faulknerwn

Well, the current scoop is that the dz's last weekend will be the weekend right before Thanksgiving. That's right before Rich goes in for surgery. There is high hope right now that the people who are interested in buying it will come through and keep it open, as its been home to me for so many years now I can't imagine being anywhere else. I am always looking for new CRWdogs in the area though :-) W

There's some video of Bill and I doing that but out of an airplane on my website :-) I like doing the crazy stuff a tad higher! W

Oh yeah - roller derby is great fun - its all about women in short skirts beating each other up :-) Its spectactular fun. In most matches you'll see: fights skate-offs spankings arm-wrestlings pillow fights and more!

I went to a spectacularly gorgeous dz about an hour north of Milan. It was located in the Swiss Alps and had the most beautiful scenery. It was located in Locarno and I highly recommend it. W

We have not only 1, but 2 roller derby leagues in town! Everyone is jealous :-) The girl standing next to me in one of the pictures is an actual roller derby girl who (as it turns out) works in the same company as me! Too cool! She loved the fact that I dressed up as one of my favorite players in the league... W

You're a CRWpup now! You gotta stop that pull low stuff - its now pull high! :-) Congrats!!! W

http://crwdog.servebeer.com/RollerDerby/RollerDerby.html

I was at the dz all weekend so got nothing done then :-) I got a big batch of 12 or so videos from a friend of mine and I've been working on getting those digitized and clips extracted, and listening to a lot of the music I downloaded and seeing what's approproate :-) So I haven't done any editing this week.... W

cool! These lyrics --- In and out On and on and you're Turning me upside down Turning me inside out And I feel My head is spinning round Round, round we go (round, round we go) --- Just seem so perfect for the famous Chico wrap at Rantoul! W

I love those lyrics! Know where i can download the song? I checked iTunes and my other online music store and they didn't have it... W

I should have added - I'm definitely still looking for more footage - I just got a big box of videos from Chico today - I'm so excited - he may get his own section!!! If anyone wants to donate more, I'd love to get more footage. An Aussie bud of mine is gonna bring me some great footage to the record next month, but I'd love more. Digital format or tapes is fine - anyone who sends me VHS tapes will get the originals back plus the tapes converted to DVD.. I'm getting great footage and having a ball doing it! W

Well - the only problem with that is that this is 97% wraps and only like 3% non-wraps.. So not much time for nice and melodic! But it might could work...

Just maybe! This is actually a long enough (and getting longer - I'm still actively soliciting footage!) that it'll take multiple songs.. Gonna have to go download some musci tonight... W

I'm making up a DVD full of Wraps, wraps, and more wraps... Any suggestions on good music for it? W

I always wear them in the airplane but never ever ever freefall. The one time I forgot and wore them it was like jumping with the worst head cold I ever had. I couldn't hardly hear for 3 days afterward. The pressure change is too much to leave the earplugs in - at least for me. W

My experiences aren't that high of a wing-loading but they are small canopies. I've got a Microraven 120 in one of my rigs and it lands fine if I front-riser it in. Otherwise it has no flare. I used a dash-m 109 once (body weight 130) and it stalled out on me above my ears. I sold it immediately and replaced it with a Tempo 120. I went out of my way to put the Tempo 120 in my CRW rig. It has 8 jumps on it now and still lands quite nice. Its definitely my favorite reserve. I like PD reserves as well, but I don't have any problems with Tempos. In my experience they land quite well. W

There's a running joke in the CRW community that when ya need it, pull out your first hook knife and throw it away since you're just gonna drop it anyway. :-) Then pull out your second hook knife and get to work!

Without a doubt! Let the wing fix the wing! A year or two ago at one of the camps I was at, I docked a wing multiple times upon the same person. He had a really bad habit of sticking his arm and leg out to catch me, and then doing a wide sweep of his leg when I got close. I think half the time he'd snag my center cell line. He'd then put his legs back together, which tended to completely collapse the inside of my canopy! Drove me nuts all weekend! I couldn't get him to look before taking a grip, and he about caused me to come around multiple times that weekend.. I'll get my dock to where it belongs - just let me do it! W

Many CRWdogs use helmets similar to the picture or half-shell skateboarding Pro-tecs.. Both work fine. W

Spoken by Davy Crockett himself :-) W (Practically all of my CRW pack jobs are free packed - Zero malfunctions in a little over 2000 pack jobs.. I love it.. We won't discuss my percentage on freefall canopies and bags :-)

I think how they fly depends on turbulence tho., I weigh ~130 lbs and jumped a 375 sq ft canopy last year just for fun. It was stable as a rock, no issues. had a good flare. My wing-loading was only about .4 on the sucker. W

An interesting story about an old friend of mine (its been a lot of years since I've heard it so I'm sure I've got some details wrong but I do remember the gist of it.) There was a skydiver named Steve Morrell. He was a pilot in the military for a lot of years, and later on a pilot for Northwest airlines. He also did a lot of base jumping. At one point he was base jumping in Saudi Arabia, jumped off a cliff and had a cliff strike and hurt himself pretty good. His buddy carried him out and they got him to a hospital. Because of this, he missed his flight back to the US. The flight he missed - the Pan Am flight which exploded over Lockerbie. He always wondered what would have happened if he had been on that flight - because: 1. He said he always kept his rig underneath the seat in front of him, and being a practiced base jumper, knew he could get his rig on in some quick amount of time - 30 seconds or something... 2. This flight supposedly split apart in mid-air - most passengers weren't killed by the bomb but by the crash into the ground... He always wondered what would have happened if he had made that flight, got his rig on, and somehow this skydiver who happened to be on the plane, happened to have a rig, happened to be returning from Saudi Arabia, and somehow mangaed to be the only survivor.... Ya never know... W

Interesting - from what I've observed - the problem is getting BETTER not worse.. I started jumping in '93, and most dzs even at that time had round reserves. I always jumped the "small" gear with a Maverone and a 26' round.. Its was huge.. And at the time I was 5'1 and 110 lbs... With practically all the drop zones having square reserves now - that alone can make the rigs less bulky and better for small people. And there are so many more choices of appropriate student canopies now than back then its night and day difference. Big isn't necessarily bad tho. I was an awful freefall student but I loved the canopy ride. And being small I could easily ride the thermals and I'd hang out up there until they started yelling at me on the radio to come down cuz they needed the rig! If the student is getting blown backwards into inappropriate areas then to start with the spot sucked.. As a student, I flew straight down or backwards under that Maverone in anything above 5mph. But I was dang good at accuracy on it too.. But we were jumping Cessnas, the JM's knew I was small, so they spotted me really long. And it was fine.. The funniest memory I have of those big rigs was that I borrowed a friend's rig (I was a poor broke student then) and jumped with a friend at Deland. I was 110 under a 220.. He was under a Sabre. We did a 2-way, and I opened and flew around. Got stuck in a thermal over Deland's runway and while spiraling was going up! By the time I managed to get down, my buddy was closing his container... My student experiences are probably what got me loving CRW but that's not a bad thing!! W

If its good footage I'll put it on my website as well!!! I'm collecting video footage as well to put together a nice wrap DVD so if ya got any of that send it on! W

Yeah. For Lightnings the standard wing-loading is 1.3-1.375.. If you're doing recreational CRW on Triathalons and Spectres, you can get away with somewhat lighter... W