riggerrob

The Calgary Chief of Police used to buy one-way bus tickets to Vancouver and force Calgary's winos to migrate to a warmer city with better shelters for homeless people.

The biggest difference will be in your waist measurement. The precisely compensate for a smaller waist, you will need to get a Master Rigger - or the factory - to shorten your lateral straps. You may be able to cheat by adding an after-market belly-band to tighten loose laterals. Other than than, smaller thighs will require shorter leg pads. The better local riggers can modify leg pads or the factory will cheerfully sell you replacement leg pads. Look at the 2piece, sliding leg pads often installed on student rigs.

Also consider that it might be easier to replace batteries if they are storing in under-belly baggage panniers ... with external doors.

Halleluyah! A mere 12 years after I suggested removing it, that ugly, eye sore of an airplane wreck has finally disappearred from Pitt Meadows Airport. This is after I suggested removing it a decade ago. I wrote letters to the owner, airport management, Pitt Meadows Town Council, Pitt Meadows Fire Department, Maple Ridge City Council, Transport Canada, Workmens' Compensation Board, etc. I even offered to buy a box of blades for PMFD's crash rescue saw. This is a recurring theme in my life: I identify a problem and suggest a solution. Authorities tell me to "Shut the F' up! Because we are never going to do that." Then a few months or years later, my solution is implemented." Why do they waste time denying my suggestions????????????????????

Wise words.

How many other world leaders have jumped? Retired U.S. President George Walker Bush did a few jumps, but his first was the most spectacular: from a flaming Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. It seems that he had been bombing Japanese positions, but the Japs replied with AAA. Circa 1997, Pres. Bush was the keynote speaker at a PIA Symposium and expressed an urge to do an AFF jump. All the various PIA members tumbled over each other to donate equipment: Airtec donated a Cypres, Precision donated a reserve, Flight concepts donated a couple of mains and Rigging Innovations donated a Telesis I harness/container. Since I was working at R.I. I got to assemble and pack the system, then sent it off to Yuma, Arizona where Mr. Bush jumped it onto the front pages of newspapers.

Sometimes Canada benefits from still having a monarch (Queen or King), though it is usually the Governor General who knocks heads together. Sometimes we need an aloof statesman to convince elected politicians of the best path. For example" during the last exciting federal election, neither major party (Liberals or Conservatives) gained a clear majority. Incumbent Conservative P.M. Harper might have tried to stay on, but the Governor General called him and Liberal J. Trudeau to to the G.G.'s official residence and helped them hammer out a deal that saw a Liberal-NDP coalition take control. The GG's heavy-handed methods are infinitely preferable to the American policy of rioting on Capital Hill. Yes, Canadian politics can be boring and we like it that way. The Queen or King or Governor General adds a bit to the boredom.

How generous of the Russian Army to Lend-Lease AFVs to the Ukrainians. This reminds us of how Finland started WW2 with mostly Western-pattern weapons, but by war's end was mostly equipped with Soviet-pattern weapons. As the Finnish Air Force wore out their Western-made airplane engines, they replaced them with (Soviet-made) Shevnetsov and Klimov engines salvaged from battlefields.

Mr. Poutine claimed that Nazis were operating in Eastern Ukraine, which gave him an excuse to invade. Mr. Poutine also has slim historical evidence to back his claim. Many centuries before Mr. Hitler invented Nazisim, Jews were employed by the Russian Tzar to collect taxes in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc. This practice made theses Jewish tax-farmers unpopular symbols of the oppressive Tzar, so poor peasants reacted with pogroms (riots, stampeding, arson, lynching, etc.) for many centuries. Pogroms against any Jews were a recurring theme in Eastern Europe. Then during World War 2, some Ukrainians aligned themselves with the invading Germans and helped ship a few thousand Ukrainian Jews to concentration camps. Circa 2014, the Ukrainian Azov Battalion resisted the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Some Azov Battalion members were severely right-wing, bordering on fascist or Nazi. They even held torch-light parades and waved their version of runes. Please remember that the runic alphabet was the founding alphabet of Kievian-Russ, a good 1,000 years before Hitler. Yes, some Azov Battalion members counted Jew-bashing as a popular sport, but that element was suppressed when the Azov Battalion was integrated into the regular Ukraine defense forces. The most ardent right-wing Azov leaders drifted into politics. Please keep in mind that Mr. Poutine's distorted definition of "Nazi" no longer meshes with Mr. Hitler's definition of Nazism. Instead, Mr. Poutine includes anyone who opposes him. So, yes, there is slim evidence of Nazism in Ukraine (circa 2104), but you really need to drink Mr. Poutine's brand of Kool-Aid to understand his attitude.

Yes, we'd often turn onto jump run and I'd encourage the next student to lean his head out the door to look at the target. Often the previous student was on short final as the second student was climbing out. That was the best way to avoid low-altitude canopy collisions.

I would never argue against an AAD. Back before electronic AADs (e.g. Cypres) became fashionable - during the mid 1990s - every third accident report included low pull or no pull. Or it included the words 'cutaway a malfunctioned main at a reasonable altitude but pulled the reserve ripcord too late or not at all." Back around 1984, I watched one of my IAD students do a low cutaway from a partially malfunctioned Para-Commander. Then he never completed the full pull on his S.O.S. handle. I was a good 10 seconds before we saw a white reserve canopy. Fortunately, Saint Francis Xavier Chevrier was on duty that day and saved the student's lazy ass. That sold me on the concept of equipping students with AADs.

Minimum 18 years old is a grey area in Canadian Common Law. A decade or so ago, I had to explain to a Vancouver-based lawyer about a precedent that had been set in an Ontario court during the early 1980s. Back in those days, many Canadian DZs allowed 16 or 17 year old students to jump as long aa a parent signed the waiver. Then a 16 year old girl landed a malfunction during a static-line jump. She did not respond to the sight of a badly-distorted (long way from round) Para-Commander overhead. She broke her spine and was paralysed from the waist down. She was confined to a wheel-chair for the rest of her life. The lawyer representing the DZ was too lazy to inform the DZO of the verdict, so he heard about it on his car radio. Douh! I later worked with a guy who had also driven Handy-Dart buses. He said that the girl was messed in the head before she jumped and on several occassions, he had to pull her out of bars before she was old enough to drink legally in Ontario. Since then few Canadian DZs drop students younger than 18 or 19 or 21 or whatever is the age of majority in their province. Quebec seems to be the only exception, but Quebec does not operate under British Common Law, instead they prefer the Code Napoleonic. American tandem manufacturers specifically prohibit taking students younger than 18. Fast forward 30 years and I had to explain this to a Vancouver-based tort lawyer. It was a scary conversation. Silly me expected that an aviation lawyer would understand case law and precedents. Then he tried to spina yarn about an IAD jump that he did with Dave Williamson in Nova Scotia. I remain cynical as to whether he ever jumped. Next thing I knew he was trying to convince me that letting his 14 year old daughter was a good idea. He was disappointed by my response: NO! It felt like every conversation with him was a test. He was "helping" me with a personal injury lawsuit, but bungled that case 3 ways to Sunday! He wasted 9 years losing a simple case!!!!!!!! So the "16 with parental consent" is one of those silly Canadian laws that is still on the books, even though it has been obsolete for more than 40 years.

An earlier rumor stated that Russian soldiers came from poor, backward villages well outside of Moscow, so for them, a washing machine was a rare luxury. How those privates or sergeants expected to transport their stolen washing machines all the way home is a mystery to me.

Looks are secondary to function. The more important question is: "Will there be enough tension on the main closing loop to prevent premature deployments?' That question is best answered by your local rigger.

I disagree. Mammals are born with three instinctive reactions to danger: fight, flight or freeze. Politicians later learn a fourth response: filibuster. "Fight" means pulling more handles to improve the main canopy overhead ... or replace it with a better reserve canopy. "Flight" means running away from the problem ... pulling cutaway handle. "Freeze" means doing nothing and hoping or praying that the big nasty problem loses interest and goes away. S/L, IAD and AFF instructors try to screen for those reactions during ground school. Most of the time, ground-school instructors screen out the least competent students.

We teach "if it is not square, get rid of it and follow through with the reserve ripcord. Problems like line-overs or pilot-chute-unders are best dealt with at 2,500 feet ... er ... shortly after opening. Any lower than that is a waste of altitude.

We try to avoid collisions by spacing students from heaviest to lightest and when in doubt, take extra (airplane) passes to create an extra minute or three of spacing. I can only recall one canopy collision between students during this century (see A.I.M. reports in old issues of Parachutist magazine).

Tandems and wind tunnels are part of the process of screening out those students who are not emotionally tough enough to handle high-speed, high-stress sports like skydiving. Do any wind tunnels use reverse-clock-altimeters to train AFF levels?

In most other countries, the term "militia" refers to army reserve. I served in the Canadian Army Reserve, Sherbrooke Hussars, Sector Est Milice, Mobile Command, etc. and we reported all the way up the chain of command to the Queen of Canada. Canadian Army Reservists wear the same uniforms, fire the same weapons, follow the same Queen's Rules and Regulations, etc. as regular army soldiers. When a regular army regiment is assigned an overseas task (e.g. United Nations peacekeeping) they often take along 40 percent reservists to top off the ranks, because few regiments are at full-strength during peacetime. I guess that the word "milice" makes more sense in French. Trivia question: What do you call a North American who speaks English and French? What do you call a North American who speaks English and Spanish? What do you call a North American who only speaks English?

Russian accounting!!!!!!!!!!

His name was Clark Thurmond and he lived in Texas. He was/is a friend of Manley Butler. I sewed together two of his Para-Kits and put hundreds of jumps on them. Recenlty I donated those canopies and my copy of the Lone Star manual to CSPA's Technical Committee.

Will proceeds from the sale go to the governor of Gibraltar or some Ukrainian charity?

The money would be better spent on anti-suicide fences.

Try to find a psychological coach to help you get through your fear. May I suggest the book "Transcending Fear" written by Brian Germain? Brian has also published several www.youtube.com videos about psychological training for skydiving.

Part of the logic for removing pilot chutes - from chest-mounted reserves - was that old umbrella style pilot-chutes had wimpy springs that contributed little to launching the pilot-chute into clear air. Umbrella style pilot-chutes were considered obsolete by the time I started jumping in Canada in 1977. The last time I saw an umbrella style pilot-chute was in 1986, at the West German Army parachute school. Mind you, the WGA was in the later stages of developing a replacement for the T-10 system.