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steve1

Scary stories from the old days?

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actually i heard it as "no shit ,there i was at 10,000 feet with nothin but a silkworm and a sewing machine' still funny tho LOL




Old Joe Smith told it to me once...the 'whole' story.

~ and it was 2000 feet, a sleepy silk worm and ONE knitting needle.;)










~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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Another version goes...

"No shit, there I was at 2000 feet out of ideas, altitude and with lots of airspeed..."

or for pilots..

"One was turning, one was burning and I knew I was upside down because my air medals were dangling in my face!"
____________________________________
I'm back in the USA!!

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Another version goes...

"No shit, there I was at 2000 feet out of ideas, altitude and with lots of airspeed..."

or for pilots..

"One was turning, one was burning and I knew I was upside down because my air medals were dangling in my face!"






As a Marine once told me:

No shit there I was....enemy all around, up to my ass in empty brass and grenade pins, nothing left to defend myself with but a flashlight and a tambourine...:)










~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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......

I’d see her around and she’d never fail to give me a coy smile that would always refresh the memories of the night I got my 'Wings'.B|

As for the Kaptian...I don’t think he ever took that ~ SIU Skydiving Team ~ jacket off in the two years I had until graduation! :ph34r:



Classic B|

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Not too scary unless you were the DZO...

Marvin was an MD. He had come to our rural DZ to jump and had a nice wife and kids who we all came to know well. They were nice folks and Marvin really enjoyed kinda letting his hair down with us. He was not a natural. He was sort of a klutz and we knew it. We had taken him up on some "harness hold" jumps to help get his stability straightened out. (1977 before AFF.)

One day the good doctor goes up for a quickee solo with the wife standing on the ground waiting to gather up his gear and jump into the car for points elsewhere. They had just stopped by for the one. Marvin has a messy streamer on his borrowed Starlite. It's a ball of nylon and really screaming. I was in the airplane saying aloud, "Cut away Doc. Cut away...). The people on the ground were screaming CUT AWAY DOC!. His wife was literally climbing up the side of the DZO and ol' Marvin was burning thru 800' .

He got it out and landed uneventfully but here is the scary part... He was looking for his Tapewells on his chest where they always were. When you wear your rig they are always at your collar bones and they just weren't there. He looked and looked patting his chest to find them. Finally he just gave up and figured he'd go in. He relaxed and raised his head up from his chest. Lo and behold there were those missing Tapewells. Rip Rip, Pull and grunt from the opening and land a few seconds later.

We figure he was a couple seconds from a crater. That was scary enough for all of us to take his experience to heart and erected a hanging harness the next weekend.

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He got it out and landed uneventfully but here is the scary part... He was looking for his Tapewells on his chest where they always were. When you wear your rig they are always at your collar bones and they just weren't there. He looked and looked patting his chest to find them. Finally he just gave up and figured he'd go in.

You're right - that is the scary part. What's real scary is I had the same sit'n once myself. It was a spinning mal and it wasn't so much just giving up as the effect of the spinning. Maybe someday I'll talk about it.
If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

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Could someone explain about the tapewells please?
A pre 3-ring were they? What did you need to do to cut away?
With your rig closed they are on your chest, but once the container is open and you have something above you they lift up to above your shoulders or something?
"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

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It's the same thing with 3-rings, except that you don't care as much because you're reaching for the handle.

Tapewells just replaced the external hardware on Capewells (connection between main risers and harness) with nylon tubing, turning cutting away into a single stage action.

Look at your 3-rings on the ground sometime -- they're right on your front and easy to see. Next look at them when you're under canopy -- you're settled into the saddle, so they're up about 2 inches, and away from your body.

Now imagine that the harness, instead of being custom, is an older one that doesn't fit as well. They could be even farther away. Nowhere close to where they were when you practiced on the ground.

Hanging harnesses are important (your cutaway handle on the 3-ring can shift based on deformation too).

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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Hanging harnesses are important (your cutaway handle on the 3-ring can shift based on deformation too).

Wendy W.



Oh yeah, imagine my surprise on a hard spinning malfunction 11 years ago (almost to this day) and locating my cutaway pillow up at my shoulder while my back was parallel to earth! :S That was a really hard pull. :o
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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ABSOLUTELY. Joe REALLY knew his shit



Joe gave me my rigger "course" in DeLand in Sept. '72 and wrote the letter for me. I was there at 8:00 AM, Monday morning and Joe goes to the refridgerator and gets a pitcher of beer left over from the night before. He says, "When you finish this, we'll start." It took a while to get those first few pack jobs done.
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

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ABSOLUTELY. Joe REALLY knew his shit



Joe gave me my rigger "course" in DeLand in Sept. '72 and wrote the letter for me. I was there at 8:00 AM, Monday morning and Joe goes to the refridgerator and gets a pitcher of beer left over from the night before. He says, "When you finish this, we'll start." It took a while to get those first few pack jobs done.


:)Henry Worst

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My first time in here but am long term jumpa. Montana mostly.. I just was informed of one Linnea Larson of Livingston Montana killed in a traffic accident. Her family stated she was one of the first if not the first female skydiver in Montana. She would have jumped in Missoula Area. any of you oldster silvertips know? Smiles.....Jumpa.

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If I remember right Joe had a sign listing rigging services and prices. At the top of the sign were prices for repack then onto modifications. At the bottom of sign was a listing that charged more if you watched , and much more if you helped.
" 90 right, five miles then cut."---Pukin Buzzards

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charged more if you watched , and much more if you helped.

Jimmy Godwin had one of those in his loft at Eustis as well. I was quite taken with it :ph34r:

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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If I remember right Joe had a sign listing rigging services and prices. At the top of the sign were prices for repack then onto modifications. At the bottom of sign was a listing that charged more if you watched , and much more if you helped.



And charged the most if you had TRIED to do it first.
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

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Another version goes...

"No shit, there I was at 2000 feet out of ideas, altitude and with lots of airspeed..."

or for pilots..

"One was turning, one was burning and I knew I was upside down because my air medals were dangling in my face!"






As a Marine once told me:

No shit there I was....enemy all around, up to my ass in empty brass and grenade pins, nothing left to defend myself with but a flashlight and a tambourine...:)


Thats some funny shit!!!

I heard it was a banana and a clothespin!

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This isn't a scary story. It's one of my more memorable jumps...

Night jump. Lodi, around 1986. Bill's Beech had floater rails. Me and a friend went out first on a night 10 way, hanging under the Beech on the foot rail's cross bars. Waiting there for the rest of the floaters to get out. Huge moon over Lodi, thin cloud layer at 6K, big blue flames coming out of the engines. A good 10 seconds, looking my buddy in the eye, and living life. Don't know why I'm thinking about this tonight, but it just won't go away...
We are all engines of karma

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