Net.Rec.Skydive History . . .

[NickDG 23]

Coming a bit late to the internet myself (1986) I found the following older USENET post (from the very person that started it all) interesting in that it mentions a time when there are only three skydivers posting to net.rec.skydivng (which later became rec.skydiving) from 1984 . . .

Nick BASE 194

>>From: [email protected] ([email protected])
Subject: Count me in too....

Newsgroups: net.rec.skydive
Date: 1984-04-13 08:02:09 PST

Several years ago I started this group, but the whuffos kept sending me mail saying they would never jump out of an airplane. I guess it got old.

By the way, I like blast handles, providing I am using a 3-ring or R-2's.

Now that I know there are 3 other jumpers on the net, are any of you folks familiar with the AFF program. I have watched about 20 jumps from the air, and was very impressed. Has anybody heard any negative information? 20 jumps is not enough to really make a decision, unless you are trying to TSO a reserve, :-)!

--
Al Gettier
AT&T Information Systems Labs
11900 North Pecos
Denver, CO 80234
(303) 538-4771<<

[mattb 0]

Interesting - I forwarded this post to who I think the author is (a co-worker with the same name)

[alg 0]

Matt just sent me this email.

Boy, those were the old days.... "Duke News", "Netnews A", "Netnews B", etc, etc.

When net news first started, anyone could create any news group. In late 1980 or early 1981, when I was at Bell Labs, the netnews software was installed on many of the systems, and I started net.rec.skydiving.

Back then, you usually only saw "netnews" at the Universities, Gov't contractors and some hi-tech firms. The volume of postings was low enough that the news was passed around on many sites via UUCP on 1200 baud modems.

There were a handful of jumpers who were posting questions and comments on this group. Unfortunately, every time you would post, you would get a ton of "Why would anyone... yada yada yada" or "I have always wanted to, what does it feel like", or "I want to make a jump, can you comment on dropzone XYZ"

As a result, activity on the newsgroup died out until ~1984 when it started getting active again. When I mentioned 3 other jumpers I was being sarcastic.

Thanks for digging up the old memories!

[cpoxon 0]

Quote

Coming a bit late to the internet myself (1986) I found the following older USENET post

Nick, where did you 'find' this post? Any others available? I'm wondering if they could be incorporated into www.recskydiving.org?

From what Al said, I guess my comment on the front page, "The origins of rec.skydiving are lost in the history of time." is not exactly true!

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[NickDG 23]

Hi Craig,

I meant to e-mail you Al's post as I know of your interest in this sort of thing.

I found Al's post with Goggle's "advanced search." I searched the year "1984" and only in the newsgroup "net.rec.skydive"

Nick BASE 194

[cpoxon 0]

Interesting. I didn't know about net.rec.skydive. Thanks Nick.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[pilotdave 0]

Thanks for the site... I'm enjoying reading the posts from 85 and 86...

Quote

9/27/85: The USA won a decisive victory over the world at the international RW competition in Yugoslavia. The "Deland Air Bears" won the four way sequential competition and the "Coors" team won the eight way sequential competition.
The Russians competed for the first time, the did not do well. The
Canadians came in second in four way.
For more details see the next issue of "Skydiving" magazine, it should
be sent out in the next couple of weeks.

So the Russians have gotten better and the deland jumpers got better at naming their teams...

Dave

[alg 0]

Around 1987, give or take a year, "net.rec.skydive" was renamed to its current name.

Netnews was getting popular enough, and it had grown without supervision, that a massive reorganization of the was done.

Note that the people doing the reorganization (and I forget their names) thought that skydiving did not have enough popular support to have its own news group, and we should use rec.aviation.

After I pitched a fit, they relented, and allowed the group.