pilotdave

I've always estimated mine using the freefall table in my logbook. Have a neptune now which records freefall time. I've found that for most jumps, the neptune matches the table pretty well (for RW). No idea how it would compare for freeflying. And some jumps are harder to estimate. Got 79 seconds of freefall yesterday on a tracking dive. I would love to see how much freefall I could get doing a really flat, fast track. Dave

I have worn weights on most of my jumps, starting at AFF 3 for my first release dive. Weights have allowed me to fall in a more neutral body position while still able to stay down with other people. It's possible that I could have sped up without weights by arching harder, but then I'd lose the range of fallrates I can achieve with weights, and lose maneuverability since I'd be arching so hard. I got booties about 30 or 40 jumps ago. I expected that they'd slow me down even more so I'd have to wear more weight. To my surprise, every time I'd approach a formation and fly to my slot, i'd "fall out" and end up low. I got a lot of "what were YOU doing low??" comments. So I tossed the weights in my bag and stopped using em. I'm assuming the booties make me fly with my legs up more, which is making me fall faster. But whatever the cause is, I love not having to wear weights on every jump! Dave

I just dont see it. To me, it seems like the kind of commercial a skydiver might write. Heck, tandem masters can use it to their advantage... "arch hard or i'll disconnect you like in the t-mobile commercial!"

I think that commerical is hilarious. Dave

~4:12:0 ~4 people with control line issues. 2 resulted in cutaways and one resulted in an injury. 2 night jumps, a two way and a 3 way. I love night jumps... can't figure out why so few people will do more than the two required for a D license. FUN weekend! Dave

I sent them feedback about not being able to get in from work (activeX required and disabled at work). They sent back a note that mentioned a regular html version of gmail is in the works. Dave

Lets see if posting works yet... (tried posting like 4 times already) Yep, night jumps at CPI tonight. I'll jump if I can get my hands on a strobe. Maybe I can sucker a couple others into doing a 3 way or something. About arlo... I think she can still take orders, but no longer physically works in the shop. PM her and new toys arrive a few days later. Credit card statement still says TSO-D. Dave

Can anyone with a gmail account invite people? i have an account but dont see how to invite anyone else... Dave

Love my neptune. Started using it as a visual, then switched it over to an audible. Knowing when to stop tracking without looking at my altimeter is the coolest thing ever. Plan on using it tomorrow as a visual for night jumps because of the built in light (and my lack of glow sticks). As far as I'm concerned there's only one place to get a neptune (or damn near any other piece of equipment) online. Send a PM to arlo and say "gimme gimme gimme" and she sends you stuff. You're actually purchasing from The Skydiving Outlet at Deland. Never ever buy from paragear unless you can't find something somewhere else. Their prices almost always suck. They sucker in new jumpers by sending the catalog out. TSO-D's neptune price was the lowest I could find, and arlo threw in shipping too. She also added a few goodies to go with it. BUY FROM HER! She kicks butt. Dave

Anyone see the video of guys jumping wingsuits with base rigs and pulling at 150 feet? Thats 10X crazier than this. No BSRs or FARs broken in the process either, only cause it didn't happen in the US. No reserves, no time to even cut away the wings to flare. Damn near any malfunction would be fatal. But they were base jumpers (that had jumped out of a plane). If people are willing to take huge risks to push the limit, should they be stopped? This isn't guys with 100 jumps doing hook turns. This is experienced jumpers taking calculated risks that they're ok with. Video HERE. Dave

Since people were ready with cameras to catch the action, I'm gonna take a guess that the DZO (or S&TA, or instructors, or whatever) knew he was going to do this. It was a stunt. It wasn't some dumbass move to show off. It was really freaking dangerous, but he took the risk. I understand that when a tandem goes in, it could put a DZ out of business. But if this guy had died, there'd be all kinds of quotes in the paper the next day about how his incredibly dangerous stunt jump went wrong. Heck, might even increase tandem traffic. Dave

Maybe he wasn't a USPA member. I can't believe people are so hung up on a possible violation and not amazed that the demonstration. I don't know who's idea it was, but it's a heck of an advertisement for the skyhook if you ask me! It's about equivalent to a jumper allowing their cypres to fire for demonstration purposes. I wouldn't do it, but I'd love to see it done! Whoever it was knew the risk he was taking. Who cares if he violated a BSR? Dave

You guys are just jealous you can't cut away at 250 feet like us skyhook-equipped jumpers can! Seriously though, I have heard the 80 foot deployment number mentioned. Sounds way too low. Just how much room does it take for a normally packed reserve equipped with a skyhook to open? A 250 foot INTENTIONAL cutaway might be a dumb idea, but how about after a serious canopy collision or something? How high would you need to be to land with an open canopy? Dave

One of the reasons I don't like the idea of new rules is that they may not take into account future technology and training. Wasn't there a time, not all that long ago, that a sabre was considered a high performance canopy not suitable for beginners? Or when only experts were allowed to jump square canopies... And I bet someday there'll be a time when we can remember that stilletos were once for experts only. I don't like the idea of setting a jump number required to jump an elliptical canopy or a cross braced canopy or whatever. Someone might develop an elliptical cross braced student canopy some day. Course that makes no sense... now. But maybe someday we'll have canopies that fly fast but land slow. I think to do what you're talking about, we'd need canopy categories. Every canopy out there would be put into a category. A velocity might be a category A canopy. A sabre2 might be category C. So a BSR would limit both wingloading and category, separately. We obviously have a problem now with people getting hurt under good canopies. I think in the future, canopy training will be very different from how it is today. It'll be a lot more like learning to fly planes. Much more "ground school" and studying. No amount of ground school can prepare a student pilot to solo a pitts special, but no rule is required to prevent low time pilots from flying them either. Pilots know better, most of the time, and also need a couple logbook endorsements. I think thats the direction skydivers need to go. Dave

When I was in college, we'd be going to home depot at like 2am to buy something random (like a doorbell for a dorm room). People are there at that hour, shopping for everything. So strange. My favorite late night shopping story was when a couple friends and I got a craving for bagel bites (mini pizzas) at about 2am one night. When we arrived at the grocery store, we tried one door while another couple guys were trying another door. They got in, ours was locked so we went around to the other door. Arrived at the frozen foods aisle, where we found those guys, staring at the bagel bites. We grabbed a couple boxes and walked to the register. A few seconds later, they got behind us in line with 2 boxes of bagel bites, just like us. So random. Dave

Same thing happened to me when I started my job. I had a couple months of college left when I was offered the job. They were only willing to hold the job long enough so I'd have a week between graduation and starting work. Then I showed up and was told they hadn't really budgeted for me until the next month, and there wasn't a whole lot to do right then. Things are about to pick up big time though. Having too much to do is actually slightly better than having too little to do though. Dave

Stories like this make me so happy that I jump at a civilized DZ, run by a club, not a DZO. A lot of our jumpers switch back and forth between competing DZs. For special events, planes are shifted around as needed, and jumpers go where the action is. There's even an RW competition coming up between DZs. Now THATS how nearby DZs should compete, not by banning jumpers that choose to jump elsewhere. Clubs are the way to go. No DZO to feed. Dave

I got curious so I did a little research. Here's what I found... From http://www.embroideryauthority.com/faq.htm Dave

Right but the file still needs to be converted to a format that embroidery machines can read. Thats where the problem is. Dave

Digitizing for emroidery is one of the biggest rip-offs I've ever seen (asside from $7+ for a small popcorn and small soda at a movie theater). Embroidery companies often charge over $100 for that "service." Problem is, the software they use is very expensive. Hence it's not something you'll likely be able to do yourself unless you know someone that has embroidery software. I THINK there are standard embroidery file formats that different machines can use, so you might shop around for the best digitization price. But chances are nobody will do it for free unless you get a bunch of items emroidered. Dave

In case anyone's interested, you can find a couple reports about that accident... Factual Probable Cause And yep, the NTSB found the ATC to be the main factor. The controller was in training and said he never saw the traffic (he did not intentionally not report it). Dave

I agree that it's usually possible, but realistically, in the real world, not always. That traffic might be 3 miles away or more at the time we exit. We may have a nice big hole in the clouds to jump through, but that plane is below a cloud, in the distance. So before exit, in my opinion, it's not always possible to spot all traffic. Then of course there's the time it would take for each group to look in all directions, etc, not that the rest of the jumpers can't be looking out the windows on jump run. And spotting traffic in freefall? Not realistic for the average skydiver (definitely including myself). I'm way too busy on even a 2 way jump to be scanning the sky after exit. Luckily, I think we'll have technology on our side in the future. Jump planes, and maybe even ground based systems available to DZs will be able to see traffic on their moving map displays. Still might be many years off before all aircraft are equipped with this kinda thing, but the technology is here now. Dave

In that particular case, the skydiver sued the air traffic controllers, and won. BTW the skydiver broke a leg and all on board the plane died. Air traffic control (Bradley Approach) hadn't informed the jump plane of the incoming traffic. In my opinion, the jury was wrong. Fault lied with the pilot, the jump pilot, the skydiver, and maybe ATC to some extent. But skydiving is a VFR activity. ATC does not HAVE to inform a jump plane of all traffic in the area. The radios in the crashed plane were found to be on the frequency of the departure airport, very many miles away. And of course this was before GPS was common, so we can't blame that. Nobody here broke any laws. The jump plane talked to ATC and announced jumping activity on the local frequency, the plane flew along VFR, visually looking for traffic, and ATC provided separation to IFR aircraft. But I'd put most of the blame on the pilot for flying over a DZ on a sunny day without listening to the local or approach frequency. It might not be the law but it sure is safer. To his credit of course, it was found that the parachute symbol was not obvious on the chart. At home I have sectionals from before and after that accident so you can see the changes they made. Pretty interesting. Dave

Hehe ever looked at a sectional? The less words, the better! The last thing I want on them is warnings. It's true that the parachute symbol doesn't always stand out, but more words just add clutter. Years ago in MA, a skydiver in freefall hit a plane. The investigation found that the blue parachute symbol was sitting right on top of a river on the chart, making it very hard to spot. So they changed the parachute symbols to magenta. But the entire accident woulda been avoided if the pilot had either been listening to the local frequency or the approach frequency. When I fly, I navigate almost entirely by GPS these days. I always have a sectional open also, but I just use it as a backup most of the time. But I constantly hit the "nearest" feature on my GPS to keep looking up the frequency of the next airport I'll be flying near. And on nice sunny saturday afternoons, I tend to try not to overfly any airports, dropzones or not. Just busy places to be. Dave

In case anyone missed it in another thread, here's an excerpt from hook's campaign speech about all the things he'll work on as a national director: Dave