bob.dino

On the plus side: it'll be coming into summer, and the folks at Naggers are damn fine. I can introduce you to some of them. Stop feeling sorry for yourself princess - you'll be back in the land of VB, Utes, and AFL soon enough

Congrats on the B Licence! The foundation of swooping is accuracy, and accuracy is best achieved by flying a predictable pattern. A pattern consists of three points - the point at which you start your downwind leg (C), the point at which you turn onto your base leg (B), and the point at which you turn onto finals (A). Use the Optima to help you fly this pattern accurately. Brian Germain explains patterns much better than I can in The Parachute And Its Pilot. edit: Bugger. Beaten to the punch .

That was funny. I think I'll keep that on file for the next guy bashing thread ...and I'll keep it on file for the next "Nice Guys Finish Last" thread .

Almost exactly 73 hours.

I've been doing 90 degree turns for the last 250 jumps or so, and I feel that my pattern, turn and roll-out are getting fairly reasonable. My turn is from about 300ft, on a Samurai 170 loaded at 1.2 or so. I don't plan on downsizing until I can run the pond on this canopy. Current plans are for early next year, assuming things continue to go vaguely to plan. Because the canopy has a positive recovery arc at this loading, I think my next step is to increase the amount of rotation in my turn. Make sense so far? So, if I'm going to increase my turn from 90s, how should I go about it? What are the gotchas? How would you coach someone making this step? I have and will continue to consult people that know how I fly, but I'm also interested in a wider, more general point of view. Cheers.

Atair have done some experiments in building ZP canopies without sewing - search for posts by "cobaltdan" for more info.

It's a damn big pond, laser-levelled, and with a nice sandy run-out area. Should be a lot of fun

I spent the day shuttling between my desk and the trading floor fixing a production problem. Something to do with Funding the overnight balances, and it had to be fixed before 3pm. The trading floor is massive and the walls are lined with flat-screen televisions. Very surreal to be working away at a computer when all of a sudden a room the size of a football field goes absolutely silent. People holding phones, frozen in time as the first tower collapses. When the second goes, I briefly think it's just a replay of the first. Going back to my desk in a different building, my colleagues refuse to believe that the towers have fallen. Every news site is overloaded, and without televisions or radios we have to rely on runners to and from the trading floor for information. Later that afternoon, scenes of quiet madness as London has to take over and run the NY books. As far as I know, we were the only major FX desk to keep making prices through chaos of that day. That evening, myself and a couple of colleagues went and got very drunk in about three hours of hard drinking. It seemed the only way to get some sleep.

PJ was one of the funniest bastards to post on these forums. His sense of humour didn't suit everyone, but it consistently tickled my funnybone. Blue skies, mate.

Guess what Andy9o8 does for a living?

I beg to differ. You had your learning curve in the tunnel. The only thing your gonna have to learn in exits, tracking, deployment, and canopy flight. You can fly your body already.... So, all she has to learn is all the stuff that can kill you? Don't trivialise her learning curve. She'll be well ahead on one aspect of the game, but not on most of the ones that really really matter. That said, I'm sure she'll do just fine

As Ugali said, you can't jump that rig until you have a D licence (200 jumps). That's if it has an RSL fitted. If not, you must wait until you get yourself an E licence. The Falcon is F111, so with 445 jumps it's getting long in the tooth. No ideas as to its value, sorry.

You sure about that? The A380 won't be for every route, but LHR-[BKK,SIN]-[SYD,MLB], LHR-JFK, and LAX-NRT would all suit it nicely. I'd be very surprised if the 787 was a flop, but then they're aimed at two very different markets. The A350 is the aircraft I'd be more concerned about.

Rrriiiight. You're just scared of showing everyone those 16+ avg skillz .

Perfect.

I love it when skydivers call other people dumb for taking needless risks.

Random facts from my head time: - The muscial version is by Baz Luhrmann, the Aussie that directed Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge. - The song was #1 in the UK for a long time. - The first time that speech starting going 'round in email, it was incorrectly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut.

If you don't want to speed up your landings, you need to let go of your front risers high enough for the canopy to return to normal flight before you need to flare. How high this is depends on your canopy, your wingloading, how far down you've pulled your front risers, and how long you've held them down. Easy, huh? Experiment up high to see how long it takes from letting go to normal flight resuming. If you're just shooting casual accuracy, I'd be surprised if there's a real need to be on the risers under 100ft - you should be pretty much lined up by that stage. That said, I'm often surprised.

The dropzone.com server probably isn't providing the correct MIME type with the file. Not all that surprising.

Google.

Nah. We can squeeze 17 in with one jumper in the copilot's seat, though it's not pretty. Our standard loading for sixteen, with floor seating: one in copilot's seat. Five on the step behind the pilot, then two rows of five. Works pretty well.

Vitamin C. Stay warm. Lots of sleep. Hot whisky.

All the info in one place: Direct Link to file. (Some changes I'll be making over the next few days may mean that ray's instructions above fail to work). Use VLC to play it if your favourite player doesn't. Note: VLC has the handy ability to play videos in slow motion, something many other software players lack. Dead handy for debriefing 4-way exits .

To put this discussion on a more constructive footing: where do you think does it better? What would/should you change? Why should D licences exist?