robinheid

You frighten easily, methinks... what if what if what if... ? Spoken like a true Whuffo. You know, what's most comical about all the whining is that the best way to get out of any spin is to go into a delta position -- you know, the same position in which a wingsuit configures the body. And really, wingsuit tandem is going to be by definition and equipment imperatives a fairly limited-market-segment offering. Bowling balls and beanpoles need not apply because what school is going to have suits that fit shapes outside the bell curve? It is truly amazing to see people with profiles claimiing thousands of jumps going on and on like sanctimonious whuffos risk avoiders. Jeez, grow a pair, would y'all? Yer emBARrassing me. 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."

LMFAO If I recall correctly, tandem was for its first 20 years or so an officially certified EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITY so for those 20 or so years, everyone was, in fact, a test dummy, sooooo..... uh... what exactly is yer point, dude? . 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."

That just means more orders for Abbie and Tree. LOL Wingsuit tandems are a great idea as long at the TI is experienced on wingsuits. They will force a re-think of tandem jumping because the drogue system on tandems in inherently dangerous because it makes the whole malfunction event and decision tree so much more complex. Most peeps forget that Booth's original tandem rigs didn't have drogues... if I recall correctly, it was Ted Strong who introduced the drogue to slow down the deployment speed because HIS parachutes were blowing up. Then someone figured out that you could film a drogue-fall tandem and thus was born a cool carnival ride. After a spate of tandem fatalities involving very experienced tandem masters a decade or so ago, I did a study and found no correlation between TI experience and fatality rate -- ergo, it doesn't matter how good you are, the complexity of the system can still overwhelm you. But when I suggested to one tandem manufacturer that getting rid of the drogue was the answer -- especially given that freeflying allowed drogue-less tandem photography, he laughed and said: "If I got rid of the drogue, half my tandem masters couldn't get stable." So we persist in keeping the drogue around despite its obvious and documented dangers because there aren't enough TIs capable enough to do tandems without one -- and then talk smack about a system that not only eliminates the greatest cause of tandem fatalities -- drogue-related screwups -- it gives the TI greater control over his customer. I mean D'OH! when the customer has on a wingsuit it literally straitjackets them into a reasonably aerodynamic and symmetrical body position -- and especially reduces their ability to disrupt the TI with their arms. And D'OH! a wingsuit also eliminates the chance that the customer will fall out of an improperly adjusted tandem harness. Yes, wingsuit tandem requires a higher-order skillset on the part of the TI, who must now include wingsuit proficiency along with general freefall and canopy handling proficiency, but those who have the requisite skillset will in fact be able to provide their customers with a demonstably safer and aesthetically better experience. So get used to it -- and quit WHINING. 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."

We're a little late to this super fun party, and the thread has spun past having much to do with us, but I did want to reply to some things. First, as people have now figured out, we are sending a subscription and t-shirt to the Adventure Skydiving Tennessee for their upcoming boogie. Where anyone got the idea that we are full-on "sponsoring a SkyRide boogie" is beyond me, and we were never (and still haven't been) asked if that was the case, or what that even entailed. Second, we knew AST was affiliated with SkyRide before we agreed to send shwag to their boogie. We support skydivers wherever they choose to jump, whether we agree with their decision or not. We stand behind our actions -- and respect anyone who doesn't agree. Third, we started this community of Blue Skies Mag as a group of intelligent, opinionated, respectful people who like beer, boobies and flying under nylon. We absolutely agree on one thing only: To respectfully disagree. If we ever do anything that is so morally reprehensible that you feel you can't be part of our community anymore, you should absolutely leave. The fact that this action is the unacceptable one out of everything else we've done, printed or posted is a bit past our comprehension, but we're not the smartest people on Earth. Kolla and I just did a 200-mile, 36-hour running relay so our brains are still a bit fuzzy -- and why we haven't replied until now. We will have a more thought out response in our next issue, and please feel free to write letters to the editor (aka me) at lara@blueskiesmag.com. Hey Lara, I've been waiting to hear from you on this one, as I long ago ran out of cheese to go with all of the whine. First, congratulations on your spectacular ROI for one subscription and one t-shirt... Madonna will be sending you a fan letter any day now! Second, don't retreat -- RELOAD... send more to the next Skyride boogie. As Mike and Sue discovered at SKYDIVING, the best way to deal with whiners was give them more -- much more -- of the same to whine about (some of my faves: 1) when some libber chick whined about "sexism" in the mag, Mike put in a full-page house ad of a smoking hot chick sitting in a bathtub full of hotdogs; 2) someone whined about boobies in the mag and canceled her subscription, so Sue posted a pic of a naked dude in a field of flowers and asked readers to please show it to the girl who canceled her sub; and 3) someone else whined about them putting in an ad featuring machine guns and hot chicks (go figure), so Sue put in a pic of three naked guys holding automatic weapons in phallically suggestive poses to give the gals "equal opportunity" to be, ahem, titillated). Third, keep on keepin' on! Considering how many business (not moral) mistakes you made out of the gate, I always thought it was amazing that you're still around, but after reading your (allegedly) fuzzy brain post, I can see why you've managed to keep your rag above room temperature so far. Best of luck going forward. 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."

All prospective students should be shown carnage before they sign the waiver; that way, when the enterprising lawyers decide whether to take their cases, they see the vid and say, "You saw THAT and STILL you jumped? No way a jury will find in your favor. C-ya!" The biggest threat we face as individual jumpers, drop zones and the sport/industry itself is not scaring off a few wussies because of carnage vids but getting sued by same and the best way to reduce that risk it to make it abundantly clear, in living bloody/xray color just what you face when you jump; it scares off the wussies, it gives pause to the scammers and it defeats most lawyers before they even get started (thus taking a page from The Art of War: "The acme of skill is not to win 100 victoris in 100 battles; the acme of skill is to subdue the enemy without fighting"). Bill Dause does a variation on this: He charges extra for credit card purchases, and if someone complains that "that's not legal," he points to the door and says, "Leave." The reasoning is obvious; if someone snivels legally about a $3 surcharge, they are in fact more predisposed toward litigation than those who don't. All this crapola about having epiphanies after they spend some $$$ is ridiculously short-sighted (though of course most of those comments were made in jest): people who complain about videos and otherwise reveal a whining, sniveling, legally-oriented personality should be pre-screened out of the parachuting ecosystem at the earliest possible moment, and I have long advocated that the best way to do that is with a serious dose of orientation carnage BEFORE they pays their money and takes their chances. 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 reserve canopies are one solid color. Most main canopies are not. Given the nature of the commercial they probably used a reserve to show the guy was totally unaware of altitude, due to his phone, and saved by an AAD. Just my guess. I think you're giving whuffo understanding of skydiving too much credit. My guess would be that a solid, bright color canopy provided better visuals for the ad. Looks like a main to me. +1 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 get it - did you become even MORE liberal and you are now so liberal that Rainbo Canopies offend you? Dude, you really DON'T get it; liberals are offended by EVERYTHING. BTW, j'ever notice there's no WHITE in a rainbow? Oh wait, maybe pink counts. 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."

Roberta Mancino. Nuff said. 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."

Indeed - though if you know what these guys have been doing in the mountains during the past few years, then you know it's a testament to how good they really are that so few of them have so far paid a high price for routinely doing stuff at the very edge of the envelope. Totally amazing bunch of guys, totally dedicated to their craft, totally dialed into what they're doing. hopefully, Shannon will be back in the saddle soon. 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."

can you say... double-redundant? 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."

Not my logic. Yours. Fairly faulty, too. Which is surprising considering your profession. But you just keep sliding down that slippery slope, Prof. You know you're right and that's all that matters. Sorry, Skybytch, the good professor did indeed follow your premise to its logical conclusion - a conclusion to which orders of magnitude more people subscribe than to "your" logical conclusion that only certain skydiving practices are stupid. There are about 50,000 skydivers on this planet of 6 billion people-- one out of every 120 million. That means we can safely say that at least 5.99 billion of those 6 billion concur with the professor's logical conclusion rather than "yours." 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."

It's not a good thing. Without consequences for surviving something stupid, stupid will keep happening - "I did that and survived so that rule must be bullshit." Since jumping out a a plane in flight is intrinsically a stupid thing to do, this must explain why you've given up skydiving. Following your logic, there should be a rule against skydiving. +1 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."

????????? Based on what criteria? The composition is creative and cool and the lighting is great and what's become clear from this thread is that is has a Rorschach test element to it too: What you see says more about you than it does about what's actually there. Kudos to the photog and team for a great shot, and to the picture picker at Parachutist. 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."

See, this is why you are a Marine.* First of all, you don't define "combat effective" (that means, tell us what the term means). Second, whether your percentage is accurate or not, insertion injuries are not the only factor that determines combat effectiveness. Third, that's still twice the percentage of World War II Marines who actually fired their weapons in combat. * Props to you anyway... better to be a Marine than to never serve at all. 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 My quote was indeed about insertion injuries, not fatalities or even malfunctions. And as someone else said above, just because you're hurt doesn't mean you're out of the fight. And yes, the D-Day Eve dudes were bad asses. Read "Currahee!" by Donald R. Burgett for an amazing account of the Normandy airborne invasion from a 101st Airborne trooper perspective. (Currahee, BTW, is a slogan for one 101st unit, the 506th Infantry Regiment, from the Cherokee word "We stand alone together.") In many ways, the parachutists who jumped into occupied France in the dark with 100+ pounds of gear and were scattered all over through "the fog of war," changed history because, insertion casualties and operational confusion to the contrary, they took the initiative and started shooting Germans whether they were one man alone or with two or three or 30 of their airborne colleagues. This caused the Germans, in their logical and regimented minds, to assume that every contact represented a platoon-sized force (~40); they couldn't get their heads around the idea that one or two crazy American parachutist soldiers would take on 100 Germans, or even 10 or 20, but they did. The Germans then multiplied this mistaken assumption across the much-larger-than-intended-due-to-inadvertent-dispersion battlespace in which the paratroopers operated (82d went in there too) -- and concluded that there were about five times more paratroopers than there actually were. This led the Germans to hold their reserve forces in place for several hours until they could figure out where the biggest threat was -- and by the time they did, the beachhead had been established. Literally, without the total balls-to-the wall bravery and individual initiative of the 101st and 82d Airborne paratroopers taking it to the Germans, by themselves and in small groups against vastly larger German units (AKA as "a target-rich environment"), it is likely that the D-Day invasion would have failed. Airborne! 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."

FYI, children have been suspended and/or expelled from schools across the country for saying much less -- or even for drawing pictures that school "officials" have determined to be threatening and therefore suspension/expulsion-worthy. Here's one. Here's another. And here's one more. (BTW it took a 2-second "child suspended for drawing" search to get these.) So while I concur that what he said was not a threat, just aggravation, don't presume to think that any public "official" is similarly rational. 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. You have defended him doing it. 2. You have argued that it is not a factor in accidents. 1. LOL 2. Ditto. I know you'll correct me if I'm wrong but, as I understand it, neither of those incidents factored into the proposed $664,000 fine, which, again, is the subject of this thread, not all the ancillary, peripheral and off-topic informatioin being "offered" herein. LOL LOL 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."

It very likely started with this MX issue... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=3732320;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25; And this has what to do with the proposed $664,000 fine and the compliance issues related thereto? You said: "If I recall correctly, Bill did not have an actual MX issue;" It's seems he in fact DID have an MX issue... If you meant ONLY to refer to the 664,000 question you should have made that clear. As I understand it, the cables and/or wing spars did not fai. Ergo, there was no MX issue -- there was an FAA compliance issue. Which, of course, is the title and therefore the topic of this thread, not all of the other ancillary, peripheral and off-topic sub-topics being "offered" herein. 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."

What you are doing is ignoring the fact that ignoring MX leads to a higher chance of an accident just to be argumentative. Never said ignore MX. No one has proven or even argued that Bill ignored MX -- only that he ignored FAA compliance requirements in a very narrowly prescribed area of MX. Not being argumentative. Au contraire, mon ami; I'm just trying to introduce a little precision and discipline to this argument. 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."

Reeeeeally. When was the last time you checked the maintenance logs of the aircraft from which you jump? Or do you just assume that they are being maintained according to FAA standards? 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."

What you think I "suggest" is a product of your imagination, not what I actually wrote. Ergo, any conclusion you draw based on that suggestion is invalid. No, my conclusions were based on what you wrote. I quoted your writing. Try rereading what you wrote and if it wasn't what you meant then revise what you wrote. LOL You say yourself that you based your conclusions on what you thought my post "suggests" -- not what I actually wrote. And you did not "quote" my writing. If you did, there would be quote marks around my actual words. What you did is "paraphrase" my words, which means you summarized what you thought I suggested in my actual words. So try this when you respond again: Put quote marks around my actual words and then try to make your case. 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."

It very likely started with this MX issue... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=3732320;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25; And this has what to do with the proposed $664,000 fine and the compliance issues related thereto? 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."

Not hard to imagine that a DZ that skips MX could have more MX issues than a DZ that does the proper MX. key word: "imagine." If I recall correctly, Bill did not have an actual MX issue; he had an FAA compliance issue. Or am I imagining that? http://tsb-bst.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2008/a08p0242/a08p0242.asp I'd call this one a MX issue...and I for one, do see a trend here. And this has what to do with the proposed $664,000 fine and the compliance issues related thereto? 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."

Then start BASE jumping. 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."

LOL First, you ask for a list of Bill's contributions to the sport. When you receive two big ones, instead of saying "thank you for the information," you: a) denigrate them despite the fact that they are in fact monumental achievements according to any standard of sport parachuting; then b) change the subject and recite a laundry list of alleged Bill sins that are unrelated to the title issue of this thread. Why is that, skybytch? 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."