winsor

Your stance is unworthy of debate. I would no sooner attempt to sway your conviction than I would engage in a serious theological discussion with a Moonie. I find the propensity of ovine personalities to inflict their insecurities upon others to be roundly repellent, and will not lower myself to dissuade them of such. I do not presume to impose limitations upon you. You support limitations upon my freedom consistent with your ignorance. Shame on you.

Bull shit. Thus speaks the voice of ignorance. You have the basis for a standpoint regarding parachutes, and none at all for firearms. If you are unfit to own firearms, that's your problem - so long as you eschew any contact with them. I do, however, begrudge you the right to inflict your limitations upon me. Speak not of what you know not. Blue skies, Winsor

Margo Timmons has it all over Lou Reed as a singer, genius though Lou is. Blue skies, Winsor

Toronto

A truncation of weblogging, where someone uses a site to post a web log. It appears to be all the rage. Blue skies, Winsor

My last cigarette was on 25 May 1990. Nicotine is a tougher addiction to kick than narcotics (uh, according to something I read somewhere). Alcohol, barbiturates and some tranq's are the worst addictions to kick in the sense that cold-turkey withdrawal can prove fatal. Blue skies, Winsor

Wonder if he'll use that in his campaign "It's like a thousand points of light." "More like billions and billions, sir." "Whatever."

If you need them, you can't fly. Blue skies, Winsor - I feel much the same about my canopy. Of course - you, like I, have an airplane....

I can drive my van just fine, but the power steering makes it easier. So why not make skydiving easier? Let's not make the newbies have to suffer like we did learning I didn't say they weren't worthwhile, nor did I say that one shouldn't use them. I'm pretty sure I have two or three jumpsuits with booties. I would, however, suggest making enough skydives with a minimum of accessories (say T-shirt, shorts and footgear) to make any of the nifty features of your jumpsuit nothing more than icing on the cake. Just because someone has them doesn't mean they NEED them. Semantics rears its ugly head.... Blue skies, Winsor

So long as the weather is good and you can get on enough loads, it should be no problem. I banged out 28 at one of Mike Mullins' Boogie 'til ya Puke events (thanks Mike!) with my own pack jobs (I pack kinda fast), so I can guarantee it's possible. Blue skies, Winsor

If you need them, you can't fly. Blue skies, Winsor

He knew the rules and he made his choices. Regardless of whether there is a right or wrong, there are certainly consequences. He was fully aware of the consequences if he got caught, and he bet the ranch that he wouldn't get caught. He got caught. End of story. I wish he had made different decisions, but his decisions were clear and binding. Shoeless Joe, OTOH, should be inducted into Cooperstown. He got screwed. Blue skies, Winsor

Unsafe because a minor error of judgement or technique can, and routinely does, result in grievous injury or death. If you have to bat a thousand, it is NOT safe. NOBODY bats a thousand. Blue skies, black death, Winsor

This is like the chicken and the egg. Neither of us can say what came first, but you are right that each side gets defensive because of the actions of the other. Both sides are currently in losing and in danger of losing things that are of value to them. Thus, the only sensible thing is rational discussion and compromise. Compromise is the hallmark of mediocrity. If ignorance is truly bliss, the life of an antigunner must be like a continuous orgasm. If it is okay for the Government to be armed, I contend that, as a taxpayer and a Citizen, I AM the Government. He who pays, says. So long as my tax dollars are footing the bill, I insist upon calling the shots. I do not require any officially assigned babysitters to do my thinking for me, and possess expertise in the matter of firearms that only a handful on government payrolls can match - none of them in the Legislature. Anyone who cannot be trusted with a loaded firearm cannot be trusted, and a man sees in others what he knows of himself. If someone doesn't trust the citizenry with armament, he has clearly defined his lack of trustworthiness. Blue skies, Winsor

Tolouse le Truck

You don't have an entry for my category. My dilemma is to vote for him or throw away a vote on whoever runs on the Libertarian ticket. If he signs renewal of the firearms ban, I'm going Libertarian. I will die of old age before voting for a Democrat, and at this point the only thing dubya has going for him is that he might keep a Democrat out of office. I'm wildly unimpressed with any of the options (as usual). Blue skies, Winsor

How many skydivers do you know that have this understanding? Actually, rather a few - the sport is rife with techies. In most technical degree programs Physics 101 or its equivalent is a Freshman course. Anybody with an Bachelor of Science degree should have covered this material at some time early in their educational curriculum (if not in High School). I suppose I learned this stuff enough decades ago that I really don't remember what it's like not to understand it, and don't have much patience for people who demonstrate ignorance of things that I assume are simple. Dr. Ralph Heller, a professor at my alma mater, was reputed to have once told a Freshman class "I've been teaching this subject for thirty five years - you should understand it by now!" His students weren't amused, but I know how he felt. Blue skies, Winsor

Yes. Good. Are we agreed that if the winds at exit altitude (13,000 ft) are say 50 kts, and they drop to 0 kts at 5000 ft. you cannot calculate exit seperation based purely on airspeed? While the balloon example shows that ground speed counts for jack shit when it comes to seperation, the space ball example shows that air speed is not the answer either. I just hope that people will take the time to figure out what is going on. Dave I hope you include yourself among the people who need to take the time to figure out what is going on. We are not agreed that you cannot calculate exit separation based purely on airspeed, so long as you can calculate the exit speed relative to the airmass at opening altitude. If all you have is exit airspeed and groundspeed, you can still make a good estimate of an appropriate exit interval that will ensure horizontal separation between exit and opening altitude. A clear understanding of the kinematics involved is pivotal, but apparently elusive. Blue skies, Winsor

Errr... does that not mean they will be moving towards each other at 60 kts? Yes.

If you criticized the racist agenda of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with equal enthusiasm I might pay attention. As it is, I get the impression that "Progressives" are unable to distinguish between an underdog and a loser. Blue skies, Winsor

I should not have implied that there was any change to the approach to spotting on the basis of my treatise on the subject (or Fred Leslie's or John Kallend's, for that matter), since that wasn't the point. Given the tools that are available to a jump pilot, ground speed gives the only measure that is useful for determining separation at opening, and I don't know anyone who does a better job - regardless of how they go about it. I considered a response of "okay, that's legitimate" to the theory behind the physical models that we use to be as close to a change of standpoint as I meant to convey. Up until that point, there was no suggestion that any other model had merit. I am by constitution a semanticist, and do make a distinction between theory and practice. For theory I'll turn to Doctors Leslie and Kallend, but in practice nobody is better than Mike Mullins. It will be a cold day in hell that I presume to tell Mike Mullins how to fly an airplane.... Blue skies, Winsor

For a second, I thought we were going to get through a separation thread without seeing this falsehood. The 45 degree rule doesn't/can't work. I..... see hahahaa care to elaborate? Sure thing. When you step out the door you are subject to two effects that come to mind - gravity and wind resistance. Gravity applies a constant force in the down direction, and wind resistance applies a force proportional to the square of airspeed in a direction opposite airspeed. Right out the door airspeed is often close to terminal, so you can expect almost 1 g of acceleration directly aft from wind resistance (drag); add to that orthogonal (right angle) acceleration downward, and it turns out you follow close to a 45 degree path out of the door. Thus, the angle of departure is a poor parameter upon which to base exit timing. Bill's suggestion that 7 seconds to start with from an Otter is a minimum between groups is a good one - I'm prone to count off 5 seconds before climb-out. BTW, if you're putting out a series of solos who can be trusted to stick to their column of air, you can shorten it up significantly. While playing Army, we used to hook our reserve under the main of the guy closer to the door and run out. We could clear out a C-130 like it was a tube of toothpaste that got stepped on. In retrospect that was none too fucking bright, but it sure was fun. Blue skies, Winsor

If they don't send me back to Serbia first, I'll be there.

You really don't get it, and it is frightening to note how consistently and insistently wide of the mark you are. In the years that I taught Physics I don't think I had a student who was so opposed to figuring it out, so I don't know what approach is likely to get through. I'm not sure to what I should attribute this intransigence. Given your writing I doubt if stupidity is the issue, so my guess is some combination of ignorance and denial. In this sport, ignorance and denial can be fatal singly and even more so in combination. A big problem is that someone else's ignorance and denial may get ME killed, and I'm not okay with that. To a certain extent I don't mind if people don't understand the theory as long as their practice is safe. I do, however, draw the line when people put forth comic-book physics to explain their decisions. Perhaps you're playing Devil's Advocate, with the intent of putting to rest some common misconceptions, though I doubt it. When all is said and done, people who don't understand lose track of which model was valid and which one was tripe, so it tends to be a bad approach. There are plenty of people in the sport with a thorough understanding of the physics of skydiving. A simple litmus test is to see if they agree with your arguments put forth in this thread - if they do, they're clueless. Blue skies, Winsor

So what exactly is the minimum and should it be modified based on group sizes? For a four-way RW formation that breaks off at 3,500 and deploys at 2,500, given the results of tracking contests it is conceivable that a radical tracker could get nearly 600 ft. from the center of the formation by pull time (average 100 fps for 6 seconds). If you cut that in half for an average recreational jumper, and double it to get the results of people from two groups flying toward each other, you have the same 600 feet. Figure an 80 knot TAS jumprun, which gives you something like 130 fps. Five seconds separation is 650 feet, which can have people from subsequent groups opening in each other's faces - if not quite hitting each other in freefall. If your group size is larger and you're tracking longer, you'd best increase your delay between groups. This assumes that neither group was sliding around, of course. Going from bellyfliers to head-downers you don't need quite as much delay in general, since the fast fallers get separation from their increased throw (it's significant if there is a great difference in fall rates). If your airplane is slower, bump up the times accordingly; out of the Jet you have separation whether you like it or not. Oh, and the groundspeed part of the deal? If you have enough headwind to keep you in "green light territory" longer (lower groundspeed), use the extra time on target to get extra separation between groups. More is better. It's better to land out than to risk freefall or canopy collisions. It's a lot easier to plan for a safe off-DZ landing than to hope that you either don't collide or survive the collision. So my personal minimum is like 5 seconds between RW groups, maybe a solid 3 before the first head-downers should follow. If we're doing RW 12-ways in succession, an 8 to 10 second delay is not a bad idea for starts. If you have more time, use it. Blue skies, Winsor