mdrejhon

I feel for you as well. I have been between jobs for 2 months as well. (resume). Although I'm finding small odd jobs to help pay for meals and such - I'm looking for the right job now, and I am more willing to relocate (Northeast US/Canada). Getting warmer and warmer, though.

There are several different versions of the WET lube - the cheaper stuff is not my favourite. However, the premium stuff is really good and long lasting. (A small container of the good WET, not often found in drugstores, costs more than the jumber cheaper WET though!)

The paid advertisements are delayed slightly, but we did make it into the boogie listings. We've submitted our boogie listings to several sites including the following, with mentions from the following already: http://www.skydivingmagazine.com/events.htm (Should be in April Issue of Skydiving Magazine) http://www.uspa.org/news/events.htm (Should be in April or May Issue of Parachutist) http://www.skydiving-events.com/month.php?date=20060728 http://www.gayoutdoors.org/page.cfm?sectionid=103&typeofsite=events-detail&id=1091 http://www.gaysports.com/page.cfm?sectionid=27&typeofsite=directory-detail&id=801279&parent=4 http://www.outsports.com/localEvents/index.cfm http://www.lambdaevents.com/index.cfm?typeofsite=detail&id=7161 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/calendar/page.cgi?g=Detailed/909.html&d=1 CanPara Magazine (June/July issue) Our logo is at our sponsors too: http://www.nouvelair.ca (host dropzone) http://www.sidsrigging.com (sponsor, main screen) http://www.tobe.ca (sponsor, left sidebar) http://www.montreal2006.org/en_supporter.html (sponsor, scroll down to center) We finally finallized a contract with another sponsor (Finally), this time with a gay site. Some of the boogie stuff got delayed because I'm between jobs (and still am). Posters that some people requested, for example. Those will be finished this month and be sent out to those people who requested them!

Hey Martin, Let me know if you find anyone - I obviously wouldn't qualify - A mention on the RainbowSkydivers mailing list on yahoogroups is good too in addition to this. Since not all of them are on dropzone.com we could also contact the C and D licenseholders who has registered. (or write to everyone, since an A licensee could be a wingsuit flyer with enough jumps, true...)

Just had my birthday last weekend, I just became 32. A friend of mine is taking me to Maine, and is paying for a full day's of unlimited skydiving at Skydive New England. Probably Saturday April 15th. (If the weather turns out good). In case any of you are at that dropzone for the Easter weekend.

I find I get scared with new pilots now. Especially ones that don't take off as steady as the familiar ones. Sure, they're good pilots or the DZO wouldn't have hired them, but I still tense up when an unfamiliar pilot make a steep banked turn mere seconds after takeoff. I'm a little less scared when a more experienced pilot picks up speed flying level at 100 feet, then makes a sudden steep climb (20+ degree angle or something similiar) with all that extra speed built up, but it does perk me up from trying to start a Cessna snooze. An airspace-related manoever, probably.

This is a very interesting study; I'm curious how it translates to pollution though. Say, for example, 3 times the energy from a more evironmentally friendly source (say, wind), would still end up being much better than the less energy from a dirty source (say, a 40 year old coal plant in a third world country). What kind of energy is being used to manufacture a car? Dispose? Etc? How does it translate to pollution that affects today's and future's quality of life? It must vary from country to country, as different kinds of energies is used in the manufacture/disposal of different things in different countries. But what about specific places like North America?

I've only pulled to a very brief "folding" of my Sabre 170, which is a scary moment, and resisting the temptation to suddenly raise the toggles too fast for stall recovery. Has anyone had major problems doing sustained stalls on a Sabre (170 square feet, wingload 1.15) with safe recovery? It's something I'd like to try this year (at 4000-5000 feet), but I don't want to cause it to suddenly mal. I'd notify the dropzone of course, so they don't have a heart attack watching me.

It's worth noting that some countries don't even teach students to even adjust a closing loop. (By now, I have some of the basics and a spare closing loop handy now, but I could use the learning experience.)

Very interesting, but I've always found it hard to estimate the speed of objects. It's easy to overestimate the speed when there's not much familiar references (backgrounds, etc) I should mention there is actually a scientific method of calculation to find out the speed, that's reasonably accurate. Video is taken at 60 fields per second (30 full frames per second). 60mph is equal to 5000 feet per minute, or about 83.3 feet per second. Most cameras have a freeze frame feature and most of them have a frame advance of 1/30th of a second. A human body in boxman position is about 4.5 feet long. Find out how many body lengths the renegade body moves (in relation to another body) between 10 frame advances (1/3rd of a second). If the body moves about 2 body lengths (in relation to the other body as a reference point) in that time interval, that's a movement of 9 feet in 1/3rd second or 27 feet in 1 second. Since 83.3 ft per sec is 60 mph, doing this math (27 feet per sec divided by 83.3 ft per sec, times 60 mph), yields 19.4 miles per hour. So, from this math, a flat body moving horizontally about 2 body lengths in 10 frame advances (1/3rd of a second) is moving at approximately 20 miles per hour horizontally relative speed between the two bodies. This is assuming 1/30th sec frame advance -- you can doublecheck by counting the number of frame advances needed to go through one second of videotape. This way, you can pinpoint the exact speed, down to an accuracy of approximately 20 percent (or better). Parallax issues can make things difficult, but can be compensated. Shaky video camera issues can be a problem, but since you're calculating relative velocities between two bodies, you just need to measure the change in body locations between two bodies even if the camera is shaking, between two different points in the videotape (preferably something statistically significant, such as at least 1 or 2 body lengths), I have chosen 1/3rd of a second as an arbitrary value which is appropriate for measuring a high speed collision of this type. The formula can be adapted accordingly. This is assuming the video is a third party filming the two colliding objects. There is another, more complicated, method of mathematically estimating speed of an incoming object -- which you would need to use if one of the two colliding objects is holding the video camera. It is done by measuring the number of frames it takes for an object to 'double in size' in the video frame, or if incoming too fast, then using a derived formula using the number of frames it takes for an object to grow a specific amount, such as 'quadruple in size'. From this, a formula can be applied. (Let me know if you need me to dig up this mathematical formula for measuring the speed of incoming objects heading directly towards the video camera).

In North America, the proper term is foosball. Google.com "foosball" 27,000,000 results "foozball" 91,500 results "fooz ball" 16,200 results *ducks flaming pie thrown at me*

Congratulations, BILLY!!!

Or maybe relocate your keg to a BYO location in Canada. (Brew Your Own). Not sure if that's convenient, but might provide a legal loophole

It generally gets very warm during this time of the year -- It's southern Canada so temperatures in the 80's are common at this time. It's not like your 100's in Arizonia though. If it's cool, it's the high 70's, and if it's a heat spell, it's the low 90's. Lately, we've been getting annual heat waves, thanks to the greenhouse effect, so mid-90's are getting somewhat more common. (Conveniently converted to Fahrenheit for you all Americans.) Hopefully we don't get rain.

It's the secret time of Armageddon where the world ends -- more information at the 11 o'clock news after the world has already ended, so keep tuned in front of your TV.

There's a memory trick for that too, a saying often goes around: "Better a line over than a ball under!"

QuoteI'm the kind of person who spends hours and hours in front of his computer, and then carries his most valuable equipment to one dropzone after another just because I think my friends and fellow jumpers deserve to be entertained by good music. You are apparently the kind of person who takes that as an opportunity to brazenly steal someone else's hard earned personal property. So frankly, I'm not sure if you and I even speak the same language. But I will put this as plainly as possible:First thing -- Talk to the manifest person. If all the people there were skydivers, maybe you can pay The Farm to send out a printout of this letter to everyone who skydived that day. Post this message on the dropzone billboards. Talk to everyone there. Not everyone is on dropzone.com. Time is of essence - before the thief "decides" what to do with the laptop. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your files... That really sucks, the loss of all that stuff on a laptop really hurts... I only backup my files once every 6 months (via burning to a couple of DVDR's -- basically my "C:\Documents and Settings" subdirectory tree, where all my personal files are stored). I do exclude video files for a separate backup to another computer instead, as they are too big to fit on a DVDR. I'm thinking of buying one of those nifty programs that "automatically synchronizes" a laptop hard disk to a backup folder of my desktop computer everytime my laptop reaches WiFi range of my home LAN. Something that's one button and doesn't require any other manual intervention. The same thing can be used to synchronize between two identical external hard disks automatically so one can be left at home. Then I don't need to worry about forgetting to do backups... Losing my files is a scary scenario to me too

After completing a long Saturday of tax-related work, I rewarded myself with a skydiving trip on Sunday morning and set out by car... I was driving the 401 freeway almost all the way to Skydive Gananoque. My eyes happened to glance to the left to see a tumbling, distintegrating, bouncing car. Like in the movies. Apparently it hit the ditch at full freeway speed just a fraction of a second before I glanced, putting it into a high speed tumble (at least 3 rolls) with small pieces breaking off the car as I watched from less than 100 meters away! (from the opposite side of the freeway) The first 1 second was a double take of stunned astoundment, and then the next 1 second was "ohmigod, someone may die" and I swerved to the shoulder, braked hard and leapt out of the car. 10 feet away, I remembered I forgot my cellphone, ran back into the car to grab it (just in case I needed to dial 911; a very difficult procedure for a deaf guy like me but...). Then I ran across the freeway to the opposite side (the accident happened on the opposite side). Running across a full freeway to the lanes going in the other direction on the opposite side is crazy, but it was a Sunday morning so there were not many cars speeding by. To hell with skydiving, a life comes first... I was one of the first to stop, but as I raced across the 50-feet-wide separator, I witnessed 4 cars stop almost simultaneously before I reached the site. When I arrived, about 4 trucks and 8 cars pulled over on the same side as the accident site (I was the only one who stopped on the opposite side of the freeway). To my relief, within seconds I saw a bleeding man exiting the upsidedown mangled debris that used to be a car, and he walked on his legs -- clearly conscious and able to walk, but shocked and stunned. People managed to reach the man seconds before I did, and three people were on their cellphones (likely calling 911). Thank goodness - I would not have been able to do 911 as quickly as they have because of my deafness and my need to use the use the 911 text telephone (TTY) service via my BlackBerry (which I had custom TTY service installed on), which is slower. I was prepared to call 911, but my first concern was someone might die and it would take me 3 minutes just to complete a 911 call. The man was walking around aimlessly in a stunned fashion, looked like a japanese businessman wearing a suit. An attache case sat about 30 feet away, thrown from the car, along with other miscellaneous pieces of debris that had broken off the car. The car was totalled, upsidedown, and the engine compartment was a gaping mess. Damn... I've never witnessed a high speed accident like this. I watched the tumble roll 360 degrees multiple time at high speed. He was damn lucky he survived that, those consumer cars don't have roll cages like those Indy or Formula cars. It looks like only his car was involved as there were no other cars that got damaged. (could have been as simple as a rabbit crossing the freeway, could be a mad driver swerving in front of him. Or it may have been his fault but I won't know and don't want to speculate, innocent unless guilty, and the life saved is a priority regardless) I didn't think about anything, I headed to the freeway shoulder 2 seconds after seeing the rolling car. Around here, people stop when they see accidents like that. More than a dozen did -- it was that shocking and potentially traumatizing to witness. It could have been worse. What if people did not stop? What if people did not call 911? What if he was already dead? Dismembered body parts, crushed face, etc - I don't know how I would have handled that. Of course, that was not necessary, but it made me do a lot of thinking about "what ifs". I thought about what I would do. Would I just stand and watch him die? Would I do CPR? Would I apply a torniquet? (I imagined that and if he was still alive but with a missing arm or leg, "TORNIQUET" nearly instantly screamed in my mind because he would be minutes away from death from blood loss). Even with my inadequate medical knowledge and lowly high-school CPR education, I think I would have tried my best sacrificing my skydiving Tshirt and/or belt for a torniquet to seal a severed stump, but CPR would have scared the hell out of me -- what if he had internal injuries and just the mere applying of CPR killed him? Being responsible for death scares me. The "what ifs" scare me a little. Thinking about it in retrospect, I believe I would have done what I could to stabilize the situation as much as I trusted myself to THEN called 911, because the 3 minutes spent just initating a text-telephone 911 call (as a deaf individual myself) would have been better spent saving a life first. At least I would like to think so. Would I have been traumatized? Probably, I've never had to deal with severed limbs (except in an occasional videogame) I left after about 10 minutes after I ascertained I was of no further help (I asked two people if they needed my help), emergency attention was on their way, the man was walking around for 10 minutes clearly conscious (with blood only coming from his hand, and was not bleeding fast enough to drip blood). And others witnessed the tumbling from a better vantage than mine, and I was the person who parked furthest away (200 meters away where I finally braked all the way to a stop at the opposite side of the freeway). It was amazing to see how many stopped (the final tally seemed to be nearly a dozen cars and four trucks that were at least eighteen-wheelers), which formed a big wall of vehicles on the shoulder obscuring the accident site - the ditch was adjacnet to the shoulder. It looked like I was one of the first to stop, because obviously, I happened to glance that tumbling, distintegrating car a fraction of a second after it started rolling. I don't know what it caused to roll, but it looks like it hit the ditch at that instant. An observation I note is that this unexpected situation took a full second to "figure" in my mind before I made the decision to pull over (which took an additional second before it was the obvious decision). In skydiving, lots of people say that it often takes 1 to 2 seconds to figure out something is not right (seeing an unexpected mal) before making a decision to save their lives (EP's). If you're expecting something, reaction times are pretty fast, but when something life-threatening you've never seen before hits you. There's that fraction of second of "that's not right" and fraction of second of "a life is in danger" realization, followed by quick decision what to do, followed by the execution of action. It looks like it took me about 2 seconds after I first put my eyeballs to the tumbling car, before I was heading towards the car shoulder. I had no time to think about anything else, it was automatic...

Somewhere on SkydivingMovies.com I saw a SVO windtunnel video where the camera lens got droplets on its lens and fuzzied up the video, so yes, apparently rain can sometimes get sucked at the SVO wind tunnel.

If I am the only person riding the plane down with an active Cypres, I won't be able to turn it off without taking off my rig. Mine's located under the top of the reserve flap (Vector2 container.) On a related note. I feel that my biggest and stupidest mistake I've ever made in skydiving is forgetting to turn the Cypres on at 8:00am during a rushed 20-way attempt. I was red with embarassment when the pilot waited an additional 10 seconds at the end of the runway until a fellow skydiver turned it on for me. (I was the one who remembered and told the fellow skydiver, just as the plane was taxiing to the runway). Yeah, everyone on the CASA noticed. Lesson learned by public humilation

Boeing. Clicky: Connexion by Boeing. If I remember right, I heard it was something like $26.95 for unlimited Internet access for the whole flight. Or $14.95 for 2 hours, or $9.95 for 1 hour. A bit expensive, but I'd pay it over watching the in-flight film, unless it was a sleeper flight. I've sometimes heard of foreign Internet cafes charging more. You can even use Skype on Connexion, so you can talk on the telephone from the airplane. 6 hours of long distance phone calls from the airplane for only $30! The U.S. airlines are too cheap and bankrupt to install these great in-plane WiFi systems, but several foreign airlines on international routes, have this system. Wireless isn't a problem in planes per se if setup properly -- as tested by Boeing, in partnership with Intel, WiFi is safe to their own airplanes and Boeing actually backs this up. Even so, to be even safer, they shut down the system during takeoff and landing though, and require everyone to turn off their laptops during this period as normal.

As I got my A license (And B license) in 2005, I am curious about details. I checked both theblueskyranch.com and skydivetheranch.com and could not find information except that the events section says April 8th is Safety Day.

Thanks! By the way, I just noticed that this article about me made it into Google News at near the top for news search term "skydiving". It produced a spike of hits to the Rainbow Boogie website on March 29th.

This is correct. How it works: - An everyman, such as Ford or Microsoft employee, home computer got infected. - He/she is a skydiver so they have skillscamp@freeflytrainingcenter.com in their addressbook. - The virus stole the email address from the addressbook - The virus sent an email message with a forged "From:" email address from the home computer. So person "X" can have a computer virus that masquerades as person "Y", and send it to person "Z". Person "Z" ends up accusing person "Y" who truly never sent the virus. Because of the way modern computer viruses work, 99% chance, that freeflytrainingcenter.com is totally innocent here.

Okay, this thread has been quiet long enough. Time to bump it up. We've got a logo being designed right now and going to print some T-shirts too in a few weeks. Sometime early April, I'm going to send an email to all the people who registered about what design they like the best. The proceeds of the T-shirt sales will go into paying for the event, on top of the existing sponsors (and more are going to be announced soon as well). If you are a person that has not registered, or not planning to attend, but is still interested in the Rainbow Boogie T-shirt, please email me in the Contact Us section.