Eule

Do you have one of the flex-fuel Fords or something else? My DZ is just about 50 miles away (100 miles round trip). At 45 mpg and $2.50/gal (I live in the middle of the country in a city with two refineries in it), this costs me about $5.50. My lifetime average (2001 Prius) is 45 mpg; best tank ever 51 mpg; worst tank ever 37 mpg. However, I did get new tires about a month ago which seem to be dropping my average to around 42 mpg, which would put my round-trip cost up to $6. Since I'm still going through AFF (it's taking me a while), this pales in comparsion to the cost of two or three jumps a weekend. For those of you keeping score at home, my numbers are 80 km/160 km, 5.2 l/100 km, €0.54/liter or £0.36/liter, €4.50 or £3.06, 4.6 l/100 km, 6.4 l/100 km, €4.91 or £3.33 . Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

You might also want to visit the "Stammtisch" forum on this site. It's in German and you should be able to talk to a lot of skydivers in Germany. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?forum=28; Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

While waiting to board the plane for my first AFF jump, I noticed that one of my instructors had a round can in the leg pocket of his jump suit. I asked him if it was Skoal and he said no, it was Altoids. He passed out the mints right after we got off the ground and it did help with the dry mouth (in comparison to later jumps when I didn't take a mint). The mint was all gone even before we got to altitude. Eule

Your best bet is probably to look at the dropzone locator at http://www.dropzone.com/dropzone/ . Make sure to turn up the radius from the default 100 miles to 200 or 300 miles - you should find various dropzones in Kansas, Missouri, and possibly Oklahoma. Then check each dropzone's Web site, or contact each one by phone or email, and check on their age policy. Probably you will find that most of them will let you jump at 16 _IF_ you have a waiver form signed by your parents / guardians. You may have to go further afield to find someplace that will let you jump at 16 with no waiver, and then your problem becomes convincing your parents to let you drive to California or Florida, rather than convincing them to sign a waiver. As to safety - that debate is always ongoing. You might look at the reviews for each dropzone when you find them in the locator. You may also want to read some of the articles at http://www.dropzone.com/safety/ , particularly http://www.dropzone.com/content/Detailed/515.html . Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Uh, flying commercial (to get lots of altitude) and then setting the plane on fire (so you have an excuse to jump out) is probably not cheaper than what you're paying now... PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

In the US, per http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ , $20 in 2005 is: $18.01 in 2000 $16.07 in 1995 $13.45 in 1990 $11.27 in 1985 $7.88 in 1980 $5.34 in 1975 $3.97 in 1970 $3.36 in 1965 As a comparison with Trae's numbers, at the DZ I go to, a standard jump ticket is US$18 to 11K (C-182). In the area, aviation gas/petrol (100LL) iis around US$3.10/gallon, while car gas/petrol is around US$2.50/gallon. In metric these are AU$23.80 a jump, AU$1.08/liter avgas, AU$0.87/liter mogas. Eule

Most of the time I jump at "10", which usually works out somewhere between 10,000 and 10,500 AGL. A few times I've jumped at "11", 11,000 to 11,200 AGL or so. The highest I've ever gone was this past Sunday, at 11,500 AGL, and had a really good skydive. All of the jumps were from the same C-182 - if it was a person it would have been eligible for POPS 6 years ago. :) Field elevation is approximately 920 feet MSL. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

So far, once in two months. It was Friday night/Saturday morning, before I went to the DZ on Saturday. What I remember is from at or just after pull time. The canopy deployed and got rectangular - but it was only a single surface, like a round! I could see the tops of the risers and the lines going up to it. The canopy kept turning back and forth on its own - it would get to where it was almost twisting the lines in one direction, then stop and turn the other way, and so on. I wasn't still in freefall, but I was falling faster than I would with a "good" parachute. I looked at it for a while, then thought, "I've been watching it too long, and it still looks weird. Better get rid of it." I cut away and pulled the reserve; the reserve was normal and worked just fine. I remember starting to steer the reserve, but I don't remember the landing. After I woke up, I thought it was reasonably cool that 1) I had my first dream about skydiving and 2) I did the emergency procedures correctly. :) I told someone at the DZ about it and they thought that I was taking my dream as a "bad sign", which I wasn't. The first jump that day went fine. Eule

MikeForsythe: Yes, without hesitation. That is like saying would you let the car manufacture assemble your car? I would submit that a new car is not exactly equivalent to new gear. If you had to go to the car factory and drive the car off the end of the assembly line yourself, it would be closer. Most cars are driven by a human off of the end of the assembly line, over a bumpy surface to check for rattles and loose parts, and then parked. (An acquaintance had this job; he once drove a new pickup truck halfway down the bumpy road, glanced iin the outside mirror, and noticed that the bed had turned about 90 degrees... the bed bolts had been omitted.) A little later, someone drives the car onto a truck, train car, or even a boat. If it goes by train or boat, someone else drives it from the train car or boat onto a truck. When the truck gets to the dealer, someone drives the car off the truck and into the shop, where protective stickers get removed, some exterior trim items are installed, etc - it's another chance for someone to look over the car. While it's true that nobody has taken it up to 120 and slammed on the brakes, the car has been "jumped" (driven) enough to expose any really bad problems with the brakes, steering, etc. As you can see, I am a n00b and a completely new set of gear is probably a ways off for me. Having read this thread and thought about it, I think that when I do buy new gear, I may ask for it to be assembled, but not packed. The first reason is very simple: I want to make sure they didn't accidentally give me a Teatowel 70 when I ordered a Bigboy 250! If the rig came packed, opening up the main to verify it isn't a big deal, but opening up the reserve would incur a reserve repack. Against the cost of a complete new rig, this isn't a lot of money, but why pay it if you don't have to? I would compare the assembly with the available manuals, and inspect the stitching, lines, etc by myself, making a list of questions. Then I'd take it to a rigger and let him or her inspect the assembly and the equipment - after this, we'd go down my list of questions. Then I'd have the rigger pack it, and then I'd jump it. If the only two options are "completely assembled and packed" and "completely unassembled", I'd still inspect the components myself, but probably involve the rigger sooner to help with the assembly. I recall reading a magazine article in the 286 era where the author had ordered a complete computer system in parts. He was looking forward to being the first person to assemble it, and was mad when the parts arrived and he found out the supplier had assembled and run them before shipping. Some of this, I think, isn't even because you think the supplier might have done it wrong. It's just that it's _fun_ to take a pile of parts and assemble a working machine out of it - computer, parachute, whatever. It's part of what you're buying when you buy something unassembled. Eule

Started at approximately 32.3. I am now 32.5. :) Eule

It looks like if you book an hour (bulk time), you can get it for £600, which is about $1,080 as of the date of this post. IMHO, UK tunnels aren't competing with the US tunnels. They are competing with UK skydiving. When I first looked at prices for tunnel time in the US (in the range of $10 a minute, plus or minus) my reaction was "That's steep." Then I thought about it some more. At my DZ, the regular jump ticket is $18 to 11K (182) and that gets you about one minute of free fall. I get the impression that $20 plus or minus might be an "average" US jump ticket, so the tunnels are priced at about half the cost of a jump. Skreamer said jump tickets in the UK run $35-$40, so having UK tunnel time priced at about $18 a minute is still about half the cost of a jump. On the other hand, I could be wrong about competing with US tunnels. For grins, I looked up a British Airways flight. Round trip, London Gatwick to Orlando from 2 Sep to 7 Sep, £610 or about $1105. Given that number, $630/hour in Orlando, £600/hour in the UK, the break-even point is between two and three hours. Three hours would cost $3240 in the UK and $2995 if you flew to the US from the UK. That even leaves you $245 for food, rental (hire) car, and four nights of hotel, which probably iisn't enough but would make a good dent. Four hours is $4320 (UK) or $3625 (UK->US), leaving you $695 in expenses, which could cover four days if spent carefully. This doesn't take into account any discounts off the one-hour price, or the time factor of an international round-trip flight, or any differences in flight quality between the two tunnels. Also, the kind of UK citizen that would book four hours in a tunnel has probably been visiting tunnels abroad already, and the prospect of not having to take a long trip abroad probably offsets a lot of potential cost savings. Re-reading my post, I sound like an accountant. I'm a computer geek, honest... :) Eule

About three weekends ago, on Sunday, I flared too high and didn't PLF and landed on my ass pretty hard. I could still walk and function, but it hurt. The only thing that fixed it was time - by Wednesday (three days later) it was better. I have since taken more interest in being prepared to PLF, but my concurrent increased interest in flaring at the right time has kept me from having to practice that so far. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Manifest at my DZ is married to one of the instructors. She's jumped several times (a couple dozen?) but always tandem. Eule

But my Sony camcorder uses one and it gives me a pretty accurate "time remaining" count? The Neptune uses a lithium manganese dioxide primary cell, while your camcorder uses a lithium ion rechargeable battery. Just the battery for the camcorder is as big or bigger than a whole Neptune. In the camcorder battery, there is room for a chip dedicated to keeping tabs on the battery - that's what InfoLithium means, and that's why there are "extra" contacts on the battery, for the battery to talk to the CPU in the camcorder. The chip in the battery could do anything from a simple voltage check to a complete measurement of the energy put into and taken out of the battery (like the watthour meters the electric company uses) and I'm pretty sure it's closer to the latter. You can get battery management chips that understand primary cells, but you'd have to build it into the Neptune, and space may be at a premium. The Neptune takes a CR2450 battery which is 24 mm diameter by 5 mm thick; an option would have been to have it take two CR2425 batteries which are half as thick and use one as "primary" and the other as "reserve". Run on primary until the battery test fails, then turn on an indicator on the screen and run from the reserve. You'd have to put a battery in it twice as often, but the reliability might be better. The argument between "right first time" and "mostly right first time, issue updates later" is ongoing in the computer world. My day-time job is as a computer geek and I get to deal with both philosophies. My life would be simpler if more people chose the "right first time" one, but having sat in front of the compiler with both the salesman and my boss breathing down my neck, I understand why the "issue updates later" one is also popular. :) Eule

From MapQuest. Gladewater, TX to miles time Waynesville NC 887 13:25 Orlando FL 1031 15:20 Eloy AZ 1120 16:26 Like Paige said, go to http://www.bodyflight.net/ to learn more about each of these tunnels. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Instead of height difference, I wonder what the difference was in terms of strength, or 'kick' if you will...a fish scale pull test to see the difference in compression required. Car engine valve springs operate under wildly different conditions and far more often than a pilot chute, but that is about how you're supposed to check them when rebuilding the engine. The three shop manuals I have to hand ('73 Dodge pickup, '79 VW van, '98 Ford pickup) all give spring specs as something like "it should take a load of 90-110 pounds to compress the spring to between 1.1 and 1.2 inches" or similar. There are test jigs that allow you to apply various forces and measure the resulting spring length. Some of the manuals give a free length, but don't specify a test for it. I suspect the free llength criterion is a first filter: if the free length is listed as 1.5 inches and the spring you have is 0.75 or 3 inches, you pretty much know it's hosed without further testing. In a few minutes of digging around on the Web, I couldn't find similar specifications for spring pilot chutes. That definitely doesn't mean they don't exist, only that I can't find them quickly. Eule

[computer_geek] With the right access, you could probably run queries on the "find a dropzone" database here and see how many have the "AAD required" box checked. Now, this may not be very accurate: How many listings are done by the DZO/staff vs. by customers? If a particular DZ requires AADs for students but not for experienced jumpers, should the "AAD required" box be checked or not? I know there are a few listings for defunct DZs, as well. I'm about 99% sure you can't do this with the Web form, or at least not with the one available to non- premier members. Sangiro could break it down in many ways with a few minutes' worth of SQL. Or, maybe you could ask for an extract of a few fields (maybe state/province, country, AAD required) into a spreadsheet and play with it yourself. [/computer_geek] Eule

The place I jump at has one 182, so I guess I'm qualified. The DZ has a rigger working there, who mostly packs the DZ's student and tandem rigs. I think one or two of the instructors may also be riggers, but I can't remember right now if I've seen them packing rigs besides their own. I am still a student and jumping the DZ's rigs, but I've always been able to get questions answered. I've seen him talking rigging with jumpers who own their own gear. The guy I know is a rigger does a lot of packing. If you want to have a detailed discussion of whether the cable should be 110.0 or 110.1 mm long, you might be out of luck in the middle of the day when he's trying to keep up with packing the tandem and student rigs. First thing in the morning or later in the evening - no problem. He pretty much just does packing and rigging - he doesn't teach class or jump with students or run manifest. Like I said, I think there may be some other people at the DZ who are riggers, but I'm not sure. If for some reason you wanted a rigger and there wasn't one at the DZ I jump at, the next closest DZ is about an hour away and I'm fairly sure they have a "staff" rigger. The next two DZs are maybe 2.5 hours away by road, and the next one is probably 4.5 hours away. I've never been to any of these llatter three. Eule

Disclaimer: I've only got 17 jumps at this point; take with appropriate amount of salt. I'd say do it first in a harness at the dropzone while somebody watches you, to make sure you are making the right motions. Then, continue at home. My AFF instructors have been careful to stop me doing "wrong" motions on the ground, so I don't build up bad muscle memory. For example, on my first few debriefs after a dive, I would tend to kinda-sorta make some of the motions with my hands (practice pull, wave-off, etc) as I was describing the dive. They made it a point that I should either do exactly the right motion or not do it at all. To stop myself, I had to sit on my hands for a couple of debriefs after that. :) Eule

Here's some I took on my trip to L1/AAC in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago. I got video of myself, but no stills. A group of 12-15 "locals" came in right after me and that's who I took the pictures of. 04: A shot of a flyer above the mountains. The guy standing on the net in black clothes and black helmet with white chinpiece is an instructor. 06: A rather stout flyer (purple suit) gets air. John Suiter is in the green suit. 38: From the "If I don't know what I'm doing, it must be art" file. I had to take long exposures because it was dark out and my flash wasn't up to the job. I was inside the building so I could brace the camera on the window, which is how I got the reflection in the upper right corner. This was a 1-second exposure - guess what happened to the flyer near the end of the exposure? That's John again at the lower right. Eule

I read this book before starting AFF and I had the same experience. I deliberately stopped looking at the book in the week or so before my ground school class, to help me better absorb what my instructors said. I found that reading the book helped me understand ground school better, but I don't think any book can totally prepare you for the first jump. I am glad I read it, though. Note that this book seems to be revised every 3-5 years, so if you're looking for a used copy, it might be good to make sure it's not too old. I bought it new this spring and I think I have the latest edition - "Ninth edition 2004, completely revised". If you haven't already looked, there are some reviews of various books here at dropzone.com : http://www.dropzone.com/gear/Skydiving_Videos_and_Books/Books/index.shtml Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Looking around the web, US$1800 seems to be an "average" per-eye price for LASIK. That's like 90 jump tickets, or around half a new rig! Get some $20 reading glasses * and jump the rest. :) I've worn glasses for about 25 years now. I have occasionally thought about contacts, but I don't like the ideas of 1) sticking something in my eye and 2) always having to have a bottle of goop to wash them in so they don't get infected and/or weld themselves to my eyeball. But if I had to choose between contacts and somebody carving on my eyeball, I'd take the contacts in a heartbeat. The main problem I have with the eyeball-carving is this: I plan on living for another 50 to 70 years or so. If you could show me some 70 to 90 year old people who got their eyeballs carved when they were 20 and are doing fine now, then I'd believe that it really does work as advertised. Since they weren't doing eyeball-carving (as far as I know) in 1935-1955, I remain unconvinced. After reading this thread, I have been thinking about how I would land if my glasses broke or fell off. I don't think I'd have a problem seeing the landing area or setting up the pattern... probably trying to judge the flare right would be the worst thing. If I had a choice I might try to land near something that's visible from the air but not a big hazard, like an orange cone, a small puddle, a bare spot in the grass, or even the edge between mown and unmown grass, just to provide some reference besides a sea of grass. Eule (an owl with eyeglasses?) * I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

At the DZ where I'm a student, all of the student rigs have a chest-strap altimeter - the kind that's mounted on a wedge-shaped "pillow" so you can easily see it under canopy if you look straight down. AFF students also get a wrist altimeter to use during free fall, but static line students don't. Everybody gets goggles and an open-face helmet. I haven't seen the student setups at the few other DZs I have visited. The instructors have mentioned that if there is some problem with your goggles after the canopy opens, it's OK to take them off at that point, so I gather goggles aren't 100% necessary. I like using the altimeter, especially to know how far away I am from the altitude to start into the landing pattern, so I can get to the right spot in time. Your DZ may prefer that you learn to judge the altitudes by eye, which can be handy if your altimeter quits working or falls off. Also, if you have a radio, the ground can always call out relevant altitudes to you. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Yeah, I saw the thread on RSS below, but if a newer technology isn't in the cards, how about an older one? Some pros: - The end-user interface is better, IMHO. Newsreaders had 15 years of development before the Web even existed, and five more before everyone started trying to do Usenet in HTML. Tabbing through the latest articles is nice. Threads that stay sorted by time is nice. The killfile is a lovely invention. :) - If carefully done, it _might_ be a bandwidth win. No graphics for avatars, etc. - The five people that would use it would probably buy Sangiro lots of beer. Some cons: - Harder to run the ads which help pay the bills. You could append them in HTML (something like the 'brought to you by dz.com' on the end of email) but 95% of people who know what NNTP is will use it with HTML shut off anyway. Perhaps mitigate this by making it premier-only. - Having to support it. It'd be nice if you could get away with saying "If you don't know what this is, you don't need it" but that probably wouldn't fly. People would probably also expect things like syncing of the "new articles" flag between the newsreader and the browser and other difficult stuff. - Additional CPU and possibly disk load. - It _might_ make it easier to scrape email addresses. Some of the Usenet software might complain if there isn't a semi-valid-looking email address in at least one of the headers. Also, it'd be nice if the "email direct to poster" option (known here as a PM) in most newsreaders worked correctly. - It may be difficult to allow some current features, like editing your post for a few hours, or allowing moderators to easily edit or remove a post. On the other hand, in a closed system, you could get some of this functionality by using cancel messages or supercede headers, knowing that they would be honored. Some notes: - It'd help if most of it was handled by whatever forum software is in use. Given the database schema and such, it'd be _possible_ to write a forum-to-news translator and glom it on to the side, but it probably wouldn't be much fun. - I am _not_ talking about making the dz.com forums available on Greater Usenet, or on Google's Usenet archive. dropzone.com would run its own news server, and would only accept posts from people with a username and password. So far, out of maybe a dozen websites on various topics with forums I might like to participate in, this is the only one where I want the content enough to deal with the interface. (This is a compliment, not a complaint.) I realize that in these latter days, 95% of the audience expects the Web-forum format, not NNTP, and definitely not a mailing list, and to some extent, you have to give the people what they want. But hey, asking is free. :) Eule ( EULE@UMKCVAX1.BITNET ) PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The police - this might not be an isolated incident. There was a policeman on the news last night talking about a case just last week where some jerk jimmied a window and jiggled a juvenile's jacks, causing a jam when the kid tried to play with them. PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.