Eule

Having a) noticed that the forums just hit two million posts, b) been mightily inspired by cpoxon's World Team statistics, and c) been bored at work, I figured I'd do a little number-crunching - see attached. This was all done with information available to anyone who has a login on dropzone.com. I'm not a mod or sysadmin or otherwise able to access any statistics that "normal users" can't get. So, I don't have any information on how much disk, CPU, or bandwidth the site takes. Some of the numbers don't quite add up - the total posts and threads as reported at the top of the forum page are a little bigger than what you get by adding up the user-visible posts and threads. I'm guessing that deleted posts and maybe some non-public forums for moderation or maintenance would account for the difference. Yes, it has already been established that I am a geek. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Yes, it is fairly simple to run reciprocating engines on alcohol instead of gasoline/petrol. If all you do is change the carburetion, your "gas mileage" will go down, since alcohol has a lower energy content than gasoline. You can do things like raise the compression ratio (mill the heads or install heads with smaller chambers, install domed pistons) to get some of the power back. How to make alcohol from corn: 1. Fill tractor with diesel. Plow field. 2. Refill tractor with diesel. Plant corn. 3. At intervals, refill tractor with diesel, and spray (petroleum- derived) fertilizer and pesticides on corn. 4. Fill combine and truck with diesel. Harvest corn with combine, load it into truck. 5. Drive truck to refinery and unload corn for processing. It turns out that you get less energy back from the grain alcohol than you put in by running diesel in the tractor, combine, and truck. In other words, you should have just run the diesel in your airplane (or car, or whatever) in the first place, instead of fooling around with the corn. IMHO, any further improvements in reciprocating aircraft engine efficiency are probably going to come from electronic fuel injection - not mechanical as some aircraft have now. Yes, it's expensive, complicated, etc. It's also a fairly proven technology - we have about 35 years of experience with analog electronic fuel injection and about 25 years of experience with digital electronic fuel injection. Beyond that, I agree with riggerrob that the next step is probably a turbine engine run on something other than petroleum-derived diesel. (I think reciprocating diesel engines will probably always be too heavy to be practical in an airplane, but I could be wrong.) The energy content of biodiesel is high enough that you end up getting back more energy than you put in to make it. I am 100% sure that the various air forces already know how to do this, because they can't always count on fresh, filtered, lemon-scented Jet-A to run their aircraft on. I'm about 75% sure that GE, Pratt-Whitney, etc have run alternative-fuel experiments on the bigger turbines that go in commercial aircraft, and a lot of that will probably translate to the "little" turbines in jump planes. If you're a fan of free markets, and you want to see more development of alternative fuels, then one of the better things that can happen is for the price of oil to go way up and stay that way. That way, it's a lot easier to justify throwing money at engineers and chemists to develop better engines and better fuels, instead of just buying more oil. It's not a requirement, but it also helps if the political climate is in your favor. For some reason, there was a lot of federal funding for alternative energy in the late 1970s, but hardly any from about 1981-1993. By the mid-90s, oil was cheap again, and nobody cared. I know, I know, Speaker's Corner is ------> that way. Tom makes a good point about inflation. I would also add: there is no other product that has its current price displayed 24 hours a day on electrically lit signs every few blocks. If all grocery stores had signs out front with the price of bread or eggs, people would complain about how much those things cost. This article on energy, fuels, alternative energy sources, etc may be interesting. I don't agree with all of the opinions or conclusions, but I think it's a good overview of the basic science involved. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

That'd probably be a new one for whoever they bought the cuffs from... "No, these aren't for my girlfriend/boyfriend - I'm trying to keep someone from stealing my parachute." I will note that it is possible to buy cuffs that are more comfortable than what the police have - you'll need to supply your own chain or cable and lock. I wonder if you could use one of those alarms like stores have for expensive display items, where there is a little box with an alarm, and an electrical cable that runs from the box, through the handles (or whatever) of the items, and then back to the box. If the cable is unplugged or cut, the alarm goes off. You'd have to secure the box, though, or somebody would just steal the rig complete with alarm and remove the alarm later. Sometimes, the goal is not to make some item impossible to steal, but to convince a thief that it'd be better to steal a similar item from someone else. For instance, a lot of car security things are like this. You might not like the idea of saying, essentially, "go steal somebody else's rig", but that might be an effective way to keep your rig. On the other hand, this can lead to an arms race. "Dude, back in the day, we thought a 400-way was really huge, and we didn't even have armed guards for our gear at boogies!" Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

This is more of a generic "small business" thing, but maybe it will help. You want to talk to a DZO. If you ask the DZO whose DZ is an hour or even four or five hours away about getting into the business, he or she will probably be reluctant to help create a competitor. But if you ask a DZO several states away, you are more likely to get helped. I realize you're trying to contact a 'far away' DZO here, but not all DZOs "do" the Internet, and those that do might be reluctant to discuss hard numbers in email. A phone call, or visiting the DZ with beer, might work better for this. I wonder if PIA or USPA has any advice for aspiring DZOs. If they have any kind of "best practices" documents, those might help you estimate your costs. You also probably want to talk to an attorney, and for more than just the usual adage to get everything in writing. I don't know the details or the reasons but at a couple of the DZs I know about, the structure of which entity owns the planes, gear, hangar, airport is not simple. This is not done to be sneaky - I _think_ it is done to help limit liability, so one lawsuit can't take _everything_. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. The attorney may also be able to give you some tax advice, or talk to an accountant. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

11 out of 15, 73%. Got hosed on the 10/9.8 thing. Apparently Scotland is more dense than the rest of the world, resulting in a higher acceleration due to gravity there. I score the BBC down on speeling and grammer, though. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Did the people who said these things have anything else in common? Like, were they younger, older, mostly men, mostly women, from a certain part of the country, etc? I know you don't make them tell you all this stuff before you lend them a demo, but I'm just curious. I also wonder what would happen if you had some canopies that were mislabeled on purpose - like a "slow" canopy with the "fast" model name screened on the end cells, or a canopy labeled one size smaller than it actually is. Somebody asks for a 150, you hand them a 170 and tell them it's a 150 - would they notice the switch or come back and say, "wow, this is a lot better than the 170 I've been jumping!" I realize this would be a bad idea for many reasons, one of which would be that they might end up thinking they could handle a 150 and would demo a (correctly marked) 150 from another vendor and get in trouble with it. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Bribery? Stand in the middle of the packing area and loudly announce that you have a beer (or a six-pack, a case, or if you really flail a lot, a keg) for anybody who will jump with you. This works especially well on Sunday afternoon, when people are starting to think about the beer light and remembering that they drank all their beer on Saturday night. Bonus points if you are in a backwards state where it isn't possible to get real beer on Sunday. :) Eule (who will hopefully be faced with this dilemma himself soon) PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I started jumping in June 2005 and I've jumped at least about every other weekend since then. I still have a certain amount of getting psyched up for a jump, especially if it's the first one of the weekend. I find that most of the time, I get somewhat anxious on the ground and more anxious on the ride up, but when it's time to get in the door, I just click into the routine of the dive and start focusing on what I'm going to do, rather than be scared about it. Sometimes it lasts until I'm out the door and down a thousand feet, and then I really settle into the routine and quit thinking about being scared. The next jump on the same weekend is almost always a little easier. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Probably. It depends on the dropzone, but at some, taking the FJC as a refresher is a little cheaper than taking it for the first time - asking is free. I don't know if that's OK for you or not. I can say that I weigh 180-185 dry and around 210 out the door, and with 39 jumps, I've never been on anything smaller than a 240 (0.88). The 240 was just on a few of the most recent jumps, too; before that it was a 260 (0.81) and before that a 280 (0.75). Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

When I get a new canopy, I have been thinking of doing the cells like this: black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray. The reserve would be white. If you used one color for long, another for short, and a third color for a delimiter, you could put your initials on your canopy in Morse code. bob.dino's comment probably applies. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Call the hotel to let them know it's coming. I've never had a hotel refuse to accept a shipment, but it could happen. They will usually keep it in the office or some reasonably secure place, and can give it to you when you check in. Put the address on the outside of the box in a couple of places besides on the FedEx paperwork. If you use a label to do this, put some clear tape over the label. Also put the address inside the box in more than one place. I would avoid putting "parachute" in the "what is it" field on the shipping label, unless you have to for the insurance. I worked at a place where we were set up to print our own FedEx labels and we could put whatever we wanted in the "what is it" field. There is some information on how to pack a rig here: http://www.chutingstar.com/archives/00000112.html Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

And it shows. But please don't take this as an attack. It's all good. :) I know that there's probably a lot I don't know about BASE. My personal opinion towards BASE at the moment: I have seen BASE jumps on video, but not in person. I'd like to see some jumps by experienced BASE jumpers in person, from several different angles if possible. I have no desire to do a BASE jump myself. Ask me again after I've got lots more skydives. Uh oh... requirements creep! If you're going to specify a particular bridge, then I get to specify a pilot who's been flying jump loads for 10 years in the same 182 and a DZ with a metric buttload of open landing area. :) I'm sorry but it's a parachute, it wants to open. I've heard that before, mostly in reference to the kinds of pack jobs one can "get away with". I think it's mostly true, but as long as we're anthropomorphizing the gear, I have to think that even a parachute can have a bad day and decide it'd rather stay in the nice comfy container instead. As a moderately well-known politician once said, "Trust, but verify." I trust that it will work, and that if my main is hosed enough that I'm going for the reserve, it will very probably work a lot better than the main. But the other side of that is that nothing or nearly nothing is 100%.* It might have a whole lot of nines, but it doesn't have a one and a bunch of zeros. (emphasis mine) I think that "can only" should be a "can't"? As far as I know, packing with the slider down or removed will give you a canopy that opens very fast. This would imply that going to high speeds before pulling (having a long delay) is a bad idea. Assume for a moment that you could fix the "getting slammed" part - then skydivers could pack their mains like a BASE jumper would. If this type of pack-job is that reliable, we could save several hours of FJC, lots of money, and a little weight and bulk on a skydiving rig... :) In almost all cases, I think the option of having that second canopy is a very good one. I've yet to do a BASE jump where I forget to pull. It's hard not to forget. I agree that it's hard to forget, if your brain is online. Hit your head on the aircraft or object on exit, or have a heart attack or seizure just as you leap off, and remebering isn't really under your control anymore. I haven't checked the BASE forum yet, but I do intend to, maybe after this thread seems to be winding down. To be clear: I'm not mad at you or thinking that you're flaming me for not knowing about BASE. I think we are both having a good discussion while coming from different perspectives. Eule * I would say that there is one event that, as of 1 Jan 2006, has a 100% chance of happening: Someday, everyone will die, and stay dead. This has nothing to do with the dangers of skydiving or BASE jumping or driving a car or walking around; it's just a fact of life. I qualify this with a date because who knows what the doctors will cook up in the future. Also, one reason I said "nearly nothing" is that a non-trivial set of people believe very strongly that the "stay dead" part didn't happen once - maybe they're right. PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

It depends. :) Caution: low jump numbers here, and I know nearly nothing about BASE. I also haven't looked at the replies in the BASE forum. One way to look at it: when does the jumper screw up? At or just before landing (low turn, flare high/low/not at all, no PLF): Probably BASE. For falls of just a few feet, it's better to fall in the water than on the ground. (Assumes the water is deep enough.) Between opening and landing (screwing up canopy control, not flying to the right landing spot): The BASE jumper will always have the obstacle of the bridge supports. Otherwise, fairly dependent on landing area. If the skydiver has flat grass for miles around and the BASE jumper has a river 30 feet wide and six feet deep, the skydive is probably safer. On the other hand, if the BASE jumper is in the middle of a 640-acre, 30 foot deep lake, and the skydiver has civilization (obstacles) surrounding a 1-acre landing area, the BASE jump is probably safer. At opening (incorrect response to malfunction): Skydive. Even if the skydiver is fighting a main mal and doesn't cut away, I think he's got a better chance of getting _something_ over his head (via the Cypres) that will slow him down. At pull time (hard pull, bad body position): Probably skydive. The skydiver has more time to fix something like mondo line twists, and has the option of cutting away a really badly screwed up main. Also the main might have gotten him upright enough that his body position won't get too screwed up in the time between cutting away and pulling the reserve. For a no pull, the Cypres might be able to help, but the BASE jumper is done. Between exit and pull time: Mostly covered by the above. The BASE jumper has less time to get in a bad position but also less time to get out of it. I am thinking of something like the time required to go totally head-down, but the problem with this doesn't really show up until you pull and get whipped around. At exit: Depends on the configuration of the bridge and the exit method from the Cessna. If the BASE jumper is jumping from the lowest high point on the bridge structure, the act of stepping forward enough to get off of the bridge will probably cause him to clear all of the bridge. If the skydiver is going to dive out the door of a 182 to the rear, he will probably clear the strut, gear, and tail. But if the BASE jumper is jumping from halfway between the lowest high point and the road (or tracks), he's got more bridge in his way. Same if the skydiver is going to stand on the strut and step backwards. If the BASE jumper is knocked unconscious, he's pretty much done. An unconscious skydiver has a chance to get a good canopy via the Cypres. You might be able to weight the above by the relative frequency of the various things. Right now the dz.com fatality database has this, sorted from high to low: Landings 36% Malfunctions 22% Collisions 13% Other 12% No Pulls 6% Reserve Problems 6% Of course this doesn't include injuries, and is mostly (entirely?) skydiving, not BASE. If most of the "landing" category is low turns (and not collision with obstacles), then the BASE is probably better because of the water. The others are more of a toss-up, I think. Disclaimer: I am aware of various arguments for and against AADs, and I think it's a bad idea to "rely" on the AAD in some of the scenarios above. But I think it makes it more likely that the skydiver will end up with _something_ out in most situations. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Clicky of Jack's AOPA link: http://download.aopa.org/epilot/2005/20052653ad.pdf Clicky direct to FAA: http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/0/024844d7e970c68d862570e00057f02e/$FILE/2005-26-53%20(Emergency).pdf If FAA clicky doesn't work: Go to http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/safety/alerts/ Click on "Airworthiness Directives (AD)" Click on "Emergency ADs (Last 30 days)" Click on "2005-26-53" Original emergency airworthiness directive from New Zealand CAA: http://www.caa.govt.nz/fulltext/nzcars/Emergency/DCA_750XL_7.pdf Followup emergency AD from NZ CAA, approving replacement of rivets with bolts per PAC service bulletin: http://www.caa.govt.nz/fulltext/nzcars/Emergency/DCA_750XL_7A.pdf Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

If he's in the US, you might be able to look up his pilot's license: http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certification/interactive_airmen_inquiry/ You have to put in some information about _yourself_ first before you get to the lookup part - I think it's a legal requirement. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

All, An idea: Have a page with links to good threads about certain topics. I am thinking that this will slot in between the "fully polished article" and the "use the search function and sift the results yourself" methods of finding information. It's relatively easy to add links to a list, and it might provide a useful first level of filtering by someone seeking information. Maybe some statistics could be collected, or the rating system used, to decide when a certain set of popular threads warrants being written up into a full article. You might also want to indicate the most appropriate forum if you want to discuss further. I thought of this after "how do I get my rig through the airport" popped up again recently. (Probably pops up around the holidays a lot.) There were a few posts that referred back to earlier threads. On the proposed page there might be entries like this. Taking your Rig through the Airport See threads on this from December 2005, October 2005, and June 2004. If it isn't covered in one of these threads, ask in the General forum. Is Billvon a Duck? Some threads on yes, no, and huh?. If it isn't covered in one of these threads, ask in the

1. Don't get hurt. 2. Get A-license, sometime before I have enough jumps to qualify (by jump numbers only) for a B-license. 3. In pursuit of 2, don't break any more instructors. 4. Get other half to the DZ sometime to watch me jump. (Not for lack of trying so far; schedules and weather have conspired against us.) 5. Mom wants to do a tandem; make that happen for her. 6. Get some more tunnel time. 7. Try out some small-way jumps (like maybe 4 tops) as experience allows. 8. Accumulate more gear - if not a whole rig, then everything short of that (altimeter, helmet, keg tapper, etc.) Further out (probably past 2006)... Get enough jumps to start thinking about doing some wingsuit jumps. Visit my family in Europe and do some jumps there. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Random thoughts... If you were just worried about how the smoke canister would affect your control, you could fly with an empty/dud one. On the other hand, maybe you want to make sure you can get all the moves off while the smoke lasts, and you want to time it with a real canister. I wonder if you could do it with fog - either the classic dry ice (solid CO2) in water or whatever the fog machines at the nightclubs use. You'd probably need to generate a lot of it - continuously for a non- recirculating tunnel and maybe just at first for a recirculating tunnel. You might have to be careful with the CO2 fog in a recirculating tunnel - too much CO2 means not enough O2. If you had some colored lights to shine into the fog you might be able to come up with nice effects. Another great idea... GLITTER! It'd probably be fun in an open tunnel and you'd never clean it all out of a recirculating tunnel. Or it might sandblast you... hmm. You might want to wear a full-face or at least one of those dust masks over your nose and mouth if you tried this. Depending on the tunnel and motor design it might also cause excitement if it got into the motors. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Punching "CH-47" into the 'model' box at http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/acftref_inquiry.asp gives 4 that are registered to Boeing with a Pennsylvania address. Looking up the one that Amazon posted (N245CH) at http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_inquiry.asp shows it as a "Boeing-Vertol" model 234. Going back into the make/ model with "Boeing" and "234" comes up with 5 registered to Columbia in Oregon, and 2 with an address in DC. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/h-47.htm gives the Boeing model numbers for the first ones as 114 and 414; neither of those find anything at the FAA. http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/ (caution: much Java and music) has a pretty extensive list of military tail numbers, and some info on the Columbia ones at http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/history/aircraft/Columbia/Columbia.html . This also gives a Boeing model number 107; all of those at the FAA come back to Columbia. Columbia is at http://www.colheli.com/colheli.html but they don't say how much a lift ticket is. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I want to do that too!!! Then, before sitting down and strapping in, totally gear up and then sit in the exit row, tapping my feet nervously. DISCLAIMER: None of this is actually a good idea, but it's fun to think about. Alternatively, get yourself a polo shirt with the airline's logo on it and wear it on the flight. Get in the plane, gear up, sit down. If any other passengers ask, say something like "Well, they implemented a new policy for free employee flights - we can get on the first flight that goes _past_ where we want to go and get out when we're over that city." Or, "We're thinking of a new service - really low fares, but you have to land by yourself - and I'm testing it out." Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Mainly for claiming that the TSA regs had been superseded, which is pretty obviously not true. At first I also thought they couldn't require you to open the reserve (since that incurs a reserve pack job - $$*) but a more careful re-reading of the one-page TSA sheet doesn't support this - they talk about opening the "chute(s)" which implies they could ask you to unpack both. At the least, it does NOT say, "we won't ask you to unpack your reserve." I haven't re-read the FAA directive. * I realize this isn't an "immediate" thing - if this happened, you would repack your reserve and main yourself there at the security point so you could get on the plane without a big wad of canopies, but before you could jump it, it would need a repack and a seal by a rigger to be legal. Also, by "dropping a dime", I don't mean to call up the head TSA guy for that airport or area and say, "Officer Smith hassled me, please fire him", but more something like, "I had a little trouble going through your airport; maybe it would help keep the public happy and keep your officers from catching crap from the public if you could help the officers to understand the regs more completely" or something like that. I'm with you here. I was once inbound on a flight that had to go around a pretty big storm, so it arrived late and I missed my connection. In the terminal, there were about two hundred people with missed connections, and only two agents to help them all. I got in line with the friend I was traveling with and as we moved closer to the desk, he was starting to get pretty annoyed. I convinced him to let me do the talking. I watched a few people in front of us gripe to the agent while she was rebooking them. They left with passes for another flight and that was all. My turn, "Hi, we missed our connecting flight to XYZ because of the storm, and I'd like to see about getting booked on another flight." "OK I can put you on a flight about two hours from now." "That'd be great." " Here are your boarding passes for that flight." I thought we were done but " And here's a voucher for $20 for any of the restaurants in the airport." "Thanks!" I'm pretty sure not everybody got one of those. :) This was a ticket agent instead of security, but being nice apparently helped. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out that when the heads of large corporations say "there is a lack of qualified graduates", they always leave off the part "at the price we want to pay". There is some debate, but I think many companies want to treat IT as a "trade" (like a machinst, carpenter, or electrician) instead of a "profession" (like an engineer, architect, or lawyer). Another factor is that there is no such thing as a registered professional computer geek - at least not on the level that there are registered professional engineers. There are vendor certifications, a few of which are useful but many of which are just sales training in disguise. We brought some of this on ourselves during the .com boom - anybody who could spell HTML was calling themselves a programmer and getting such high prices that some companies involved decided they had to bring salaries down any way they could. Hence H1Bs, outsourcing to India, etc. A friend of mine from college who works in IT says he's seeing a lot of people with two-year "CIS" degrees lately. He says that a lot of them can cut and paste code, but not many of them can go deeper than that. [geek]He told me a story about trying to help some CIS types who were trying to make their code go faster by using ints instead of floats, playing with byte alignment, etc, and not having much luck. He looked at their code and told them that none of that stuff would help much - the big O said that their program would be slow. "What's a big O?"[/geek] When I was in college, I noticed two broad groups of students: ones who would be screwing around with a computer for fun anyway even if they weren't going for a CS degree, and ones who had seen CS in a list of "careers that will make you a lot of money" in a magazine. As far as I know, the people in the former group have done better in the workplace. [geek]A couple of jobs ago, I worked with someone that had just graduated with a four-year Computer Science degree but didn't know what a makefile was.[/geek] I suspect he belonged to the latter group. Skydiving content? Uh... lemme see... AADs and digital altimeters have computers in them... :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

What was the outcome? Did you put the rig in checked baggage? Did you drop a dime on the TSA guy when you finished your trip? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

You know, I'd heard that they grow some really good sh-t in Oz, and now I believe it. :) If you _aren't_ smoking something, I'm off to read this. I would suggest, though, that there is a different financial advantage to working in IT: you can make money as a successful SL or IAD instructor, because if you've worked in IT for more than ten minutes, wanting to throw someone out of an airplane will come naturally to you. The USPA usually has a breakdown by occupation on their member survey results: 2002 2000 Eule (edit: speeling misteak) PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Background: So far, all of my transactions involving skydiving have involved money flowing out of my pocket, not into it. I have a bachelor's degree and have worked at several places, both in and out of what I have a degree in, since graduating ten years ago. I am not an accountant, businessman, or lawyer; this is not legal, financial, or tax advice. I know people who write novels for a living, and their standard advice for aspiring writers who want to quit their day jobs includes "make sure you have X months/years of salary IN THE BANK first". One of the reasons they advocate this is that writers tend to get paid in large, irregular chunks. A writer with a couple of successful books out might make $30,000 one year, but it will come in as a $12,000 check in April, a $10,000 check in September, and an $8,000 check in December. It seems like people working in the skydiving industry get paid in smaller but more regular chunks, but there is probably still some seasonal variation to it, so having enough money in the bank to cover a month or three of cold or rainy weekends is probably a good idea. There are some opposing theories like "it's easy to turn a hobby you love into a job you hate" and "if you find a job you love, you'll never work another day in your life". My suggestion in this direction would be to keep your day-time job, get your ratings, and see what you think after that. You'll have more knowledge on how you feel, and you'll be able to talk to other people who are tandem and AFF instructors to see what they think. Something else that can help you to decide is to do the math. A spreadsheet is great for this but it can be done perfectly well with pencil and paper. What I do is break everything down to a monthly basis first and look at what I make and spend each month. Don't forget that if you're self-employed, you get to buy your own insurance and (probably) withhold your own taxes. You can get a quote on insurance from several places, and guesstimate your taxes by what you paid last year or this year. Or, for this year or last year, "pretend" that you were self-employed - take your yearly net pay, add the withheld taxes back in, and then do your taxes again, assuming that you are self-employed. Don't be surprised if your taxes end up being more than they were for the employee-of-company case. The tax thing varies - I have heard of DZs doing everything from the full-monty W-2s and 1099s to the DZO handing you a wad of cash in the men's room on payday. Remember, the IRS has an infinite amount of time and money to hassle you with. You might want to talk to an accountant or tax preparer to understand the financial stuff better. One nice thing that Florida, Texas, and a few other states have is called a "homestead law". The Texas version is (was?) basically that when you buy a house, the only liens that can be put on it are for the mortgage and the taxes. Once you've paid off the mortgage, and if you keep paying the taxes, it's YOURS. If you lose a bunch of money in Vegas or max out your credit cards or whatever, your creditors can take your car, your rig, or your stereo, but they _cannot_ take your house. You might be sleeping on the floor with the utilities shut off, but it's _your_ floor. :) One side-effect of this used to be that in Texas, there was no such thing as a second mortgage or home equity loan, but I think that has changed. It's probably not a good idea to _depend_ on this law, but it can be a reassuring backup. You didn't mention it and it may or may not be a factor, but I'll say this: Don't move because you've fallen in lust with someone. I did this and althought it eventually worked out (with a different person), it created some unpleasant situations for a while. Again, I am not an accountant, businessman, or lawyer; this is not legal, financial, or tax advice. Good luck! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.