howardwhite

And a lot more. Kirkwood, Greene, Fulco-Johnstown, Sha-Wan-Ga, Java/Arcade, Ava (where the LAGNAF people were), Malone, Stormville, Franklinville. And Lake Placid (at least for annual meets.) HW

No description of life at Pop's Place would be complete without stories of happenings at the Seminole Inn -- major Ottley abuse, among other things. HW

You've been in Texas too long. You leave out Turners Falls, Shirley, Northhampton, and Fitchburg, among others which were even more fleeting. HW

Riverview (Tampa Bay Parachute Ranch) was the DZ of the recently departed and greatly missed Mac MacCraw. Richard ("Jonathan Livingston Seagull") Bach made some jumps there in the mid-seventies. The field was a cow pasture, complete with real cows. One great story was when the right landing gear fell off in flight when some jumpers got out on the strut; Mac landed at McDill AFB on a foamed runway. HW

You may be able to find some information at the Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields site. And in a month or so, there may be another place on line which could help. HW

To refresh your memory, here it is when it was in the Smithsonian. Mike's in the blue jumpsuit, wearing a poptop reserve. HW

If you agree to post a picture of yourself wearing it, I'll be happy to get one for you. HW

If you mean where did I find it, I don't know. Sometimes I store info in pictures after I scan them, but in this case I didn't. I would guess it's from an old Sky Diver. If you mean where was it taken, again I don't know, but looking at the background in my original scan, I'd guess southern California, probably Elsinore. HW

Without engaging in the debate here: --AFAIK, Mike Horan was never an active participant in the museum effort. As to his whereabouts, I sent a letter last month to the address USPA had on file for him; it came back undeliverable. --The four-way to which you refer was Ottley, Bird, Dick Fortenberry (D-38, one of the original Knights) and Mike Johnston (who, I think, would be surprised at being characterized as "some oldtimer from the barnstorming days.") I think Ottley paid for it personally. HW

Here's a picture of a friend (who works with such things) demonstrating a small vortex ring canopy used for flares or some such. HW

She is not. HW

Sort of like this? HW

Briefly, the vortex ring parachute was invented by David Barish in the mid-fifties and got a lot of publicity, including a spread in Life magazine. But it never really fulfilled the hype. The lines from the separate canopies converge in a swivel (above the jumper's head in this picture.) The canopies rotate about the swivel, kind of like helicopter blades. Once open, it was very stable but as a personnel parachute it had problems (opening shock, steerability, etc.) The Air Force tested it in the late 50's as a possible mid-air retrieval device. Now, it's probably used only for light loads (flares, etc.) HW

Nope. I have enough trouble with mine. (but seriously, Photoshop does wonders with making those faded old scrapbook pictures look almost like the day they came back from wherever you had them developed.) HW

Well, at least one, a water jump into Long Island Sound. HW

Well, I put a ? after my spelling of Tibor's name.... I expect to see Kinger and pecker at PIA in Reno next month; I saw them there two years ago. And I expect to see Chuck Schmutz and Doug Garr and maybe Chip Maury at Jumptown this spring and at the Old Farts reunion in Raeford in May. A lot of the old central New York skydivers are in Doug's new book about his skydiving career. HW

I hate to see those old faded pictures. Isn't this one prettier? HW

I think a lot of the property is now in a land trust, so there's no way it's going to sprout the megamansions that are now infesting the land. At one time or another the hangar has housed 36C and 88C, the two 170s that were I think used in the meet and are still owned by jumpers. The meet attracted a lot of press, including a feature story in The New York Times, which noted that Charlie Hillard and Steve Snyder flew up from Georgia to participate.They were, of course, later the first two to pass a baton in the U.S. Another small news story attached. HW

Well, you could start looking here. HW

Bingo! Goodhill Farm in Woodbury, CT. is the Pond family place; Nate's brother Larry lives there now. There are still reunions there each August, although there hasn't been jumping into Goodhill for the past several years. Goodhill Farm was the site, in May, 1957, of the first Collegiate Nationals. And the picture (according to the Life info) is Jacques Istel jumping a Russian rig; I'm guessing he brought it back from the World Meet in Moscow in 1957. As to the sleeve, Istel and Lew Sanborn hold the patent for a sleeve attached to the canopy. In the patent, they note an unattached sleeve "is undesirable because of the difficulty in locating the sleeve after the jump and the expense incurred in replacing lost sleeves. "For military purposes, the separability of sleeve and parachute is an even more serious problem. A lost sleeve can inform the enemy that a parachutist has been landed in their territory." The picture is credited to Peter Stackpole, one of the best-known Life photographers of that time. It's undated, but I'm guessing it's either late 1956 or early 1957. At that time, attaching or not attaching the sleeve was optional. HW

Nate Pond's cornfield and strip is in Vermont. It's not Nate. HW

Would that be Tibor Orszag (?sp), the mad Hungarian of West Bloomfield, NY? I think I still have a ragged-out t-shirt from his DZ. HW

Or sometimes the line broke. But in this case, I think it wasn't attached. It's part of the time/place/people part of the story here. HW

This is taken from (and much cleaned up from) the Google collection of Life magazine pictures (so if you're terminally curious, you can find it.) There's a lot of history wrapped up in this one picture -- both the place and the jumper. HW

It's pretty easy these days to find old news clips on the web, but to spare you the trouble, and because I already have a pretty big collection of them, I'll be glad to send the Wasik stories (not post them here, because if they're readable they're usually too big to post.) Whenever someone posts something here that might have made the newspapers, I compulsively go looking for articles. HW