pilotdave

Coming soon. Looking like it's gonna be better than ever. More details later. Dave

Have nothing in your hands. No note cards or anything. No matter what you have in your hands, it will be a distraction. Dave www.skydivingmovies.com (coming soon? )

I have a major group paper due tomorrow for an aircraft design class. Somehow I ended up volunteering to put the whole thing together for my group and print it. It's 12:15 and I'm STILL waiting for one kid's sections. And then I have no idea what format they'll come in. Ugh this sucks. The paper is over 40 pages now... mostly just tables of calculations. Printing is gonna suck, and the later it gets the more it'll piss me off. I HATE GROUP PROJECTS! GRRRRR. The real kicker is that we had the same project last semester, just less detailed and individual. Since my project was the best of anyone in my group, we decided to use my design for the group project. So most of the work was already done for everyone else. edit: it's 1:35 and i'm still waiting. paper is due at 10am. ugh. Dave

The scary thing is that's probably only aircraft on IFR flight plans. I dunno if I'd like to see that same thing for all planes in the air. Would be cool if they could make something like that that allowed you to zoom in on a certain area. I'd love to get an idea of the VFR traffic in the DC area these days. We're ALL talking to ATC (stoopit war-induced rule) so it sure sounds like a lot of us... even though its far fewer than it was before the new rules went into affect. Dave

As president of a college skydiving club, I gave a lot of presentations to prospective skydivers. I've definitely met some weird ones. I remember one guy that couldn't wait to jump. He came up after the presentation to ask a bunch of questions. Started off with the usual stuff, then started getting dumb. I was explaining to someone else what the cypres does, and this guy perked up when he heard how low it opens the reserve. He started asking how high he'd be opening on an AFF jump. Then he asked how many jumps he needs before he can go on his own so he can open lower. He wasn't interested in anything but opening as low as possible (ie in the hundreds of feet, not thousands). I told him that sounds fun till he's actually there, but then he'd want to open nice and high. His response was "I'm an aerospace engineer. I like going fast." I laughed and said "me too." Then I went and talked to someone else. Don't think that guy ever jumped. Oh well... didn't get to witness the cypres fire I was hoping to. Dave

The penalty for forged flight time would be a lot worse than the penalty for forged skydives. Course everything's legal till you get caught, right? I think some classes of pilots should be able to medical self certify, but it's not gonna happen. The FAA isn't even going to allow sport pilots (coming soon to an airport near you) to self certify. Glider pilots can. I guess ya gotta be extra healthy when you've got an engine. Seems to me glider pilots and skydivers are in an emergency situation on every flight. Shouldn't they need physicals?

He does use a ripcord. In the attached pic (a screenshot from a german TV program), you can see the ripcord on his right. I'm not sure what the second ripcord is on his belly. At first I assumed it was his reserve ripcord, but he seems to have a standard cutaway pillow and D ring reserve ripcord (not easily seen in that shot). There are a few opening shots in the videos of him... damn that doesn't look comfortable! It's also kind of funny... later in the video you can see that his jumpsuit has special holes in the chest so he can thread his chest strap under it... apparently as not to block the red bull logo. Dave

Havent started yet.... June 2 is my first day. Gotta finish college first. Soooo much left to do. Dave

I dunno about the wing in the bottom left picture of the article, but the other wing (the SkyRay) is worn under the rig. There were a bunch of videos of it on skydivingmovies.com. The rig is basically attached to the wing. As for control, you can see in the videos that he holds on to handles on teh bottom of the wing allowing him to kind of swing it from side to side or up and down. I don't think it has any moving control surfaces or anything like that... though it's possible that's changed on a later version or something. That thing is really cool. I hope I can get the videos back online soon. Dave

I have to disagree with the second to last one i think... the big guy toward the left and the black guy 3 over. Take a look at the black guy. He's not using his hands. Thats just asking for trouble. I wouldnt stand next to that! Dave

I did a really cool lab last week for an aerospace engineering class. We ran a small Mach 2.2 wind tunnel, and used a flow visualization method (shadowgraph) to see the shockwaves on a sphere in the tunnel. I thought it was really cool. Dave

Area is pi * r^2. In that case, its (3.14*21^2) = 1385.44 in^2, which equals 9.62 ft^2 (you have to divide by 12 twice because the units are square inches, not inches). But yes, the answer comes out nearly the same... a 24 would be 2.5 times larger. I think the vx46 is the smallest canopy landed, right? Thats only 4.8 times bigger than the pilot chute. Dave

You'll need someone else's signature for all jumps that you want to count towards a license or rating. I think you can sign your own jumps when you have a D-license, but you will still need someone elses signature for jumps applied to ratings (like pro rating accuracy jumps) I think. Just keep getting em signed by any jumper. Dave

Maybe it was. Here's the cobalt 39 in formation with the cobalt 24. Dave

Just finished grabbing the last of the files off the server. Final count: 11 gigs, 1500 files. Holy crap. Dave

I like to think of it as a colony for stupid people. I swear this state has the highest number of idiots and BAD drivers per capita. Ok, here's an example. You're at an intersection, turning left. The light is green in both directions, so you need to wait for a break in the oncoming traffic before you can make your turn. In Maryland, drivers stop at the stop line and don't cross it until they're definitely ready to make the turn. They won't enter the intersection until there's a break. When there's a lot of traffic, they need to wait for huge breaks before they can go. I blame the Maryland driving schools for this one... they're taught to do it like that. There's just so much other stupidity going on here I can't even describe it. All I know is I want out! Also, this is my 1000th post. Hmm...lessee...what am i now? Dave

Sounds very interesting...might work well. Problem for me right now is that I cant currently run any servers due to a router here. The good news is that I'm moving far far away (finally getting out of the hell hole of a state they call Maryland) and will, in theory, be getting cable internet, so I should be able to run any servers I want. That doesn't happen till the end of May though. I'm sure I'll find a temporary solution before then. No files will be lost. The site will be back. Anyone know what 9 gigs of hosting and 25 gigs/week of bandwidth costs?

Don't kill the server now... Hopefully he can keep my account so i can get all files downloaded to put them on the new server. I have most of them already. Also, many files are copyrighted... they were posted to skydivingmovies.com with permission but not permission to post elsewhere. I doubt that would be a problem, but I dont want to piss off anyone that's uploaded their videos. Don't worry... the server will be back... sometime. Dave

Hopefully this is only temporary though. AndyMan has been doing a great job running the server from his work for about the last year, but sadly his boss has asked him to shut it down do to the huge amount of bandwidth it uses. If anyone may have the capability to host the server, for any length of time, please let me know. I don't know the exact bandwidth usage, but a year ago I was sending out an average of about 20 gigs per week. I'm assuming it's higher now. You'd need about 9 gigs of ftp-space. Dave

Might want to take a look at THIS video (right click and save, 6.4 megs). Skydiver dislocates his shoulder on exit, needs another jumper to pull for him (his main anyway). Pretty scary. Dave

I wouldn't know, but Tom Aiello would. That's his video. Scares the crap outta me every time I watch it. I saw a BASE lineover on TV the other day (discovery channel I think). Guy was jumping off of a low crane. No time to even think about fixing it. Slammed into the ground and broke one of each. Ouch. Dave

Why thank you! But let him "wax lyrical" (that's a good thing, right? )! That's the best part!

I love that movie. Dave

I have a 150 main and a 120 reserve. There were separate reasons for each purchase. I chose the 150 main because I was downsizing from 230 student gear and I didn't want to have a gigantic leap in wingloading. I only load the 150 at about .8 so according to a lot of even conservative people's recommendations, I could have gone smaller. The biggest reason for the 150 was availability. My friend was selling one, and the price was right. As for the reserve, the dealer (my former rigger) that I bought it from recommended the size based on my weight. I load it at a little under 1.1. That's not an excessive number I don't think, but the idea of jumping it still scares me. I'm pretty confident I'd be able to land it without getting hurt, but it would be the smallest canopy I've ever jumped. If I could go back, knowing what I now know, I probably would have bought a slightly bigger reserve, but I don't think upsizing is necessary. Hopefully by the time I need it I'll be jumping a smaller main, but we'll just have to wait and see. Dave

I fit nicely under the flaps (unless they're down, which they usually are when I'm walking around a cessna), but checking the oil can be a pain. When I pull the dipstick too far out, I can't see the hole to get it back in. But on the bright side, I'm the perfect height to stand up under the overhead console in a 737.