pilotdave

Unfortunately I'm not gonna make it this year. Doing the Great White North Boogie at lake wales right after your boogie (wish I could do both). I arrive in FL on the 17th. Any of you guys gonna be there? And does palatka have any woods to take the vans through?? I missed the naked russian jumping the bonfire and I wish I missed the grub eating. But the rest of that was so much fun. I still need to get a copy of the video of that fat lady jump...that was awesome. Dave

Lift is related to speed (squared). But thinking backwards confuses people. They think a smaller canopy has more lift because it flies faster than a larger canopy (billvon responded to "the speed is also directly related to lift..."). Canopies want to find an equilibrium. Smaller canopies do fly faster in order to produce the same lift as a bigger canopy. Forgetting the difference between lift and drag and just taking both to be the "upward" force created by a canopy, it's easy to see that a tandem drogue creates the same "lift" as a tandem main. When the rate of descent is constant (terminal velocity), both the drogue, in freefall, and the main, under canopy, are pulling up at exactly the weight of the jumpers. They just happen to be going very different vertical speeds to achieve the same lift. Swooping is a dynamic situation. Lift does increase when the swooper comes out of a dive. When a canopy accelerates upward (ie levels off from a dive or actually goes up), lift no longer equals weight. Dave

Are you talking about the British guy that jumps mostly in Ohio and tells baaaad jokes nonstop all day long? If yes, you can see him for a split second in the background of this video: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2705. Foggy's probably a common name though... Dave

You can also call it an AAD and continue to use it. Either way you'd be violating an FAR. The FAA doesn't play word games. Dave

Lying as a business model is pretty different from cheating on a significant other. And I don't think anyone needs to stand on a soap box to say that what skyride does is wrong. It's wrong whether we debate it all day or not. It's also wrong to do all those other things you mentioned. But that doesn't make skyride any better, nor does it make anyone that's spoken up about skyride a hypocrite. Dave

Or they might send people to a DZ much farther away, right past the one in your area. I don't like them either, but not for dishonesty or unethical behavior. And they DO help promote the sport. Dave

Ever seen someone over 6 feet tall try to get comfortable in a Cessna? C'mon now, they just look silly. Dave

If you've got specific videos on SkydivingMovies.com you'd like to use, I MIGHT be able to help get you in contact with the owner. Let me know, Dave

??? Open your eyes... I was speaking about a particular situation. Do you know how often the two people this thread is particularly about practiced their emergency procedures? How about the girl that had the cypres fire recently or the one that went in without pulling her reserve? Since I don't know whether or not they were current with their emergency procedures, I can't compare myself to them and assume that I'm better prepared than they were. I'm not saying practicing emergency procedures isn't a good thing. Of course it is. But does more practice lower my chances of ever being in a situation where an RSL would make the difference between living and dying? It seems that it might, but I've never seen proof. All I'm saying is I use an RSL and an AAD because I don't assume I'm any different than those that have needed them (or could have used them) in the past. Others assume an RSL is unnecessary because they practice their EPs. I don't make that assumption. Dave

As he said, AGP is outdated. PCI-express 16 is the latest for video cards. And his motherboard is SLI compatible which means you can actually install 2 video cards with a bridge between them to make them act as one. I decided one $200 video card was enough for me so there was no point in SLI. But I definitely went with PCI-express for video. Dave

What's wrong with the Mite? Mooneys wouldn't have a backwards tail if it wasn't for the Mite! I think Mooney has survived on the energy produced by people saying "why's the tail on backwards." Dave

The EAA has one, along with some other fun planes. Ever talked to Kermit Weeks? He's got a whole fleet, including some WW2 bombers. Dave

Hmm. What kind of heat issues do you have? Instability/crashes? What kinda temps you running at? Dave

Dual core isn't the best for gaming...yet. Games don't take advantage of it, but they will in the future. I really got it so my computer isn't totally bogged down while rendering video or things like that. BTW, you gonna try Windows XP 64 bit edition? I thought about it, but read some really bad reviews so I'm waiting a while on that. Dave

What's it got for a power supply? That can make a HUGE difference. If you've loaded it with fans and they don't help, try a new (more powerful) power supply. I didn't believe it until a friend was having cooling problems. I bought him a case fan which didn't help (but it did light up in blue to improve the look of his dead computer). He could only get the thing to run for more than a few minutes by opening the case and aiming a big fan right at it. When he finally got a new power supply, the problem was instantly fixed. Dave

Looks cool. Why such expensive RAM? Does it really make a difference? I only went with 1 gig, but it was only about $80ish. 2 gigs of the same type of RAM for $278?? Why? I really liked that case too but it was just too expensive. I wanted a $25 case with built in power supply but settled on a much nicer $50 case and a better power supply. And $277 for a sound card?? Built-in sound on the motherboard (with 5 channels) was plenty for me. Sound couldn't be any better through my little tiny computer speakers. They do the trick for me. The best thing I bought, which wasn't on the wish list, was a Wacom tablet. I still can't draw but I really do like it more than a mouse. Dave

I agree about water cooling. My old system sat in a cabinet with poor ventilation (I left the front open and the sides off the case to help). It ran pretty hot, but no problems. Only stock cooling too. I looked into water cooling the new one and found that it's WAY more of a mess than I wanted to get involved with. I was looking at an external "radiator/tank" for the coolant, not one of the internal ones. Well as soon as I read what it takes to move the PC once the cooling is installed, I gave up on that idea. My new PC has stock cooling only... a decent power supply with 2 fans, one big case fan on the back, one stock AMD heatsync with fan, and built in fan on the video card. That's it. I even overclocked it a little with no heat probs at all. There's room on the case for a front fan, which I should probably install. But that's just bonus. Cooling only becomes critical when you really push the limits of your processor/video card/whatever. For a pretty standard system, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Stock cooling works fine. BTW, your wish list doesn't work. Make sure it's shared, then use the link to email it to yourself. Then post the link here. That's the only way I could figure out. Dave

I just don't see how any of this relates to the thread. More on topic would be if there was a law saying an airbag must protect car occupants at impact speeds up to 50 mph, that does not make it illegal to drive at 60 mph. There are laws and standards that car makers need to follow when designing and building cars. There are other sets of rules that drivers need to follow when operating cars. If a product is made improperly and it causes harm to a user, they can sue no matter what. If somebody is injured when they crash into a wall at 90 mph, they can sue ford for a design flaw in the airbag. They probably won't win, but that doesn't stop people from trying. It's probably not illegal to ram a car into a wall at 90 mph either. Dave

It can be easy or it can be a total nightmare. I recently built a new computer, and before that (4ish years ago) I upgraded my old one with a new motherboard, processor, and all that. The upgrade was the nightmare type, at least for the first 2 days or so. Started off smooth, got the processor and heatsync installed on the motherboard, got the motherboard in the case, FINALLY got all the leads from the case (for the buttons and lights) connected, and tried to boot. Nothing. I played for a long time with the leads to the power button since the instructions weren't very clear on how it should be connected. I ended up calling tech support from every component, including the MS paid tech support claiming I had a problem with windows, since afterall it wouldn't load, right? To make a long and annoying experience short, I finally figured out that my zip drive was touching a capacitor on the motherboard, causing the whole thing not to work. Removed the zip drive and it worked fine... on day 3. My new PC (a few weeks ago) was slightly smoother. I bought everything at http://www.newegg.com. They make it fairly easy to choose compatible parts. But since I hadn't kept up with what the latest and greatest components were, I spent a lot of time on there reading reviews and choosing my parts carefully. Probably spent about 2 weeks creating various wish lists until I finally nailed down exactly what I wanted. So all the parts showed up and off I went. Step one, connect the processor to the motherboard. I read the instructions very carefully and came to a screeching halt when I read the note that "All AMD processors require thermal interface material..." Well I didn't have any thermal interface material. Damnit, something else to buy. The note went on to say that AMD's website has a section on processor cooling with suggestions on what type to buy. Well I searched that site for 10 minutes and finally found a little note on some random page saying all AMD heatsyncs come with thermal interface material pre-installed, but if the heatsync ever gets removed, new stuff needs to be applied. Ugh, problem solved. Shoulda known that... anyway, since I had done this before. Anyway, the case I bought is great, but it came with about 5 different types of philips head screws and no instructions (the manual could be found online easily... I had it bookmarked before the shipment arrived). Had to figure out which screws to use to secure the motherboard, which took about 2 tries. The motherboard came with a little cover for the back of the case where all the components plug in. The one on the case unscrewed easily, but the new one had no screws didn't seem to fit. Ended up having to leave it off, so my case has a big hole in the back around all the plugs. Then came the real fun. My copy of windows XP is very old. Couldn't read more than 137 gigs of a hard drive. My drives were 250 gigs and 160 gigs, so that was no good. The solution is to format the first 137 gigs of one drive, install windows, get online to download service pack 2 which fixed the problem, then format the remaining space on the drive and the entire other drive. Pain in the butt, but it went fairly smoothly. If you've never installed anything in a computer, I'm not sure I'd recommend trying to build a whole one. When something doesn't work, you'll need to be able to troubleshoot it. If you think you can do that, go for it. It's fun (in some sort of crazy way) and you can save a TON of money over buying from somewhere like Dell. (I priced the closest possible computer to mine on Dell, which was still nowhere near as good as the one I got... it was approximately double the price at Dell). I think this'll work... Here's what I bought (plus a few more components that I didn't save on the wish list like a second hard drive). Dave

See http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1609006#1609006. Dave

DivX version: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1094. Dave

No. I know the guy that got hit and he was fine (well, as fine as a guy like him can be). Another angle and some more info I got from witnesses: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1768 Dave

Just in case they take the video down, http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2929. Dave

I might agree with that if the cypres had fired high. Her death had nothing to do wtih her cypres. She went in without pulling. The cypres didn't kill her any more than her reserve did. Dave

Better do it throughout the day if you plan on making any instrument approaches where you need better than 100 foot accuracy.