pilotdave

Spam makes up something like 75% of all email. It's time to find out where it's coming from and kick some ass. I started doing a little research into who spams. I was surprised that the vast majority originates from inside the US. I really wonder if a large percentage of spam comes from only a few large sources. I'd love to see those companies burn to the ground. Dave

which server you trying to upload to? Dave

13 megs is gonna take a while to upload on dialup. Got any friends with high speed internet? You can upload (in theory) to either server. Eventually anything uploaded to one will end up on the other. I think we might designate leroy's server as the upload server because of issues with the other server. Right now, I cant seem to upload to it though. I think something is just set wrong. So, unless you've got an internet-only phone line that you can leave connected all night, i'd say 13 megs is more than you probably want to try uploading on dialup. C'mon, someone out there must have high speed access you can borrow for a few mins! edit: eh, i take it back. If all goes well, it should upload in around an hour. Dave

That yers? What codec is it encoded with? Can you make it a wmv? Dave

Ouch! That sucks. At least it doesnt sound permanent. Now git to work on figuring out how to deal with your dynamic IP! Dave

I guess ya don't learn the wonders of tin foil till you live somewhere with a kitchen. In college, before I had a dishwasher, I tried to never let food touch anything that needed to be cleaned afterwards. Foil was my best friend. But I can tell you one thing... I sure as hell didn't own an iron (and still dont). If it's too wrinkled to wear (is there such a thing?), I'd just throw it back in the laundry. And might I suggest a microwave for that dorm room? They weren't allowed in the dorm I lived in, but it can be hidden...

NSFW when you finish it!!! Dave

G forces are something you get used to as you fly more. It doesn't take a very tight turn to generate enough Gs to really feel. If you ever get the chance to fly in a small plane (ie not when you're jumping), ask the pilot to show you a 60 degree bank turn. 60 degrees never sounded so steep to me, but from inside the plane, you'd probably think you were in a 90 degree bank. In a level 60 degree bank turn, you're pulling exactly 2 Gs. Thats a lot more than you should ever experience in a jump plane. 2 Gs is enough to feel your cheeks drooping, and lifting your hands becomes difficult. Try that, and I bet the 30 degree bank you might experience in a jump plane will feel like nothing. But yeah, G forces can be very uncomfortable, but I guarantee you are nowhere near losing consciousness due to the Gs you'll pull in a jump plane. Also, the recovery time after pulling enough Gs to "gray out" is pretty short. Dave

I pack pretty much no matter what since my DZ has no paid packers. Some local high school student could make a killing on a summer weekend. Even tandems get packed my tandem instructors. This is one reason i'm hesitating to buy a brand new ZP canopy... I'll have to pack it from day 1. In a few years, when i'm a millionaire (I should probably start buying lottery tickets, huh?), I'll hire my own personal packer. Till then, I'm on my own. Dave

Did my first tandem yesterday. Jump #135. Now I know why those tandem students always look so nervous. And this was the instructor's 7th tandem. The jump went great. Not nearly as uncomfortable as I expected. Did a perfectly stable poised exit and he threw the drogue after a couple seconds. Then I got to have some fun. Stuck my feet straight down, grabbed my toes, went fetal, tried turning and tracking, anything to throw him off a little. There wasn't anything I could do that he couldn't counter. Kinda nice to know, I guess. Considering every experienced jumper I talked to beforehand wouldnt even consider making another tandem as a student, I expected a LOT worse. The opening was softer than my own canopy, and that thing had better performance than my canopy too. We did a nice soft slide in landing. The one thing I should have done was borrowed a student suit... my jumpsuit now has a nice brown ass (on the outside!!). Overall I really enjoyed the jump. It was nice to let someone else do all the work for once. I'd do it again if I got the chance. Maybe next time we won't bother with that silly drogue and really have some fun.

Maybe, but I have zero interest in swooping right now. I assumed i'd much prefer the spectre and almost bought one without demoing a sabre2 in the same size. I expected nice, slow landings. I found that i just didn't seem to have "enough" flare to stop my downward motion before touching down. Landings weren't HARD, stood up all but 2 (and one was a downwinder... 2nd jump on the canopy i think), but not as soft as I would have liked. I don't think its the canopy's fault though. I think it was my flare technique. But I had no problems with the sabre2 right off the bat so I got a much better impression of it. When I want to swoop, I think I'll stick with being surrounded by aluminum with nice little tires underneath me.

I took a look at votexes last weekend. Tried to demo one but there wasn't one my size (that would hold something as big as a 135

The sabre and sabre2 are totally unrelated. Forget the original sabre (yeah, i know, some people love em). I put 17 jumps on a demo spectre135, a few on a sabre2 150, and a couple on a sabre2 135 (and a sabre2 135 demo will be arriving for this weekend). After 1 jump on the sabre2 135, I knew thats what I wanted over the spectre. The major difference to me was the landing. The spectre landed a lot like my PD150, just faster. Now I know with only 17 jumps on it I was no expert, but I found the sabre2 MUCH easier to land. The spectre seems to require a bit of timing to get the flare right. With experience, i'm sure I could land it nice and soft every time. But the sabre2 can be flown right down to the ground. I just had to flare it as much as it needed to slow me down. Nice, soft landings on all the jumps so far. Just to note, I've only tried the spectre in low wind and the sabre2 in high wind. I might hate the sabre2 on a no wind day... i just dont know and thats why i want to put more jumps on it before deciding. In flight, I loved both canopies. Both opened nice and softly... nothing like i've ever experienced with my PD150. Openings weren't excessively long for either one. Slightly shorter most of the time (for me) on the sabre2, and nicely on heading. I think both are great canopies but I just loved the landings on the sabre2. Dave

I try to never jump from an altitude of zero...or at least i dont count it toward freefall time.

Really quick estimate based on 6 seconds per 1000 feet of freefall. You could easily turn some constants into variables to get a better estimate for each jump.... =[(Exit Altitude)-(Opening Altitude)]*6/1000 Just replace the altitudes as i wrote them with labels to the cells containing those numbers (or just change opening altitude to whatever altitude you normally pull at). So, if you exit at 13,000, open at 3000, you get: [(13000 - 3000)*6]/1000 = 60 seconds. To convert seconds to hours:minutes:seconds you'll have to get fancier but i'm sure excel has a built in function for that. Dave

Yep. The DZ here is only about 10 miles from an international airport so there's a lot of FAA scrutiny. A lot of stuff is done much more by the book here than other DZs I've been to. We're right on the edge of class C airpspace, so, depending on the spot, we can be inside the class C between 2100 and 4200 feet. We don't spot with GPS anyway, but even if we did, jumping through a cloud layer just wouldn't happen here. Makes for a safe DZ! Dave

Check out [URL "http://www.skydivingmovies.com/dl.php?f=misc/TheSkydivers.wmv"]The Skydivers[/url] at skydivingmovies.com. (28 megs, or also available in a 110 meg avi file). It's a (the?) film about the making of Gypsy Moths. I love the final shot... 3 guys side by side in freefall, static lined to each other. First guy pulls in place, as he gets pulled away the next guy is deployed, and then the 3rd guy. I really think its amazing to see what has and hasn't changed since then. Dave

You can control how hard a canopy opens by packing technique, but it also sounds like your harness wasn't sized/adjusted properly. Your chest strap shouldn't be able to ride up that high. Ask your instructor to make sure the main lift web is adjusted properly. As far as packing, I assume you didn't pack it yourself. Hard openings just happen every once in a while. When you're packing yourself, ask what you can do to ensure your openings are nice and soft. The pilot chute over the nose is probably no big deal. Happened to me a bunch of times when I was jumping student rigs with ripcords (I assume you're using a spring loaded pilot chute). The extra weight of the spring gives it some inertia that can send it over the nose during opening or a quick maneuver. As long as it's not causing the canopy to deform at all, it's not gonna do anything. Dave

Some risers have a loop on the opposite side to stow the excess. I don't think it's very common... yet. After this accident I think it will be. I don't know how anyone could keep stowing them in the riser loop now. Even without a "built in" solution, there are other alternatives. Dave

Here in CT, we need to fill out a "parachutist incident report" after every off landing. It goes to the state DOT I think. I don't think they'd take too kindly here to that sorta thing.

I jump a PD150 (F111 9 cell) but am about to buy a new canopy. I demoed a sabre2 150 and today a 135 and found it sooo much easier to land than my canopy. It's definitely higher performance so you need to get an appropriate wing loading, but that doesn't necessarily make it more difficult to fly. I've got a demo sabre2 on its way from PD right now (today I demoed one from aerostore) so I'll put some more jumps on it before I make my final decision, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna buy a sabre2 135. Great openings, greater landings. And for me, great landings means EASY landings, not swoops, which it's also capable of. Dave

So on load 1 today, the spot was off a little bit. At 1000 feet I was over a construction area downwind of the landing area with no chance at making it back. Below me were trucks, trailers, and piles of dirt. Not too friendly looking. So I spotted a narrow field across the street that happened to be lined up well with the wind so i set up on final over it. At the opposite end of the field I could see a lot of people gathered. As I got lower, the crowd began to run toward me. Upon landing I seem to have become the hero of a large group of kids. I was most definitely the highlight of their day. But I wondered, just what are all these kids doing here? A woman offered me a ride to the DZ which i gladly accepted, and i asked her what was going on. "Tractor races." I wasn't sure what to think. As we pulled out with her car, I saw what was going on. Lawnmower racing. I wanted to laugh but held it back. Yes, a bunch of men were racing modified lawnmowers. She said one had flipped earlier in the day but the driver managed to jump off and was unhurt. I still think its more dangerous than skydiving. I still cant help laugh when i picture them lining up at the start line. Skydiving just doesn't seem so crazy afterall. Dave

Looks like someone copied my idea: Ultra Low Drag Sitfly Shorts . The wonderful thing is there are 2 girls in this world that own pairs of em. Ok, one was a gag gift from her boyfriend but still... Dave

Yeah, really... I couldnt get in for a while so I had to actually do WORK today! Dave

Here's a shirt I designed for my old skydiving club. Got the slogan off another thread here on dz.com. Dave