Leaderboard

One party tolerates it and embraces it. One does not. As others have pointed out.

Question -- what do you teach your son about bullies? To give in because they're bigger and shouldn't be poked? Wendy P.

So Ukraine attacks infrastructure used by Russia to support their war effort and three people were killed. You call it a terrorist act. Russia (or Putin, as you rightly point out) attacks an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia, killing 17. You call it an escalation but not a terrorist act. Brilliant analysis.

Here is the Elsinore walk back.... "may be coincidental" and resembled Sketch "A"... IMO, Elsinore is a red herring..

Either on Putin's payroll, or a useful idiot.

Those were the ones that referenced killing all the impure women I assume.

Hahahaha 100%! Best post in the thread.

Much as I would like it I don’t have the power to end the war in Ukraine. Who do you think I am? Your post to Wendy justifying Putin’s invasion proves you are a warmonger.

But it is found in the dictionary you said you use, and the definition matches the way the US functions. I think you only harp on about this because you hope the Supreme Court will enshrine the Republican’s extreme gerrymandering power forever and you’ll have your defence of ‘it doesn’t matter anyway, we’re not a democracy’ all ready to go. Well I think the founding fathers would also have hated one party giving itself power in perpetuity.

They are the other side of the International Spin Line.

Having been to a few places some DZs are like that, and some are family. Each DZ has it's own culture.

I would like to make a point that I think is overlooked in AFF. For the most part AFF instructors have a lot of experience skydiving, and most of them jump small cross braced canopies, and why wouldn't you they are fun to fly. However I feel like the students would do better if the instructors were jumping canopies that they could slow down and take the student from free fall to canopy pilot. Show the student the pattern, make the student find your canopy in the air and do a find a follow type pattern. I was taught skydiving by static line, and we learned how to fly the canopy first, and then free fall was slowly added. As I remember on the freefall skydives I found my instructors canopy very fast and it helped me relax and learn all the way to the ground.

^This. Big time. If you don't know what you are doing, find a mentor. From the way you are asking, you don't really know what you are doing (this is an observation, not a criticism). If the pilot hasn't done this before, find a mentor. It can be done safely. But there are a lot of pitfalls. If you don't know what those are, they can easily kill you.

Got my Cypres 2 set at 1050 (shows 3 on the display next to the 0). Extra 300' might just help one day....

The safest thing for the population as a whole would be to outlaw skydiving.

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough. If people won't comply and the budget for enforcement is small, what good are rules? It would be far safer if the national speed limit were 55, 20 in towns. Would you comply with that? Wendy P.

Because it is a reasonable limit that most participants are willing to accept. That's how it works, just that simple.

Because it would piss off so many people that it would be ignored or even drive some DZs away from USPA affiliation. Only in the nanny states where the local association wields real power can such rules be enforced. Skydiving is an adult sport and people make adult decisions for themselves without consulting you or anyone else.

What’s so hard about it? I don't want to get too far into this argument, but I think the idea is that it is hard to deal with different human performance abilities, that affect landing a parachute, more than it does getting your reserve out in time. The argument isn't that it is any way hard to write some numbers down on paper. For minimum opening altitude, even if I'm a shit hot jumper, my reserve opening distance is like anyone else's, my main will snivel as much as anyone else's, and even if I'm skilled, my reflexes aren't going to be that much different than anyone else skilled. So it is easier to set a hard limit, with a few mods for jump numbers or license levels. (Though one can of course quibble about some situations, eg, "What about if I'm not doing 120 mph but am just doing a hop and pop, and I have a big F-111 canopy that doesn't snivel forever -- aren't slightly lower limits reasonable?") For landing parachutes at different wing loadings, there it is harder to decide what is appropriate and not just arbitrary, as it is more an issue of experience and skill. E.g, I and others with significant airplane piloting experience have successfully downsized faster than typical in skydiving -- because high approach speeds and a fine touch on the controls aren't something new to us. (Having waivers would of course allow more flexibility if there otherwise were hard limits on wing loading vs. jumps.)

You are WAY off base with that comment. USPA encourages skydivers to chase their passion, and promotes best practices regardless of the discipline. Is canopy piloting safe? Nope. Not even close. CP is dangerous - damn dangerous - but that doesn't mean USPA should discourage it. Is freeflying safe? Nope. How about CRW? FS? And then there's speed skydiving. Consider a premature deployment at 300 mph. Nothing we do is safe. The CP culture is the most peer-policed discipline in skydiving. Go to a CP comp sometime and observe. You will see the best pilots on the planet coaching, mentoring, and critiquing - all with the goal of keeping one another safe. CP has come a long, long way since the days of toggle hooks and ditch digging. Today's pilots have a deep understanding of the science behind the discipline and continuously hone their skills and education to stay as safe as possible. They are also acutely aware of the risks. From an organizational perspective, the ISC (International Skydiving Commission) and national-level organizations like USPA have and do modify competitions rules and practices to make safety a top priority. One great example is the change in distance rules that now require pilots to stay below a certain height for a portion of the run before climbing their canopies. This was done specifically because folks were getting injured by climbing so high that landings were becoming sketchy. I have been following the competition CP community for over a decade. My son is one of the top pilots in the world. Do I worry about him? Every single day. Would I ever dream of discouraging him from doing what he loves? Never. USPA does not "endorse canopy piloting competitions that encourage skydivers to land in very unsafe ways". USPA encourages skydivers of all disciplines to conduct their activities as safely as possible. Some disciplines are more dangerous than others, but none of them are safe. Canopy piloting is not safe. Neither is any skydive you have ever made or ever will.

Sorry, your request for insurrection has been denied. You only purchased the non-profit volunteer membership organization revolution package. You will need to upgrade to the Federal Aviation Administration package to change the cloud regulations through an uprising.

Good question, and I haven't heard a good answer.