Macaulay

When you're getting out of a plane that is already going 80 - 100 MPH, you rarely get the stomach-flip thing, regardless of how you're jumping. - Mac

First wingsuit exit from a 182... beer this weekend. When I arrived today, DZ operations had just ceased, and the Otter was being put away. There are some very kind people up here at Skydive Oregon that let me go up in the 182 alone. I just went for the dive out, and it worked really well. The only problem was that when I sat up and inched back a bit to align myself with the door, my right bootie slipped off. I didn't notice until I was in the air. It worked out pretty well, actually. The plane was on a north jump run and I was to fly west... do the math. I just kept my right leg bent a bit more than my left... the bootie had slipped, but the zipper was still down. Whenever I brought my knees down to inflate the tail, I would bank to the right a bit, so I just flew conservatively and watched the sun disappear while still in flight. Had a great deployment/opening and a great swoop, too... easy to set up when there's no one else in the air. Long story for one jump, but I only got one in today. - Mac

Total time was about ten weeks, but they got slammed with orders right before I ordered mine, so who knows... - Mac

This raises the question... DO the same rules apply? In skydiving, the low person has the right of way. But that's when you're going DOWN. When you're moving more FORWARDS than down, then should it be the low person, or the person in front? Or maybe figure out what angle is the limit for right of way. In other high-speed sports, or even driving for that matter, the person in front has the right of way, regardless of vertical position. For example, in mountain biking, if I'm going up a hill and run into another biker, it would be my fault, even though they were higher than me. In this situation it seemed that the guy that zoomed by would be at fault if there were a collision. He was out of your range of vision, but you were not out of his. Had he looked up, he would have seen you. This is just my opinion, and the standard rule still stands, but this is something that I feel should be considered and recognized. Either way, that was great lift and speed. I paused it and checked out that Skyflyer for a bit (the suit, not the pilot, er... shut up). :) - Macaulay

I was pretty bummed out when Bird-man said that I wouldn't be getting my wingsuit until September, long after the Freedom Jam, and right about the time the weather starts to turn in Oregon, so I was stoked to get a call from my girlfriend at work reporting that it had arrived... the day before the Freedom Jam. Short on time, so sparing details. It's frickin' amazing. The feeling is as unique as the feeling was on my first skydive. I dropped pretty fast on my first couple jumps, but hit 116 seconds by the end of the day Sunday (9,000' total freefall). Can't wait for this weekend. - Mac

I would have gotten out and asked for $9 back. - Mac

¡Uf! Spinettos and wingsuits are a bad mix (see two posts up). No one can really expect you to spend the money on a new canopy, but just open high. - Mac

Portland. - Mac

How was the opening? ;) What canopy are you flying? Just curious. - Mac

http://www.skydivemonroe.com http://www.archwayskydiving.com http://www.skydiveskyknights.com ...were all taken into consideration. How could I forget the skydiver shouting stuff to the right side of the screen. That really shouldn't be as funny as it is. On Skydive Monroe's site, I would agree that there are just too many items. Skydive Oregon has the same deal, and I think some sections could be collapsed into one, but the approach there was to take all the options and divide them into three sections right in the navigation. Other than that, I just think the colors are a little weird (just my opinion). The tables took no time to render at all, but I'm also running a P4 NW 2GHz, so... I'm also not a fan of Comic Sans, but other than that, the site's good. I have to retract a previous statement, as I did not realise that this site was also PHP (happens when you look at like 150 sites all in one sitting). Archway was one of the sites that I had mentioned earlier (not by name), as being good, but just not a real standout for me. If it had some consistency in the fonts and layout, it'd actually be a really nice site. $150 AFFs?! Awesome... Sky Knights has one major flaw: colors. Seven colors, not including B/W, and all the colors are very saturated and high contrast. Change the colors and the present the logo better, but keep everything else. ----------------------------------------------------------- Content admin tools. I started writing these about four years ago, and I've never had a single client not use one. Doing everything in PHP/MySQL right now, I've found that PHPMyAdmin makes an even better solution than what I've written in the past, and it's free. I guess it all depends. I'm designing about four sites a week right now, on my own, and I have a fulltime job doing non-web work (print work and writing PostScript). If I maintained sites regularly (aside from the occassional fix or addition), I would never get a new client. Hell, I'd be homeless. But that's me. Personally, I would recommend the PHP/MySQL or ASP/XML or ColdFusion or whatever route (OK, maybe not CF). Run the entire site from a single PHP program and write it so the HTML ignorant can type text into a box on a page you bookmarked for them and have it all come out nice n purty. ;) But everyone's got their own way. - Mac

I bought some really awesome goggles/glasses awhile back. Three seconds out the door, they slipped off my face and shattered on my helmet. I still have a little piece of them in my change cup. - Mac

Yeah! Bump it up to 100:1, bitch! Sorry... I didn't even read this thread. Carry on... - Mac

Looks like we're agreed on all points except dynamic languages. By writing a site in PHP/MySQL/CSS, and then giving the client an online SQL admin tool (plus a reference for img, a (just href), and basic text formatting tags), I've had very good results with clients never having to bug me again once their site was up and running. The main advantage for a "brochure" site is that they don't don't have to update nav links on every page of the site. MANY DZ web sites (and straight HTML sites in general) have inconsistent navs and/or broken nav links, due to the fact that they typoed here, or didn't paste there, or forgot to update this page, etc. And don't even get me started on how much time goes into a straight HTML photo gallery vs a PHP/MySQL one. Oh, I wasn't plugging these sites, I just thought they were good examples to illustrate my point. And I see what you mean about a site's design pertaining specifically to skydiving. I was more comparing DZ sites to sites in general. - Mac

Send photo evidence of your F jump and $3,600 to the address below to receive your USBASEF certificate: Me 123 Fourth St Blah, BLAH BLAH - Mac

The insane part being how quickly the canopy opened, not the safety part. Devil's Punchbowl and Sunset Cliffs are probably as high/higher, and I jumped those long before skydiving. I just BASE jumped off my chair without a rig. Yep, it's expanded to BASEF, for furniture. - Mac

See attached pic (posted on the Blinc forum). - Mac

Wolmari a Stiletto. - Mac

Hmmm... maybe that was misinterpreted, or maybe I'm misinterpreting your post. Looking at my post, I wrote it retardedly. I DID order a wingsuit -- Birdman GTi. My canopy will last me for years. My rant was that I have to wait another 5 - 6 weeks (production just started) for it, but that it should be ready in time for the boogie. Three other guys at SDO split the money on a GTi, so I'll have three fellow Bridmen, albeit one at a time. Dwayne jumps a GTi and a Skyflyer, but primarily for BASE. He might jump them at the DZ more if there are people to jump with. - Mac

"Skydivers use parachutes!" Just throwin' some more ideas your way... "Skydivers are f*¢king alcoholics!" Patent pending on that one. - Mac

Skydivers jump out of airplanes!

I wrote this long-ass post in the middle of the night over the weekend, but the forums were down, so I'm posting it now: ____________________________________________________ I've just spent the last few hours examining literally every USPA drop zone's web site. Skydiving has come a long way in terms of aerodynamics. The advances over the past few years have been phenomenal. However, when it comes to Internet technologies, the venues that showcase our advanced support have always been drastically behind. Most drop zones do what they do really, really well. They have great safety records, fun jumps, paid employees, beer at the end of the day, etc, because, understandably, that's where their focus lies. But when it comes to bringing in the wuffo to do the tandem that will keep the drop zone afloat, your average person just may be turned away from skydiving at the web site, as was the case with a friend of mine. In some people's minds, a poor quality web site reflects the quality of the company. This may seem foreign to us, because, being that we are skydivers, none of us were turned away by our drop zone's web site, being that, to date, they've all looked like crap. Being a designer, programmer and skydiver, this sent me on a quest to find if any drop zones out there have made the effort to peer out into the world of marketing beyond the DZ, and utilize the existing technology and design styles to their advantage. No surprise, there weren't too many. Almost every drop zone site uses background tiles of thick, fluffy clouds, sometimes with a little blue mixed in. Not only is it ugly as hell, but think about it... in a sport that more or less demands a lack of clouds, the first thing DZs are doing is stamping clouds all over their sites... often times using the same images as other sites (beknownst to them or not). If I had a dime for every giant typo I came across, right on the home page or huge, flying around one of the countless weak, repulsive Flash intros, I could probably afford to fly to wherever the sun is and jump, rather than write this post at 2:20am. I even came across one drop zone that just took PD's old design and changed the links. To the credit of these primitive, unattractive sites, they were often easy to use and well-organized, until you run into broken links in the navigation, which occur on probably, no joke, 90% of the sites I visited. Yet, there has been some movement, and with any luck, the bar will be raised for drop zones, which are currently notorious for having the ugliest sites on the web. I came across about half a dozen web sites that looked decent and worked well, but still weren't up to par by today's standards for web design, layout and programming. There were only four drop zone web sites that I would consider to be on top of the web design game. I've compiled a list of what I see are their pros and cons, in hopes that maybe some drop zones will take notice: ----------------------------------------------------------- 1.800.FUN.JUMP - Hollister, California http://www.1800funjump.com PROS - Probably the best-looking drop zone site on the web, IMO - Super-easy to use - Printable CONS - Found a number of style and list tag bugs (the above-mentioned "ugly" sites probably have a billion of these, but they are far more noticeable on such an otherwise clean site) - Not really too bad, but the site should use includes, if it doesn't already, as opposed to straight HTML, to better maintain links ----------------------------------------------------------- SKYDIVE OREGON - Molalla, Oregon http://www.skydiveoregon.com PROS - A Flash Intro that is actually good - Design is super-clean - Super-fast-loading - Written in PHP, the ONLY drop zone's site that has moved beyond HTML - Well-organized and easy to use - Printable CONS - As great as the Flash intro is, it's still a Flash intro that must be skipped when you return - There's a pop-behind that whuffos might find useful, but experienced jumpers will find to be a nuisance ----------------------------------------------------------- SKYDIVE CHICAGO - Ottawa, Illinois http://www.skydivechicago.com PROS - Great aesthetic design - Home navigation is easy to use - Nice, subtle use of Flash CONS - The navigation changes and becomes somewhat inconsistent and confusing if not on the home page - Lots of buried pages that don't tell you where you are gets you lost - Frames prevent bookmarking and provide a printing hurdle or blockade for the less web-savvy ----------------------------------------------------------- CENTRAL MAINE SKYDIVING - Pittsfield, Maine http://www.centralmaineskydiving.com PROS - Simple, clean, pretty design - Good use of CSS - Super-fast loading - Printable CONS - The saturation level of the blue is a little bit too much - The quality level of the JPGs could stand to be raised without really adding to the load time - Gives no information to the experienced jumper, but this DZ may focus on students, anyway - Small enough to maintain in HTML, but dynamic languages really are the way to go for even small projects nowadays ----------------------------------------------------------- I also call upon the designers and programmers out there to help your DZ out a bit... at least at a discounted rate (as I did for mine). I did see about eight other sites that looked good and functioned well, but the above four stood out for me. If I missed any, let me know. - Mac

What model/colors of suit did you get? Just curious. - Mac

Flying a Sabre 120 loaded at 1.5. I had to decide whether I wanted to spend money on a new canopy with about 13 less square feet, or hold onto what I have and go for the wingsuit. I think I made the right choice. August seems so far away, but as long as I'm skyflying before the Freedom Jam (Skydive Oregon's boogie), I'll be happy. - Mac

That really sucks. On top of the horribleness that is such a death a general, when a student goes in, it's a severe blow to the sport. - Mac

Yeah, where he opened about twenty damn feet off the ground. That was one of the BASE jumps I've ever seen. DJ went off on that one, Dwayne flew his ass off, low-deploy, cactus collison. It was great. ;) - Mac