klafollette

This isn't an exact science, as each canopy and wing-loading performs differently, but I've found that in a low/moderate tail-wind, some rear riser flattens out the glide, improving distance covered. It's easier to push the rears out to the side, than to pull them down. In a strong tailwind (15mph+), I find that deep brakes slows the decent rate, allowing the tailwind to push you forward for a longer period of time. In a strong head wind, tuck up as much as possible to lower your wind resistance, and use front-risers to gain more forward speed. Your mileage may vary.

I just went through Brian Germain's course last week. Even though it was "General Canopy" course, there were people from 50-1500 jumps in it. Even people who proclaimed to be "swoopers" learned a lot. It is mostly classroom presentation/discussion rather than dedicated flying type of course. You do have some jumps and filmed landings, but even though we were rained out for 1 day, I don't feel like I missed out on its value. It really helps to understand how parachutes work, what makes them fly (and fall out of the sky). Looks like he's doing east coast over next month, and in Alberta in late September. Don't see any of his advanced canopy "swooping" courses listed, you might need to email him for schedule. http://www.bigairsportz.com/schedule.php

after 750 jumps, I'm just starting to play around my front risers and higher-speed approaches. I just spent the weekend at Brian Germain's canopy course. What I learned was how much I know I don't know, and even more, how much I don't know I don't know. One of Brian's fundamental points what to learn exactly how much altitude it takes for your canopy to naturally recover from a high-speed approach; either a 90, 180, or 270. And that you can't accurately do that with a wrist mounted mechanical altimeter, or by trusting your eyes. Highly recommends a Neptune or an L&B Optima with audible landing guide tones. #1 to help you get consistent with your approach method, altitude loss and recovery arc, practicing up high, and with the Optima, giving you audible cues when doing the actual landing. Recommened setting up 3 check-points on the approach, each 300 feet above the last, the 3rd being the final turn. Big point was practicing (up high) methods to adjust mid-turn when you're either too high, and more importantly, how to dig yourself out if you're too low. Practicing the approach turn, then immediately dropping the fronts and stabbing the toggles, and getting the canopy over your head smoothly. Learn to fly with all 8 controls you have; 2 toggles, 4 risers, and 2 hips (harness); and what they all do. Fly high along-side a second person (at a safe distance) , with them being the "base" reference and try different inputs and see how your altitude and speed change from normal flight; front's rears, toggles, Map out exactly what your approach will be like, where you'll be at each approach point, at what altitude, and willing to call it off when you don't set it up exactly the way you had planned. Oh, make sure you're loosening your chest strap, pulling down the slider behind your head, and that your brake lines are long enough so that pulling the front risers aren't causing you to pull down on the tail at the same time. There's more than my brain could absorb in his course, would also recommend the his Canopy Pilot book.

So after 8 years of jumping, finally decided I wanted to get some tunnel time to improve my RW skills. My wuffo wifey gave me the tunnel time and coaching for my birthday in July. I was so pumped that I'd get some great skills to use the rest of the season. Arranged time with Chromy from Skydive U. down at Skyventure Orlando. Had 1 hour over 2 days scheduled. I flew from Chicago down to Orlando this morning, and here I sit at the Hotel 6, just completely bummed-out. Something in the tunnel mechanics broke this morning as I was on the plane, and it's going to be down for 3 days. So that's a grand total of $560 + vacation days from work for absolutely nothing. Now it'll cost me $100 more to get my flight moved up so I'm not sitting here for 3 days with "maybe" a chance at the tunnel. Even more sucky that I didn't bring my rig, so I can't even go jumping. I feel like Clark Griswold trying to get to Wallyworld, and it's closed. Not intending to bash Skyventure Orlando here. Just venting my frustration. Tunnels are mechanical beasts, and shit happens. Just really pissed, that today it happened to me. Has this happened to anyone else? Looking for company in my misery.

Hmmm... I don't see "my other dog's poop" listed. Between the 2 of them, that seems to be their preferred after-dinner snack when out in the yard. Other than that, they both get Nutro Natural Choice Lite.

Portuguese Water Dogs (porties)!! We have 2, Bosco and Sweety. They are medium size, 50-65 lbs. They don't shed, but need to be groomed every 6-8 weeks. Love to swim, retrieve. They're a working breed, so have tons of energy. Not aggressive, but love to play. Like any dog you have to set boundaries of what is allowed. Very vocal. Sometimes they almost seem to talk. They love everybody. Extremely friendly. Pack oriented, so will constantly follow you around the house. Wherever you are, that's where they want to be. Coats very from a wavy, loose curly, to a tight curly like a poodle. Sweety is a brown wavy, and Bosco is black/white loose curly. Colors can be white, black, brown or mixed. More info at http://www.pwdca.org/

This is linked from the USPA Member website as a broker that can get policies that cover skydiving. http://www.quantumquotes.com/wholesale/quote.asp?id=3414/ I'm in the midst of getting a policy written through them, that covers skydiving. Banner Life Insurance is underwriting the policy. Roughly $1000/year for $300K 10-year term. I checked with my local Allstate and State Farm, and they wouldn't include skydiving.

This weekend, I was watching the movie "Deja-Vu" with Denzel Washington. http://imdb.com/title/tt0453467/ There's a scene where they are trying to transport a note through the time portal machine. They're all scrambling to make the thing work, and the scientist guy is fiddling with the controls and shouts out "I NEED MORE COWBELL!!!!"

It's a cord that goes up the arms to the waist of the RW jumpsuit. the jumpsuit has extra material between the elbow and waist. When in a RW boxman, and you stretch your arms out, the cord pulls the material taught, so you have a wing under your arm to act as a speedbrake. When swooping on a formation, they let you decelerate faster, and for us fatties they help keep us from sinking out of the formation, instead of de-arching hard and getting a bit unstable. If you pull your arms back a bit, into a relaxed boxman, the cord goes slack, and the jumpsuit material just flaps around a bit. Still slows you down, but not as much. Ultimately they're a crutch so we can keep drinking beer and eating cheeseburgers. See attached pic, the red circles show 2 suits with swoop cords. I'm the one in blue.

I wear gloves all the time, partly so I can wear my right hand swoop loop under the glove, to prevent just such a scenario, getting my pilot chute caught in the loop. My swoop cord is one continuous line from left hand, up the arms, across the back, to right hand. I wear the left-hand outside the glove just in case I need to free up my hands for full motion. I can reach my toggles with the swoop cords engaged, but I take off the left hand when under canopy so I've got full reach. Also, I wear the loop around my 4 fingers like a toggle, to avoid getting a broken thumb if something does get snagged. Your whole wrist is stronger than just your thumb.

Not to take anything away from SDC. It's a great place, first class amenities and where I did my AFP training. But there is another DZ near Chicago you might want to check out. Chicagoland Skydiving in Hinckley. www.skydivecsc.com . It's West of Aurora, Just take the Eisenhower to I-88 west to Route 30. It's a straight shot, you'll drive right past the DZ on Route 30 after going through the town of Hinckley. It's a smaller DZ than SDC, but they have a Super Otter, and this year also a PAC 750 turbine. There's a great group of friendly jumpers whatever your discipline of choice, with plenty of coaching and organizing. The season starts next week April 6th. Safety Day is April 7th, where we have various talks about DZ operations, gear and jumping safety. If you're serious about jumping, it would be a great way to start to learn about the sport. It's not an either / or SDC or CSC. Both are great places to jump, Try 'em both out!

There are several options. For a good reference site to services available in your area, check out http://www.broadbandreports.com/ DSL is usually provided by your phone company, but you can go through another provider that uses the phone company lines. Though if you have problems, there will be lots of finger-pointing between the line carrier and Internet provider. Speed and reliability depends a great deal on how far you are from the phone company's central office (CO), and how old the wiring is in your building/home/neighborhood. Cable providers can provide a good deal if you already use them for television, bandwidth while advertised as higher than DSL can be slower during peak times since you share the same pipe as all your neighbors. Depending on your location, there may be wireless options. I use a local service through for point-to-point wireless. An antenna on the side of my house is aimed at a local cell tower, and I get dedicated high-speed (3mbps down/1mbps up) that is rock solid. I pay a little more, but the reliability is worth it. If you do a lot of traveling and have a laptop, you might consider a cellular provider like Verizon, T-mobile, who can provide a PC Card that will give you wireless Internet access virtually anywhere, though at reduced speeds compared to Cable/DSL and higher cost. Check with each Internet provider to see if they also provide analog line modem dial-up numbers for times when there is an outage, and you absolutely need to get email or web access, or you are on the road. Sometimes this is included or an extra cost.

Have a Vector 3 M-series w/Skyhook for a year now, and love it. Have tested the skyhook with a spinning main cutaway, and it works as advertised. Wished it had the magnetic riser covers. Only things to watch for if you're new to Vectors is main flap closure is reversed from many other rigs (Right then left). I do get the occasional packer who doesn't know and does it backwards. And read up on main closing loop length, and how the flaps should line up when it is the right length. I get packers (and the occasional rigger) trying to tell me it is too long.

Do the afterburners work as well as swoop cords? I'm 220lbs and even with swoop cords and baggy arms, sometime have trouble staying slow enough for jumps that start getting in the 115s. At least getting slow enough and still being able to fly through the points.

Yes, tighter is better than looser. Be sure to snug them up right before jumprun. I'm at 220lbs, and I did find that once I got off of rental rigs, the thigh discomfort got much better. My first rig was a Mirage G3, and my current Vector 3 M-series is even more comfortable. My other suggestion would be to wear corduroy pants inside-out walk a few miles and build up some callouses

Just bought a Pioneer PDP-5070 50" plasma after months of research. Boiled down to best performance for the money. (Same model at Best Buy is the PDP-5071) Depending on how much you have the display on, DLP will cost you an additional $200-300 for bulbs every 2-3 years. Plus continue to dim well before they die. Samsung has a LED solid-state lamp model out in a rear-pro DLP, but I didn't like it much. The LED light source eliminates the lamp life issue and color wheel rainbow effects. The Samsung picture uniformity and hot-spots were quite noticable, but the color was really nice. Unless you have your sweet spot chair directly in-line with screen center, you'll likely be unhappy with the off-center picture. That has more to do wiith the actual rear-projection screen than the DLP technology itself. It will be interesting to see who else comes out with the LED lamp DLP. If JVC had one using their D-ILA light engine or Sony's LCoS, that would have made me rethink things. If you go DLP Rear-Pro, make sure the model has an auto-iris to control brightness. They can be overly bright in a dim room. Burn-in with Plasma is not much of an issue now, though I was extra careful to use break-in video brightness settings, and ran a break-in DVD for the first 200 hours of use, until the phosphors were broken in. You'll pay a high-premium for 1080p, but unless you're closer than 8-10 feet from a 50", you wouldn't notice much of a difference. I went with the Pioneer 5070 because it has some of the better electronics and scaling/stretching processing, which is important for watching standard def TV (whether analog or digital). Also the Pioneer has some nice features like individual memory settings for video on each input. My next favorite model was the Panasonic TH-50PX60U. It was a little cheaper than the Pioneer, but didn't think Standard Def picture or 4:3 stretching ooked as good as the Pioneer. Plus the Pany doesn't have individual video settings per input. That and the silver plastic stand looked nasty. The Pioneer is all black, which I like much better than the silver case brands. I decided on Plasma vs. LCD because of cost (for a 50") and I have a fairly wide seating area, and the LCD can be dimmer when off-axis.

Spam Parmigiano - Slice your spam 1/2 thick, broil or grill it on each side 5 min. Spoon on Ragu or your favorite Italian gravy, a little Oregano, and some shredded Parmigiano Reggiano. Let bake until cheese melts. Paired with a nice Chianti.

Along the "lines" of Canopy design: Would be interesting to hear what affect different line types have on a canopy design and performance; Spectra, Vectran, HMA, etc. I'm especially interested in learning about HMA since I've heard a rumor that Brian has now switched to HMA lines on his canopies. What difference does HMA make, either positive or negative? Other topics of interest: There's also been some people talking that non-cascaded lines are the future. What are Brian's thoughts on non-cascaded lines. What are Brian's thoughts on the new canopy fabrics that are coming out, like the one that PD is using on reserves to allow smaller pack volumes? What major innovation areas does Brian see coming in canopy design over the next few years?

I'd have to go back and read the details on the Eloy incidents, but thought that I read that at least one had attempted to deploy their reserve, with no mention of cutting away. So at what altitude (skyhook or not) does it make sense to attempt a cutaway, vs. just deploying the reserve to get as much nylon and drag out there, even if the reserve doesn't completely open. Does the Skyhook change that altitude at all? If you get clipped on final, only a few hundred feet up, and the main is still there, but lines are broken, panels blown, etc. it may still give you some drag. If you're too low for the reserve to fully open, should you pop it anyway without cutting away your main? Sure, theres a high risk of entanglement, but if your main is a mess, wouldn't at least getting reserve out there in any fashion help slow you down enough to at least give you a shot at surviving? Can't remember off the top of my head, but aren't reserves TSO'd for a maximum distance to open, I tried looking up the TSO C23c regs, but couldn't find anything related to opening distance. For some reason 400ft sticks in my head. If that is a standard, is that from terminal speeds or from a slow decent of a functioning main?

I have a Vector with Skyhook, and had one spinning mal cutaway with it. Can't for sure say how fast it opened, but it felt like a couple hundred feet at most. Having the Skyhook has changed my thinking under canopy a bit. While in the pattern and somebody is uncomfortably close, I find myself thinking that I could cutaway below 2-300 feet and at least have a chance if something ugly happened. But as it was said, if you were on final, that would require an instant decision, figuring out what happened, that it's not recoverable, and decide to cutaway. If I was below 500 ft, in the heat of the moment, I might just decide to go with the reserve and get as much nylon as I could out there. Even with the skyhook, to go for the cutaway below 500 ft, I'd have to look up and find a absolute streaming ball of shit. Then I'd say a quick prayer to Bill Booth, and pull the red. As I write this, I guess one thing to consider is the effectiveness of the Skyhook to accelerate the deployment if the main is not exerting a significant amount of drag. That's part of the principle, that the Main acts as a drogue to pull out the reserve. If the main is so much of a mess after a collision, it may not have enough drag to speed up the reserve deploy at such a low altitude.

I believe you are refering to VNC. You can read up on it and get links to downloads at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNC Using VNC, Windows XP Remote Desktop (RDP), GoToMyPC, etc. all do basically the same thing, let you remote control another PC somewhere else over a network connection, which may be over a VPN (encrypted tunnel), SSL encryption, or not. Assuming for the moment that you have a PC at home, that is always on, connected to the Internet over a broadband connection (DSL, Cable, Wireless, etc), you could install the remote control server piece on you r home PC, may need to open ports or do IP forwarding on your Internet router to allow inbound connections from the Internet to your PC. Then you install the appropriate remote control client on your work computer. When you connect to your home computer, you effectively have a remote view into the screen of your home PC. If you launch a web browser on your home PC (remotely from your work PC), the work network staff will only see a connection from your work PC to the home PC, but if you surf websites using the browser on your home PC, they won't know where your going from there. Assumiing you use a product that is encrypted, they won't be able to sniff the content of your activities either (unless there is a keyboard logger installed on your work PC). The networking guys will only see the connection from work to an obscure IP address, they won't see that you're browsing www.britneyspearswithoutpanties.com on your home PC. That browsing session only goes from your home PC to the target website. This all assumes that your work firewalls don't block the remote control ports that a given product uses, or restricts your ability to install software. That might require some experimenting. www.gotomypc.com might be the simplest, since it doesn't require a client, and should work over ports that are already open at work, namely port 80 (http) and port 443 (https SSL). Hope that helps.

Tomato Juice is a mild acid which can help remove the oils in the skunk spray, but does nothing for the odor causing components. It is pretty much just a waste of tomato juice and makes a mess. If you want a solution that really works, try the Hydrogen Peroxide, baking soda and dish soap recipe. It actually neutralizes the skunk smell components. I speak from experience. My 2 dogs are on the losing end of a skunk fight in the back yard at least a couple times a year, so I keep a six-pack of hydrogen peroxide bottles and box of baking soda ready to go. It is amazing how well this works. For details on the recipe, go to http://home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home/ 1 quart of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide 1/4 cup of baking soda 1 to 2 teaspoons liquid soap for very large pets one quart of tepid tap water may be added to enable complete coverage. Wash pet promptly and thoroughly, work the solution deep into the fur. Let your nose guide you, leave the solution on about 5 minutes or until the odor is gone. Some heavily oiled areas may require a "rinse and repeat" washing. Skunks usually aim for the face, but try to keep the solution out of the eyes - it stings. If you have any cuts on your hands you might want to wear latex gloves for the same reason. After treatment, thoroughly rinse your pet with tepid tap water.

I recall a past post of someone ordering one of these http://www.chasecam.com/ , but never saw any review. Looks like a good compromise between the low-end MP4 recorders and the high-end like from Fast Forward Video.www.ffv.com. The mini DVR Pro was something I was interested in trying with a bullet cam, until I found out the thing was $3500 plus the cost of Flash Card memory.

I had the first Skyhook Vector at my DZ. My rigger had never seen one before. I printed out the packing instructions that came on the CD with my rig for my rigger, which he appreciated. I would definitely point out to your rigger that you have one, ask if he/she has ever packed a reserve with one. It is a bit more involved than a non-skyhook reserve, but nothing a good rigger should have any difficulty with. Ask your rigger to go over the Skyhook operation and assembly with you, so you understand how it should look when packed. Especially important is to know how the Collins lanyard is routed. If you ever remove your cutaway handle to flex your risers or clean the cutaway cable, you should understand how the cable routes through the Collins lanyard, up under the harness yoke (to the right of the Cypres control. The Collins lanyard ensures that if one riser releases in a cutaway, the other riser will release too.

Would there be any conceivable way to get your Cypres to work, just in case you're unconcious on the way down? If you turned it on before boarding, it wouldn't be accurate, being that the cabin would be pressurized around 8-10K, then suddenly depressurize. I think it would probably shut itself down at some point. If you turned it on after de-pressurization, maybe you could "quickly" set the alternate landing altitude? to be 30,000 lower than your take off altitude