apoil

A but the ones at demotivators.com are so much better: "For every winner there are at least 12 losers. Odds are you're one of them."

Funny.. as awful as the work seems, it was the loader at perris that helped me to finally get head down. I'd been at it for 4 straight days with the flyschool, but it wasn't until the loaders started getting on my case with "so are you gonna nail it this time?" that I finally managed out of sheer force of will.

I know nothing about this particular incident, but ANY canopy can have the nose fold under in an aggressive front riser turn. Nil wind doesn't mean nil turbulence. Funny things happen up there.

Ask the instructors who would presumably be letting you use their student gear if they feel a) the rig is freefly safe b) they feel that your skill level is sufficient that you can attempt a solo sit fly on your own. If one of them says "no" don't go looking for another instructor that will say "yes" or "maybe" or "it's up to you". Saut A. Poil

Let's watch out for phrases like "xxx are bad" and stick with something more objective, that the a significant downside of continuous lines is increased drag. No one can argue with that. In the case of the nitro, attempts were made to reduce this drag by making the lines shorter, and of course, thinner. As you point out, there's an upside as well. Sounds like everything is a bunch of tradeoffs, and maybe the nitro and other continuous line canopies wont set any speed records due to their drag, but they may have characteristics that are ultimately preferred by their pilots. I'm not an advocate of continuous lines, I'd just like to be able to look at the tradeoffs objectively. I'm still more concerned about what I heard about aramid, that it was originally rejected for use in parachute lines because it has a very poor resistance to both abrasion (slider grommets) and UV radiation. What changed there? Saut A. Poil

all of the above are great places. I've been to many of them. But let's leave the US for a moment. Skydive Express in York, Western Australia (near Perth).

You would turn your body into a walking advertisement for a manufacturer and pay for the privilege?

Yeah, but you've got to sit on his face first. Saut A. Poil

When I spoke to their (NZ) reps about what I was looking for, based on my desires as a canopy pilot, they steered me towards a safire at 1.4 They said that the crossfire is more for the 1.6 and above range. I was specifically enquiring into the crossfire at low to moderate wingloadings. I haven't flown one yet, but it's on the short list for my next canopy. Saut A. Poil

Coors? Not fit for drinking at any stage. Sounds to me like they were doing us a great service. NO CHEAP BEER!

Hopefully this doesn't actually need to be said, but fixating on that spot can lead to a) not realizing that your path to that spot might involve you being too low to clear trees/powerlines/fences b) not having time to turn back into the wind once you get there. Follow the example of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and make your decisions high. - Saut A. Poil

What has become of us that we describe some of our jumps as "uneventful" You jumped out of a plane saved your life! Every jump is eventful. Anyhow, it makes sense to try to extract the pin like that provided you don't go unstable and don't spend the rest of your life doing it. As to the line twists, it seems pretty unlikely to me that your pc packing method would induce line twists. Saut A. Poil

Only for calculating the wing loading of your reserve. That is, assuming you actually chopped the main.

oooh.. Now this is getting juicy. You are obligated at this point to name names. Having a title with USPA makes him by definition a public skydiver and his actions should be held up to greater scrutiny than just another asshole shooting off his mouth on the DZ. If he was elected, then his constituents on this forum deserve to know about his behavior. So they can make an informed choice next time. And trust me, it's easy to tell someone to stuff it no matter who they are. I suggest you practice these techniques until they become second nature.

mountains? that's nothing. We've got active volcanoes.

The posting said that generally speaking wing loadings greater than 1.2 are "heavy". 1.2 is as good a place as any if you are going to place a demarkation between "heavy" and "light". However 1.2 is by no means extreme especially by modern standards. I wouldn't steer a beginner to that range, but after a few hundred jumps and demonstrated canopy control, 1.3-1.5 would not be considered extreme. The safest thing you are doing is asking questions like this. I myself have been very slow and conservative in my canopy progression. ~700 jumps now and I jump a Safire at 1.4-1.5 (depending on what I had for breakfast). Since you post with a woman's name I'll make the following points 1 - women's bones are more brittle than mens and their bodies are less muscular. This means that an impact that might only cause a sprain injury for a man is far more likely to break bones or kill a woman. 2 - women tend to be less agressive canopy pilots than men. For these reasons, a woman is usually steered towards a .8/.9 wingloading for her first canopy versus 1.0/1.2 for a man. (These are not rules, just what I've observed). Jump with what you are comfortable with and don't downsize unless you are truly feeling the limitations of your current canopy.

Windows NT 4.0 Netscape 4.76, IE 5 and Opera 5.12 I have a suspicion that it is because .pl is a registered executable type on my workstation (I'm a developer and have activestate perl installed) and the page is labeled with .pl and might be given a funky or nonexistent content type. I notice that other pages (like this one) are http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forums/newreply.pl?Cat=&Board=bug_reports&Number=37854&page=0&view=collapsed&what=showflat&sb=5&o=7&part=1&vc=1 which is also a .pl, but has arguments.. When posting the private message, perhaps the lack of arguments are confusing the browsers into behaving the same way as if I were downloading a .exe URL. I'm going to play with my local settings and see if I can find a fix.

Hows this?

Actually, this itself is highly symptomatic of ADD. It is called the ability to "hyperfocus" and is the reason why many folks with ADD are able to be very successful in their fields. And I know exactly what you mean. Thing is, most of us pay real close attention to things that are genuinely important. Problem is, most things in life just aren't.

Just read the FAQ posting on how to check for private messages. Great stuff. Turns out I had one that was a few days old, but when I try to reply to it, when I press the "submit" button, it tries to DOWNLOAD the perl program (the CGI Script) mess_reply.pl rather than EXECUTING it on the Server. I've tried it in Netscape, IE, and Opera, all with the same results so very likely a bug on your end. Same thing happens when I try to send a private message. I'm prompted to download "sendmessage.pl". Curiously, when I download these files they are not perl scripts, but html pages. That's about the extent of my diagnosis. Suffice to say it ain't working.

I've jumped cross keys many times. One March (the windiest month in that part of the world) I spent three consecutive weekends there as a lowtimer being unable to get in the air. However, it is precisely this "C/D license or better" that makes you potentially dangerous once you get to 200 jumps. I've never seen Cross Keys place a restriction higher than 200 jumps, they'll just shut down the drop zone. But once you get 200 jumps, you'll be thinking - cool, they are finally letting me jump in these conditions. I know my skills, I think I can handle it. You'll go up on the load, but you'll notice that guys with THOUSANDS of jumps usually wont jump under a "200 jump minimum hold". I'm suggesting that it is this attitude that allowed them to rack up those thousands in the first place. I've jumped under those conditions myself. And I'm well aware that I'm putting myself at additional risk. Cross Keys is generally safe - when things get really rough wind wise, no one will be jumping. Just be careful.

Nothing wrong with Hip-Hop as an art form. Just like everything else, a lot of it sucks, including just about anything they show on MTV or play on the radio. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of creative intelligent people working in and around the genre. Usually the best stuff progresses it or incorporates other styles. To dismiss the whole thing outright is just prejudiced and makes you sound EXACTLY LIKE YOUR FUCKING PARENTS who thought your punk rock was "nothing but noise". Do yourself a favor and take a listen to A Tribe Called Quest's "The Low End Theory" before you dismiss all hip-hop and rap.

I've heard more like 200-800 jumps. It is in that range where you start to become confident in your canopy skills, are comfortable downsizing, and will jump in wind conditions that you "know" you can handle. It is at that stage where your confidence may exceed your skills. Of course this is a danger at every stage, and one has to constantly focus on the risks and consciously act to minimize them. Watch a busy DZ on a windy day, and when you see people with 7000 jumps staying on the ground while people with 600 are jumping, think about whether you want to make it to 7000 jumps. At Quincy 99 there were really high winds, and a lot of people were telling me it wasn't so bad. Lew Sanborn (D-1) was there, at that time in his 50th consecutive year of skydiving. I asked him if he was jumping and he just said "nope.. and you know why". I decided that still being a jumper in 50 years was more important to me than jumping that particular day. Sadly, someone with around 200 jumps died that day, from what appeared to be a low turn to face the wind.

A downwind landing isn't that bad. It definitely beats a low turn, so let's think about it as a survival technique rather than a cool swooping thing. To perform a downwind landing, this is what they say in "Fly Like a Pro" "flare at your normal height.. do the roll" You'll be looking at the ground going, holy shit that's fast! The difference in your ground speed will be TWICE the windspeed. So even 3-4 knots ground wind will make a very noticable difference if you land downwind versus upwind. Don't freak out, do the best flare you can, at the appropriate altitude keeping your feet together and knees bent. You will almost certainly finish your flare with a lot of forward speed, but if you've flared correctly you wont have any more downward speed than in any other landing. Forward speed just helps you do a proper PLF. You should be able to roll out of it, and dust yourself off. So, now if you are going to practice a downwind landing 1) Make sure you do it in a place where you wont screw up the landing pattern or you may kill someone who tries to avoid you. Best to tell the people in the plane that are close to your exit order what you are planning. And if yours is the kind of dropzone where someone will usually have a word with you if you make a really screwy approach, TELL those people. 2) Pick your target with the understanding that you are likely to be sliding through it. Don't wear your brand new pre-brown (white) jumpsuit. If it's rough tall grass it will scratch you up. 3) Give yourself a longer runway, you'll be going faster than normal.

The color has nothing to do with why Vectran hides wear. Are you telling me you wouldn't be able to see wear just because the lines are tan? Ridiculous. It's a property of the material. Vectran will lose tensile strength without fraying the way spectra does. This is one of the things you need to be careful of. Your brake lines may be dangerously close to snapping, but you wont see much or any wear.