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We'll miss you Jeff.

The Ash Dive will be on October 2nd at Skydive Arizona in Eloy.

Negative. Science tells us that if it hasn't ever happened, it can never happen!

Most of you will probably remember the discussion that was going on a while back (6 months?) about a French company called Nervures that is developing a paragliding canopy that can be deployed in freefall like a normal skydiving canopy. Well I was back on their site, re-reading what's there and something got me thinking. They say they've got the glide ratio to 6:1, for every 6 units the canopy travels horizontally it will drop by 1. Fine. Then I found a site which compared paragliders, 8:1, with hang-gliders, 12:1, with sail planes, 30:1(!). So my questions are: What's a typical glide ratio (or the maximum achieveable) for a skydiving canopy? Is 6:1 really that much of an improvement? And when we compare canopies and say that one has a much better glide than another, what magnitude of difference are we actually talking about. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway