lurch

No, but the ability to go about your life and do what you want with a minimum of interference from the State, pretty much -is- the definition of freedom. NH... right to bear arms, is still an actual Right. You don't need to get a "permit to buy" you just go buy it. No firearms registration in any form. No firearm owners permit you have to buy. No seatbelt law aside from kids. You're a grown person, you wanna forego the seatbelt for a 1 mile trip to the store, go right ahead. Other states, its an excuse to pull you over, start a fishing expedition... No biker helmet law... your choice. I choose a fullface myself, but I like that at least here, if I want wind in my hair I can have it. Very little regulation of motorcycles at all actually. In fact you're free to just buy one and learn to ride it yourself on a 30 day learner permit. If you try that you'll discover the test is very difficult to pass, but thats your problem. Training is available. No mandatory car insurance law. If you're a Granny who drives 20 miles a month maybe it doesn't make any sense to HAVE car insurance. Your choice. No state income tax. So far, the state does not claim you have an obligation to pay "your fair share" of somebody else's bills. Property taxes here are awful though. Few to no random law enforcement fishing checkpoints. I've heard of em but never seen one. On the other hand small town cops love to pull you over "just to check you out"... this can get maddening after the 46th time they pull that stunt when you appear as a regular on a new road with a new job. "Yeah, the last 6 times you guys said the same thing my taillight was out, but it never was..." Noplace is perfect. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

The ludicrousness of the rigidly formalized nature of the system... cannot acknowledge obvious reality without first having a formalized "finding". I bet after he surrendered, they were still referring to him as the "suspect". Kills two people on camera but no, he's not guilty till we do this 3.2 million dollar theatrical pageant. There ought to be an "obvious emergency extremity" clause that says, when you see a guy commit multiple murders with your own eyes and he poses an imminent threat to the species, you can dispense with the formality of labelling him a "suspect"...he's a "known"... just take him out back and plug him. No big show trial, no fame, just dispose of it like you would a mad dog. Maybe the knowledge of the low, ignominious end they'll come to would act as a deterrent, lot of these guys get off on knowing it'll cost millions to give em their little courtroom theater. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

No, a teacup. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Looks pretty accurate, too. My home state, NH, is in the top 5, lot of personal freedoms still remain here that are gone in most or all other states. Its why I live here. Having lived in Cali and gained some unfortunate experiences in NY state, I can say their assessment of both those places as the blackest of the least-free is also quite accurate. I will live in neither. In both, many of your "rights" have been made defacto "conditional privileges" you have to buy from the state, and the rules are "whatever we say they are" when it comes to dealing with the authorities. Ugh... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"Its tea, actually. I'll kill you with my...teacup." (name that movie) -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

No, they're actually not my style of music, but I can do a halfway decent ZZ Top, and if you set me on fire and wait a bit I can do a passable Marilyn Manson. Now, movie impressions, I can render Mr. Hand Agent Smith Al Pacino (as Satan) The Joker and over the winter, added two new ones I haven't done live yet, Bullet Tooth Tony and Brick Top. Hey, you asked, man. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hah! It didn't even cover the rental car! One more victory as profitable as that, and I'll be living in a dumpster with a sign that says "Will work for birdseed". But I'll tell you what, the stuff I learned developing the attack I used to get it, was worth the price of admission. And those Hungarians, -really- know how to throw a party. I learned a whole new definition of first class, there. That place is coool. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You have no idea Doc... I've been hibernating for 6 months... Now, with even MORE beard! Chuck Blue, paging Chuck Blue... If you're gonna be a wild haired globetrotting wingsuit biker mouse from Mars, you -must- look the part. I believe the beard did not meet your standards previously...now what say you? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Alright, how bout if I arrive by hitchhiking someone else's plane, with last year's state of the art AXRW suit but a 10 year old helmet, a faded old Sabre, and an obsolete base-model Javelin that looks like its been dragged behind a harley? ...hell, how bout if -I- look like I've been dragged behind a harley? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Living in the philippines as a teen, my Dad decided to prank me by throwing a cicada at me in the dining room. All I saw was a big green and red thing screeching like a smoke alarm, I ducked and said "Whoa! What the..." Then I examined the bug and thought "Wow, this thing is cool!" Never did it occur to me to EAT the thing. So far as I'm concerned, if its a bug, it ain't food. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

First off, good to see somebody actually put in the time on the smaller suits instead of going to the big suit by 50 jumps. 600 jumps is a good progression. Thoughts: 1: Think you're trying too hard. It's possible to get flights well over 4 minutes in that suit without major effort, heavier guys would be more in the 3:15-3:45 range, light guys 3:45-4:15ish. 2: Next time, relax a bit. Sprawl out. Don't concentrate on bearing down on your arms concentrate on being as wide and flat and sprawled out as you can. Relax into the suit. Like you're lying facedown on a mattress and just snoozing. Let your head droop, just kind of hang your head from your neck and look around, look down and behind, just get used to keeping your head down. 3: Grippers: Barely need to touch them. I hold them with fingertips and just use them for steadying the suit and as fine adjustment controls when I've got the suit loaded hard. This changes... any time I'm not maxed out I take a much more forceful grip on the grippers and use them for muscling the suit around, pulling in a wing or pushing on it for major moves, large rough airflow control. which brings me to 4: Flying stall braking. In a smaller suit, the S-Bird, the grippers make great full-on airbrakes. You can grab em and twist em down into the airflow to add drag that slows your forward speed while keeping your surface area maxed. Great for hovering over a fast flock where you don't want to bend your legs, or cutting your speed a bit so friends can catch you without folding your tail. Works good as a combo with rearing up, too. Whole-body S-shape like a snake for a second. The Apache class suits, you can't really do this. Not with grippers a foot long. The scaling doesn't work, and even if the gripper doesn't just bend, making a radical twist at the end of a wing that huge just distorts the hell out of it and redirects an entire sheet of air along the side of the suit rather than just biting in like a little set of flaps as it does on the S-Bird. But you can do a pretty good approximation of the same move with your whole body and armwing based around that whole body S-shape and some really weird armwing work. The scale of the wing permits a huge range of moves that just don't even exist in smaller suits. You can change the axis you're using your arms. 99% of suit flying, your hands are out, your arms are some variant on "by your sides", right? You totally do -not- have to obey the shape of the suit, you can break the wing for a partial rearing-up effect. In a smaller suit I used to have to rear up and present my entire wing surface to get this kind of braking but now its possible to get that just getting weird with the armwing surfaces while simultaneously keeping the suit flying with pinpoint control. I love these things! Let go of the grippers and turn your hands palms-up. Like you're holding a couple of watermelons. This basically turns your arms "upside down", totally not the wingshape you're used to, (if you fly a Birdman GTI this way it'll mostly fall like a brick) but then, move your hands forward, rotate your arms at the shoulder and take a shape like you're doing very wide push-ups. Now you've got 2 new control axes and your airflow management orientation has been rotated any angle you like between 45 and 90 degrees. Now you've got a whole new world of sprawled-out armshape combos to choose from. The wing is mostly hanging off your elbows and forearms, you can use the wings like 2 huge scoops, and by twisting your arms you can decide how much of this action you want to dial in, and control the overall size of the wing by bringing your hands closer or further from your shoulders. With techniques like this applied to suits this big some bizarre un-wingsuity-looking body positions suddenly start to make a lot of sense. Digging down into the airflow, "holding your hands out in front of you" basically. So extending and retracting your arms has massive effects on huge sheets of wing all down the sides of you, you're flying most of the suit indirectly, elbows, toes, knees. You already know how to fly a suit, the skill you're looking for is how to kite one. The distinction between the two ways of flying a suit is very smooth once you get the idea how to blend moves. When you get a feel for this you'll find you're only putting in effort where it gets a useful return in airflow, speed, fallrate, whatever... and your muscles will only start to burn out if you're deliberately holding a super-scoop shaped max-out for most of the flight. Hope this is useful. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This is AWESOME! A digital buzzy doorstop! I could do this all day! Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You got it, Doc. I haven't got any particular plans besides catching a high-altitude load and maybe dropping in on a couple of flocks, so just catch me when you see me paddling around the DZ or perched on a railing somewhere, let me know what you want to work on, distance, speed, time, show me your current technique and we'll come up with a plan and go fly it. Same goes for anybody else wants to get a little more distance or time out of whatever suit you've got. If there are enough of you and you let me know before I get there, (late Thursday of the event) we can form up a little side class for ninja tricks and maybe even do some maxed-out small group flights provided we aren't interfering with the real organizers running the main show. I work a lot better one-on-one though and prefer working with birds one at a time so I can give you my full attention- the outer edges are very much an individual art, for me to be useful to you I need to listen to how you fly already and get a feel for the feel -you- have so I can figure out how to get you the feel you're looking for. I won't resort to group classes unless I unexpectedly get a lot more work than I can handle, but if that happens, we'll just get off the side out of everybody's way with a few suits, hang out, talk bird tech, practice some shapes and explore some limits together. Cellphones should be considered standard mandatory equipment if you want to get in on this. I haven't ever led a group so far astray that we landed out, but there's a first time for everything, so if I suddenly get your attention, visibly abort what we're doing then turn and start running, I suggest you run with me. The trouble with training specifically for performance, especially distance or time, is that if you succeed you may find you went a lot further than you expected to, and since its new and unfamiliar, you didn't know you should have turned for home 25 seconds ago. Half my job will be to do my best to make sure that we do. I also suggest if you want to get in on this that you study the aerial maps, memorize the outs in the area, and pay closer attention to winds and jump run than usual. There's a big difference between flying with a conservatively planned and flown 30-way where you don't venture all that far from the DZ and you pretty much can't miss, versus an all-out flight where most of the flight is spent miles off the airport and if you don't do everything perfectly, you WILL miss. If you want to get hardcore, you have to take it seriously and that includes planning ahead for what to do if you get it wrong. Let's go fly. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Took awhile to confirm it, but I will be there. Mostly going just to bum around the DZ for a few days, but if anybody wants it, performance coaching will be available. Can't wait... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well, ok, actually, yeah, it kinda was. But the last time I let my head get too big, Jarno and Elana tag-teamed me HARD. You haven't been slagged till you've been slagged by a comic Dutch guy and a tiny but utterly fearless sharp-tongued Scotswoman who says exactly what she thinks, simultaneously. So you got to understand, if you wanna take a shot at me, you got some hardcore prior art to live up to. They're GOOD at it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

For you? What on earth makes you think you're worth more of my time than a couple of sentences? If you don't understand respect, this community hasn't got much use for you and neither do I. Class dismissed. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jesus christ. Is this necessary? Scotty has forgotten more about wingsuit flight than most birds are ever going to know and he's got a heart the size of Nebraska so you might want to make sure you know who you're talking to before you jump to shoot your mouth off in this community. Goddamn amateurs. Show some f'king respect. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Due process has been a corrupted sick joke in this country since prosecutors came up with the cute little tactic of hitting a defendant with multiple made-up bullshit charges just to make sure the defendant can't win and gives up without a fight or pleads out. Its been a sick joke since defending yourself in court became so insanely expensive that it costs more than a month in an Intensive Care Unit and even if you win, you lose, and may spend more on your own defense than the resulting fines from being found guilty. Its been a sick joke ever since laws started being made to serve the interests of insurance companies and corporate campaign contributors instead of the people the politicians were elected to represent... I could go on... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think this Darrien Long guy is my new hero. He's more patient with human beings behaving badly than anybody I've ever seen before. He talks the talk but just will not let them work his nerves into playing the game their way. This guy should be a cop. I hope they pay him well. This can NOT be an easy job. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh, and worst case scenario, your wing comes loose? Meh. Training for competition last season I discovered that freeflying an Apache headdown for 3000 feet with my arms held in a certain position caused my right armwing zipper to pound loose and come unzipped on its own. At 178 mph. Wing started drumming harder and harder... Pulled out of the dive, still holding the gripper, made my practice run anyway, (getting windy in here, excess drag, waste of a good run) exited the gates at 6500, checked out the wing... hmm... released the gripper, wing blew off. Oops. Bit asymmetrical here, but not really a problem. Reached around, grabbed it, folded both wings in, got a hand on the zipper, rezipped the wing, kept right on flying. So much for in flight wing blowout. And this is the biggest suit you can buy. ...oh, and Spot? I wanna see this dogfight, although I'm not much of a videobird I'd offer to shoot the dive just to see it play out, I'd be laughing almost too hard to fly... saw a whole bunch of small birds pickin' on a hawk once, this sounds even funnier... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'd suggest just leaving it alone. May come in handy when you least expect it. My old S-6 had it. Over the years I never used it. Then one day I went to unzip and the tab broke off the zipper leaving the zipper lock intact. Surprise! Due to neglect the cables were chafed badly. Went to cutaway and couldn't. Spent a minute under canopy alternating between steering and trying to undo the zipper by pinching it. Wasn't gonna happen. Running out of time fast I went back to the cutaway, folded myself in half for leverage, got both hands on the cable and tore that sucker out freeing my left arm just before I entered the pattern. Landed fine. Made mental note not to ever neglect the minor maintenance bits again. They ain't so minor when they don't work right when you need em. Last thing you want is to have that happen to you and discover that you have NO options because you deliberately disabled it. The whole time I was thinking great, I'm gonna break a leg landing because I was too dumb to notice the cables were chewed up from years of use. Just tell your compadres not to dock on your handles. If you're worried about THAT you should be twice as worried about them docking on your MAIN handle. If they are doing it so sloppy and rushed that they can't avoid grabbing your chop handles they ain't precise and careful enough to be doing it that way and should work on slow and deliberate hand docks. Slow it down and learn it right. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

How small do you want to cut your margin for error? The last friend I lost due to combining elliptical with wingsuit was Pete Luter a couple years back. Word is his Stiletto spun up so fast it appeared to have knocked him out, unresponsive, when he woke up and chopped, he was very very low...game over. Yes it can be done but its widely known to be ill-advised. Since all I do is wingsuit and I like a fat margin for error I've stuck to Sabres. As a result I've had exactly 1 cutaway in a 9 year wingsuit career. Is a sportier canopy ride worth cutting your safety margin in half? I've considered going elliptical myself, but given how very many "bad idea" reports there have been, I just don't want to go there. I have plenty of fun with a Sabre 120 and it leaves me a bit of forgiving room to make mistakes, deal with a busted zipper or a situation that is just not going to plan. I didn't go above a 1.3 loading till I'd been in the sport for 9 years already... and I watched plenty of others have MUCH shorter careers in the sport by the same thinking you're hoping we will help you justify. Its your choice, but the choice you want to make is not a very good one and cuts your odds of long term survival dramatically. Tony Uragallo has about 30 years in the sport. His standards should not be yours. There are things to know about packjobs and flying your openings that you won't even know that you don't know for several more years. Here, thinking like a cautious noob is the way to go... you live longer. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Its reasons like these I tend to sit and wait awhile. Incredibly annoying usability issues there are usually no way for the user to correct. I'd like to be able to set one of these things up, put it on, wake it up with a single button, (or a 2-button sequence so its resistant to accidental buttonpresses) shut it down the same way, come back a week later and use it the same way without having to reenter half the settings or discover, like my garmin, that the developers "helpfully" made it so that it cannot actually be turned off and now its dead. My CX-100 is annoying enough- dumps its autofocus settings every 12 hours... forget to set it to manual before every jumping day, get fuzzy shifting video. I'm sure they set it that way just in case general population users forget they left it on Manual and wonder why the autofocus seems broken, but it'd be nice to be able to get at the firmware and fix it, and like most appliances, you can't. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

No. Wrong. Getting paid FOR not working would mean the purpose of the payments is to prevent me choosing to get a job. "Here, we don't want you working so as long as you sit at home and do nothing we'll pay you to do it." I'm not being given the money because someone wants me to not work. I got the money because I damn well paid into the system and I barely touched my 99 weeks either. I hold that in reserve and will reluctantly use it when the local economy finishes falling apart, it becomes impossible to start a business because it costs 10x the first years profits in taxes permits and fees to be allowed to build it and excessive tax and permitting has made mexico and china look better than New England, wiping out the last of the factories in the process. And leaving an entire region with no way to survive and no jobs to get. This has already happened all over the country. Mooching my ass. I am a ferociously dedicated productive citizen because thats how I better myself. What would you have the people trapped in economic basket case regions do? Just sit and starve? Relocate? To where? With what money? When there ARE no jobs left to get, you take what you can get, by any means necessary. Or you start a black market business out of your truck if you can. Or you starve. I have a shitton of valuable skills I can trade. I can fix fucking anything... industrial robots lasers computers cars machinery plumbing... I can't imagine how people with a useless degree in ancient history or some liberal arts degrees are managing to survive when they find out the system cannot afford to employ people for decorative nonessential tasks anymore. This is why we have people with 4 year degrees working Mcjobs and losing their houses, cars... Or are they all mooches? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Bullshit. They're not "being paid not to work" as if the goal is to get them not to work by paying them. They're being paid usually barely enough to survive on while they are supposed to be hunting a job. I've lost my job twice in the last 5 years due to globalizing outsourcing and my employers being more willing to hire mexican labor than the robots I used to run. I was collecting the maximum, which was about half of what I used to make and I was slowly going under despite having no home phone, cell only, no cable, no internet besides the cellphone, no car insurance, bare minimum of bills. Despite your apparent expectation that I'd now be happy to be "paid not to work" I hit the job market like my life depended on it, and in a job market where the average period of job hunting was 18 months I landed one in 2 weeks. Next time the pickings were even thinner and despite an all-out all-day attack it took me 8 weeks to find another, and I'm far more versatile than most... almost any factory can use me, but there were thousands of apps for the most menial of positions. If you had your way I'd be reduced to living in a dumpster 8 weeks later. No money, no rent, no phone, no way to GET a job because I have to scrounge trash cans to eat. Once you fall out the bottom of the system like that you CAN'T get a job. Nobody hires the phoneless carless addressless filthy homeless. Setting unemployment coverage to reflect the realities of the brutal job market search duration to help keep people from starving due to the problems the politicians created in the first place is one of the only things I ever saw the government do right. Cut it to a few weeks, and you will see the starving homeless population EXPLODE... Instead how bout asking the DOD to get by with a few less multibillion dollar bombers aircraft carriers prototype crowd control death rays and other toys? Sell a couple of those off and you could feed the country for fucking years... If stupid people want to waste that time, thats not my problem. In 99 weeks they'll starve, and they leave more spots open for ME to grab. I used unemployment for the safety net it is and bounced right back on my feet repeatedly. How many families do YOU want to see living in your local tent city? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.