SkymonkeyONE

At Z-hills we have a swoop pond, a swoop lane, a huge "regular" landing area with a pea gravel pit and concentric circles visible from the air, and lastly, an accuracy tuffet on the other side of the hangar.

Another good thread! -Cessna 150 -Cessna 170 -Cessna 172 -Cessna 182 -Cessna 185 -Cessna 195 -Cessna Caravan -Cessna Grand Caravan -Aeronca Chief Beechcraft Twin Bonanza Beechcraft Super-Twin Bonanza (supercharged) Beechcraft D-18 Beechcraft Queen Air Beechcraft U-21 (Queen air with turbines) Beechcraft King Air Cherokee six (240 hp) Lockheed Lodestar Pilatus Turbo Porter PAC 750 XL DeHaviland Beaver DeHaviland Twin Otter (-20, -27, and -34) CASA 212 CASA 235 Shorts Skyvan Shorts Sherpa C-130 many, many times C-141 C-5 Galaxy twice C-17 with four of my workmates over NAS Boca Chica (Key West) FL. Some weird, old Dornier in Germany Islander DC-3 Westwind Turbine conversion DC-3 UH-1 UH-60 CH-54 Skycrane MH-53 Chinook Pitts Biplane Allouette Coast Guard SAR helo (don't know the nomenclature) edited to add Caribou! edited again to add Helio Stallion and Fokker F-27 Friendship Chuck

Nice one, Kirk! We actually had a pretty thorough list there in the school at Raeford when I was there.

Amazingly, I never spent a day in the desert.

That was educational to watch. It seems you have your own west coast version of "burble mike" out there! Holy Zoooooomie!

There are two guys here at Z-hills with $4000 mountain bikes that they only rarely ride. Fully "race faced", ten inches of downhill travel up front, etc. Just what you need down here on the DZ. You can buy two nice, used motorcycles (one dirt and one street) for that money. Chuck

-Quoted from the article. I don't see how that's related at all to BASE jumping. What I can tell you from many years of experience as it relates to this article is that the great majority of people I have run into at Lake Martin in Alabama (the fifth largest man made lake in the USA) at Chimney Rock are generally drunk out of their minds. Chimney Rock is a 65 foot vertical drop from up top and I have seen countless people pound into the water belly or back first after botched leaps. It's a rite of passage there and I first took the tall leap at age 12 (sober). I have watched two people die first-hand doing it, both plowed out of their minds, being prodded on by their likewise-drunk buddies on the pontoon boats tied together at the base of the cliff. It's simply bad form and bad luck all rolled together. The epitome of the phrase "hold my beer and watch this." This seems to be more of a drinking/smoking/partying issue than anything else.

www.skydivewings.com

Two "r's" in Storrie.

Thank you, brother, that will help. That and your turtle helmet will definitely help to identify you.

the tailwing was flapping like a motherfucker for some of the flight because he was flying dirty to get down close to the slope. I actually thought he was pretty clean and not flying erratic at all. I liked that video. Chuck

Mexican Americans go to night school and get a "B"!

Harley Davidson FLTR Road Glide. You can get a nice used one for about 14 thousand dollars.

Boozehag

Eloy - Arizona Moss Point -Mississippi Pell City Alabama Wetumpka Alabama Tuskeegee Alabama Opelika Alabama (both the grass strip and the municipal airport) Zhills- Florida Skydive Sebastian - Florida Lake Wales - Florida Palatka - Florida (both dropzones: Palatka Paracenter and the current one) Emerald Coast - Alabama Fort Walton Beach, FL Panama City Beach, FL Wildwood Beach, NJ Air Adventures/Clewiston - Florida Skydive Deland - Florida Skydive Carolina - Chester SC ASC Atlanta Skydive Atlanta Lagrange Georgia Dublin GA Key West (actually Boca Chica NAS) Florida CrossKeys New Jersey The Ranch Parachute Club NY Raeford Parachute Center NC Carolina SkySports, Louisburg NC the original CSS, Franklin County Airport NC Vikings of Denmark, Barnwell SC Walterboro NC Orangeburg SC Monroe GA Vidalia GA Birmingham Alabama (Legion Field) Washington DC (FedEx Field) Fort Campbell Kentucky Skydive Spaceland Texas downtown Houston Texas (Fort Sam Houston Park) Quincy Illinois Rantoul Illinois Skydive Perris California Skydive Elsinore California Yuma Proving Ground Arizona Coolidge Arizona Rota Spain 3rd AD spc, Hanau Germany the german DZ across the autobahn from Fliegerhorst Kassern in Hanau Germany Santo Domingo Dominican Republic LaVenta Honduras Palmerola Airbase Honduras Puerto Plata Dominican Republic Mazamari Peru Puerto San Jose Guatemala Poptun Guatemala Camp Santiago Puerto Rico Skydive Kamloops Canada Savanah Georgia (Hunter Army Airfield) St George South Carolina Clemson Skydivers, SC (both the DZ and into "death valley" during a football game) Weston on the Green, UK Netheravon, UK That's right off the top of my head. Never been to Australia, Africa, Japan, Russia, or anywhere else in SE Asia. Chuck

Polarized lenses? I jump three different varieties of Gatorz (with three different color gradient lenses) and have never had a problem with them. That's odd that you had that problem, Randy. Chuck

I am hand-carrying the Sky Squared Productions submission with me when I drive up there next week. Chuck

No, I do not ship my rigs back to NC to get repacks (I live in Zephyrhills, FL now). Sometimes the stars align and I happen to be back up there on business when I need repacks though. I have three friends locally who do all of my repacks for the same price or for free (beer and other random labor-related favors go a long way with my friends). I don't consider anyone "my rigger." As far as trust goes, I have only met a couple of riggers that I would not let touch my gear. Chuck

Me too, Ian. I can see the potential for the slightest of performance increase (JVX Z-po vs. Hybrid vs. Sail comparison) over a standard crossfire, but nothing mind-blowing. Still, I have already been attacked by one person to referring to the canopy as a "sail crossfire"... I predict that in the near future (definitely less than five years) you will be able to get pretty much any HP canopy with a hybrid (sail) top skin option. I don't count that as anything monumental, just smart. Chuck

I agree with all of that. I have watched quite a few people die skydiving (including Danny and Bob, both good friends of mine), but I am not going to affix my name to any petition which mandates landing direction, pattern, and degree of turn. What I WILL do as a life-long skydiver/instructor/S&TA/competitor is continue to educate people on canopy flight from jump number one until they don't require my attention any longer. What is MOST needed are instructors and S&TA's with the balls to walk up to someone and tell them they are being reckless. If they don't listen, tell them again and threaten them with banning. If they don't listen again, run them off your DZ and have the RD put out a message to other local DZ's. I am all for separate, designated landing areas for swooping, "standard", even classical accuracy. All three forms require very-different approaches from 1000' agl down to the ground and we should be able to accomodate all of them. Separate passes work for pond swoopers and low-exiting accuracy guys, but there are plenty of people who go to full altitude which ought to be able to fly whatever canopy is over their head, whether it be a Velo or a Parafoil; they just need better guidance on where to "hold" at altitude and where to setup. The diagrams being distributed by Brian Germain work for some landing areas and that's a good start. Most places, though, offer even more variations and airspace separation. These future guidelines, regardless of any future USPA BSR, need to be implimented at the dropzone level. They must also be enforced at the dropzone level. This starts when a visiting, or new jumper first walks up to manifest to fill out waivers. If the dropzone staff has a good overhead photo with "lines of demarcation" clearly drawn on it indicating where different canopies need to land (and setup for landing) then things become much easier to regulate. Again, the responsibility to enforce any regulation: USPA, local or otherwise, lies with the dropzone staff. No amount of regulation is going to prevent fatalities. None. This is a dangerous sport and people are going to get caught doing even more-dangerous/stupid things on occasion. It sucks when our friend/family member/loved one dies (or gets killed), but hang around a bit longer and another one of your friends is going to die; I promise you. I do my part to educate. I ask that the rest of you in positions of authority and influence do the same. Chuck Blue D-12501 AFF/SL/TM-I, BMCI-4, PRO, S&TA

What have you replaced it with, Kevin?

I am in

I bet if you dialed (813) 780-8961 someone would tell you.

I saw one a couple of weeks ago at Lakeland HD (here in FL, near Z-hills). It's a nice looking bike (for a sporty).

The only thing remotely associated with our sport on that list is ground launching. No, I don't think you need to dirty up this site with a bunch of other clutter. What do I know, though?