howardwhite

This was part of an ad in Spotter for the 1976 Z-Hills Turkey Meet. Wonder if Parachutist would print it today? HW

At this moment, the dropzone.com calendar has 95 boogies on it. I doubt you'll find a more comprehensive list somewhere else.

I discovered this word in the Aug. 10, 1959 issue of Life Magazine, which described the newly-opened Orange (MA) Sport Parachuting Center as "the anti-catapedaphobic center of the nation." HW

I like the little Epsons -- R200, R220. The real kick in the wallet is not the price of the printer but the price of keeping it in ink. (You can buy refill kits, but my experience with color quality is not good.) There are new "high-quality" Epson printers for not much more money, but ink for them is really expensive. HW

Define "small enough." What size prints do you want to make?

"Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could feel joy and happiness every time you face jumping from high and low places, instead of the old phobic reaction? Wouldn’t it be great to be finally free of Catapedaphobia? Of course!" (In case you didn't know there was a name for it....) HW

Ah, yes, a new excuse. Instead of "I got caught in the burble," "I got recoiled out of my slot." HW

O.K. Here's another. It's a very big original, too big to fit on my scanner in one piece. I sort of glued together two pieces; one of these days maybe I'll spend a few more Photoshop minutes doing a better job of concealing the seam. Gives new meaning to the term "handheld camera." HW

Least I could do for the proud new owner of a Hornet. Oh, wait, that doesn't look like your Hornet. HW

Sure, but it wouldn't be any fun to put them all up at once. Stay tuned. HW

As noted, it's possible to judge at least 10-second delays from the plane. The JM can easily see whether the student is making (unplanned) turns and/or is on his side or back (especially at pull time.) It's harder to tell exactly why these things are happening, but the cure is basically the same: awareness of body position. HW

For all you Ripcord fans... Life Magazine (April 12, 1963) had an article about your favorite TV show. (Picture attached.) One excerpt from the story: "Another time the script called for a hero-type to lower himself from the good guy's plane onto the tail of the bad guy's plane. After several false starts our hero finally managed to latch on, whereupon the two planes collided in mid-air. "The hero-type was able to retreat to the familiar wide-open spaces of the blue sky, pull his ripcord and descend to safety. One pilot jumped clear. But the other one, for some unfathomable reason, had brought along his chute but had neglected to put it on. "As his plane began disintegrating he reached back, grabbed the chute, and jumped clear with the bundle of nylon in his hands. "In a descent that not even a Ripcord writer could think up without dizzy spells, he fell thousands of feet, all the while trying to hook the chute to his harness which is roughly as easy as dressing for a white-tie dinner, studs, collar button, and all. "While the rest of the cast watched from the ground and feared the worst, he succeeded in getting hooked up just in time." HW

I think you underestimate. I know for sure of one, and maybe two, at one DZ in Massachusetts. (Not the same DZ where a bird took out a CASA last summer.) HW

He lives on the west coast of Florida and runs military parachute related businesses. He was at the Pioneers of Sport Parachuting reunion in Nevada in October. I have his email address but won't share it unless I ask him whether he wants to hear from people. Send me a pm if you want me to ask. HW

Buy a Mac.

This is from The Harvard Crimson. ====== Med School Ex-Paratrooper Wins First American Collegiate Meet Published On 5/6/1957 12:00:00 AM By ALAN H. GROSSMAN WOODBURY, Conn., May 4--The country's first intercollegiate parachute jumping competition, held today atop the windswept crest of The Good Hill Farm, was won by Harvard's British-born R.C.A. Weatherly-White. Flying 2,200 feet above the 50-yard target area, at a clip of 80 m.p.h., Weatherly-White dropped to the ground a mere 9 ft., 3 1/2 in. from the target center, amid the cheers of almost 1,000 spectators, who were held back by U.S. Marine Corps guards, in dress uniform, and officers of the Connecticut State Police. Competitors and members of the press attended an eleventh hour briefing session in a small farmhouse, a quarter of a mile from the hill farm's landing field. The briefing, and the entire afternoon was dominated by Marine Captain Jacques Andre Istel, iron-willed director of the meet, and captain of the United States parachuting team which competed at the World Championship held in Moscow last year. The first thrill of the afternoon came when Dartmouth freshman Charlie Hotchkiss, who was making only the ninth jump of his career, landed 39 ft., 9 in. from the target center. Hotchkiss used a Derry Steerable chute, which allows more control over horizontal movement than the chute used by Weatherly-White. Weatherly-White, who showed up at the meet wearing a black derby, checkered suit, and crimson vest, and changed into a white siren suit for the jump, received his training as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He is a third-year Medical School student and, with David B. Burnham '57, is co-captain of the Cambridge Parachuting Club. Burnham and White began the club several months ago, as the first fully organized college-membered parachuting organization in the country. There are indications that similar clubs are being formed at Princeton and Williams. All the jumpers at the meet have practiced only on an informal basis this spring, except for the Cambridge Parachuting Club representatives. === David Burnham went on to become a reporter for The New York Times. His reporting on organized crime formed much of the background for the movie Serpico. Karen Silkwood, of the movie Silkwood, was on her way to provide information to Burnham when she died in an auto accident Weatherly-White went on to become a successful plastic surgeon in Denver, well-known for his charity surgical trips to third-world countries. Good Hill Farm (see attached) is still in the Pond family and the airport is still in use. There's an annual party there where you can jump in; it's a treat. (Where else can you find high-quality trivia like this?) HW

Here, just for the record, is an account of a later blind jumper. HW

Well, there some every-weekend jumpers at Jumptown who come from southwestern Connecticut and one from New Jersey, bypassing some other DZs on the way. From Burlington, it's all Interstate and you can crash at the DZ. I haven't jumped at Addison, but I know some of the people there. You'll have fun and get some great views of Lake Champlain. You might also look north to Canada; there are some DZs in eastern Ontario and Quebec. HW

The "guy in the photo" is D-3. The other guy is D-245. (I figured everyone knows what a 1.6 is.) HW

I inferred, maybe wrongly, that his printer is an inkjet that can print directly on "printable" DVDs. Lots of cheap printers, e.g. Epson R200, can. Of course you will quickly spend more on ink than you paid for the printer.

The UMass/Amherst parachute club was around in 1959 (see attached). It kind of morphed into the Mass. Sport Parachute Club, which is the operating club for Jumptown. UMass/Amherst students are jumping there. (A slightly strained reach for "oldest continuous" status.) HW

Tandem-only

Apart from the merits of merits of the issue, already well discussed here, would you personally regard staff drug testing as a "selling point?' If you compared two similar DZs, would you prefer the "drug-free" one? More importantly, do you think potential customers react positively to such a claim? HW

As noted, Orange Sport Parachute Center, which opened May 2, 1959, was the first commercial parachute center in the country, but obviously people were making sport jumps elsewhere before that. The people who started Parachutes Incoporated, the operator of Orange and, later, other centers, included Jacques-André Istel, D-2, Lew Sanborn,D-1, and Nate Pond, D-69. All, but especially Istel, had been visiting college campuses in the Northeast for some time before that, stirring up interest in creating college clubs. The first collegiate Nationals meet was held in 1957 at Goodhill Farm in Connecticut, the Pond family place. Many early sport jumps were made at Goodhill -- I guess that makes it a DZ. People still jump there the first weekend of every August. The Mass. Sport Parachute Club -- which still exists and currently operates the Jumptown DZ at Orange -- also dates back to at least the spring of 1959. MSPC jumped at Turners Falls, MA from then until 1996 when it moved 15 miles east to Orange. (PI had closed more than a decade earlier, so there was a gap in operations there.) And I'm sure the west coast, and parts in between, will also chime in. HW

Look what Mr. DHL just brought us. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2921130