377

Congrats Hangdiver! BTW, is there a path from the maternity ward to the altar....or is your son a skydiver? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

What car, what plane, how'd it go? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Didnt' Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines do an AFF from hell? I heard he lawyered up to get it pulled off the Internet, but as Snow says, its too late once its on the net. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Orange, if you ever visit the West Coast I'll treat you to some tunnel time, that goes for Snow too if he promises to do AFF afterwards. I don't know if you've flown in tunnels, but they are an AMAZINGLY effective way to quickly improve FF skills. Even five 2 minute sessions will prduce a big leap in skill. You can see your reflection in the plexiglass and see how body position affects flight. The TV debrief helps a lot too. Anyone who is contemplating AFF and lives near a tunnel could benefit big time by pre-learning stability before starting AFF. I am not sure how profitable tunnels are. They eat LOTS of power (600KW ++), need at least 3 employees on duty during operation, and probably need a fair bit of maintenance I am told that occasionally coins and even tiny cell phones come out of tourist's pockets and can knick the fan blades. I bet insurance is high too. I've never seen anyone make much money off anything skydive related. Have you? We used to joke in the 70s that if a DZO had a good car FOR SURE he was smuggling drugs on the weekdays. I am soooo grateful that there are people who want to be DZOs. It looks like financial insanity to me. Snow definitely has the right stuff to be a good jumper. You'd see it too if you met him and saw some of his climbing photos. We just have to get him to start AFF training. He is actually a nice guy too but nobody here would ever believe it. Snow probably would rather be "rude and abrasive" here, and in control, than have to be a humble newbie taking orders from sadistic AFF jumpmasters. I can totally see his point. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Yes. He is saying that if you don't blow it up with an overspeed deployment, the PC is the better canopy. The C9 is far stronger. If I had to deploy above 150 kts I'd take the C9. Funny, with all the huge advances in canopy tech, fighter pilots still use C9s or their equivalent. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

B66 ???? Now that's a RARE jumpship. How would you exit? Bomb bay? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jumping naked would have made egress exceedingly difficult for Cooper. Those naked Dutch girls who jumped at WFFC didn't need to escape from law enforcement. They didn't seem very mystic or yogic though. Far from it actually. They partied real hard at night. Bet Snowmman doesn't see such sights very often in climbing, especially on ice. Maybe this is how we lure him into skydiving. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

WHO did you babysit? I'm not getting the same popup. I thought Catherine Zeta Jones was your babysitter Snow. This Duane/Cooper as mythic is really interesting. It may explain the amazingly long lasting public fascination with DBC. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

In troubled times we need to worship heroes. Duane, according to Jo, was the ultimate hero. Religion is irrational. Still, I'd balk at deifying Snowmman. Times are not so tough that I would resort to Devil Worship. Amazon. Did you do terminal openings in unsleeved C9s???? If so why??? Ouch. I had two VERY hard pulls when I was learning freefall. It was a rental rig with a sleeved C9 stuck into an unextended military container. It was very panic inducing, especially because I had not yet mastered stability. Very scary. After the second incident I complained and opined that the rig was unsafe for newbies like myself. The rigger told me: "maybe you need to work out more kid." Dont forget that Coopers ripcord handle access may have been impaired by his jury rigged money container. Add hard pull, night, wild tumbling, fear etc and you have recipe for a fatality. I do think if he pulled chances are decent that he landed alive. The chance of a no pull needs to be seriously considered though. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo, I really am not writing anything or assisting any authors. If any movie or TV producers want a 727 jet jump dummy I'd likely go for it, but I'd use Snow as a Wind Drift Indicator. Remember those WDIs Amazon? Snow's slanderous expose of my past was really a breach of confidence. I am not one to lawyer up though. I am in the one step program. My name is 377. I am a jump junkie. I accept my past and am trying to become a better person: one jump at a time. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

The Rangers took Duane in and trained him. Why? Rangers are as right as Amazon, being tough dudes and all that. Georger should have found your candidate by now. Maybe he is tring for a home run by finding all three photos. I can't find the third one even though I think I once knew the source. Poof? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snow writes: If I cut away at night will you respect me in the morning Snow? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snow is fooling around with some sort of post and delete strategy to screw me out of my rightful 666 slot. I just know it. He is also recruiting an Icelandic girl to flirt with the webmaster and make it a slam dunk. I am just learning cheat to win. He's been doing it for decades. I am really behind here. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Wonder if some boaters found Cooper? If he still had a lot of non rotted cash attached they'd likely take it. They'd know they'd be questioned about money if they turned in the body. "Hell, he's dead anyway. We can get a REALLY nice boat with some of this money. What's the point in taking the body in?" 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I can tell you from experience that it DOES kinda work out. My son has the same outlook. He once found a twenty on a street in SF. We never thought to check if it was a Cooper bill. He expects to find another twenty someday. After all he already found one and it wasn't hard to do. That one was just his first as he sees it. The future looks promising to him. When I was jumping dirt cheap surplus gear my optimism was tested on every jump. I just expected things to work out OK and they did. When I had a malfunction even the dirt cheap $25 Navy conical reserve worked as well as my $900 PD square reserve did later. It just reinforced my optimism. The only place I really messed up through irrational optimisim was in my marriage. I picked a really high strung edgy but smart and attractive wife. It was a fast thrilling ride, but it was like flying a postage stamp canopy. Trouble was 100% certain, just a matter of time. I now fly a big canopy and have taken a no swoop vow. My girlfriend is small but very stable. Malfunctions teach you lesons. You adapt. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sheeesh Amazon. EIGHT??? That's nearly a 1% malfunction rate if your posted jump numbers (960) are current. I can tell you aren't the type to cut away anything landable. A little rushed when ya pack perhaps? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Well, being an unrealistic optimist really helps Snow. I definitely am one of those. Maybe Cooper was too. Really. It would explain a lot. It's stormy, I've never jumped freefall, I don't know where I'll land or how I'll escape... BUT... I bet it will work out OK, I'll figure out something to get by, I always have in the past. Another Bourbon please Miss (heh heh...sure they impair my judgment but they are FREE!) 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Didnt you read my post about how cheap skydivers are? I guarantee you there would be a huge rash of "emergency" cutaways when the FAA mandated reserve repack dates were approaching. The DZO's would be living in tents not trailers. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Cost wouldn't enter into my mind, but you'd be surprised about other folks decisions. There are DZs in FLA and other places where a cutaway main can and often does end up in a swampy bog, and is sometimes not recovered. I'll bet jumpers there have landed mains that others would have cut away from in less hostile areas. It is really tempoting to land something that looks reasonably intact. Squares, unlike rounds, have to be flared or you get hurt or killed. When a damaged square is flying OK you tend to think you can handle it even when you know it can't be flared right. You start rationalizing: "ist a pretty lightly loaded canopy, so maybe I won't hit so fast if I cant flare, or I can do a semi flare and stop short of the point where it gets squirrely, etc etc. Surely there are some analogs in the exercise of poor judgement in climbing, continuing on with damaged gear etc. What are they? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I have cut away twice from malfunctions. One was a high speed mess with Capewells on the main and a belly reserve. I am afraid to do a cutaway from a good chute on a nice day. Believe me, when you HAVE to cut away, you do. The worse the malfunction, the easier the cutaway. The huge mistake is thinking you can land it, changing your mind at 500 feet and impacting just as you are getting reserve line stretch. It happens. It happened at WFFC twice in one year. At WFFC 2005 I had canopy and line damage that rendered the chute unflareable (dove to the right hard when I tried flaring), even though it flew OK without brakes and looked pretty good. It was tempting to stay with it and try some kind of asymmetrical riser pull to tame it on landing, then my training kicked in: FAIL CONTROL TEST? CUT IT AWAY. Kerchunk, and an open PD 193 reserve at 1500 feet. SWEEEEET. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

There actually was a commercial product developed to do just that. Riser mounted cutaway activated low power xmtrs bought by jumpers and DZ owned direction finder receivers. I think they operated on garage door opener freqs in the 300 or 400 MHz band. It never caught on even though it worked REALLY well in demos. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I dated a girl in college who was working part time as a typist for the FBI Snow. She typed up wiretap transcripts. She was really hot, honest. Long legs, blonde, but no skirts. It was the 60s. Just pefectly fitted bell bottom jeans. She talked freely about the transcript contents, especially after smoking a few. The SAs would have died had they known. It was really boring stuff, gamblers and bookies operating interstate by phone. I urged her to get some sexier phone taps to type up but she didn't think that was funny at all. She married a professor. Things got started when she went to see him about a grade. She got an A from him. I gave her an A too, but since it didnt go on her transcript it didnt mean as much to her. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

It's a relief to hear you are not being financially victimized Jo. Even though I give you a hard time I'd never want to see anything bad happen to you. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

ABSOLUTELY. Just don't do hook turns, swoops, etc. Look at how most jumpers die: landing accidents under fully functional canopies. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I'm "ascared." It's really that simple. It's REALLY hard cutting away from a semi-OK chute, e.g. open but serious control issues due to damage. Cutting away from a perfect canopy would be tough for me. It would be like leaving a warm stateroom in a luxury liner and taking to a lifeboat, even though both canopies are pretty similar in my case. Some CRW jumpers used to have tertiary back up reserves. They are almost never seen now. I don't know why, maybe a lurking CRW dawg can tell us. It isnt about rolling dice. It's about preserving the illusion that skydiving isn't gambling. When you cut away you admit it is gambling, that you are an addict and that you would have died but for that extra canopy you carried. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.