bfilarsky

It isn't legal, that's for sure. I suppose it depends on how much I trusted the pilot, and how much reason I had to get in said airplane.

Guess I'll have to disagree with you there. I flew for them for a week this summer and found them to be very professional, and I didn't see any problems with the way they treated staff or customers. What beef do you have with them? Might I suggest you fill out your profile to give yourself a little more credibility? I wouldn't quite say they are on their way to a slow but certain death, either. They seemed to be doing quite well. I have also heard bad things about Hawkes, but never met the guy so can't really say. Got nothing at all bad to say about Buckner - I was treated quite well when I was there.

I love the conversations that go- Well enough about me, lets talk about you. . . . what do YOU think is great about me????? Or a date with a pilot.... You know its halfway over when he says, "Enough about me, let's talk about my airplane."

If you look at the jet exhaust, you can see the afterburners are indeed on.

Alaska!

Check Snopes.... SB-2099 is fake. Didn't bother reading the rest

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12914925 Legalize and tax drugs - don't outlaw them. Rather than spending money (and lots of it) on something people are going to do regardless, how about making money on it? The government seems to be catching on after many decades. Just a disclaimer - I don't use pot, so am not advocating on those grounds. Just think its stupid for the government to lock people up (spending my tax dollars) for a drug less dangerous than alcohol.

Correct

Just give me another 12 hours!

Is that 0300 or 1500 Zulu?

Alright, cool - that would be pretty awesome! Do I know you? IE do you jump at Skydive San Diego at all?

Just a little anecdotal experience..... I've taken my Iphone in a dry sauna with no problems. I think the most I've done is around 30 min.....

Where from SoCal are you driving up? I've got a group of 5 jumpers (myself included) I'm flying up in a Cessna for the boogie from Skydive San Diego, and anywhere from 1-3 others flying up Southwest.

I got a good chuck out of it

I got un-lazy and looked it up. I was wrong, Moses did not ascend into Heaven. Elijah, Enoch, Paul, and John all did, according to some random website. I remember hearing that someone did, and I was thinking it was Moses off the top of my head. So your odds are 4 times higher!

Yup.... pretty obviously just trying to sell fear.

Not if you believe the bible. Moses didn't die (wasn't him? Someone in the bible at least....) he just ascended into heaven. So if 1 in say 20 billion people haven't died, they just ascended, you have about a 1 in 20 billion chance of never dying

Not at all. If you do 10,000 jumps, you are more likely to die than if you do 1 jump. Fair enough? Now, you are absolutely correct in saying that each jump is independent of the last one (save for currency and such, but we're not considering that). IE, by doing 9,999 jumps and surviving, you have not increased your odds of dying on that last jump. In our simplified world of probability (where skill and currency don't matter) you have the same probability of dying on the last jump as on the first, or on any other one in the middle. Each jump has the same probability of death. All the total numbers are saying is that in doing a total of 10,000 jumps, you have a probability of X (a little under 10%, depending on the numbers you use) of dying on any ONE of those jumps.

A common misconception. The majority of a group CAN be better (or worse) than the average. A majority can NOT be better or worse than the MEDIAN. Think about this in simple terms... If 9 people have 110 wigets each, and 1 person has only 10, then the average number of wigets is 100 per person. The majority of (actually, 9 out of 10, in this case) have more wigets than average. On to the OP.... the math is completely correct. If your odds of dying are 28:110,000, then the odds of dying calculated for 1,000 and 10,000 jumps are correct. However, the original data is wrong - shit in, shit out. The real data is, as has been posted, about 1:100,000 (btw, NOT safer than driving). However, calculating THOSE numbers, you get a 1% chance of dying in 1,000 jumps, and a 9.5% chance of dying in 10,000 jumps. Also, as has been noted, this does not take into consideration the individual. There are quite a few risk factors you can take out, and decrease your chances of dying. Pulling low, swooping, not wearing an AAD - if you take out all of those fatalities (and don't do any of those things yourself), you dramatically increase your odds of survival.

I've been to CSC and have nothing but great things to say about it! Its the nicest dropzone I've been to. Go for it!

The pilot should know about this, but if the aircraft is not certified to fly with the door(s) removed, an STC (supplemental type certificate) must be obtained in order to do so legally.

Literally laughed out loud on that one! Thank you! Have you heard of the polish parachute? It opens on impact!

It would most definitely have to be Tom Hanks.

Hoping to be there

They sure wouldn't be able to get a hit on their transponder, but they AFAIK they should be in contact with someone over their HF radio (they use those over the ocean rather than a VHF radio due to their longer range). If that's the case (not really sure what the range on those things is) then for some reason they couldn't get a mayday out - whether they were just dealing with the problem (aviate, navigate, communicate) or they lost the power to that radio, or they had an inflight breakup, or perhaps something else.