riggerrob

When Trump was in power, Canadians were busy stacking snow blocks along the border.

Also consider that we grow a new generation of young skydivers every 2 or 3 years and every new generation needs to hear the same bloody lessons anew. It is also important to include a bit of history or theory to help the lecture sink in. Young jumpers need to hear that they are standing on the bloody shoulders of older skydivers who learned bloody lessons the hard way. The old military, authoritarian approach no longer works with younger skydivers as they need to be motivated and they expect to have some of the "whys" explained.

One British, movie stuntman landed his wingsuit - once - in a huge pile of cardboard boxes. Those cardboard boxes were the same as used for high-falls in movie stunts. Conventional wisdom says that standing/stagnant water becomes as soft as concrete when speeds exceed 40 miles per hour. Go talk to Olympic high-divers/swimmers to learn how big and how fancy a bubbler you need to soften landings.

Once you get past the cutting table, it makes little difference for production sewers whether the D-bag is a J-1 or J-10 size. The sewing processes are all the same. So you can easily slip a J-1 sized D-bag into a batch of J-10s. However, switching machines from sewing leg-pads to D-bags may take a half-hour or so. Changing thread colors and tape colors takes longer, so many factories only sew black on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday may be all-blue. Thursday may be red. Friday is spent catching up on all the odd-colored orders. If they have a big, military order, they may sew camouflage colors for three weeks straight.

Dear Bluhdow, "In stock" used to mean "we have those parts sitting on the shelf and our shipping department can send them on this afternoon's UPS truck." However, I suspect that Amazon, UPS, DHL, etc. have re-written the definition while we were distracted by .........

In a perfect world, manufacturers would sew up spare handles, d-bags, etc. during the slow season. However, if you are quoting 30 week delivery times, you are running a tight ship and have no slack to sew spare parts on speculation.

Did you look at the Reflex manual?

While it would be ideal to stock one of every size of D-bag, it is just not economically feasible. Consider that some of those rare sizes will sit on the shelf - for years - until they are sold. No company can afford to have a huge stock sit on the shelf with slow turn-over. Chances are the factory was waiting for a shipment of ripcord pins. Another possible explanation is that they were busy with a large order and wanted to complete it before building any one-offs in an odd size. Another possible explanation is that the factory sub-contracts ripcord manufacture to an outside manufacturer (Capewell or Parachute Labs) and their next order is not due for delivery for a couple of weeks. They MIGHT be able to squeeze an odd-sized ripcord into their next batch of ripcords.

Why does this remind me of politics in Germany 90 years ago? The National Socialist Party got into power by using thugs (e.g. SA) to pound political opponents into pulp. It took an even bigger bully - Joseph Stalin - to un-seat Adolf Hitler's Nazis. Do we want to see a repeat? History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

those tubular handles started out as old thread spools. Later we discovered that the black plastic spools were too brittle and too easy to crack when people stepped on them, so we switched to softer, more flexible orange plastic tubing for main pilot chute handles. I have so many thousands of jumps with tubular handles that they are the norm for me. Even Strong Dual Hawk tandems have tubular plastic handles encased in Cordura. I am so old that whenever I see a hacky sack hanging from the corner of a rig, I have an over-powering urge to kick the hacky-sack! Hah! Hah!

"Call Jane" is a Hollywood film that debuted at a film festival during January 2022, but it only hit local cinemas this week (last week of October 2022). It is a fictionalized version (names were changed to protect the law-breakers) of the story about how a group of Chicago women who organized illegal abortions during the late 1960s, before Roe versus Wade legalized abortions in the USA. I first heard about the film when the two leading ladies: Sigourney Weaver and Elizabeth Banks were interviewed on a TV talk show. The two actors really seemed to have the courage of their convictions. They strongly seemed to believe that their characters did the right thing. On a personal note, this reminds me of all the times that Dr. Henry Morgantaler got dragged into Canadian courts during the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Morgentaler started the first birth-control clinic in 1969, in Montreal where he prescribed birth control pills, vasectomies and performed abortions, long before they were legal in Canada. Funny how a film about abortions only debuted two weeks before an American mid-term election. ????? Next question: will the film "Call Jane" affect the mid-term elections in the USA?

Did Bolsonaro start a dis-information campaign before the election campaign? Did he start accusing his opponents for stuffing ballot boxes before the concept crossed their minds?

By their nature, most semi-automatic guns can be converted to fire fully-automatic. At one end of the scale, an FN FAL C1 can be modified by simply inserting a paper match stick into the trigger group. Yes, I have done that modification to a Canadian Army rifle. At the range, I fired one magazine on full-auto bursts and concluded that it was a waste of ammunition. At 15 yards, the first bullet went into the target's right hip. The second bullet went in to its left shoulder and the third bullet missed completely. Most fully-automatic guns are useless in the hands of amateurs (read gang-bangers). Gang-bangers want full-auto because they instill fear in victims. Just count the number of bullets fired during the average drive-by shooting, then count the number of bullets that struck the intended victim. Back during the 1960s, Us Army surplus M1 carbines were popular with Montreal bank robbers because they could easily be converted to fire full-auto. My dad even had an M2 carbine (fully-automatic in military service) but he installed an after-market selector switch to limit it to semi-automatic. Mind you, tolerances can be tight in most trigger groups, so the difference between semi and full-auto can be a matter of a few thousandths of an inch. Designers of semi-auto weapons often have to add disconnectors to prevent run-aways at full-auto. I could refer you to a couple of textbooks ... but prefer to leave the bad guys guessing. One of those textbooks is sitting on the far side of my living room.

Perhaps we should define it as "make your decision above/before altitude "X"." When teaching S/L or IAD first-jump-students, I keep things as simple as possible and just tell them that the higher they decide, the better. Perhaps the block of instruction needs to be re-visited multiple times during a jumpers' career. Is an emergency procedures review required before every new USPA license? The decision-making tree can get more complicated as jumpers acquire more hundreds of jumps.

Yes! I remember when "Limits to Growth" was published. There was a conference by that name at Bishop's University. Funny how human birth rates started to decline around the same time. Dr. Henry Morgentaler opened his first birth-control clinic in 1969. The good doctor offered vasectomies, birth control pills and abortions. If you want to see what abortions were like before Morgentaler, go see the just released film "Call Jane." ... or visit a few right-wing Americna states today. Funny how that film was only released two weeks before Americna mid-term elections??????????

We do not need petroleum to make gasoline or plastics, etc. it is just the cheapest source of long-chain polymers currently available. My 3D printer runs on poly lactic acid ... not quite sure how PLA is made, but the name implies that it starts as milk. The disadvantage of synthesizing plastics, gasoline, etc. from other sources is the increased cost. Consider the example of Nazi Germany. They started World War 2 with only a few months reserve of petroleum and not significant oil fields within Germany or Austria, so Nazis conquered oil fields in Romania, but that was not enough. In June of 1941, Nazi oil reserves were running low, so they launched an invasion of Russia. When they failed to capture Caucasus oil fields by September of 1941, Germany lost the war. German chemical engineers were clever enough to synthesize oil, plastics, fertilizer, etc. from Germany's vast coal mines, but the processes were expensive, and they could never produce enough gasoline to win the war. By late 1944, the Luftwaffe was essentially grounded by shortages of gasoline.

Good point! We will never drill for the last barrel of oil because it will be too deep, too far off-shore and too crude (think road tar) to be profitable.

Wow! A second time that I agree with Ron!

I disagree with the notion of only deploying a reserve if you find yourself below altitude "X." That tactic may have been relevant when round reserves were fashionable, but when was the last time you saw a round reserve in opened in the air?

We teach a simplified definition to first jump students, especially S/L or IAD students. "Count to 5 and look up. Is it there? Is it square? Is it flying straight? Can you turn it? Can you flare it?" If the answer to any of those question is no, then look at the right side of your chest and grab the red handle .... The sooner and higher you make this decision, the better. Any delay in releasing a malfunctioning main just reduces your chances of survival." I do not waste time telling them to look at their altimeters. If they do, I remind them that USPA (used to) recommend deciding to cutaway about 1,800 feet.

While the First World burns ridiculous amounts of oil and gas or birth rates declined rapidly during th e1960s and 1970s. Ever since then we have had to import laborers from the Second and Third World. As birth rates slump in Second and Third World countries, our overall human population will start to decline. My guess is 2050 when the last of the Baby Boomers die off.

Now that many of our neighbors are installing sculptures of ghosts and goblins on their front lawns in preparation for Halloween, I suggested to my landlord that we install a similar scary statue on our front law. I suggested installing a statute of a lawyer. My landlord was ^%$#@! furious until I promised to only include the images of the lawyers that I admire and respect.

A joke only understood by computer programmers.

Funny, we had a few ZP Manta 290s at Pacific Skydivers during the early 2000s. They were red, white and silver and we did not suffer any malfunctions. The biggest complaint was that they took all week to come down with light students, so we only hung them on larger (more than 200 pounds) students.

During another rigger course, I assigned a similar equipment selection exercise and the lone, British candidate was ^%$#@! furious!!!!!!!! I told him to calm down, then said that I could keep the junior jumper busy learning the finer points of precision landings for the next 200 jumps.