AndyMan

A week after I broke my ankle, I jumped. I jumped a FRIGGIN HUGE canopy, and did an intentional butt slide landing. Getting up off the ground and into my crutches was the hardest part. Oh, getting into the plane was fun, too. A tib/fib is a whole lot more complicated then an ankle break, though. I'm not answering your question either way, ultimately it's your body, and only you can decide the level of risk you're willing to take. However, butt slide landings are pretty easy on your legs. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Both my freefly suit and jumpsuit are made of Supplex. My RW suit is made of PolyCotton. The supplex is thinner, and flaps about a whole lot more. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

If a jumper got caught smoking a joint in the afternoon, I have no sympathy for him. Skydiving while stoned has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, or seen. Unfortunately, I've seen it pretty frequently. I can also point to fatalities that most likely happened as a result. If he's smoking up in the afternoon I'm guessing he's about to jump stoned. If the cops were wandering around behind the hanger looking for people smoking a joint when everybody else was partying around a bonfire, I'd seriously wonder about their priorities. We're not talking about that, though. Smoking a joint is illegal, and the US is a democracy. The drug laws were passed with public support. Until those laws are changed, that's what we've got. Breaking the law in any way other then a discreet and responsible way is stupid. It does not sound like this jumper was either discreet, or responsible. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I don't think most people hate America. I do think that most people are scared of America. People like the Swiss, the Italians, the Spanish, the Canadians, the Mexians, and even the English - are afraid of the US. Many people in the world are starting to look to the US in the same light that some of the older people here remember looking to the Russians. They see the US as the single biggest danger to world peace. This is earth shattering. I hope that very soon the US takes the opportunity to reflect upon the opnions of its former closest alies. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Storing a spring-loaded pilot chute inside the helmet would negate this risk. You could then attach the pilot chute release to your helmet cuttaway, having it automatically deploy. The only remaining issue is figuring out how to make it comfortable having a spring ontop of your head. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Thanks for spreading the news, Cajones. This is an important project, and we can all contribute in meaningful ways. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I'm going all out this year. I'm gonna give up starvation. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I'm not made in the US either, but my girlfriend probably agrees with you on that. If so many people had a hand in its design, it may be a case of TOO many people designing something. Unless the inconsistencies in that canopy list are sorted out quickly, I suspect they'll have a lot of pushback. That said, I do like the idea. Edited to add, I am a class 4 jumper, jumping a class 4 canopy, at a class 5 wingloading. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I was on SETI, then I went to Folding@home because the folding project will actually save people lives, the SETI project is just silly. There are some really good distributed projects out there, some of them even trying to find a cure for cancer. If anybody is thinking of running the SETI client, I'd just ask them if looking for little green men is important to us right now, vs finding a cure for cancer. ;) _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I agree with the concept. There are way too many people in this sport doing things way too early. Drop by the video forum and notice the guy with 8 jumps asking which helmet he should buy, for example. It's becoming abundantly clear that dz's can not be trusted to push lower time jumpers into picking appropriate gear. "Recomendations" are meaningless if dropzones are not going to follow them. Now, that said - these specific rules seem foolish. The Sabre2 is being used very effectively as a student first jump canopy in the US, but the dutch say you must have a hundred jumps to jump one. That doesn't make sense, to me. Likewise, that you can jump a sabre on your first jump, but not a spectre? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either. These specific regulations seem to lock in an entire nation to one groups idea of what an appropirate canopy is, even though in reality there are some wildly divergent and well justified alternate views. Any regulation that is adopted must be flexible enough to allow canopy instruction to mature, such as using a Sabre2 as a first jump canopy. Likewise, it must avoid contrived comparisons of "safety", unless those are well established. This specific set of rules seems poorly thought out, poorly constructed, and is being poorly implemented. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

In the last three years, I've flown over 30 times with my rig. I've always been completely up-front and honest, and I've never been delayed more then 3 minutes. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Two critical, opposing points. 1) It's criminal, not civil - so our release of liability would be meaningless. Criminal law isn't about liability. 2) Colorado has passed specific laws regulating the conduct of skiiers. The government has explicitly stated that skiiers can and will be prosecuted for bad accidents. This happened after a particularly bad year where a lot of skiers were killed. Avoid Colorado, avoid the risk. I ski in Banff. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

There are no issues flying Southwest with a Cypres. In fact, I flew Southwest when I wandered down to Perris over New Years. Southwest changed its policies regarding Cypreses a few years ago. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Price, Paul, Price! The other half of the equasion is price! The number of transistors is only half the game! CCD's cost fractions of what they used to. Additionally, CCD's used to need active refrigeration to maintain the -30(C) to keep them accurate. The cooling made them even more prohibitively expensive. The significant price drop of CCD's over the years represents a GOOD part of your missing pixels. Secondly, on a CCD - one single transistor does not equate with a 'pixel', and it's transistors that Moore postulated would grow. (technically, he used the term "feature".) In addition to the redundant green 'pixels'the CCD chips also now have basic I/O circuitry, etc. Moore's law allows for IC's to become more complicated by adding additional features. Secondly, you can clearly see the application of the theory if you look at low end comsumer 'point and click' digital cameras. The prices continues to drop, and each model has a higher resolution, bigger zoom, and quicker and larger memory storage then the last. HERE is an EXCELLENT primer on Moore's Law, and how it applies to intergated circuits. It' s a long read, but it clears up a lot of misconceptions. Nobody has ever offered a good explanation of why a CCD is different then any other integrated circuit. I hate to refer to Popular Mechanics, but this one calls it a "variation" in Moore's law, but I argue they just don't understand its finer points. http://popularmechanics.com/technology/photography/1999/3/Digital_Cameras/. It was written in '99, and introduce the new 'buzzword' to watch, megapixel. They drool over this new 1MP camera that breaks under the $1000 barrier! Astrosurf.com has a good article detailing the use of CCD's in telescopes going back to the 80's, and yes - they discuss (briefly) Moore's Law. http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/howto-ccd.htm Interestingly, one of Moore's chief engineers in the late 60's was a guy by the name of Carver Mead. If you do a quick web-search, you'll see this guy has it all. Bill Gates says "nobody ignores Carver Mead." Why is this important? Well, Carver Mead is of course the founding geek behind the Foveon 3-in-1 chip. In founding Foveon, Mead stated one of his goals was to guaranty to continuation of Moore's law into the future, as applied to CCD's. Meads new 48MP chip will be the engine behind the next $8000 toy you'll drool over. It's designed to rival medium format in price, as well as resolution. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I disagree about Moore's law not applying to CCD. Remember that in 67 when Moore postulated the existance of this "law", he used Intel's latest memory chip available as an example - a 16K CCD. Also remember, that Moore's law is one of the most commonly misquoted postulations. He didn't say that processor speeds would double, or memory size would double - or any metric that most users would understand, would double. He postulated that the number of transistors for dollar would double. He postulated they'd get more complicated, have more STUFF on them, and each square mm of silicon would do more magic FOR THE SAME PRICE. Either the chips get more complicated, or they get cheaper. The reality is that usually a bit of both happens - meaning if price halves and complexity doubles every year, either happen about every 18 months. An example of this in digital photography would be the new chip by Foveon, which rather then dividing a CCD up into R, G, and B pixels, has managed to stack all three vertically on the same chip - making a one chip Foveon CCD just as cool as a standard 3-chip chipset. We can also see this in the way that low end applications formerly using CCD chips are now being done with CMOS. I imagine in 5 years we'll be using CMOS instead of CCD. The high end will always be ludicrously expensive, just as a few years ago nobody would buy a SUN ultra-sparc for a home server, and today nobody would buy a Dell Power-Edge 8450, even though they retail for 1/4 of what the high end Sun Servers did when they were "the shit". There will always be digital cameras that I won't afford, and ones that you won't afford - it's just that both the cost of the high end and the low end will come down, just as it has in every other consumer appliance. As for that $299 pc at walmart, actually I've got one on my shopping list. The 486-66 collecting dust in the closet cost me over $4000. The performance of PC's has increased FAR faster then software developers ability to code to it. _Am _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

On the members page, the calender link points to the member page. My other comment, is that on a lot of pages your menu is bigger then the content of the webpage! Try to use your pages a bit more effeciently. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I personally think paul is underestimating the rapid progression in both CCD technology and more importantly, memory modules. I think he hit the nail on the head with the comparison to the computer industry, but was incorrect in saying that prices are static. You can buy a $299 Pentium 4 system at walmart now. Only a few years ago you'd be hard pressed to get a 386 for under $2,500. I think digital SLR's will eventually be in the same pricerange as analog SLR's, where you can get a pretty good one that does 99% of what guys like me need, for $350. Digital SLR's are just now evolving out of the realm of "Early Adopters", and slowly moving towards being mainstream consumer electronics. When they do become common pieces of consumer electronics, expect the price competition to be ruthless. If anybody is looking at buying a digital SLR, I'd say that just like buying a PC, you have to be able to justify the business logic of buying one NOW. The prices will come down, and if you're buying one just to have a cool new toy you'll be kicking yourlsef in the ass when you see a similar model a year from now for half the cost. Manufacturers are currently competing on technology (read: bigger memory, faster processor), but in a very short time that technology will be ambiquitous, and they'll have to compete on price. Anybody remember when "point-n'click" digital cameras STARTED at $800? __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Quick! Everybody post what you jump, tell everyone it's the 'best', without ever trying anything else! _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Dude, sorry to break it to you... but.... It was fun to see every one again, and seeing all these new faces. Keep in touch! _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I very carefully drilled, with a very high speed drill and VERY little preasure applied to the door. It worked. I would have much prefered to use a Dremel, but didn't have one handy. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

I use mine as my Premiere scratch space, if thats what you mean. The program is installed to my internal disk, though. I use the external one as the scratch disk because I do all my work on a laptop, and the internal disk is incredibly slow. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

The logical place for MicroMV to go is to an HD based MPG scheme. I have a concern about Sony going HD based, which is to point to their complete failure to capture any significant market in the MP3 player category. Sony, owning a music company, completely forbid the the marketing of any product that would easily copy MP3's. This decision effectively killed their line of "walkman" products from entering the digital player. Sony is losing marketshare to Dell and Apple for audio players. Amazing! I'm concerned the same thing will happen with video. I'm sure the minds of the Engineers are rumbling forward with ideas of really cool HD based devices, but I worry that their ownership of a Movie studio will prohibit using any common "net" formats, like MPEG 4, DIVX, etc. I wonder if there'll be a video version of the IPOD walking all over Sony in a few years, too. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

The visor is always popping open in freefall. Slam close, pop open. Rinse, repeat. The lens is always separating from the frame, no matter what kind of glue I try, it only lasts a month, usually. The liner is always separating from the shell. Again, no matter what kind of glue I try, it never lasts. The paint is peeling off. Not chipping off, not scratching off, but peeling off. It first started near the bottom of the helmet, near the neck, and has spread up. Other people haven't had the problems I've had, or had problems to the same degree. I imagine Parasport probably fixed some or many of these bugs, but the frustrations I went through trying simply to get the latch to the visor replaced taught me a thing or two about what customer service is NOT supposed to be. There are so many good companies in this industry that take care of their customers, they're the ones that get my business. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

PD's slinks website: http://64.226.67.31/slink.asp They mention that it has an "FAA 'TSO' approval", but don't specify if it's (c) or (d). That said, they're also known for being considerably stronger then old rapide links, and in tests, they were the last to fail, after risers, and after lines. I've got slinks on my main, and would put them on my reserve in a second, but it's questionable if it's legal to put them on my Tempo reserve. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

Bonhead has excellent customer service, they will help you until you are happy. Para-sport italia have crappy customer service, no matter how much work you go to try to talk to someone at the company, I'll be surprised if you actually succeed. I bought one Z1 a few years ago, and I never will again. I can't imagine trading in a perfectly good bonehead for the Z1. The Z1 has tons of issues itself, and is far from perfect. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.