pilotdave

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Everything posted by pilotdave

  1. pilotdave
    There are even non-USPA DZs that require USPA membership to jump there. Dave
  2. pilotdave
    Don't think anyone mentioned this yet... One more thing to watch out for doing hard toggle turns down low... spinning into line twists. I jump a Sabre2 135 loaded just under 1.1. I was at about 1300 feet, just upwind of the landing area. Decided to do a quick 180 to lose some altitude and put myself onto downwind. Well, pulled the toggle and instead of diving, I found myself on my back looking up at the sky, as my canopy started twisting up over my head. Luckily my canopy flew mostly straight in the twists, but I still didn't have them kicked out until about 700 feet or so. I probably had almost 200 jumps on the canopy. I had done plenty of hard turns before, toggle stalls, rear riser stalls, etc. Never had it do anything like that. Lesson learned! Dave
  3. pilotdave
    Is the container a prototype or something? I didn't think they put em into production... Dave
  4. pilotdave
    Something like that happened where I work (well it's a helicopter company, so no big surprise). They put a new sign on the front of the building and wanted to get a shot of a brand new helicopter flying by. So I was in the cafeteria eating lunch one day when 2 helicopters shot by in formation (S-76 for the photo platform shooting an S-92) right in front of the building, over the parking lot. Made a couple passes and set off a bunch of car alarms. Attached one of the pics they took. Looks much higher in the pic than it really was. Can't believe it was much over 100 feet. Musta used a wide angle lens. Dave
  5. pilotdave
    Not as cheap as free, but there are a lot of very cheap web hosts out there. Many will even let you run php scripts, and some give you MySQL database access (which you might wanna do in the future, even just for a fancier photo album). Almost any cheap hosting will be MUCH better than most of what you'll find for free. Dave
  6. pilotdave
    The plot has thickened in my fight against spam... I had forwarded a couple of spams to the company that they came from to check out. Well I actally got a call back. Turns out that at least one (if not all of them) actually came from a direct competitor of the spam company, but with their name on it. Long story short. Their domain is registered through a 3rd party to hide their information (ironically normally used to avoid spammers). I talked to them and forwarded one of the spams to their legal department. If it is found to be in violation of their terms of service (which are pretty strict), they could shut down the domain. So maybe I just stopped a spammer...for a day or an hour or whatever it would take them to register with someone else. But it made me happy! Dave
  7. pilotdave
    Don't be too hard on yourself. You get an A for not being this guy: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1004. Your "fun" score is one reason a lot of people do a tandem first. Much more "relaxing" and more time to just enjoy the ride. But now that you've done one, it just get's better and better. You'll be very surprised by how much you can just enjoy yourself when you do your first solo after getting off student status. Dave
  8. pilotdave
    I dunno how many times I've seen that video and never knew that. Course the only time I've ever seen him is during his dad's funeral. But my friend that did a tandem is very into politics and recognized his voice before even seeing him. Dave
  9. pilotdave
    Well, probably wont help but I was getting tons of spam from one company (using a lot of different company names). I tracked down the parent company that they were coming from, and had a chat with a lawyer there today. Very friendly, and no more emails from them. And I learned a lot about the world of spam. My favorite part... Me: "you do popup ads too, right?" him: "yes, we do those too" me: "out of curiosity, do you use a popup blocker at home?" him: "at home? no." me: "do you use a popup blocker at work?" him: "well, yeah, but only because it was part of service pack 2" me: "don't you find that ironic?" him: "no, we just have to use it because our computer people make us" He was too nice for me to tell him I think his company is the scum of the earth. But I had my fun. Dave
  10. pilotdave
    That was quick. I shoulda said no tandem instructors that have seen the video 3 billion times. Dave
  11. pilotdave
    Ok, maybe everyone knows this except me (until recently)... Who is the narrator/tandem student in the RWS waiver video? No checking! Took a friend for a tandem recently and he pointed it out to me. Dave
  12. pilotdave
    Serious question that maybe someone can answer. Where do the group member dues go? I really have very little understanding of the GM program. It always seemed to me to be a listing in parachutist every month and not a whole lot more. But for a skydiving club that doesn't even have a DZ to join, it would cost $200/year. The bigger the DZ, the more it costs. Why is that? Do they do more work for the bigger DZs? What's that money get spent on? Sorry for being off topic. But I'm concerned where skyride's hard earned money is going. Dave
  13. pilotdave
    Skyride DZs don't need to worry about USPA certification. They're National Skydiving Association approved! Dave
  14. pilotdave
    There have been a lot of threads about this. It's not always true, but do a search and take a look at what DZs the people jump at that don't pack. It's mostly a big DZ thing. I hate packing but almost never use a packer. My DZ doesn't have any full time packers, so it's either pack yourself or have a years supply of rigs. I used a packer over the summer after injuring my knee, and used one at Deland when I rented gear cause they require a staff packer to do the final pack job before turning the gear back in. Funny thing was I had already packed it, then it started to rain so I had to unpack it to let the packer repack it. Dave
  15. pilotdave
    Haha. I bet they have the best spam blocking software in the world. They also do banner ads and popups. I think I'll ask if he uses a popup blocker at home. Wouldn't that be ironic? But I've saved up probably about 20 spams from their "affiliates." Maybe I'll forward them for his personal inspection to make sure they are really coming from his company. Dave
  16. pilotdave
    http://www.addrive.com/contact.html Yes, that is contact info for the executives at a real live spam company that's been sending me at least a few emails a day for the last week or so. They did the same thing a few months ago and I had a nice chat with a secretary at thei parent company, SubscriberBase. When these started again, I called them back and got a different secretary. She was very nice and even gave me her email address to forward a spam so she could find out who was sending it. But the emails haven't stopped. So I think I'll give the president a call tomorrow. I think I'll enjoy that. BTW, if you ever get emails offering free products like laptops, TVs, or X-boxes, read the fine print. They have a lot of names but most are like Product Test Panel. That's them! Dave
  17. pilotdave
    I don't think there's a need to stoop to their level. Dave
  18. pilotdave
    Stay faaar away from this one. Comes with a PD vengeance owners manual. Probably means it has a vengeance of an unknown size inside. You'd never want to buy any canopy of unknown size, but that's a high performance canopy that you couldn't jump in any size for a long time. Then again, if the price stays where it is, might be able to resell it at a nice profit. But don't buy it to jump it! Dave
  19. pilotdave
    You're pretty safe running apache. Start reading the online documentation... might wanna start with security tips: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/misc/security_tips.html. Dave
  20. pilotdave
    Fraud. I'm not a lawyer. I don't KNOW that fraud could be proven. But in my mind, what they are doing is clearly fraud in the moral sense. They are lying. Clearly. Now maybe it's a criminal offense. In that case, forget a lawsuit. A DA should prosecute them in criminal court. Nobody needs to prove they were hurt (as far as I know). Ok why haven't any lawyers chimed in on this thread yet?? Dave
  21. pilotdave
    Hmm..aren't you missing an area there? Drag depends on more than speed and air density... 1/2 rho*v^2 will give you the dynamic pressure, not a drag force. But yeah...multiply it by a coefficient of drag and a reference area, and you've got drag. Now how will the coefficients of drag compare? Probably similar. So yes, bigger area=bigger drag. But if the canopies react very differently in the stall then their coefficients of drag and areas might not be proportional to their sizes. But for 2 canopies of the same type in different sizes, I can't really imagine the bigger canopy coming down faster. Now if it was a bigger fully elliptical canopy and a smaller square canopy, who knows. Dave
  22. pilotdave
    Well when you suggested suing I thought I was imagining things. Skydivers don't sue skydivers, right?. But anyway I reread what you wrote and it still sounds like you're defending them. Unless you were being sarcastic. The problem with suing them is that you have to have been directly hurt by them. I wasn't, but they very well may have been taking business from my DZ through fraud. But maybe they were giving more business to my DZ. Can't sue for that. And hell, if another dropzone hired the law firm my brother works for, they'd probably sue my dropzone for benefiting from the fraud.
  23. pilotdave
    I got my XP machine to run for 100 days straight between reboots...and actually used it that whole time for everyday use/games. Course the mouse stopped working on day 98. But I wasn't gonna let that make me restart.
  24. pilotdave
    Nuttin but apache (or any other http server). Apache is great but not very easy to set up. I started with a program called Omnicron httpd, which was windows based (apache has no gui...runs in a command prompt window...although i'm sure guis are available). But when I wanted to add php functionality to my site, apache was the way to go. PHP and MySQL database server are free to add. Can really get fancy then. Dave
  25. pilotdave
    Try this: http://www.hotscripts.com/search/827114.html If that doesn't work, go to http://www.hotscripts.com and do a search for hide email address in the javascript section. Dave