JayhawkJumper

And what is wrong with being partial to hand-cuffs?

nothing that would be beneficial for skydiving. The Elan IIe has an eye tracking focus system and maybe a couple other bells and whistles that probably won't be worth the extra $$$$.

What? You don't like Steak?!

Ok, Beer, Nudity, Steak and SEX day. My girlfriend lives kinda far so I won't have sex Saturday, but everyone else have fun with that. So yes, porn will have to suffice.

no, I've had a girlfriend for a while and no war talk actually, I'm just tired and posting any random thing to keep from doing my work like I should. Good thing I don't procrastinate or I'd be screwed.

That is permitted, but I'm saying this Saturday should be reserved for these things and ONLY these things.

I propose with all of the tension involving the war, jobs, and the economy that this Saturday be declared Beer, Nudity and Steak day. On this day you are only allowed to do the following: watch porn drink beer skydive run around naked eat steak drink more beer Anyone found violating these rules, which include mentioned anything vaguely political or business oriented, shall be required to chug a pitcher.

If you go out on a first date, and you ask them what they think about the war, and they disagree with you, you won't have to worry about making conversation for the entire night. (although the conversation might not be pleasant)

For one thing, the civil war put an end to slavery, although the ideology of the South won out in a lot of regards, aided by D.W. Griffith's film "Birth of a Nation". Watch the film Amistad and tell me that the civil war didn't accomplish anything. The war was however, seriously downplayed by a great deal of the re-union imagery of the press and film industry, making a claim that was the civil war, the bloodiest war in history was just kind of a "goof". I know there aren't any signs saying "keep sadam in power", but if you are under the opinion that we should back out of Iraq, that means you want to keep Sadam in power (in a round-about way I know). Even though this film isn't about civil rights (although its a nice benefit), we don't realize how much someone suffers until its shown to you. Is you hear that 10,000 people die, you think, wow thats tragic and thats a lot of people, but if you see a scene in a movie of the brutal torture and rape of a child having their intestines drug out and allowed to slowly die for 2 days.....your blood will boil (even though its just a movie, and movies don't show this type of thing, even though it happens in places like Iraq). As a sidenote: Sadam's son raped a 15 year old high school girl over and over until he beat her to the point she wasn't attractive anymore, so he covered her in honey and fed her to attack dogs (alive). Her parents might not even know what happened. The Iraqi people definately aren't going to take out Sadam on their own, when they tried at the end of the Gulf war, we allowed them to be mowed down my machine gun fire from helicopters. Lastly, I don't favor war by any means, I truly don't know what to think. You hate to see even one life lost, one mothers child gone, but what happens if Sadam develops a nuke and decides Israel and Kuwait should be wiped out? It's a catch-22, and hopefully 20 years from now we will be able to look back and realize we did the right thing, but only time will tell (and hopefully we are around to see that day).

Everybody will probably tell you something different as far as cameras, but I think a generalized opinion is a Sony camera, either PC101 or 120 or TRV style (not sure what the newest model #'s are) You can find older used digital sony cameras too. I know a guy that has two PC7's that are bullet proof, they have something like 3,000 jumps and still work fine (no D-Box used).

As a sports and action photographer, I can tell you a little bit about this issue. I don't shoot freefall stills yet, my stroboframe isn't in yet, but anyway... Yes the Elan will go faster... is that an advantage? maybe. Yes the camera will shoot at a higher fps, but this can also lead to the thinking that "if I just hold down the button, I'll get the perfect shot" this is not always the case. I usually shoot basketball and football with cameras that crank at 8-10 fps. I liked this at first b/c you could basically make a little video of what you were shooting and pick the frames you liked. The bad thing about this is that you don't really learn about the decisive moment. This means waiting for the exact, perfect moment, and being able to capture it. This takes a lot of practice and experience, but the end product will be better. The rebel is also a little smaller if that matters to you.

If your seriously worried about chopping the helmet and/or losing your camera(s) due to getting hit, insure them. I pay $50/year to state farm and whatever happens to my camera, broken, stolen, or lost, they will replace them.

Ok, as far as quality goes, you can talk about the technical aspects all day, but I've DL'ed 128 bit "CD quality" songs off of Kazaa and the CD sounds COMPLETELY different, with a much cleaner sound. However, some people like a dirtier, less produced sound. It's all about personal preference.

All I can really say about war protesters is they claim war solves nothing. It's too bad nothing was accomplished in the revolutionary war, civil war, WWI, or WWII. There are evil people in the world, who flat out WILL NOT listen to diplomacy. So what do you do? If you believe diplomacy hasn't been exhausted, what should we do when it is? I wonder what an Iraqi would say to a protester that is holding a sign basically saying "Keep Sadam in Power" All this being said, I am greatful to the anti-war movement and if it disappeared, I would probably become opposed to the war. If we don't have people questioning authority and making sure our public officials know they will be held responsible for anything they do wrong from war to something as little as getting a hummer from an intern, we aren't free. A society of total consensus would be the scariest thing I can imagine.

Actually the radio broadcasted music is probably of a higher quality than music on Kazaa. I've talked to record execs who have researched the quality of music on Kazaa and they have said it is very far below average which is another reason they don't like it being distributed as the artists and record labels feels it misrepresents the artists as the quality of sound is much worse.

Anyone ever study something so deeply involved in the philosophy of politics and life that your brain just can't take it anymore. I've read about 100 pages about movies in the 50's era and what social and political movements were behind them. My brain is to the point right now where all I want to think about are boobs and cheap beer.

Well, the main difference is if you BORROW a CD, you have to give it back and no longer have access to the music. Yes I know you could copy it, but thats illegal too. However, this is also comparable to radio in that you can record songs over the radio and this isn't something authorities are trying to shut down. At first though radio was seen as the worst enemy of the record industry because people could record songs, but now its their life-blood. I think the whole Kazaa, morpheus thing will wear off as I think it already has started to. People are realizing that they can get a hit song on Kazaa, but that song gets boring after a while and you want to hear all the other songs from that artist if you like their music. I DL music to listen for a while and if I really like their sound, I'll buy the CD to see what else they can do.

Another biological fact that you may find interesting is that most skydivers, or people that participate in seemingly dangerous activities like mountain climbing, drag racing, base jumping etc.... tend to have low mao levels. This is a chemical regulator in your brain. Low mao levels are also common in criminals and abusive people, but they are also common to inventors, entrepreneurs, and very successful business people. It would be interesting if there was some kind of mao booster that could be given and if someone actually lost the urge to jump because of it. I personally doubt it would cause a skydiver to quit, but it might inhibit someone from trying it for the first time.

An easy way to tell if its freefly friendly would be to freefly with it and see if it moves around on your head at all. If it stays nice and tight on your head, then its freefly friendly.

Hey Chris, hope the jump class got up on Sunday. I've almost got my helmet set up for stills so we'll have to get some cool hybrid shots. Anyway, you said you didn't like oversteer, and I think almost all ellipticals oversteer, probably more than the sabre2, what about spectre? Openings can't be beat and I doubt there would be oversteer. Next time I'm out you'll also have to jump my safire, it doesn't oversteer for me, but it might at 1.5 loading.

call me crazy, but I just like to learn about things like this and take on projects like building a helmet. Yes it will take a long time, but I have to have SOMETHING to do when its too windy to jump.

Ok, if your building a helmet, I know fiberglass can get kind of heavy from looking at some other custom helmets. Does anyone know much about the composite materials other manufacturers are using like carbon-fiber, kevlar etc... and what the process is. I know some require complicated pressure and heat curing, so that wouldn't be ideal, but any general info would be good.

OK, I've been doing some modifications on my camera helmet lately for installing a still etc... and considering I'm just one of those people who loves to build stuff just to see if they can do it successfully, I think I might try to build a camera helmet for myself out of fiberglass. Long story short, if I build a rear entry helmet, would it be possible to attach the bonehead cutaway to it? If you have this new cutaway on your bonehead flat-top, let me know if this looks like something that you could be fitted to another helmet.

What about the dry cleaning option? Are rigs dry cleaner safe?

In an earlier thread, Kris said he washed his rig in the bathtub. I need to clean my rig sometime soon and I called Javelin and Aggie said to put it in a pillow case, tie it off, and throw it in the washing machine. Is this a very good way to wash a rig? I also thought about the cheap and easy way: get some spray paint and just spray paint the rig every time it gets dirty. Just kiddin, but this method is similar to how I do my laundry.