NWFlyer

Yup. Until you've been around for 10 or more years, you are a tourist - a short term skydiver. This. Even as someone who's still a tourist, I've seen a bunch of people who, at 2 years or 3 years in thought they were lifers who were off chasing the next shiny object before too long. Which is fine. But funny when they're judging the guy who's "less committed." "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

How's the agenda work going? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I suggested no such thing. I was just curious. Me too. Just curious. If it is possible, it seems like a loophole. Seems like one that wouldn't be exploited that often, if at all, since there is (as JP cited) a D license requirement to be an S&TA. We may assume that some of those are waived, but that it's probably a pretty small number, then perhaps an even smaller number that would think "Oh, I'll sign my own D license" rather than get someone else to do so. (Since there's a much larger pool of people who can sign an A, B, or C license, I'd assume that thought wouldn't even occur to our hypothetical non-D-license-holding S&TA). "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

So's Airspeed (to use an example you cited). But you seem to lump Airspeed into the "good lottery" category and the PDFT into the "bad lottery" category. Why? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I suggested no such thing. I was just curious. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Do you have that in writing somewhere? I have looked and can't find it. So you've been asked to be an S&TA, maybe you already are one by now. Your profile here shows that you have a C license, but perhaps you've gotten a waiver as part of your S&TA appointment process. D license applications need to be signed by an S&TA, I/E, or a USPA Board member. So is this really just idle interest in picking apart the intent of the USPA rules? Or do you want to sign your own D license application? If so, why? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I can get a good idea by watching someone pack whether they know what they're doing. I will say the overwhelming majority of my packers are also jumpers, with the notable exception of JohnMitchell's son back when he was still a teenager (he's since gone on to get his license, but back then he wasn't a jumper). Still, he'd been around the DZ packing for years when I met him, and had a good reputation as a packer and did good work. Really, that's what I usually do when I go to a new DZ - I ask around, and figure out who are the packers who've been around a bit, and talk to them first. At this point in my life I'm mostly going back to the same places, so I know the regulars, many of whom have been packing (and packing for me) for several years. I also know who to avoid - bad reputations are pretty easy to discover, too. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Spectre, Pilot, Pulse. Been on the Pulse since 2009 and have no plans to change. Even built a second rig that also has one. Switched from Spectre to Pilot for something different - fell in love with the flat glide of that canopy, but never loved the flare. Tried a Pulse demo as soon as they were available and liked the similar glide to the Pilot, the more positive / less snively openings, and the higher flare point. Plus, it allowed me to buy the same size canopy with smaller bulk, which was good since the Pilot was a tight fit for the container I had then (which is now my backup container). My goals have never been around going faster. My goals now are the same as when I bought my first canopy - to have a canopy that packs easily, opens nicely without a lot of drama, and that I have a good chance of landing safely in a wide variety of conditions. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

What did you order? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Sorry we couldn't make it up to the party... hope a great time was had by all! "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Let's say you just want to use the US as your data set. Data on the total number of fatalities is relatively easy to come by - since almost all make the news these days, you could probably compile a pretty complete list of US skydiving fatalities using the data here and the data collected by USPA. Your challenge is going to be getting good data on the total number of jumps. USPA doesn't really know it. You could try to survey every dropzone in the country, but many consider that proprietary information and wouldn't share it. Even if you could get good data, there's lots of different ways to slice and dice it, which could lead you to different conclusions. For example, do you include tandem jumps or exclude them? Including them would vastly increase your denominator of total number of jumps, and also vastly decrease your numerator of number of fatalities (I'm guessing here based on the general trend of a 0 to very small number of tandem fatalities each year for the several years I've been involved in the sport). Do you include or exclude aircraft related fatalities? Is death the only way to measure danger, or do you try to count serious injury? What's your line for "serious injury?" The best analysis I've seen comes out of Skydive Arizona. It's one of the largest (if not the largest) DZs in the world, and Bryan Burke (who is a total numbers geek) tracks fatalities, injuries, and close calls, and regularly (annually, I think) writes up reports on what they're seeing each year, and the trends. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Non-jumper does not necessarily mean "no training whatsoever." Because your entire argument seems to rest on that premise, I'm perfectly comfortable dismissing it and carrying on about my business in ways that I'm comfortable with.

Please! It's hydrate or die in this kind of heat. 100 degree plus days are an excellent time to help a packer pay their rent. I find it really tough to drink enough on the super-hot days. When I was out at Byron last month when it was 107, over the course of about 10-11 hours, I went through 2 1/2 to 3 gallons of water, plus coconut water, potassium tabs, salty snacks etc. (so I was hydrated, and keeping my electrolytes balanced) and I still wound up with a brutal headache at the end of the day. Jumping is supposed to be fun, and days like that I don't have fun. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

The pro is that Skydance is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so it'll "only" be 107 when the DZ's open. There's a reason I'm not at the DZ this weekend; unless it's a boogie or I've committed to something else (training or organizing) I can usually find a better way to spend the day (usually at home where it's significantly cooler). That said, when it's 100+ on the ground, it's rather refreshing at altitude. You can slip around the sky trying to make a no-jumpsuit dive work, which is amusing to say the least when you have a bunch of people who are rarely without their grippers and booties. Super hot days are phenomenal for cross-country jumps, too. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/a-30-second-guide-to-how-gay-marriage-ruling-affects-you/ "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Everyone's got an agenda. It's up to an informed consumer of media of all sorts to figure out what the agenda is and who's driving it. PBS and other non-commercial media outlets are pretty open about disclosing their funding sources (the dulcet-voiced announcer who says "Major funding for this program provided by [X corporation] and [Y foundation]." It's not all pledge drives and tax dollars, but I don't see it as any great conspiracy. For commercial media, at least those that are owned by publicly-traded corporations, it's also not too hard to figure out who's driving the agenda. Then it's up to you to figure out how much you want to believe. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

http://www.today.com/news/bert-ernie-celebrate-doma-decision-new-yorker-cover-6C10480518 "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I'd argue that any team (not just pros) that's involved in fairly serious training (especially coached) doesn't have time. My 8-way team does 20 minute calls all day. By the time I get in from the landing area (we train at Perris, and I'm often among the last down and have to wait for a landing plane before I cross the runway), drop my gear, debrief and/or dirt dive, I'm lucky if I have enough time to pee, down some water, and shove a pack of almonds in my pocket to eat on the ride up. Packing for myself isn't an option. As for the rest of the time, I mostly pay packers. I'm old enough not to be part of the entitlement generation, but I'm also old enough to make enough money in my career that I can afford to pay packers, and for me paying packers greatly increases my enjoyment of the sport. I jump a large, docile, forgiving canopy that can handle less-than-perfect pack jobs, though I do try to use packers that I know and trust anyway. However, paying packers doesn't mean that I don't know how to pack. I do*, and I make sure that I pack enough that I don't forget. It doesn't mean that I don't maintain my gear. I do. I look at my brake lines when I land and untwist them if needed before I stow them. I check other points of wear regularly. I hand my rig off with the slider uncollapsed, brakes stowed the way I like 'em, and pilot chute cocked. *As a side note, I can thank karenmeal, who was a packer at the time at the dropzone where I learned to skydive. She not only taught my packing class, she steadfastly refused to take my pack jobs till I was confident and comfortable packing for myself. In my case, that took a lot of practice! I'm forever grateful for that, because I will never find myself in a situation where I can't pack for myself if needed. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Eh, I just use this magical skill called empathy, and put myself back in their shoes, when all I knew about skydiving was that you fall from the sky until your parachute opens and then it places you gently on the ground. If all you've ever seen is a tandem video (and let's not kid ourselves, that's what the vast majority of people have ever seen), it's a rather logical conclusion to come to. I don't bring up skydiving with my whuffo friends/coworkers too often, basically because I have answered the same basic questions so many times that I don't really feel like it most of the time. Then again, I've also been in the sport long enough that I'm over the idea that I have to talk about skydiving all the time. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I usually tip around a dollar per pack job, give or take. Usually it's whatever gets me to a round dollar amount. If it's a particularly hot day or otherwise challenging conditions, I might tip more. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Helped that we had a crazy-analytical group of jurors. There were a couple who were ready to say "I don't think the prosecution proved their case" and be done with it, but once we went through the evidence methodically (rather than having bits and pieces floating through our head - it's very hard to recall everything over that long of a trial), we reached unanimous agreement with everyone fully on board. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I had a similar experience last year, where I served as a juror for a murder trial. The case was not highly-publicized, though it did get a bit of limited local media coverage. End-to-end, the process ran about 7 weeks, with a very large volume of evidence presented, much of it circumstantial. It ain't like TV, folks. There's not always a "smoking gun." There's not always the "a-ha" moment. There's a prosecutor who is (hopefully) fair and hard working who is doing the best to prove his/her case beyond a reasonable doubt, using the evidence collected by the human beings involved in investigating the case. Those human beings are most definitely flawed (they're human after all), most likely overworked, and possibly biased in one way or another. Sometimes there's "scientific" evidence in a case (like DNA evidence), but again it's rare that it'll provide the "a-ha" moment... at least in the case I was on, it was another piece of evidence that we stacked up along with the other 25-30 pieces of evidence presented to decide whether we believed all those things added up to the prosecution proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant murdered the victim. It was 12 people doing their best to make sense of all this, and using ONLY the information presented to us in court as evidence, and nothing else. It's not 12 Angry Men where the jury brings in additional evidence and speculation from their own experiences. The way we approached it was to review each and every piece of evidence presented and agree whether all 12 of us thought each piece was proven to be a fact. If it was, it went into the facts pile. If it wasn't it went into the "not facts" (or not proven to be facts) pile. At the end we looked at the things in the facts pile and said "Does this prove that the guy did it?" We also looked at the things in the "not facts" pile and asked ourselves if any of them were proven NOT to be true, would it show that the guy couldn't have done it? And once we'd decided that the facts as presented in court showed that the guy did it, we then tested out whether the same facts could be applied to any other person (defendant's brother, a relative of the victim, random person) and concluded they could not. Then and only then, we decided that he was guilty of 2nd degree murder. I have no idea what kind of information that jury's going to get. I have no idea what type of people will be on that jury. But hopefully they'll take their job as seriously as I and my fellow jurors did. And, as BIGUN says, there's two options: Guilty and Not Guilty. Not Guilty doesn't always mean innocent, but it does mean that the prosecution didn't convince the jury. Our system isn't perfect by a long shot, but I'll take it over the alternatives any day. And I'll always prefer it to trial by media or vigilante justice. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

And you ordered one? Did you see a prototype or anything? https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/544934_504027559655966_1947245030_n.jpg http://www.rockskymarket.com/295-1453-thickbox/skysystems-c6-air.jpg those are computer renderings of the helmet, i am looking for real pictures. and they still do not help answer any questions about: cut away system, camera platforms, locking mechanism, visor gaps, etc..... Personally, I wouldn't order based on just an ad, especially before it's even come on the market. Even if the helmet were already on the market I wouldn't order just based on an ad. For helmets, fit & comfort are so critical - I'd want to see/feel/touch/try it first to see if it's right for my noggin. I hope Skysystems comes through for you - that would be pretty shitty of them to promise a delivery date and not meet it and/or not communicate why they're not meeting it. Have you tried reaching out to them directly or are you just waiting for something to come to you? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

And you ordered one? Did you see a prototype or anything? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Pretty slick. By banning him they just got way more publicity than they would have if he'd actually posted the photo in the first place. Well played.