NSEMN8R

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Posts posted by NSEMN8R

  1. My plane is a '57 182A with a Horton Stol Kit. With the original 0-470, I get from 600 msl to 10000 msl in about 25 minutes and we burn about 8 gallons per load. When I'm cruising at 23 squared I indicate about 120kts and I'm burning about 11gph.

    I just sent it in for the 280hp pponk upgrade. Can anyone who's had this done give me an idea what I can expect for cruise and climb performance and fuel burn when it comes back?

  2. I got a call from a Hospice nurse today. They have a patient that's really close to dying of lung cancer and she really wants to make a jump before she goes. She can only be without her o2 bottle for a few minutes at a time. Would you jump her?

  5. pchapman

    TomN.'s idea is an interesting scenario, and I guess one that has actually happened?!

    But in this case with the drogue apparently ripping off completely, one doesn't need stray lines during packing to be the explanation for a line dropping down and catching the handle. It can just be explained by the bag bouncing around in the burble on its own, with lines "everywhere".

    (The thing about the drogue disconnecting completely is something one might miss if one isn't reading the thread carefully. It was mentioned in a somewhat ambiguous manner in the original post. I nearly missed it myself. When he meant the drogue floated away.... aha, he meant it floated away unattached from the whole system off into the sky.... and not just 'floated' as in a slow bag extraction. I think!)



    Yup I meant it floated away unattached to the rest of the system. The 4th pic is of the broken attachment point. In the video you can see it float away right when we pulled.

    At first I thought the same thing you said above but the more I think about it I kind of like Tom's theory. Maybe the ball hanging up gave it the extra bit of force it needed to break the worn webbing.

  6. That tube webbing looks like the same stuff they use for the Y-line on Strong drouges. As often as those things break, I'm surprised UPT chose to use just 1 loop of that stuff to attach their drogue to the rest of the system.

    You're right though. It must have been hanging on by a thread to break loose before it even unstowed the lines. Seems like it should have been caught by the packers/riggers before this happened.

  7. Had a weird thing happen that I've never heard of happening to anyone else and I thought I'd share it here.

    I just got Sigma cross-trained and I was helping out at a dz I'd never been to before so I hadn't had much chance to inspect the gear.

    I pull the drogue release at 5500 and it comes completely loose and floats away leaving the dbag bouncing around in my burble. I didn't know what was going on yet and as I'm thinking "wow this is a long trap door" and trying to look back there to see wtf is going on, the canopy deploys into line twists and the left side golf ball is stuck in the lines and still attached down by my ass with the line between the handles running over my left shoulder. So I grab ahold of the line with my handcam hand as I reach for the hook knife with my right. I gave it a good hard yank as I was farting around trying to get between me and the student to grab the hook knife wishing my altimeter was on my left hand where it belongs. Somehow I guess I pulled hard enough that the line snapped at the connection in the middle between the two balls along with the elastic before I even got my knife out. We kicked out of the twists and landed fine. Crazy shit, huh?

  9. riggerrob



    Exactly!
    Subrogation can drag on for eight years after an accident. Wounded and witnesses will be repeatedly asked to remember that miserable day. Wounded will be forced to testify in interviews, hearings for discovery and multiple court appearances. The wounded will never be allowed to forget the accident and they will never receive enough dollars to compensate for the mental anguish imposed by the subrogation process. Subrogation can do far more secondary psychological damage than the original accident. Subrogation can prolong traumatic stress disorder for the rest of your life .



    Yeah but the lawyers could make a bunch of money..

    Why don't we just go "Hey man I'll bet you your $4 against $25000 that you live through this."

    And if they don't die we put the $4 in the beer fund and fuck the insurance company?

  11. chuckakers

    ***That's a fantastic idea Chuck. It also gives me an excuse to go hang out at the bar!

    We did a radio ad last year but we paid cash. $1000 got us 30 30 second spots.I guess it's hard to tell if it had any effect on business but it seems like it was a complete waste of money.



    Radio can be tricky, but if you get everything just right it can pay off. It's expensive so it's all about demographics, reach, and saturation. At 30 spots for $1000 I assume it was a small market. Small markets don't typically pay off like larger ones. If you draw customers from a major market do your promotions there instead. You'll have to play the game in a bigger way, but the payoff is much better.

    Trade with stations can hit big but only in big markets where you are getting hundreds or even thousands of dollars in advertising and reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners per giveaway for the hard cost of a single tandem jump.

    Also, don't waste your time with stations that don't offer the right demographic of listeners. Stick with core skydiving demo's - rock, new rock, top 40, etc. Don't try to sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

    To minimize cost and maximize potential try these strategies:

    Conduct the promotions during times when the payoff will be bigger. Early December with a "Christmas gift certificate" theme, just before spring break and summer vacation, etc. The promotion will cost you the same amount of money regardless of when you run it, so stack the odds of success in your favor.

    Make the winner's certificates non-transferable. That way you get the advertising but folks who win the prize and decide not to jump can't give it to someone else. Be sure to have the radio station put the winners' names on the certificates so they can't be transferred. We provided the stations with a unique-colored pen to be sure we knew the winners' names were written on the certificates before they were given out.

    List a weight limit on the certificates. Same goes with age, of course.

    Place a reasonable expiration deadline on the certificates.

    Have the station give the jumps away along with other prizes. Often the winner has no intention of skydiving but wants tickets to the ball game or concert.

    Make the certificate part of a "prize pack" that includes discount coupons for the winner to bring friends, and if you use an AFF program offer a discounted "upgrade" for the winner to convert their certificate to an AFF jump for an extra price. During one promotion we gave away 30 tandem jumps and 2 people converted to AFF, went all the way through the program and bought gear. BTW that was in the late 90's and both of those winners still jump today!

    Are you anywhere near a large market? If so, which one?

    Thanks Chuck. I appreciate you sharing your experience.
    Funny thing, I got a call from a sales person from WGRD just after I read your post. I'm going to meet with them on Thursday. I should print out your post and bring it with me.

    The closest major market to me is Grand Rapids with 1.3M if you include the surrounding metropolitan area. Lansing with 450,000 and Kalamazoo with 320,000 are also about the same distance away.

  13. skymama

    I enjoy shopping for bargains. I can't remember the last time I was at the interior of the mall, even though it's only a few minutes from the house. Most of the time I'm at the stand-alone stores, or I order online. I don't hear of my friends going to the mall much either, only my teenage nieces. Maybe you should quiz your family and friends as to how much time they spend at the mall before you make that investment?



    Good point Skymama. I should probably go hang out there for a while and scope it out.

  14. Remster

    Quote

    but I'm worried we're too weak in the search engines to get the full benefit from it



    How about you spend a couple month's worth of Mall Kiosk money on a SEO project?



    I've spent at least that much already. It's working too. At least we're on page 1 now. When we started we were on page 10. If you googled our name you'd find news articles about accidents before our website. We're getting there but 3rd place on page one might as well be page 2 most of the time.

  15. I believe you're right about the billboards but damn they're expensive. They want 3600/mo. for one by the highway. If I do it I will probably wait until we're open this spring, but I'm worried we're too weak in the search engines to get the full benefit from it. I hate to spend a bunch of money putting the idea in people's heads so they go home and google "skydiving" and end up jumping someplace else.

  16. So while I'm sitting here balls deep in snow for the next 3 months, I'm trying to think of things I can do to get a good early start next season.

    One thing I think I'm going to try is a booth in the mall. For $1000/month I can set up some posters and a couple of tvs back to back on their cart running skydiving videos and maybe put a wingsuit on a mannequin standing next to it or something to attract some attention. Maybe offer a sweet mall special deal if they buy tickets now and use them before June 1st?

    Anyone tried something like this before? Any other ideas besides groupon and living social?

  17. I looked into it a little. I wanted something we could put on our website so students could schedule tandems online instead of blowing up my phone all summer.

    Burble is pretty cool but they want $3/student scheduled on it. If we do 600 tandems it could get pretty expensive if a lot of them book online.

    I went with Mindbody. It's really for gyms and yoga classes but I think it's going to work out pretty good for us and it's only $40/month.

  19. Anyone got a copy of an actual proposal they can post?

    There's this sweet airport right by a bad ass beach on Lake Michigan that I want to jump at next year. We did some bandit jumps onto the beach this year but we want to be able to land right on the airport too. I went to the meetings and showed some video of the beach jumps. Everyone there loved it, but they want me to give them a proposal in writing. I know pretty much what I want it to say, but I'm not sure about what the format of a proposal should look like.

    Anyone got something I can copy or maybe get some ideas from?

  20. MisterCrash



    I don't even smoke cannabis..



    Well, duh. There's your problem.

    Seriously man, I have a really close friend that was depressed all the time going to counseling popping all kinds of weird pills with horrible side effects.

    She quit all that shit January first and started eating this "paleo" diet. She started smoking weed and got off the zoloft and whatever other crap they gave her. So far she's lost 60 pounds and has never felt better. She's exercising now and she made her first skydive a few weeks ago. She really seems like a whole new person.

    These people dogging on weed don't know wtf they're talking about.

  22. I need to get the hell out of Michigan before the snow flies again.

    I have a 182 and a couple of tandem rigs and student rigs.

    Anyone know of another TI or pilot that has a place we can land parachutes that might want to partner on a winter operation?

    Someplace with palm trees and a beach landing area with good surfing nearby would be perfect, but I'll take any place without snow.

  23. DSE

    ***
    It's not a "someone" that investigates.
    It's a team known as a Disciplinary Group (DG).
    (1-6.5 PROCEDURES
    The procedures contained in this section will apply to all
    USPA regular members.
    A. A Disciplinary Group will be formed of: the Safety &
    Training Committee Chairman, the Group Member
    Committee Chairman, a National Director (not a
    member of the Executive Committee) appointed by
    the President, the relevant Regional Director, and the
    Director of Safety & Training)



    So the guy being investigated is doing the investigation?

  24. riggerrob

    Yes.
    Carry food and water out to the plane.
    If the young pilot is well nourished and fed, then he/she might have enough energy remaining to check fuel or oil levels or glance up final approach one more time before taxiing onto the active runway, or any of those dozen other little tasks that we demand of all our pilots.



    Amen to that brother. I made that mistake this weekend.

    Our last load on Saturday after all the work jumps was supposed to be a beach jump into a bar on Lake Michigan. We had a new pilot fly tandem loads all day long and we forgot to feed and water him. After the last tandem load he came out of the plane looking all green and sweating his ass off. He said he felt like he was going to throw up and couldn't fly anymore so we got screwed out of our beach jump. I'm pretty sure it was because we didn't take good enough care of him.

    It's weird that one of the people you need the most is the easiest to forget about when it gets busy. Pilots, if you need something, please say so!

  25. I don't see why this incident would affect whatever office he was elected to.

    Yeah, I think he's an idiot and a hypocrite for trying to impose extra rules on wingsuiters while he's off swooping crowds like an asshole but he was elected to the board because enough people like the way he represents them. I don't think any one person should have the authority to over ride that. If the people he represents want him out they will vote him out.



    He should face the exact same consequences as anyone else w
    ho fucked up the way he did. Nothing more and nothing less.

    Was there even a bsr violation?