DZBone

Right on, Herv! What a difference a few dedicated people can make, eh? Kudos to the experienced jumpers who took you out and started showing you the ropes. I remember going through this with some very special people at my first home dz, and it made all the difference in the world. If they could see me now, the would be ashamed, hahaha, but back then, wow! Remember that when you are the experienced sky god, and the new guy/girl gets off student status, and is looking for people to jump with! YAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

The only problem with this is that you have to go to Florida in July. To simulate the experience, stand in a sauna, turn the humidity to 150%, add vicious biting flies, chiggers and aligators, and put in a tape of shock reality news programming. Oh, and make some great skydives at Perris or Eloy.

By the way, Dave. I just checked out the video on your Web site. LMAO!! You should get it put up in the archives!

I voted for Michele

Um, slackjawed? Nice post!

Rock on! Hey, we're going to have a load of new dz.com jumpers out there at Perris, aren't we? Better get planning that dz.com 10-way! Carl

Dan, Very cool of you to post this so openly. Very cool. By the way, you gave me some free advice a couple of weeks ago at Perris, and it made a huge difference. Thanks so much. I haven't been abusing canopies nearly as much since then, and it's made my landings much smoother and more fun. Carl

You didn't have a GUN did you?

The Frankenrig belongs to our brother Shark. Check out the picture here.

The key will be how soon he actually gets back to the DZ and starts a course. I have seen so many fjc's, especially tandems, that come down all charged up and ready to dedicate their lives to skydiving, only to have one thing after another come up to keep them from getting back. Then the feeling fades, and they revert back to being whuffos. So tragic. Carl

I think I may have a diagnosis of your problem. You all suck! Hahaha, just kidding. But seriously, it doesn't sound like any one person in that group has the authority to be pronouncing judgment on the others. A hundred jumps entitles you to pie, not Godlihood. It's not a surprise that it goes to hell. I would get hooked up with some more experienced people, and subvert your ego (tho it sounds like you're already doing that, maybe too much), and learn like hell from them. And have fun, dammit! Those crazy freeflyers didn't invent "enjoying skydiving"(tm)! Carl

Hmmm. So a quick search of the Web shows that there are a number of variations and disagreement on the definitive technique. In addition to yours, there was the one I thought it was: Thumb: "hmmmmm" Fore/Middle fingers: "oh, yes!" Pinky: "hey, WHAT THE!!??" With the ring finger out of the way, bridging "the gap". Other variations included using the thumb to hold back the ring finger (seems to eliminate a very useful function), and using the index finger in place of the thumb. Variety, the spice of life! Carl

Ring finger? I get it. So it's: Thumb: "hmmmmm" Forefinger: "oh, yes!" Ring Finger: "hey, WHAT THE!!??" Pinky (holding base)

I'll give you a hint. The "shocker" is the pinky. lol!

Yeah, this sport is full of plateaus. You will get past this one, and hit another . It's when you break through them that you get really stoked!! I would try to find a different group, or at least a different organizer. It could be that whomever is setting up the dives isn't putting you in a good position for your skill level. Good organizers can do that. You could actually turn points in a 20-way, for example, if you can launch a stable 4-way base and keep stable. The other 16-19 jumpers can do all the hard work until you are ready/confident to take more challenging slots. If you are being asked to fly into a 4-way meaker from a position you aren't comfortable with, you will have problems. What exactly is going on with these dives, anything consistent? If you are going low or high all the time, you can ask your friends to match your rate better, or gets weights/looser suit. If they are all general free-for-all-fuck-ups, try simpler dives, and repeat the same one over and over, so you all have a chance to fix your mistakes. Anyway, we all have streaks like this, then suddenly there is that one dive that goes like clockwork, and it makes up for everything! Carl

Nice job, man! Keep 'em coming!

So the good news for those "()"'s is that once they reach 50 posts, they will graduate to "Enthusiast", without ever being a "Newbie". Carl - Enthusiastic for the second time

The more I read and think about this, the more I realize what a weak area this is in our sport. There are no standards, and, I suspect, little or no real-world testing. Helmets that have this advantage, namely race and other vehicle helmets, don't take into account how they would be used by skydivers (weight, line catch points, vertical visibility). Seems like there is an opportunity for someone to break open the market and make $$$. At least, the current leading manufacturers could provide us some test data! Carl

A natural, that's for damn sure. That fear you are feeling is your intelligence telling you that you are doing something dangerous. It's what is making you so alert and aware of what you are doing. It is your friend, and so are we! You go, girl!

He has been neutralized by the vast left-wing conspiracy. BWAAHAAAHAAAAAHAAAAA!!!!!

It's a dig on those who call themselves "right-thinking". And it's grammatically more correct, er right, whatever.

LOL, Shark! Isn't there a networking company called "Cypress"? I know there used to be an "Odyssey" synthesizer.

Yes, isn't it interesting how people on all ends (and middles) of political spectra are willing to take positions against the freedoms of others, yet rant on about their own personal right to freedom. There are two especially juicy examples of this that just kill me, and there are many others. The first is the right-wingers who want to restrict free speech that they find offensive, lest their children's tender ears be exposed to it. I won't even start on how these people thrash the rights of gays and other minority groups. Granted, these are mostly religious conservatives. I would think most political conservatives would find this offensive as well. From my own side of the fence comes an even more insideous example, I think. These college students that are trying to censor offensive right-wing speech. What hypocrites! These well-meaning idiots think they are protecting us from some harsh truth that we can't handle, like there are people out there with stupid things to say. Give me a break. Anyone with half a brain knows that slavery really happened, and that it was bad. Bringing light to half-baked treatices to the contrary only gives the idiots attention they don't need. This attack on freedom from both sides of the issues is pretty troublesome. It seems like the one thing we all agree on, yet all agree to let go. Why is that? Carl - a "correct-thinking", pro-choice, anti-death-penalty, pro-gun-rights-with-control, pro-free-market, anti-hypocracy, pro-freedom, pro-privacy, god-damned liberal.

Let's see. In the beginning, there was darkness, and out of the void, God created light. It's that kind of a difference. The porosity of f111 means that to create the same something-or-other, the wing has to be thicker, which inherently creates more drag (along with the air leaking out), etc. and so forth. You get the idea. The ZP canopies are better wings, they simply perform better. Try one and see, although its hard to compare because size differences also come into play. Comparing two similarly-sized canopies isn't fair, but trying to match some other parameter will be difficult as well, because there will be size differences. I'd almost venture to say that rounds are to f111 canopies as f111 canopies are to ZP canopies, but again, in both cases you are comparing apples to oranges (and oranges to pears). But, as usual, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Carl BTW, Omri said something in his interview about canopies being made of Teflon and Silicone. It this was the ZP coating is made of?

Well, I would use both. And don't bother with BlackICE, stick w/ZoneAlarm. THe router/firewall also does address translation, which helps shield things, and allows sharing one IP address across multiple systems, should you care to. With my NetGear RT314, I can set it up to translate a port to a given machine and port, so I can ssh to one port and be connecting to the Linux box, and if I had another machine, I could set up a port that connecting to would connect me to it... with... from... whatever. But yeah, high-speed connections are da bomb! Carl