SkymonkeyONE

Hey Al! Great meeting you this past weekend. You represent the company well, brother. Chuck

Is it? Is it going to "show" to the event organizer wondering which "name" to invite? Is it going to "show" to the person coming from overseas looking for the "most qualified" coach? Is it going to "show" to manufacturers who are looking to sponsor the "most qualified" applicants? It's very likely that none of the people I mentioned have ever, or maybe even will ever jump with these people. In that regard, it really hurts the people who actually deserve such recognition when others blatantly pad their logs. I can name very-big names in every discipline (except maybe some of the artistic disciplines) who do it right now. It does, however, make a difference to a lot of people. It matters to each of the individuals I just mentioned above, particularly in a fiscal sense. Many of those organizers, sponsors, potential customers become enamored with these "masters of self promotion" and will bybass a better qualified candidate just because someone else has ramped themself up and tooted their horn louder. You are absolutely correct, Bets. Some come close though (Rook Nelson is a great example). That's not really relevant to what we are talking about though. What we are talking about is the reason why people feel it neccessary to blatantly pad their logbooks. My answer is that it's always ego driven and it's generally to bolster their reputation and standing in the competition, coaching, sponsorship, organizing, and business sides of the sport. I see those things as a personal affront to other organizers/instructors/coaches/competitors/businessmen who would rather take the high road and get jobs based on their actual personal merit as it relates to jump experiences. Once again, I know people, right now, in almost every single category who blatantly pad their numbers in the thousands. It's sad. Chuck

Positively NOT! It's a very fast suit. The "big camera suit" comment really had me chuckling as well.

Hey, it was great having you down here, Steve!

They are going to be playing a marathon on SciFi Network

It was a weird sort of six-months-ago flashback. It didn't do much to clear things up in my opinion.

I really like Phantoms. Particularly Acro-vented "Phacros". They are fantastic all-around suits.

You will be a great Tandem Instructor! Great personality and plenty-big-framed to do the job safely. Chuck

That is true. I was asked when I ordered my new 2k3 racer tandem if I wanted the RSL; I said "yes."

You would have to ask my wife, as she is the one that brought it up.

The four-stroker is fine, as are all the rest of the electrics and the fuel system. The plane was smashed to smithereeeeeeeeeens! Anyway, I am going to buy him a new plane, me a similar gasser, and we will both get drunk and build them. I had been wanting a gasser for a long time anyway. Oh yeah, I guess I will buy some other-than-channel-19 crystals too. I have considered a T-rex electric but, amazingly, I have found that gasser helis are MUCH more tractable than micro-electric helis. At least on my Hangar 9 FS-one simulator software. A T-rex would have been a much smarter purchase than my Blade CP, even though it costs more initially, as it's a FAR stronger airframe. I have been through a TON of CP frames and other parts. There are now four of us at Z-hills with CP's. I now own three Strykers (two brushless) and one CP. Paul Meagher has a .60-size gasser Mustang with retracts, new in the box, that I am going to buy tomorrow as my first gasser. I am going to buy Manny either another Funtana S or whatever the fuck he choses to build. I feel like a moron about today's fiasco. Chuck

Unbelievably fucked up afternoon at Z-hills! I have never been a member of any "real" RC club, but I still should have known better than to let this happen. Manny was flying his beautiful four-stroke Funtana-S 3-D plane when I saw it up in the air. I raced over to my camper and pulled out my brushless Stryker C to fly around with him. Disaster. I had no idea he was on the same frequency. The simple act of turning on my radio was enough to wreck his plane as he was flying along knife-edged over the campers. It was an $800 plane. My $250 Stryker also balled-in, but I felt like shit. The one thing that we had not discussed as fellow-RC-pilots was which channels our planes were on. It was fucking ugly.

What has me positively dumbfounded is that some people will do it when most of their contemporaries know their actual experience and jump numbers. I have been very, very good friends with several people over the years who have bumped their numbers up thousands of jumps per year when me and everyone else of consequence knew for sure that they were positively full of shit. I could name at least four people right now, but I will refrain. Here is one example of such a thing and how their amazingly-stupid embellishment put an end to their positive experiences in the sport. An old four-way teammate of mine and a then-regular at the Green Beret Parachute Club on Fort Bragg, Sherri Giarrusso (Dick Giarruso's daughter). Sherri was a fantastic skydiver and she had around 500 jumps when I had around 200. She jumped alot when the jumping was free at the club. She also jumped alot at Raeford. She had all her ratings and was very current. She changed jobs in the Army and became a CID warrant officer. She basically quit the sport due to her job requirements. That did not, unfortunately, keep her from logging 1000 jumps per year (minimum) even though every one of us knew that she was deployed overseas to Bosnia and other locations where we knew she was positively not skydiving. She would return home once a year, maybe twice, and put in for another diamond on her gold wings. After a couple of years, the S&TA's at the DZ had had enough. They told her that there was no way in the world that they would sign off on her awards if she could not prove that she had been jumping. As predicted by the same people (who owned the gear shop), the next day Sherri came in to buy some new logbooks. Pathetic, even back then. I really like the girl, but we all knew that she was SUPER-inflating her jump numbers. You WILL NOT make 1000 jumps a year in the US military when you are deployed nine months out of the year. I did VERY good to make 300 jumps a year on active duty. My wife is a perfect example of such "regular" progression. She makes several boogies a year and LIVES on the DZ. There are very, very few exceptions to active duty personnel making more: Alex McCalman and Trevor Hill among them. Those fools, since they have been skydiving, show up at boogies when they are not deployed, make every single load with their two matching rigs apiece, and spend a ton of money doing it. They still don't make over 500 in a year. The difference between those two guys and any other number of logbook padders is that I don't have any problem verifying their jumps by simply calling manifest at whatever dropzone they have been locals at, or asking manifest at DZ's hosting boogies, or just asking my buddies that are fellow-organizers how many jumps THEY made at boogies. I know for a fact that I can't maintain that pace and I DO notice the few people that actually do. Ultimately, if you are padding you logbook and your contemporaries know it these days, then you are in grave danger of being outed. If you are sponsored and outed, then I would hate to fathom the consequenses of such brazen perpetration. To those fools: I hope your logbooks and Neptune match up when you get called out. To the gear vendors out there: laugh like hell when some of these people come running to you for new logbooks after reading this thread. I have had about enough of it, personally. I know how many jumps people make at boogies. I also know how many jumps a week I make as an organizer and instructor living on a dropzone. Chuck Blue D-12501 AFF/SL/TM-I, PRO, BMCI-4 -still not quite 5000 jumps since 1981. Never more than 488 jumps in a year since I retired from the army in 2003.

Stacy, Froggie, Pammi, Merrick among others.

Shut the fuck up, e-normiss-cockring! You are spoiling a perfectly good thread.

There are quite a few big guys here at Z-hills that fly suits. Ryan, the Australian rigger, is 285 butt naked and has no problem staying up with us vertically or horizontally in his Phantom.

The stuff most competitors get from MEL is 340

The only removable slider failures I have ever seen were on those with releases like you posted in your pics. Pressure on the loop will cause that suspension line to jam. Earlier versions used a sort of toggle tit to hold the loop and they were worse. Cutaway cable releases that go through the loop and where the excess is stowed in channels are MUCH more secure and release MUCH more easilly. Chuck

There are quite a few of those canopies flying around NC and GA. They were designed to compete directly against Crossfires and Cobalts. Yes, the nose looks a lot like a Crossfire, but no, it's not a "copy." The only two I jumped were like a 110 sized one and a prototype tandem-sized one that was at Skydive Monroe. I didn't experience any of the "360 on opening" stuff mentioned early in this thread. I have got the feeling that the person with the single most amount of experience on the canopy (Joe Bennet) might have the best idea about the overall performance of it. I didn't have any problem landing the small one I jumped, but then I understand how to land a parachute; any parachute. Note to others: be very leary of advice given by people who have padded their logbook over 2000 jumps in their profile in the past six months.

Save the full RDS for competition and practice. But get yourself a removable slider. You won't look back. I can take my slider off faster than I could stow it and it's so nice not to have it hanging around your head. Plus it only takes an extra one minute (maybe two) to put it back on. I second everything written in that post. Chuck

I rode an old Suzuki GS 400 to school my entire senior year of high school!

I saw the title of the thread and thought it was going to be about Jim Kime!

It sounds pretty clear to me that the resulting slow-down at different tunnel types varies greatly. I can tell you with absolute confidence that the big tunnel on Fort Bragg takes some time to spool down. We used to do two things at start-up and power-down: First, lay on the grate and see how fast we can get off the net as the fan spools up. Next, try to stay in the air as long as possible as it spools down. I guess that is a product of having one very-large fan and the fact that it's a recirculator. Chuck

So, here we are: Fat Scotty, Jeffe, and myself. As I can see it, the only drawback to the production "hand-bags" is backflying. In those suits (Nebula and Eagle) , I can't imagine that you could invert your hands to backfly without spoiling half your lift protential, assumining you flip your hands over when you flip over. In every other suit, you just have to lay your hands over backwards. No biggie. Blicky!. We tryed to make a five-way horizontal line today. It's very hard when you have guys flying four different suit. Anyway, the faster you fly, the easier the dockage. Four-way was not a problem, but we could not do a five-way horizontal line without funneling. Fuck it. We have figured out that it does not matter what brand of suit you fly, so long as you can haul ass and stay relative. Slow sucks. Fast equals lift. We are not sucking at Z-hills........ Hasta la muerte, chingones. Carlos Azul e los Pajarones

MEL at SkyWorks rigging will happilly make you a set of HMA for that canopy.