riggerrob

Agreed! If girls can wear skirts to class, then I insist on my right - as a grumpy, old, gray-bearded part Scotsman - to wear my Utilikilt or McLaughlan family tartan kilt to school.

Yes, Shaun Ryan is one of the better pod-casters. I also listen to: Jordan Peterson, Thomas Sowell, Joe Rogan, etc.

Sounds like they are trying to lower standards for their female students. I say that we should hold female students to a higher standard than "fragile vessels." I do not understand how "fragile vessels" can cook, clean, manage a household, raise children, balance a budget, drive kids to soccer practice, etc. The last thing that I want to deal with is weak, lazy, girly, sissified dainty flowers in skirts. My attitude is based upon too many years dealing with women as a soldier, air force technician, skydiving instructor and city bus driver. What female students wear is totally secondary. Just limit over-sexualized clothing since it is difficult enough for teenaged boys to concentrate while they are going through puberty.

Returning to the original question ... if you want to experience how a reserve turns and flares, borrow a ZP 7 cell the same size, say a Triathlon. The Triathlon will not open as hard/quick, but it will turn and flare similar to a new reserve of the same size.

The generation of Technical Standard Order will not change with the date of manufacture. The TSO will only change after the manufacturer repeats all those drop tests and receives approval from the FAA. Given that drop tests cost something like $1,000. per jump, few manufacturers are going to repeat drop tests just to get an updated TSO. They are allowed to continue manufacturing - under the original TSO - as long as they keep the accident rate low. The FAA is unlikely to insist on any changes considering how few skydivers die every year. Skydiving will remain a low priority for the FAA as long as we keep fatality rates low.

Some day, some one is going to explain to me the logic behind parades. When in uniform, I stood thousands of hours on parade, but no one ever explained tome why????????? I was even among the honor guard when Prince Charles and Lady Diana visited Halifax. Why parade????????????

When you consider the relative dangers of transporting oil, road is probably the worst. Compare oil spills on roads, with train de-railments, with leaking pipelines with oil-carrying ships running aground. I can only remember one leaking pipeline in British Columbia and that was caused by a back-hoe. My evening constitutional will be along a high-pressure oil pipeline that runs up the side of Burnaby Mountain.

"Abuse of process" is considered a sin in Canadian courts.

Should we discourage Evan Corcoran from going near top-floor windows?????

Patience

Wow! First time I have heard that concept! I never thought that cowling flaps were big enough to provide a significant amount of drag. Au contraire, cowl flaps should only be used to regulate engine cooling. Close them at the start of jump run and keep them closed until you are back on the ground. Closing cowl flaps retains heat in the engine compartment, slowing the cooling process to reduce shock-cooling. If you really want dive brakes, there are a couple of STCed, after-market kits for single-engined Cessnas. A buddy installed the combined flap gap seal and dive brakes kit on his straight-tailed (late 1950s vintage) Cessna 182. He later complained that the dive brakes produced so much turbulence that he had to re-skin the flaps. That is nothing new as I have seen cracked flaps and cracked flap guide rails on plenty of Cessna jump-planes. I suspect that most of the cracks were caused by lowering flaps at too high an airspeed. The other dive-brake kit was developed for Cessna 210 pilots who want to descend rapidly to keep ATC happy. These dive-brakes scissor out of the top and bottom skins near the main wing spar.

Find an old rigger who still has the tools for pull-testing PD reserves or an even older, grumpy, gray-bearded rigger who used to test round reserves for acid-mesh. The old rigger will have the rubber-jawed clamps and scale to precisely test the tensile strength of your pilot-chute's fabric. It is important to use the correct tools and techniques, because a clumsy test will pull holes in airworthy fabric. A quicker test is to look for fading. I got a pilot-chute that had been laying out on a fence for 3 weeks after a reserve deployment. It was badly faded and I could easily pull it apart by hand - note experienced hand that had tested a thousand round canopies for acid-mesh.

Dear wmwm999 and Coreece, I have a theory that your taste in music is defined when you are a teenager or young adult. Your hearing is most acute during your teen and early adult years. After that, the "music" parts of your brain get re-purposed for other learning. Some philosopher said: "It is the duty of every new generation to rile their parents with their taste in music, clothes, etc." I see every new generation struggling to invent a new genre of music distinct from their parents' taste in music: blues, jazz, big band, swing, rockabilly, rock-and-roll, British Blues Invasion, folk, blue grass, disco, new age, progressive rock, heavy metal, speed metal, thrash metal, Mongolian folk-metal, indie, etc. For example, Sugar Hill Gang debuted circa 1979, after I was 22 year sold. While I enjoy SHG's light-hearted brand of hip-hop, I just don't get most rap introduced after that. Too much rap music sounds like "angry young man" music and I was past that phase of my life by the time that gangsta-rap became mainstream music. I did not grow up in a crime-ridden, poor neighborhood, so have trouble relating to most rap lyrics. Sorry folks, but I am old and boring.

Does that mean that Utahans (sp?) are only allowed to read from the Book of Mormon? Hah! Hah!

Military and NASA are willing to pay big bucks for research and development. Once the expensive development is complete, manufacturers cheerfully sell it to the public for a cost as high as the market will bear. The military care little about emissions, but take fuel efficiency very seriously as it can cost up to $5,000 to move a gallon of diesel fuel to some remote outpost in the mountains of Afghanistan.

As a Strong TIE operating in Canada, the factory gives me a bit more leeway on medicals for aspiring TIs. I usually send them to a Transport Canada certified aero-medical examiner doctor for a TC Class 2 aircrew medical exam. I only ask for a doctor's note stating that they are fit to skydive. I tell aspiring TIs not to bother with TC paperwork as it is expensive and slow.

Tell them to go back and read the 4 articles that Annette O'Neil published - on dz.com - back during the autumn of 2016. I researched those articles, then handed the data to Annette because I was exhausted from a 9-year-long court trial about a King Air crash back in 2008. We learned a bloody lesson back in 1992 and there is no reason to repeat those mistakes. Smart skydivers learn from the bloody mistakes made by others.

It looks beyond repair. Just buy a new mount.

I disagree. When hook turns become the norm, young TIs kill tandem students. In 2022, USPA reported 3 fatal accidents after tandems hook-turned too low. That is why tandem manufacturers preach against turns more than 90 degrees in the landing pattern.

Sorry Dear BMAC, But USPA did not change those things .... rather USPA REACTED to changes that were already the norm at larger DZs. I have not been jumping as long as Gerry Baumchen, but I have seen many of the same changes. Minimum opening altitudes changed because our airplanes got better. Compare a World War 2 surplus Beech 18 with a newly manufactured PAC750XL or Quest Kodiak. Ambulance-chasing lawyers made it ruinously expensive to rick injuring students less than 18 years old.

15 years ago, the problem was that many young jumpers were already exceeding any wing-loading guidelines that USPA was likely to publish, so USPA politicians tried to find a "soft" response ... or "grandfather" those jumpers who were heavily-loading their canopies. As usual, politicians were behind the fashion and trying to introduce solutions that were so luke-warm that they bordered on toothless. Junior jumpers are always going to try to down-size too fast - quoting the "mad skills." Only DZOs can say "you can't jump that tiny canopy here." DZOs will only limit wing-loadings when they fear that ambulances and hearses will interrupt their regular business.

Okay Dear SkyDekker, But I am deeply suspicious of "Orders In Council" because they side-step the entire democratic process. Unless you read the Hansard, you may suddenly find yourself a criminal because you were not aware of the most recent change in gun laws. Back in 1992 I wrote a newspaper article about this abusive process and it seems that the process has not changed. We also know that Canadian professional politicians fear an open public debate on gun laws. They fear an open debate because they know that voters are polarized on the subject and will oust a few professional politicians from office because some voters will be offended, no matter which way the politicians vote. We saw similar political cowardess the last time abortion laws changed. Members of Parliament cowardly foisted the problem on the Supreme Court of Canada. Eventually judges decided that abortion was legal in Canada.

Yes! And they interviewed a bisexual student on CBC AM Radio's "As It Happens" program. She was born female and raised in a heterosexual family. During her teen years, she realized that she likes both boys and girls. I have enjoyed "As It Happens" for more than 40 years.

That is an on-going controversy with Canadian gun laws. We have a a huge split between city slickers and natives who live off the land. Few Canadian city slickers have any need to own a gun beyond plinking at the range. OTOH many natives have always been poor and they live beyond range of a grocery store, so depend upon hunting and fishing to feed their families. Natives tend to not waste ammo since it is expensive. The latest version of Bill C.21 (currently under review by the Senate) proposes prohibiting a variety of military rifles. I agree that most of those rifles serve little sporting purpose. The prat that I do not understand is their proposal to ban SKS carbines (ballistically equivalent to an AR-15 or AK-47) because those SKs are preferred by native hunters. At less than $500 Canadian, a native hunter can purchase an SKS (7.62 x 39mm Commblock) for half or 1/3 the price of a .303 (equal to NATO 7.62 X 51mm). Natives need to modify (trap door) magazines to limit them to 5 rounds ... to conform to the old version of Canadian laws. ??????????? Remind me to write a letter to my senator(s).

Shoe Goo works well. I always have a tube of Shoe Goo on hand. Another option is to glue on a small sheet of rubber ... the same rubber that your shoe-maker uses to repair worn heels. As for the Cordura fabric sidewalls fraying ... I sew on Type 12 webbing sidewalls. I start by laying it upside down, so that only the edge overlaps on the seam. Lay the bottom portion (aka. edge of the sole) flat so that it gets caught in your first row of stitching. Then fold the Type 12 upwards and stitch around the edge of the Type 12 webbing. Finally, may I suggest sewing some sort of buckle or magnet near you knees so that they you don't drag your booties when they are not fastened tightly around your feet.