MarkM

And how many DZ's have you been to? It that fact or just what you think? I seem to remember a call for hard data. Guessing doesn't count. From http://www.uspa.org/publications/index.htm That would seem to indicate that the majority of skydivers are below age 40.

Heh, Thumper? Glad you weren't hurt worse.

I don't know the numbers, but I think there are more tandem factories that don't allow fun jumpers than there are fun dropzones that don't allow tandems. So odds are, tandems can bring in more money than fun jumpers.

I think there are better ways to help developing countries than to throw money at them.

If you're going to do a realistic drill, then you're going to have a lot of jumpers exiting quickly. I'd think that this would be dangerous because of canopy opening proximity and also load balancing on the plane. You'd probably get as much out of just doing hop and pops from 3k. I don't think some people are used to or comfortable with low altitude exits.

Heh, female. Either that or I'm gay.

Easy, install http://www.mozilla.org

Yeah, because look how much respect squids get for their crazy rice rocket videos.

You're missing a poll option...

Been there, done that. It's happened to other people with other DZs closing down as well

I still get all mine signed, at least when I remember to ask people to sign them. I'm sure I'll stop once I get my D, if not before then(it's not like anyone checked my log book when I applied for my A or anything). But I definately will always log my jumps.

WoW is a very good game. I play a gnome mage and NE druid on Dalaran. I love the gnome just for the pimping dance he does.

Seen one of my links look about the same after a jump once. I didn't tighten it enough when I installed my main. Fortunately I had the habit of inspecting things carefuly when I put that new main on and caught it before I jumped.

Here's a good read about wrist guards in snowboarding, wrist injuries are common in that sport: http://www.ski-injury.com/wrist.htm#evidence There's a good section that handles the "I heard that wrist guards merely transfer the force further up the arm and break the bones somewhere else" idea as well. I think with ankle injuries it's as much about angle rather than force. Put force in the wrong way on an ankle and it'll pop or sprain. Ankle support I'd think would help prevent that. I've seen quite a few people break and sprain joints(mostly ankles, though one wrist) because it hit the ground and bent the wrong way. I'm sure everyone has heard about someone snapping or twisting an ankle because they hit a divit or mole hole while landing. I wish the sport tracked minor injuries more closely. There are probably a lot of common small injuries that happen which could be reduced via gear or brief training. To the orgional poster, I think that mostly I've seen students with bruises and generally I've seen more guys in the 50-300 jump range breaking legs(getting on faster canopies yet still not solid in bad situations), but my experience is pretty limited and that may just be because there are a lot more 50-300 skill jumpers than students. Personally I'd say my 1-50 jump experience range was at a pretty high risk for injury, and I did get a lot of sprains that would've affected me in other sports. It's not just landings too, a bad opening can have you hurting for weeks and as a noob it's easy to pack a bad opening or have a crap body position which gives you a bad opening.

Heck, when I make my own bread it's pretty much stale by the end of the next day. If I buy a loaf of bread from the store it'll last about a week. It's silly to automatically assume something is bad for you just because it's not "natural" or isn't pure. People used to drink distilled water because distilling filtered out all the impurities in water, then they started to lose their hair because your body needs those impurities. I think it's the french fries at McDonalds more than anything. Those suckers are 100% pure yummy fat. But I usually eat at Subway when I want fast food. It's good wholesome low cal stuff there.

No no no, you're supposed to just follow the zombie-like fanatical group mind devotion present at your DZ. "One of us, one of us". Besides, those "other" guys kill baby seals to make their canopies and they don't eat dolphin safe tuna in their salads. How can you support that?

I have a 700 jump Triathlon 160 that flies wonderfully. The main killer on the value of it though is that it's 9 years old, even though I bought it in 2000 and kept it stored for about 4 years. I don't know how I'd price the Spectre 150, depends on when it was made. Usually you subtract about $100 per 100 jumps off what they'd cost brand new, or $100 per year of age(whatever is higher). To me a recent reline adds in a bit more value though, I paid a little more for my Hornest 150 because it had a brand new reline. Relines cost about 200 or so. Can you see the canopy beforehand? You're at a big CA DZ no? There's no reason why any seller shouldn't be comfortable sending the canopy to the rigger at a big DZ for you to check out.

Hmm when you wrote color I figured on it being purple, blue or green. I guess I hang around freeflyers too much.

I uses to jump at Fort Wayne in 2000 when I was a SL student and it was being ran out of Waterloo. It was a very cool DZ, a little crazy but it also managed to stay safe, very much a "fun jumper" type of place. A guy named AJ was the owner and he was a pretty level headed guy, ran the place because he loved the sport. No idea if he still runs the DZ. If he does, it's worth checking out. I also used to jump Goshen when it was being ran by a guy named Charlie with Bo and Paula as instructors. Bo and Paula really made that DZ and they own it now, so I can only imagine it's gotten better.

Where are you getting them for a dollar? They were about 4 dollars at Radio Shack where I live. If you can order them online for a dollar I'd buy a small supply to keep at the DZ for other people. It sucks when your altimeter dies out in the middle of the day.

I don't think the battery life indicator is sensative enough on the Neptune. I had my Neptune lock up a couple months ago and removing/reinserting the battery reset it. Worked fine for awhile then when I was prepping for night jumps it would lock up every time after turning the backlight on. Borrowed someone else's Neptune who's batteries were about as old as mine(March) and it locked up on me at 5k during a night HAHO. New batteries fixed both of them, but mine only registered a low battery after that second time of locking up.

I've been through a couple training programs, some teached and practiced it, some only taught it, some didn't even do that. I'm really glad a couple of my early instructors had me practice it. It's saved me from bad injury once. Just find an instructor at the DZ, have them explain it to you and watch you try it a couple times jumping off a table or something onto grass.

So like what would we do in the Men's Forums? Talk about whether or not The Boys cause extra drag for freeflyers? Discuss what kind of birth control we prefer? Announce men's swooping events? Testicular cancer issues and drives? Get advice from other men about what our girlfriends might be thinking about?

Here's what you do. Plop down your canopy in the middle of a bunch of packing skydivers and start to pack like you don't know what you're doing. I mean, look down at the canopy and scratch your head, swear a lot, give up and restart multiple times, struggle and fail to get it into the bag and so on. Pretty soon you'll have people showing you just what to do. If this doesn't work, try a different DZ.

I don't pay income taxes to my state. I'm allowed to own a gun where I live and even carry it around with me. That isn't true everywhere in the US and I wouldn't call those changes cosmetic.