SkymonkeyONE

Team Lime Green. That's all I have to say.

I agree with Ed on everything he said basically, but have found that some people with quite a bit of time out of the sport barely lose any aptitude or ability. Case in point: I just had an old friend who last jumped with me 16 years ago at the GB club on Fort Bragg. He quit with just under 200 jumps to go fly helicopters. The guy (Brent Kluge who posts as "pawnmower" on here now) was run through a thorough refresher, did some table drills with a BOC-equipped trainer, then went up with myself and two other AFFI's on a four-way. He did a solo diving exit, three practice touches, right 360, left 360, then flew in and docked on the formation and we turned two more points of four way. Perfect landing in the peas, too. We were all stoked. 16 years without jumping! He left the DZ after the weekend having already purchased brand new gear and now flys down here every two weeks and jumps his ass off. (over 100 jumps in the past month and a half on his new gear). He may be the exception, but I also have two other buddies who jumped with me and Brent back then that can go five years without jumping and still pull off ten point four-ways. My only caution to those guys is to please refrain from busting big hookturns like they used to. THAT is a perishible skill. My rule for my students is that you must make a jump at least once every thirty days if you hope to ever graduate. I will positively make a lapsed student re-do their last level if they go a day over 30 days. Likewise, I will thoroughly review the critical survival tasks and make them prove to me that they fully understand the skydive. The same goes for unlicensed jumpers who are past Category E and are doing F,G, and H coaching. They must make a jump every thirty days or they require refresher training and possibly, according to how long of a break they have taken, going back to Cat E. Chuck

I have a student cypres in my student rig, a tandem cypres 2 in my tandem rig, and an expert cypres 2 in both of my sport rigs.

You get what you pay for, bro.

Actually the conversations Jeff and I were having last week were talking more along the lines of early October. That said September 14th is my birthday. My only issue with September is that I will likely be working a contract job in Canada then.

He left Raeford in a clapped-out Ford Explorer with no airconditioning enroute to Chicago on Monday. He has not answered the phone anytime Tony or I have called since then. Chuck

Outstanding pics, Elliot! I saved one of me as my new background. The swoop and chug pics are great too.

Swimming is definitely fundamental. EVERYONE gets wet once in a while.

That's just half an orbitron (or whatever the hell Omar calls it) if you turn it into a huge diving transition. You sound, though, like you want to just figure out how to snap over and immediately change directions. Have you done front flips in your suit yet? If not, then try those first. If you can do that then you ought to easilly be able to just half-flip forward then power out of it on your back in the opposite direction. Chuck

I personally think it's a waste of money to buy tracking suits. Save the money to buy a wingsuit when you get the minimum experience.

I have been here since Thursday morning and have dropped off the Sky Squared entry into the film festival. Actually, we have played the movie twice already to good reviews. I have also been on a good number of flights with some old friends out of the PAC. Tony G and I went up and busted one this morning and got sucked into a full minute of solid cloud before popping out the bottom and realizing we had flown WAY into Fort Bragg. Talk about turning and burning! I couldn't believe we both got all the way back and had enough altitude to hook it! The wash job my wingsuit got in that raincloud really took the stink out; it WAS a bit gamey. Chuck

They are just tiring, Jack. You will be OK though.

At Raeford, the tuffet (when it was there all the time) sat right in the middle of the pea gravel pit which in turn is right in the center of the main landing area. At Z-hills, the pea gravel pit is right out in the middle of the main landing area, past the swoop pond and swoop lane. There is also an accuracy tuffet on the other side of the hangar in the alternate landing area which is generally used by the SOCOM parachute team guys.

Yep, and you can get those things at pretty much any pharmacy on earth (for cheap). Chuck

Israel, while you are fantastic giver of first-rate sombreros, I agree with the others that you have definitely been under a very large rock.

That's my answer as well.

What a drag! Man, I really liked Jason! BSBD! Chuck, aka Mono Uno.

Likewise, I have a large double-cover-up on my right arm and I can't say it hurt any worse on those follow-ups.

You really ought to come, Glen! We are definitely going to fuck it up!

the chicken parm pizza is fantastic as well. My brother in law used to manage the Mellow Mushroom in Auburn, Alabama.

I am going to follow-up on what Scott said here a bit: The Green Beret Parachute Team is not an active-duty parachute team. It has no "commanding officer" and the great majority of it's members are retired soldiers (and not all US Army either) who used to jump at the old Green Beret Parachute Club. There are even some dependants who jump on the team. It is now, and has been for the past nine years at least, staffed with part-time jumpers who used to meet once a week at the old GB Parachute Club (later "activity") on Fort Bragg. I have no idea where they might meet now that the post shut down the parachute activity. They are not funded in any way by the military any longer as far as I know. Prior to the advent of the active-duty-only USASOC parachute team "the black daggers", the GBPT was command sponsored and supported to a degree by USAJFKSWC (the special forces school) and the team was made up primarilly of active-duty members of the command, retired GS empoyees still working on Fort Bragg at the special warfare center, and other units on Fort Bragg. I was a member of the team from 1985 until I retired in 2003, but rarely did any demos with that team after I moved over to the Daggers. After the Black Daggers stood up, the great majority of us who were still on active duty moved over to the new team. Some of us still volunteered to go do GBPT demos as well when time permitted, but only rarely. I still have some of my GBPT uniforms in my closet. Every member of the GB Parachute Team has a PRO rating. Some of the guys are quite long in the tooth, though, and don't jump as much as they used to. I am not sure how many guys I would know on the team these days, but it used to be a great group of jumpers. Mostly retired GS employees. The team operates hand to mouth on whatever shows they can rustle up. The members are lucky to get paid food, travel and lodging. Again, it's not command sponsored at all. Entirely voluntary with no full-time staffing or budget. It's a shame that they had a run of bad luck in this particular town. Chuck Blue D-12501 GBPT and USASOC parachute team alumni

Kramer has had a hip replacement (among other things...) and he says the hip doesn't bother him at all on skydives.

I am wingsuit organizing at SkyFest/SkyFlock and yes, we will be setting and declaring a Texas state big-way record among other things. There are going to be a ton of people at the boogie, brother. Jason "Voodew" Weisberg, Doctor Theopolis, Jen (at a minimum) will be doing FFC's for slot. Robert Jones from Morpheus Tech will be there, Jeff Nebelkopf and Tony Uragallo from Tony suits will be there doing FFC's on their suits and will have at least 30 demos with them. Nick Rugai from EG wingsuits will be there with demos. Expect all kinds of formations from technical/vertical/sequential to big single-point formations. We will positively accomodate every experience level. I expect at least 50 wingsuiters. Be there and get your face in the next killer video and in the magazines. Come early and stay late. I arrive on the 10th and don't leave till the 16th. Chuck Blue Z-Flock Wingsuit School

That's not accurate at all. There are no NPS "BASE nazis" involved in this at all as far as I could tell by reading that. These are state marine patrol officers and other "water cops" trying to keep drunken idiots from dieing as they attempt to prove their manliness by attempting their first-ever layout off the top of such things as our Chimney Rock in Alabama. That and other drunken idiots hooking up ill-conceived rope swings like people they did at Chewacla State Park in Alabama when I was a kid. I really do think this is simply a drunken redneck issue. I am sure that's what they hope to curtail anyway. If you live in the USA, that's simply the way it is always going to be. No amount of protesting on anyone's part is going to change that. FWIW, I have never seen anyone given anything but a citation for any marine-based offense. I have never seen anyone taken to jail for illegally jumping/diving off of a bridge, but I have seen plenty of people cited for being drunk and rowdy at such locations. By the way, my family had a cabin on one of these tremendously-large lakes when I was growing up.

Who else is up for a wingsuit jump on one of those loads? Follow me, boys!