faulknerwn

This sort of thing makes me wonder - I've got close to 5000 jumps and have never been hit in freefall, never been close to unconscious, nothing even vaguely of the sort.... Never even been dizzy. Of course the majority of those jumps I never had an AAD. It really makes me think that people are being far more aggressive because they have AAD's than they would be if they didn't.

Apparently Buzz was killed by a roadside bomb this weekend in Afghanistan. http://wrow.com/pages/pages.php?page=28 This sucks. He was such a great guy - friendly and helpful and just a great guy...

I completely agree. I help a lot of rookies here with their first gear, and I don't think a single one of them recently has been on links! Links go with the canopy people! It makes it a nightmare to untangle them from zip ties and other things and get them on straight. Send them on connector links and its a much faster assembly. I think the problem has arisen because people starting using slinks ($20) instead of metal links ($4) and don't want to buy new ones....

Nice shots!

Depends on what you're jumping too - a Velocity 75 may be tough to land off. I'll put my Triathlon 99 down in a backyard. If you have 10 jumps, definitely head back to the airport. If you have more experience, consider following it. I know of numerous times where the only way you'd ever find the canopy again was is if someone followed it. I'm usually following CRW cutaways which can go for miles. I landed in a field once across the street from the backyard where 2 mains landed in at Moss Point. I walked up to the guys hanging out in the yard and found that they had already stashed the parachutes in their garage, If I hadn't seen exactly where it was and been right there, I doubt we would have ever gotten those back. It also depends on the available outs where you jump as well - we have TONS of farmer's fields here so landing off is a non-event. Course I'm also a CRWdog who has landed off hundreds of times, and we've put down CRW 100 ways off airport. To me landing off is a complete non-event, but I know there are definitely dropzones out there where outs are very few and far between.

People have died doing this. Its an EXTREMELY bad idea. Follow it down, land as close as possible while remaining safe, but catching it is dangerous. Mains do unpredictable things when floating down, and it is very easy to find yourself in a canopy wrap if you try this.

Apparently Brad was killed a few days ago while crossing a highway near Lodi when he was hit by a car. He was a great guy - we'll miss him here in Texas. http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2008/05/30/news/2_pedestrian_080530.txt

I'm surprised how so many people still don't know that about MicroRavens.. I informed someone of that recently who was about 160 and had a 120 reserve that he really didn't want to jump it. I weigh 135 and just have gotten accustomed to coming in with speed in order to land it. But it still surprises me - last time I used one I tried hanging out in deep brakes to circle around and watch where my main and freebag were going to land - I must have accidently stalled the thing 5-6 times while circling. It definitely was a good reminder to be careful on landing!

What I've seen many rookies do is get used to spiraling aggressive on student canopies, and then when they transition to "non-student" canopies spiral like they were used to and spin themselves into twists. Our rental gear is still square canopies, much more docile than the Pilot, and they have always been able to kick out of them. The Pilot I'm quite sure was a far more aggressive canopy than the bigger ones you were used to, and I suspect that you were just too aggressive on the controls. A lot less toggle input on the Pilot will give you a more radical spin than on student canopies.

Bonehead sells them :-) I bought a pack of 5 a while back cuz I tended to lose them :-) Have sold a couple to other people who needed them as well so they were good to have on hand

Skydive Temple :-) Belton has 4-5 nice parks about 5 miles south, and there are multiple parks around Stillhouse and Belton lakes. The town of Salado about 15 miles south is a great little tourist town with lots of cool shops.

I've still got her teddy bear on the head of my bed at night. She was so incredibly talented and a joy to be around. The last CRW record just wasn't the same without her.

And whatever you do - don't let Mark sucker you into drinking tequila with him!

Use the Classifieds please. Thx

I grew up never having any sort of analog clock in my house, and always had digital watches as well. I find it much harder to read an analog altimeter than a digital one. I wear an analog one on my chest for CRW, and I've had several over the years. And I will admit they did get dropped on occasion. The failure mode on mine wasn't reading the wrong altitude as much, but on the last 2, it would only function above 1000 feet. My last one, it started having to be set at 750 on the ground and it would function perfectly above that. That slowly started going up, until by the time I retired it, I was setting it at 1500 feet. The only reason I retired it then was because I got tired of everyone telling me how my altimeter was off! When I do look at an analog altimeter, I have to stare at it for a second, read the numbers the hand is in between, and then calculate which its closer to in order to figure out I'm at 5300. Its MUCH easier for me to look at one and read "58" than to do the other calculations. Again, I NEVER had analog clocks anywhere in my house growing up.

Probably a couple of reasons - they're the CRW version and not the hybrid version which means they can't be taken to freefall. So that eliminates most rookies, and people looking for a casual CRW canopy. The Lightning is the canopy of choice for big-ways and you can't mix Triathlons in there on big-ways. With only 3 canopies, that makes only 3/4 of a 4-way team (if they're the correct sizes). Maybe if there was a 2-way team looking for dedicated canopies, but most people doing 2-way are also on a 4-way team.

Yeah I know. I hear people talk about needing SUVs - but growing up my family had 2 kids and 1 car - a Chevette! We managed fine...

The Lab that just adopted me is the best :-) Super smart and even when she's being naughty sneaking cat food and such she just looks so happy and overjoyed its hard to be mad at her! Wouldn't count on her stopping a burglar though - she'd just love the company!

I prefer squares over ellipticals just because the openings are more predictable. Line twists turn into malfunctions far too often for my taste on ellipticals.

Landing with weights is a complete non-event as long as you stay within an appropriate wing-loading for your size/experience. I wear that much weight all the time and don't think twice about the landing.. Heck - at the CRW record the guy on top wore 90!!! lbs of weight and still stood up his landings..

An Otter? I stand up and walk around in our 182!

Is it mostly laptops that are that low of resolution? My 5 year old Mac has a resolution of 1680x1050 and my new one 1920x1200.. I guess I can see 12 inch laptops having that low of resolution, but I'm surprised to hear that some desktops are still that poor.

Its just part of standard IT debugging though. If both are slow, maybe its the site, maybe its a certain combination of operating systems. If only 1 browser is slow, then maybe see if they're running the latest version of one. Its impossible for someone to have access to every possible type of browser/operating system, and just having a complaint of "Its Slow" without knowing that you're running XP with SP1 and IE version 6 and not 7 and whatever - it matters. Maybe its an issue of bandwidth or memory - maybe its slower for some people who have slower connections but not noticable to people on fast connections. Maybe its a memory issue - if a computer has plenty of memory it might not be slower while if you don't it will be. There's a thousand different possibilities. That's why if people try different things and get info its far easier to fix. If the techie person doesn't know whether a person is on a Mac or a PC, running Safari, Opera, Firefox, Netscape IE or whatever, what versions of that - that stuff matters. There's a thousand possibilities why it might be slower for some people and not for others - the more info the better.

I did that every weekend when I was a student back in Venice. Hopped on overnight trains, slept in the regular seats, woke up wherever I was going. Would get a hostel only when we got too smelly :-) I loved it. As long as you are on regular trains, you don't need reservations for a regular seat. You would for a sleeper but I never used them.

Thanks for the links. I think the reason they didn't show up is I searched on the actual types of lenses available on ebay in kits with the 400d and only the Canon kit lens is mentioned in those threads. I've googled and seen mixed reviews on the others. I'm leaning towards the kit lens over the other 2 but was just curious if anyone else had used those exact 2 for freefall. None of the other lenses mentioned in the threads are available by default. Another question - a lot of the stuff on ebay includes a wide-angle lens to attach to the outside of the 18-55. These any good?