skr

While posting the "Dropzone review technicality" bug report I noticed that when I click the little "url" icon down there on the bottom right it inserts the "url" tag but puts the cursor on the left of the tag instead of on the right, so if I click "open url" tag icon type some content click "close url" tag icon I get content-content-content "open url tag" "close url tag".

Starting at http://www.dropzone.com/ I login click "Dropzones" on the nav bar at the top select "North America" select "United States" select "Washington" select "Skydive Snohomish" select "Read Reviews" select the "skr" of "Rated by: skr" arrive at http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/dropzone/review.cgi?user=skr and see that that page has 4 reviews two by me "skr" and two by "skreamer" selecting "user reviews" in that same sentence "Rated by: skr on Thu Aug 24 2006 (user profile) (user reviews)" gives the same result.

Sometimes I too have felt uneasy about history getting rewritten and threads getting mangled with people replying to posts that are no longer there. But I have faith in Sangiro and what he is trying to do here, and some appreciation of how hard it is to even get where it is now, so I balance that uneasiness with all the good points. I discovered the newsgroups and rec.skydiving back in the 80s and for a long time it was a great place to figure stuff out and tell stories. To me one of the best points was that anybody could say anything and there were no censors. But in the mid 90s a bunch of really inconsiderate people showed up and filled every thread with so much brain foam and bullshit that it became unusable. So even though I feel an occasional qualm here I think this has turned out much better. Skr

We are moving up that way and jumping at local dropzones was part of the scouting trip we just made. They were busy with tandems and students but they sent an 18 place Caravan up with just six of us to keep the flow going. The DZO, Tyson, made a point of welcoming us as we did the paper work, and his wife, Elaine, was great on the manifest microphone, herding cats with gentle persuasion. A couple people have mentioned the lack of experienced jumpers, but raising a few crops of students up to be experienced jumpers is a fun thing to do, so if it's true I see that as an advantage. I'm looking forward to jumping there. Skr

> Almost Nearly Normal... This almost nearly caused my brain to tangent :-) :-) What does it mean? Have you been doing yoga or something? Ah, I see from a couple posts down, you are up but haven't had any coffee yet. Skr

> reading through some of the posts here, some people seem to > suggest that for them, skydiving isn't just a sport I don't think for me that it was ever a "sport". That "sport" word showed up in the 60s when PCA (the ancestor of USPA) was trying to make whatever it was that we were doing somehow appear more respectable / acceptable / comprehensible to the general public and started calling it "sport parachuting". I had an urge since before I can remember to fly, to be free of this relentless, ground bound gravity, to soar like a bird. And then one day I got the chance, and I took it, and I've never looked back. Freefall is magic. Andy Keech is right. The skies call. And for me it was about exploration and creativity. Freefall is like a new kind of paint brush, and you can say things with that brush that you couldn't say before. And as it developed over the years it became about friends and family, my skydiving family, scattered now all over the world. And then in the 70s states of mind, consciousness, meditation, LSD, that whole track entered the picture. It's been lots of things. I don't do anything serious anymore, I mostly jump with new people. I feel like a grandparent over here playing with the kids while the adults are out there taking care of serious business :-) :-) It's been lots of things, and I still have the urge to get free of all this gravity. I buy a Powerball ticket twice a year just in case the universe is trying to funnel $20,000,000 my way so I can go up to the space station. I may have to reincarnate for that one and do it by the standard route of becoming an astronaut. Skr

> Does skr stand for "sucker" this is old news and very very untrue. > http://www.snopes.com/...business/cell411.asp Thanks for the snopes link. The email came from someone I know and sounded believable so I did it. But your reply made me wonder whether I had called a fake number and given my number to some phone spammer organization, so I went to the donotcall.gov web site and checked to see whether I was registered and I was, so at least I didn't pass on a fake number. It's hard to keep up. Skr

This could be old news but I didn't see it anywhere on here: -------- Original Message -------- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:50:48 -0600 Subject: Fw: Cell Phone "DO NOT CALL" List > >>> JUST A REMINDER....4 days from now, all cell phone numbers are > >>> being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive > >>> sale calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS.... To > >>> prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: > >>> > >>> 1-888-382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only > >>> take a minute of your time. > >>> > >>> It blocks your number for five (5) years. > You must call from the cell phone you want on the list >>> > >>> HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS OR GO TO: > >>> > >>> www.donotcall.gov

> Should I repack I usually repack if I've been out for a while, but it's mostly to get my brain back in gear, and maybe a little peace of mind that it's all still there (the chute I mean) (well maybe my mind too :-) :-) The nylon and the air still remember how to work. The military and others have left chutes packed for months and even years, crushed under weights, even soaked in water, and they open just fine. Skr

I don't know how it actually happened but the order I remember hearing these words is: At first there were just parachutes, meaning mostly the 28 ft flat circular, plus a few T-10s, and the 24 ft reserves. Then the Lopo (Low Porosity) came out from Security. It was 1.6 oz per square yard vs 1.1 for the C-9s. Then Lyle started calling the 28 ft flat circulars Cheapos in Skydiver. People also spoke of "one-one"s and "one-six"s. Then PCs and Crossbows and other stuff came out and people started calling cheapos rags. But that's just the order that I remember hearing the words. Skr

Well you got caught by lack of experience, and you now have a jump story's worth of experience, and you're thinking about how it happened and learning from it, so I'd say you're on the right track. And Bonnie's advice is good. In the old days of rounds backing in from opening to landing was common and people got good at it, but with squares you don't get to practice this very much. Next time try to think further ahead up high, looking over your shoulders, and use the crabbing-going-backward technique Bonnie mentioned to head for an open area. Skr

> I've had a heck of a time understanding how to simplify spotting. Do you mean to get the main ideas yourself, or to explain it to a student, or ... ? Spotting has a *lot* of factors. It's complicated and takes most people hundreds of jumps to learn. Even in the mythical old days when theoretically people knew how to spot it wasn't so. Everybody knew who could spot and who couldn't :-) :-) Skr

> I'm taking Scott Miller's course on 6/18 That's the right idea. You will probably get a smaller canopy of some kind later, but right now education on canopy flying is way more important. Also you could start noticing which experienced jumpers approach canopy flying like Scott does so you have some good influences to hang out with after he leaves. Skr

Well shit. I got some emails that he was in the hospital but I didn't know that he had died. He was one of the good ones. I remember his laughter. He told me once that "Paproski" was Polish for "Knight of the Silver Chalice". He said it with such a straight face that I almost believed him for a moment And I remember the expressions of consternation on the straight laced style and accuracy guys at the 68 nationals in Marana when he would go running down the aisle with his bare feet going slap slap slap on the floor. Those were the days of industrial grade air cushioned French boots and nobody even wore tennis shoes, much less went bare footed. Of course he had a pair of mocasins stashed in his jump suit that he would put on for landing. >And now it starts. The beginning of it all is starting to come to a close. Yeah ... Skr

Yikes, another one! I've been losing about two a month for the last six months and now here's the third in the last few days. I remember being in freefall near him in 1964 jumping out of a Norseman into the Inn. I remember the sight of all those jumpers in freefall over endless miles of woods and trusting that since he had spotted that he knew where that 3 square inch clearing down there somewhere was. Skr

>Jeff Fischer was just out at Perris visiting Walley. >He was on the winning '67 Rumbleseat team So was I. That's probably Clark Fisher, although now I'm feeling a mild uncertainty about the spelling. Maybe it was Clarke with an "e" and Fischer with a "c", but that doesn't feel right. Also maybe that was Jeff somebody-else because Clark was from Bakersfield and I don't remember him being on any of Al's teams. >few good stories including a naked jump with a malfunction >that my wife followed down. But that part sounds pretty plausible, although I hope she wasn't following him too close, he wasn't the highest puller to ever come down the pike. Skr

> PS: it's great to see you here! :-) I haven't been around much the last few months. Last year I gave up trying to jump in Colorado, it's too painful, and took a different fork in the road. Basically I added up my life to date and "someday came", so I spent 3 months helping some people with English at the Academy of Science in Beijing. I'll probably go back again for a few months this year and maybe longer after that. The future is very uncertain but there is certainly a feeling there of a country on the upswing. I'm not selling my gear but I'll probably wait until we move to jump any more. We may still get a jump or two together before it's all over. > Welcome to the fray... Right! :-) :-) I read further down in that Sandmonkey blog and see that some main stream newspapers have picked up the story and the Danish consulate verified it.

This says that the cartoons were printed in an Egyptian newspaper in October 2005. http://egyptiansandmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/02/boycott-egypt.html Is it true? Is it just more disinformation? I don't have the energy to delve into verifying it one way or the other, but the world is in such a crazy state ...

>I jumped with you at Chicago-Hammond some > many years back, I believe in 1965 or so. > Do you remember me? I remember you from Elsinore. And I remember when you guys jumped off of El Capitan. > Nice to see a familiar name still posting Yes, I see lots of names from those days floating around here. I haven't been around much lately because I just got back from several months in China. > disagree that hanging on the rear risers when > landings with a round I think people are not talking about hanging on them but rather pulling down at just the last moment before hitting the ground. I almost always did it - 900 jumps on rounds plus 900 jumps on PCs - and it worked pretty well. It often followed a wind hook, which was to go down wind and at the magic moment do a 180 toggle turn which caused an oscillation into the wind. The oscillation into the wind plus a sharp pull on the rear risers gave me a moment of slowness relative to the ground. Skr

> This is what one looked like deploying. Hey, I remember that picture! That was Ken Rounds at Lancaster. Lyle Cameron printed it in Skydiver and made some comment about reserve pilot chutes. I used Bob Sinclair's idea of a reserve pilot chute with a slip knot so that if you had a total you could pull your reserve and get a pilot chute deployment, but if you had a partial you could release the slip knot and then pull your reserve and do the normal down and out and into the spin. Skr

> I dont know why i'm suddenly scared, Ha! It's probably because we're mammals and we're not supposed to be doing this kind of stuff. The advice so far in this thread is good. The sports psychology stuff - breathing and relaxing, focusing on and practicing all the stuff you know how to do right, the wind tunnel for practicing technique. Even more powerful may be the suggestion to find some experienced jumpers to hang out with and tune into their states of mind. How come they're not scared? Well probably some of them are feeling a little anxiety in one form or another but they're just not showing it, and you're comparing your insides with their outsides. I don't know if the fear ever goes away. The fear of the unknown gradually goes away as you gain experience and competence and find your place in the jump world, but the root fear, falling and hitting the ground, doesn't. Sometimes it's so far in the background that I don't notice it. Other times, like if I haven't jumped in a while it's more noticable. I don't really like the feeling, but I just accept that it's one of the less pleasant parts of jumping, like the long drive to the drop zone, or the checkbook with a two digit balance. At your stage I'm guessing that it's the feeling of competence in freefall, you know, like: "What are you so scared of?" "Oh, I don't know. I'm just in a lethal environment, a life and death situation, and I'm not sure I know how to do all the right moves." Before tunnels came along the best approach was to find a good instructor/mentor/coach and make 20 or 40 jumps really close together, but these days a good instructor/mentor/coach and a tunnel could be an even better answer. Skr

Aahhhhhh .. The old ones are fading fast. I was out of the country and away from dropzone.com when I heard about this, so I guess there's nothing to do for it now but tell a jump story .. I met Don in 1976, he found me sleeping in his bed. I happened to be in Fort Bragg for a few weeks as a civilian consultant. You could tell I was a civilian because I had long red hair and a great big red beard and my clothes were kind of rainbow colored instead of olive drab. To the army guys I probably looked like something out of a Hollywood viking movie. It was unclear where I was supposed to be staying but after while one of the Golden Knights, Al Navarro, said hey one of the guys where I live is out in the field for a couple weeks and you can stay in his room. So OK, as a jumper I had slept in a lot of unlikely places already and anyway, I was more focused on what I was doing there than the logistics and accomodations. And of course he came home a few days early. I'm a little hazy about exactly what happened, it was the middle of the night and we, the people I was working with, may have had a few beers earlier to help us debrief and plan for the next day. But he didn't kill me, and we'd laugh about it when we'd cross paths over the years. He may have had a few sharp corners in his personality, I have a short fuse myself with some of the stuff I see people doing, but he was a good guy. He cared about people and he cared about jumping. Skr

> who has experiance of a bag lock , and did it > stand you up in your harness?? I never had a bag lock but when piggybacks first came out I put a reserve on the front and jumped some intentional malfunctions and then cut them away and opened the reserve on the back. One of the malfunctions was a streamer caused by tying the skirt of the main closed. There wasn't much drag. It was easy to stand up or lay flat. Skr

> articles written some time ago by Bryan Burke I put some related to exit order and separation down near the bottom of http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html and there used to be some other stuff by him on the Eloy website. He is a careful thinker and I always listen to what he has to say. Skr

> Why is wing loading such a big deal when canopy > performance has so much to do with it? I think that's just the human tendancy to look for a simple rule of thumb for a complex situation. Some well chosen simplifications can really help in understanding and in coming up with answers that are good enough, but people take it too far and try to zero in on just one factor. For canopies it's wing loading and rules relating wing loading with number of jumps, for exit separation it's "just wait 5 seconds and go" or maybe the "45 degree rule", for landing it's "follow the first person down". Maybe that's better than nothing, I'm not sure, but it's certainly not good enough. And you see people doing this everywhere, not just in skydiving. Wasn't it Einstein who said a physical theory should be as simple as possible, and no simpler? Skr