winsor

A guy I have not seen for maybe eight years was a tower mechanic and BASE jumper. IIRC, he worked on a variety of antenna types - TV/FM/AM - and would be the person to ask regarding the pitfalls of the various types. From my limited (and probably out of date) academic background as relates to antenna theory, it seems that the risks are a function of frequency. With AM, the whole tower is the antenna, and the biggest risk is shorting out the antenna to ground. You don't want to complete the circuit across any insulators. With the higher frequency stuff - FM & TV - the antenna itself is a "stinger" atop the support structure. Here the real problem is getting nuked by being close to it for too long. I have heard tales of fillings and hardware getting hot by induction when being too close to the stinger for too long, but am not sure quite what effect is expected of living flesh. In general, it is a good idea to have it off before going too near, according to the advice I have had from techs. When you get into the millimeter wave stuff (radar, microwave), the effects of exposure range from sterility (like no babies) to dead and roasted. Cell phone antennae have proliferated since I left school, so I would have to do some research before suggesting what to expect from proximity with them. Depending to a large extent upon economics, a given tower can perform more than one function. Microwave dishes and/or cell antennae can show up on radio or TV antennae, so there may be more than one set of problems you face in using a tower as a jump platform. In any event, asking local people about a site tends to be a good way to figure out what are its risks. There tends to be a pretty good knowledge base about commonly used objects. Blue skies, Winsor

I have a number of such rigs, but do not tend to use them very often. A couple of drawbacks are that they are a bitch to pack, and the procedures are all different. Packing with sleeves, spring-loaded pilot chutes and ripcords on the main is more of a pain in the ass than I prefer. Trying to remember where the hell all the handles are, both at deployment time and if something doesn't work as planned, is too much of a distraction to be a lot of fun. Focusing on any kind of RW is tough when you know that the procedures that have saved your life thousands of times won't work this time. I thus generally stick to hop and pops, where I focus on the main ripcord between exit and pull time, and am expecting to fire the shot-and-a-halfs and bellywart if I don't like what I get overhead. An airworthy Wonderhog is my rig of choice when jumping ParaCommander class canopies. A BOC throwout works just fine with a round, and a D-bag packed round is as reliable as anything going (ask any military rigger who has worked on T-10s and the like). The handles are all where you would expect them, and emergency procedures are standard. As long as you have someone to hold tension, it only takes about 10 minutes more to pack a PC than a square. I am now setting up a rig with a UT-15 (the Soviet original from which the "Russian PC" was copied) and a Safety Star. Having had numerous rigs with square mains and round reserves, I find the idea of a round main with a square reserve amusing. Regarding people who get together to jump vintage gear, at Richmond Revisited there is a group who breaks out their airworthy vintage gear to make jumps on an annual basis. There are other groups that jump the old stuff on an informal basis, and if you ask around you can stumble across them. For anyone who has never tried a round, I highly recommend finding out why Bill Booth viewed the ParaCommander as the pentultimate parachute. Blue skies, Winsor

I always assumed that the Wonderhog was a direct take-off on "Wonder Wart Hog." Given Roger Nelson's use of the "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers," it seemed likely that Gilbert Sheldon was behind the name of the rig. While Roger knew perfectly well from whom he had appropriated the artwork that was his trademark, Bill's cartoon Wonderhog was not a direct ripoff of Sheldon's character. I never did ask Bill from whence came the name but that would certainly be one way to check my assumption. FWIW, if he did get his inspiration from the underground funnybook character, he showed good taste. Sheldon is brilliant. Blue skies, Winsor

I consider myself an intermediate (10,000 jumps seems to be the cutoff for "advanced" these days...), but I have a number of big mains that I jump routinely. I'm have two Raven IVs, just got a ParaFoil 252 set up yesterday (with a 300 sq. ft. reserve), and have a few others around that have me well under a pound per square foot out the door. For reserves, I gravitate to the "nylon overcast" type (the bigger the better). I do, admittedly, jump a couple of FX99s as well (again, with BIG reserves), but consider 2 psf a bad choice for an only rig - particularly for a fun jumper. Getting maimed is not fun, and your likelihood of doing so increases significantly with wing loading. Considering that the main purpose of your parachute is to get you to the ground in one piece, and your basic big old parachute will do so reliably, what's the down side? Blue skies,

For all the indignation this standpoint elicits, it has great merit. All too many jumpers go to great lengths to convince themselves that skydiving is "safe." You will hear nonsense about how the drive to the airport is more dangerous than the jump, and you will see people who have absolute faith that the electronic marvel in their rig will save them from any kind of operator error, but the truth is that you are but seconds from a sure death on each and every skydive - if you do not successfully intervene. If you do not think you are having a near-death experience when you skydive, you are not paying attention. The fact that as few of us die as is now the case says a lot for our equipment and procedures, but does not make it "safe." How can we keep skydiving as safe as possible? Part of the equation is to have a clear understanding of the dangers we face. Engaging in denial may make it easier to get out the door, but it is detrimental to the process of getting to the ground in one piece. Pointing out that skydiving consists of committing suicide and intervening at the last (ta-daah!) moment may be dramatic, but it is one way to get past the illusions that people use in order to participate in the sport. It is blunt, to the point, and, to a large extent, accurate. People who accept this nasty reality are more likely to focus on the life-saving part of the process. They are less likely to be cavalier about reserve size, emergency procedures, preflight planning, and so forth than the people who are complacent. Bridling at the mention of how high are the stakes in this sport smacks of denial. Increasing your odds of staying in the sport for a long time and dying of natural causes comes from considering risks and planning for them. I applaud an instructor who plays it straight with students. If you don't like the stakes, you don't have to play the game. Blue skies, Winsor

I had a MK-1 with stained-glass colors in the keyhole, but that was a while ago. I have a similar one in the car, if red, white and blue colors will do in the keyhole, and you're okay with an RWPC. If you have a camera, you're welcome to take a picture when I jump it. Blue skies, Winsor

Hard to tell. My first military and civilian jumps were so long ago that I'm kind of fuzzy as to who was there with me. My guess is that damned near all of them have gone on to other things. This may well be a good thing - though it is not the "young person's sport" that it once was, it still isn't well suited to most of the Geritol set. Another thing people don't seem to grasp is that this sport is by no means for everyone. Some people like the intense rush, but go with economy and convenience and simply use drugs. For other people, the level of fear they experience outweighs any enjoyment they might get out of jumping. In addition, given some people's decision-making skills, they are but statistics in the making. Make no mistake about it - when you step out the door of the airplane, you are dead until you do something about it (yeah, I know, you have an expensive, magical bit of electronics that will save you...). Some people compete, and find that they have lost interest in such things as four-way that involves less than 25 points per jump. I know rather a few people who went to the Nationals or whatever, won in their division, and hung it up immediately thereafter. There are also people for whom it became a job, and, when they found a job that paid many times what they got when jumping, they didn't return to the sport side of skydiving - it was either work or stay on the ground. I have tried to keep from burning out in the sport, and to do enough varied stuff that it stays interesting. Some things scare the hell out of me, and I try to avoid doing them. I expect to continue to jump, and my goals are to do so safely while having fun. So far, so good. Blue skies, Winsor

Left bank? If it was a direct head-on trajectory, isn't that a right turn we've been all trained to do? I'll always do right bank as taught for a direct head-on collision danger, but I'm just curious what circumstances would warrant it -- perhaps it wasn't directly head-on and a left bank was simply the "obvious" direction to go in at the time (i.e. potential collision at an angle), or you just saw the plane banking left and you followed suit? Just making sure that was the case, and not some foreign rule, etc. Quote I think the extent of my "training" wrt avoiding head-ons was being told to turn right. Given that the Cessna and my plane missed each other when we both cranked in a left 90, in retrospect it appears we weren't exactly head on. Maybe I would have eaten his starboard engine if we had not spotted each other. It is hard to estimate the time frame involved, but I doubt if it was more than two seconds between acquiring a visual and having the results become history. I surely did not have any time whatsoever to ponder my course of action; as soon as I spotted the oncoming silhouette getting big FAST, I reacted. If either of us had done anything slightly differently, we would have made the news. Regardless of what is the "correct" course of action, the other pilot and I reacted such that we survived. I'd rather be lucky than good. Blue skies, Winsor

My first reserve ride was a handle I couldn't find. I dropped the rig off for a repack, and manifested for another load with a different rig. My first malfunction was a tension knot. I dropped the rig off for a repack, and manifested for another load with a different rig. I don't drink, and don't think I was any more nervous than I am normally. As far as heart-pounding adventure goes, ,flying TO a DZ one time I had a knife-edge near-miss with a Cessna 310-type airplane. We both saw each other at about the same time, and each jammed in a 90 degree left bank in time to avoid a head-on by a few inches. If he/she had gear down, we would have hit. My reaction was Wow! Cool! I'm still alive!" I then continued to the DZ, made a couple of jumps, and flew home. All things being equal, I find having someone else get maimed or killed in close proximity to be more unsettling than having to chop. Even then, the thing to do is get on the next load and make a jump. Blue skies, Winsor

I have not read the book, and doubt I ever will. From where I sit, Rita was in the sport for all the wrong reasons. The extent to which she simply did not get it never ceased to amaze me. I was in the air with Rita only once. I recall being stunned by the absolute lack of control she displayed. The fact that she was able to find instructors who finally signed her off to jump solo concerns me; it is my understanding that they did so in order to get her to go home. Neither of the local drop zones would consider graduating her from student status, and even now refer to her as the poster child for people singularly unsuited to this sport. I feel badly that I did not give her "the talk" before her final arrival. This is not so much because I think she would have caught on and taken up a hobby she was more likely to survive, but, rather, to clear my conscience when she finally cratered. Whenever she was told that the approach she was taking was unsound, she made it clear that she thought that people simply weren't being nice to her. Rita would be, and wouid have been, welcomed into the skydiving community had she taken it seriously. If she had spent as much time learning a skillset that would ensure her survival as she did focusing on which tandem masters had nice buns, she may have thought to flare in time to avoid snapping BOTH femurs. I am somewhat offended by her decision to write a book, since her tenure in the sport was but an exercise in cluelessness. She still doesn't get it, and I can not imagine her prose would do anything but make that point painfully clear. She indicates in the cover blurb that there was some redeeming value in her approach to the sport, and I could not disagree more. I suppose the literary tradition of wannabes portraying themselves as participants is well established; reading Hemingway, you would never guess that he was but a drunken observer during the running of the bulls - but never in the melee himself. You can read the book if you like, but I can't bring myself to do so. Blue skies, Winsor

Lebanese would be blonde. Black plate from Pakistan or Afghanistan. Temple balls or fingers from Nepal. Red from India or Arabia. Green (Kief) from Morocco. At least that's the way the High Times Market Report would have it. Blue skies red eyes, Winsor

Oh, and a thread about six months ago discussed what would happen if you chopped while the line was around your finger. None of the predictions were pretty. I executed a Gunslinger cutaway with a steering line looped past my ring finger and the base of my thumb. It was hooked badly enough on my altimeter that I couldn't get free, and I was not interested in how much time I had left to screw with it. I managed to keep from losing my finger, but it did take some years before I could feel with it again. Blue skies, Winsor

Drawing the line as to how "related" a DZ is to Skyride is tougher than it might appear at first glance. Did a DZ accept a certificate to help out someone who was down-home screwed otherwise? If so, does that make them a partner in crime or a good samaritan? If a DZ accepted one or more certificates, but got stiffed by Skyride when they tried to redeem them, are they a partner or victim of Skyride - or both? I don't think dropzone.com lists any of the Skyride dropzones that exist only in cyberspace; I would be more supportive of listing only such DZs as take up-jumpers (no tandem-only operations) than omitting those whose business practices would not earn a DZO a halo (the saintly variety). For one thing, there are operations out there that are something less than 100% compliant with various standards without Skyride's help. For another, I have been to dropzones over the years that used to be terrible and are now outstanding, and vice-versa, so I can't think of a means that I would trust to rate them. The policy of listing dropzones and having feedback is not perfect (feedback can be artificially skewed either way), but it leaves the responsibility where I feel it belongs - with us, the skydiving public. As far as a caveat goes, I think the publicity this thread represents is doing a pretty good job. Blue skies, Winsor

well mike just heard of this recently i think, past few days or so. he also has a group membership at asc for chuting starr rigging loft. and i beleive he got that for advertising purposes. i dont think it was so that they have a "piggy back membership". although maybee group memberships should be reserved for dropzone's and not a rigging loft. but who knows, mike maybee wanted to show that he is part of uspa and supports them by being a group member. but i also think that asc should not be able to use it in any way. i like mike personally too, he has clouded vision though, i would love to see him get out of there. then i could have my favorite rigger back. but untill then i will use other riggers. Ron and Mark, My primary focus is on providing high-quality rigging services to my customers and the customers of the ASC group of drop zones. I also manage the staff at Atlanta Skydiving Center and run the student/coaching school (through Chutingstar). It is my intention that everyone who walks through ASC's doors has the best experience of their lives...be it a first-time student, a whuffo just watching, a rigging customer, a visiting jumper or an everyday regular skydiver. ASC is my skydiving home. It may be dysfunctional on several levels, but I'm not leaving all of my skydiving and work friends because of what Ben/Cary may/may not have done. My job is to make ASC's skydiving operation run smoothly and safely...and it does. As for Chutingstar's USPA Group Membership, I have been told by my regional director that it is no longer valid (although he doesn't agree with that decision). Ed Scott and Glenn Bangs have not returned my phone calls all week to verify this or explain my options. I applied and was approved a group membership in April as Chutingstar does run the student/coaching programs at ASC...I am also the S&TA and wanted easy access to rating checks for our visiting jumpers and staff. The possiblility of ASC losing its group membership was discussed with Glenn Bangs beforehand as one of many reasons for Chutingstar to become a group member. I wanted to keep an established link between USPA and ASC's jumpers. We religously follow the ISP, membership and licensing of our jumpers. I don't see how taking that away from Chutingstar helps USPA (in its issues with Ben/Cary) in any manner. I really hate posting here...so you may not hear from me for awhile. But I just wanted to reiterate why I do what I do since I've been slammed again...see you all in the gear and rigging forum. Mike From Tony Ross at rec.skydiving: Actually, there was some more writing on the wall today, and I find that the original rumour was somewhat in error, as well as incomplete. "Ben Butler and Cary Quattrocchi had their individual USPA memberships revoked effective immediately, as of 17 July 2005. In addition, the Chuting Star Rigging Loft training facility, because of its association with ASC, will also lose its GM effective 16 August 2005."

From the days of yore comes "Gay Nazis for Christ." Then there were the two four-way teams "COD" and "Impact." When they did 8-way together, they went as "COD Impact." At the DZ, bad taste is an art form. Blue skies, Winsor

I sometimes think that rather a few hot-button issues are but red herrings to keep the focus off the potentially insoluble problems we would just as soon ingore. Beyond the fact that I am entirely uninterested in having anything personally to do with homosexual marriage (or any other kind of homosexual relationship), I am wildly indifferent. If you are gay and want to be married as well, fine, knock yourself out. So long as everything is between consenting adults, you are on your own. I figure that it is of primary importance that people who see things differently than do I (read: 99+% of the population) should see fit to leave me to my own devices so long as I do not involve them. I thus try to grant the same leeway to pretty much everyone else. On the one hand, I oppose persecution of gays. OTOH, I like the idea of people doing whatever is necessary to spare me the details (I really don't want to know the specifics of what does or does not happen behind closed doors). At any rate, there have been people of all kinds of sexual persuasions through the centuries. I'll take peaceful (and discreet) gays over forceful/violent heteros any day. Blue skies, Winsor

My RWPC has 325# suspension lines 18' or so in length. Its dimensions are the same as my MK-1s. I think my Sierra is also 24', and it has cascaded lines, something lighter than 550#. I haven't measured my UT-15 (commie original to the Russian PC from Pioneer), but expect it to be as peculiar as are many things Russian. I am not familiar with an "R Mod," but that does not mean much in and of itself. I'll look it up in my PC manual, and ask some of the folks that have more PC experience than do I. Blue skies, Winsor

Why? Because it is by no means for everyone. I have known people who made one jump, and either had a horrible time or were injured when doing so. In two cases they were there because fellow frat-boys pressured them into making the jump, but the result was the same. In the Army, you MUST be a volunteer to jump. You have to want to do it rather badly in order to get the chance, and you can turn down ANY jump (you likely won't get a chance to make another jump if you do - or to have the right to wear jump wings again - but that's your choice). One man's meat is another man's poison. Just because I find skydiving to be very rewarding, that does not mean that everyone will have the same reaction as do I. If someone is willing to jump for all the wrong reasons, talking them out of it is probably doing them a favor. I've been detailed to give people "the talk" enough times that I think prevention is the preferred approach. Some people are craters looking grid coordinates from the word go, and the sky is not always the optimal place to discover that. Even if the gene pool could use a little chlorine, I would rather not make excessive use of the Darwinian nature of the sport. Blue skies, Winsor

17 My Uncle (Sam) paid for it. I was a Trained Professional (tm) after 5 jumps.

Strangely enough, I have a G3R (reserve version of a Wizard) packed in one of my rigs, and a Laser 9 Reserve I haven't been able to fit in anything yet. I'll probably stick it in whatever rig I find to accommodate the ParaFoil 252 I have on hand. Three Raven IIs, and Swift Pluses in 200 and 175 square foot variants, round things out. Regardless of how heavily loaded is the main, I want as much nylon overhead as I can get when I pull silver. Like the joke about the funky British RJ - "How come it has four engines?" "The designers couldn't fit six under the wings." My response to the question "How come you have a 218 reserve with your 99 main?" Is "I didn't have anything bigger handy when I assembled the rig." Blue skies, Winsor

I tend to stick with the basic one-tone dirt alert. In addition to standard Dytters, I have a Skytronic and a Cool and Groovy whatever-it-is on hand, but don't put much stock in the excess complexity. When it comes to safety equipment, simple=good. I set my first tone about 200 feet below breakoff. Thus, if it goes off and I'm still turning points, I'm not paying attention to my altitude. About the only time I set the tone for breakoff is when I'm shooting camera. I'm too far away from the other jumpers to watch their altimeters, and try not to ruin the shot by looking at either my altimeter or the ground (except out of the corner of my eye). If I have a snivel that puts me into the basement, I am acutely aware of it without having a voice in me ear saying "you have ten seconds to live, you have eight seconds to live...." If I don't get slowed down in a very reasonable time frame, I'm yanking handles. Blue skies, Winsor

I have never had a reserve malfunction, but I have packed one. FWIW, the reserve opened exactly as it should have done, but it was operating in excess of its placarded limits for both loading and speed, and thus sustained significant damage. A Strong LoPo Lite 26' conical was deployed at higher than a "low speed" rate of descent with a loading of something around 250#. There were broken lines, and two seams blown out that worked like extra modifications (LeMoigne? Derry slots?), and resulted in a faster than normal arrival. I count it as a "save," and the people at Strong - who were well-versed on the scenario and personnel involved - stated that the canopy had performed above and beyond its specifications. This is but one of the cases that has led me to wish for a "nylon overcast" when I yank silver, regardless of how tiny the main I jump might be. Blue skies, Winsor

QuoteHere in Poland most skydivers say "Ready, Set, Go!", but I heard some say "In, Out!". What other countdowns are there, mainly country-specific? Is it always in English language?Quote In France I saw RW teams practice, and their exit count was "okay." I couldn't figure out how they got the rhythm down, given how some of us stress the count to get the exit right, but a number of teams would simply get in the door, one of them would say "okay," and they would nail the exit. As far as it being English, I don't know. Samuel F. B. Morse came up with OK (--- -.-) as shorthand for "received" after hearing stevedores in New Orleans, who said "aux quais" when checking that something was on the dock, or received. Thus, in a sense "okay" is actually a French expression, so it is apropos that French teams should use it in their count. Quite what "on the dock" has to do with leaving the airplane in a coordinated manner escapes me, but those folks were so good that I take it for granted that they know much that I do not. Blue skies, Winsor

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I have known too many people who came to grief, but would have had an uneventful jump if they had checked their gear one last time before exit. For some years now, I have made an announcement at about 2 minutes before exit (typically at 10,000 feet) in which I ask people to check their straps and handles once more. I should probably throw in pin checks, but people generally do so anyway. Occasionally the Cool People will roll their eyes - particularly if I'm at an unfamiliar dropzone - but they generally humor me (and occasionally find the odd misrouted strap or inaccessible handle on their color-coordinated rigs). If Scotty Carbone or Orly King is on the load, I tend to let them make the announcement. Their approach is somewhat different, but the intent is the same. As far as asking for pin checks goes, I can tell where the closing loop is on the pin by feel, and check it myself routinely. I may ask someone to tuck in my bridle if it feels like it has become unstowed, but i check the pin again thereafter. If I ask for a pin/gear check, I am confident that someone who takes the time to do so will be careful and attentive. Someone just off student status is likely to be overly cautious if anything, and someone with 10,000 jumps will give it a competent inspection. I have jumped all over the world, and I have never been to a DZ where asking for a pin/gear check was a problem, or one where it was treated as superfluous. The only time I have ever been hurt in this sport was when I had a question about a procedure that I did not ask the owner of the equipment I borrowed, since he was busy talking to the pilot at the time. In retrospect, I realize that if I had interrupted him it would not have been considered rude, and I might have avoided a few weeks in a cast. If you have a safety-related issue, bring it up. It greatly improves your future in the sport. Blue skies, Winsor

The procedure was to connect the snap hook of the static line of the person ahead of you in the stick to the left D-ring outboard of the reserve. Holding on to the static line with your hand is a bad plan. Even if things go right, deployment forces may be greater than you can handle, and you have a few of your pals in freefall well below pattern altitude. Not good. If you somehow secure the static line so you can't let go, the static line is strong enough to rip your arm off at the shoulder socket. This scenario also leaves something to be desired. The way to pull it off without getting court-martialed was to come up with some spare static lines from the rigger shed, so you have something to hand the jumpmaster before exit. Since the approach in our unit was for the last man in the stick to hook his reserve below the main of the next guy and RUN for the door (exit delay? what's that?), bodies thus came out of the aircraft like toothpaste from a tube on which someone had stepped - emptying a C-130 in like 5 seconds - and the jumpmaster didn't get a clear look at the offending arrangement. The most that anyone did while I was around was four IIRC. With six, from 1,250 feet with T-10s, the last guy gets maybe an oscillation or two before arriving - if EVERYTHING goes right. If exit altitude is at all low, or if someone has the slightest hesitation, you begin to lose people, so five was considered an operational limit. FWIW, the average IQ in my unit hovered around room-temperature (in Fahrenheit), and daisy-chain jumps were a reflection of limited intellectual acuity mixed with an excess of testosterone (and God knows what else). The rate of "death by misadventure" amongst my comrades was simply horrendous. Go ahead and try it if you're game, but be advised that, if you make a habit of it, it is not so much a question of IF as WHEN and HOW BAD. All the way, Winsor