winsor

What you said was; "If spotting for the release point, then separation would have the same effect." That is wrong. My point is that what you said displays a fundamental lack of comprehension. Rather than discuss it here, the most effective way for you to come up to speed is to review some of the very good material covering the subject. It's out there and available. As I have said before, physics is not subject to solution by quorum. What's to debate? I do not wish to hurt your feelings. I would like it if you would do your homework before holding forth on this subject. Blue skies, Winsor

If you're running stock pipes on your motorcycle, I highly recommend upgrading to a good set of aftermarket pipes, all the difference in the world! My Harley has had straight pipes since I put it together. My last ringding had stock pipes, but that was pretty much a function of its peculiar geometry. The RZ-500 runs the exhaust pipes from the rear two cylinders (it basically has siamese engines) under the seat (hot roasted nuts are rumored to be standard equipment), and anything afterrmarket tended to be race-team proprietary. Then again, the chambers that came with it were pretty impressive, and if you want a hell of a lot more than 110 horsepower on a

Blue Skies, Black Death

If spotting for the release point, then separation would have the same effect. No. Spotting is a three-dimensional problem, but separation is four-dimensional. For spotting you only need to know where, but for separation when is important. It has been done to death. Please review enough of the readily available materials that it sinks in, since it is important for safety and you don't quite get it. Blue skies, Winsor

Winds aloft have more of an effect on spotting than separation. Check out John Kallend's simulation to see what I mean. Blue skies, Winsor

So students are really a different category on this subject. Grounding them for 30 days puts them out of currency and perhaps gives them too much time to dwell on the negative. If the instructor feels it was a "forgiveable" fuckup, maybe better to sit them one or two weeks and then get them back in the air? For the rest of us, 30 days seems like a good chance to reflect. If you're a student and aren't paying enough attention to saving your life to stay out of CYPRES territory, maybe 30 days is appropriate to contemplate if this pastime is really your cup of tea. Screw currency - if you have a CYPRES fire as a student, you might be well advised to start from scratch (if you return at all). There are a couple of very basic principles that you appear to have missed on this go-around. Blue skies, Winsor

I doubt that Elsinore is enforcing this rule so it wouldn't take much to drive down the street and jump there. I have been impressed with how well the S&TA network can work with things like this. Some time back someone misbehaved at Raeford, and Gene Paul Thacker grounded the hell out of him. Knowing that all he had to do was find another drop zone, he said fine and left. It turns out that he was unable to get in the air at Chester, North Raleigh or Barnwell, since the principals there checked the guy's bona fides before letting him jump. The bottom line was that if Gene Paul says you're grounded, you're grounded. There may be competition between DZs on one level, but there tends to be cooperation on an operational basis. Even if two DZs are competing fiercely for business, my experience is that the word of the S&TA at one is taken seriously by the other. If a call comes in regarding a questionable jumper, information provided that they are an incident waiting to happen is taken seriously. Some things slip through the cracks, but this sport is a particularly small community and you tend to earn the reputation that follows you around. Blue skies, Winsor

Quote>If you have a CYPRES fire, you are on free time for the rest of your life. I'd have to disagree with that. There are people who pull low because they are trying to avoid someone above them and have a cypres fire. An incident which would have ordinarily resulted in nothing more than an argument over better tracking now becomes a 'cypres save.Quote The thread is primarily about CYPRES fires due to loss of altitude awareness, and I limited my comments to those who had their skydive interrupted by a self-actuated reserve without so specifying. My bad. Sure, someone fighting a mal so their CYPRES just beat their reserve pull or someone with a snivel that took them into CYPRES terrirory fall into another category. I just have images of the footage at the beginning of Tom Sanders' WFFC tape in mind. People who think "keep pulling handles 'til your goggles fill with blood" is just a clever saying are the ones who concern me. The documented cases where people chopped and went back into freefall, wishing to be stable when the CYPRES activated, really worry me. I think the CYPRES is terrific. I have 4 of them. I do not, however, consider the system a panacea, and do not expect the system to save my ass if I am not heads-up enough to do so myself (I do hope it does, but...). The same survival policy that applies to cheesy horror movies is good for skydiving: stay the hell out of the basement! Blue skies, Winsor

Why aren't there mandatory suspensions for other accidents which can result in death? i.e. making a low turn..? If you make a low turn and pull it off, good on you. The mandatory suspension from not pulling it off is typically enforced by the policies of the ICU, not the S&TA. Sometimes the next skydive made after a botched low turn is an ash dive. Check out the fatalities page if you think I'm being overdramatic. 30 days on the ground is a minor inconvenience compared to the results if you didn't have the CYPRES handy. I am not impressed by people who are so cavalier about the effects of loss of altitude awareness. At least half the time I jump without an AAD. IMHO, if you wouldn't leave the plane without an AAD, you might give some thought as to how much responsibility you really accept for the outcome of the skydive. Blue skies, Winsor

I'm a Chemical Engineer, not a homemaker. I look at it from the standpoint of surfactant efficacy, dye migration, etc.. In general, Skymama's advice is sound. Something color-safe like Cheer in cold water allows a greater range of compatibility between colors. Blue skies, Winsor

Okay, there are some basic lines that you shouldn't cross if you want things to come out satisfactorily. Red and warm-colored things should be washed separately. Cold/cold, no bleach. Whites do best separately as well. Bleach or bleach substitute can't hurt, and raising the temperature is okay, too. Jeans and dark fabrics should be separated. Cold/cold is fine, no bleach. Greasy or seriously grimy duds should be washed separately. I break the rest down to cool colors and khaki/tan/yellow loads. Cold/cold, no bleach. Underwear and socks go in these (elastic likes cool temperatures). Since I have enough clothing to go a couple of months or more without doing laundry, I can usually put together full loads of each type (don't overload - it defeats the purpose). With a family, it takes a LOT less time to build up a sufficient backlog. Blue skies, Winsor

The shit that I've seen happen in this sport often requires the services of a coroner. A CYPRES fire changes the outcome from a closed-casket funeral to a repack and a NSTIWTIWGTD story. If you have a CYPRES fire, you are on free time for the rest of your life. You played Russian Roulette, got the chamber with the cartridge - and it was a dud. If you had a CYPRES fire because of inattention, you should likely take up another hobby. Letting you back on the airplane at all, even after 30 days, is an act of consummate generosity. Sending you somewhere that you can have fun without so great a likelihood of killing yourself is doing you a massive favor. Everyone is not cut out for this sport. It is not, and should not be considered, mainstream. The CYPRES has somewhat reduced the Darwinian nature of the sport (though I think the "Watch This!" landings have picked up much of the slack), but having a mechanical gizmo change your life expectancy from 6 seconds to decades is hardly a non-event. I would suggest an instant 30 day grounding and an attitude review by a board before reinstatement - if you can detail the series of grave errors that led up to the incident and have a game plan to ensure that it never happens again you are subject to reinstatement; if you say "I did nothing wrong," the grounding becomes permanent. Blue skies, Winsor

At first I thought the subject was like ice racing - talk about a serious sport! As far as winter riding goes, I have been a 12-month rider since the late '60s. I figure any conditions in which I would ski I would ride. Needless to say, in Northern Illinois or Massachusetts in the dead of winter the trick is to ensure you don't have an inch of skin exposed. With a snowmobile suit, full-face helmet with a throat-coat, Hippo Hands over the controls and so forth it becomes quite doable. I once went into a bank without thinking about it, and think the guard came close to peeing on himself before I got the helmet off (it was around 0F, so I left it on for warmth when outside). I found an O2 mask with appropriate tubing was necessary in really serious cold to keep the visor from turning into a block of ice. Running a step or two hotter on the plugs and inhibiting the cooling on the engine is a good idea, as well. Blue skies, Winsor

Bush may be a problem, but a pair of lawyers is anything but a solution. We had not endorsed Bush previously. We were, of course, appalled by the choice of Kerry as his opponent (though not surprised that it should be someone of his ilk).

Okay, from a skydiving standpoint I see two key issues. 1) I don't want to see a good DZ shut down because someone shows up positive on a tox screen after an incident. The pressure could come from either litigation or such organizations as the DEA; the relative legality of the intoxicant being significant only in the case of the latter. 2) There are people with whom I won't jump because I consider them a threat to my safety and well-being. Being under the influence is certainly a factor, but the cases where I begged off and an intoxicant was involved were where aggression and bad judgment were present along with indications of alcohol use. I have jumped with people who had red eyes and an illegal smile, but was confident that they were well in tune with their responses in that condition. I really don't know about people doing much else, but if someone was behaving like a clumsy dullard such that I found it alarming, I wouldn't be reassured if they had a prescription for whatever induced their stupidity. Thus, jumping under the influence is a bad idea from the standpoint of the health of the DZ. Scratching from a load where someone is under the influence is something with which I agree and which I have done. Blue skies, Winsor

First grab at silver was from a pilot chute in the burble. I got a handful of boogie tags, which impeded my pull. When I looked to deliberately pull with nothing in the way, I dipped a shoulder and the main opened at just under 2,000'. IIRC, I said "wow!" and went up for another jump. I keep my handles completely in the clear these days. First reserve ride was when I couldn't find a deployment handle. Tried twice and went straight for silver. 26' conical at like 1,900 feet. I was too busy using my rusty round accuracy skills to put it into a big, open area to dwell on it much. I think my reaction was pretty much "cool!" I dropped the rig off for a repack, grabbed my other rig manifested for another load. First malfunction with a cutaway was a tension knot on dacron lines. I took a look at whatever was causing my turn, decided to go to Plan B, grabbed one handle per hand and fired the reserve when the main cleared. Under a square this time at well over 2,500 feet (I was jumping camera), and I used a spare rig for the rest of the day. All in all, the only reserve ride that was at all dramatic was one where I had a steering line hung up on my altimeter/left hand. I had a nasty landing, hurt my right foot, and jumped my spare rig for the rest of the weekend. Freaked out? Not really. There have been a couple of times that I was VERY UNHAPPY, but in general it was pretty straightforward. Blue skies, Winsor

Every couple of years there is a big to-do about some new and more sinister drug that is unlike anything that came before. Crack, basically a trademarked process to produce good old freebase cocaine, is no different. I am not saying that any of it is good for you. I am saying that, regardless of it's perceived badness, it is not WORSE in the long run than booze and tobacco. As with alcohol, the cure (prohibition/stupid drug laws) is worse than the disease, dreadful though that may be. Regardless of the relative legality, I don't touch any of it. I am officially on the sidelines. Blue skies, Winsor

A) If it isn't worse than tobacco or alcohol, legalize it. B) NOTHING is worse than tobacco or alcohol. Could you explain how Nothing is worse then tobacco and alcohol. I don't quite understand how that is true. As far as addictions go, there is little to hold a candle to either of our socially acceptable recreational drugs. As far as the modes by which the two kill, they have to be among the nastiest ways to die I have witnessed. Destroying the brain, liver and sundry other systems in the case of alcohol, and destroying the lungs and other organs to which cancer has metasticized in the case of tobacco is about as bad as it gets. Alcohol gets high marks for its capacity to ruin one's life - marriages, families in general, jobs, freedom, etc. - and results in a phenomenal rate of crippling injury and death from incidents as the result of diminished capacity. Compared to alcohol, heroin is like a gift from God (though it sucks out loud in its own right). Blue skies, Winsor

A) If it isn't worse than tobacco or alcohol, legalize it. B) NOTHING is worse than tobacco or alcohol.

LSD is active in minute quantities, so it is a bitch to dose accurately, and a variety of approaches have been taken over the years. A "standard dose" in the bad old days was 250 mikes, so a "four way" hit was 1 milligram. Put another way, a small matchhead of pute LSD 25 is sufficient to put a platoon out of commission for 12 hours. One of the first approaches was to prepare a standard solution (with dye, so it was identifiable) and apply a drop containing 250 mikes or thereabouts to a sugar cube, thus making it manageable. Later on, a standard solution was applied to absorbent paper, making "blotter" acid. An approach that became common by the '70s was to prepare LSD with gelatine, which then could be dried into a thin sheet of uniform thickness and cut into small pieces. A gram of LSD 25 could then be split up into 4,000 (more or less, depending upon the whim of the manufacturer) thin, translucent rectangular pieces of gelatine with a standardized potency. This was, of course, what is known as "windowpane" acid. As I understand, it it still around, but blotter is more common and tablets are relatively rare. Blue skies, Winsor

I used to jump with Hells Angels from the Trois Rivieres Chapter at Farnham, PQ. One guy had his colors on the bottom of his canopy - VERY professionally done. I have known Angels (and a variety of other outlaw bikers) over the years, but have had no urge to wear colors (though the offer has been made). For one thing, I'll be damned if I'll be anybody's prospect. For another, the pack mentality is a little too similar to the herd mentality for my taste. I have had a Hog for decades; my Hardtail Wide-Glide Shovelhead cannot be confused with a yuppie bike. If I'm in Darth Vader leathers or wearing denim and sneakers is my choice - I really couldn't care less what wannabes think. None of my biker trash pals have ever given me shit for my choice of riding apparel; if anything they have found it amusing. Just because you don't like outlaw bikers, you shouldn't underestimate them. There are a few ringers amongst them. Blue skies, Winsor

I had to dodge some kind of hawk/eagle after opening under my FX99. I just missed nailing it with my canopy, and it did some very startled-looking aerobatics as I whooshed past. I'm not sure how my canopy would have flown with a big, weirded-out bird being part of its planform, and I'm glad I didn't have to find out. Blue skies, Winsor

Just for fun, this is my take on the subject from about 8 years ago on wreckdot ---------------------------------------------------- How to deal with the butterflies when jumping? If you're a real American, the answer should be glaringly obvious. Drugs. "Compoz - that little gentle blue pill," as I recall, is good for situations ranging from asking for a raise to facing a firing squad. Quaaludes would be good if they didn't lower your odds of finding a given handle to roughly 50%. Avoid the goofballs in general. Acid can either have you freaked out by the garish jumpsuit colors, or too into groundrush to pull ("the people look like ants - no, those are ants - far out!"). Bad choice. Marijuana is too disorienting for novice users, but should be good for dyed in the wool (baa) stoners. Do a few bongs before the jump, and you'll be too busy wolfing down SuzyQ's and Twinkies on the ride to altitude to worry about the jump. Short term memory loss makes getting off Level 1 tough, though: "You want to post dive that last jump while it's still fresh?" "Jump? What jump?" Narcotics do a good job at changing the relative meaning of dying, but nodding off at pull time is a problem. Demerol seems like a good choice for skygods who just might not pull off that next hook turn. If you're likely to break every bone in your body, being chock full of painkillers to begin with seems like a wise prophylactic measure. Opiates don't impair the coordination of experienced users, but they appear damned near as addictive as tobacco, so watch it! Cocaine seems to be popular with some of the more flamboyant members of the community, but I'm not sure it's the way to go. Stuff's nearly as expensive as skydiving, according to what I hear. The traditional approach is, of course, liquid courage. You'll hear people singing out the quantity of barley pop necessary to perform a given feat for the first time - typically "case of beer!" You wonder how folks summon the nerve to do most of the careening around the sky you see at any boogie? Easy! They're shitfac*d! With the level of alcoholism in the sport, there are a few people one should not jump with if they don't have booze on their breath, since they have Gold Wings but less than enough for an A-License sober, and DT's interfere with their performance. If you're into natural mind-bending chemicals, testosterone has kept the Airborne in business for 60 some-odd years (hey, it worked for me). For those in the audience who want to do it the hard way (after all, reality IS nothing but a crutch for people who can't handle drugs), the way to deal with anxiety is intense drill. Becoming one with the kinesthetics of the experience makes the mechanics comfortable and obvious. Like a kata prepares the student to instantly react to the demands of sparring, intensive practice and preparation make each step of the jump familiar and deliberate. The way to get to the door with confidence is the same as the directions to Carnagie Hall: practice! Going through every step in the jump until there is no doubt at any time what proper procedure is will ensure success, and confidence will follow. Be assured that if you KNOW and FOLLOW procedures, your safety is as close to guaranteed as anything in this life.

I hate to break it to you, but the hardest drug out there is alcohol. Ask a coroner how they can tell if someone was addicted to alcohol or narcotics. They have to do a tox screen on the narcotic addict (assuming they weren't punching holes in themselves, and a lot of addicts avoid needles), but the drunk will show effects on the organs that are visible across the room. Have you ever heard of "wet-brain?" There is no narcotic equivalent, but with good old alcohol it is a reality. Removing the intoxicant from the scene in the case of substances you appear to consider "hard drugs" can result in full recovery if someone lives an otherwise healthy lifestyle. With alcohol the damage is very often permanent and debilitating. Nicotine is a nastier addiction to break than narcotics. A narcotic jones makes one feel lousy, but a nicotine jones makes one feel truly evil. People who have been addicted to both report more trouble giving up Marlboros than Heroin (for real). I don't recommend (or take) any of it, but for someone who drinks to criticize ANY drug is a truly uninformed standpoint. If you think drugs are bad (you may well be right), you would do well to avoid alcohol and tobacco like the plague. They are without a doubt the worst of the lot. Blue skies, Winsor

E) None of the above.