bomber

Signed it. Wow, the forum search on here really sucks. I was going to post this myself, since the first thing that popped up for a search for "whitehouse" was from 2005 and not relevant. bleh.

Nowadays claiming that "not everyone is connected" is like saying that not everyone can *drive* to a polling place (for gov't elections). i.e. there are plenty of other options. Sure, maybe we don't all have expensive, high speed phone-computers in our pockets to access the internet at a moment's notice, but I suspect it an exceedingly rare situation that a person would, for the entire duration of an election, be unable to find a public library with 'net access, or ask a friend to borrow their computer.

I'm in India for a couple weeks and whenever I try to go to dropzone.com (even just the home page) all I get is a "403 Forbidden" error. Are connections from other countries blocked on purposes? Just India? If I VPN in to my company's network, which is in the US, it works fine (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be posting this).

Anyone need a ride to zhills? I'm driving from Chicago around the 27th, and heading back Jan 9th. If you're anywhere near I64, I24 or I75 I'd be happy to pick you up.

I just saw a video of someone flying head down in a wingsuit, so that would probably be around 160mph (right?). Of course, there's going to be some losses in turning that velocity around 90 degrees, but how fast do you think you'd need to be going?

Here's an article supposedly from James himself: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/19/fell-6000-feet-survived but, something doesn't seem quite right. One of the lines in the article says "...meaning I had two or three seconds before I hit the ground. I can't have been more than 20 metres up", so that's about 8m/s or 17mph. Is that slow of a vertical speed even possible?

30k! Is it really that much on average, or do you just have an expensive hospital? When I broke my arm it was only about $6500 ($8500 in today's dollars), which included a day at the hospital. Maybe I ended up with a good deal, or are broken legs that much more expensive? eric

Is there a shuttle for the landing area too? If I'm remembering correctly from last time I was there, even landing on the far end of the main landing area can seem like a loong walk. Then again, maybe I'm just "spoiled" with having a small landing area at home and I'm being lazy.

I've never been close to a bird while skydiving, but I once had a crow smash into my face while I was on a bicycle. I was only going 20-25mph, but I was surprisingly disoriented for several minutes afterward. I definitely wouldn't want to hit one in freefall.

I recently acquired an Aiptek HD GVS video camera (it was essentially free) and I'm wondering if anyone has ever tried to use one for skydiving. It claims to do 60 frames/s in 720p resolution, or 30/s in 1080p, and the video looks reasonable from what I've taken so far, except it doesn't handle low light very well. Also, it doesn't appear to have a way to attach a wide angle lens.

I know of several. Definition of a 'student' jumper: In 1998, the definition of a student jumper was changed from 'until cleared for self-supervision' to 'until obtaining an A license'. ...[snip]... The downside of this, aka the detriment to jumpers, is that the new jumpers now must do more jumps to clear student status, fewer people are available to jump with them beyond the 'cleared for self supervision' point. Costs to the new jumper are more. Maybe I'm just drinking the kool-aid, safety of _existing_ jumpers seems like a good reason for these changes, regardless of whether it was championed by a DZ that had a business case for it. If I'm looking for someone to jump with and ask "are you student", I expect an answer of "no" to mean that they have at least the basic skills required for an A license. That doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. Sure it makes it a bit harder for new, unlicensed jumpers, to jump with people, but until they get a bit of practice that sounds like a good thing. Until you've spent enough time to get a license I don't really consider you part of the "membership", so IMO the "detriment to jumpers" is through the indirect route of fewer jumpers getting fully into the sport. I can think of a way that is helps: it provides an increased level of trust that the standards for the certification is being followed. If you are conducting a course at a DZ that follows the USPA guidelines, you're going to have a harder time signing someone off just because they're your buddy because there's likely to be other people around that will act as checks and balances. I think this impression of responsibility is key for giving the ratings the necessary respectability to make them actually worth something, and not just in the eyes of skydivers, but to people outside of the sport. (i.e. regulators and lawmakers)

nah, just tie an anchor rope around your waist and off you go.

Wow, I'm amazed at how often you all say you do PLFs. I'm definitely not the best canopy pilot around, but not managing a stand up landing on every jump seems really odd. The last time I did a PLF (well, sort of, I could use some practice ) was after flying into some nasty air currents 15 ft off the ground and having my canopy fold up. Barring situations like that, after even a couple of rough landings I really try to figure out what I'm doing wrong, or just decide I'm having an off day and it's time to grab a beer.

Well, in case anyone is considering building one, according to the "bodyflightconcepts.com" site, and the skyventure.com site, a state of the art tunnel will cost between $2 million and $5 million, and generate $875k profit per year. (disclaimer: this is based on 10 minutes of web searching. don't take it too seriously) If you stick to the middle of the range, $3.5 mil, that leads to being entirely in the black in 4 years, and a 10 year profit of $5.25 million. That's not spectacular, but not too bad either, especially with the other successful tunnels to use as examples. hmm.... eric

Yep, it's fahrenheit. When I switch it to Celsius I get a temperature of -13. It was a bit chilly, but not *that* cold! :)

I'm looking in JumpTrack at the temperature that my protrack has been recording on my jumps, and it looks way too low. It only reads between 5-10 degrees F. Bumping it up to about what I know the temperature actually was causes the altitudes and speeds it displays to be way too high. Is this normal? Has anyone else noticed anything like this happening with their protrack?