skr

!!. I love that airplane. Oceanside was my home dropzone until it got flooded out (by a neighbor who had a long running feud with the family of the DZO). It had a door on both sides. Once we took a piece of bungee cord, routed it under the plane, had a guy in each door hanging on to their end, Lucky Silman and Sunny Yates come to mind, and jumped out. I don't believe there was a plan other than get close and grab on to something. A plan wouldn't have worked anyway since they spent the whole freefall zoinging back and forth on the ends of that giant rubber band :-) :-) It climbed really fast, but flew really slow. It had a big step on each side, and I remember once starting to climb out and swing to the rear, and as I came around the door frame there was Ed McKay. He was just standing there on the back of the step with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn't even hanging on. The pilot and DZO, Jack Zahniser(?sp), was an F-86 pilot in Korea. There was a big plexiglass window between the rudder pedals and he could look down at the dropzone on jumprun. The parties at Jack and Artha's house were legendary, at least for anybody who could remember anything. Thanks, Howard. Skr

I never looked, I just got a letter one day from Bill with a patch and a mimeographed page saying he was starting this thing to honor Bob Buquor and a list of the 20 people who had been in an 8-man star. I got SCR-16 which I thought was a nice number. On another day I was up at Taft and Art (Armstrong, DZO and Board member) mentioned that they had decided to make an award for 12 hours of freefall. I thought "Hey! If I act fast and get my application in first maybe I can get number 1!". So I went home and added my stuff up and rushed it up to Art and he signed it off and sent it in. But they took the first batch of apps and drew them out of hat, so I got #8. So I certainly wasn't the first person to hit 12 hours, but I may have been the first to apply for the badge :-) :-) I never applied for anything after that, I thought 8 and 16 were pretty cool numbers and I'd quit while I was ahead. And upon rereading that and reflecting I think there must have been many Russians and French and others who were way out ahead of us in terms of jumps and freefall and other numerical landmarks, but I wasn't so strongly aware of that at the time. Skr

Wow! That's an early morning jolt! The people, the airplane, the canal, ... The stories, the memories, ... Thank you, Howard. I haven't seen Chip Maury since the nationals in Plattsburgh in 1970. Please say hello for me. Skr

> I think 1st man down is a completely hokie rule Wonderful, I'm not the only one. I think that "first person down" sound bite is even more inadequate than the "45 degree" sound bite. You can't know how to setup for your own landing until you see someone else land. You can't see who is first down and which way they were going without fixating on the landing area trying to guess who it is going to be, so you're zooming around not watching where you are going. People keep telling me it works at Eloy, but no, it doesn't. "First person down" is one part of a very structured environment. There are tons of wind indicators, so you can guess which way it will probably develop as soon as you open. There are only two possible directions in each grassy area. The hook turners always go along the fence, and do their hook at one end or the other, so you can stay out of that air space. But out here in the wild, without all that other structure, without a Bryan Burke to gently guide people through life ... Skr

Hey, D O'B! :-) :-) Thank you guys for starting this discussion. There has been a lot of background grumbling for a long time with respect to mixing such dissimilar flying styles, but nothing has come of it until recently. With this plus the changes at Eloy it feels like the discussion has officially begun. I just found out a couple weeks ago that I'm going back to China in a couple weeks, so I haven't been around here. On the off chance that you guys get this worked out before I come back, please leave me a note around here somewhere so I'll know how to act when I get back in the air. Skr

You didn't get water training, you got ... (Insert rant on assembly line student mills here) I think real water landings are serious business. You need the mental training to - see it coming - decide how to fly the last few hundred feet - and which way to land - accept that you are going to abandon your zillion dollar rig - get your chest strap undone - start shedding shoes/helmet/... - and so on With squares people aren't landing in water much anymore, and since they are no longer required they're getting taught by people who've never made one, and who in turn were taught by people who've never made one, so ... So it's an imperfect world and I'm an idealist, and what I see here is that with your military training you can make a difference in your part of the world when it's your turn to start teaching people. Skr

> you got any more of that :-) :-)

Ah, peer recognition, very inspirational .. > Windowpane into the world It's funny you should say it that way. I remember, about 1970, sitting on the front porch of my apartment near UCLA, staring out over the city, and thinking that while "Spaceship Earth" was a better formulation than the then current planetary pillage and plunder with no thought of consequence or future, that that was still inadequate. It put humanity outside the system, when actually we are a component, a part of. We are "Earth Fruit", that was the phrase that came to mind, the Earth, the Universe, grows us in the same sense that an apple tree grows apples. We are like nerves in a bigger nervous system, nerve endings through which the Universe is self aware, windows through which the Universe is observing itself. And the reason I was confused and unable to see clearly was that my window was dirty, and my primary job in life was to clean my window. It was a window pane insight. I learned later that I wasn't the first person to notice that. I also learned that such things didn't fit well in resumes and job interviews. And many decades later I learned that that was because I was looking for the wrong kinds of jobs. We're still talking about skydiving here, right? I thought so .. Skr

I used to find it very nerve wracking to put people out on their first freefall after static line. "Why didn't you pull!!??" "I liked it, I wanted to keep going." And they wonder why we have gray hair :-) :-) Skr

Well I'm quite sure there is a lot more going on than the standard sensory consensus reality. But I also know that it is often difficult to know whether I'm actually tuning into something or just making it up and kidding myself. And there is also the way state of mind affects the course of events, and whether to call rituals and procedures sports psychology or superstition. I do have some set procedures, like the way I pack or the way I gear up or some other things I check in the course of making a jump, and these do evolve over time, although at any given moment they are pretty fixed. And it's not like an OCD thing, I can do things out of order or differently in some unusual situation. But I'm quite aware of where I'm deviating, which is what I want. I developed those procedures over time because I've caught myself in the past getting tired, dehydrated, stupid, distracted. I remember once at Quincy catching myself suiting up, hands raising flaps, eyes aimed at pins, mind a million miles away. My body was going through the motions, my mind wasn't registering any of it. But I do think it's highly premature for so called hard nosed scientists to just dismiss stuff that doesn't fit in their idea of reality. I was a scientist once "Back off man, I'm a Scientist!" :-) :-) It seems to me that we've barely scratched the surface. Skr

> recommend studying the shepherds and not the sheep of the "hippy" generation Zen arrow.

My first jump was out of a Piper Cub, in a farmer's field. It cost $2 - That was for the ride up, a rig, and some instruction. Moving up to Cessnas and going to an official dropzone were exciting steps.

I don't see a one size fits all clear cut answer. And the best answer for a particular person at a particular stage may need updating at a later stage, when they know more about themselves, and start doing new activities, and realize more ways that things can go wrong. So it seems like the best idea is to talk to knowledgeable people and come up with a current set of plans, and then practice them until you can do them standing on your head in a cold shower with the ground screaming at you and it's cold and your goggles are covered with snot and you can't see and ... And then keep your eye out for new ideas and viewpoints. My plans change over time as I learn about or think of new ideas or possibilities. I probably don't practice as often as I'm officially supposed to, but there is one thing I do drill into my head, and I learned it late in the game, like 10 years ago. It's the student thing of try once, try twice and then ... take care of business. I practice that one because I know I'm susceptible to getting carried away trying to fix something. This is a good question. Skr

> Pelon Oh, ... It's too many memories ... of the Latin ... He loaned me his PC once so I could have the right colors for a demo jump into the race track in Tijuana ... ...

> I think I'd like to learn Skratchese or PatWorksian! Hmmm .. I can often understand PatWorksian, but I've never tried to speak it. Can you imagine being in 10th grade English trying to diagram some of his wilder zooms? You'd probably sprain something! Actually I did try once, and here's how far I got before I had to stop and drink a couple beers: ----------------| conjunctive | | abstraction subject \|/ | --------- ------------- | \ |-----------| adverbial \ | / | crossover \ participial | / | \ dubiosity | / | \--------- | / | / \ | parallel | / \-------------- embellishment / \ / | / \ / | dangling \ / | marsupial \-----/----------- interjective tangential > Hod Sanders was saying that you and B.J. and he also learned how to speak Vodkaese after a hard day of jumping with the Russians, Yes, that's a true story. After the world meet in 1975 the three of us went down to Portoroz, Yugoslavia to show the USFET movies to the Russians and East Germans and ... Three long haired American hippies driving a borrowed German car into a Soviet bloc country with a bunch of movies to show the Russians. Right! We're off to a good start! We found the hotel that all the teams were staying at, and BJ walks right up to the front desk and asks for a room next to the Russian team. The idea was that if the Russians started doing it then everybody on that side would start. The desk clerk kind of freaked out, but this senior lady came out and explained that while that was out of the question, we would be allowed to rent a room, and then she gave us a room right in the middle of the Russian team! I remember the night that Hod is referring to. We're in a hotel room, one of the Russian guys pulls out a liter of vodka, and a glass, like an eight ounce water glass. He pours it pretty full, and drinks it right down. I'm thinking "Holy Cow!". Then he fills it up again and hands it to me. Not wanting to appear ignorant and uncultured, I drank it right down too. Then he hands it to BJ, and Hod ... But I seem to remember that while BJ and I were focused on delicate, high level, international negotiations, like how can we show everybody the movies and get some free jumps with them, Hod was putting more effort into a different aspect of international diplomacy - meeting local girls. You might ask him about that if he hasn't gotten married or something. Skr

>> Rules!!???!! Nooooooooooooo!!! >> Don't print any of that. > > Aw, shucks, > > I had so wanted to illustrate :-) :-) Feel free ... I just have kind of a reflexive reaction to all these rules that create rigid formats that drain energy from the creative and artistic, especially the ones I was irresponsible for. The main reason, aside from not wanting to be left out of the inevitability of the tide of events, that I made up the 4-way event was to break free from the rigid format of speed stars. Everybody was wanting to grab hold and hang on, and I was on this crusade to turn the world on to hovering and flying around. It didn't work, all it did was create another form of rigidity. I didn't know much about human nature back then. I can appreciate that what Airspeed does is somewhere beyond amazing, and I thought at the time that Roy Johnson turning a 6 second series was amazing, but I was never drawn to that kind of goal oriented stuff. So feel free, I just had a momentary reaction there. Skr

> early RW rules Rules!!???!! Nooooooooooooo!!! Don't print any of that. I know I was irresponsible for some of those rules, but I plead youth and inexperience and ignorance. I had no idea how much damage I was doing! --- I'm glad Jan got the actual facts on the towed jumper. We must have seen that other footage at the Rumbleseat or the Gypsy Moth or somewhere. I know it was Carl because we made a lot of jumps together. Skr

> I thought that the towed jumper in Masters of the Sky > was Gary Patmor as well. Now you guys are making me wonder about my memory. The shots I'm remembering are: 1 - A shot forward from inside the plane catching a glimpse of the right side of the pilot's face - and Jim Wilkins keeps coming to mind. 2 - A shot of the strap going around the strut, going around a section covered in black tape, and a guy in a blue jumpsuit doing the lowering. I'm not remembering a face but Jay Gifford had a blue jumpsuit and worked with Carl during this period. 3 - A shot looking down at the towed jumper. He hangs there for quite a while, does a few barrel roll turns looking up at the plane, fumbles with the release for a long time, and then falls away for several seconds and then the camera looks away. He looks like Carl to me - red jumpsuit with white wings, gun camera on the side of a black helmet, front mount reserve. Gary had a red jumpsuit too, but I seem to remember a red helmet with a fancier enclosure for the camera, and he was an early adopter of the Security piggyback. I wonder if I'm remembering other footage that wasn't in the movie. Hmmph, it's very inconvenient when the facts get in the way of a good jump story :-) :-) Skr

> though I think Gary Patmor was in "Masters of the Sky," doing something. When they were jumping into the snow and ski scene in the mountains is one place. It's been a really long time since I've seen those movies, and it's hard to keep straight which scenes were in which movie. I also remember footage of Gary jumping some really odd shaped canopies, but I don't remember what was in Carl's movies and what I just happened to see in some other context. > Chuck Alexander I didn't know about this jump. That sounds pretty touchy. In Scotty's case there was a lot of cable between him and the balloon, plus he was on the ground holding still, which would make it easier for the C-130 pilot to guage his flight path. > attached picture of a jumper being towed under a Beech 18 I had forgotten about that. Wasn't that a camera guy trying for some shots from an unusual angle or something? Camera guys are a strange lot. I remember once at Oceanside when the Cessna caught on fire in the engine compartment, and everybody was running for fire extinguishers .. Except Carl, who ran for his helmet camera :-) :-) Skr

> Is it "Masters of the Sky" that has scenes of a jumper towed behind a Cessna? > > I think the jumper is Gary Patmor and he also had a movie camera on his head. That was Carl Boenish at Elsinore. I believe it was Jay Gifford lowering him down, and doing the filming from from the door, and I almost remember Jay doing a couple tows with Carl filming from the door, but that's a pretty tenuous memory. And I think maybe it was Jim Wilkins flying. Jim used to zero-gee us off the Cessna. We'd sit on the floor with our feet out on the step, and he'd lower the nose a bit and build up some speed, then he'd pull up and do a short zero-gee parabola over the top and we'd float out under the wing and hang out for a while before going our separate ways. Jay Gifford and Ed McKay started up north somewhere (Idaho?). They took turns putting each other out on static line. I met them when they came down to Oceanside in the early/mid 60s, where they contributed substantially to the legendary scene there. At least it was legendary to we who were there. Gary Patmor was more of a Northern California jumper, although he did get around quite a bit as a camera guy. Skr

> Calibrate your eyeballs. :-) :-) VFR skydivers are a dying breed. I think it's a better approach too, but you can't really blame people who've been raised as IFR skydivers for suggesting what they have been taught. Plus every time I got new glasses I'd have to re-calibrate .. Skr

> Now you have the rest of the story Did we jump together at Taft? I keep trying to place where we know each other from. Scotty and Norm Heaton came down to Taft several times when PCA headquarters was in Monterey. I remember Scotty telling these stories too. It was testing a possible way to rescue downed pilots. You send up a balloon with a cable attaching the balloon to the pilot, and then a C-130 flies by and snags the cable and hauls the pilot to safety. He said that on one of the tests the cable reeling in device jammed, and he was out there for a long time, an hour or more, while they tried to figure out what to do. I guess there was no quick release on the pilot end of the cable since in real use the pilot wouldn't have a rig on anyway. He said that while he was out there hanging around he tried lots of freefall stuff including tracking positions, and that he could get above the tail of the C-130. Sounds like an early military wind tunnel prototype to me :-) :-) Skr

> It was funny, because he was explaining skydancing > without specifically using the term I was a math major once and I saw many instances where people were independently mulling the same or related questions and came up with the same or similar or related insights. Of course I still speak Skratchese and he still speaks PatWorksian, so I painted my pictures with a Skratch like brush, and he used a Pat Works style brush. But this didn't happen in a vacuum, lots of people had ideas, and there was a lot of mutual inspiration and sparking off of other people's wild tangents, although I must say that some people's relation to consensus reality was a little, ahhh, *looser* than others :-) :-) > Pat's carefree nature was a welcome change. Ha! I think both of us were a bit more intense and driven back in those mythical old days, but, yeah, when I watch some people jump I think they could go up to the International Space Station and be so caught up in the instruments and experiments that they wouldn't even look out the window. Pat looks out the window - and then like any good aging hippie he hangs out there in mid air going "Wow!" and "Cool!" and "Far out!" :-) :-) Skr

> in order to avoid a low pull we both didn't track Well, sometimes you find yourself in a situation with no good answers. Pulling too close is probably a better mistake than pulling too low. The bottom part of a jump happens so fast, and altitude slips away before you realize it. But the question now is how do you teach yourself to keep track of your altitude? It's not a skill we're born with, we have to learn it, and practice it. I've put a lot of effort into developing a feel for when it is getting to be too long since the last time I checked my altitude. Up high I'm pretty relaxed and might only check once or twice, but somewhere around 6,000 or 7,000 ft I start checking more often. One exercise we used to do was at 5,500 ft we would stop whatever we had been doing, we would flash our hands five-five at each other, and just hold still and look at each other, and then break. It was just an exercise to teach our brains to have a sense of where 5,500 ft happens in a jump. Anyway, now that you know about it you can put some effort into teaching yourself this skill, and you can pass it on to your students. Skr

> do you remember things as being like this? By the time I met them Bob and Dave were working together doing Hollywood movies, TV commercials, demos and assorted exotic stuff. Dave was the business half and Bob was the camera, stunt and other stuff half. I remember Bob being on the Connie loads at Taft in 1965 and may have met him before that somewhere, but I didn't meet Dave, that I remember, before I started working for them. I still have a couple of their cards here somewhere. The company was Para-something, not Paraventures which was an earlier incarnation that Jim Hall was part of. I was never clear where Verne Williams fit into all this except that he came up often in the jump stories. I didn't meet Jim Hall or Verne Williams until much later. Starting in 1965 I dropped out of Caltech, where I was ostensibly getting a PhD in math, so I could get a job so I could have more money so I could jump every weekend, which is what I was already doing anyway, on a $200 a month NSF scholarship if you can believe that. I went to work at JPL for several years and that's where I met Bud Kiesow. He was in a different group but we talked often and he filled me in on all kinds of unbelievable stuff about the early days ("early days" meaning the 50s and early 60s). I was hanging on every word :-) :-) I got to do demos with Bob, but for most of the Movie and TV commercial stuff Clarice was in front of the camera and I was support, packing rigs, running the day's film up to someplace in Hollywood for overnight processing and so on. Dave Burt was in the car accident. He was an amazing guy but you really had to coax him to say much. I mostly learned about him from Bob and Bud Kiesow. One night some drunk in Los Angeles ran a red light and dead centered his car and killed his wife and kids and left him in a coma for a long time, 18? months. Then he died. It took the wind out of Bob and things were never the same after that. Bob is a very talented and creative guy with a touch of the true madness, but Dave was the one with the magic touch for business. Bob tried to keep on keepin' on, but without Dave he was like an incomplete protein missing some essential amino acids. George Speakman worked at Elsinore. We made a lot of jumps together and somewhere in all this he met Bob and was involved in a lot of typically unlikely jump stories. I believe he was jumping in Nevada before he headed out west. I'm not kidding when I say these guys had more jump stories per jump than anybody I have ever met. I accumulated several just standing around with them and getting caught up in their whirlwind. It's distressing that all this early history is just disappearing. At least some bits and pieces are being captured by these conversations here on dropzone.com. Skr