davelepka

Before the human (pilot) factors got involved, the drive splines on the fuel pump were not inspected, and proceeded to corrode and fail. You can point to pilot error for securing the wrong engine when there is an unexplained failure. In this case, proper inspections would have revealed the corrosion on the drive splines, and avoided the whole thing. Pilot error or no, that pilot ultimately set the plane down flat and level, and everyone walked away. In case you didn't know, the inspection that was skipped in that incident involves removing one cover plate, and swabbing the area with a Q-tip. If the Q-tip comes out clean, the splines are good. If it comes out rust colored, there is corrosion, and further investigation is required. It was a matter of 20 min, and one Q-tip, and they skipped it. Back to Lodi, why would you plan to travel there? With the highest concentration of turbine DZs anywhere in the world, you pick the one DZ in California that has outstanding fines with the FAA nearing a million dollars. Amazing. Here's the thing about aircraft maintenance, there are a small handful of skydivers who have the qualifications and knowledge to actually judge the quality of a turbine maintenance program. Everyone else can only go by a DZs reputation and track record. How good could either of those be at Lodi if you have to start a thread to ask about the safety of jumping there?

Mental note - the 727 stops much faster without the nose gear extended. It looked for sure like he was going to over-run the runway. Between a long touchdown, and then holding the nose off as long as possible to reduce the impact when it did hit, it looked like he would need another mile. Once the nose hit the tarmac, it was game-over. I can only imagine the size of the runway in the windshield when the nose dropped below the standard, gear extended height. Looking downhill, right at the runway had to increase the 'pucker factor'.

What you do is get a hooker up on top of you in the cowgirl position. Lay on the edge of the bed so your head is hanging off the side just slightly, and have her choke you out. Instant hypoxia. Use condoms for safety.

Delete your post. Anything can happen, and if you're not ready to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly, just don't get involved.

She was on private property, just not her own private property. It's owned by the apartment complex, and the owners can treat it like their own private property (as long as they don't violate tennants rights as dictated by the lease), the tennants on the other hand are not permitted to treat common areas of the complex as their own private property. She would have more of an argument if you didn't also live in the complex, but seeing as both of you are tennants, you have equal rights (and restrictions) to the property. Even if there is no specific rule for leashes in common areas in the lease, she has the responsibility to control her dog, and she did not. Let her take you to court, and be sure to mention that you were open to paying a portion of the bill, and that she refused an amicable division of the costs and wasted your time, and the time of the court, in bringing the suit.

For a variety of reasons, provided that your skills are average and your weight is the result of being 'athletic' and not 'constantly eating pie', bigger people can load canopies a touch higher than lighter people of the same skill/experience. What that means is that if you have an exit weight of 275/280, in order for you to stay right at 1 to 1, you would have to be jumping a 280, which is big for a non-student. A better choice would be a 240 or 230, and even though it would be above the 'normally' suggested WL of 1 to 1 for a newbie, the size of the canopy itself degrades the performance somewhat, so the end result is acceptable. Likewise, very light people need to go the other way. A 115 lb jumper would have an exit weight of 135 lbs, but they should not be jumping a 135 sq ft canopy in their first rig. Even though the WL is 1 to 1, the small size of the canopy increases the performance, and it becomes unacceptable for a new jumper. Regardless of your size, you should always be conservative when downsizing canopies. Make sure you are 'good' on the one you are currently jumping, and that means a chain of several jumps in a row where you can demonstrate control and consistancy in your landing patterns, accuracy, and flare. Even then, get a briefing from an instructor before jumping a smaller canopy for the first time.

All that aside, who's working on a special shoe with a pointy, low-drag toe so you can be in the water to comply with the rules, but still get the most speed/distance? Short pants and pointy shoes? Sounds cute....

So that's it huh? 600ft is too far, so now they have to dumb it down so it 'fits' on the DZ? There's enough room to land an airplane, but not a canopy, right?

I get the inspection before you sell it. You were probably shipping it to someone, and there's no reason to waste everyones time shipping a faulty peice of equipment. The inspection let's you advertsie the condition of the item with confidence. Why include the repack? The buyers rigger is just going to have to fire the reserve to inspect it anyway, so why waste the money on a repack? Beyond that, what if your gear doesn't sell as a complete rig and you have to part it out? Then you have to open your own 'fresh' repack. One step further, what if it takes more than 6 months to sell? The repack was useless in that case. It's said that the majority of the wear on a reserve is from packing, so the better move is to have everythying inspected, then bag it all up in some sturdy plastic bags. and put it in a closet until it sells.

That's all you can see as far as options goes? What about option #4, where you refer to the shitstorm the DZO would face for employing an illegal worker, and hold it over his head as leverage to get paid. Take your pic, send this guy his money, which he earned by servicing paying customers, or deal with the TWC and the IRS for employing illegal workers and the tax related headaches that will go along with it. If you were the DZO, which would you choose? Especially considering it sounds as if the OP has nothing to lose by involving the appropriate state and federal agencies, it's a no-brainer the DZO would pay up and avoid all the trouble.

In this case, you're both at fault becasue it takes two to tango. However, if the matter came to light, you would have far less to lose than the DZO. You'll be on the hook for back taxes on the money you made, and might have some troubles getting back into the US to work. The DZO on the other hand, who is still trying to run a business in the US, is going to have several state and federal agencies up his ass, and nobody wants that. Contact the DZO, and mention that you're left with no choice but to call the Texas Workforce Commission in order to try and get paid. If he wants to avoid that, give him 24 hours to provide you with a tracking number for a Fed Ex or UPS package containing your last paycheck. (Be fair, and call him Mon-Thurs, so he has at a least one business day left in the week to ship the check)

I don't know what the purpose of the 'supervising rigger' is in the UK, but in the US it does not include personally checking every step of every pack job. The truth is, I don't know what the exact purpose of the supervising rigger is in the US, just that they need to be 'there'. All of that aside, a misrouted bridle is an 'outside' problem, which means the jumper should have caught it on a gear check. It was well within the jumpers means to check it, and I think most would agree that ckecking the main pin/bridle area is a definate part of a standard gear check. Something like an unstowed brake (let's assume this packer sets the brakes for you), even though you could pop a riser cover and check it, that would not be part of a 'standard' gear check, and a jumper could get a 'pass' for not checking it. Something like a line-over or a flip through is an 'inside' problem, and not something that can be detected once the rig is closed. A mis-routed bridle fall square in jumper-land, and the jumper should have taken care of it. If this was a wingsuiting student, or newer wingsuiter, it's a fine example of missing the bigger picture and probably how that one kid managed to jump without his legstraps around his legs. There are more things to think about, more going on, and more excitment in general when jumping a wingsuit, but you have to remember the key word in the phrase is 'jumping'. You're still making a skydive, and still need to cover the basics while dealing with the 'fancy stuff' at the same time. This is where packers are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you would think that jumpers using a packer would have more time for the 'basics' because they're not busy with packing. While their rig is being packed, they can manifest, hydrate, un-hydrate (pee) and check their voicemail, while jumpers who pack for themselves still have to do all of the above. You would think that those using a packer would have more time for gear checks, weather checks, and just being on top of their game in general. However, what I see more of is a version of Booths law. While jumpers using a packer should have more time, they seem to end up giving up that advantage and tyring to make shorter calls, or just fit more 'other stuff' into the time they do have, and leaving no extra time for the 'basics'. It's skydiving folks, and it goes from being real fun to you being real dead in a hurry. Unless you've been present for a significant incident, it's hard to understand how fast everything goes from 'just fine' to 'not even close to fine, with the DZ grinding to a halt, and an ambulance and line of news vans on the way'. Remember your FJC, and make sure you have all of that stuff covered before adding anything esle to a jump.

Indeed. Nobody is forcing you to make the jump, and nobody is forcing you to jump this rig or that rig, packed by this guy or that guy. If you board the aircraft with a rig you intend to jump, it's your job to asses is the rig is ariworthy, and deal with the repercussions of jumping that rig. If that includes personally packing the rig, so be it. If you feel that you don't need to be involved in the packing process, that's also your choice. I choose to pack my own rig, everytime. I also choose to be present and observiing while my rigger repacks my reserve. I also choose to not jump borrowed gear. The end result is a tight control over the equipment I jump, and I have had very few equipment related problems since I began conducting my jumping in that manner. There are a couple of exceptions - students who don't know how to pack and are jumping rental rigs. The DZO generally requires one of their own packers to pack the rigs, and they are being rented out for profit, and in those cases, I feel that the DZO is taking the responsibility for the rigs. They provide the maintenance and packers, and they charge the students to cover the eventuality of a lost component. The other exception is tandem instructors - they are frequently being told to jump a specific rig packed by another person who they did not choose. Again, this is a for-profit venture, and as far as I know, no DZO holds the TI financially responsible for a lost component during a cutaway. In the end, for a licensed jumper, you pays your money, you take your chances.

The DZ where I made my first jump had a sign up over the manifest window that read 'You pay your money, you take your chances'. They also had a waiver you had to sign, that went into more specific detail about that concept, but that sign pretty much says it all in skydiving.

If this is in the US, and you're legal to work in the US, then you can file a claim against them in small claims court. You'll need to have some documentation of your work, some sort of proof that you did the jumps you're claiming, and then the DZ would be on the hook to prove that they paid you (like a cashed check, or reciept for paying you cash). Another thing to do before going to court would be to send a certified letter to the DZ/DZO requesting payment for the work you did. It might seem like a formality at this point, but if you have the signed delivery slip that they recieved the letter, at least they can't show up in court and claim they didn't know what it was about. If you don't want to (or can't) go to court, I would show up at the DZ and ask face-to-face to be paid, and try to do it in front of as many current staff members as possible. If the DZO gives you a hard time, start looking around and asking everyone if they expect to be paid for their last couple of weeks as well, and see what happens. It's a shame that the guy would screw you over on your last few weeks of work, and for this long. I guess I could udnerstand if he was strapped for cash the week you quit, and it was either pay you or pay the guys who still worked there, but after a year he should have made that right. But for a busy DZ to not be able to pay you after this long would be really hard to explain.

I don't know where you go that math, but you don't need a 21" MLW. If you did find that formula somewhere, it was probably based on measurements 20 years ago when guys wore their pants higher on their waist. The inseam on your jeans is going to be shorter than the inseam on a 'traditional' fit pair of suit pants. Next time you're at the DZ, look for a couple of experienced jumpers between 5' 10" and 6' tall, and ask if you can try on their rigs (make sure they're packed when you do this). See how they fit, and check the harness size. If it's not marked on the data tag, write down the serial number and call the manufacturer to get the size of the harness. I'm pretty sure you'll find that you're about an 18" MLW. A 21" MLW is huge, and I would guess there are very few rigs out there with a harness that size.

Who was the genius who decided to fly jumprun right into the sun? With one group exiting, they could have flown the other way and avoided the sun flare on the exit shot. I guess there were only like six camera guys on the jump, maybe I'm asking too much.

That's creepy, just go in. Not everyone at the DZ is a jumper, and there's room for everyone. Some of the non-jumping staff, like office or maintenance works might not be jumpers, but they can hang out just like everyone else. Especially if you have one jump under your belt, and a good reason you're not currently jumping, you're certainly qualifed to hang out and make friends. Only a small part of the jump day is spent in the plane or actually jumping. Aside from the staff guys, most jumpers spend more time hanging out than they do actually jumping, so go in and add to the crowd.

It's more of a trim issue. One canopy may hang more of your weight off the front risers, and the other may hang more off the back. The less weight hanging off the front, the easier they are to pull. Try slowing the canopy down a little before you pull down the riser. Go into 1/4 or 1/2 brakes, and give the canopy a few seconds to slow down. Then reach right up from the braked position and grab the riser(s) and pull down. The idea is to catch them before you have a chance to accelerate back up to full flight, so don't waste any time. Once you grab the riser(s), there should be less tension on them, and should be easier to pull down. Once you pull them down, the airspeed and tension will start to build, but it's easier to hold the riser down with higher tension than it is to pull it down under tension. It's just different than what you're used to, and riser tension is generally higher with the larger canopies. They do fly slower, but you're yanking on a lot of square footage, and it yanks back pretty hard.

You want to use the school rigs to work you way toward a 1 to 1 WL. Proggress down one size at a time until you are comfortable with each size, then move on. When dealing with downsizes below 1 to 1, like going from .7 to 1 down to a .8 to 1, the changes are fairly suttle, and you can generally get used to the 'smaller' canopy in 4 or 5 jumps. Just keep moving toward 1 to 1, and make sure your instructors approve each step. You can get to 1 to 1 on the student gear, or you can get to .8 or .9 to 1 on the student gear, and then move to 1 to 1 on your own rig. Keep in mind that if you're a student, the DZ will require you to jump an AAD and an RSL. Both are very good ideas, but are optional once you have a license, so if you plan to go without either one, plan on getting a license before you get a rig. Just a quick note, in case you didn't know. Wing Loading, or WL, is the ratio of your weight to the size of the wing. The weight used is your exit weight, which is you and all your clothes and gear, more or less, how you exit the plane. If you're 185 lbs, and have 25 lbs of equipment and clothes, your exit weight is 210 lbs. (25 lbs for gear is a good number to use in calculating your actual exit weight. Take your exit weight, and divide it by the canopy size, and you get the WL. So 210 lbs divided by 210 sq ft equals 1 to 1. If you were jumping a 220, it would be 210 divided by 220, for a WL of .95 to 1. It does get more complicated if you're extra light or extra heavy, say, under 150 lbs or over 220 lbs body weight, but if you're inbetween there, the numbers above are a good starting point. Figure out your WL for your previous jumps, and keep track of it as you try different rigs the school has to offer. Above all else, always consult with an instructor before making changes with regards to the gear you are jumping.

...and that's why you don't buy a new rig for your first rig. You can buy a used rig for less than half the price of a new rig, and then sell it for most of what you bought it for a year or two later. A new rig is going to lose half of it's value over that time period, and even then you're going to be selling a beginner type rig for more than most other beginner type rigs. When you're new, your harness to canopy size ratio is going to be such that the continer will hold canopies on the larger size compared to the size jumper the harness will fit. What that means is that the only people looking to buy that rig will be newbies or old people, who both are looking for fairly low WL. Find a nice used rig, save yourself $1000s of dollars, and learn everything you need that way. Spend the extra dough on jumps, where you really learn stuff. About the Skyhook, just get an RSL, and pay attention to what you're doing. There's a very small slice of sky where the Shkyhook will make the difference over an RSL. If a Skyhook can get a canopy out in 300 ft, and an RSL can get one out in 400ft, you only 'need' the skyhook if you cutaway between 300 and 400ft. If you cutaway higher than that, the RSL works fine. If you cutaway lower than that, you just go in, and it doesn't matter what sort of rig you had. Also, the Skyhook can disconnect itself during a deployment, and it becomes a standard RSL. In that case, cutting away below 400ft will still kill you. It's a neat gimmick (sort of) but not a reason to guide your gear buying decisions.

According to your profile, you also made 7000-ish other jumps, which would probably help you to 'master' a canopy quicker than the average jumper. The OP has under 1000 jumps total, so if you do the math and figure on student jumps, beginner canopies, and jumps before he started swooping, the total number of swoops or jumps on the KA has to be considerably less than 1000. It's the same mistake people make all the time. They rush into swooping, then rush into higher WL (the OP is at 1.9) and then rush into the highest performance canopy on the market (by that I mean any x-brace). Sooner or later all that rushing is going to catch up to them. The lack of accumulated 'seat time' will show itself eventaully, and the faster the canopy, the sooner that time will come. People need to understand that swooping is an 'expert' catagory activity. You might be something short of an 'expert' when you start to learn swooping, but at the same time you're not doing expert level swoops at that time. Moderately loaded, mid-level performance canopies, and smaller turns are all the stepping stones to 'expert level' swooping. By the time you feel like you have an HP canopy like a Katana all figured out, and are ready to move to the top of the list, you should ask yourself if you really consider yourself an 'expert'. Maybe even ask a canopy pilot you respect (and consider an 'expert') if they would consider you an 'expert'. Where I come from, it takes 1000 jumps to be considered an expert, at least in terms of swooping. You need 1000 swoops to be considered an expert, not under 1000 jumps total.

Most of the time, this is a big waste of time and money. Jumping only rental gear or whatever you can borrow is going to limit the availability and variety of gear you'll have access to. The idea is to buy a used 'beginner' rig. It's like a car, where you could buy a 16 year old kid a brand new Mustang, but it's probably not the best idea. What you do is buy the kid a 10 year old Civic that get's him where he needs to be, and costs 1/10 what the Mustang costs. Once the kid 'grows up' a little, then he can step up to a newer, more expensive ride. So put together a used rig for yourself, and shoot for the $2500-$3000 range. You want a rig that will hold the canopies you're able to jump at the time of purchase, with room to move down a size or two. This was you can demo other canopies, including smaller ones, in your own rig. After a year or so, and 100 jumps, you should be able to sell the rig for just about what you paid for it. The price difference between a rig with 700 jumps on it, and 800 jumps is almost zero. Compare that to the cost of renting gear for 100 jumps, which is going to run you $1500 - $2000, all out of pocket, never to be seen again. Not to mention the benefits of owning, packing, and maintaining your own gear, you'll jump and learn more with your own gear. A note on AADs - if you want one, just buy one. A Cypres2 will work in any rig you buy, and if you want to own an AAD, just buy one and plan to move it from rig to rig for the next 12 years. Also, just buy a Cypres2 and be done with it, you're not going save anything buying a different brand.

Talk to this guy - http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?username=likestojump;

What's also ironic is that you're commenting on anything having to do with this topic. Like it or not, you've positioned yourself in the same group as Sangi or VB. Read all the posts about Sangi post-accident, and replace his name with yours. That's exactly what it's going to look like if you follow suit. You should only hope for a friend and cheerleader like VB to stand up for you while you literally cannot stand up.