MarkM

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content

    3,000

  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by MarkM

  1. MarkM
    I have been "training" my eyes. I'm moving to wingsuit jumping(as soon as my damn PHI gets delivered) and reading a hand mounted alti is a PITA in a wing suit. And it's actually pretty suprising how accurate your eyes can get(though if I went to another DZ, I'd probably have to train them there, I dunno). But I probably didn't start that til jump 230 or so and jumping by eyes only was pretty wildly innaccurate at the first attempts. Worse, since I was doing 90-100 veritical during those jumps instead of my normal 150, my internal clock was also wildly off. Fun is when your untrained eyes say "Hmm, this looks pretty high, I think you got plenty of time" while you mind is screaming "OMG, you should've pulled 10 seconds ago, you're gonna die". My Neptune doesn't have either of those flaws. It just dies when I most need it if I forget to put in new batteries...
  2. MarkM
    Well, I was on a 4 way FF that got out lower than usual. My internal 6k alarm went off at 4k and 2 of the guys I was with ended up pulling at 1500. A person's internal time sense alarm can be easily fooled. Looking at the ground is a lot more reliable, but it's not as easy for newbies to gauge as many of the high number jumpers seem to think it should be for us new guys.
  3. MarkM
    Fractured, breaks, sprains, sure. You get that in most sports though. But getting metal takes a little more effort.
  4. MarkM
    I'm betting that's more about the behavior of your friends, not just time in sport. I've known a lot of good instructors over the last 5 years and none of them have gotten any metal in them. Except for one that died, and I wasn't suprised to hear he went in. He had a talent for putting himself into bad situations.
  5. MarkM
    Do a search for the skydiving fatalities database and read that. Also if you join the USPA, you'll get Parachutist which has incident reports in it each month. Study those and I think you'll see some patterns of activity that cause a decent amount of the incidents and fatalities.
  6. MarkM
    Nature is there to be improved upon
  7. MarkM
    Pilot = Hornet = Sabre2, basically. That said, for a first time canopy I'd just buy a used Tri. They're a dime a dozen and a noob isn't going to notice the difference between any of those canopies.
  8. MarkM
    Last I heard, he was still trying to find a company that could provide him with enough of the proper foam peanuts to fully cover the landing area. He had one manufacturer tracked down awhile back, but then protestors compained about the environmental impact of all those peanuts being thrown on the ground, so he's had to look into using biodegradable foam peanuts. Unfortunately biodegrable peanuts don't have the same bounceproof level of the standard ones, so he's also had to pad his wingsuit with bubble wrap. And that, of course, has caused issues with the flight characteristics of his wing suit which he's also still working out.
  9. MarkM
    It'll be nice when all these new suits hit the general market and we start to see more experienced users contrast and compare them. But given the track record of the designers, I doubt we'll be seeing a rash of disappointed buyers.
  10. MarkM
    They're a nice, if cheap, suit. They usually deliver them pretty quickly. Some people have had problems with sizing / quality, but Kurupee seems to have handled the problems when contacted about it. It really comes down to "what do you want" out of your suit. If you want a high quality suit that'll last you 500 jumps with very good support, buy something else. If you just want a suit that'll last maybe 200 jumps and is cheap enough that you won't care if you rip it apart on your 3rd jump on it, Kurupee is a good option.
  11. MarkM
    For an anthro class, you'd probably want to cover stuff like: Dropzone social hiearchy: owner, manager, ST&A, instructors, really experienced jumpers, novies, students, tandems and how they all relate to one another. How the sport has traditionally been(student -> novice -> experienced jumper) and all the culture involved in that. Pies, beer lines, beers for "firsts", licenses. How tandems have influenced that. How dropzones getting bigger have influenced that. The sport has a sub sub-culture all its own based in years of tradition. But it's also changed a lot over the years, due to new technologies(AADs, tandems, faster canopies) and more "professionalism"(coaching, AFF instead of SL, wind tunnels, turbines). Should be an awesome subject to work with.
  12. MarkM
    When I ordered my G3 the G4 announcement came out maybe 1 month after I ordered the G3 and I was kicking myself over it. Turns out that the G3 they made me basically had all the improvments that the G4's had and 3 years later the G3's are still selling strong.
  13. MarkM
    yes and yes... flame away No flames, I also see your registered for bridge day. But why the rush into everything?
  14. MarkM

    SAVE SKYSURFING!!!

    MarkM replied to Douva's topic in The Bonfire

    That's not how it works. First some really brave/dumb guy tries out some new thing. Then a couple other people pick up the idea and improve on it. Then you start to see other people doing it because it looks cool. Then when you got some skilled players, you see a competition. I think skysurfing died down because freeflying is so much easier to get into, doesn't require dealing with a board in the plane and offers what looks like a lot of the same experience: freeform 3D movement. Plus with freeflyfing you can do docks, cluster with a bunch of friends and geek their cameras, etc. I hate to see the discipline die down, Rob Harris is totally why I started skydiving in the first place, but I totally understand why it has.
  15. MarkM
    Expense(and it can add up when you own multiple rigs). Because even if it saved them while unconscious, they'd still die on impact under their 1.8 loaded reserve. Some people don't trust them or like feeling in complete control of their skydive.
  16. MarkM
    D) You didn't see the incident first hand or don't have all the information involved(how many jumps, what exactcly happened, what type, let alone WL of canopy) and don't want to post a half assed incident report that could be completely wrong. E) There's nothing to be learned from the incident, because the same exact type of incident was posted last week, the week before, the week before that...
  17. MarkM
    Smart man. Though I have to say, you Z-Flock bastards have ruined me. Last time I jumped all I wanted to do was track. And when I heard the PHI wasn't gonna be at the dz.com boogie, I got depressed, stayed home, never left the apartment and ordered out pizza. Got so bad that I went to a doctor. He prescribed me a brand new PHI. Unfortunately it'll be a bit of a wait before it gets here Til then, I'm trying work out something with some garbage bags and duct tape.
  18. MarkM
    Sure that wasn't the Heatwave and not the Hornet?
  19. MarkM
    Do a search on the forums for the brand you're interested in and that will give you a solid history on how people like it(or not). Then it comes down to how much you want to pay for your canopy. Like everyone loves sabre2's, so the used market on them is pretty pricey.
  20. MarkM
    Jumpsuit - for consistent friction and so no odd piece of clothing covers anything important. Helmet - so I don't rip off an ear due to a riser strike. No ditter / audible alti though.
  21. MarkM
    Nope. Most or all new containers are as far as I know, but if rig is older or just worn out it can be dangerous to freefly in. You might want to ask specific questions about what makes a container freefly safe(and not) in the freefly forums or do a search on it.
  22. MarkM
    20 jumps a month, which pretty good for a weekend jumper, would be $400 a month. That's a new car payment, maybe the difference between a 2 bedroom and 1 bedroom apartment, a bike/boat payment, etc. There are 2 ways to make money you don't have: 1> Get paid more. 2> Spend less.
  23. MarkM
    Because students are flying belly to earth, so it doesn't have to be freefly safe. I've seen a lot of older student rigs that you wouldn't want to freefly in, but are fine for normal skydiving. You probably don't see really good sport rigs for renting, because people buy their own gear as soon as possible. Why spend $2000 on renting when you can buy a used setup for the same price and sell in in 100 jumps for a few hundred less.
  24. MarkM
    I think you guys all watched too many Road Runner episodes when you were kids.
  25. MarkM
    Are they doing it to generate business or just to make sure the guy gets his rig packed?