TALONSKY

You forgot to put 0-5 miles. I live exactly 1 mile from the DZ. Kirk

http://www.waycool.com.au/index.html

To be honest it was quite fun and weird. I have started and finished while on the phone and the othere party never knew. It is really strange having to concentrate on something else and not give anything away on the phone. Kirk

My ex and I had this game, if one of us was on the phone the other would start sex(oral or otherwize). The idea was to see if the one on the phone could continue the conversation without interruptions. Krik

You know Dave with your whopping 268 jumps I really do not think you should be throwing around being an instructor. Oh yeah and it took you how many years to get those 268 jumps in? Do not come in and slame everone with that minuscule amount of jumps. Oh, I have had my coach rating and also since you seem so intent on throwing around credentials I have had my tandem rating for two years. Go get a life Kirk

Skydiving is a very mental sport, if you psychic yourself up before the jump you will screw up. This changes as you get more jumps but is always there. I can remember screwing up on 15 ways when I had a hundred jumps and the reason was I felt intimidated by everyone I was jumping with (they all had four times or more jumps then me) and I just knew I would screw up (hey guess what, I did). The biggest key is just relaxing, thinking things through and you will be fine. Even at 4000 AGL you have plenty of time, do not think about the what if’s just concentrate on what you need to do to make things go right(big deep breaths). Kirk

As diablopilot stated it is best to go with a known reputable company, rather than save a few bucks. I have bought suits from Tony suit and Firefly and thought the quality was outstanding (fit and looks were perfect). A few years back I decided to give Kurpee a try back when the suits cost $130 for a custom. What a mistake, first it got lost in shipping for a month (plus I had a hard time getting them to return my calls) and when I got it the material was thin the sewing was not nearly the quality found on my other suits and it fit terribly. I never wore it since it just turnout terrible but I did sell it to someone else. Kirk

I currently have two camera eye 2's both of them use red and green only. Kirk

Trying to look up does spill air and make you back slide and get lower, however if you turn 90° to the formation and turn your head sideways you can look up with out spilling air. You are right not knowing where the formation is above is dangerous !!!! Doing the right thing so you can work your way back to the formation is your job. Kirk

Something to keep in mind is most people will down size a couple times in the first few years. Most rigs can only truely handle three canopy sizes the one it was made for and one bigger ( a real pain to pack though) and one size smaller. Most jumpers will not know if they are going to be down sizing or not (it kind of depends on alot of things). Anyway, the point being if you buy used then you can resale it and not lose alot of money. I personally would suggest buying used and in a year or two getting a new rig(by then you should have an idea of what you want) Kirk

I think this is right up there with if your boyfriend or husband asked you to loose weight would you? These things are only things the person can make a choice on. It would be very superficial of someone to ask that. Kirk

Over trial and error the best thing to do on a blind date is meet for coffee, that way if you do not hit it off you can just say you have to go. Otherwise, coffee can mean a half hour or couple hours and on. I met my wife through the internet, we met for coffee talked for 2 hours and ended up going out to dinner. Kirk

Most of the way up a water fall about 100 feet up on a small ledge. Kirk

Something to think about is how many miles do you plan on driving each week. The mustang may be a great ride but if your sticking $80 or more a week in the tank it might not look so appealing. I personally live 40 miles from my job one way and put between 360 to 500 miles a week on my car. I drove my 70 Cuda one week and spent $90.00 in one week driving it. I soon realized I needed a car that got great gas mileage. Kirk

I try to buy as much stuff used as I can. When I first started skydiving I bought a Safire 169 with 200 jumps for $500.00 and just recently bought a protrak for $130.00 both from this web site. I also bought a VX 109 with 200 jumps for $1000 from www.enclave.com. Kirk

I do not know about hugely humiliating but here is a story from my past. Just after graduating high school I had the great job of being a fast food restaurant assistant manager. One evening on a busy night I ran into the freezer for some onion rings and was backing out of the freezer when I slipped on the wet floor. I must have gone down smiling because I hit my front teeth on a concrete corner. I broke two teeth off and split one of my front teeth up the mild of the width, which was now a jagged point. The impact was so hard it had set my top teeth behind my lower teeth. Well for immediate care a dentist took some orthodontic wire and gooped a bunch of bonding agent to that to stabilize my teethes current position. Before any work could happen I had to wait about 6 months for the teeth to become more stable,so for six months I was missing two front teeth and had an orthodontic wire gooped to what was left of my front teeth. I can say during the year it took to fix it I never smiled. Oh yeah, 10 years to the day of the original dental work I had to have them redone with dental implants (took 3 years of surgeries to get it done) now I think I have the most expensive front teeth rounding in just under $40,000 for four teeth (thank God for workmans comp). Kirk

No, I just called their service center and talked to the rigger that does the factory relines and he was the one that made the comment. It also seems to me that the canopy is not genrally flawed when some do none of the things that others say theirs do. I also remember a comment form skycat that concurred with what I have heard about it mainly being the USA built ones (Oh and the reason she would know is her friend (Derik) does the modes to them) Kirk

Well in talking to the factory when it came time to reline my Safire 169. I asked them for the same revision of line set because mine flew great. They asked me to check where it was made, and then said most of the problem ones came for the USA and that they never had any complaints on the ones made in Spain. Not sure if it may have been a tolerance issue or what all I know is what the factory told me, and the fact that my Safire flew great (no hard openings and tons of flare.). Kirk

Yes, and I will bet you had one made in Spain too. If you do a search in these forums you will find that alot of Safire 1's had hard openings and weak flares. Most of those problem one's were built in the USA. My Safire had great openings and tons of flare, but I know mine was built in Spain Kirk

I have seen his Safire, it is one that was made in Spain(similar to the one I had). It does not have the weak flare and hard openings associtated with the Safire's made in the USA. Kirk

After thinking about it for a little while, the amount of braking power is not the line length but the amount of travel from your hands fully extended to fully down. That distance for me is 55” I would assume most canopy control range would be somewhere between 40 to 50 inchs. So your .5% would be less than a ¼”. At 2” would be 4 percent. I also would think that it is just not a percent of that length but more of a sliding scale. To truly figure it out we would need a canopy designer to chime in on this. Kirk

This is just like ABS on a car. It's a good idea for those who stomp the pedal and lock up - but for those who don't, they're losing braking power. If the brakes are set 0.5% long, the pilot will only get 99.5% of the flare. If they're set 0.5% short, and the pilot stalls that canopy at 30 or 20 feet, it may kill. If someone needs that last 0.5%, they're either a world class PST competitor - or they're jumping a canopy too small or fast for their skill set. t I am not a rigger but .5% of 10 feet (just a guess at line length) is only about 5/8".

Brake line length is almost a personal preference. Having the brake lines set so you can stall the canopy if you hold it at full flare for a few seconds’ means you have the brake set to allow you the most braking power that the canopy can offer. Having the brakes set long allows one to have the toggle in hand and pull down on the front risers without deflecting the tail (this is used for high performance landings). In the end it is really up to how you would prefer them set. If you cannot stall the canopy it means there is some (a small percent) of braking power that the canopy has but cannot be used with the brakes set long. If you shorten the brake lines it may start deflecting the tail if you start pulling down on the front riser. I guess I should add, it is possible to set your brakes too short. The first thing that would happen would be as previously described you would not be able to pull down on your front risers with toggles in hand without deflecting the tail. If they are set really short it could mean that the canopy would never be in full flight and you would lose some of the braking power since it would be flying with some the brakes applied all the times Kirk

If I understand women even remotely, I believe it has little to do with nice guy or not and more to do with self-confidence. Most assholes have an inflated egos that comes off at least in part as self confidence, most “nice guys” lack that self confidence. Women, I believe do not want to walk all over the guy nor do they want the guy to walk all over them, but given a choice between the two would rather have the later or none at all. Kirk

While I have done atleast 3 two ways from 4500 AGL out of a C 182, I generally average about 30-35 seconds of freefall. I deploy around 2500 AGL. I still think it rocks that on a hop-n-pop you can get some flocking in Kirk