SkymonkeyONE

And you won't be disappointed! They are really, really nice sombreros. Thanks, Pre.

I have found that latex surgical gloves under any other glove will, in fact, keep my hands much warmer on a very-cold skydive, but only if used properly. If you put them on at takeoff then your hands are going to get wet from sweat, then they are going to super-cool in freefall and you will be worse off. When I do use them, I only put them on right before exit. Chuck

Gus said it best: find a mate to bring it back for you.

Tonto hit it on the head. While lofting along at a very quiet 38mph vertical is neat, it's tiring and a bit boring. I generally always mix my wingsuit jumps up with "Stuka Dives", taking grips, and generally screwing around. I can go three minutes, but it's much more fun to go two minutes and whoop it up. Chuck

We recently put a very-small girl through her AFF training under a Sabre2 150. Our smallest "standard" student canopy is a Navigator 220. While we were hesitant to do so, it was the only way to get this girl (Autumn Shultz, who posts here) in the air with a container that wasn't literally falling off of her. Thankfully, we had a very-small-harnessed Mirage container (brand new even) laying around which held sufficiently large canopies. She still loaded the 150 quite a bit under 1:1, so we did it and she did great. Chuck

-bump- I am still looking for candidates for this course. If funding is the only thing holding you back, PM me. Chuck

Eloy, Arizona is a fantastic place to go over the holiday and like Deuce said, there are a LOT of Brits that come. Still, I may very well end up in Z-hills this year just for a change of pace.

Are you the older guy with the solid black SkyFlyer that I flew with in 2001? The guy that had the main-zipper blowout on a very-long flight in very-thick clouds with Jari and around six other people?

Actually, you will likely only pay the prorated amount for the rest of the year.

No, Army Special Forces (on a dive team; ODA 725 at the time). The Navy offers up a boat once per quarter for SUBOPS and any water team can sign up for it at the sail conference. Everytime I went (Once in '87, twice in '89), we split the trip with one SEAL detachment and one Marine Force Recon detachment. Three days underway on the sub and six days in support of the other two groups on the surface tender. The worst part of the entire trips were riding around on that single-screw surface tender in high swells and deep water south of Vieques. Ugh. Chuck

Liar. Bisexual, boozehag, liar! You KNOW you want a toaster.

Question: does your rig have cut-in laterals? And if so, have you ever jumped another rig with them? If you have not, then I can tell you that such rigs feel a lot different than those without cut-ins.

Agreed. I would not buy anything until I had jumped everything in it's class then formed my own educated opinion. Characteristics which are "better" for you might suck for someone else. Chuck

Scuffing over the entire helmet will not preclude you from still being able to see the pattern of the weave so long as all you are doing is shooting clear over it.

Agreed. My original CYPRES has been in the water a few times, both turned on and turned off. My rig was never in the water long enough for it to get anything but moist. I pulled it out after I was done jumping, wiped it off, let it sit for a few minutes, then ran a functions check. All OK, Jumpmaster. The unit has been sent off for a four year since then and SSK found no problems whatsoever. Maybe I am just lucky, but now I simply don't sweat it at all.

My hands get beat up pretty badly on skydives, sometimes for no apparent reason. Reaching up for my risers on tandem jumps and competiton jumps under my Velo expose my fingers to riser slap. I generally always wear gloves on tandems because I know my hands are likely to get beat up, but I only very-rarely use gloves when I am jumping my Velo. Also, the narrow dive loops on my Wings risers, while easy to grab also cut into the side of my hand where my pinkie meets my palm. The worst mysteries to me are when my hands get cut up on wingsuit jumps. I cannot explain that at all, but it happened at least four different times at Rantoul.

I spent time on three boats (fast attack variety) doing SUBOPS out of the forward escape trunk with my team. I was on the Ray, Sea Devil, and Sunfish. I have to say that it really takes a special type of person to excel in that duty. "Hot bunking", working round-the-clock shifts, staying subsurface for extended periods (at least on boomers), dealing with the water rationing, etc. I was fascinated at how cramped the living quarters are on such vessels. I had visions of all these separate compartments for each ship function, but such is not the case. The ladder to the forward trunk was right dead in the middle of a sleeping compartment! The guages to operate the trunk just sort of stuck out of the pipes and panels. Likewise, in the forward torpedo room where we kept our gear when we were not using it, they had a whole rack of under-way instruments which were constantly manned. The wildest thing to me was that some of the "new guys" on the boats actually bunked in the torpedo room, sometimes right on top of them. One thing that was really cool about subs was mid-rats. You could eat four times a day on any navy vessel I ever stepped foot on. Subs are neat, but I am far too extroverted to have done well in that job. Chuck

Actually, most of the rest of the military laugh at the outright caste system that exists on ships. It fascinates me that people simply stop working with their hands at grade E7 in the "regular" Navy. When we would stop off in Rosie for SUBOPS I made it my personal duty to piss off as many people as I could in the Chiefs Club. I made E7 when I was 26 years old and those fuckers just could not believe someone who looked as young as I did had any business in "their" club. Oh, and the segregated messhalls were pure comedy as well. FWIW, I can't stand that bell-bottom crap that the junior enlisted troops are required to wear. I simply don't get it. As to the new cammo, I don't really understand the logic over the pattern, but do agree that putting everyone in the same, modern uniform will do wonders for morale. Chuck

WOW! When did this happen? Hell, I just saw her and MonkeyLip two weekends ago.

Fine, I will bitch at both of you then! Sunny is a total boozehag and Val likes HOT SEX with Bill and Amy!

That's a fun video. Noice!

Unfuckingbelievable. Dan was a really nice guy. Do any of you know that his college degree was in Theatre? He was a very smart guy and would always have something interesting to discuss. I am proud to say that I killed many a braincell partying with Dan. He was a good pilot, too. Dan was well liked at Raeford and I hated to see him go. He was quirky, but then so many of us are. Still, we kept in touch and he seemed to like what he was doing out in California after leaving us. He was incredibly stoked to be involved in the re-opening of Hartwood! BSBD! Chuck

The offense? 153mph in a 55mph zone; speeding to elude capture; failure to stop for a blue light; willfull speed competition of motor vehicles; wreckless driving. The vehicle? My 1985 Corvette (black, 4+3 overdrive, the top stored in the back because it was so nice outside) My buddy Bill was ten feet in front of me the whole time in his brand new (and chipped out) Buick Grand National (also black). The date? Labor Day weekend 1987. It was a Friday and it was around 1:30 am. The location? finally aprehended in Manteo, NC at the terminus of Alligator Alley. The verdict? Guilty of wreckless driving and speeding 153 in a 55; all other charges dropped. The fines/punishment? $500 fine, 90 days suspended jail sentence, three years license revocation. The synopsis? Two idiots driving to the beach as fast as our cars would get us there. We were working as lifeguards for the Nags Head, NC Beach Patrol. Our boss was not impressed, but hey, it was the last weekend of the season. Top that, suckas!

Hey Scott, does your main have packing tabs? Your rig looks very smacky booty, but my shit still looks mo better.

Your impressions concerning how boogies are put together and how organizers are compensated are way off base. You want Max Cohn or Dave Brown at your boogie? You better have $300 per DAY plus transportation and lodging. Same for Guy Wright, Ponce or any of the "name" RW guys. Think I'm kidding? Oh yeah, add free jumps for the duration of the event to that list. You know what? I skydive for a living. I haul meat, do AFF, dispatch SL students when they wander up, teach FJC's. I have been skydiving for nearly 24 years. I also fly anywhere people want me and organize wingsuit stuff, teach first flight courses, and run BMI and canopy courses. I am VERY reasonable; just ask our Canadian brothers. This keeps me quite busy. You need to understand that BirdMan does not pay any of us a salary to instruct. For boogies and courses, we get paid our travel out of the money we make doing FFCs and BMI course fees. If it's a trip where I am not likely to at least break even then you will likely not get me. If you can't promote a course and get three candidates to show up at your dropzone, then no, you will not get me there to teach only you. That said, there are plenty of opportunities around the country to get to a course. Is it really that insurmountable for you to drive or fly to Deland or Eloy? Come to my home dropzone here in NC and I will train you as well, minus the three-candidate minimum. Hell, the next course in Deland will be run DURING THE WEEK. I know you aren't doing any AFF in Temple, TX during the week. Likewise, Glen was sitting right there at Eloy last year (or was it two years ago) when we ran the BMI course during the holiday boogie. His excuse for not attending? "Well, Bill is on the DZ more than I am so what's the point?" By posting all of these "anti establishment" threads, he has clearly demonstrated to me that he missed the boat and should have attended the damn class! You are my boy, Glen, but this shit is out of control. I told you then that I thought it was a mistake that you did not attend. If you don't think that you paid that AFF course director's travel to and from your course you are seriously mistaken. Your AFF course fee was determined by the number of candidates who participated and I can promise you that your DZ paid for that course director's lodging or else someone on the DZ put him up. You also paid that guy more money if he was present for a pre-course. Like me, those guys are independant subcontractors when it comes to running courses and they simply must make a living. Once again, if you want a course ran (and free organizing and canopy coaching thrown in for shits and grins), then get three people together and give me a call. Please do not make the mistake, though, of scheduling me for a weekend and then calling me to say you don't have the people anymore; you can ask Steve Crawford how those conversations turn out. As you have never sat in on a BMI course, you obviously have no idea what some candidates bring to the table. You simply would not believe some of the gross rigging errors we see from these supposed "expert" wingsuit pilots. I have never, not once, taught a BMI course where everyone didn't say they learned a significant amount. Likewise, I have never taught a course where at least one "expert" wasn't completely flabergasted that he had been doing something very wrong on every single jump. I am pretty sure that every single side of this debate has been covered at least twice in these recent threads, so unless anyone has something different to say, then please hold your tongue. Chuck Blue D-12501 AFF/TM/SL-I, BMCI, PRO