pilotdave

I'd start with a book like Kaplan and see how it goes. Comes with a CD with practice tests, so you can find out where you stand. I got lucky... before I studied, my school dropped the GMAT requirement. The GMAT looked a lot harder than all my MBA classes combined.

I won't bother looking up the post # where I said we should work to reduce accidents without banning skydiving, since we're skydivers. The rest of the world would probably be fine with banning all age groups, but we have a different goal here. I'm also not suggesting banning anything. While I have nothing against a wingloading BSR (because I don't see a downside), I'm also not suggesting it. I'm just agreeing with the original poster that those with authority (which really isn't the S&TAs) should be stepping up to keep jumpers on appropriately sized canopies. If a wingloading BSR came along, what do you see as the downside? Xtreme risk takers would be oppressed? Dave

It's sort of amazing how people can get different perspectives in this little sport. I believe someone that has done most of their jumping at big dropzones has a different perspective than someone that jumps at a little dropzone. And there are other reasons why we end up with different perspectives. Like here in CT, we have to file incident reports with the state DOT for every injury, dropped object, and even off landing. The town reviews our incident reports every so often. Every safe off landing in a back yard or huge farm field is an incident that will bring negative attention to the DZ. We don't have many injuries at our DZ, but every one of em gives the town more ammo against us. So maybe some skydiver are more sensitive when it comes to "everyone should be allowed to take any risk they want." Dave

I have nothing against atmonauti. It's the statements and diagrams about aerodynamics that I have a problem with. Has anyone with a background in aerospace engineering helped you guys write up your explanations for what's going on, or did you make them up based on what you feel? Do you believe your angle of attack is 0 in atmonauti? Do you believe the human body makes an efficient airfoil? Do you think a tracking skydiver doesn't produce lift but atmonauts do? Do you believe in a fundamental difference between "creating lift" and "deflecting air?" Dave

It's been discussed in another thread quite a bit. Sony already sells underwater housings that use the A/V port instead of lanc for controlling cameras. People have experimented and made DIY adapters that allow existing lanc devices to control the camera through the A/V port too. Dave

And that's where I think you're mistaken about what goes on. You can select the angle you point your body, but you can't independently select the angle of the relative wind. The human body is a terrible airfoil. Even airplanes generate a very small percentage of their lift purely from the airfoil shape of their wings. Proof of that is the symmetric airfoil. Aerobatic planes fly just fine with 0-camber wings. I'd love it if you guys got some help from someone with a background in aerodynamics and studied what's really going on in atmonauti. I've (previously) heard claims that atmonauti gets more distance than tracking over a fixed vertical distance. If that was true, we should ALL be doing atmonauti at the end of every skydive to get away from each other. If you agree with the claim, then it's worth really studying. I think you guys use aerodynamic terms to describe what you feel, but I don't get the impression that you have truly studied the physics going on. Dave

Got windows XP? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Download the Image Resizer. Once it's installed, you just right click on the picture you want and you'll have a "Resize Image" option. Couldn't be easier. Dave

Got stats to show that calculating a proper time between groups is safer than trying to judge 45 degrees? Clearly if the 45 degree rule was flawed, we'd have ABUNDANT data to show why people must be educated that it doesn't work. (and for the record, the 45-degree rule doesn't work, even though I haven't seen any statistics to show that deployment collisions have been reduced at dropzones that have switched from the 45-degree method to a proper method as taught by kallend). Dave

Oh, it's ok... I don't care what I'm labeled as long as they let me jump outta dem planes.

My FF2 fits perfectly into a Brand X (square 1) helmet bag I won in a raffle. Beats the plastic bag I was using for a while when I first got the helmet, or the pillow case I kept my Z1 in for years. Dave

Geez... He's not gonna share any of his relative gravitational wind with you! Dave

Hmmm... I don't think I'm a skydiver yet. And hopefully never will be. I've met skydivers that later died, but I'm not sure I can think of anyone I've jumped with (in nearly 10 years, 1250+ jumps) that's died skydiving. I must be a good luck charm or something. Dave

Do you have a reliable source for injury statistics? How about "unsafe flying that didn't cause any accidents" statistics? Do you think your life would have been horrible if someone told you to stick with a Sabre for a while when you had 40 jumps? Would you have felt oppressed? One more question. Do you think there are people out there that SHOULD be advised to jump a bigger canopy? Dave

I have 1200+ jumps at a loading of about 1.1 or less (ok maybe a little higher these days). I don't buy it for a second that there's anything dangerous about that kind of loading. ANY canopy can collapse in the right (or wrong?) conditions. Experienced jumpers tend to choose higher loadings for reasons other than how they fly in turbulence. That could be one factor, but I believe it is a bit of a myth. If the conditions are so bad that they cause a canopy to collapse, I think I'd want as much fabric over my head as possible. Dave

Well, not sure what the beginner part has to do with it really. Some people believe that low wingloadings can be more dangerous than higher loadings in some situations. I've jumped at a wingloading of about 0.45 or so... I'm personally not a believer that too little wingloading is bad, except maybe in really extreme cases. Not that I'd recommend a wingloading much less than 1.0 for licenced jumpers. But I don't think you need to get up to stupidly high wingloading (1.4+) for a newbie to be safer in case of turbulence. You may have just hit the ground harder if you had been jumping a smaller canopy when yours collapsed. Dave

The super otter my DZ used until a couple years ago is now flying on floats in the Maldives. They have huge fleets of them there (at least two airlines). They even have maintenance facilities that let them float the planes right in. Dave

Not too hard to make them in photoshop (especially if they're going to be small icons) if you have pictures to start with. Dave

Ok, but what specifically do you not like about the kit lens as far as using it for skydiving? I hear a lot of people knock it, but almost nobody gives any reasons for what they don't like. Don't get me wrong, I know that it's not the best lens in the world. But I find that it's far from junk. It's a great value and its quite a bit smaller and lighter than pretty much anything else that you might use for skydiving. I have used the 10-22, which is nice, but I don't see much difference in pictures taken with that lens at the same focal length. There are theoretical differences, but the 18-55 does a great job. I just hear a lot of people knocking the kit lens with no explanation. I'd highly recommend it for someone starting off. Get something better when you can figure out what you specifically don't like about it. Dave

I believe you FEEL what you see in the diagram, but that doesn't make the diagram correct. Aerodynamics is not magic. It is based on physics. You use a lot of fancy terms to express what you feel (like that you're falling in the direction your head is pointing). Your diagram ignores the fact that you just can't do that. I'm sure I'd love atmonauti if I had someone here to teach me how to do it. I'm sure I'd feel like I'm slipping through the air generating lift with my body. But it still wouldn't explain the true physics of whats going on. If you can fall at 70mph (vertical speed) while maintaining a 45 degree trajectory, there's something really amazing going on. I mean really. I would love to see some wind tunnel modeling or actual analysis of how it's happening. But a fancy diagram explains nothing because it contains no actual information. Do you have any objective evidence or explanation without using terms like "relative gravitational wind" of the actual physics behind atmonauti? Dave

Adorable! Dave

You're missing my point. I injuring themselves is bad enough. You feel that your decision to jump a stilleto at 40 jumps was "informed?" Dave

Oh, I do florida every winter... that's my january trip: http://www.skydivingstills.com/gallery/4175268_wkmRj#243919793

I totally disagree. What is it about that lens that YOU don't like? I agree on the 10-22 though. I'll probably get that or something similar this year. But not because I don't like the 18-55, more just for a wider angle. Dave

A 4-gig card in my XTi on JPEG large/fine give me 800 something pictures. If I go down to lower quality or smaller size, I get 999 showing. Are you sure you're on large/fine or raw? Dave

Those 100 newbies all accept the risk of doing a 100 way. Nobody else will be in the air. They can't hurt any bystanders. Should they be allowed to organize the jump themselves and do it? Can you see that an accident on that jump would likely have consequences that affect you and not just the participants? That's the problem here. Suicide by skydiving, for example, is incredibly selfish because it affects people other than the jumper killing himself. Just because one jumper is ok with doing something dangerous doesn't mean anybody else should accept it. We, as skydivers, should focus on reducing accident rates while still allowing our freedom to jump as much as possible. Sure, you could ban skydiving to make it 100% safe. That's a GREAT solution for anybody in the world that has no interest in skydiving. WE need solutions that allow us to skydive. And even allow swoopers to swoop. And allow wingsuiters to wingsuit. And allow CRW guys to bark like dogs. And allow atmonauts to draw ridiculous diagrams. We need to make those activities as safe as possible without banning them. If you were a swooper, wouldn't it piss you off to see some kid with 100 jumps trying to swoop his stilleto? He could get swooping banned at your DZ. Wouldn't it piss you off to see a newbie organizing RW and telling everyone to barrel roll on breakoff to check for traffic? That could get someone hurt.... not you, but someone else. Can't you see that that's bad? I don't have numbers to present to you on a powerpoint slide. I'm captain obvious. Newbie + high wingloading = bad. Do you really not agree because you don't have data to show that they're dying left and right? Clearly they're not. Does that mean it's safe? Dave