winsor

69

Okay, so I wasn´t paying attention....

I've had my eye on a small 22 cal. stainless revolver made by Taurus. I think it is nine shot. Anyone have in opinions on it? I would rather have a kit gun made by S&W, but these are no longer made and are expensive, when you do find a used one. Thanks,....Steve1 I have a blued Model 94 Taurus (their stainless models work just as well) with a 4" bbl, and I like it a lot. I am very impressed with the strides Taurus has made in the quality department since they came on the scene, and this is just one example. Blue skies, Winsor

Humans have more rights than dogs. With that we believe that sometimes it's okay to take a life, and sometimes it happens without intent and the person is not held to the same level of punishment. Don´t think of it as punishment so much as "death therapy" and you won´t have so much trouble with the concept. Blue skies, Winsor

I won´t go so far as to say that it was a good film, but I did enjoy the hell out of it. In all fairness, there is no greater a percentage of bullshit than in most other Hollywood offerings but it is subject to a fatal flaw - the people who don´t skydive don´t generally find it a compelling subject, and the people who do can´t get past all the groaners. There is a warped kind of accuracy to it, despite all the bullshit. Blue skies, Winsor

I think this has been around on the GA aircraft for about 10 years now. BillVon? Quade? Anyone else know for sure when they started putting these on? I know this isn't new to this year. That's for sure. The first patent for such a system (not rocket, though) dates to about 1935. The predictions that everyone would have one within 10 years accompanied the news release back then. Blue skies, Winsor

The guy I got it from is the DZO and the Serbian equivalent of a Master Rigger. I probably have as many Para Commander class canopy jumps as any of them, and it is not a lack of experience on anyone´s part per se. The problems are that there is no apparent provision for stowing the lines and that there is no mechanism to keep the canopy in the sleeve until after line stretch. Given some of the Russian skydiving hardware I have seen, such as the drogue-delay system for high-speed exits, I am not assured that anything similar to conventional line-stows with sleeve-locking are part of the deal. I will probably pack it D-bagged in my biggest Wonderhog or whatever, since I´ve had great luck with that approach and the UT-15 has had nothing but rave reviews from everyone I know who has jumped one. It is mostly a matter of curiosity that I ask how it packed in the rig in which it now sits, since it is anything but obvious. Blue skies, Winsor

Disorder | Rating Paranoid: Low Schizoid: Low Schizotypal: Low Antisocial: Low Borderline: Low Histrionic: Low Narcissistic: Low Avoidant: Low Dependent: Low Obsessive-Compulsive: Low

I just picked up a 1979 UT-15, which is the Russian variant on the Para Commander theme. Though I expect to jump it after putting it in some kind of modern configuration rig (BOC Wonderhog or whatever), I'm somewhat baffled by the apparent lack of line stows in the rig in which it came. The deployment sleeve is nylon, going against the conventional wisdom that nylon vs. nylon leads to burns. At the bottom of the sleeve there is not the usual flap with grommets, but merely elastic around the hem. In any event, I would appreciate input from anyone who knows how this system worked when set up. It sure isn't obvious to me.

If you're low, the plane is on fire and the pilot says "get out," pull silver as you clear the tail. You can survive a LOW exit (~200 ft.) if you get nylon out at the first possible moment; this may not be the case if you put any priority ahead of survival. Blue skies, Winsor

Like with a variety of companies, the vintage of the product has a lot to do with what you can expect of its quality. Some companies once turned out a beautiful product but have fallen on hard times and now make junk, others started out making cheap products and have graduated to the manufacture of world-class high-end products. Rossi is now, to the best of my knowledge, owned by Taurus. Taurus is one of the companies that started out making cheap S&W copies, and has discovered the benefits of high-quality manufacturing, so an old Taurus is not on a par with the current offerings. I have a couple of Model 92 Rossis (Winchester clones) that I like very much, but none of their revolvers. If the Taurus management has mandated any of their quality initiatives, I expect that Rossi pistols should be a good value. FWIW, the semantic distinction between "revolver" and "pistol" is singularly pretentious. It's like that Basic Training tripe that seeks to distinguish between a "weapon" and a "gun;" so why didn't they call an M-60 a "machine weapon?" A Louisville Slugger makes a fine weapon, and an M-16 falls nicely into the gun category. A revolver is a pistol, but a pistol is not necessarily a pistol. Handgun, sidearm, pistol, etc. - a rose by any other name.... Blue skies, Winsor

What's your point Bill? You mean they steal them from the military that doesn't have any? They were all destroyed - right? Hell, no! We still have humploads!

Am I alone when I think that chopping a canopy with your finger caught in the steering-line could be a painful exercise (taking the term 'chopping' a bit literally) I assure you, it is. On a camera jump about 10 years ago, I had a lineover due to a partially corrected botched pack job. Waffling forward in a slow turn, I decided to try to clear it by burying the toggles and letting them up briskly. Bad idea - it turns out that leaving the toggles stowed and hauling down on the risers on the affected side is the hot tip. When I let the toggles up briskly, the left (affected side) steering line did not retract immediately, leaving a loop. When the line did snap taut, it threw a half-hitch around my left hand above my altimeter, going between the base of my thumb and my ring finger. I had lost my Zak knife in an orange blur on the previous dive, and thus had no way to cut the 1000# microline lashed around my hand, and was now spinning wildly on my back. Sometime in the third rotation I quit trying to clear the line and cut it away. In order to avoid having fingers snipped off by the steering line I effected a gunslinger cutaway, pulling both handles at once. The footage shows the freebag barely clearing the trash as the two spun past each other. After kicking out of four line twists my goal was simply to stay alive, so I left the steering line attached to my hand with my trashed main trailing behind. Because I couldn't flare properly with all that drag, I arrived very solidly indeed. The nerve damage sustained by my left ring finger has mostly recovered, and I can feel with that fingertip again. I try to have two hook knives on my person on every skydive these days. It's like a gun - it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, since if you do need it you need it badly, and if you don't have it you may never need it again. Blue skies, Winsor

Try to follow me quade. Some people hate guns in all their forms and uses. They want guns gone forever (we'll ignore how impossible that is for now). However, since they can't attain their goal immediately, they are going after everything one piece at a time: CCW, AWB, .50 cal bans, certain hunting seasons, etc. They are also going after shooting ranges because of some half-assed junk science threat of lead (they also went after lead shot in shotgun shells with no evidnece of harm done by the shot). So, if you want to trust the government to go after people, should you not tell them what they CAN do to avoid lawsuits? Why not have the state version of the EPA tell them what they can do to avoid harm, and as long as they do it, tell them they won't be sued? Does this principle apply across the board? If, say, an airport follows all FAA regulations and recommendations, should it be exempt from lawsuits by local residents complaining about noise? Hell yes!

Your score in the FHM Purity Test is: 171 125-174 Well done, you are above average. You’re a mild pervert with a sexual history that puts most of your friends to shame. That said, if it’s entry into the outer limits of sexual depravity that you want, then you’d better keep trying. Buy more rubber products for a start.

Speedy Gonzales sings the key part of "La Cucaracha" in one episode: "marijuana par fumar..."

I have a Jason refractor and some kind of Jason reflector. I'm unclear on the nomenclature, so I voted for the first (and likely cheapest) reflector category. Starry skies, Winsor

If you consider that every skydiving discipline can be seen as a set of lifesaving skills, it's all good. Freefly is a marvelous skillset for an RW jumper to have up his sleeve. Whether tracking steeply to a big formation on your back so you keep your eyes forward, or being stable in the position in which you're thrown if a formation funnels, getting comfortable with all the elements of freeflying can only improve your abilities as a bellyflier. Since a nice, stable belly to earth body position is conducive to good openings at pull time, being able to get into a solid RW position NOW is a skill that can only serve to make the next jump that much more likely for a freeflier. There are many positions that are just fine for freeflying, but having bellyflying kinesthetics wired can save your ass. Then you have CRW. Whether it is simply bumping end cells or doing stacks and downplanes, I think low-time jumpers should take the time to fly canopies together with seasoned CRW dogs at the earliest possible opportunity. A jumper who has done a lot of CRW and finds himself in formation with another canopy on short final may just yell "Hi, Tommy!" and land. The people who react by burying a toggle and impacting in the middle of a panic turn are usually those who have never flown in close proximity with another canopy. Style? Learning to fly in an unstable body position is good for developing an intimate feel for your personal column of air and learning to use it to your benefit. Instability is the handmaiden of maneuverability, and a style series is all about riding the ragged edge of controllability. Accuracy? When you have to land somewhere with no outs, being adept at accuracy means never having to say you're sorry. Just because your home DZ is somewhere without a tree within 100 miles doesn't mean you won't ever find yourself low over a place with only a few places where it's possible to land without injury. If you have shot accuracy repeatedly, you are more likely to be able to go into the mode and focus on doing what you have done so many times before. If all you know how to do is go for 100 meter turf-surfs, you're screwed. If you have the opportunity to do something new, particularly if it is done with someone who is very good at it, by all means do so. You never know when you might need that extra skill that you added to your bag of tricks. Blue skies, Winsor

1:1 is consistent with what I've seen of the Golden Knights tracking demonstrations. IIRC it is called a "diamond track," and results in two smoke trails crossing at about a right angle, which indicates 1:1 in an established track for both jumpers. Blue skies, Winsor

Remember the Maine!

Let's see, I picked "Winsor" because, uh, my name is Winsor. The Avatar, however, is "Snappy Sammy Smoot" as drawn by Skip Williamson. I couldn't find "Coochie Cootie" by Robert Williams, and everything by Robert Crumb has been done to death (Mr. Natural, Keep on Truckin', etc.). Blue skies, Winsor

Kennedy wasn't there. Joanne was driving away from the Senator, to keep the police from discovering them together. He knew the island, she didn't. She took a wrong turn and drowned. The rest is all spin. Blue skies, shallow water, Winsor

Statistically speaking, they would be right. This has been thrashed unmercifully, but the short form response is: bullshit.

Money is analog - you would not say "I have seventeen money," so you have less money. Currency is digital - you have fewer dollars. The grammatical principle applies. Blue skies, Winsor

When someone prangs an airplane, the last transmission is usually on the order of "oh, fuck!," and I suspect the reaction while skydiving is often the same. Very often, when facing a near death experience in an endeavor in which one is well trained, one is very busy executing Procedure A, Procedure B, Procedure C and so forth until the clock runs out, and there is no real awareness of how close one came until later - assuming one survives. I have seen people screw with mals too long, and execute emergency procedures too low to be useful. My impression is that at least some of these people were working under the impression that they were "saving their life" until their life ended. I have come an RCH shy of dying on a number of occasions, and my reaction has varied. None of the options in the poll covers my reaction to imminent death. Blue skies, Winsor