MarkM

No joke. My Neon gets 35 miles to the gallon and I couldn't imagine driving something that got half that.

My advice for what its worth, IGNORE this advice. Yes there is a degree of separation on exit but nobody here knows the original posters flying capabilities. How do we not know if he backslides across the sky? He could be all over the sky for various reasons. Pulling at a higher than planned altitude can ALWAYS present a problem if there are people exiting after you. Dude, he's talking about if his altimeter friggen breaks. You jump out of the plane, you're alti-giga-tude-2000 explodes upon contact with the airstream. Your options are: A> Pull high in this circumstance, because you're a 30 jump wonder and don't know what 4k looks like. B> Hold it in until the ground looks really really big, because you might be sliding a little. Orange, talk to your instructors at your DZ and see which they'd prefer you to do.

DivX

He was accusing you of being smart? The bastard...

The tandems shouldn't be jumping out on top of you, so pulling if something goes wrong with your alti shouldn't be an issue. I didn't get an audible off of student status because I didn't want to become dependent on it. They can fail and when they fail you may not know it. My vis altimeter has failed twice, but it's really easy to tell when it fails.

Hornet 150 loaded at around 1.1. Mostly learning right now how to fly it slow, brake turn approaches so I can sink it in whereever I want. Also experimenting a lot with shifting my weight in the harness to move the canopy where I want it to go without altering the canopy's planeform(use it a lot to fine tune landings, I'm sure I look absurd when I do it). Above 1k I'm doing riser turns and enjoy speeding it up, down low I'm sticking to learning how to go slow. Once I know I can sink it into a back yard surrounded by power lines, then I'll move onto learning how to speed it up.

Ahhh that's so cuuuuute.

29. Would be interesting to see this poll split by gender.

TuG? TuB?

Don't see why the exam is supposed to be so impressive. Figure at the time they were focusing on just that stuff, while today we have chemistry, physics, higher math, computer lit, history from the 1900's and so on.

The Toxic Avenger.

There's a couple lift tickets worth at ya. Love the site.

Heh, oh trust me, at 5 jumps you're not any good. I have over 200 and still suck. But even if you suck, they still let you jump out of the planes so don't sweat it.

Me me me me. I'm already obsessing over slowing down my tracking fallrates and having live data would be immediate feedback.

Heh, same deal. Was doing a night HAHO and the thing died at 5k. I think they recently updated the battery monitor in the software though.

Depends entirely on what you're doing. A 2 way belly requires much much less skill than a 10 way freefly with half the party going head down. What do you want to do in the next 50 jumps? Get some RW skills so you can fly well in that position? Then study up on it, learn what's dangerous about it, how people get hurt, and make your decisions based on that small area. When you start to freefly, again read up, ask questions learn how people get hurt doing it and make your call based on that. Understand the situation you're going to put yourself in, objectively evaluate your skills, judge the other person(do you know them and their skills?) then make a call based on that. The 25 jump guy might be fine for a 2 way RW if you understand how he could try to kill you and you know you can get out of those situations. It's not just cute chicks that get asked into situations over their head. I was in a 3 way freefly that became a 5 way, then a 6 way when I had only ever done 2 ways and maybe one 3 way. So I backed out. Pick a jump discipline, learn all you can about it, start small and slowly build up.

Did you make that flappa flappa flappa flappa flappa sound sliders make on your way towards the ground?

Thanks for the info Katee. I've been dying to try the nylon crack, but it's only been in the past couple weeks that I've gotten my currency reqs done.

Are there going to be any BMI's there this weekend that can take up new bird wanna-be's?

Heard of a snow ball.

Why was everyone on the ground running for cover??

That's because for most everyone risk taking isn't about the risks, it's about experiencing things in life most people are afraid to try. Risking your life pointlessly is foolish, because without life you can't experience what's beyond the risks. So you do everything you can to minimize the risks so long as it doesn't negatively effect the experience that causes you to take the risks in the first place.

I've found that to be the opposite unless you have very experienced friends willing to coach you for free. FF is a lot more dangerous, so you really need certain skills before hitting specific situations. For example I started FFing at around jump 90 or so and have only recently started getting in on 4 ways. And even now I'm finding myself to be a slow faller, so I need to be able to stand reliably to keep up with some jumpers. That takes work for me to do yet, which keeps me out of complicated jumps with those people.

If the 1734 doesn't include gear rental then yeah it's a lot. If SDC takes big guys up(and they have the gear) you could probably take the wife and kids to Orlando and do AFF on close to the same budget.

When my mother was around 11 or 12(this would've been close to 60 years ago) her doctor ordered her to drink a malt a day because she was too skinny. So yeah, it could be one of those generational hold overs.