pilotdave

Make a "TV commercial" for it and upload it to SkydivingMovies.com. I'm really surprised nobody's done that yet for any products. "I used rigminder for just 7 days and look how white my teeth are now! " Dave

This is about the 20th thread I've seen that references some crazy events from earlier today. I was on here. How'd I miss the fun? I always miss the fun. Maybe I'm just picky about what threads I open. I dunno. But what I do know is that I need a dz.com tivo. Ya know, something to record all the drama when I'm not paying attention. Instead of a commercial skip feature, it'd skip over boring posts and get right to the good stuff. Why am I never involved in any drama? C'mon, it's winter, I'm not jumping much, I'm bored! Dave

I haven't thought about this hard enough to truly understand it, but here's some trivia I learned the other day. Anyone wanna write a proof for why it's true? ... If you ignore friction/drag and assume earth is a perfect sphere of uniform density, it will take the same amount of time to fall through any straight line hole through the planet, no matter what angle it's at. Straight through the center of the planet or barely through a sliver.... as long as it's a straight line hole. Dave

My first jump was under a PD 170. Little slower than a Sabre would have been. But I was much more comfortable on that jump than 15 jumps later under a manta 288 at another DZ. Dave

On top of FARs and BSRs and all that, there can be state and local laws you need to comply with. Dunno about Vermont, but CT and MA have some very specific rules about skydiving and so do many towns in them. Dave

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2843&string=long%20tube Dave

Funny, I assumed he was talking about http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=99. Dave

Any chance you could let us know what it's gonna cost? The question of getting a design on a canopy comes up a lot... Dave

The asshole mayor of chicago has already asked for his own ADIZ to protect that city. Others will follow. This just sets precedent. I've flown in the DC ADIZ. It is a pain in the ass... not as bad as flight in the FRZ (closer to DC), but an ADIZ could easily shut down a DZ unless they could get a waiver or something. Not sure if it's changed since I last flew in the DC area, but when I did it, I had to get a clearance and transponder code by phone from the approach control, then immediately call them on the radio after takeoff. I also had to file a flight plan to leave the airport and a second flight plan to return. It was impossible to take off, fly around for a while, then return. I had to land at an airport outside the ADIZ, file a flight plan, call the approach control for a transponder code and clearance, then contact them again from the air before entering the airspace. Dave

It's a closed circuit tunnel. I don't think there'll be an inlet at the...ummm... "inlet". I'm sure it's just the contracting section below the flight chamber. Dave

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=3034 Dave

There is now an american version of Top Gear. Same people, same show, same clips. I think all they changed was the stuff they record in the studio to fix the words you guys got wrong. Dave

Nice work! Wish we'd shared the layer masks... took way too long to cut out the background.

Yeah, it's a bird man doing a barrel roll. Figured anyone that took that pic would be on his back. Tried to distort it to sort of match the contour, but I wasn't gonna spend another hour on a reflection. BTW, I did blur the blades, even though it doesn't look like they should be blurred. I THINK the front row is actually nonmoving vanes, but I could be wrong. Mine does also have a smoke trail but it's a little more subtle. Dave

Sorry I'm late...photoshop crashed the first time I tried and I hadn't saved... Yeah, I know it sucks... Dave

I went ahead and emailed ogrish asking them to remove the video. I'm sure it'll be gone within 24 hours... yeah right. Dave

I know they're not sending them on purpose (or maybe at all), but so far today I've gotten emails with attached zipped exe files (probably infected with some virus, but I haven't checked) from skydivingmagazine.com and baserigs.com. Anyone else? Dave

Never in freefall or under canopy, but I've disconnected mine on the ground for particular jumps or when demoing a canopy on risers not compatible with my RSL. Dave

Ok, silly new feature that nobody will care about, but I was up till 2am working on it so I'm gonna post about it anyway. Just like the big websites like Google and Dropzone.com, search results now get highlighted on SkydivingMovies.com. So for example if you do a search for "cool guy", you'll see that the phrase comes up in one of ~120 comments for the Jeb Corliss video. Click on the filename of the video, and you'll see all occurences of "cool" and "guy" are highlighted, making it easier to find what you're looking for. But here's another cool feature. It works for searches on this site too, as well as many others. Imagine you did a search on these forums for "ground launching" and came across this post. It contains a link to a page on SkydivingMovies.com, which, as a result, has the words "ground" and "launching" highlighted, making it easier to figure out what that link had to do with what you searched for in the first place. Pretty freaking useless, huh?? Dave

Their phone number is 1-800-Sky-Ride. I think you should probably start by contacting them. Dave

From the other thread: It was discussed to death over there and just like every thread, it wanders all over the place so I might have missed more info about this incident. I understand your point. Sometimes correct information in the wrong hands can be dangerous. But here's my question (which may have been answered in the other thread): had she ever logged on to the safety and training forum of dropzone.com? Where did she get the idea in her head that cutting away could possibly work in that situation? Was she a dumbass? I am asking because, well, I wonder if we worry about what we say in here for a good reason or not. This thread has ~200 posts, most of which repeat "pull the reserve handle" somewhere in them. A couple posts refer to the reserve handle as being a backup, with an explanation of what was meant by the word backup and a repetition that the reserve handle must be pulled. Is it truly possible for someone that wasn't already on a path toward a darwin award to come away from this thread thinking "gee I won't have to bother pulling my reserve handle if I pull my cutaway handle?" What gets taught at a first jump course is a different story. I can assure you I'd never call a reserve handle a backup in that sort of setting. Dave

I've never met or talked to anyone that failed to pull their reserve handle after cutting away and ended up having a cypres fire or worse. I don't know what their emergency procedures were or how recently they practiced them or what they considered to be "primary" or "backup." All I know is for some reason they freaked out. They found themselves in freefall and couldn't figure out how to stop the ride. Did they understand how their gear works and just forget? Did they think an RSL is the same as an SOS system? Were they crazy people? Did they have ANYTHING in common? I don't know the answers to any of those questions. I hope I'm different from them though. I hope that I don't need to pretend I don't know how my gear works in order to survive, cause I can't do that. Dave

And people have died thinking "I don't need any backup devices. My left hand is my AAD." Well, they were probably actually thinking more like "damn I wish I had an AAD right about now." I'm not sure what you mean by my attitude anyway. What exactly is my attitude? If you saw me practice my emergency procedures or if you saw me teach somebody else emergency procedures, it would look just the same no matter what my "attitude" was. If I was experiencing a malfunction, do you really think my RSL would even come to mind? I'd be lucky to remember my name. Procedures better take over automatically at that point. Saying that my RSL is most likely going to pull my reserve pin after a cutaway is a fact, it's not attitude or opinion. It's the way the gear works. It's not a part of the emergency procedures though. I have used rigs without an RSL. Doesn't change anything procedurally, but it DOES change the inner workings of the rig. That's the beauty of an RSL... it's totally transparent to the user. Nothing new to learn. Dave

Thanks for accusing me of telling people they don't need to pull their reserve handle after cutting away. I appreciate that. Do you want me to go back and count the number of times I said the exact opposite of that in this thread alone? How about just my last post? Dave

There, I fixed it for ya... this is the way it's actually done in the real world. NOTE: There are many a thread on the topic of trying to avoid teaching BRAND NEW SKYDIVERS what you have just posted as you basic line of thinking. Actually, no, that's not how "it's actually done in the real world." That's a great way to pretend it works, and a great way to teach how it works, but it's not the way it really works. When a jumper has an RSL, and the RSL works, as they do most of the time, it is NOT the reserve handle that pulls the reserve pin. That's just incorrect. We TRAIN as if it was true, whether or not we use an RSL. Not because the RSL is a backup, but because the RSL might not do its job. If jumpers were 100% reliable, we wouldn't need a lot of things... RSLs are one of them. But we're not 100% reliable, so many people recommend the use of RSLs. I agree with those people, but that's got nothing to do with my post. I'm talking about the reliability of RSLs, and why we still need to pull the reserve handle after cutting away. You can "fix" my post to talk about pink elephants if you want, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I'm saying. I'm posting to answer the question of why I choose to use both hands on each handle. I'm not posting to tell anybody that pulling the reserve handle is unimportant if you have a cutaway. I don't believe that any more than you do. What I said is factual, not opinion, not attitude. When an RSL works properly, it pulls the reserve. The jumper pulls a handle that does absolutely nothing because the pin was already pulled. That's a fact. But I do agree that everybody needs to plan and practice to pull both handles no matter what, because RSLs DO fail. When I practice my EPs, I don't even consider the fact that the RSL may or may not do its job. I just follow the procedure. But I did take the RSL into consideration when choosing what procedure to use. Call it device dependence if you choose. The reserve handle is a device, the main pilot chute is a device, the harness is a device, etc, etc, etc. Because we can't survive freefall without any special devices, we're all 100% device dependent. Dave