pilotdave

Somewhere in the /from tv/ folder of skydivingmovies.com (media player isnt working for me right now...), there's a video about Tom Sanders. Part of it is a clip he took during a big way RW jump. They were exiting from high altitude, so they were on oxygen. He didn't realize it, but his oxygen line had come undone or was clogged or something. He passed out after lining up for the exit, but he was held up and dragged out by all the other jumpers. He tumbled for a few thousand feet, then finally woke up and pulled. He didn't have a cypres. If he hadn't woken up, he would have died. After that he bought a cypres and (apparently) wont jump without one. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that. Dave

They've brought it to Oshkosh at least a couple times. Tickets were $700 for local, subsonic flights. I don't think they had any trouble filling it. Dave

Perris should forget that DC-9... a new toy just became available!

Hehe, not so impressive for some helicopters. I can probably outrun an R-22 in my Escort pretty easily (in a straight line anyway). One thing I love to do in planes is fly parallel to a highway and slow way down. I always wonder what the drivers are thinking as they pass me. Dave

I don't know how common it is, but my friend jumps a Mirage that's been modified (by a master rigger) with some carpet padding to fit a smaller canopy in it. Just enough to go down one more size than the container was designed for. It's an option if you do go with a container that's too big for what you want. Dave

http://www.techtv.com/beyondtomorrow/story/0,24330,3381294,00.html Dave

Yeah I have a higher res version of that one if you want it. Lemme know. Dave

I did the protec with kroops over the glasses goggles for a while, then bought a Z1. Glasses are no big deal for skydiving. Contacts will give you more options but they've got their own problems for skydiving. Dave

The whole thing. It was actually more like $46 or something, but my DZ's latest price is $49 for everything including packing. Gear rental is $23 per jump, making jumps $43 if ya pack yourself. I wish they had a deal like some other DZs where gear rental is by the day, not the jump. Dave

Peep Research Dave

Thats the regular price when you buy hour blocks ($600/hr). Interestingly, I recently found out that's about the same price as it costs to use the horizontal research wind tunnel at my school. Course this one includes measurements in 6 components of force/moments. Who wants to go in on an hour and get our drag coefficients? Dave

The wind tunnel is great for solving problems like yours. By the time a new tunnel opens I'm sure you'll have corrected it and finished AFF, but you definitely can learn things in the tunnel that you can't in freefall (and vise versa of course). The tunnel really lets you see how you're moving relative to the fixed reference frame, as opposed to what you can get in freefall, relative to another jumper. A few minutes of coaching in a tunnel is probably much more valuable than a few skydives as far as what you'll learn. But it's definitely not as fun as the real thing, and you don't get the canopy ride. How you spend your money is up to you, but if you'd like to spend it on improving your skills, the tunnel is probably cheaper for the same outcome. Dave

Jump free gear till you get tired of it. It's probably best to have as many jumps as possible before buying your first rig. You'll have a much better idea of what you want later on. If you were paying $50/jump like I was on student gear, I would say go buy something cheap. But you've got a really good deal there, so use it till you can't stand to anymore. When you're just itching to downsize or have been bumped off a bunch of loads cause a student needed the gear, then maybe it's time for something else. Dave

Speaking of realplayer.... I can't get it to work on my computer at all, since upgrading to XP. There are a couple of .rm files in the uploads folder of skydivingmovies.com. Can anyone tell me what they are and what directory they should be in? Dave

I used to run Omnicron httpd until I wanted to run a database-backed website. Then I switched to Apache and MySQL, using PHP. Apache isn't easy to use, but it's not horrible either. I was surprised how quickly I had a database driven website up and running, with no previous knowledge of PHP. I spent a lot of time reading the important parts of the apache, mysql, and php manuals, but it was not hard to understand, just time consuming. I was never able to get cgi to work on a windows based server. I didn't want to learn CGI myself so I just downloaded some example scripts that I could modify. The problem I ran into is that everything seems to be set up for running on a unix (or apache) server. Once I was running apache, getting downloaded php scripts to run was no problem, and I found php simple to learn. Dave

Yeah, it sucks, but it's the same way it works with planes. Unless it's under warranty, the owner pays for almost all mandatory fixes/inspections. Planes do normally come with warranties that cover these things for the first few years. Every new or majorly updated design has a bunch of them. With skydiving equipment, I'm really impressed that any manufacturers come here and talk about their stuff at all. I would take that into account right along side customer service, price, and look. Dave

You sure you're a skydiver? What if that was your DZ that got closed with the excuse that it was done for security reasons? I ALMOST flew as a passenger to Meigs the day after it closed. I'm on a mailing list of pilots in the DC area. One mentioned he was going to fly his bonanza to meigs the next day for a couple hours and wanted to know if anyone wanted to come. As it turned out, I read the email at just about the same time the runway was starting to be ripped up, but we didn't know it. I replied, but it turned out 6 others had replied before me so I didn't get a seat. The pilot had checked the NOTAMS when he filed his flight plan the night before (before the closure) and all was good. He took off and headed toward chicago. Halfway there though, the engine temporarily lost power. Everything seemed fine afterwards but he decided to make a precautionary landing at the nearest airport. A quick inspection showed nothing wrong and no water in the gas tanks, and the engine seemed to be running fine, so they decided to forget meigs and fly home. They only found out when they got back that they wouldn't have been able to land at meigs anyway. Dave

My brother lives a couple blocks away from it. But when I go to visit NY, I don't wanna see grass. I'm sure it's a great place to get away from the city if you live there, but I go to the city to see the city. It looks nice though! Dave

Anyone know if a pilot has ever actually gotten in trouble for allowing someone to jump with an out of date reserve? What were the circumstances? It IS unquestionably the pilot's responsibility to not let anyone jump with an out of date reserve (FAR 105.43(a)), but I'm just curious if it's ever been enforced. Has the FAA ever written any kind of interpretation of the rule? I mean, what exactly does the pilot need to do to ensure everyone's reserve is in date? Is checking the (possibly faked) reserve repack cards enough? Personally I think the FARs put WAY too much responsibility on the pilot in command. I remember when I went for my private pilot checkride in 1997, the examiner was all pissed off over an FAA advisory circular that had just come out. It basically said that a mechanic is only responsible for ensuring the safety of a plane at the time the plane rolls out of the shop. After that, it's completely up to the pilot in command to ensure it's safety. So bascially if a bolt that the pilot can't even see comes loose because the mechanic didn't properly tighten it, the pilot can be blamed because it was his reponsibility to ensure the plane was safe to fly. Same stuff goes for air traffic control mistakes. The pilot is always partially to blame, no matter who actually messed up. Drives me nuts. Dave

It's a pretty cool visual that even skydivers don't see often. I'm sure they were just willing to take a little extra risk to get a few cool shots. Not as if there were any low timers on those jumps. Dave

Yeah, I got myself some football gloves that work pretty well. I made sure to test them out a lot before I trusted them in the air. When it's really cold I wear a pair of those knitted stretchy gloves under them. Even then I can still feel all my handles pretty easily. I definitely need to be moving somewhere that the mid 60s is cold though! I'm moving to CT in a couple months, but my company has a site in west palm beach. Maybe I need to transfer...

Just curious... how cold was it? I can't remember the last jump I made without gloves. Musta been last august or something. I even had to wear em when I was jumping in florida in january (in the 40s out). I consider the low 50s to be warm now, even though I wear gloves.

Haha, I missed this post. I've just finished re-encoding it and am uploading now. Guess I can cancel, huh?

BM_SF3 cut away.mpg moved from /UPLOADS/ to /cutaways/ BM_SF3 cut away_small.mpg moved from /UPLOADS/ to /cutaways/ andrew_perrine.txt moved from /UPLOADS/ to /base/ andrew_perrine.mov moved from /UPLOADS/ to /base/ CaschSwoop.avi moved from /UPLOADS/ to /misc/ CaschSwoop.txt moved from /UPLOADS/ to /misc/ CaschSwoop.mov moved from /UPLOADS/ to /misc/ SLO_padliangeli_org_2.avi moved from /UPLOADS/ to /freefly/ SLO_padliangeli_org_2.txt moved from /UPLOADS/ to /freefly/ Freefly Money Meet in Eloy '03.wmv moved from /UPLOADS/ to /freefly/ Dave

Here's the packing machine I invented. Still in prototype stage. Ok, more like photoshop stage. Someday though....someday.