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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/19/2020 in all areas

  1. 1 point
    Of course - That's what Q meant - before they KNEW that was what they meant!
  2. 1 point
    Might still be available from Jump Shack. Earlier this century they partnered with Sonic to build a BASE rig with TSO'd harness. Snap on the Pop-Top chest to make an FAA-legal rig, leave the Pop-Top behind to make a non-FAA jump.
  3. 1 point
    Thanks for help, I am not sure that the size is correct, this informations I tried to gain for the other skydiver. One more thx. Is it possissible that is two models of PdF canopy Prime & Prima?
  4. 1 point
    NYT 3/19. I expect you'll consider it "fake". It can take one to two weeks for a case to go from infection to diagnosis. The incubation time is thought to be five days, meaning it takes that long for symptoms to appear. It can take a few days for people with symptoms to get tested, depending on how informed they are about identifying symptoms, how eager they are to get tested (high health care costs or hassle factors can disincentivize testing when symptoms are mild) and their access to tests. Then another day or two for the results. This lag, combined with the speed of the coronavirus’s spread (uncontrolled, the number of cases can double about every two days), means that the number of actual infections might be up to 128 times what they appear to be. In other words, what looks like a handful of sick people might actually be a full-on outbreak. And what looks like a controllable outbreak might actually be well beyond the threshold of a public health disaster. Countries do well when they assume as much, even if it initially looks like overreacting.
  5. 1 point
    His profile says he last visited 16 hours ago. I'd emailed a couple of times about 10 years ago, but it was from a mail account that no longer exists, when I was working. Wendy P.
  6. 1 point
    Fine. But I want names, home addresses and cell phone numbers so I can keep up on progress. As it is now I have to wander from brewery to brewery looking for BillVon to get answers and that's not right.
  7. 1 point
    I've been saying this non-stop. For example, BillVon's a genius why is he allowed to have a normal day to day life while we're fretting about this stuff? That makes no sense. Time to round up these slackers, I say, and set them to work!
  8. 1 point
    I know, I was being a smart ass. He's committed to picking a women, good by me. I know many don't like her for her hard edge and odd way of talking but I sort of favor Klobuchar. She's smart and, I think, a hard ass. Biden falls over and I think she could step right up.
  9. 1 point
    I think it could be done with a little bit of harness modification.
  10. 1 point
    The "better" about it is that apparently it's maintainable; the old format had software conventions that weren't adapting to some of the newer software technologies, and were getting really hard to maintain. I understand the motivation, especially in a website that no one pays for. Yeah, that model T is perfect, but when no mechanic can work on it any more, maybe it's time to get rid of it regardless. Wendy P.
  11. 1 point
    Oh Turtle - you HAD to go there (but yeah, of course I laughed) Wendy P.
  12. 1 point
    Everyone gets them. Many times I couldn't remember the next point :)
  13. 1 point
    Sure is 210? https://gemapar.fr/Documents/Materiels/caracteristique/CA365.pdf
  14. 1 point
    Ribs with extra “crossporting” ought to be adopted to reduce bulk and weight.
  15. 1 point
    Ribs (as in parachute ribs, not pg ribs aka crossbracing. Getting complicated. Ha, ha)are already getting pretty threadbare in cases and don't particularly affect negatively, although it may have life expectancy issues in the long run. It's is more notable in BASE canopies which are not expected to last housands of jumps. For example or When getting the geometry right they work just like an upside down suspension bridge, where loads can be transferred effectively and thus only a certain amount of 'threads' are needed to support the expected loads and they seemingly cope well. Similar thinking is used with regards support tapes in PG's and some sky canopies, having them form parabolas instead of the classic triangles. That supports the load more evenly accoss the to skin and avoids the pinchpoints usually asociated with traditional supprot taping. NZA's kraken does have parabolic tapes and interestingly in their marketig they have photos of what could have been an earlier pre-production model without them (or mini-ribs) and the difference seems noticeable. Could also just be judicious photography work of the later model making it look smoother though ;-) Other more leftfield 'solutions' do exist, for example PdF techno reserve's direct attachements to the top skin via spectra line, rendering the rib itself more of a 'helper' in order to shpe the skin rather than supporting the load. Similarly single skin PG's have direct line attachements with no rib, ribs used as a bit of a fender to keep air in only, or parabolic tapes/lines with fabric only above between the parabolas and top skin to again, help shape the top skin and spread the load without pinchpoints. The amount of 'ideas' that have been put to use past and present outside the 'normal' stuff is pretty inspiring, so the 'lines only rib' thing does not look that far fetched in context, though it looks like a lot of faff and likely no possible benefit over other 'systems'? On a 'normal' RAM air canopy a rib of sorts is still needed at least at the unloaded bit even if crossbraced to shape the bottom skin and preventing it from ballooning downwards from the internal pressure. P.S. I found that website a while ago and have been trucking through it. It is excellent in a nerdy sort of way. Thanks Edit: This is one example of a single skin pg rib made wth parabolic tapes + fabric. It'd be the best compromise as opposed to using just lines i think, so as to spread the load evenly acroos the seam
  16. 1 point
    It makes sense as part of the evolution of ribs. Starting out as solid ribs, with a few round holes knotknifed into them. The holes then become more rectangular, or a set of thin vertical slots to allow the rib to transfer loads along the weave of the fabric. With diagonal loads being taken by tapes sewn on from the line attachment points. As computer aided design expands, more and more excess material in the rib is removed. One can't go too far with a plain rib as soon one would have a thin strip of material on a bias, on the 45 to the main threads, that will stretch when loaded or ravel even with hotknifing. So one would need strips of material built to work along the diagonals. (Not sure how the Nova Phantom paragliders' diagonal ribs work.) ("crossbracing" in skydiving = "diagonal ribs" in paragliding) If the production methods could be made to work without adding ridiculous cost, for great structural efficiency, each rib or diagonal reinforcing rib could end up as a bunch of bifurcating, cascaded threads or mini-lines. A 2D version is sketched below just to convey the idea, but obviously these could split spanwise as well to act as crossbracing, whether they could attach to the upper surface at any point or have to join into some sort of reinforced seam. Then it becomes more like organic structures from nature, thin structural members going everywhere instead of a few heavy structural beams of simplistic design. In skydiving, having ribs that aren't just a bunch of holes might be useful for controlling inflation though. Some more thoughts on some diagonal variations plus spanwise load bearing tapes, from a while back I think, can be seen at http://www.laboratoridenvol.com/paragliderdesign/V-H-ribs.html
  17. 1 point
    Skylarks approach is a really elegant solution to provide shaping and rigidity to a canopy, Atair's however i always thought it to be a pretty impressive feat given they probably didn't have much in the way of 3D software to get the patterns dialled. The amount of trial and error involved when sewing those must have been huge. (Edit: Thinking more about it, they probably designed it with ribs on and then just removed them?) The rib design in those Phantom paragliders are really interesting. A bi-cell bracing nested inside a tri-cell to give a quad cell. (Edit: I'm making the names up. Don't know if there's an actual name for that) Clever the way they run the fabric threaded through the holes! Interestingly the bi-cell type seems to run at 45 degrees tying with what Mark mentions above regards angles
  18. 1 point
    Makes sense that. The Neos is the one canopy that i thought was closest to that 'missing link', in that by bracing the centre sells and A to C lines it tried to get the benefits with less complexity and cons so to speak. I assumed the lack of bracing on D's was due to it being purely unnecessary due to the lack of height of the rib on a narrow profile, but now that you mention it's very possible a bracing there wouldn't do anything or not much at all. With regards mini-ribs at the trailing edge i found interesting that of the ones i could inspect they are not equal height/shape to the corresponding section in the loaded ribs, but usually taller. I guess so as to reduce the thickness of the cell without actually pinching it as it will invariably balloon more compared to the loaded ones
  19. 1 point
    What Skylark is doing looks nice. The crossbrace design reminds me of the Atair Onyx of around 2002 - one over-hyped canopy even if some aspects were inventive. Two sections on the bottom surface become 4 sections on the top surface.
  20. 1 point
    He would have trouble stabilizing because of a 20 pound bag of money tied to his body, but not because it was dark or he could not see the horizon. If he had any skydiving experience, or parachute free fall training, he would have known to arch his body. He could have done this in the dark, or with his eyes closed.
  21. 1 point
    Yes, for rigidity the optimum angle for the cross-brace is about 45 degrees. By contrast, think about the lack of effectiveness of cross-bracing at the tail. Some canopies cross-brace just the forward part of the cell (Icarus NEOS, for example), and some canopies add false ribs at the tail to keep the as-flown shape closer to the as-designed shape (PD Valkyrie, for example).
  22. 1 point
    Yes, i meant a 'normal' cell (2 loaded ribs with an unloaded rib in the middle and support braces from line attachement points to unloaded rib). Such as Proably overkill as you say, but also, in that configuration, necessary for symmetry? Although possibly other than the centre rib it'd work, (braces running only on one side) that is being done in cells 3 and 7 in the Gangster. Yes. That was patented by Atair some time back, but wasn't aware it had made it into production https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030209634A1/en It'd not be as efficient as a crossbrace as the path "line attachement>bottom skin>rib>top skin" is still longer than a crossbrace (line attachement>Xbrace>top skin) though still a shorter path than a normal height rib would produce. I suspect the effectiveness of the crossbrace might be relative to the angle of the crossbrace, so where a tri-cell would give a sharper angle trying to stretch the brace to the unloaded rib on a bicell might have too big of an angle which wouldn't do a hell of a lot to load the top skin with most of the 'shaping' being done from the expansion force from the canopies pressurization. But that's just academic, hence i'm curious why this 'step' was tried and discarded or bypassed altogether
  23. 1 point
    An early, somewhat successful version of crossbracing was called "airlocks." The chamber-spanning fabric of the airlock valves had the effect of crossbracing the most critical part of the airfoil.
  24. 1 point
    That'll secure the nomination for Biden, I suspect. I might be off in my reckoning, but I think what most average Democratic voters want for the next 4 years isn't a protracted fight about gun rights, or healthcare, or abortion, or any of the typical 'lefty issues'; it's simply to steady the ship and have an end to the absolute insanity of the current President and the new type of politics. Under Trump the established government social rules have been changed. Openly lying is OK. Corruption, racism, bigotry and vice are acceptable. Communication in 128 characters of less is the appropriate channel from the ultimate authority. Loyalty to the CIC is more important than honesty and integrity to the country... I think voters are uncomfortable with this change to their understanding of what 'politics' was and how the game was played, so it wouldn't surprise me to see them vote for the old establishment for this election, just to get back to a set of rules they understand. Bernie is almost too far in the opposite direction generally, and a female VP would be another 'change' to the old and comfortably understood rules. When your car is on fire and pissing gas everywhere, it's probably the wrong time to start thinking about improving engine efficiency and installing eco-friendly seat covers, is all I'm saying.
  25. 1 point
    Or mine, "You haven't seen our planes then, have you?" ltdiver Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon
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