outrager

Yo ! Tom was kind enough to capture and send this little clip from Ostankino 2004: http://maxf.net/~outrager/ostankino_2004/Pond_Flight.mov bsbd! Yuri.

Gear setup was a small Triathlon with a sail slider and mini-risers in a Vertex 2 container. Canopy did a very fast stall-turn into the rocks, after an approach in deep brakes overshooting the landing area. I was standing about 50 feet away and it was not a pretty sight. I hope Robin will recover completely and wish him well. bsbd! Yuri.

BASE is about people. Pissing off the people is a really bad way to start. What Tom said. In extreme cases people went as far as physical violence directed towards obviously misbehaving jumpers. I would be very careful about pissing off a bunch of law-breaking nutcases such as base jumpers bsbd! Yuri.

Posessing nukes and their delivery means is the best way to insure Iran does not get attacked. In other words, it is professing peace. Too bad Saddam embarked on Kuwait misadventure before developing his own nukes. We would not have this whole mess in Iraq right now, and US would have likely backed off a bit from trying to dominate the region. bsbd! Yuri.

Indeed. Just a week ago this exact set of circumstances has been discussed on ABA: http://www.basejump.org/discus/messages/1/708.html?1096554410 Slim's quotes, dated Sep. 28: "WS are great fun but you can quickly find yourself very low with your arms trapped trying to make a sudden landing. God help you if you get line twists." "Pulling high is the only really sure way of ensuring safety. This, you have to discipline yourself to do. I still have a ways to go in this area as I continue to scare the crap out of myself." It seems like a major trap all of us are rapidly falling into. Low openings after a fingsuit flight quickly build up dark statistics. Den got seriously hurt two years ago, and just had another scary WS/line twists opening in Ostankino, breaking 4 glass panels of a greenhouse on landing. I misjudged my altitude the same day, splashing into a pond, and got lucky on a few other occasions. Duane's accident is a fresh wound. Now Slim... People, please think about this before your next flight! You MUST force yourself to open higher, because the normal pull reflex fails on a wingsuit flight. Did Slim have his usual battle gear on ? Heal fast, brother!!! bsbd! Yuri.

In Norway rigs seized at the illegal wall used to be sold at a public auction. I remember Thor Alex got his gear back at a nominal cost

Yo ! This is something i have posted on the subject on Blinc some time ago. In your case with 4 sets of wires you only have 90 degree sector to work with, instead of 120. Be very careful!!! >"stronger the wind the higher necessity for the wind to perfectly bisect the wires" This is a very common misunderstanding about antennas. Let's have a look: The most dangerous condition is no wind at all (just when it feels so peaceful and safe...). After an off-heading opening you will be flying towards either of the wire sets at your canopy's speed in brakes. Any wind down the wire is a much better case. If you open facing the downwind wire, you speed vector towards it is still your canopy's forward speed. If you open facing the upwind wire you are flying roughly at your canopy's speed minus the wind speed. Stronger the wind, safer you are. In a strong wind (at or above you canopy's speed) exiting almost parallel with the upwind wire (0..30 degrees off) gives you the most safety margin: 90..120 degrees free sector on the downwind side. The upwind off-heading is safe because you have no penetration and/or your canopy will be backing up. You will also open a bit further away from the downwind wire. Obviously, the safest situation is a strong wind exactly between the wires. Draw yourself a little picture with 3 lines at 120' angles representing the wires and 2 vectors representing speeds and directions of your canopy and the wind. Add these 2 vectors and everything will suddenly make sense. If their sum is pointing away from both wires no matter what direction is your canopy, you can throw a monkey off safely. Otherwise some prompt steering response will be required in case of an off-heading opening. You must consider the wind at your opening altitude - NOT at your exit point. The wind will frequently turn as you climb up (usually to the right in the Northern hemisphere and to the left in Oz). Sometimes it turns enough to cross into another sector, and will be a big mistake to follow the wind and exit on the wrong side of the wire. bsbd! Yuri.

DW doubles from 240' and 180'. D-Dog's one and half from 240' was also very impressive I won't name some other amazing "doubles" and twin sisters i have seen, as that would be off-topic... bsbd! Yuri.

How lame. Yeah, a hostage is in terror for a minute and you are horrified. Now thousands of innocent people in Iraq (or Yugoslavia or dozens of other places) suffer for hours, days or weeks in incredible pain from a civilized and humane bullet or cluster bomb wounds before they die. They fully realize what is happening to them. You don't seem to show much emotion about that, because you choose not to. Sick!!! bsbd! Yuri.

Neither should be killings of thousands of unarmed civilians - but nobody in US seems to really give a damn while it's done from a distance and for their own good. They are all hostages in a way, expected and accepted collateral damage. Sick!!! This is the funniest shit i have ever seen on this forum! You can't be serious, can you ? If i were drinking a cup of coffee i'd have spilled it from here to Texas. In case you are still wondering, US has the least freedom to BASE jump in the entire world. A beacon of hope is about as wrong as it gets too. I consider US a lost cause, what freedom that's still left is diminishing every day. US still is a fat cash cow, but that is slowly changing too. "Nuke the fuckers" was my own emotional response, as is a logical conclusion of many people on this forum. Unlike them you do think, and i respect that. But when you start the war you get the war, and eventually it will come home in a big way. I know it first-hand, US just got a taste of it and the main dish is coming sooner rather than later. bsbd! Yuri.

I'll consider that my birthday present bsbd! Yuri.

This forum is moderated by two of them bsbd! Yuri.

So it's not the fact somebody gets killed but simply the way it's done ? Well, once you manage to handle your emotions, try to think rationally. Try really hard to think as if you were from the third country. Then you will likely manage to understand that people who are doing this, at least a large part of them, had their own countrymen killed in front of them. Their own women and children, and they have seen it in person - not on the web. What is shocking for you have been done to them on an uncomparably more horrible scale. The only difference is that it itsn't customarily shown on CNN. Thousands of civilians dying from bullet or shrapnel wounds suffered longer and harder than a beheaded hostage. They know who has done it to them and the nature of this enemy. Their eyes are wide open. Take it from a russian, who has been shoked and had a fury of emotions over this. My obvious emotional reaction is "to nuke the fuckers", but logically i understand very well why they do it and how they feel. Their feeling is exactly "nuke the fuckers", using whatever simplier means at hand. Unfortunately you are the fucker, from a point of view shared by hundreds of millions of people. Try to understand this. You can either escalate it to the level of another global World War or you can try to resolve it by behaving like a human being and stopping being a fucker. Unfortunately countries rarely behave like human beings... bsbd! Yuri.

Yo ! An excellent observation! bsbd! Yuri.

Almost, 4.3km (GPS distance) so far. A tiny bit more glide will carry a loooong way over that terrain. Next year! bsbd! Yuri.

Dima Obod died on Sunday in a motorcycle accident near Moscow. Many of you met him in Europe, Malaysia or at Ostankino tower boogies. Dima was one of those who started BASE in Russia, we made our first building jumps together in the summer of '95. He was at the heart of Shtopor, those of you who've been there probably remember it well... i can't find proper words at the moment, please remember him on your next jump. BSBD! Yuri.

Okay, okay... whatever it takes to prevent a bloodshed http://base416.com/974-2.jpg bsbd! Yuri.

A first thing to do to a grappler is to gouge his eye and bite ;-) bsbd! Yuri.

In my rather short experience, any no-contact or point sparring school will be very limited. I have done 3 years of Shorin-ryu and while a beautiful art, it isn't very useful in a real fight (at least as it is tought these days). The closest to "practical uses" is probably Mixed Martial Arts crowd. Most MMA fighters usualy belong to either grappling (mainly Brazilian Jujitsu) camp, or full-contact stand-up styles (Muay Thai, Kyokushinkai and its spinoffs). Either will advocate "obvious advantages" of their approach, but the best ones are training in both. Combining Muay Thai and BJJ is probably the best practical mix. I switched to Enshin karate (a spinoff from Kyokushinkai with lots of grabs and some throws added). Its stand-up part isn't far from what MT teaches, plus grabs, moving into blind spots and throws. Enshin lacks grappling on the ground, intentionaly i believe - its founder practiced Judo a lot and keeps it as a separate piece. Now i wish i never did no-contact stuff, had to unlearn a lot of bad habbits and myths. Kung Fu is a very wide term, it can be all over the place. Unless it is tought as a full-contact fight-to-kill art it will not help much with self-defence. There is another point i now believe in strongly: any style that stays "ancient" or "traditional" and does not constantly develop is bound to fall behind and die. All sports have advanced so much just in the last, say, 50 years that rigidly sticking with "centuries proven" system is like fighting a modern war with a bow and arrows. bsbd! Yuri.

Yo! I'm thinking about visiting Montreal and/or Toronto this coming weekend and would love to make a few jumps. No particular plan, just a tourist outing - will be free to play

Well, she was - on the phone If you would only pick up yours... Thank you sweeties! bsbd! Yuri.

I only use ZP PC for wingsuit flights, usually unvented 38". F111 takes longer to inflate and has a higher tendency to hesitate - unacceptable in a wingsuit situation where PC must reliably grab the air, while opening heading is of no concern at all. The reason F111 is used by some people on terminal BASE jumps is just that - because it takes longer to inflate and vents air, marginally improving heading perfomance Speaking of which: for some reasons i still cannot rationally explain, my openings heading perfomance on wingsuit flights is much better then on regular freefalls. I don't use S3 PC pouch (quite happy with a regular BOC), but a pouch shall not dictate a PC choice. If it does, change the pouch, not the PC! bsbd! Yuri.

Yo ! There is also nothing wrong with logging jumps without actually making them. As long as you imagine a jump vividly, you can record it and boost up your numbers. This is called visualization and is practiced by most competitive athletes in the field. bsbd! Yuri.

A remarkable report by CNN: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/index.html?cnn=yes PATRAS, Greece -- Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir scored a goal here on Wednesday night, setting off a rousing celebration among the 1,500 Iraqi soccer supporters at Pampeloponnisiako Stadium. Though Iraq -- the surprise team of the Olympics -- would lose to Morocco 2-1, it hardly mattered as the Iraqis won Group D with a 2-1 record and now face Australia in the quarterfinals on Sunday. Afterward, Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements. In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes." "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself." Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes." The Bush campaign was contacted about the Iraqi soccer player's statements, but has yet to respond. To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power. But they also find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?" At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?" Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted." Sadir, Wednesday's goal-scorer, used to be the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. In the city in which 20,000 fans used to fill the stadium and chant Sadir's name, U.S. and Iraqi forces have battled loyalists to rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr for the past two weeks. Najaf lies in ruins. "I want the violence and the war to go away from the city," says Sadir, 21. "We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away." Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid's cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance. "I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. "Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq." Everyone agrees that Iraq's soccer team is one of the Olympics' most remarkable stories. If the Iraqis beat Australia on Saturday -- which is entirely possible, given their performance so far -- they would reach the semifinals. Three of the four semifinalists will earn medals, a prospect that seemed unthinkable for Iraq before this tournament. When the Games are over, though, Coach Hamad says, they will have to return home to a place where they fear walking the streets. "The war is not secure," says Hamad, 43. "Many people hate America now. The Americans have lost many people around the world--and that is what is happening in America also."

Not really. When it comes to killings of innocent civilians, USA kills an order of magnitude more. However it does kill them with good intentions. Reminds me of South Park: "We gotta kill them or else they will die!" bsbd! Yuri.