FlyingRhenquest

Human tragedy. 80,000+ people losing their homes. I live out west and the whole goddamn place is just constantly burning down. For all that we're capable of doing, we're still very much not in command of our environments.

Hey! Safety goggles!

bgrozev

Surely you're not suggesting that the probability to have a malfunction has decreased somehow?


On the original topic: I haven't had a cutaway yet and I am not as confident as I would like to be that I will react correctly and in time when I have to do one. When it happens, I would be happy about it if I deal with it as the OP did.

My first one was neighborhood of 160 jumps and it's was like I'd done the cutaway/reserve training in ground school a single day earlier. It's amazing how fast it comes back to you. Just look up, realize you want nothing to do with the canopy that just opened (or didn't open, or exploded) over your head and let all that instruction kick in.

Better yet, if you're nervous about it, there's no shame in asking the dropzone to let you do the drill with the equipment you used in ground school. It doesn't hurt to do a refresher every so often on anything you think is getting rusty.

Awesome! You got that out of the way early, now you don't have to worry about it for the next couple hundred jumps.

It's definitely more exciting than your average jump. I can't get an erection anymore unless there's a cutaway involved.

HIDGAF84

I was actually considering getting a Mac, before I purchased this set up… the cost is a pretty significant difference; but within the last year, I've had a few Mac friends say they were never buying another Mac.

So like reading comments on Amazon, who knows what the hell to think…

If you get a mac, you have to drink ALL of Apple's Kool Aid. I did that for a while and put up with a fair bit of god damn bullshit, from unacknowledged hardware problems that everyone on various Mac forums were having problems with to hardware intentionally crippled with software (Original Mac Pro Desktop was more than capable of running a 64 bit OSX, but they never upgraded the 32 bit boot loader on the system to allow it,) ancient versions of java, terrible video options, and the list goes on. Most of the things that annoy me probably wouldn't bother the average user and the plus side is that buying an Apple is like buying a Prius -- your asshole doesn't stink after you do it. Until you quit, buy a Charger and then your asshole stinks twice as much as it used to.

For your money, buy a HP or Dell i7 laptop with RAM, hard drive and video upgrades and you'll still come much less expensive than what the high end Macbook would set you back. And you'be be getting a lot more hardware and software compatibility. Or maybe a MS Surface Pro -- I've heard good things about them.

If you want to stand out in the Starbucks crowd, install Linux and a custom graphical boot screen. I've been running Ubuntu Linux for a couple months solid now and it's every bit as capable as booting this machine to Windows. Except Skyrim won't run (But a lot of my other steam games will.) It's even got some pretty nice editing crap -- Kdenlive is all I need for my videos, and I can do audio recording and editing with Audacity. If you need more graphical stuff, Inkscape is a pretty good vector drawing program once you learn the keyboard shortcuts and blender is a pretty good 3D modeling program once you learn the keyboard shortcuts. I use pdflatex for "official" letters, and it always puts out a much nicer document than any word processor you've ever used. Does really nice addresses for printed envelopes, too.

Yeah, I'd guess your hard drive is boned. It sounds like a boned hard drive to me. You might just be able to replace the hard drive with one that isn't boned or you could use the excuse to upgrade your laptop.

For some reason, this guy (NSFW) reminds me of Fred Rogers with Tourette's Syndrome. About the time he starts psychoanalyzing the goat, I just can't stop laughing.

Eeh. It happens. I never saw most of the people who were in my AFF ground school again, by the end of the first month. I didn't feel like I was that scared on the plane on my AFF 1, but I saw the video later and had this whole deer-in-the-headlights terrified look that I've never seen on my face again before or since. Kinda surprised I got out that day, honestly.

If you really feel like you need to get out once and think you can do it next time, I'd say give it another try. If you don't (either one of those things,) maybe it's just not the right time in your life to try skydiving. Most people never do, so you're already ahead of the game. You can always come back to it later. I don't think it would have worked for me, if I'd tried it a decade or two ago. Tackle other challenges first and maybe in a few years you'll be ready for another try.

Skydivers won't criticize you for deciding you don't want to skydive. We know how hard it is to get out of that plane the first few times.

377

I could be wrong, but I think it is real. Here is how you could do it

4 each JetCat model P200RX turbines each 52lbsf of thrust (210 lbsf total) and each turbine weighing 5.6 lbs, the total dry weight of the thrusters is 22.4 lbs, leaving about 190 lbs for pilot+fuel+clothing and etc. hardware.

http://www.jetcatusa.com/rc-turbines/turbine-details/p200-sx/

Short flight times though. Add more fuel, need more thrust, makes it even heavier, you just can't easily engineer your way out of the range limiting corner. The old Bell peroxide rocket "Jet Packs" had the same problem.


377

Watching it, I think fuel would be the limiting factor. They don't show you a full flight, although they did claim that he was able to fly nearly 4 minutes on the thing if I read the text in the video correctly.

I'm also pretty sure he never reaches an altitude where that parachute would actually be useful if the thing craps out on him. But flying over water, I guess he'd probably survive if it did, anyway.

Heh. The F18s were taking off out of Broomfield yesterday. The 5 I heard take off sounded like they were tearing the sky a new asshole, and they were being pretty restrained about their takeoffs. They should come pay Vance Brand a visit for a few days!

Noooo! If they fire up the hardon collider again, we'll all be sucked into an ENORMOUS BLACK HOLE!

hillson

I think that most of those useless apps are written by someone with 10 jumps that thinks they've found the answer to the question that no one has asked. My favorite is the altimeter simulator so you can learn "altitude awareness" on your phone. Give me a fucking break.

Bwaahaha really? *checks altimeter* Yup, still 0!

I used mytracks for a while to collect GPS info and plot my jumps out on Google Earth. Their KML export is crap, though, so I'd export them to gpx and process them into KML with a C++ program I wrote. The GPS info was also kind of crap, though. It's much better with a flysight. My program can also handle flysight data files, but I usually can't be arsed to bring it along to get telemetry. I did think, on my last cutaway, that it would have been really handy to have access to all that crap right at the dz so I could plot on the map exactly where I deployed (My program does that too.)

Heh. Relax more. I did the same thing with forgetting to wave off on a couple of my AFF jumps. You get in the habit quickly enough. If you have a vertical wind tunnel nearby, you can always book 10 minutes in and work on holding a heading and practicing the pull move so that you're more comfortable and less line twisty when you do that. If you don't, well you'll get the hang of that pretty quickly too.

gowlerk

I hope so - GOP or Dem - I hope they all go down.

From what I've seen so far there are few to zero Americans involved. So far.

I think some people are going to die over this. A lot of Putin's friends, for example. I wouldn't be surprised if the Mossack Fonseca building mysteriously burns down, too.

This news broke hours ago and Australia's already investigating hundreds of people for tax evasion.

I wonder if we haven't heard about any Americans in this because the FBI is currently rounding them all up.

The next couple of days look like they're going to be pretty interesting.

Jumpdude

***http://longmontcompass.com/citizens-for-complete-silence-quietly-call-support/

Hmmm, makes me want to move to Boulder Co, and bring my RACE CARS, and enjoy my other life as not only a skydiver, but a racer, and enjoy the many days and/or nights when we run the engines to be sure the

City of Longmont has gigabit fiber, a very nice weed store and I believe a Whole Foods will be opening here later this year. Just sayin'...

hillson

That whole thing could have been ghostwritten by el gibbo. Such nonsense.

It's probably one of the free rags in the area. They're not good for much other than littering your driveway once a week. I got pretty bent out of shape about having to pick up their stupid thing every week and throw it in my outside trash can, but they've mostly stopped since I E-Mailed and yelled at them.

Anyone who's a skydiver or a pilot. I get signatures for my hot air balloon jumps from the pilot. Hot chicks are also totally acceptable. If they're not a skydiver, just tell them to put their phone number down instead.

gowlerk

Nah...He was strictly small time. And not exactly good advertising exposure for the product. I felt just a little guilty over my immediate reaction to the news, which basically was "good riddance". On further reflection, he did not do anything to deserve the fate he suffered. It's not a crime to be offensive. And his drug habit may have been illegal, but I've had worse friends.

We all have it coming, kid.

They way that guy was living, I didn't expect him to live this long. He must have had some severely hardy genes to survive all that crack and shit he was doing.

Turn their hand so you can read their altimeter.

Oh yeah, I actually relaxed for the first time in the wind tunnel. I hit the air and just felt all my muscles just relax into it. Skydiving's pretty much the same way now. I relax as soon as the door opens and the cold air hits me. In freefall and in the tunnel, I always feel like I'm just going to melt away in the wind. Which... is kind of weird, I guess, but there you go.

ryoder

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

youtube-dl is awesome. Also works with several other video services (Dailymotion, Myspace, etc.)

It's good you enjoyed it. For all that I mostly just want to fly a wingsuit lately, I still like to take a break and do a jump where I just deploy my parachute right out the door at 12,000 feet. It's a nice 10-15 minute flight with great scenery and no other concerns than getting to the ground. Definitely worth trying, once you get your A license!

PeteW

***You should harness that power...and jerk off right after landing.

Lol is that standard dz etiquette?

It probably wouldn't be considered a foul...

Can't. Operational security and all.