howardwhite

I figured the Bonfire crowd would especially go for RSS: RSS (Real Simple Sex) RSS is a relatively new algorithmic technology fueled by the continued hot desires of many online web users. Accessed by an illuminating an icon on the toolbar - a single click allows you to view and optionally download anything that resembles a tit, a boob or a breast - rendered directly in the browser with speeds up to 10 times faster than the competition. Real Simple Sex can scan and arrange explicit images/pictures in order of quality and effectively filters out irrelevant content such as balloons or soccer balls. [I'm puzzled about why the word icon links to the Aerodyne Icon site]

All you Windoze people looking for a better browser should check it out. http://www.msfirefox.com/microsoft-firefox/index.html Be sure to check out the system requirements. Be the first on your block to get the best from Redmond. HW

If you just go here: http://ataka.speedriding.free.fr/ and read French, you can read all about their school. (There are a few other short video clips there, too.)

Picture 853 bad shows it in its bad days at Elsinore. But there is life after skydiving.

Maybe you can find the 195 in the attached picture. (Scanned from the 1977 Turkey Meet program, presumably showing the '76 meet.) HW

"MakeItHappen" has on her history page the following: "Sanborn was the first person to jump with a sleeve tied on to the apex. Sleeves had just been introduced in France, tying it on was a new idea. It worked." No attribution, no info as to where or when. HW

You might want to add .jpg extension to your attachment to make it open a bit easier. (Cool picture.)

Some info at: http://www.mediacollege.com/flash/video/encoders/ None of them free but one pretty cheap. I use Sorenson ($$$), because I bought it for other reasons. HW

The biggest one for New England is Skydive Banter, hosted at MIT. It's read by jumpers at most NE DZs and has been around for a very long time. http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/skydive-banter to sign up. Other DZs, Jumptown, Pepperell, Skydive New England and, as noted, CPI, have their own lists. HW

Poynter's manual (p 245 in the second edition) shows two patent drawings for sleeves. One, issued to R. L. Oakley in 1956, shows a pilot chute and sleeve apparently detached from the main canopy. The second, issued April 4, 1961 to "Jacques-Andre Istel by Lewis Barton Sanborn," shows a sleeve clearly attached to the canopy apex. I'm reasonably sure that retainer lines were used at the Orange Sport Parachute Center from the moment it opened May 2, 1959. (Istel, D-2, was president, and Sanborn, D-1, was vice president.) It's hard to imgine shaggers running around the DZ policing up sleeves. FWIW, Lee Guilfoyle, D-50 and another early PI exec, is credited with inventing the pilot chute assist system. HW

O.K., it's here. This brings up a page with the QuickTime movie; you can play it from the page, and when it's through, you can click the triangle at lower right of the QuickTime bar to save it to your drive. (~15 mb) Just scraps of movies thrown together in a hurry; no sound, no titles, no fancy transitions. Not guaranted to be there forever, if I need the space for something else. HW

O.K. I've found the footage of N4395N. It is basically silver (i.e. basic aluminum) fusilage with red cowling, wingtips, and stripes. The same chunk of film also has the C-46, several DC3s, and a Lodestar (believe it's Sweet's). The team pictured dirt diving and boarding is Pieces of Eight, from Massachusetts. It's from either '73 or '74. I'll clean it up a bit and put it on a site in the next day or so -- it'll probably be a 15mb or so download. Haven't found any stills yet, but still looking. HW

I might have some pictures, but I know I have some video footage (converted from 8mm film) which includes the 196, the L-10E, etc. If I can figure the best place to post it (I've got several possible sites for it), I can put up a short clip, at least for a while. HW

Here's a better Sailwing picture -- the best I've seen. (And I don't remember ever seeing a red Sailwing.) It comes from a Pioneer Parachute Co. annual report and was recently posted on Flickr by Jon Guignard, an early rigger at Orange. It makes clear how few lines the Sailwing has. HW

Here's another picture of Pete boarding Norseman with Pig rig. (Not guaranteed to be the same one, and no chest mount in this one.) Lousy color; I quick 'n dirty Photoshopped for sharpening details and let color find its own way. (At right is Vic Deveau.) HW

Could be Security, could be Pioneer, could even be Strong (my first pig, which I bought when I started S/L jumpmastering in 1967, was a Strong container on a Pioneer harness, and had front D-rings.) Need to go look at some old books and catalogs. Also will go back to the original scan and see if there's more detail (this one, as others, was sliced and diced to fit upload requirements.) HW

And wouldn't you like to undertake a little more edjimacation by explaining exactly how the Mae West got its name? HW

Here is the best closeup of the rig I can muster without rescanning the original, which is 40 miles west of where I sit at the moment. It's not possible to see if he's wearing a front-mounted reserve. Also attached is a picture of Pete ("the incredible packing machine") Peterson just after exiting a Norseman at Orange. He's wearing a piggyback rig and a chest-mounted reserve, and is almost certainly testing some canopy for Pioneer. (I took the picture, but have no idea about what's in the main.) HW

I think they are of the same canopy. Sometime, I'll have to ask the guy who took them. But I think the apparent difference in line length might be a matter of perspective -- the one more directly underneath does not display the length. What is more interesting from a development point of view is that there seems to be no sort of opening shock inhibitor; the later production Rogallo wings initially used a strap that wrapped around line groups and released them in sequence (too complicated to explain in a sentence -- have to draw a diagram or post a movie.) Later wings used sliders, I think. I can ask Lee Guilfoyle, who probably was among the jumpers, or Loy Brydon, who also made early Rogallo jumps (I've seen both of them in the past couple of months and have email and phone contacts.) For Jerry Baumchen -- yes, it's quite possible that it's a three-canopy system. I'll look at the original; this version was considerably down-sampled to meet posting limitations. But such systems were common for Pioneer testing at the time; I have other pictures of jumps from that time with additional canopies. As to the Sailwing, yes, it's a wierd canopy. I lost a coin toss to jump one in the late '60s. The guy who won the toss (we had only one rig that would hold it) had to chop. But David Barish, its developer, was still testing modifications to it at Lakewood, NJ into the '70s, I'm told by Someone Who Was There -- he's got lots of pictures and movies and I plan to scan/archive them this winter. HW

Here are a couple more Rogallo wing pix, taken at Orange, MA, probably during the '65 Nationals. Canopy (probably the same one in both pix) bears the Pioneer logo, and was presumably a test model, since AFAIK Pioneer never sold any -- at least into the sport market. Also from the same batch of scans a Barish sailwing jumped by Lee Guilfoyle, D-50, at the '65 Nationals. HW

Well, I was around when MagicGuy made most of his 56 jumps, and from time to time gave him a hard time about wearing water gear (required at Jumptown for student jumpers because there's a lake about a half mile east), an obvious signal that he didn't have his A yet. Jumptown has been extraordinarily busy for the past couple of months -- 30 or 40 tandems each weekend day, lots of AFFs, etc. Instead of waiting around for a coach so he could finish dotting all the i's and crossing the t's, he chose to jump by himself. Pretty cool that his swoop and dock check dive was with Dave Brown, an internationally-known freefly competitor and coach and tunnel master, movie star ("Adrenaline Rush" and others), and available all this season at Jumptown for free coaching and video. In other words, in this case 56 jumps was his choice. At this point, he's got a lot more experience than "just got my A" would sugggest. HW

Mr. Google might help. Lots of entries. This one has a cool base picture from Budapest. http://www.apexbase.com/portal/content.asp?contentid=92

There was a hazard at the Lodge that did not happen at the Inn -- geese. Not only did they hiss at jumpers but they also, well, "soiled" large portions of the ground. HW

The Turners Falls DZ closed somewhere around 1995, after its clubhouse building deteriorated to the point of collapse and was condemned. We had a fine time destroying the remains with sledge hammers, and took anything worth preserving to Orange, 15 miles east. The Massachusetts Sport Parachute Club, which had operated at Turners Falls since 1959, has operated since then as Jumptown/Orange, and moved into its new building in April 2006. The Turners Falls legacy remains at Jumptown in the student gear, very well-maintained and still embroidered "Turners Falls." At various times, Turners had Beech 18s, a DC-3, a Lodestar, Dornier 228s and Twin Otters (in addition to Cessnas and the occasional visiting Caribou and Beaver.) From 1996 to 200? Jumptown moved to Turners for at least one weekend a year when there was an airshow at Orange, but I know of no jumping there at all in the past two or three years. A beautiful DZ, with great views of (and occasional landings in) the Connecticut River off the west end of the runway. HW

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