pilotdave

BRB, gotta wash my eyeballs out with soap. Dave

Here's mine. I think it's about time for a new wallpaper. That's a pic I took while dodging storms on a cross country flight a few months ago. Icons are getting cluttered. I need to clean up. Dave

True. After clicking on the link from here, right click on the "click here to play or download" link and hit save target as or whatever you have in your browser. Dave

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/dl.php?f=memorials_tributes/Rob_Tonnesen.wmv (8 megs). Dave

Mooney shmooney. You've gotta deal with those wheels that dont stay in place and a propeller that twists all around.... what a piece of junk. Plus that big, gas guzzling engine. And some idiot put the tail on backwards. Naaah, Grummans are the way to go! Durn things are glued together. What could be better?? Out of curiosity, what do you figure your hourly operating cost to be? Our mooney's cost 50% more to rent, plus the added fuel consumption, and only do about 25 kts faster than a Tiger. Dave

I've never landed with the plane when I planned to jump, but if I had to I wouldn't mind...too much. One hesitation... a very hard landing in a plane with no seats wouldn't be any fun. Modern aircraft seats are designed to absorb huge loads in very hard (crash) landings. No big deal since I don't expect the pilot to crash, but if something did go wrong, we don't get the protection that seats give. A couple weeks ago I saw the seats of a blackhawk helicopter that basically fell out of the sky from 100 feet when another helicopter's sling load took it's rotor blades off. Amazingly, everyone survived, all thanks to the design of the seats. Planes don't usually have seats capable of that kind of abuse, but they still help. As a pilot, I love taking skydivers for plane rides. They are SO amused by landings. The only time I ever got a round of applause for a landing was when I landed a few skydivers on a nice soft grass runway (grass landings usually feel smooth). One guy had over 100 jumps and only 1 other landing in a plane. Dave

Interesting. Not supposed to open the canopy all the way in flight.... not nearly enough to get out, especially with a rig on. I'm guessing at 70 kts it's no big deal (can open it part way to 113 kts I think), but I bet they restrict it for a good reason too. Not something I'd try. Then again, I wouldn't try anything that could cause damage to the plane (other than my landings

I use yahoo mail. Used to use the weather channel. Dave

Helmets mostly fog up because you're breathing in them. Goggles don't have that problem. Dave

I agree with buying a protec if you don't know what you want. I bought one and used it till I decided to buy a Z1 and haven't touched it since. No reason to rush into spending so much on a helmet when you're not sure what you'd like. Stick with something cheap, and you'll probably have some opportunities to try out other helmets. The only reason I can think of to go ahead and buy a full face right away is for winter jumping. That's why I bought mine when I did. One thing to watch out for with full face helmets... I can't see my handles with my helmet on. Had to change my emergency procedures when I got it, and I check my chest strap before putting the helmet on. Dave

Did she think otherwise? Maybe next time she wont and think she does... Dave

Oh quit your complaining and get a Reflex (wanna buy a black and pink one?). Then they'd have to go through you to reach the reserve flap. I can honestly say that I've NEVER gotten a reserve pin check by another jumper, with or without permission. Dave

I'm jewish and have known at least a few others. Maybe we need a club!

One more for your collection... (if you want a cleaner version let me know...that ones compressed to fit here). Dave

Stuck photoshopless at work. I can try when I get home if its not done by then. Dave

No glue related problems with mine yet, but I agree that their quality control is nearly nonexistant. You'd almost think it was made in America! I still love it though. Keeps my head warm and looks a heck of a lot better than my protec and over-the-glasses goggles! Dave

Is there harm in setting it for the hard deck instead of opening altitude? I mean, I agree that learning to pull without any help is probably a good idea, but is there anything wrong with a backup just in case? Could prevent a cypres fire or something....never know. Dave

There may be ways of flying that are cheaper than skydiving, but I don't think thats generally the case. I spend a LOT more money on flying than skydiving and I do it a lot less often. I spend around $27/hour on fuel alone ($2.98/gallon here). Add $35 - $40 for the plane rental. And since I'm in a flying club, I pay monthly fees of something like $250 (which includes 3 hours of airplane rental). The monthly fees apparently started to go out of control just over the last few years. In 1997, insurance for the club's 9 planes was $17,000 a year. Now it's something like $93,000 a year. I also agree that flying's a whole lot harder than skydiving. I mean, its totally different, and it might be easier to be a great pilot than a great skydiver, but the basics of skydiving are much easier to learn. Learning to skydive is like learning to dance. Learning to fly is...different. There's a similar aspect... learning the feel of the plane and coordinating your body to control the plane, but it also requires studying an encyclopedia of information. As far as the people go, I don't disagree with the original post as much as most people seem to. Sure, a lot of skydivers become pilots, and some pilots become skydivers (much fewer). Those people are the exception though. Most of the pilots I've met outside of skydiving are pretty different from most of the skydivers I've met that don't fly. Definitely not always true. But most pilots I've met are more like the RW crowd than the freeflyer crowd (take that to mean whatever you want

Stoopit weather. Got in 2 jumps yesterday before I decided it was too windy to be jumping. I was coming straight down under the sabre2 135 I was demoing. Woulda been backing up big time under my PD150. I really wanted to jump as many times as I could cause that was my only day with the demo (it was stuck at fedex last weekend, i was stuck in alabama during the week). So, I'll end up paying about $55 to use the canopy for 2 jumps. And all I got to do for those 2 jumps was hold into the wind the whole time. I made the mistake of doing a traffic pattern on the first jump and ended up on the wrong side of a treeline and had to land off. The second jump, I just held over the landing area and came straight down. Well, guess I'll just have to buy me a sabre2 if I wanna try it s'more!

Clearing the sky took WAY too long and didn't come out nearly as good as I wanted. I was getting bored so I only spent a few minutes on the one with the people. It's a whole lot easier to remove people from one pic and put them into another than it is to create something that was never there...even if it's just an empty sky. But yes, I do have entirely too much time on my hands. I love being done with school!

You're absolutely right. Here's how it was really done... Dave

If this doesn't work, I know of another ftp server we could have you try to upload to and i can grab it off there. Dave

Ok.... lets figer this out. Start from scratch... what is the filename of the video? Where on your computer is the file? And what version of windows are you running? win 98, xp, etc? If you go to ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com, do you see the public and uploads folders? when you open public, you should see lots of folders... uploads should be empty. Lets start there... Dave

Not seeing anything yet.... You getting an upload progress thingydoo? Dave

Ok, easiest way: using internet explorer, go to: ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com/uploads. Now, you'll want the video copied to your hard drive (uploading off the CD will probably be slower). I'd just copy and paste it to the desktop so its easy to get to. Then just drag and drop it right into the internet explorer window. It should start to upload. In other words, just treat internet explorer just like its a folder on your own hard drive. After the upload is finished, you won't be able to download the file from there. I'll have to move it to another folder first. Let me know if that makes sense to ya! Dave