SkymonkeyONE

That's actually a pretty good analogy, Bo.

stooopy!

Holy SHIT! Is Skinny going to be here this weekend?

Your post just begs for me to comment further about the hazards of jumping lead, particularly a LOT of lead, in competition. While this was a Open/Pro event and the caliber of competitors on the invite list was first-rate (at least to their country's standard), there were clearly some chows; at least one pretty dramatic judging by the video. The possibility, however remote, of sinking to the bottom of this admittedly-deep water after a chow would have me thinking twice about loading up to the very-high wingload flown by some of the very-best competitors this year. I figure it's only a matter of time before someone of consequence gets smart and starts wearing a belt with a quick-release. That or maybe people will simply get past this "must wear a ton of lead" stage that the Pro level of competition is experiencing. chuck

Now THAT was a very cool venue! It reminded me a bit of Cleveland: you either make the small sliver of landing area or you are swimming! Fantastic!

Leave anything you really need secured in your car. Besides that, lots of people leave their stuff in the dropzone.com tent, or whichever tent they choose to call "home" for the boogie. Most tents generally have someone hanging out, taking up all the room on the sofas (Sunshine). Don't sweat the small stuff, Chuck

Good answer, Egon. A larger Silhouette or even a Navigator would be a good choice. I have flown every size Navigator from 200 to 260 and I think they fly really nice and have very a very powerful flare. Chuck

All I can say is "feet and knees together, Airborne!" I will bet you anything that that student hit the ground with her feet apart.

I was definitely yanking front riser 180's in 1986, as were several others at Raeford and the GB club. Of course they were under Bogys (me), Raiders (a few guys on the USAPT), and whatever club rental gear Rick Neely had over his head. They were low, as ugly as toggle whips, and didn't result in much of a swoop, but the "turf surf" game was definitely afoot then. That said, the same bunch of people who started trying that stuff would regularly intentionally collapse our parachutes and ride them down to within 500 feet of the ground before letting go of the brakes and letting them reinflate. We all did CRW at the bottoms of most every skydive as well, no matter what canopy was over our heads. Like you, this thread definitely makes me feel old. Chuck

You can run video straight out of the camera if you use your "three", but no, there is no firewire straight out of a 109.

People party at WFFC? I don't believe it.

Never, ever trust a guy with a lisp who has "pretty boy" embroidered on the sides of his rig to NOT embarrass you, girl. Dan, you kill me, man! Chuck

You must not have busy packers, Rob. The highest paid employee at Raeford Parachute Center is Liz Comp, a packer.

We will be running a "double" meet this weekend at Raeford to make up for the incredibly bad weather which has caused us to have to bag two previous meets. I will be setting up the speed course and marking out the distance/zone accuracy this week (probably Thursday) for practice if anyone wants to show up early. We are going to conduct two six-round meets this weekend NO MATTER WHAT. I am yet undecided on whether to run one complete meet and then re-set the course for another one; or to run and judge both sets of rounds one after the other before changing the course to the next event. Also, depending on the consensus of the competitors, I will either take two sets of $50 entrance fees and pay all of it out to the winners of each "meet", or I will only take $50 for both meets total and we will just pay out smaller prizes. Keep that in your mind if you are coming. I intend to run competition rounds on both Saturday and Sunday. If you are competing in the four-way meet on Saturday, I will find a way to accomodate you; I promise. Sam is coming up from St. George to help out with judging and course construction, but I will for sure need some more volunteers this weekend. Chuck

The S5, still in prototype form, will not be dealt with until the backlog of Phi orders are sewn, completed, and sent from the new facility in Estonia. All of the other suits are built at BetoTex in Slovenia.

Fool, don't you know that you should never, never sell your last wingsuit?

I think that's a great article. As I started riding at the age of six (on minibikes/dirtbikes) and was a small kid, it was hard to do too much damage to myself on the size of bikes I was capable of riding. As I grew, so did the size of bike I rode/raced. I did not get my first street bike till I was a senior in high school (a 1980 Suzuki GS 400) and, lucky for me, it only ran around 90 mph wide open. I have owned/raced a ATC 250R three wheeler since then, had unlimited access to a CR500 Elsinore, owned three Harleys and a Buell. I have wrecked every single motorcycle/ATV I have ever owned at least once (minus the new Buell) for one reason or another. All the street bike incidents have been at relatively low speed and left me mostly unscathed, but I had many, many hellacious motocross wrecks (still, no broken bones ever). I learned my lesson on street bikes when I, like a moron, went flying past a truck, uphill, double-yellow no-passing line, on a badly patched piece of road on an original Kawasaki 900 Ninja (this was 1985). I wobbed out as I was forced into the very center of the road when I found myself head-to-head with oncoming traffic. I knew I was dead so I simply let go of the handlebars and waited for the inevitible. Amazingly, the vehicles passed me less than two inches on either side of me, the road got smooth, and the front end stopped wobbling. I pulled over, parked the bike, walked thirty minutes up the road shaking like a leaf, turned around and walked back to the bike, and rode it 45 mph back to Fort Bragg where I promptly gave the bike back. That was all the lesson I needed and it wasn't until 1990 that I considered buying another street bike. I still ride pretty hard sometimes, but never wrecklessly. Unfortunately, that simply cannot be said of the literally thousands of young GI's running around town on their brand-new rice rockets. Fresh back from Afghanistan/Iraq with a pocket full of money and off they go to one of the many bike shops in town. 600 F4's are the minimum size bike anyone of them will accept, 1000's and above being the norm. I am talking first bikes here. I wonder how often I see them on the cover of the newspaper? A lot, that's how much. They ride wide open throttle in big packs weaving in and out of traffic. You can't tell them shit. Lots of "grown" people I know have "both" kinds of bikes. I have a 2001 Harley FLTR Road Glide for tooling around on and going on road trips and a 2003 Buell XB9S for doing wheelies and riding hard/scaring myself. I keep current on both because I ride both almost daily. My bikes ride as differently from one another as I could possibly imagine. I ride both with the same confidence as I show when switching between my tandem main and my Velocity or Sabre2. Not everyone has that ability with bikes/canopies because they simply do not stay current enough on both varieties of whatever they ride/pilot. Sorry for rambling, but the original post really struck home with me and others here at Raeford because we just had one of our best, most accomplished canopy pilots (who also does tandems for a living) wreck the hell out of his GSXR 1000 (he also rides a custom Harley). Unless I am mistaken, both were his first bikes ever. In this case, even his fantastic skydiving/canopy piloting ability did not rub over onto his riding ability. Chuck 2001 FLTR/2003 Buell Lightning Firebolt 350 tandem/Velocity 84

Sorry I didn't get back to Raeford to party with you Saturday, Dave. Sorry I missed your re-up load by one also. Next time.

You fail to see his ethical issue? OK ... How about the choice of a parent to protect their child from an concievable danger that may kill or injure their child? NO?, OK, Well howabout the view of alcohol or drugs, oh wait a minute, the kids eight yrs old and his balls have just dropped, lets go and get him to bang a prostitute in the ass? I dont think 'taking your own kid brings home anything'. If you are happy with jumping your child, thats your issue, if your not then thats your issue. The reality of the bigger picture is, YES Tandem skydiving is dangerous and YES it can kill, and from my POV there are too many what if's to jump the sprog. When I was a child in the '60s it was perfectly acceptable for parents to drive around without seatbelts in their cars with a full load of kids, all unbelted and some standing up on the front seat so they could see over the dashboard. It was also fine for kids to ride in the back of pickups and stand up to see over the cab, happilly cruising along. It was also perfectly acceptable for mothers to smoke cigarettes during pregnancy, at least it must have been everywhere I ever seeing as a kid. My dad taught me to siphon gas, with my mouth and a hose pipe, at age five. I got my first motorcycle at age six, which was the same age I became able to fly a Cessna. All that was cool, but there was no way in the world that my Dad, who owned then and still owns a dropzone, was going to let me start jumping before age 16 as that was the regulation; odd. If tandem had existed back then and there had been a small enough harness to fit younger/smaller passengers, though, I bet people wouldn't have thought twice about letting their kids jump. Some people are simply going to over-protect their young while others, like my parents and all of their friends back in the day, are more than happy to let their offspring test their limits and expand their horizons. I thank God that I was not a sheltered child. Chuck

I did ten one day in 100 degree heat out of a C-182 with me packing them all.....outside. Two of the ten were over six foot six and both of those two were over 260 pounds. That about killed me and I didn't make a dime doing it as I was jumping at my Dad's DZ and became the default slave that day. That is as many as it was possible for me to do that day as the moon was brighter than the sun when I finished. I just did eight in 100 degree heat out of a C-182 (with me packing them all) this past Saturday at St. George. It was very, very hard on me but the payday was worth it. I actually even woke up at 0530 in the morning and drove two and a half hours to get there by 0900 start time. I can't believe how much I sweat nowadays! I walked around completely soaked all day, but had a blast taking those folks up on their tandems. I was on the first load of the day at around 0940 (waiting on the pilot) and the last load of the day, so it was not possible that I could have made more jumps. I have made 15 work jumps in a day (AFF/tandem/video mix) ,but that was using packers and jumping turbines. Chuck

UGH! Talk about eating too much dogfood!

He DID have a big, shit-eating grin on his face during the entire flight, didn't he? I did, though, think he was going to keep on flying toward Fort Bragg...

I Just graduated Golden Knight demonstrator and long-time wingsuit flyer, John Ewald, from the BMI course at Raeford Parachute Center. Jon is a great guy and is working hard to get wingsuiting onto the list of "regular" things people will see at airshows. Congratulations, Jon. Good flying! Chuck Blue BMCI

That wouldn't be very "trashy", would it?

Straight out of just about every first jump course sylabus I have ever seen.