riggerrob

I have met plenty of right-wingers who are religiously intolerant and harbour hatred towards their own kind. That is why I fear extremists on both ends of the spectrum.

Pour enough alcohol into someone and you might hear the truth. In vino veritas

The USA would be wise to stay out of that long-running civil war. Just because a 5-way civil war has been reduced to a 4-way civil war is not cause to celebrate. Russia and Iran backed the Asad family. Iran backed a variety of Sunnis minority sects especially in Eastern Syria. Turkey was busy shooting up Kurds. Kurds in Northern Syria were backed by the USA. Druze in Southern Syria (Golan Heights) were backed by Israel. Al Queda and ISIS/ISIL backed Muslim fundamentalists in Central Syria. Those fundamentalists really how to put the "fun" in fundamentalism: beheadings, beatings. covering womens' heads, banning every holy book except the Koran, etc. Who has a clue which faction will dominate Syria in the long run?????????

Killing the CEO of a medical insurance company is too gentle. He deserves to spend eternity in a poorly-staffed, poorly-equipped, burn unit with the bare minimum of drugs as scheduled for his poorest subscriber. I know - from personal experience - how long term pain can drive a man insane. Good thing for the faceless bureaucrats at Workmans' Compensation Board of British Columbia that I sold my guns years ago. If any gov't troll finds this post, he is welcome to take a long hard suck on my hot knife.

What percentage of women want to work in the sewers? How many women can lift a man-hole cover single-handedly?

No. I draw the line at political violence. Ever since Alfred Pinisch died (1964) I have abhored political violence. Alfred was a family friend who died in a bungled FLQ raid on a gun store in Montreal. We should not have to suffer political violence in North America.

One man's horror (Russian oligarch falling out a window) might be another man's bliss (BASE jumper falling out the same window). Hah! Hah!

CEOs of wealthy corporations can buy elections in Russia, the USA, etc. At that level, there is little moral or economic difference between a Russian oligarch and a North American oligarch.

Authorities persecuted Jesus' followers for a few hundred more years until the Roman Emperor decided that Christianity was a good idea. Once the Emperor converted to Christianity, then it became a fashionable religion and a few hundred thousand more quickly converted. Then the Roman Catholic Church hung up a bunch of cruxifices with the image of Jesus bleeding out. I always saw the Catholic cruxifix as a "my way or the highway" religious symbol. As in non-conformists will be hung on a wooden cross along the highway leading into town and they will die a slow and painful (asphixiation) and disgraceful death in public "to encourage the others."

The sneaky wording on attorney Paul Van Der Velde suggests that he is lying about collecting the $40 million. Has an attorney ever lied before? Hah! Hah!

The wrist watch mimics the altimeters worn by skydivers. They need to know how high they are and when it is time to open their parachutes. They should have an open parachute overhead by the time they enter the red zone (below 2,500 feet above ground level). The various bronze and gold wings with diamonds were issued by the United States Parachute Association to recognize how many thousand jumps he made. The "PIA" pin stands for "Parachute Industry Association" which is dominated by the companies that manufacture parachutes. Every second year (e.g. February/March 2025) they host a big Symposium that attracts hundreds of professional parachute riggers and instructors to a week-long conference in a resort city like Reno. That white parachute with a black kite-shape hanging below it was issued by a USSR sport parachute club recognizing "X" number of jumps.

While I can understand what motivated the shooter, I am appalled by the notion of political violence. ... perhaps because I met Alfred Pinisch many times before he died in an bumbled FLQ raid during August of 1964. As many of you have read, I had my troubles amplified by a two-faced medical insurance company: Workmans' Compensation Board of British Columbia.

Agreed. Welcome the end of a 5-way civil war. Now it is only a 4-way civil war. It will be interesting to see how power settles in the next few months. Will the various factions continue to cooperate? Will the Kurds be satisfied with autonomy in Northern Syria? Will Druze be satisfied with autonomy in Southern Syria? Will HTS make good on their promises of moderation and religious toleration? etc.??????????? Asad lost because his supporters got distracted by other conflicts. With Russia distracted in Ukraine and Iran distracted by their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah losing battles,

My interpretation of so many skydiving competition disciplines is that young jumpers look at the 10,000 jumps required to join Arizona Airspeed, and they decide that it is simpler to invent a new sky sport. Early (1920s) precision landing competitors were happy if they landed in the correct field. Then they added precisely defined targets which eventually evolved into the modern electronic "discs." Competitors responded by getting more and more precise. Now if you miss the "disc" on your first jump, you just go home in disgrace. Then came "style": solo maneuvers ... then "relative work" (group formation) in freefall on their bellies .... then sit-flying .......... Then sky-surfing .... then solo free-fly (see Dale ...) ... once square parachutes were perfected, they invented canopy relative work (canopy formations) ........... speed stacks ........... canopy rotations ............ para-batics .............. blade-running ............ flat-land slalom under canopy .......... pond-swooping ........... distance under canopy ............... The list is never-ending. Next thing you know the FAI has written rules for competition and a few years later you need 8,000 jumps to compete seriously at the world meet, so youngsters find it easier to invent another new sky sport. Not every young skydiver is a fiercely competitive team member. Some of them just want to play grab-ass with their friends on the weekend.

These trade tariffs sound like another tax on the American middle class. Money will come out of their pockets and land in Washington.

The sad thing about that (Mexican-American) border wall was that immigration patterns changed a decade ago, but right-wing politicians are still chanting the old propaganda. Starting around 1990, Mexico started building machidores (apology for my sloppy spelling in Spanish). Those "shadow factories" allowed skilled Mexican workers (licensed welders and electricians) to find decent-paying jobs close to home. Hence no need to sneak into the USA. I used to work alongside Latina-Americans in factories in Southern California and have a lot of respect for them. They show up early, they work hard all day and they don't steal tools. Since then the mexican-American border ahs remained open but the numbers of immgrants from Mexico has dropped. Their ranks have been replaced by immigrants from Asia, China, etc. who still see the M>eican-Americna border as a easy-in.

The Chinese Communist Party will have a good laugh over that! Hah! Hah!

Sure! Over the next 4 years Trump is going to get blamed for everythign that goes wrong on the planet, so we might as well blame him for the demise of www.dropzone.com. Hah! Hah!

Interesting how the International Criminal Court (Hague, Netherlands) has now defined starvation as "genocide." Before 2023, Gaza had could not grow their own food and depended heavily on imported food. Most of the at food was donated by international charities. A handful of Palestinian families controlled all imports into Gaza. Hamas charged a 30 percent tax on all imports. Over the past year, fighting has interfered with imports. Warfare always interrupts trade. Now Palestinians trapped inside Gaza are starving. I would counter that starvation has been a military tactic for thousands of years. In several of his books Professor Brian Fagan describes starvation as the motivation that started several wars.

That is because the USA is one of the few nations large enough to build everything consumers need within their own borders: clothing, oil, housing, food, automobiles, computers. etc. While your American-made computer may not have the latest semi-conductor (only made in Taiwan) but it will still be smarter than you. The USA is one of the few nations that can afford to ignore things outside its borders.

He is not bright enough to learn from history. The first American Civil War was bloody, long-winded and wrecked large parts of the Eastern Seaboard. Civil Wars are always messy and bloody. The amount of blood shed is a direct reflection of the amount of love beforehand. .... similar to divorce court .... No one in their right mind would ask for another civil war.

Looks like his new organization is trying to overlap with the pre-existing: Federation Aeronautique International, USA National Aero Club (sp?), United States Parachute Association, Soaring Society of America, etc.

When people try to modify the definitions of words like "extremist" (US politics) or "genocide" (Gaza) I begin to wonder if they have ever read the dictionary ..... or .... B they are lying to me. Extremist vocabulary scares me and makes me distrust the speaker. Note" over the last decade, I have watched American politics, news, etc. polarize and I am not enjoying the changes. Call me a grumpy old grey-bearded Master Rigger.

When extreme left-wingers and extreme right-wingers go full-circle, the general public cannot understand the difference between violent socialists and violent antifa black shirts. As Canadians, we hate political violence. I can still remember Alfred Pinisch, who died in August 1964 during a botched FLQ raid at International Firearms in Montreal Alfred was a friend of my father and we met a dozen times before his untimely death.

Yes! Attitudes towards AADs changed radically during the mid-1990s. I started rigging in 1984 when only FXC and Sentinel were available and they needed wide margins of error. I only saw one FXC miss-fire at 7,000 feet. All the rest of the "miss-fires" happened below 2,000 feet. What was any junior jumper doing in freefall below 2,000 feet?????? I started rigging for Square One in early 1994. A year later, Cypres was the norm on new-sold gear. Soon the sales girls were raiding the receiving dock to secure Cypri for their customers. A couple of years later, one of my rigging colleagues told a customer "Your new rig has arrived, except for the Cypres. How about if I assemble and pack it so you can jump it this weekend and I will install the Cypres when it arrives next week." The customer replied: "Never mind. I can jump rental gear for another week."