Eule

Maybe including time since registering or total days logged in would also be a useful measurement. Of course, a dedicated scammer could just log in and wait. I posted a bit about this here before I saw this thread. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I wonder if some kind of scoring system would work. Sort of like a feedback rating on eBay or the rating/moderation system used at sites like Slashdot. You start with zero when you first create your account, and then: - one point gets added each day (or, one point gets added for each day on which you log in) - two points get added each time you post - one point gets added each time somebody follows up to one of your posts - points get added if an existing user says you're a good guy (based on how many points the 'referring' user has; a recommendation from HH or a mod would give you more points than a recommendation from somebody who signed up yesterday) - one hundred points get added when you buy a mod a beer For certain areas of the site, you would then require a minimum score to use them. It wouldn't take any score (or even an account) to _read_ most of the site, just like now. But you might have to have a minimum score of, say, 20 to post a classified ad. Of course, all these numbers would be adjusted based on experience. Possible problems: the scammers will just register and wait until they can post an ad. Or, they will register, and then go post-whoring to get their score up. You would also get the whole dicksize war that goes on now with jump count, post count, etc - maybe the point count is not displayed to the user, to help offset that. The error message when the user tries to do something that is above his or her score might say something like "We don't know you well enough yet - try again later" instead of saying "You are at 193, and you need 200 to do this." Just some ideas. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Actually, it varies a little bit. The Earth isn't a homogenous ball of rock and it also isn't a perfect sphere. Gravity is a bit higher at the poles and a bit lower at the equator. It also varies with altitude, but this is a fairly small effect. Having said that, I don't know of any dropzone that advertises "Come to Skydive Foobar! 9.82 m/s**2 guaranteed!" The common answers (financial and cultural) have already been given. It might also be interesting to look at the proportion of minorities in the general population. http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t1/tab01.txt has some data from the 2000 US census. I'm going to use the "18 and over" chart, since nearly all skydivers are at least that old. If the population of skydivers exactly mirrored the US population, then for people that consider themselves to be of one race: 7 white people would jump for every black person that jumps. 21 white people would jump for every Asian person that jumps. 97 white people would jump for every Indian that jumps. Based on that, if you go to a dropzone with a relatively low number of jumpers, it may well appear that there aren't any minorities that jump. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Whoa. That wasn't what I meant at all. What I meant was, that on TV, when the General Lee drove by, sheriff's cars (painted black and white) that had been driving along perfectly normally would suddenly spin out or run into a tree or go into a ditch or something, whether they were involved in chasing the General Lee or not. Since your canopy would look like the General Lee, it was a joke that other people's canopies that looked like a sheriff's car would suddenly have problems. I wasn't talking about beating up on black people at all. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

They got behind on the gravity bill and it was turned off. Their 182 could make it to altitude in 3 minutes but when the people jumped, they just hung there in the air. They had to wait until it got dark, covertly attach a hose to the neighbor's gravity well, and run the hose over to the landing area to get the jumpers down. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The Prince of Darkness takes another one... I know that skydiving is generally more expensive in Rightpondia, but that seems like a lot - it's about US$90. The _retail_ cost of still+video for a tandem runs something like US$75 here; I don't know how much of that the cameraman usually gets but I'd guess US$50 plus or minus. Everybody is _supposed_ to. In the UK it may be different, but in the US it can basically go one of two ways: you are an employee of some firm or person, and the tax gets taken out of each paycheck before you get it, OR you are a "consultant" or "independent contractor" and have to set aside the tax yourself. There are other possibilities but these two are probably the most common. Being a consultant and getting your entire check does allow you to manage your money independently of the government, but it's pretty easy to forget that 15%-25% of that check isn't really there because you'll have to send it in later. Then there is the "lunch bag full of cash" method... Again, things will be different in the UK, but I figure it like this. US$50,000 might be a good gross for an electrical engineer a few years out of college. At $50 a jump, that's 1000 jumps a year to gross the same, or just over 19 jumps a week. If you're at a 182 dropzone that only operates on the weekends, you're probably not going to get this many. If you were at a dropzone with larger aircraft and longer hours in the southern US (operating more of the year), you might. Do something else. For instance, one video guy at my DZ had previously managed restaurants, and his plan was to go somewhere that gets busy in the winter, like a ski resort town, and work in a restaurant or club there. Maybe you could do consulting on electronic projects. This is more for the winter than the random weekend with bad weather, though. At the DZ I go to, all of the video guys and instructors have 9 to 5 jobs during the week, and then jump on the weekends. The only person with a full-time job there is the DZO. I don't want to get too personal, but do you hate doing electronics, or do you hate doing electronics for that particular firm? If the former, I don't know what to tell you, but if the latter, maybe you can tie in to skydiving somehow? Go to work for somebody like Alti-2 or Airtec or Vigil - design it, lay it out, solder it, flash it, and jump it. I know those firms are not in the UK but you get the idea. Or, design your own handy widgets for skydivers and sell them. Good luck! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

My fault too. We'll get a room. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Welcome! OK, I have to post this now. When I first saw the "FlyingRedneck" moniker, I immediately thought of a bright orange canopy with the Confederate flag on it. Whenever this canopy is open, anyone under a black and white canopy nearby suddenly experiences hook turns, hard landings, cutaways, etc. I then tried to figure out how you could package a Dixie horn and enough battery for it so that you could wear it on your chest. Then I realized I actually have access to a suitable battery and horn, and had to stop thinking about it before I did something silly. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

That's about the way I read it, too. At first I was trying to figure out which way it was going - was rock climbing going to be moved to dropzone's servers/pipe/board engine or the other way around? But I think you've got it right. This has probably been taken care of already, but my only suggestion for the principals is: Get everything in writing. I help run a community site that works on a volunteer basis - no ad banners or anything. There was a related site that lost their hosting on short notice, and we took them in. Things went OK for a while, but then some of the features on their site took more bandwidth than anticipated. In particular, one video clip got slashdotted, causing a US$2000+ phone bill - the normal bill was about US$200. It's not fun to have to code in a redirect to close off over half a site's content, but the bleeding had to stop somehow. This incident caused a lot of bad feelings between the people involved - one of them still won't talk to me. Since dropzone and presumably rockclimbing are working with "real money" - or at least selling ad banners and so on - they are probably run more like a "real business", with contracts, profit/loss statements, etc, so getting things in writing will probably be second nature to them. I looked at rockclimbing's front page and one of their forum threads about the merger. It seems like their pages (phpBB) load more slowly than dropzone (Gossamer Forum) but someone in the thread over there said the same thing about dropzone! I can't tell much about the relative server load from here; my ping to dropzone is 92 ms (Vancouver, BC, I think) and rockclimbing is 55 ms (California, I think.) No uptimes for either site at netcraft; they're both using Linux/Apache. Merging the user lists "should" be relatively simple, but getting the rockclimbing archives into Gossamer Forum will probably be interesting. GF can apparently do imports, but it doesn't list phpBB as one of the things it understands. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

On most twin-engined airplanes the door is 20 or more feet from the pilot, so you need a systems of lights and switches to communicate with the pilot. I figured that part out. :) I'm just used to jumping from a 182. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

A guy I know in the Netherlands has jumped from one of these. I Googled up the DZ and found the picture of the one he was talking about - on the airport's "historical aircraft display" page! As he said, "It's huge, and slow, and ancient, and everybody loves her." Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[PM'd and posted] From a little Googling, I'm pretty sure that this is the same guy that's in Pink Floyd. If so you might have more luck with "David Gilmour" - I can't check iTunes on this machine, but try that spelling. I think this is the live DVD with the "Pearl Fisher" music on it: http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/ptr/pfloyd/news/david_dvd.html . There doesn't seem to be a track called "Lullaby", but there is supposed to be a lullaby on that DVD - I think it's "Hushabye Mountain". Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

March or April is probably a reasonable time for Eloy - warm, but not too hot. Not bad in Perris, either, but it might rain a bit in March there. Here's a chart for Eloy and a chart for Elsinore (just down the road from Perris): http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliF302000.pl?azeloy http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliF302000.pl?caelsi Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I could see that working at all the currently operating tunnels in the US, but isn't your tunnel a recirculating type? To me, that would mean that the helmet would keep going around and getting reborn. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I am aware of this. So is everybody who was at the dropzone this weekend. :) I got there fairly late on Saturday and she told me she was thinking of going and asked about some details of the tunnel. She bought her airplane ticket on Sunday morning and then came to the DZ and was telling everyone about her upcoming "wind tunnel vacation". There are a couple of other semi-local folks considering going out there as well. Yeah... Rebecca and I bounced a few ideas around about her costume and how to keep things from going flying on their own. Edited to add: I also told her about Barbie. How about the new (one piece) fan? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Are you going to tell them where you're going before, during, or after the drive to the dropzone? :) When I took my first jump class, one guy there was "kidnapped" by his friends as a bachelor's party present - they didn't tell him where they were going until they were a couple of miles from the airport! Sounds like a good idea to me. That's where I've been working on my student jumps - I live in Tulsa. General advice: Get pictures - stills and/or video. You can call and make an appointment, or just show up - if you don't have an appointment, get there as early in the day as you can if you don't want to wait an hour or two. OSC is always open on the weekends but if you absolutely can't come out then, they can sometimes work out a time during the week. If it's going to be warm, you might bring some water or soda or whatever - there is a pop machine at the airport but that's about it unless you go back into town. Town is only about three minutes away, so it's not that big a deal. In Cushing, Homestead has good cheap breakfast, while Steer Inn (steaks/burgers/BBQ) and Rodolfo's (Mexican) are good for lunch and dinner. As has been mentioned, deal direct - call the 918 area code number that's on their Web site; it's answered all the time, not just on the weekends. Have fun! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I don't have a Protrack, but: when any kind of computer starts losing its clock, the battery is the first place to look. If you just bought the Protrack new, get warranty help. If not, try another set of batteries from a different store. It is possible to go to the store and buy brand-new batteries in the factory sealed package that are perfectly dead. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. If you really don't want to spend the money on new batteries to see if that fixes it, find a friendly local geek with a digital voltmeter to check the batteries you have. If you can find a clueful Radio Shack clerk, he or she may be able to help. (Note that your odds of finding a clueful Radio Shack clerk are about the same as the odds of finding a commercial pilot that'll let you jump out of his Boeing at 30K halfway between Denver and Seattle on a scheduled flight.) Or, temporarily swap batteries with someone else at your DZ to see if the problem follows the batteries or stays with the Protrack. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Newer cars (say 2000 and up) that have vertical, non-retracting radio antennae often have this design. The main shaft of the antenna is straight as usual, but there is a somewhat thinner wire wound around it all the way to the tip. The windings are fairly widely spaced, like one an inch (2.5 cm) or so. The wire is bonded to the antenna at manufacture and then the whole thing is painted, so it looks like one unit. I understand that this is done for the same reason - to reduce noise. The wrap on a car antenna is probably tuned to 70 mph (110 km/h) or less; it'll be interesting to see what the windings for 120+ mph (200+ km/h) look like. I sort of thought they might try making the net out of airfoil-shaped metal tubing. Just like you can buy round tubing or square tubing, you can buy tubing that has kind of a teardrop shape, like a wing. As far as I know, though, this only goes down to the equivalent of 0.5" (12 mm) or so round tubing. You could probably manufacture it in smaller sizes, but crisscrossing lengths of this tubing to make a net would be extremely interesting. The pointy trailing edges would tend to cut into the round leading edges, I would think. In other net news... have you guys got your new net out there in North Carolina yet? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I think this picture shows it the best: http://www.airkix.com/photo_gallery/construction%203%20aug-sep05/slides/site-90-01sep05.jpg The caption doesn't say, but I think that is standing under the flight chamber, looking up through the chamber to the spot where the air that has just left the chamber turns horizontally (in two directions) to go through the fans again. The turnvanes appear as several horizontal slats - almost like a Venetian blind - in this picture. That makes more sense to me than just a solid wall. Looking back at davedlg's "turnvane1" picture, I can pick out the slats a little better now. In the picture, all the air from the flight chamber would be coming vertically out of the ground into the box section in the center, then about half of it would go through the visible turnvanes and towards the camera. The other half would go the other way - away from the camera. I think it'll be interesting for experienced flyers to compare the recirculating and open tunnels. This may have been asked before, but if it's the middle of January in the UK and the tunnel is on full recirculation to keep the heat in, and somebody goes flying after having really spicy curry for breakfast, does it gas everyone else out for the rest of the day? :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

This is interesting. Maybe all the pieces aren't in it yet, but the turnvanes just look like a piece of the wall set at a 45 degree angle. The turnvanes I know about usually involve several curved pieces in the middle of the duct. I think they reduce turbulence as the air goes around the corner. They are pretty common in the ductwork of forced-air heating and cooling systems: http://www.offroadvw.net/tech/brad/fanshroudtech.htm http://www.suncoastweb.com/aerodyne/assembly.htm http://www.suncoastweb.com/aerodyne/installation.htm Do you know if there are going to be more pieces inside those ducts, or do the pictures show their final configuration? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Hey, I know that guy! That video was very popular at the DZ this weekend. The younger guy that's talking to the camera is Sean, who flies camera and does packing at the DZ I go to. Once school starts up, during the week, the DZ takes the plane to various college towns and does tandems. This one was in Kearney, Nebraska, and I think Sean's family is from around there. He said he was trying to get his dad to do it and he wouldn't, and his grandma said "if he won't, I will". So she went, and Sean shot the video of the dive. The local station picked it up and then forwarded it to CNN. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The DZ I'm at has a similar structure: $7 to get on the plane and $1/1000 feet up to 11,000 (C182). I haven't yet tried to pay them $8 to see if they would put me out at 1000 feet. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The USPA asks for demographic info when you sign up or renew your membership. They publish a summary each year - the summaries for the past few years are linked from http://www.uspa.org/about/sport.htm . It's not broken down by training methods, but in 2004, the summary says that a bit under half of all USPA members were 40 or older, and about one-fifth of them were 50 or older. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I update my profile every Sunday or Monday. :) In my log book, I usually write the basic data (date, altitude, maneuver, etc). The instructor and I discuss the jump and then he writes in the description and signs it. On my first several jumps, I also wrote (on the computer) a narrative of the dive on my own. At the top, I put some extra factual data - who the instructors were, approximate time of day, tail number, etc. Then I would do a brain dump of how I remembered the dive. These were fairly extensive; if printed they would have ranged from two to four pages. After about a dozen jumps and some discussions both on here and with my instructors, I quit writing these detailed notes after each dive. Trying to remember everything that was going on during the skydive was somewhat getting in the way of actually doing the skydive. At some point I will probably start logging a little extra data on the computer again, but I probably won't write big stories for a while. Most of the people that work at the DZ seem to log all their jumps at once at the end of the day. They refer to the manifest board to keep things straight. One of my instructors has a two jumps per page logbook like mine and usually writes a few sentences; the other one has a 4 or 5 jumps per page logbook and just writes things like "tandem", "AFF L2", etc. When they do their logbooks they also fill out their "time card" that gets turned in on Sunday evening to get their paycheck. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.