pilotdave

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Everything posted by pilotdave

  1. pilotdave
    There must be a mac equivalent of Notepad... Dave
  2. pilotdave
    Kind of, but not at all. Dave
  3. pilotdave
    http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=5824161&page=1 Dave
  4. pilotdave
    Big, heavy, expensive.... PERFECT! It's probably the most suitable full frame SLR though... Dave
  5. pilotdave
    I'm a believer in condition-based maintenance... but that requires the operator to be on top of things. It makes it easy for an operator to skip required maintenance if they want to. I would be a lot less worried about going over TBO in a PT6 equipped plane than in a 50 year old 182. Skydiving is rough on a piston engine. I'm surprised most of them make it to TBO, let alone beyond. Dave
  6. pilotdave
    At least I had a replacement pic for ya!
  7. pilotdave
    I don't think that's true. A fixed percentage of each barrel of crude oil that gets refined becomes jet fuel. If the production of heating oil increases, the production of jet fuel automatically increases as well. Dave
  8. pilotdave
    206 woulda been N3927G actually... they look about the same but 27G has the big engine that lets it climb as fast as the otter. Dave
  9. pilotdave
    I dunno what the plans are, but I know a DZ in CT that would love to keep one of those 206s for the winter. Been enjoying two of the 206s all summer and Van even brought over the Otter a few weeks ago when Pepperell was weathered out. Dave
  10. pilotdave
    Posting is free. Jumping is 'spensive. 3000 jumps over 4 years? Jump less, post more! And get a real job where you can post all day and not just go jump whenever you want! Can I have a job, btw?
  11. pilotdave
    Interesting... I never realized that some lenses have a DoF scale on them. Only one of my lenses even has a focus distance scale. Dave
  12. pilotdave
    Was that serious or sarcastic? I don't have stats to back it up, but it seems to me that tandems have a higher malfunction rate... often due to tension knots or unrecoverable line twists. Dave
  13. pilotdave
    You shouldn't need to hold a riser or toggle to keep a heading. You might have to crab to get where you want, but that just means choosing a heading that's not quite in the direction you want to go. But wind won't make the canopy turn, so there's no need to keep holding a riser. Personally, I'm a deep brakes kinda guy when I need to get back from a long spot upwind of the landing area. It's a lot easier than holding rear risers and in my experience (with my canopy) works better... especially in high wind. Into the wind, I don't use brakes or risers. Dave
  14. pilotdave
    Then we agree! I said the same thing! We just have slightly different reasons why we agree that his point was beside the point. Huh? Did anyone suggest that a cop, truck driver, or web designer has more business teaching teaching than a professional pedagoger? You're a smart guy, but you miss the point on a lot of threads on this site. You should probably be traveling the country teaching the teaching section of coach courses. I'm sure we'd have better coaches. But that has nothing to do with whether or not teachers should have to sit through that portion of the coach course. Have you posted a downside to sitting through it? Dave
  15. pilotdave
    Getting big to turn your body into a sail has to be one of the top 10 myths that are passed on in skydiving. Getting small is the only way to go no matter which way the wind is going. Getting big adds drag... that doesn't help you in ANY way. Dave
  16. pilotdave
    Clearly he never suggested that. He said that even a professional educator MIGHT learn something from a 3 hour course taught by a skydiving instructor/course director. But I think that's beside the point. I don't care if they learn anything or not. I think it would be ridiculous to try to make exceptions for everybody that might already know something. You survived the 3 hour course on the basics. The rest of the league of superhuman educational professionals will too. I actually would prefer if they skipped that entire part of the coach course. I had to show up to the course with the written exam complete. So after passing the test, I had to take an entire course in how to teach. That's backwards. It was really boring and pointless. That part of the course should have been focused on how to teach the particular skills that coaches need to teach. I really learned that stuff after failing ground evals... Learned more in the debriefs than in the course, I think. Dave
  17. pilotdave
    I never got used to the mouth switch. Installed a new tongue switch the other day and I'll keep the mouth switch as a backup for when the tongue switch inevitably fails. The biggest problem that I found with the mouth switch, aside from the fact that I couldn't trigger the thing with my tongue, was that it doesn't have an angle in the cord near the switch. I'd need a big loop of the wire sticking out of my mouth which would tend to catch a lot of wind and shift it around in my mouth. Missed some pictures because of that... and had no clue if they were taking or not. But I dunno if that's really a problem with the mouth switch since I wasn't using it properly... I could only consistently take pictures with it by biting it, which is bound to break it. Dave
  18. pilotdave
    Is there supposed to be sound throughout the video? I think your Vegas is broken... ... or is it just my computer? Dave
  19. pilotdave
    It's insulting that theres only one set of rules and that exceptions aren't made for anybody? If you're insulted by that, maybe you're just a tad oversensitive? Don't get me wrong... it may very well be a waste of time. So are a lot of things. We could make all sorts of exceptions for all different people that come to this sport with knowledge in all sorts of areas. Should pilots be able to skip parts of the FJC that they should already know? Should lifeguards have to take water training to get a B license? I wouldn't know what you're referring to... no full time skydivers at my DZ.
  20. pilotdave
    I think everybody understands exactly what he's talking about. We just don't see the big deal. What are the cons to taking such a basic course? What are the pros to skipping it? Dave
  21. pilotdave
    Probably laugh at the irony... I've got a parachute and there's no way off the plane. How you planning to get out? Dave
  22. pilotdave
    Personally I don't care if the FAA has it right or wrong. They're a giant government agency. They do lots of stuff that the USPA doesn't do... sometimes better, sometimes worse. I don't disagree that it's silly to make a good teacher take a few hours of classroom on the basics of how to teach... no argument there. But I would also be kinda pissed if I found out the USPA spent a dollar of my membership money putting any effort into changing their rules/procedures for such a meaningless issue that affects such a tiny number of members. Would you be surprised if the FAA was wrong about something?
  23. pilotdave
    Sounds much more reasonable to me. Of course a C license is all that's needed for an AFF rating too, right? Maybe that's why they chose a lower number (B license and 100 jumps) for the coach rating. Dave
  24. pilotdave
    Here's another discussion on this topic: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=1779381. I'm sure there are many more too. I've never been on a jump where the organizer said to track away if you can't get back up. They've always said to stay off to the side, keep trying to get back up, and track off at the correct altitude. And be prepared to track farther and to a lower altitude than everyone else. Dave
  25. pilotdave
    I think that 100 jumps is ridiculously low as a requirement... but it's of course not the only requirement. I don't think I've met anyone that could pass the course at 100 jumps. But if someone could, great! With wind tunnels being so accessible these days, a lot of people are getting flying skills way beyond their jump numbers. There are AFF instructors with under 500 jumps... hard to believe. Dave