MarkM

Damn, Williston sounds like it needs a new owner. I've jumped some not-so-state-of-the-art rental gear and seen some lax attitudes, but I at least knew the gear was well maintained the DZO ran the place professionally. They a USPA dropzone? Anyway, what's your home DZ, Homestead? I live in Fort Lauderdale and have been itching to cruise down there to check the place out.

An audible altimeter simply beeps at a preset altitude. You'll generally have 3 altitudes and 3 different types of beeps you can use. They're no replacement for a good visual altimeter and are just a means of backup, something to warn you or notify you of certain altitudes you want a reminder or warning at.

Take away hunting and you'd have a much poorer ecosystem in many states: hunting is a form of population control and the money from the licenses goes directly back into the environment.

How about doing a canonball out the door? Sorta like in a pool, only hopefully with less of a splash.

The wheel on a cesna is right near the exit. You'd be hanging upside down in the middle of the wing, same place students do their hanging exits, so there's not really any chance of hitting anything when you drop. I've just seen pictures of it done, although I got an instructor up in Indiana who promised to show me how to do it. One of these years I'm gonna look him up and take him up on that one.

Not crazy at all. Been a year and a half since jumping and I can still feel the way those cesnas reacted to body movements. A student swings out onto the wing and the whole plane leans right. The student lets go and the plane wobbles around a little until it gets stable. Hell. One joke my instructor used to play was that after the plane took off and had some altitude, he'd reach up and pull one of the wing's control lines that ran overhead through the cockpit. The plane would tilt and it'd scare the shit out of a first time jumpers. And can you batwing off an Otter? I don't think so.

I think "Sex. Now!" is about all you'd need for a pickup line. Just don't do any serious formation work until you've done a couple hop'n'pops. Otherwise if you have a mal you may have problems with your cutaway procedure.

Nope. At least she's getting airgasms though.

Gave up nothing and gained a whole lot.

You're not a skydiver, you're a chicken, Boo. Well, back to the topic, is there anyway to do a batwing from an otter? Or maybe grab onto some handhold on the outside of the plane somewhere, plant your feet up next to them and launch off the plane?

Will an audible fit on the inside of a Oxygen? I need to pick a full face up in the next couple weeks and plan on getting an audible eventually too.

I'm not. When I moved down to SE Florida one of the things that stood out was how seriously they take care of the coral reefs down towards the keys. They're a national treasure and treated as such.

Not true! I have video proof that a human can defeat a bear using wits alone. http://loki.thebisgroup.com/~mmealman/salmon.asf

Hmm, I disagree. We're actually one of the bigger animals(in the top 2%?), and the way we're built we can deliver a lot of force. We don't have much in the way of teeth and claws, but an adult human in good shape that's really pissed could probably rip the legs off a large dog.

What does that use, .454 casul? Still would probably just piss it off. Don't think you can drop a grizzle reliably with a handgun. Maybe if you had one of these babies... http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/suit.html

Morality? Oh yeah, this is the place for that discussion.

Well if you like depressing NIN songs, here's a short fav. This track was never released, so I doubt Trent would mind it being posted. http://loki.thebisgroup.com/~mmealman/nothing.mp3 I think I have most everything NIN did. They've definately been my fav for the last 10 years or so.

Oh yeah, great idea. Let's put lizards with a taste for human flesh in some schools.

catalin it'll probably depend a lot on where to come to the US as to how you're handled. If you haven't done any or a very few freefalls, then the DZ owner will probably want you to do a SL jump or 2 to prove you can deploy on their equipment. The problem though is that in some areas you'll have a hard time finding a dropzone that does SL training. If you end up at a DZ that uses AFF, you'll probably start at level 1 because the skills you have don't translate well into that sort of training. Your best bet is to look up some DZs near to where you'll be travelling in the US and send them some emails. See www.uspa.org for a list of them. They'll want to know the deployment system you used and the type of reserve deployment system you're used to also.

I'm the 10-12th.

Problem with that is I don't think it's a good measurement of needing a Cypres. A Cypres on a student is good because they may not pull. But once you're off student status, you should have demonstrated you have that ability(or there's something seriously wrong with the student program). Now you might be more likely to pull lower than your planned altitude, but then you should have a higher "deck" than experienced jumpers anyway to compesenate for your newness. So who needs the Cypres more? A 20 jump graduate who you know can pull, will likely be jumping alone and have a deployment altitude of 4k, or a 500 jump guy who works a lot with other people in the sky and just starts to breaks off at that altitude?

But you really don't. Exiting the plane in the first place is a dangerous situation that can be avoided by staying on the ground and playing golf. Exiting the plane "safely" doesn't mean never exiting the plane, it means you recognize all the dangers involved and prepare for them. Can landing in 25 mph winds be done safely? I can't answer that for everyone, just for me: nope. But I do think that the guy that lands in 25 mph winds, and has thought out all the problems associated with it, is a safer skydiver than one that sits on the ground and thinks he'll never have to do it himself so he never thinks about how he'd handle it. It's like the recent discusion on silver reserve handles vs soft pillow ones. Is one type safer than the other? To me it doesn't really matter so much as there was thought behind the decision instead of "that's just what came with the rig". If most Cypres fires are due to low pulls, then why are they pulling low? What factors are going to cause me to do the same? Can I avoid those factors or offset them in other safer ways? If my possble lack of altitude awareness is likely to be caused just by my not paying attention to my visual alt, then an audible may be a better solution than a Cypres. I'd rather have a beep in my ear remind me to pull at 3k then a Cypres saying "you should've pulled moron" at 1k. If I'm flying formations and just pulling lower and lower, then maybe a Cypres is the only practical "you should've pulled sooner moron" solution. I can tell myself I'll start pulling higher, but maybe I don't have the discipline to keep it up. But I don't think everyone should pop a Cypres onto their rigs "just because". There may have been better solutions to magage their risk.

Point was that safety is choices. You want the most safety? Don't skydive. Now if I buy a Cypres, I lose money I could've spent on tunnel time. Tunnel work will teach a student stability. A great way to prevent a mal is to be stable during deployment. The FXC I had on my 5th student jump sure as hell didn't help me when I flipped during deployment and ended up with my legs tangled in the lines of my deploying main. Only stability would've prevented that. You want the Cypres, fine. I want to be able to go from an unstable tumble into a stable arch in a heartbeat. That doesn't make me less concerned about safety. A Cypres certainly helps reduce, not eliminate, a fatality resulting from the above situations. So will wearing a helmet, jumping solo, and not getting an arm caught in the lines of your deploying chute. Stupid quote. You make sacrifices in your safety every jump, because maybe you're not wearing a helmet, or maybe you don't have an audible as a backup for altitude awareness, or maybe your reserve is less than a 1:1 ratio, or maybe because you're jumping with others, or maybe because you're wearing a camera, or maybe because you briefly exceed speeds were an accidental reserve deployment kills, or maybe because you don't prep for a PLF each and every landing, or maybe because your equipment isn't this year's model or maybe because you exited the plane in anything other than a conservative manner, or maybe you smoke or drink alcohol and are more prone to mild hypoxia, or maybe you don't double tie your shoe laces, etc. Safety isn't about avoiding dangerous situations. It's about understanding all the dangers involved and being prepared for them. A Cypes can be a part of that, but it isn't the end all be all of safety equipment some people like to make it out to be.

God I hope the above was a joke.

"and the JM said my P/C bounced off my back 5 times in that 2 seconds" That's kind of funny. My first freefall ever was a clear and pull with a chest mounted ripcord. Left the plane... pulled... waited... waited... said "WTF?" and then it deployed. The JM said the PC bounced around on my back a few times before catching air and deploying. Went to BOC toss out right after and friggen loved it. Instant feedback when you tossed the PC out. Think I'd still rather be stable when the PC launches on a ripcord setup though. Not that I'd try to get stable on a reserve pull or anything(I just want it out), but the chance of the PC sitting in your burble forever is probably lower than a mal caused from being unstable on deployment.