narcimund

I think someone missed the point. These are hoaxes. Clever though. First Class Citizen Twice Over

I don't see any sign that addiction is suggested here. With or without addiction, it would hardly be the first time a flight crew drank heavily together on an overnight. Commercial pilots might not fly drunk a lot, but they certainly fly with hangovers plenty often. First Class Citizen Twice Over

I'm hiding inside to avoid the rain and clouds. What's your excuse? First Class Citizen Twice Over

Weather in Portland, too. I got my new Safire2 several weeks ago and only have 2 jumps on it. Bah! First Class Citizen Twice Over

Even better, although it's a big programming job, would be individual fields in the classifieds database for each rig's measurements. Then it would be a snap to build a powerful search routine. ("SELECT * FROM classifieds WHERE harness_size > '5.5' AND harness_size < '6.0' AND brand = 'infinity' AND main_size = '150' AND reserve_size = '150' AND price < '1000.00'") Sorry, Sangiro. I know you're busy. But I can dream, right? First Class Citizen Twice Over

If quad engine tanker planes were flying over the center of my DZ at 3000' without radio contact, I would find something else to do for the day. First Class Citizen Twice Over

We're currently looking for a set of gear on the DZ classifieds it's been hard because the ads usually skip important info. What's important to someone buying a container (for instance)? Brand and model Size of main and reserve trays Size of harness Extra features Condition Age Price You know what? Hardly any ad answer all of this. In fact, the most common missing item is one of the most important: size of harness. Come on, guys: tell us if the rig is for someone 6'3, 230# or 5'3, 130#. It matters! And don't use the brand's sizing codes -- tell us in feet and inches and pounds (of course, meters and kilos would be fine, too. ) I don't know how many ads we've read that described the perfect container except then just skipped the harness size question. No, we're not going to write to a dozen people asking for more info. Just put it in there in the first place. Thanks. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Haven't sold any there, but I bought two brand new, still in sealed box cypreses for $820 each. Deal! First Class Citizen Twice Over

Sangiro is incredible. Does anyone realize how much money and time he puts into dropzone.com? It's an insane hobby that he's apparently dedicating much of his life to so other people can play. Not only is he constantly pouring cash and hours into it, he keeps doing so in good humor. That is almost inhuman. He doesn't seem to have any resentment at all! What an amazing man! And not only that, he never begs, he never asks for donations, and he never asks for pity. No charity. He offers businesses advertising space for a reasonable price. Value for value in mutually willing transactions. Go Sangiro! I'm a jumper and I own a business so we bought advertising space from Sangiro. I look forward to seeing it bring me business in return. And I'm proud to participate. More of us should do the same. Maybe someday he'll have so many takers for the banner ads that he can pick and choose the best ones to run. In the meantime, if there are silly ads up top, we only have ourselves to blame. Buy ads! First Class Citizen Twice Over

So I recently came into some old copies of Sky Diver Magazine from the 60s. This issue has a long article on the then-cutting-edge Para Commander (round) parachute. The article contains some wild info that makes me realize the things going on today are old news. ------------------------------------------------ "[B]Basic Maneuvers[/B] "Once you're fully open and hanging comfortably in the saddle, after a while, you're finally ready for a few basic maneuvers. Very basic ones, mind you, but they'll get more exciting later on.... "The very first maneuver is called the gentle, banked turn. Nobody wants to go skidding around corners by any means. What you've got to do is lean a little to one side, keeping the skirt of the canopy, at all times, on the horizon. You do this by simply pulling one toggle down below your waist, down to about your knees, while leaving the other one up there on the riser. It's really very thrilling, but on your first few attempts don't turn more than 720 degrees at the most. Any more than that and it falls into the spin category. And you're not nearly ready for that yet.... "[B]Basic Landings[/B] "On your first Commander landing all of your skill as a parachutist will likely come into play... It's a fact that the Commander flies best when it has a certain amount of speed behind it and when this speed is taken away the parachute will just sort of stop flying. This is what is known as a stall.... "[B]The First Loop[/B] "To do a loop you need pretty good coordination. I'd like to add that you also need steely nerves too, but I don't wnat to be romantic about it or anything. You do have to have confidence, however. Confidence in yourself, in your Para-Commander and in your reserve.... "... Get going downwind as fast as you can go and then pull both toggles down to your knees. Hold them there for one second, then let tham all the way up again. Leave them up for one second, then bring them all the way down. Do this four or five times. "What'll happen is you'll start rocking back and forth, sort of... After a while you'll get so you're swinging out in front of the canopy, and then out behind it until you're actually looking down on it from above.... After four or five swings you ought to get up enough speed to actually do the loop itself...." "[B]The Hook Landing[/B] "... First of all you've got to get going pretty fast over the ground. The best thing is to run with the wind for a while just before beginning the maneuver for landing. When you're really zooming along, at about 150 feet above the ground, simply yank down on one toggle, all the way. Turn around about 180 degrees or so, let go of the toggle, and hang on to the capewells. Pretty soon you'll come in for a landing.... "If you make an error and turn at about 100 feet, I'll try to explain what happens. Basically, you'll end up with no speed at all. In any direction. And like I've said before you need a little speed in order to perform these basic maneuvers.... The big problem is most people who find themselves in this predicament reach for the ground. They reach and keep reaching until the ground just comes up and usually breaks something. The thing is to always try to avoid breaking something, like I've said enough times already. "About the only other thing I have to say is don't get out there and try to command your Commander, just enjoy the damned thing. Just get out there and have fun with it. Play with it. Maneuver it a little. You can really get a lot of satisfaction out of it, believe me." First Class Citizen Twice Over

Damn right. I wasn't so sure about the look at first either, but it's definitely improved now! HH: I'm sorry I doubted. Great work! First Class Citizen Twice Over

Regarding your comment about expired nav links, I use a great HTML editor called BBedit. It's got highly usable templating functions. The tempates guarantee that I'll either have no link errors at all or errors on every page. It's great! Seriously, the points about website owners updating their own content certainly works for some clients, but I've found a high ratio of clients who think they SHOULD manage their own updates to those who actually DO. I bet the larger DZs near cities are more likely to have a staff member who's willing and able to manage the content than the remote family-style DZs. About half of my new clients in the last couple of years have been refugees of previous designers who've abandoned them to something complicated they couldn't manage, so they hire me to save their sites. They don't want to manage their website -- they have businesses to run. The website is what they hire us for. We're not a design-and-run sort of firm. If the client wants ongoing maintenance (which most do), we're more than happy to oblige. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Oh gosh. That would be funny, wouldn't it? If they restricted private pilots from "Sport" airplanes, would they do the same to commercial and ATP pilots? This would be especially funny in ten years when a new crop of airline pilots has risen through the ranks. I've got this image of a 10,000 hour 797 captain and his junior FO deciding to take a joyride together on their off day. The copilot who started with a private license would be allowed to rent an FBO's 152 while the captain wouldn't be rated for it. Maybe the airlines would use this as justification for a new two-tier scale! First Class Citizen Twice Over

http://www.skydivemonroe.com/ is one I've looked at before and admired. It's got the direct, uncomplicated, appealing look that I like to see. It tells the story of skydiving to newcomers well. It's clearly created with the audience in mind. Criticisms? I have a few, but they're meant in good faith. I think a simpler navbar would be preferable. 17 items is too many. "Affiliations", "Our Staff", "Hours", "Directions", and "Contact Us" could probably be subsumed under one "About Us" link. "Downloads" could be removed until someone decides to populate it. " Also, there's a lot of HTML bugs. These bugs seem to be slowing down the rendering and scrolling, but don't actually break my browsers. Try testing on both NS Mac and Windows. I'm getting around minute-plus renderings AFTER the download. IE seems to be mostly immune but slow on the scroll. I think the culprit is unbalanced table tags mostly. Your comments about PHP are insightful. Do your clients actually USE these magic tools you've offered them? I have many computer-savvy, office-based business clients who have paid me tens of thousands of dollars for backend content managers which literally never get used. They KNOW they should use them, but they still come to me month after month for content updates. The more I offer them, the more they pay me to build them, but they STILL don't use them. I have exactly one client who's actually self-sufficient and it's only because they hired a go-getter, ambitious young marketing assistant. Finally, PHP has many great uses, as do ASP, perl, etc. But many designers get so advanced they forget to learn HTML and image optimization. Unfortunately, we ALL have to know HTML inside and out. No dynamic language or wysiwyg has surmounted them yet. (Flash might be considered an exception.) They just enhance HTML, when used well. First Class Citizen Twice Over

You've got good points about the dynamic tools. In my practice I've used them only for the truly data-driven areas such as catalogs and user-accessible interactive tools (like these here wonderful forums!) I don't see that the language the site's stored in is a measure of its quality. I've even seen (a small number of) decent sites which are largely rendered GIFs througout. Now THAT'S archaic, but in the right hands, it works! Back to the sites, there are two kinds of websites that really fail: those that don't pay any attention to design and those that pay too much attention. Most DZ sites fail in the first way. In my mind, that's not as serious a crime as the second, though. The point of these things is to bring in good customers, not win prestigious awards. Customers will forgive a cheap, fragile site ("Yeah, the site looks lousy, but I found their phone number. Let's call and get more info!") more than one they can't navigate or which turns them off with tomorrow's 15-minutes-of-fame graphic trendiness. The people who are halfway to deciding to jump want to see, hear, feel, and taste jumping*, not slef-absorbed New York design school class projects. * I leave out smell on purpose. Some of the smells of skydiving are nasty! One guy I jumped with a hundred times made a nasty smell every time we passed 9000 feet on the way up. Pee-yoo! I almost got out early a few times. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Well hmmm. I don't know if responding to this is kosher or not. It might be seen as prohibited advertising in the forums, since I'm a web designer marketing to dropzone clients. I'll just have to chance it. Opinions, Sangiro? I completely agree with you that most DZs have absolutely awful websites. The average homeless person's website is more polished than most DZ sites. Now, on to some specifics: I agree that all four of your examples are attractive to the eye and among the best the industry is offering. I don't agree that all four serve the marketing needs of the DZ particularly well. You're clearly biased towards dynamic languages, but I'm not convinced they're necessary for the brochure sites dropzones need. The advantages in maintainability are still outweighed by the limited market share. There are many more HTML savvy designers working in excellent HTML shops than PHP gurus. I don't believe in building my clients a site that unnecessarily burdens them technologically, and PHP does exactly that, in my opinion. My reviews of the ones you identified: http://www.1800funjump.com This site looks pretty, but it's more about typography than skydiving. The DZ name and knocked back photo on the homepage completely overwhelm the links which are, after all, what the viewer is trying to find. The navbar requires a screen almost 900px wide to be viewed properly. 800 is still a very common screen, and I don't know of any serious site that requires more than 800px 'live space' (most choose between 700 and 750.) is nice for background elements, but the content should be constrained to at most. They should fix the width of the picture on about.html, too. http://www.skydiveoregon.com This site is excellent in my view. It's not as pretty as the others, but it's more effective and educational. While media-savvy, high-tech teenager boys might hop up and down looking at edgy hotshot graphics, they're just reacting to its adherance to the video game style. A website should be a cross between an enticing advertisement and an educational seminar. Skydive Oregon does a nice job of melding the two without making a mess with whizbang graphics. Unfortunately, the cutesy Flash intro is annoying on the second and third visits and pop-behinds are patronizing. Also, the JS is buggy (resizes the main window on some browsers.) http://www.skydivechicago.com Speaking of distracting edgy graphics, this site is a disaster. (Sorry if I'm offending anyone.) This site reminds me more of The Matrix's esthetic than dropzones. We're skydivers, not Star Trek era interior designers. This site's high tech media look gets in the way of its main purpose. Orange??? Where is the sky? How are whuffos enticed? In addition, where do the whuffos click? The skydiving section (only one of the six homepage links) has five technically worded links, three of which transparently lead to advanced topics. I consider it vital that a DZ site which aims to interest both students and upjumpers clearly distinguish their pages. Frames are another disaster. All that said, this site is still far better than 99% of the DZ sites out there. http://www.centralmaineskydiving.com This site is beautiful and with simple design provides a sense of the adventure. I love the very brief descriptions that educate, but leave the viewer wanting to know more. But what about experienced jumpers? Do they even serve us? -- Shameless (shameful?) plug: You're exactly right. DZ owners should hire professionals to build their websites (as all four of these examples clearly did.) Most are letting volunteers put together something with their supermarket brand WYSIWYG website wizards and $5.00 clipart collections. This is unfortunate and serves them badly in the end. End of shameless plug. 'Nuff said. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Ah, that's great. Thanks for the answer. It's interesting that there's talk of adding a "Sport License" to the already crowded low end of the licence range. Sport, Recreational, and Private. Luckily, I'm already a licensed private pilot, so I don't have to worry about this. First Class Citizen Twice Over

"Sport license"? What is a sport license? The fellow I rode with is an instructor, and gives an unofficial endorsement in his students' logbook, but so far as I know there is no license or even a licensing body. The FAA doesn't require a license for this or any other ultralight aircraft. He was quite specific that it's [I]legal[/I] (although stupid) to buy one and fly it with no instruction whatsoever. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Wow! Clouds too low this weekend to jump, but off in the hilly distance I saw a powered parachute loitering around at about 1000 ft. A while later he came in for a landing on the field and I asked him for a ride. For $45 he gave me about an hour tour of the nearby farms and forests barely skimming the treetops. It's fantastic! It's got about the same forward speed as a normal canopy, but goes UP! Powered flight ... no FAA restrictions (in uncongested class G airspace)... insignificant operating costs... wide open view like under canopy.... It's too cool. Anyone have any experience with these? First Class Citizen Twice Over

Wait a second... you're advocating a Windows machine based on the ease of stealing software for it? Even aside from the fact that Macs can run all Windows software, that's the lousiest reason I've ever heard! Quick, someone tell Apple they should start an ad campaign catering to mooches and thieves. "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.

My first mac was an SE30. I miss it. :( "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.

Oh yeah. RAM. I run 1 gig for professional work. I wouldn't recommend less, considering how cheap it is. Photoshop loves RAM. Just don't buy Apple's ripoff RAM. A gig of "good enough" from pricewatch.com is going for $150. And CPU speed is a false measure of a computer's power. The slowest available is more than anyone will ever use. The fastest available is also more than anyone will ever use. The Ferrari and the Accord both drive 35 mph down city streets. "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.

I'm a professional print and web designer and I'm doing just marvelously with a 500 MHz G4. Really, everything beyond that is extreme overkill. Hell, for all practical purposes, 100 MHZ would be fine. In the real world, the rest doesn't get used. There are people who benefit from more cycles, but they're developing massive files: production animations, billboards, etc. While a student might make a big file once in a while, the extra $1000 will probably buy them a total of ten minutes of free time over the course of their degree. I would just get the kid the slowest available machine and a six pack of beer. No, really. (I liken today's CPU speeds to an engine that could drive your car 1000 miles per hour, if it weren't for the 65 mph speed limit. Besides, the transmission would explode if you tried, and you're only going to the corner store for cigarettes anyway.) "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.

Taiwan? Notice that he was operating in Detroit. So never go to Detroit. "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.

I once opened and dropped a 5 pound bag of flour as I exited from a Bell Jet Ranger during a demo jump. *POOF* "Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers" -- Titus Maccius Plautus, 220 B.C.