BlindBrick

It's been a while since I played the first one but let me see if I can give you some background that will give you a better startign point. In the original Half Life, you played Gordon Freeman who was a entry level peon at the secret Black MEsa research facility. During an experiment, the scientists you work for accidentally breach a dimensional barrier. The result is an alien incursion. Freeman then spends the better part of the game simply trying to survive the alien onslaught and then later the government Black Ops teams sent to clean up the mess. At the end, you are rescued by a mysterious character who gives you a simple choice, serve him or instant death. The sequel is based ont he assumption you chose the former rather thant he latter choice. =) If you can get ahold of a copy, I highly recommend playing through the orignal Half Life. It was ground breaking for its time(good graphics and AI that used real life squad level tactics) and is well written enough that it will still be talked about in 20 years. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Atsburey here flew an MT-1 for a while. I never skydived with mine just did a couple of BASE jumps with it(strogly not recommended), so I don't think I can give it a fair review. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

The harddrive that had my old best scores got wiped a while back, but i do know I was to the point where I could play Expert for 8-10 hours and maybe lower my time by a second or two. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

To the list that's been started, I'd add the Safire II and the Fusion. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Congratulations! You just confessed to a crime which can earn you up to 10 years in prison. You better hope the BATF isn't watching this thread... Isn't that a state by state issue? I know silencers are legal in AR -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

It's a shame this is a "One and Only" post. I'd love to know why Shayna and Rick told ~15 skydivers that went ot visit her, the last Sunday she was in the hospital at Fayetteville, that she got lucky in that MO Medicaid was covering everything(thanks to the pregnancy) except the teeth when she's now saying she's got hundreds of thousands in medical. It's entirely possible that MO Medicaid changed their minds. I'd just like them to clear that up as my biggest problem has been the perception that they are telling jumpers one thign and the media another. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

We are not setup for AFF. Our gear is ripcord rather than BOC. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

I did a test jump with some recording altis and found something interesting about wrist/hand mounts. If you're like me, you subconsciously turn your wrist when you check your alti. This changes the airflow over the alti and will cause inaccuracies when you look at the jump log. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

I've tried it on a on critical part of a rig(comfort pads ont he leg) and wouldn't use it again. Cordura just eats the sponge for lunch and your left with a white streak that doens't brush out well. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Is this a good enough pic? The rez is real low to get it under the 100K limit. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Oh I plan to share wiht all the AR crew. I just want to make sure that these things really are accessible before I show up going "Hey guys, have I got some sites for you!" -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

i've got a lead on a couple with elevators. I may be fat, but there's not way I'm bigger than the elevator.

Perrine is my most current goal. I want get up there and spend 5-7 days just getting comfortable with my technique and canopy. The money for that trip is coming from a fund I set up to visit some of my friends when they graduate from college. It's a few hours from where they are to Perrine. I can afford money for the extra gas and I've got a tent and plenty of Ramen. After that, there's some A's within a few hours driving time of here. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Dude you are so misisng the point. That's not the "Man of the Year", that's the "Dumbest Man of the Year"! Look who has all the beer and who has a single beer and a shitty umbrella! -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Sorry, my bad. I meant a Wizard. I get the two confused. Tree, thank you. I'll probably take you up on that offer. Tom, thank you for your gracious offer too. I'll drop you a PM when it gets closer to may. and to everyone. don't worry about me jumping that stuff around here. Where I live the majority of the objects are sub-200, and I've seen abotu half the jumpers here get injured even using BASE specific gear. I'm not very sure that I could take a vented canopy off this stuff and get full inflation in time, so there's no way I'm going to take the MT off them. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

i went with black center and endcells and then three cell blocks of royal blue and red. The effect was almost what i wanted. When I get my next canopy, it's going to have the same basic scheme but the color blocks are going to be expanded to four cell each with the outside black moving from the endcells to the stabilizers. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Her main was packed by our DZ's packer. Sometimes we have more student pack jobs than he can get packed on a Sunday, so I've came in on weekdays so he could finish the work(FAA requires a rigger supervise packjobs that are done by anybody other than another rigger or the next person to jump the rig). Watching how thorough he was with them was the primary reason I agreed to let him apprentice under me. The kid's good and something like not stowing a brake is not the kind of error that he'd likely make. If i had had any doubts about that, they would have been disproven by watching the main deploy. I saw Shayna's opening and the canopy opened flying straight and level. It did not begin to turn until several seconds after it fully opened. If it had been an unstowed brake, the canopy would have begin turning immediately upon opening. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

This may sound hokey, but I did honestly plan to take everyone's advice and get a complete set up, after talking to Todd at Apex, I was looking really hard at their biggest Flik and a Sorcerer. Unfortunately a custody battle bled me dry and I went ahead and picked up the MT1 because it was all I could afford. It is my ultimate goal to have a totally BASE-specific setup, i'm just not there yet. The prudent side of me knows that I should wait for an all specific setup, but I'm in awe about just how much I am jones'ing for a jump right now. So far, I've managed to convince myself to wait till the first of May when I'll have enough money and time to get half the system and spend a week at Perrine. I don't know if I have the willpower to wait past then. Maybe if I give my base friends my MT, they'll hide it until I have a full system in my hands? -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

I think the high weight/large size end is off. I jump a 269 loaded at 1.25 and I can tell you that while it's not as twitchy as smaller canopies, you can still put a tremendous amount of energy into the system. It takes a bit to get them going, but more importantly, it also takes correspondingly more effort to shut them down. We tell really small people to be careful that at somepoint below 140 sf, performance quits scaling with canopy sizes and instead surges ahead. I think that a similar situation occurs at the higher end when you begin really loading these big canopies up. It may not be turning as hard a a 210 loaded at an identical WL, but it is a lot more technical of a flight. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

I'd like to get a new BASE setup but the reality of my finances means that I can't afford both a canopy and container. Currently I am jumping a military canopy modded with a tailpocket. I've been stuffing it in my Mirage. Right now I am leaning towards going with a new container first because. 1. Even though it's not specific, the canopy's been working for me and 2. The canopy is way too big for my Mirage(370 w/ Dacron going into something made to hold a 300 w/ micro) and I don't like the CReWdog look or the stress it's putting on my Mirage. I know that in a perfect world I'd be using neither piece of equipment, but that's not the reality. Keeping that in mind, I'd love to hear your opinions on which should be my first purchase. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

This one was done totally outside of our student program. Her instructor was someone we knew from another DZ who had verified credentials. The S&TA wasn't invovled with the jump. Ironically, I believe on that day that Shayna was the only non-tandem student to jump. We were turning our regular return students away because the instructional staff was busy doing Coaches and S/L I courses. We had just finished class and had stepped outside to watch the last load of the weekend. Both the S&TA and I were curious about the actual workings of AFF, so we stood by the radioman and watched the jump. I can't say for sure right now whether it was a 126 or a 150. I do know the container wasn't sized for the 190 as the packer mentioned to me about how much of a pain the closing was. Which reminds me, on one of these threads, someone asked if the rig begin to small could have led to the brake fire. I have to say no. I watched the canopy deploy and unlike a canopy that opens with a brake fire, Shayna's canopy flew straight and level for a few seconds before beginning to spin. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

It was indeed a 190 crammed into a a Reflex sized for a 135. And Chris, if you're thinking of the one that is a Refelx in a gawd-awful shade of pink, it's that one. This was enough of a concern to Shayna that Rick did a test jump on it a couple hours before the fateful jump to reassure her that it was OK. Right after the accident, I didn't see what the big deal was about the oversized main. Yes, it was putting undue wear and tear on the rig, but as it was a temporary situation and test jumps showed the system worked, I could understand it as a "make do" deal. Now having had some time to reflect and realize how many of Shayna's bad choices were appearantly made out of fear, I'd consider the rig/main combo t be one of the major factors in this just because it amped up Shayna's fear level. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

The FAA examined the gear, changed the classification from accident to incident(according to our S&TA) but offically listed the cause as undetermined and assigned no fault(this I got directly from the lead investigator). The person in charge of the investigation was a master rigger. I am going to post my opinion here. I want to make it very clear that this is my opinion and nothing more. When we visited Shayna in the hospital, she talked at legnth about the incident. She mentioned that at Couch Freaks she had gotten scared because she was hanging with the tandem crew and they had several cases a broken lines on opening. They described the sound to her a loud snap. Shayna said that during the jump, she reched up to do stowed-brake, rear risers turns. She said she heard a "heart-stopping snap" and then her canopy began to turn. She believed she had broken a line. Having been part of the team that did the on-site investigation for the S&TA, I found the the line was fine and believe what she likely heard was the sound of the toggle smaking the guide ring after she dislodged it while reaching for the risers. She cutaway, had an RSL-activated deployment(her reserve-ripcord was found to be stowed during the on-site investigation and the canopy deployed well above cypress firing height) that led into an immediate canopy spin. Onsite investigation of the harness and reserve showed no signs of damage or incorrect assembly. The slider was down at the links. Initally the S&TA had some concern about a pair of left side C&D lines that were together, but a continuity check showed they were good. The only abnormality was what appeared to be a kink set into one of the left upper control lines. I am fairly sure this was a kink instead of a fold mark as none of the other lines had a similar fold. My current theory is that since Shayna had a slow speed deployment that her slider was stopped when the the grommet hit that kink. Because the slider didn't come down fully, the canopy never got full inflation(look at the right side in the video). I believe that this led to closed endcells which initiated the spin. I beleive that this was just a variation on a simple hung slider situation which would have been entirely recoverable if Shayna had released and pumped her brakes. Unfortunately, the video shows that Shayna never did this despite Rick screaming at her to pump the brakes. I can also tell you that the radio guy on the ground began telling her to release her brakes as soon as he saw the spin. This quickly elevated to him yelling into the radio when the spin continued. A short while later the S&TA took the radio and tried telling her the same thing in a calm voice. I doubt that anyone, including Shayna, can accurately say what was going on in her head at that point. However, by Shayna's own admission, "a few seconds before impact" she quit trying to live and instead began to focus on making peace with her maker. I think that what likely happened is that Shayna was in such a state of panic that happened a lot sooner than she thought. Given that a person's sense of time distorts in high stress situations, it's likey that her "few seconds" was just after she realized her reserve was not working correctly. -Blind. "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

Are you talking about SD:MO? I know when I was going to Rigger's School there, Fiesty claimed to have pretty much invented the IAF method. Rick jumped at FFE, the other dz at Mt. Vernon. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

I've been angry about this situation since it happened. I felt that Shayna and Rick totally played it wrong. I also have wondered how big of a motive money was. However, I do beleive in giving credit where credit is due. Someone posted a news story on a private dz website, and I've quoted a relevant portion of it below. From the Springfield News-Leader: I believe this is a definite step in the right direction. I am still along way from being happy about things, but I do give her my respect for finally acknowleding that this affects more than her and trying to set the record straight. I can only hope that she takes this farther and publically acknowledges that her boyfriend was instructing her outside of any standard student program. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."