasize enough how vital it is to have exactly this attitude. As other posters have said, work with your instructors and other experienced jumpers and see if you can spool up your performance to the necessary standard. Also, ask other newbies how THEY handled the things you are facing... sometimes you can get more insight from people closer to your skillset and experience level because, unlike the experienced people, it's all still fresh in their minds. As other posters have also said, currency is important -- especially when you are first starting out. You really do need to make a serious commitment to make at least a couple of hundred jumps in the next year or so to hardwire in your learning and awareness and muscle memory, etc etc. As you do this, it will become evident whether or not your brain/body is up to the demands of parachuting or if you'd be better served by doing something different. In the meantime, keep on doing exactly what you're doing in terms of reaching out to learn more and figure out what you need to do next. You have the right attitutde and right approach and that will help you figure out if you also have the right stuff for parachuting -- without hurting yourself or anyone else in the process. Rock on. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Self-regulation is enough to solve this problem. He will soon self-regulate himself to room temperature. Problem solved. Case closed. Next! SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

As I said, in the base community, there is still some discussion that using both risers is better, but as I recall the various discussions, the people who have actually had to do it almost unanimously favor "one-toggle-one-riser," and the ones with no actual experience doing it think two risers is best. So I'm curious: Have you ever landed a canopy with one toggle out of action? SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

If I recall correctly, the general consensus among base jumpers -- for whom a lost toggle is closer to routine than it is to almost-unheard-of -- is that you use one toggle and one rear riser. The reason? The toggle gives you way more control than a riser and your toggle muscle memory is dominant almost to the point of unconsciousness -- which means you can concentrate on making sure the riser side follows the lead of the toggle side, as in, using just enough riser to keep it flying straight as you flare with the toggle. The toggle side, in other words, serves as a guide for the riser side so that you don't over- or under-flare with the riser side. Finally, if you have time, TEST IT ahead of your landing flare, exactly the way you should test the reserve flare if you have both toggles because of course your reserve is a different animal than your main. In the base community, there is still some discussion that using both risers is better, but as I recall the various discussions, the people who have actually had to do it almost unanimously favor "one-toggle-one-riser," and the ones with no actual experience doing it think two risers is best. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Perris is the perfect place because it has Jim Wallace at the Jim Wallace Skydiving School next to the Perris skydiving school. Jim has 22,000+ jumps, most of them training jumps, and he has probably made more tandem jumps with quadraplegics, paraplegics and really old or otherwise very fragile people than anyone in the world. He does special pack jobs and otherwise modifies normal tandem procedures to minimize the risks associated with people such as yourself who have various issues that make them more vulnerable to injury and/or less able to protect themselves. Jim is DA MAN for your needs... by a wide margin. Enjoy! SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

From a strictly monetary standpoint: Would these fines assessed by the DZ staff go directly to the DZ? If so, the more they fine, the more pure profit they make. On the flip side, if a DZ grounds someone, that's lost revenue. Perhaps the solution is coming up with a system where the DZ itself neither loses or gains by disciplining a jumper. Ex: If a jumper is fined, the jump ticket fine still takes a slot on the next plane going up so if full, one less jumper can go. If someone wanted to calculate an average per slot profit that portion of the fine could go to the DZ and the rest could go towards a canopy education effort. The penalty is not nearly as important as having a set of rules to enforce. As Robin said each DZ can have its own set of penalties and if your DZO has rules that you think unfairly contribute to his profits, you can either lobby him for different penalties or choose a new place to jump. I've been enjoying the posts by people that are truly contributing to making our sport safer and hope that we can keep the focus of the discussion on things that really matter. Let's get some more contributions about what rules need to be developed. Bolas does like to argue, unlike every other skydiver I've ever met(LOL), and he's clearly never heard of Occam's Razor, but his point here is nevertheless a reasonable one that illustrates my contention that this must start locally, not at the system level. Where should the fine money go? How about to the party fund for an end-of-season shindig? How about to the bounce fund? You know, when someone goes in, there are usually survivors who can use a quick injection of cash to deal with the aftermath. How about for the DZ's Thanksgiving food drive or Christmas toys-for-tots drive or other similar charity activity to connect the DZ to the community? How about (fill in the blank)? That is the point of developing this kind of system locally: each DZ community comes up with its own details of this very general concept. Some of the plans will work great from the get-go, others will need tweaking, but if we have 20 or 30 or 50 DZs all coming up with their own plans, some "best practices" will quickly emerge and then be adopted more widely. There's another element to the escalating-fines-then-suspension idea and that is its incrementalism. One of the systemic problems we face in managing ROW violations is that some are worse than others, yet we sort of have a one-size-fits-all response available now -- ignore it or ground 'em -- and I understand why a DZO or S&TA might be reluctant to ground someone for a fairly minor infraction, or because s/he's a key staffer or whatever. With the fine-first, then-ground method, you can get people's attention without ruining their day, or the day of the rest of their team, or otherwise coming down on them harder than their particular offense might warrant. Football is another example where incremental punishments can be levied that allow players to stay in the game even though they broke a rule. Some rule breaks cost their team 5 yards, some 10 yards, some 15 yards, some at "the spot of the foul" -- and for certain transgressions, ejection from the game, sometimes followed by suspensions from future games. I think if we start adopting ROW penalty systems based on already-in-place-and-proven systems such as auto traffic and professional sports, then we start moving in the direction of a long-term solution. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Robin, A good post and you made some very good points. My question is what do we do now? It will take sometime for the training methods to spool up and make a difference. In the mean time people are dying. Sparky Start emphasizing right-of-way right away: Lower-slower-less-maneuverable always has right-of-way over higher-faster-more-maneuverable, and if you are higher/faster/more maneuverable it is YOUR responsibility to be the one that avoids, PERIOD, no ifs, ands, buts or other excuses. This is the heart of aviation traffic management and it needs to be adopted for all parachuting traffic management. We do not need to do this top-down, either, by changing the USPA ISP or creating a ROW BSR (amazing that there isn't one already, eh?). This can be done immediately by each and every drop zone -- as soon as its DZO and/or S&TAs have the vision and will to do it. Doing it would be fairly easy technically: Print up or otherwise post the basic knowledge so that people can be educated about it, discuss it in morning staff briefings (this can be especially effective because it's the staffers who are often most guilty of ROW infractions), and otherwise just get the word out on: * what ROW is * how it is applied *what the penalties are for violations (you know, other than DEATH or grievous bodily harm) The penalty provision for violating right-of-way is a critical factor here -- and again, should be established by each DZ rather than USPA. Let the sport lead, not its bureaucracy. Off the top of my head, I'd say ROW infractions need to be dealt with the same way as automotive traffic infractions: fines first, followed by suspensions (AKA as grounding). I think a one-jump-ticket fine would be a good first-offense penalty. Second offense, two jump tickets (or three or four). Third offense -- or ANY offense that results in a collision or an injury do the ROW violation -- grounding for anywhere from the rest of the day to whatever. Again, do this at the local level, not the system level. That solves two problems: 1. It happens faster, so benefits can accrue more quickly (i.e., less blood and broken bones and funerals) 2. The local solutions serve as beta testing for whatever ROW policy/BSR might be adopted systemwide by USPA. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I disagree. There's little point to separating landing areas if people are going to say "it's ok,". No, it's not ok. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's not GOING to happen, of course it is, people make mistakes. But it's definitely not ok and should be treated just as seriously as a knuckle head swooping in the regular pattern. If I go blasting down the highway, the wrong way, 1 day after I get my driving permit - the cop's aren't going to say "It's ok, he's just a student". Ian +1... ... and Exhibit A for the affirmative that we need to rearrange our training system to teach the survival fundamentals of PARACHUTING before we start with the the freefall fun that has no bearing whatsoever thereon. No sport teaches fun stuff before or even in concert with the survival stuff -- except parachuting. Until the fundamental fact of our misplaced training priorities is acknowledged and then adjusted to reflect the reality that the parachutes are now more dangerous than the freefall, we will continue to have this kind of bloody silliness. Right of way training is a case in point. I went through the SIM/ISP and while right of way is mentioned several times, it's always just a brief variation on "the lower canopy has the right of way." That is NOT an explanation of right of way and its critical importance in the aerial environment, and until we train people at least to the private pilot level in iterms of understanding right of way, we'll continue to have this kind of bloody silliness. Essentially all of these recent fatalities are directly attributable to either not understanding or not observing basic right-of-way, period, yet this point never even seems to enter the discussion, much less be discussed. Instead, we discuss separate landing areas, restrictions on wing loading, etc based on jump numbers -- despite the fact that almost all the canopy fatalities happen to people who by any jump-number measure would be qualified to jump extremely high wing loadings... ooooops. It all goes back to teaching and learning the fundamentals of PILOTING -- not canopy piloting but PILOTING -- because we are now flying non-powered aircraft that have more more in common with airplanes and gliders than they do with "parachutes" yet we keep training people as if everyone in the sport was still jumping rounds. Ian makes a really good point here because that student had no business wandering over into the HP area, but he wasn't trained and apparently didn't learn that when you're slow you stay the heck out of the fast lane. Which is also part of right-of-way. I remember when Mark Hewitt taught me how to surf one day at the Banzai Pipeline on a cloudy, misty-rain Hawaiian day when we couldn't jump. Before we talked about a single thing regarding the board, the water, the waves, the bottom, etc, the first thing out of Mark's mouth was, "Okay, here are the right-of-way rules." That doesn't happen in parachuting training. It is not emphasized by DZOs and/or S&TAs and it certainly hasn't been a topic in this thread or anywhere on this forum. And I'd say it's time to start. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1... Yup! No problems here. So, expain to me again, why do my friends keep dying? Look at the big picture, not a specific sub-set, in terms of appreciative inquiry: Big picture = declining fatalties as a proportion of total jumps. We're doing well here. Specific subset = increasing fatalities from high-performance parachute mishandling. We can do better here. I.E., a call to action to do better on a subset of an otherwise well done self-regulating system And why do your friends keep dying? 1. Everybody dies. Get used to it. 2. Human beings make mistakes. 3. Mistakes hurt more when speed and altitude are involved. 4; Skydiving involves speed and altitude. 5. Your friends are skydiving and because they are human, they make mistakes. 6. That is why your friends keep dying. Any other questions? Yes. Just one. Are you suggesting that we ignore this "specific subset" just because the "big picture" looks rosie? No. It's not. That's where the "we can do better here" part of appreciative inquiry comes into the picture. Start with "What are we doing well?" After you determine that, you are left with with the "What can we do better?" subset. Then you can focus on tweaking those subsets instead of confusing the subset with the big picture, which you and most of the other people on this thread have been doing. Just imagine using tandem as it was initially intended -- as a dual canopy flying training system instead of a carnival ride. Just imagine a training system that focuses first on training people to fly, navigate and land their parachutes competently before they "go to the top of Fun Mountain." Just imagine a SIM and an ISP that emphasizes right-of-way aerial rules instead of the current cursory and almost criminally negligent treatment thereof. Just imagine there's no AFF to focus on fun skills at the expense of survival skills, thereby creating minefields through which we all have to navigate when these AFF babies become 1,000-, 3,000-, and 10,000-jump wonders who never actually learned the fundamentals of survival parachuting because they focused on the finer points of freefall fun. Just imagine... SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1... Yup! No problems here. So, expain to me again, why do my friends keep dying? Look at the big picture, not a specific sub-set, in terms of appreciative inquiry: Big picture = declining fatalties as a proportion of total jumps. We're doing well here. Specific subset = increasing fatalities from high-performance parachute mishandling. We can do better here. I.E., a call to action to do better on a subset of an otherwise well done self-regulating system And why do your friends keep dying? 1. Everybody dies. Get used to it. 2. Human beings make mistakes. 3. Mistakes hurt more when speed and altitude are involved. 4; Skydiving involves speed and altitude. 5. Your friends are skydiving and because they are human, they make mistakes. 6. That is why your friends keep dying. Any other questions? SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

This is exactly what I'm referring to. While granted there have been quite a few incidents already this spring, show me the data that shows we've failed as the data I've seen suggests that fatalities have been in steady decline per jumper/jumps made. We can always approve but calling it a failure? +1 People who spout that sort of nonsensee remind me of the pre-Skydive U peeps who always declared how terrible a dive was instead of using the appreciative inquiry-based notion of: what did we do well? what can we do better? To me, this FAA thing is neither a shot across the bow nor evidence of a major change due to our failed self-governance. It is, in fact, a reasonable and intelligent look at a system that's working pretty well -- reinforced by the fact of increasing overall jump numbers and decreasing or steady fatality numbers -- but which of course needs routine and recurring tuneups, stentorian doomsday rhetoric notwithstanding. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Wrong. 2005. Deland. Twin Otter jump plane on descent. Gus Wing KIA. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2005-04-24/news/0504240370_1_skydive-deland-sky-diver-wing SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Q: What will do I do to improve canopy safety? A: Try to remember every moment that parachuting is very dangerous because each moment I forget that fact exponentially increases the chance of death or grievous bodily injury to myself or others. Mind my own business and don't hit anybody or get in anybody's way. LOL. Welcome to parachuting, dude. I suppose you're equally resentful about all the cars you have to avoid on the freeway too. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Where do you think those pictures were taken. Perris and Elsinore. Sparky Actually, I think that one shot was taken a bit farther north... but it was still in Califorrrnyuh... IIRC, I was there a time or two myself. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I don't see any manufacturers among the whiners and snivelers on this thread. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."