riggerrob

Yes Phil, Vancouver certainly attracts more than its fair share of immigrants from China. Punjabi (Sikh) may be the second most popular second language in Vancouver, but both Cantonese and Mandarin are close behind, meaning that the combined number of Chinese-speaking immigrants make up the dominant second-language. In some suburbs of Vancouver (e.g. Richmond) I am sometimes the token/only English-speaking, white-man in a shopping mall or restaurant. In comparison, while French may be the most popular second language in Eastern Canada, French its only spoken by 1.5 percent of Vancouverites.

Harbor Air just flew their electric Beaver from Vancouver International Airport to Victoria International Airport. It only needed 24 minutes to fly from the South Fork of the Fraser River to Pat Bay. I have taken off from Pat Bay Airport dozens of times when I did tandems for Victoria Skydivers. 24 minutes is a typical route for Harbor Air and is the longest flight that their electric Beaver has flown to date.

Good use of the Junior ROTC.

This mis-naming comes from lazy people dropping the "semi" part of the term "semi automatic." Most jurisdictions allow civilians to own semi-automatic pistols and long guns that only fire one bullet per trigger pull. In Britain, they are called "self-loading." OTOH "fully-automatic" machineguns are prohibited from civilian ownership in most jurisdictions.

I don't know specifics of the program at Pietermeritzburg, but several civilian DZs were doing assisted freefall jumps well before Ken Coleman invented the AFF program and sold it to USPA circa 1980. Bob Sinclair was one of the first with his "buddy-Jump" system that saw him leaving the airplane holding his students' arms. Bob also invented an extended main ripcord that was sew to the student's left sleeve. This zap-handle allowed Bob to pull a student's ripcord even if they started spinning. Tom McCarthy developed his own assisted freefall program in Gananoque, Ontario during the 1970s. He started by giving every student a KAP3 auto-opener and teaching them how to pull their own ripcord during their first jump. Other Canadian DZs (e.g. Claresholm, Alberta) deveoped CSPA's Progressive Freefall Program. A key difference from USPA's AFF program was an insistence that students demonstrate a few stable exits from lower latitudes (S/L or IAD) before going to the top with a pair of PFF instructors. Few DZs do "pure AFF" any more. Instead, most DZ use a variety of methods to teach AFF students pre-skills like canopy control and the basics of freefall stability using tandems, solo IAD jumps and wind tunnels. Once a student has demonstrated basic skills, they often do assisted freefall accompanied by only a single instructor.

We discussed this topic over on the womens' forum a few months back. Wendy made some good points about arm strengthening exercises. Any good weight-training coach can help you start with light weights to develop correct technique, then slowly increase weights. I often see this problem with students and saw it in myself when I returned to doing tandems after an accident. The problem is that too many of us try to complete the flare by pushing our hands down in front of us. This version only uses triceps muscles (back of upper arm) during the later part of the flare. To draw in more muscles, modify the path that your hands and toggles take during a flare. Start your flare by pulling both hands to your collar-bone. Then raise your elbows and continue pushing your hands down the zipper on the front of your jump-suit. This version still uses triceps muscles, but also pulls in pectoral muscles and perhaps some latimus dosi. When you keep your hands - almost - touching your belly, you r greatly increase the strength available.

The 2 days of classroom instruction required to earn a Canadian PAL is not nearly enough training to carry a concealed weapon in public. You need additional training in situational awareness, risk assessment, risk avoidance, driving out of the danger zone, escalation of force, identifying targets in dimly-lit areas, shooting while breathing hard, shooting around obstacles, legal consequences, perhaps some medical training ... the list goes on.

I suspect that the original poster was trying to limit the numbers of amateur or part-time or low-volume of FFL holders. If you limit the numbers of FFL holders, you make it easier for police to monitor them.

A medical doctor or judge can decide if you are risk to yourself or the public.

Canadian law prohibits any long gun magazine more than 5 rounds. Pistols are restricted to 10 rounds. Initially, shotgun magazines were not limited, but back then shotguns were only available with tube magazines.

When stored at home, a minimum of a trigger lock and preferably locked in a closed cabinet. Guns are best stored out of sight (e.g. no glass doors on gun cabinets. Ideally, ammo is stored in a separate locked cabinet. When transporting from home to a gun range, trigger locks. Pistols should also be carried in locked, hard-shell cases.

Dear SkyDekker, Did you consider that when the original owner of a biometrically-locked gun dies ... the gun is rendered inert? Cops would love that.

If the lawful owner reported to police that his gun was stolen ...

Perhaps raise the minimum age to be the same as the drinking age: 21. Non-hunting firearm ... for example, anything smaller than.308 (aka. 7.62 X 51 mm NATO) is considered the minimum for deer hunting in Canada. 5.56 NATO is only considered legitimate for hunting coyotes. A few small caliber pistols (e.g. .25 center-fire) were banned as they were only used in "Saturday Night Specials." Then some one reminded the RCMP that Olympic and a few international matches only used .25" pistols, so those were granted limited, restricted ownership, but only if the owner was registered as a member of a competitive pistol shooting club (e.g. Olympic level competition). All pistols are prohibited for hunting in Canada. If a game-warden catches you carrying a pistol - in the forest - during deer-hunting season, he will seize that pistol plus a bunch of your other stuff (truck or boat), plus other legal miseries.

Dear Wendy, I suspect that you meant "trigger locks." Trigger locks are little gadgets - sort of specialized pad - locks that hide the trigger. Trigger locks are sold by all gun stores. Fumbling for the key takes an extra minute or two. Trigger locks also work well on long guns. Alternately, a bicycle chain or Kryptonite lock blocks the breach, preventing you from closing the bolt ... ergo preventing you from firing that long gun. Trigger locks should be standard on any gun stored at home. Something that important might even require two locks.

Good point dear Jakee, I doubt if life changed much for the average Russian peasant whether they were ruled by: the Tzar or Lenin or Stalin or Yeltsin or Mr. Poutine.

For months, I have been wondering why Mr. Poutine has been willing to suffer such heavy losses of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. I finally found a 500 year old explanation. ... or is this explanation 1,000 years old? ... or is it 3,000 years old? After reading a bunch of books written by Prof. Brian M. Fagan about how climate change forces human evolution, I tried to apply the Asian horse-archer style of warfare to the current war in Ukraine. Prof. Fagan describes the grassy steppes as the "lungs of Asia" expanding during moist years and contracting during dry years. Consider the plight of a nomadic horse-archer Cossack, Kazar, Scythian, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, Tatar, Turkmen, etc. tribe roaming the steppes. They were spread thin on the steppes because grass was too thin to feed their flocks for more than a week or two in any single pasture. They were also unable to store significant amounts of food because of the constant need to migrate to greener pastures. During moist years, their flocks of sheep, cattle and horses expand. Most of their children survive to adulthood and only a fewer elders die every year. BUT come a dry year and cattle die in the fields, Fewer children survive to adulthood and your elders died off too early. The simplest solution is rustling a few cattle from a neighboring tribe. After a few more drought years, you decide to conquer the neighboring tribe. With insufficient food to feed you own tribe over the coming winter, you have zero food available to feed prisoners of war, so the men get slaughtered, the women taken as sex slaves and children are sold into slavery. If slave markets are too far away to march slaves ... those slaves get slaughtered, again because you cannot afford to feed them over the coming winter. Casualties in battle can also solve a couple of demographic and political problems within your own tribe. The boldest and dumbest young men will die in battle "thinning the herd" your tribe of its weakest males. This reduce pressure on limited food reserves and eliminates a few political rivals who are ambitious, but lack the skills to lead your tribe int he long run. Also consider that one reason that you were able to over-run the neighboring tribe is that they were starving before you. Starving people tend to suffer more from diseases like fleas, lice, poxes, flues. dysentery, etc. So the simplest way to prevent your tribe from contracting those diseases is to burn down the houses of the conquered. Burning out diseases also provides one possible explanation of why the Russian Army is willing to bomb Mariupol into rumble on their way to capturing the city. Finally, Russians have never learned how to make conquered people love them, so Russians settle for making conquered peoples fear them.

While other professional skydivers were whining about the rain/winds/ATC/ etc. I was hiding behind a sewing machine, making money. If you want a decent bottom-line ... er ... decent pay check, you need a variety of skills.

Vertical separation can be pre-planned before you board the airplane. When doing exhibition jumps or team stacks for precision landings, we always put the guy with the smallest (most heavily-loaded) canopy out first and told him to "suck it down" to open at 2,000 feet. Once open, he would spiral down over the stadium to gain even more vertical separation. The guy with the biggest (lightest-loaded) canopy exited last and opened immediately (say 3,000 feet). Then he hung in half or 3/4 brakes to watch the rest of us land. That sort of stack is easy to plan from a 4-seater Cessna.

When doing big-ways, I like to open at a medium altitude (e.g. saddled-out by 2,500 feet) and hang in half brakes off to the side of the "cloud" of canopies. Hanging out on the side of the "cloud" of canopies means that I can devote most of my vision to avoiding canopies on one side, with just the occasional glance over my other shoulder. Below 500 feet, I liked to do a large radius, front-riser carving turn towards the bowl. While carving, I keep my eyes on a swivel. "Eyes on stalks" in British parlance. If the big-way has more than 20 canopies, I tend to land well away from the bowl, on the outer edge of the landing field ... all to get more horizontal spacing from other canopies.

Dear gowlerk, Wealthy Canadians often take "medical vacations" when wait times at Canadian hospitals get too long. Some of those "medical vacations" are to hospitals in the Carribean where a handful of Canadian surgeons have operating room privileges. Like the False Creek Surgical Clinic, these are some of the best and brightest and most ambitious Canadian surgeons who are impatient with waiting two years for time in an operating room.

With only a Class A, you have not practiced those skills the ten thousand times needed to burn them into long-term memory. Even skydivers who have long experience tend to do a bit of refresher training before resuming jumping. The Australian Parachute Federation has published some excellent training aids.

Baking okalb: I grew up in Canada and did most of my travelling with the Canadian Armed Forces. Medical care was great when I was young, especially for my sickly younger brother. During my 30s and 40s, I worked in the USA and thank my lucky stars that I never got injured. After age 50, I moved back to Canada and am glad that I did because as I age, my medical expenses grow. The public purse paid for most of my medical care in the aftermath of a plan crash. I have already had a couple of surgeries paid from the public purse and am scheduled for another surgery next week. Growing old is not for the faint of heart.

Joe, Are you implying that your farts contain noble gases?

That initial advice was valid with student canopies, because you were never going to out-spiral a smaller, heavier-loaded canopy. At the other end of the scale, it can be to everyone's advantage if the tiny (sub-100 square foot), heavily-loaded pond swoopers land first. The challenge is for them to spiral down off to the side of tamer traffic. Spiraling in the pattern is discouraged for two reasons (below 1,500 feet and near the target). First, spiraling makes it difficult for others to predict where you will be 10 or 20 seconds later. They are trying to fly their landing pattern in a way that does not cross your landing pattern. It helps if you landing pattern is predictable. The second reason for discouraging spirals in the pattern is to discourage the radical turns (old school hook turns) that lead to radical pond swoops. Many DZOs have banned hook turns because they are tired of calling ambulances and attending funerals. Hook turns were the pre-cursor (circa 1990) to modern high-performance carving approaches. Hook turns often started with toggle-whipping at such low altitudes that the canopy barely had enough altitude for its recovery arc. If you were even a little late hook-turning, you were forced to slab your toggles again (late flare) or get a ride in an ambulance on the way to meeting nurses, surgeons, physio-therapists, etc.