faulknerwn

You'll love it at Temple:-) We're close to Ft Hood so lots of jumpers come by after work as well... Good times! Wendy

I was a student in Florida many years ago (a bad one - 48 jumps to get off student status!) I jumped the small rig at the time - the 248 - I weighed 110! I'd just float along over the runways for what felt like forever until the people on the radio would holler at me to come down because they needed the rig :-) I loved riding the thermals. I remember being right off student status doing a 2-way with an experienced friend at Deland. I remember getting above the runway and going up - even spiraling I still went up. I was under a 220 on that jump. He was almost finished packing before I managed to land!

I used to love skydivingweather.com - wish it hadn't gone away. I would love to see a site which pulls in AWOS stuff from local airports, as well as the forecasted uppers. Then maybe tie in skydive midwest's spot calculator and you'd be beautiful..

Bummer - sorry to hear that..

We had a bunch of expired Cypreses on my dz, and I figured I could sell em on dropzone.com ultra-cheap to be used as trade-ins. A Russian jumper actually bought all of them. Way I figure it - they probably are too poor to have AADs at all otherwise, so I figure an expired Cypres is probably better than no Cypres (or at least no worse....) I don't think there are any regulations in Russia about them.

Is it only me who doesn't like the shots looking up from below? Sure you get the students faces, but the solid blue background makes me think they were taken in Sears. I much prefer shots with scenery in the background... My problem with wings (didn't use em for my first 500 video jumps and have for almost all of my last 200) is the faster fallrate. I'm pretty small, so I have small wings and a naturally slow fallrate. I get caught by surprise more with a faster fall rate than I do slow.. For example today - had a smaller TM and a student who didn't look that big (and claimed 180 or so on his waiver.) I don't feel comfortable sitflying with tandems so I'm on my belly. I was sitting there with every appendage folded in struggling to stay down. A year ago before I got my wings I would have worn my RW suit with that tandem and been fine. I can arch really deep and sit up well for a fast fallrate. I have a lot more range in the fast fall rate area with my RW suit than I do my camera wings (and my small wings are on a tight supplex suit.) I think if I got better at freeflying where I could just sitfly with em I'd be ok - but I struggle more with going fast than slow.. Wings help me for sure on the slow to medium fall rates, but I am seriously thinking about ditching em for the fast ones..

Yeah I'm fairly small so even if I left really early, I still had the range to get back up even with the big tandems. (The classic example was videoing out the Cessna when on ready set GO - right on go the tandem student grabbed the plane and I was a thousand feet low before they got out :-) I was thrilled I made it back in with just a baggy t-shirt! With our small tandem master though the wings are a necessity. We have a 140 lb tandem master and a 255 lb tandem master. One I wear weights with regularly - by necessity! I think its going to depend a lot on your build and fall rate. My problem was always figuring how much weight to wear because I struggled with keeping down - staying up was trivial until I started jumping with a tiny tandem master!

I didn't for a long time because all of our tandem masters were 200+ pounds... I wore weights, and an RW suit, and occasionally baggy clothing. Then we got a 140 lb tandem instructor and I now wear my wings all the time. I do have to fly with them collapsed for most of the skydive on many of our faster-speed tandems but they work...

I just found out today there are two iphone skydiving apps! iskydive and freefallin - they're both kinda fun and only 99c

it does aviation weather - plug in your local airports and you get wind conditions and cloud ceilings (very handy). And the price is right - free!

aeroweather (free - necessary for skydiving!) puzzlemaniak for fun sportacular for sports scores usa today for news

I agree with that. I grew up in the digital generation, and don't remember EVER having an analog clock in my house growing up. Even my watches were digital. So I always have to stare at an analog clock for a while to figure out what time it is. Digital is instinctive..

I have an external burner hooked up to my Mac - I burn the stills on the internal (slightly slower) and the DVD's on the external which is a faster burner. The Mac can do 2 burns at once without issues...

Unless you have pre-existing conditions, you can get medical insurance with a high deductible for not a crazy amount of money. Mine doesn't cover pregnancy, and I have a $1500 deductible, but I pay just a hair over a hundred dollars a month. Its cheaper for younger people and has no skydiving exclusions. I just found it by googling for insurance on the internet.. I was ok for the high deductible because I was going for catastrophic coverage - not doctors visits etc.

That's probably a good thing! A couple of years ago I sold a couple canopies to an Australian friend. He didn't care about speed so told me to ship it cheap. I did, and apparently when it got to Australia, it arrived when he was on vacation. The post office down there apparently only keeps packages for 2 weeks, so they shipped em back! He never told me this so like 6-7 MONTHS after I shipped it, I had a notice in my box of a package I received with postage due. I had no idea what it was until I got it and found it was the canopies I'd shipped half a year before! They did have a nice around-the-world tour!

My worry was never about the AFF students doing the 2 hands on each handle method. They have RSLs. My worry was always when they get their A license and their first rig - often the used gear won't have an RSL. Now they'll cutaway - and its rarely stable because otherwise they wouldn't be cutting it away - and now they go back into freefall tumbling looking for their reserve handle.. It can be quite hard keeping your eye on your reserve handle as you're tumbling/spinning after a chop and then finding it again - especially with the huge adrenalin rush of your first reserve ride.. That's what really worries me about the two hands per handle method - not when they have RSLs but what happens later when they don't...

My rendering times (2.2 ghz Imac, 3 gig of memory) is typically about 6 minutes for the video, and another 10 or so for the burn. That's using imovie 9. Do you have enough memory?

4.88

Empuriabrava Spain for water views. Locarno Switzerland for spectacular views of the Alps.

The only time I know of that came close was Steve Morrell. He always carried his rig on the plane with him, and the only reason he missed the Pan Am flight which exploded over Lockerby was that he was injured in a base jump. He always speculated about that because that plane split up in flight...

Definitely the Sabre for reasons said above. As for none of the above? Nah.. I really prefer how the Sabre 1 flies over the Sabre 2. The Sabre 1 isn't that hard to pack for softer openings, and its a lot easier to flare to a complete stop than the 2 in my opinion. The riser pressure seems a lot lighter too. If I had a choice of a brand new canopy - Sabre 1 or 2 - I'd choose the original.. Matter of opinion I think....

Frick! Glad you're ok! If I was jumping a system where if I had a baglock I would have to unhook the RSL, cutaway, clear the risers, then pull the reserve - I would at least never hook the RSL up to save one step! That costs a LOT of time - where you're still going freefall speeds... The skyhooks are a good system, and I like the idea of RSLs on tandems, but having to disconnect it during a high-speed malfunction just seems like a bad idea..

I can think of one where I would jump there - its a fun place for anyone who can take care of themselves - but I would never send a rookie there. Why? They had multiple big planes running, and my group was waiting for one and the other plane was boarding. I kid you not, I saw a tandem master and student run up, the TM was not wearing his gear yet. He had the student climb in the plane, he tossed the rig in, hopped in, and then the Otter took off - door open - student not buckled in - and TM standing in the doorway getting dressed during takeoff... &*(&*(&* that!

My Triathlon 99's are all loaded 1.6 (more if I wear weights.) Land smooth, open nice.. CRW guys have jumped em even higher wingloaded than that...

No experience with the CX100 but we're using Imovie 9 for all of our videos here. The effects and themes are very easy to use and make for an awesome video...