SkymonkeyONE

What kind of bullshit is that? What does Ron and Michelle think of your new site?

It is my opinion that you should absolutely have it done. The only people I have ever known in person who did not have it done got teased about it during childhood and freaked out at least one sex partner by not being cut. Maybe it's different in other places around the world, but in the USA it is absolutely expected. Chuck

I was never one to talk about work at home or at bars. OPSEC prevented me from talking about what I did at work, plus I always loathed being out and hearing Joes talk army shit; ugh. Talking in acronyms is not the way to get any drawers in a "federal" town. As to Keely's comment: I don't mind hearing peoples' thoughts on things political/religious so much as I can't stand the arguments which ensue when two or more people of wildly differing views get into what starts as friendly banter/debate. I think perhaps there should be a one post per user limit in such threads.

Doctor J

altitude: 13,500 aircraft: Super Skyvan location: DeLand, FL maneuver: 3-way birdman flock time: 130 seconds description: Scott poised off and shot stills while me and Jay Moledski exited in a linked gainer. Flew around dove through a cavern in a very-large cloud. Beautiful

Noice! Jake looks like he has a frown on his back in the second photo. Perhaps Coconut Monkey pooted on him!

I give a rat's ass what everyone else thinks about politics/religion/gun control. It's a complete waste of time and bandwidth to argue about any of it, especially on a fucking skydiving site.

I have a CYPRES in one of my rigs (the one I do AFF with, because it was required at my last DZ for instructors), but do not have one in my other, identical rig. I jumped for 18 years without an AAD and am not device dependant. The CYPRES I have was bought for me as a christmas present one year. There is a time and a place for an AAD, but they do not suit the bill for every occasion. Neither my wingsuiting nor pond swooping warrant an AAD, but the possibility of getting sucked low chasing a student is very real, so I gladly appreciate the added personal protection afforded by my CYPRES in those unforseen instances. I don't skydive any differently whether or not I have one in my rig.

1. Whats your name? Chuck 2. How old are you? 40 3. Why did you decide to start jumping out of airplanes? I grew up in a skydiving family 4. Are you single or taken? Married? Taken. Live with my girlfriend. 5. Do you have kids? No 6. What do you drive? 87 Harley, 87 Volvo, 98 Chevy dually 7. Have you ever done a kisspass? Yes 8. Where do you live? Augusta, GA temporarilly 9. Do you have any pets? 1 Dog, 1 Cat 10. How many jumps do you have? a bit over 3800 11. What color eyes do you have? Hazle 12. What is your nationality? American (native american, Scotish) 13. Have you ever dated someone you met off the internet? Yes 14. Favorite Movie? Say Anything and Escape From New York 15. What do you do when you arent skydiving? nothing, seriously 16. Have you ever BASE jumped? No 17. If not... do you want to? If the right mood ever strikes me 18. Do you have siblings? 2 sisters 19. Where do you want to travel to the most? Not sure. Australia maybe. 20. What's your favorite color? Orange and Blue, but I seem to buy a lot of red cars 21. Where was the last place you flew to ( not skydiving )? Minnesota and Phoenix

In my opinion, it looked like she was lancing a boil on her ass. Not that attactive an avatar.

Gotcha beat.

Never.

I have a Perry Ellis tuxedo with tails that I have only worn twice, but would never sell. You just never know when the opportunity will arise that you might need one.

I will be there a day early and stay for the duration.

A clear case of desertion. Reduction in rank to lowest grade and a bad conduct discharge.

Yes, and doing the project properly would take some time, but the end product would be fantastic. Nice job for a guy on a pension, eh? A decent flat-bed scanner and some OCR software are all you really need. The TD (training development) guys at my last job were complete cavemen (the youngest guy in the shop was 64 years old), making free-hand changes to documents and then re-typing entire manuals; unbelievable. I taught them how to work an HP scanner and the OCR that came with it and they thought I was Jesus. It's still tedious work, especially when you are working with less-than-perfect copies of original manuals, but the end PDF document result is totaly worth it. I agree that simply scanning the pages as images would be pretty lame and also storage-space prohibitive. Chuck

Aggieland is NOT a short drive from El Paso, TX. Bob Kern's place is right over the pass in NM, right off the 10. It's a Cessna DZ, but like my dad says: "every one you turn down is one you missed."

Does your bridle not fold over and mate to a piece of velcro on one either your top main closing flap? Do you not fold a flap of your bridle back under your closing loop when you pack? If not, what do you do with the excess from your grommet to the little piece of velcro?

I think you are confusing "being an exceptional canopy pilot" with being a "swooper". Neither of which "need" to be learned under an elliptical canopy necessarily. Until you can land your parachute where you want to, everytime, and can really fly the hell out of what you have, then you have no real reason to buy such a higher performance canopy. HP canopies as vanity purchases are simply a bad idea. Your search for a Safire-type canopy is not a bad idea on the other hand. Lightly elliptical moderately loaded zero-p canopies are docile enough that they are easily manageable by jumpers with lower experience levels, yet they respond and land much better than old worn out squares. No matter what you are jumping, there is no reason why you shouldn't strive to become a better pilot. Just remember that being able to swoop and being a good canopy pilot are not necessarily synonymous

You had a PC hesitation which could have been caused by one of a couple of things: -your PC is wearing out and not providing suffient snatch force. -your bag is slightly too big for your container and the PC had a hard time pulling it free If it was the first thing, it's possible it didn't get enough snatch because the packer (you?) didn't put the little counter-fold in the bridle. If it was the second thing, agressively checking over both shoulders while elbowing your container is generally enough to free the bag. Chuck

I was certainly mentally capable of skydiving at 13, but I had to wait till I was over 16 because those were the rules which my dad chose to enforce as a DZO/competitor. I could fly a C-182 when I was six and got my first motorcycle (well, minibike) at six. I was licensed to drive a motorcycle on the street (legally) at age 14 in the state of Alabama. There are/were other states that had similar laws. In the end, I feel it's all dependent on what a child is exposed to growing up. Some children lead very-sheltered lives, others do not. A child raised in the country who is expected to bush-hog/plow/cultivate fields as soon as he is tall enough to reach the pedals on the tractor, and who can drive the one-ton farm truck as soon as he can see over the dash, is a far likelier candidate for early training. Some prep-shool kid living in Manhattan probably isn't. Hell, I don't think you can get a license to drive in NY until you are 18, can you? I would absolutely train a son or daughter of mine once they reached what I belive to be the base-level of maturity needed to safely accomplish the tasks. That said, I have seen some childish behavior from at least one of these young skydiving prodigies. Mike flew his Helio Stallion to a boogie at one of the DZ's in Alabama that would not allow Charlie to jump, so Charlie walked around kicking dirt and stomping his feet. He ultimately found some sand and played with his Tonka toys until the end of the day; I think he was 12. That illustrated that no amount of proficiency in the air changed the fact that he was a child. I did not doubt that he had the presence of mind to participate in skydiving, but I was a bit pissed that me and most of my contemporaries were forced to wait till we were 16 (USPA guidelines) before we started. Jealousy? Maybe, but who cares; the gear was so damn big when I was 13 that I could not have worn it safely.

Raeford, last Fall, had at least that many people who had flown a suit at least once. There were eight or ten suits on the DZ.

Personally, I think S&T is just fine for posting instructor-related topics as it is. The fact that it, and all the other forums, becomes spammed-up with incessant post-whoring is another topic altogether. Having an "instructor only" forum that others could still post to would lead to the same thing happening. There is a certain percentage of registered members out there who have little or no skydiving experience whatsoever, yet feel they just must ask a bunch of philosophically-based technical questions in the "specified" forums. Those are the types of people who make our job of keeping threads and the general tone of the forums on track complete murder. It's my opinion that any very-specified rigger or instructor forum would have to be very-heavily moderated to keep out the riff-raff and "lookey-loos". Chuck

Matt, in the smaller suits it's very simple to simply arch, "roll out of bed" and fly out of any situation. Once you gain a bit of "standard" experience, simply start rolling (half barrel roll) onto your back and give back flying a try; it's not hard. I have never found myself in a situation that I could not fly myself out of, but have seen more than a few people get into tail-spins in S3's and have to ball up, then fly out.