pilotdave

A tetrahedron is never going to be your only wind indicator. If it is, you're not paying attention. It tells you nothing about wind speed anyway. If it's being used to indicate proper landing direction, you should have some other way of judging actual wind. I don't think a tetrahedron should ever be used alone. Same for a wind tee. Dave

Yup, it uploaded fine: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ftp/public/freefly/tom_1st_freefly.avi. THANKS! Dave

Not sure I understand why you'd want every BSR being enforced at every DZ. Do you want to lose your membership every time you come within 2000 feet of a cloud? I mean that's not just a BSR, thats an FAR. (I don't have the SIM open but I assume it's a BSR not to violate any FARs). I realize you're talking about gross violations by dropzones, but where would you draw the line? A BSR violation is a BSR violation. I'm really surprised so many people would be for the USPA becoming a regulatory authority. We've got a really great deal as it is. The FAA is in charge, as they should be, but they're not watching over us all the time because we've got the USPA doing that job. It's like in school. The principal is in charge, but he doesn't sit there watching you. You've got the teacher in between. Most "violations" can be handled locally, without getting the principal involved. Do something REALLY bad though and you get sent to the principal's office. Why would anyone want the principal teaching their class? Dave

Ahh I've been looking for a little person (ok, she's not much smaller than me) to clean my apartment all day while i'm at work. How much ya want for her? I was saving up for a new rig, but... Dave

Holy crap thats a fast server. Downloaded in 36 seconds. Cool video. That opening in reverse looked like a nasty mal for a few seconds.

Not exactly the kind of "no shit there i was" story i was expecting. Dave

I lived in the DC area for 5 years and never got over there. When I was going to be leaving the area soon, I decided it was time to go, and found out it had closed down the week before to move the planes to the new museum at Dulles. Oh well. Dave

Get windows media encoder. I just encoded my latest video last night: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/dl.php?f=RW/dave_8way.wmv. (5 megs) Same video uncompressed in premier is 296 megs with very little difference in quality. When you get the file sizes down, feel free to upload them to skydivingmovies.com! Dave

I really hope they drop or lose the lawsuit. I can't really understand how they can expect or even want to win. I know the guy that was killed has a brother that's a skydiver. I hope he's not part of the suit. I work with a lot of helicopter pilots. Sitting at lunch with 3 of them one day, the conversation happened to turn to this type of accident. 2 of the 3 of them had taken heads off with rotor blades. Neither of them were at fault, but I doubt that makes it any easier. It's an unfortunate type of accident that just happens every once in a while when people stand where they shouldn't. Dave

Once you've got your A, you can decide where you jump and who you jump with. You can jump with any licensed skydiver. There aren't many dropzones that require more than an A license. Jumps need to be signed by another skydiver or pilot that witnessed the jump (aka whoever is standing next to you when you're filling out your logbook). Dave

I don't think I could arrange that. We have the Comanche and S-92 production lines, and technically I'm not even allowed in the S-92 area and I don't think anyone gets tours of the Comanche area (unless you're the governor or a VIP). Apparently the main plant used to do tours commonly until someone lost a piece of safety glasses. They had to shut down the whole blackhawk assembly line and find it, since it coulda caused FOD. At least that's the story I heard. And yeah, a top mounted engine in that location could have problems at high angles of attack. Usually they'd be mounted out ahead of the wing, just like normal under wing engines are. I don't know the name of that plane Amazon posted but the whole idea of it was to use the engines to accelerate air over the top surface of the wing. Because of the semi-circular shape of the wing around the engine, more air gets accelerated than just the air passing through the engine, so even more lift gets created. Dave

Get a note from your doctor stating he believes you are medically fit to skydive. Find a DZ that'll accept it. Even if you could get a waiver, its ridiculous to have to go through all that to jump out of a plane. In my opinion, if you can drive a car, you should be allowed to skydive. The risk to yourself is probably similar, and the risk to others is MUCH less for skydiving. Dave

I once had my reserve packed by a brand new rigger. It was his very first unsupervised packjob. He made a housecall. Arrived at my apartment around 11:30 pm, packed to bluegrass music till about 5 am, and charged $45. And he didn't even pack the main. He also had me print the reserve packing manual for my container off the internet. It was just wonderful to hear the rigger i'm trusting my life to saying "now what the hell are they trying to show me in this picture??" He got it done just fine though. Never used it so who knows if it was packed right, but it was neat and my poptop even stayed tight till the next repack. Dave

Over-wing podded engines have a lot of advantages over under-wing engines. But they're tougher to get to for maintenance. But they allow for a shorter landing gear, they prevent debris injestion, and can be used to blow lots of extra air over the flaps for better short field performance. Generally wing mounted engines also reduce the weight of the aircraft over fuselage mounted engines too, because in flight, the structure that attaches the wing to the fuselage doesn't need to hold up the weight of the engines, so a lighter structure can be used. Dave

Git it running and gimme an ip! I'm ready to upload! Well... sorta ready. My ISP is gonna kill me if I try to upload 11+ gigs over a few days. So start downloading!

I think it all depends on the emergency situation and where you're landing. I don't believe there's any single rule that'll get you out of any situation. Land on the whitehouse lawn and you'll probably go to prison (at best), no matter why you landed there. A parachute malfunction doesn't qualify as an aircraft emergency. On the other hand if you bail out of a plane in an emergency, you're going to get away with landing almost anywhere. But for the most part, off landings aren't FAR violations, so no FAR is going to allow you to break tresspassing rules. Dave

I went to freezefest a couple years ago. Made sure to buy a Z1 beforehand. It was cold. Sat down after jumping for maybe a half hour before I could move my hands enough to pack comfortably. Couldnt even take my gloves off after landing cause my hands hurt so much. It was fun though! Dave

Yep... Grumman Tiger. Awesome plane. Not as awesome as those gulfstreams though. I think those are IVs. Here's a closeup. Dave

Took this after landing today. The in-flight pics didn't come out as good, but I liked this one. Dave

I have a friend that's a meteo grad student. Went out do dinner with him and a bunch of his meteo friends once. I had flown to his school, 215 nautical miles from home, so i was concerned about the next day's weather when I was going to be flying home. Not a single one of them could tell me what tomorrow's weather was going to be like. I asked if the secret of weather prediction (always just say it MIGHT rain) gets taught to them at graduation or what. I've seen some of my friend's homework. It was about predicting rain drop size. The math was more complicated than anything I ever saw in aerospace engineering. And he still cant tell me if it's going to rain tomorrow! It was nice before leaving though. I got a better briefing on the thunderstorm activity i was going to have to dodge from him than I got from the flight service station. 215 nautical miles of "well, i can see to the left, cant see to the right, so i think i'll head left." FUN!

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I don't have a hook knife so I'd be trying anything else. Pull on some strings, throw a shoe at it, pray, anything. If everything fails, I guess I'm landing the lineover. I plan to get a hook knife when I buy a new rig. Not sure I'd know what to do with it, but it'll look cool. Dave

If you only want an audible, i don't personally think the neptune has any advantage, the protrack is well proven, and everyone knows about their customer service. If you like the neptune's features, get it. I'm thinking about getting a neptune, but there's no way I'll get it until they get the software finished. Dave

Those face shields come waaay out farther than the chincup of a skydiving helmet. I think it would catch a lot of air in freefall. The protection is probably a hell of a lot better than any skydiving helmet can provide, but it's definitely not a replacement for a fullface helmet. Dave

You can find a few lineover videos on skydivingmovies.com, including a couple on BASE jumps. See http://www.skydivingmovies.com/mals for some pics of lineovers and other malfunctions. Dave