SkymonkeyONE

I arrive on the 7th and leave on the 12th. See you there, fool!

I recognize Scotty and Tammy Carbone, Ramon Rionda, Dave Lund, Pam and Merrick, SunCheHag, and maybe Zennie? Edited to add that I just picked TG in there as well.

Katie bought me tickets to Perris for Nationals for my birthday! Very nice

Eugene jumps at Raeford now, but yes, Mac is still at Parkton.

Currently, the closest civilian tunnel to PA is the outdoor one in Maggie Valley, NC. The Skyventure tunnel in Raeford, NC ought to be complete by next August.

I pack my own tandem rig, as do many of the tandem instructors in this forum.

Sunrise rigging offers 50% off the base price of any Wings and 15% off the price of any options to military customers. Chuck

A rule that was posted some time ago: Zero to 100: a 1.0:1 max 100-200: 1.1 200-300: 1.2 300-400: 1.3 etc, etc, etc..... 900-1000: 1.9 over 1000 jumps: use your best judgement

If you send a suit to BirdMan to repair, it is most likely going to be sent over to Terry.

Six feet under this week? Ruth's husband is starting to have delusions and is talking to himself. He moves into the bomb shelter at the end of the show. The older of the two brothers, Nate, finds a pic of his dead wife in a book he is supposed to give to his brother. He figures out that the pic had to be taken right at the time of his wife's murder/suicide. He confronts his brother-in-law and eventually forces a sort of confession out of him. Seems the brother in law was having an on again/off again affair with Lisa (Nates dead wife). Unfortunately for the brother in law, his wife was listening to this confession so he pulls a .357 out of the desk drawer and blows his own brains out. This initially freaks the hell out of blood-spattered Nate, but quickly gives him resolution about what actually happened to his wife. The brother-in-law had killed her. Nate then makes it home and tells his fruity old/new girlfriend that he is now ready to marry and have a child with her. The red-headed daughter does a lot of drugs, has her opening night at some gallery, gets into an argument with her old bisexual boyfriend, then fucks the guy who owns the gallery. The gay brother gets talked into confronting his assaulter in jail to get some sort of resolution. He goes there and the guy simply makes it worse. The guy in jail turns the blame around on him and he simply feels more confused now.

I just got a "happy birthday" song voicemail from Arlo Pace. Thanks for the thoughts everyone. Chuckie

JL Audio makes what I consider to be the best speakers on the market. I have spent a lot of money on audio equipment over the years and have never had a single problem with any of the JL products I have owned in the last decade. Chuck

And that is about the fifth time Bill has posted that to the forums. Though we do now have a couple of packers at Raeford who we let PRO pack, the majority of us still flat pack our tandems. We have had zero tandem malfunctions on Sigma mains since we put them into service in 2001. In my opinion, FLAT is where it's at. Chuck

You know, it might take me an extra two minutes to pack a tandem. The only reason for that is that none of our tandem mains have packing tabs. It also takes a tad longer to set the brakes. Beyond that, I don't really see why we pay twice the amount to pack tandems. We pay five bucks to pack student and rental mains and ten bucks to pack tandems.

I point my toes outward and further tension the legwing by pushing out with my knees.

Training camps? Nah. These days, the word "camp" means "come pay me money so that I can teach you what I know." While video debrief of a routine by a more experienced jumper might help, there is nothing you can do for a person on a board in freefall which merits a coach fee. An example is this: people don't pay for Style coaching. They simply show up somewhere a team is training and reap the benefits of training with world and national champions. If there were more competitions, say on the regional level like at NSL meets, there would be cause for more people to get involved. In the Carolinas region of the NSL, the CaSL, we had freeflying competition as well as 4-way. Even as popular as freeflying is these days, those guys had an incredibly hard time getting enough people to show up to even quantify a meet. In the entirety of both Carolinas we have never had more than two people who regularly jumped boards, so regional comps would have then and would today still be a wash. As fun as it is, I just don't think there is enough value added to the general skydiving experience for any large group of people to get into it. The Freestyle heyday of Michigan Sandberg, Tamara Koyn, and that butt-ugly chick Dale were over lickity-split. Likewise, they heyday of televised and otherwise competitive skysurfing were a flash in the pan. The bottom line here is that I believe ANY discipline which makes competition training repetitive WORK will eventually lose it's fan and participation base. Particularly those solo artistic events where one practices the same jump over and over and over. Once again, I really like skysurfing. It is challenging and entertaining when done for "fun." I would hate to do it over if all I had to look forward to was working on one routine over and over. Have you noticed how few freefly "teams" (hardy har har) actually compete at all these days? As there is no "real" venue other than Nationals, they simply use a "good old boy" system of inviting each other onto "record" skydives, much the same as big-way RW. Max Cohn does not compete anymore; neither does Dave Brown. There are very few freefly teams that actually train together as a unit all season. Most teams which compete are throw-togethers that practice very-little prior to nationals. The top teams will always be those who train all year long, or most of it, but the fact remains that there are simply not a lot of people out there who care to compete in artistic events and least not with much serious dedication. People are fickle. These days, 4-way is all the rage and you know what? I am not interested in devoting my time to that again either. Cheers, Chuck

Well do ya?

I am damn sexy.

Chester is your closest turbine DZ. Tell the BirdMan posse I said "what up."

Who ARE the Rodriguez Brothers? Mono Uno Rodriguez PS: SHIMELL!

If I am able to come I will definitely bring some demo suits. I had some really nice flights there last year along with Scary Perry and a couple of others. Hopefully it will be nice weather for the event.

I put a couple of hundred jumps on a board in 1990 when there were not more than five people in the USA, possibly the world doing it (I have plenty of pics at home from that era). Me, Jerry (loftis), Patrick DeG., and one of two other europeans. I was absolutely the fist person in the eastern USA to jump a board. I stopped jumping it out of boredom and the lack of competition venue for it at the time. By the time the X-games came around I had long since tired of it. While fun, I didn't stay with it because it lacked the all-important social aspect which makes jumping fun for me. While artistic, it is still a solo event. I hate that I was not active on a board during the heyday of X-game/SSI competition, but I had other things going on in my life. These days, I find very little reason to strap in other than pure novelty. I still own two boards, but have not jumped them in over six years. With only one "real" competition a year these days, I don't see a lot of impetus for people to get involved. I compare it to Freestyle, Style and Accuracy, and even speed skydiving to a degree. A small cadre of diehard devotees, but that's it. Chuck

You are in luck. There are quite a few S3's in the BirdMan demo inventory right now.

The small jets I have seen on RC aircraft were VERY loud.

I must have missed it. I have been gawking at the mono-brow one for too long now to notice anything else.