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I saw this before posting but i wasn't feel comfortable to practice it.. … i newer saw anyone at dz doing it...

First fifty or so jumps on my new canopy, I psycho packed it. Seemed to offer more control. Here's a video that may help, but always discuss with a rigger, never take advice off of the internet, go to the PIA conference before you do anything new, yadda yadda yadda

Roll packing technique is my go to for a long time now. It works on any size perfectly.

Well, to counter that, what's an acceptable number of drunk driving deaths per year? There are thousands. And while there has been a change in the overall attitudes towards drunk driving, and the numbers have declined, it's still a big problem. And it's a problem with a fairly simple (although not cheap or super 'easy') solution. Many people convicted of OWI are required to have an 'intoxilock' in their car for a period of time. That's the device that you have to blow into and show no alcohol on your breath before the car will start. They are expensive, inconvenient and subject to problems (one I know of is that they freeze up in the winter). But if car makers installed one in every new car, and people were required to retrofit all cars on the road with them, then drunk driving would virtually disappear. I've asked this before and been accused of asking a 'gotcha' question. Or that it's a false equivalence. To answer your question directly (I didn't before), the answer is zero. No deaths are 'acceptable'. But what would you do to stop them? How many other rights would you be willing to give up along with the 2nd? I'm certainly willing to listen to ideas that would help. But I have yet to hear any substantive ideas that would stop shootings of this kind, short of bans and confiscation. What specific solutions would stop these kinds of shootings? Background checks? Most of the high profile shootings that I know of used guns that were purchased after passing checks. There are a couple incidents where the checks should have prevented the shooter from getting the guns, but they 'fell through the cracks. The one a few months ago in Aurora (Chicago) is a stunning example of the shortcomings. The shooter had a felony conviction. But it was in another state, so the check didn't catch it. He then applied for a carry permit. That had a deeper check (fingerprints) that did catch the felony. But, rather than actually doing something, the state wrote him a letter telling him his FOID card had been cancelled and that he had to turn in his gun. That was it. They knew he had a gun and that he was a felon (that's a crime). And they wrote him a letter. Ban military style rifles? While the ones that make the national media use those, most shootings aren't committed with them. There are millions of them out there (probably tens of millions). When Obama got elected sales went absolutely nuts. After the Sandy Hook school shooting, they went nuts again. Everybody wanted to get one before they got banned. With the previous ban, it only applied to new manufacture. Stuff that was already out there could be owned, bought and sold. So while availability went down some, and price went up, they were still readily available. Unless a 'ban' included confiscation of some sort, it would be equally toothless. Are you willing to see that? Government confiscation of private property? Unless the government is willing to pay a LOT of money, it would simply be 'taking', not 'buying' (since the government never owned them in the first place, it's not a 'buy back"). And are you willing to see the cost in privacy/search rights? There would be a lot of people who wouldn't turn their guns in. The government would have to search virtually every house and business in the country to find all the guns. Sales & background checks would show a lot of owners, but what if the owner said "I sold that a long time ago, I don't have any guns." Would you believe him? Would you search his house? How far would you search? Tear out the walls & ceiling? Destroy the house? Would you take a metal detector around his back yard if you didn't find any? What about people who never bought a gun from a dealer (no check, no paperwork). Do you get ammunition sales records, parts and component sales records, gun range membership lists. ect? How far do you go? And the gun rights folks are also flipping that around: If you ban abortion, they will still happen, just illegally. So why would banning guns work? This came up while I was composing my response, so I can't attribute it (haven't figured that out yet). I'm going to disagree. I know a few people who carry guns on a regular basis. NONE of them 'open carry'. Most 'gun types' don't really think much of open carry. It's more an 'ego' thing than a 'self protection' thing. It also puts a hell of a target on the person carrying the gun. Cops open carry, but they wear distinctive clothes and drive around in really obvious cars. Even if they carried hidden, everyone would still know. The plain clothed cops carry under their jackets more to be discreet than to keep it secret (that big bulge under their arm is a pretty good clue). I don't think anyone is going to carry when jumping, but not jumping and just hanging out? Betcha there's one or two. I know pilots who carried when flying the 182. I've known of staff that carried when working the desk. It wasn't advertised, and I knew because I either had long conversations about guns with these people or I spotted the gun at some point. And don't totally discount the 'gun in the car' situation. There have been a number of shootings that were stopped by someone who had a gun close by. A janitor at a school, a principal, a couple of off duty cops at a college (these are off the top of my head). It wasn't stopped instantly, but the shooters were stopped before they were done.

True. As the social media posts I keep seeing say: Abortions : BAN THEM! Birth control: BAN IT! Immigrants: BAN THEM! Guns: Look, banning things never works, it's a mental health problem.

Yup. I thought about posting, but really, what’s the point? A while ago I asked people here what they considered an acceptable cost for their 2nd amendment rights were - was it worth the cost of x mass shootings a year? What if it involved a neighbor? Or a family member? IIRC only riggerrob answered directly. From that I worked out that for staunch supporters of gun rights this isn't something that can be discussed or argued rationally, at least to me. It's as much a belief as any religion is. That's why I just don't 'get' it - It's not a logical position in how I frame my world view. They may not say it out loud, they may not even internalize it, but I suspect that many of them wouldn't change their stance even if it were a close family member involved. Once you make that leap then it's obvious - no matter how well I construct an argument, or how eloquently I argue it there is NO chance I will change their minds. Absolutely none. If the death of a family member won't do it then what chance would my words have? It's talking for the sake of it. So that's why I've given up lamenting about the latest mass killing on here. It'll keep happening and the only recourse we have is hope. Hope that big number theory keeps me and my family safe.

Luckily there's a web archive website that has that page in its cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20151030060538/http://sidsrigging.com/articles/greed.htm There ya go. I'll add the following based on how I pack, which is using a reverse S fold method since I got a brand new canopy at jump 100. Every jump I've packed since then for every canopy has been with that method. In that link the canopy is folded in half, then the attachment point end is folded over, and all that put in the bag with the label end still to be done. When I pack I break it down even more, making it possibly even easier. I fold the canopy in half as in the second picture, then put that in the bag. I then put the attachment point end in the bag, and because that is the only bit going in the bag at that stage, I can make sure it fills the bag right to the corners. That then gets me to the same stage as picture 4 in the link. The rest I do the same. For me the fact that you are only handling 1/2 the canopy at a time, means it is much easier to get it in the bag in stages. I've not had a problem packing since I got used to doing this method, and that includes packing a 120 ish sized canopy in a bag for a 100 size canopy for short term use. Very tight, but it got there without notable issues.

Yikes. There's long been the worry that someone might occasionally get the Cutaway & Reserve just a little out of order, if they are trying to "pull simultaneously", or even do a "quick one-two", which is a better strategy. Maybe the cutaway handle takes a little more force (whether due to forces on the cables or just good velcro), so the reserve pull ends up early. I'm wondering if maybe you had a line or line group caught on you or around the bottom corner of the rig or something, after deploying unstable or head down. Only that seems to explain the situation. So I'm guessing you were entangled in your main after all. (I'm not expecting you to know 100% what's happening behind you during a nasty malfunction whipping you around!) If one is just in line twists, each set of risers tends to have front and rear close together, very little space for the reserve to go through. Plus, it wasn't just the reserve pilot chute getting through some part of the main lines, in which case the freebag would have solved the issue and you and the reserve would be free. For the main lines to be around the reserve lines, the whole freebag had to go between risers or lines -- such as when some lines are entangled on you somewhere. That can result in a spinny mess with a line over or just something looking like one. You got a little over amped on the main pull (when you had time to wait a couple more seconds easily), and had the same with the reserve pull. But great job on keeping on fighting and actually using the hook knife. And managing to not cut any reserve lines in the process! It is very very rare for anyone to ever use a hook knife. Not unknown though, so it's still best to have one.

In State College our public transportation runs on it. No soot. Just water vapor and plant food out of the exhaust pipe.

I’m ok with universities getting grants to conduct basic research. Some day, many decades from now, the supply of fossil fuels will begin to tighten and prices will rise. We then can transition to whatever state-of-the-art, energy supply makes sense. The premature adaptation of renewables has resulted in skyrocketing energy prices wherever it has been widely implemented. Diverting taxpayer money from roads and schools into the pockets Elon Musk and company in the name of “saving the planet” is just bad policy, in my opinion.

And as soon as they do I will be all in! (It’s called economics)

This, not a mass shooting, but a perfect example of what happens when human being with tempers carry people killing machines with them all the time. They sometimes use them to kill people. And no one is surprised and no one can do anything to change the situation. Remember the dead children. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/06/us/phoenix-summer-brown-road-rage-shooting/index.html