TomAiello

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Everything posted by TomAiello

  1. TomAiello

    Smoking Pants?

    Any amount of surface area will not help in dead air. Free fall control in zero airspeed is dependent on gymnastic ability and body momentum, not air deflection. I haven't noticed any "mushy" feeling at all. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  2. TomAiello

    Smoking Pants?

    That's what my pair look like. As long as the inlets are on the front, they're going to be better than nothing. If you are wearing the pants under your harness (it's better to wear them on top), you'll need inflation holes below your leg straps for fastest inflation (otherwise, the pants will be pinched off). Definitely. The Smoking Man has noticeable forward movement only a few (3 or less) seconds into his jump. In theory, the bigger the inflated surface area, the sooner you should begin to see forward motion. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  3. Crosspost: If you are interested in tracking pants, you might want to have a look at this discussion in the BASE forum. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  4. TomAiello

    Smoking Pants?

    Is the other jumper in the launch shot wearing Bird-man pantz? And, is that the same jumper we see opening well behind the smoking pants? Just trying to establish a pantz/pants comparison. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  5. TomAiello

    Smoking Pants?

    Definitely. I know of one case where a pair were unbelted and ended up around a jumpers ankles, resulting in an out of control spin and early deployment. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  6. TomAiello

    Smoking Pants?

    I think the typical cost is around US$20 per pair. I am not alone in thinking that they fly better than the Birdman version. I have talked to several other folks who think the same thing. The Smoking Pants generally have significantly greater surface area, as a result of a crotch that is much lower (just above the knees), and larger sizes. It is a 'homemade' invention, but it's pretty easy to 'home make' yourself a pair. I know several people who are using them, including most of the Norwegian track masters, and most of the folks interested in tracking who saw them used in Norway. I don't own any pictures. I do own a pair of the pants, so I can take some photos and post them in a bit, if you like. Unfortunately, that won't show you what they look like inflated. Perhaps someone out there has a photo of them in flight that they can share? It's fairly easy to make them yourself. Buy a big pair of waterproof rain pants. They should be long enough to extend halfway down your foot. Light a cigarette (hence the name, I believe the original pair were made by the Smoking Man at the exit, using his cigarette), poke four (or so) holes into the front of each leg, just above the crotch. Use duct tape to cover any holes elsewhere that would allow air to escape when inflated. Use duct tape or a belt to secure them tightly around your waist. Pull them down around the tops of your shoes and tape around the leg cuffs (attaching them to your shoes in as airtight a manner as possible). Exit, and keep your arms out in a delta-like position so you don't get thrown head down. Obviously, you can get more sophisticated (my pair have mesh inlets and velcro straps to secure to the feet), but it's not really necessary. Let me see if I can convince the Smoking Man to post on here and give a better explanation. edit: added belt -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  7. Have you tried emailing Vertigo? I bet they'd have a ready answer. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  8. TomAiello

    Dubai Jump

    If you PM (or email) me, I can put you in touch with Steve, as anonymously (or not) as you both prefer. Sorry to hear about that, Steve. Looks like calling the locals really would have helped in this situation. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  9. An even weirder statistic: The majority of Americans who have travelled overseas have never held a passport. This is because American military personnel overseas don't have to get passports (they travel by military transport), and can generally travel within the nation they are stationed (or the entire EU) in using military orders as ID. Sometimes it's a major pain, though, like when you want to hop across the Italian border to Croatia, and your travelling companion reveals that he doesn't have a passport at all--when he just flew in from Saudi Arabia. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  10. I'd recommend making a photocopy of the full booklet, then lending out the copy. Heck, I'd recommend scanning it and posting it (at least the relevant sections) here, or somewhere else on-line. I wonder if anyone will need to use the coverage--and either get screwed or start into a nasty lawsuit. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  11. What about just making the rig itself taper down at the top and bottom, like the Merlin (or Robert's custom Gargoyle-like rig)? Would that be better, or worse than a flatter rig with "perfect" deflectors? If the rig was perfectly tapered would you need deflectors at all? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  12. When I was in college, I managed a swimming pool. One of the lifeguards was an avid scuba diver, and he had a rubber boat he dove from. One day, he showed up at work with his boat, a seven foot flagpole duct taped to the bow, flying a big skull and crossbones banner. We popped it in the pool and had Pirate Day. It turned out to be so popular that we had to repeat it every month or two by popular demand. Ahoy mateys! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  13. I think he's made five or six prototypes. The one pictured is not the one with the largest wing area. As far as larger wings, here are a few thoughts: 1) More wing area will yield a suit which starts flying sooner from a zero airspeed launch. This is increasingly important in modern BASE flights, as people keep trying to outfly closer and closer ledges. Larger wing area (and hence lower wingloading) is virtually the only way to achieve this. 2) Some of Shaun's suits have used stabilizer systems to eliminate wingtip vortices. I suspect that this might be very good idea from an aerodynamic perspective (and combat some of the inefficiencies that have been encountered to date). 3) Wing design is probably more important than wing size in virtually all ways except how soon the suit starts flying. 4) As the wings get larger, you'll need to be stronger to hold the flight position. Eventually, the wings will be large enough that no human could hold them in place. 5) Because the Sugar Glider is more of a wing that the person is inside (as opposed to a suit with wings) it can compensate better for a thicker human component (i.e. fatter pilot), by keeping the wing surfaces further apart (to minimize turbulence caused by the jumbo jumpers body). This might eventually yield a wing surface that had a smooth profile all the way across (i.e. the jumpers body doesn't stick out of the wing profile at all). 6) Larger wings have more "flapping" problems. The mylar stiffeners and cables used as anti-flapping systems on some of the newer Birdman prototypes seem to be geared toward addressing these problems. I'd love to see a very large winged Sugar Glider type suit with stiffeners and stabilizers. I bet you could achieve S3+ glide rations, but with lower forward speed and slower fall rate--which would be an ideal combination if you wanted to actually land the suit. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  14. I don't pay for it. I provide funds for someone else to pay for it. This sounds like a purely semantic difference to me. 31. I'm not sure what your definition of that time frame is, but I was living in Northern California from 1989 on (before that in central California). It was a fairly large issue there. No. Nor do I think that it's the responsibility of a doctor to do any such thing. It's your responsibility (personally) to see to your own health as far as you wish to do so--and no further. That includes contracting with health care professionals (such as doctors) as you see fit (or not) to safeguard your health. I bet all those folks on the opposite end of politics from you think what they're doing is "education" by their definition, too. Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, Pot. Black? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  15. The government is also not my doctor. Not my parents, not my doctor. I pay the doctor to educate me (among other things). The thing I object to is the government engaging in moral suasion. That's materially different from my parents doing so, or my doctor doing so, or you doing so. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  16. Parents have a right (more an obligation, actually) to teach (and in some ways control) their minor children. The government is not my parent. Nor is it yours. I do not believe that government should be in the business of moral suasion. Whether you label such suasion "education" or "propaganda" is your choice, and is usually predicated on your own feelings about the particular issue that the "education" or "propaganda" relates to. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  17. BTW, I mostly agree with you on the terrorism thingy. I'm against all forms of thought control, be they "left" or "right". "...and now ve shall send you to ze re-education camp, to be educated..." I dispute your implicit contention that "education" is materially different from prevention, except as a matter of degree. By your own admission, "education" prevents some percentage of an activity. Taking people's money and using it to "re-educate" them into different behavioral patterns isn't just immoral--it's borderline psychopathic. Whoa. When did I say that? I'd say that would be a far more useful expenditure than a large percentage of our anti-terrorism budget. Given a wider choice, though, I'd be in favor of leaving people's money in their pockets from the outset. But that should probably be a different thread... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  18. That's the best thing I've heard in this thread. A corollary might be: The only way to prevent deaths is to keep people from living. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  19. Not to the people that die. Bull. If you follow that argument to it's logical conclusion, we all ought to be kept from jumping "for our own good." After all, once we die, our death feels the same, whether the choices we made enhanced our lives or not. If you remove all choices (and hazardous activities) on the pretext that you are "saving lives" and that someone catching a stray bullet while sitting on the couch is "just the same" as someone who goes in while chasing their dreams, you might as well lock us all up in padded rooms. After all, preventing deaths is the ultimate goal, isn't it? What matter if your life isn't very enjoyable, so long as you don't die? But there are other hazardous chemicals that you inhale in Marijuana smoke. I'm pretty sure that joint smoke is actually more harmful than cigarette smoke (largely because of the filter on a cigarette. Go to Moscow and hang out with the Russian jumping crowd. I bet your generalization doesn't last long there. Seriously, what difference does it make if it's a pack or one smoke? It's still hurting their health, right? And in the long run, someone who smokes only marijuana will die younger than a non-smoker, right? So, marijuana will, statistically, "cause" some non-zero number of deaths. Yep. And if you spent 300 billion dollars on anti-skydiving education you'd save some lives, too. Thought control may save lives, but it sure doesn't make them more worthwhile. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  20. There is a big difference between human lives lost to the action of others and human lives lost due to their own actions. Maybe you ought to list the number of lives lost to skydiving, and how much money is being spent every year to fight that scourge? Makes about as much sense as suggesting we "fight" the voluntary, personal choice to consume alcohol, tobacco, or whatever substance you happen to prefer personally. And, um, how do you get your figure that 430,700 folks die of smoking, but 0 die of marijuana? I guess the smoking deaths are due to sudden radical nicotine overdose? And smoking marijuana has no deleterious long term health implications? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  21. I seem to remember Dan Preston of Atair posting some video of openings with g-forces (from their datalogger) graphed across them a while back. Maybe do a search (or just call up Atair and see if they'll share their data with you)? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  22. The force exerted on the jumpers body is not consistent throughout the opening sequence. In other words, an opening might be soft for three seconds, then really hard for half a second, then really soft again for three seconds. So, in total, a six and a half second really hard opening. Or, it might be medium hard for six seconds. So, in total, a six second medium hard opening (shorter, but softer). The thing to remember is that force exerted on your body is not constant throughout the opening sequence. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  23. Can someone explain why this is? Does adding the bag create some kind of extra sensitivity to the PC? I've taken 42" PC's to terminal, and (aside from making my pack job into a jumbled mess by stripping the center cell) the opening wasn't really any harder than a 32" PC. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  24. Of course, you can download sample tracks from the internet. And, you could put them on your iPod. But that would be highly illegal, and you'd definitely get arrested, and probably sentenced to life in prison... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com
  25. I'll bet you a hundred bucks one of their friends gave them that phone number as a prank, telling them it was a dealer's. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com