LawnDart21

No problem, will post opinions in gear section after lunch.

Cool thanks for the info. It's tough to ask questions on this board sometimes without people getting all defensive. Mucho Appreciation! Brian is a huge resource on canopy sizing and experience. He should write a book about canopy flight. What did you think of the Stilletto, I demo'd a 120 and was all set to buy it, then I talked with a few people (Brian being one of them ironicaly) and I became aware of the "Spinetto" nickname. Then with the crossfire problems, I decided to go with an airlock and am glad i did. I wante dto buy a Samuria but I get employee discounts on PD gear at my DZ so it was a financial decision that made me pick the vengeance. Am happy with it though, it flys great Peace! Tom

The question was only referring to currency numbers on the highly loaded canopies. Obviously your opinion on canopy loadings you've jumped or are jumping are certainly valid.

There are a few jumpers on our DZ unknowingly referred to as "Team Cypres Fire"

Only a HARDCORE freeflier would have to ask that........LOL!

I'm just wondering where the replies on currency based on wingloading are coming from? Experience or other peoples opinions? Not trying to be a flame, Asking legitamately. I only have 50+ jumps on a 1.7 loaded elliptical (this is my first year with it), (only 420 jumps total with only a year and a half in the sport) so I couldn't advise or suggest a min # of jumps per year on a 1.7 or higher loading. Because a) I haven't jumped a single wing loading for an entire year and b) I haven't jumped any extreme canopies at 1.8 or higher. I'm not knocking you Phree, it's just (assuming you've never jumped a 1.8 or higher) how can you recommend currency numbers? Anyways, again, not trying to be a flame, just honestly asking, cause some people just pass through here and read what we write and interpret it as fact. If you got the info from a canopy expert at your DZ, then by all means I apologize, no flame intended. Cheers and Beers, Tom

I'd recommend against putting anything like a sweatshirt on over your jump suit. If your jump suit is already baggy and you put another baggy layer over it, the sweatshirt or extra layer is more apt to blow up over your cutaway and reserve handles. As for your wife increasing her fall weight without wieghts, all the above advice is good stuff, my additional .02 would be for your wife to try flexing her abs and upperbody (chest and arms). I was just goofing around in Skyventure two weeks ago messing with my fall rate and I found that while in a stable arch, if I flexed my midsection and upper body, it increased my fall rate and as I relaxed my muscles (keeping the same arch, ie not moving) I slowed down. I got the idea from sitflying, as to increase fall rate in a sit, you flex your legs muscles and push down on the air (without moving your legs) just adjusting the force you are exuriting on the air. To slow the sit, you lessen the flex and hence lessen the relative force that your legs resist the airflow with. Just an idea. Peace, Tom

You guys have all missed the biggest problem with stand flying and sitflying to a RW formation..........YOUR BOOTIES GET BLOWN OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL Then you spend the rest of the dive with your booties bangin' around......ha ha ha

That's a great line, but let's not forget "If you want to do the team, don't DO the team."

Well, Cutaway was directed by Guy Ramos, who has like 10,000 jumps. So, I'm gonna go on the assumption (for Cutaway anyway) that any misinterpretations (like RedLine sitting on the tailgate dangling his legs over the side without his rig on) was done to make the movie more whuffo friendly and more visually stimulating. I mean, he even says in the DVD commentary that they filmed and jumped out of skydive miami mostly, but filmed alot of the freefall & landing at Daytona because the jumpsuits and canopies looked better over the beach and water. Just my .02 but I get what your saying. My favorite skydiving "faux pas" is the Point Break "Mr. Bill" with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, when Keanu swoops down and pins Patrick (on his second jump too.....wow he's good) and then deploys the main seconds before impact. Most canopy gurus will tell you that a sport main is not rated to withstand the opening force of two people (Mr. Bill's are supposed to be done out of Cessnas at subterminal speeds I've been told to prevent the main from blowing up. So assuming the main even did withstand the opening, then hit just after inflation with no flair...........Hey it looked good on the movie, but c'mon now.....LOL Cheers and Beers, Tom

This was my first year at Quincy, and well, I jumped everything except the B-24, stayed up everynight drinking till dawn, managed to get 32 jumps in, etc, etc, so when we got back home, the other jumpers I went with started caling me "The Mayor of Quincy", which eventually got reduced to "The Mayor", so when people would ask them, "How was Quincy?" they'd say go ask The Mayor, and hence my nickname was born...... There are others on the DZ, such as "Ewok", "Wildman", "Deadman Walking", etc, etc, what else is out there on DZ.com row for nicknames? Cheers, Tom (aka The Mayor......)

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My absolute favorite airplane prank (works best if your closest to the door) is to bring an extra reserve ripcord on board, and then at about 10,000ft, pass it back up theplane saying "hey, which one of you left this up here?"

Whenever a whuffo asks what freefall feels like, I always say "Take the most intense, incredible life experience you have ever had...............now multiply that feeling by 1,000,000."

Well, they may have changed the requirements, I jumped there in February 2001 with a B license. It's possible that the different DZs have different requirements too. Did you check with all of them?

It's winter, I'm bored, and I just thought I'd share one of the funnier moments I've ever witnessed on a ride to altitude: We had a full Otter load clunking it's way to 14,000ft (ie, not a Super Otter like Lebanon!!) anyways, we had a newbie A-License jumper (high soloing) in the back of the plane up by the pilot, so one of the experienced jumpers started yelling frantically at him saying "Hey! Hey! Hey!, yes, you! do me a favor, tell the pilot we need more flaps!" (The whole time he is yelling this, he is pretending to look out at the wing like he is inspecting it). So the newbie turns around and frantically taps the pilot on the shoulder and the pilot removes his headset and says "What?" The newbie says in a frantic tone, "We need more flaps!" The pilot just looks at him completely dumbfounded, then looks back at the experienced jumper (knowing exactly who it was ironically) and starts laughing hysterically. The newbie had no clue what had happened. I wish I had my camcorder on for that one. Blue Skies and Icy Cold Beer, Tom

Hawaii is one of the most scenic dropzones on the planet, but the trade off is that it is also one of the most dangerous. All the DZs are located next door to each other at Dillingham field, in the upper north west corner of Oahu. The runway is right on the coast, and it pretty much runs up to the end of the island. I jumped at Skydive Hawaii while there, but they are all good DZs from what I saw, it's basically a King Air & Cessna airfield for jumping (I think I saw a Porter too). As for dangers, if the wind is blowing out to sea, they won't jump, based on the idea that if you chop your main it will land in the ocean and be gone. So you can only jump if the winds are blowing in land or up or down the coastline. (It's a pretty weird feeling getting out over water the first time......) They also have two landing areas, in light winds, or higher winds blowing towards the DZ side of the airfield, you can land right in front of the DZ, anyone with an A license can jump in these winds. If the winds shift to the far end of the airfiled, they shift the landing area to the other end of the airfield (about a half mile away) and you haveto have a B License or higher to jump then. The whole runway/DZ areas are lined with a mountain range on the inland side of the runway, which can make for some choppy winds on landing as the wind blows inland and hits the mountains and then sort of corks up and back over the landing area. Very tight landing area as well. Oh and they will tell you that if you open up over the water and aren't 100 percent confident that you'll make it back to dry land, that you have to turn around and land in the sea well beyond the breakers and they will send you a boat out to get you. Basically the shore line has about 200-300 yards of 6-12 foot waves that will basically kill you if you land in them, so if you can't make it back you have to go out to sea and land in calmer waters. It's alot to deal with, but it's totally worth the view. All the Dzs basically cater to the tandem tourists, but they definitely go the extra mile to get the fun jumpers up. Hope this helps, Cheers and Beers, Tom The pic is kind of dark, but that's me in the Skydive Hawaii King Air

Itried posting a link (unsuccessfully) how do you post a url in your message?

I posted a bunch of new pics to my skydiving website. The site is pretty lame (I'm new to the net) but some of the pictures are pretty cool I think. Anyways, I hope you like 'em. http://www.geocities.com/skysurfer4288/index.html Cheers Tom!

Ever see Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom? How low for bailing out with an inflatable raft.........?

Can Tony Hawk get air like that? Doubt it.........LOL The wind tunnel in Las Vegas shows a skysurfer in one of their pictures, so I would assume They would do it (I think it's called Flyaway) but it's a relatively low powered wind tunnel. Skyventure wouldn't allow it (I only know because I jokingly asked Omar last weekend while I was there and got a "Ah.....NO". Even if you could I wouldn't do it. It just soulds WAY painful.........and the boards are fiberglass, you'd definitely f** up your board in Skyventure. Peace

These pics?

The thing that always got me was comments like people saying "if you have a problem just chop the board." I always thought to myself, "Uh yeah, it's that easy, I could be spinning out of control, my arms getting flung out to my sides from the force, that I have to fight to get to the cut away handle, I'm going 150mph, probably can't tell which end is up in situation like that and when I release the board, it's probably going to take out a few of my teeth when it releases...yeah....piece of cake!" LOL I have yet to chop my board (knock on wood), but I have heard from a few skysurfers that when they chopped their boards, there was so much tension in the bindings from the spin that the two ring releases on the binding ended up with tension knots and wouldn't release right away, and that that is a rather common experience, that they had to reach down and help the binding off. As for 200 jumps, I jumped a board on my 129th jump and was fine, most of my jumps were freeflies at the time, so that definitely helped. Anyone that would teach you, at 100 jumps or 500 would just want to evaluate your air skills by jumping with you or on video to see if you posses the necessary skills. So it's more of a skill question than a jump number question. Hope that helps. Blue ones! Tom

No Problem Marshal, we're all friends here!

I'm an avid freeflyer as well, and I would say that all around freeflying is much safer than skysurfing. The thing is that it is way easier to go out of control on a skyboard (not just a flat spin, but any uncontrolled spin or body position) than freeflying and conversely, it is much harder to regain control on a skyboard than freeflying. If your head down or in a sit and slide out of control, you can just ball yourself up like a badmitten birdie to stabilize (to maintain higher fall rate if there are groups behind you) or in a worst case scenarion just arch hard and you'll cork right up and stabilize. On an intermidiate board or higher, your typically in a harder spin (regardless of the axis you are spinning on) and it requires much more effort to correct the problem and get into a stable stand fly. And if you can't go straight to a stand fly, even going belly to earth won't solve the problem, because once you are belly to earth, your board is now acting like a rudder and you have to steer it straight to avoid spinning on your belly. Then, once that is all sorted out, you have to front flip into a stand to deploy your main. (only very few, highly experienced skysufers, of which I am defintely not, can deploy their main on an intermediate board or higher in the belly to earth position. So, while I would never say freeflying is not without it's own dangers, skysurfing is definitely the more dangerous of the two. There are risks in all skydiving endeavors, but there is agreater number of risks and more severe results skysurfing than freeflying. Obvisouly I'm a bit biased....LOL, but given my expeirence with both skysurfing and freeflying, that's my .02. Cheers and safe skydives! Blue Skies to all and to all a good flight! Tom