FrogNog

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Everything posted by FrogNog

  1. One trick you can do with the tape brake line holders is fold up your brake line and put it into the holders before you put the bottom toggle tab in. This lets you make a thicker fold of brake lines (e.g. triple-folded instead of double-folded) that you can fit in without much trouble (before the toggle tab is inserted) but is retained more tightly during operation. Personally, I just stopped caring whether my brake lines escape once in a while (they usually don't, and if they do it's usually only part of them) and use my eyeballs to make sure I don't put my hand through any brakeline loops while grabbing the toggles. (Yeah, I only screwed that one up a couple times. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  2. This is why I'm waiting: I need my groundlaunching skill and my skiing (or snowboarding) skill to both be high enough to be up to this challenge, which seems to combine the risks of groundlaunching with the risks of skiing. Unfortunately I have precious little experience at either, despite having fallen out of an airplane a fair number of times. Others less concerned about risk might not be as restrained as I. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  3. Yeah, I have been looking at slop as my biggest clue something is wrong. If something is loose in or on an integral part of the body, I assume that marks the machine for the recycling pile. Today I looked at a Singer 111W115. Now I know what one kind of walking foot looks like and why I don't want to use one until I need to. Darn thing was a thread-cutter. Bigger than I want to start out, too. I wish the guy who sold me that gorgeous other machine hadn't sold it to someone else for $200 more before I picked it up. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  4. Can any of you sewing machine gurus tell me how to spot a worn-out hook on a machine before I buy it? Due to my general mechanical inclination, I feel like I could spot a number of bad things. But this one sounds like it's real bad, and might not show up during the test drive if the seller has tweaked the conditions just right. (E.g. using the one kind of thread the machine still likes.) If there's some book I should get, I can do that. Or I can take instruction on what part, exactly, of the hook wears out, and look at how that's working on some real live machines. Basically I would like to avoid paying the local commercial sewing machine store an extra $500 over private party sales just to make sure this part hasn't gone bad. If the answer is "talk to your instructor" then I'll call up the local commercial store and see if they'll show me in person. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  5. The skinny round bed is actually flat on top. The machine will accept a wooden table with a slot cut in it (which I don't have) to pretend like it has a flat bed. The foot does have some ridges on the bottom of it, but I think the machine is fairly dependent on not having to fight very hard to feed the work. From the start, I was concerned about being able to make the box stitch patterns correctly due to the feed strength. It would probably be one of those things where I could do it if I concentrated, but I would sweat every stitch. Good way to start out, though, I suppose. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  6. I see. So, does that mean that the left column of the table on page 4.048 in my Poynter's Parachute Manual is the Singer needle size? If so, that's handy. I guess I'll have to stick with working on lighter-duty webbing. And shoes. I will keep an eye out for that elusive local bargain 7-31. And the feed on the 29-4 is done by the presser foot lifting and hopping forward on the work while the needle makes an odd little second downstroke, I believe. The foot then pulls back to its normal position after the needle has raised. (No feed parts below the work.) It's not the strongest pull, but it can feed in any direction the operator selects by rotating the foot alignment collar thingie. Nice to have a machine that you could set to feed the work straight toward you, huh? -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  7. Could you do harness work with a Singer 29-4? I just got one for some webbing work that will not be life-or-death in anywhere near the way skydiving is. (Basically I'll be doing some cargo nets for a van, and I might do some scuba stuff. Who knows - maybe I'll make a pair of shoes. ;) I was just wondering what capabilities, characteristics, or qualities separated a Singer 29 from a Singer 7 series. (Besides the treadle - I get that part. ) Plus also I felt I hadn't asked a weird question in kind of a while... -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  8. Here's a sweet door setup, IMO. Don't fail to have a peek at the actual door, too. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  9. Does anyone have a link to one or more SOS holy war threads? I should like to go re-read them to make sure anything I have to say on the matter has already been recorded. (This would also save me time in immediately seeing any historical replies...) -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  10. I'm guessing about 10 people or six full-size refrigerators. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  11. The dropzones up here are 80% hot chicks and 20% badass old-timers named "Dave". (The wingsuit guy in back isn't named "Dave", but as I recall he's got three flockmates this day and one of them is.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  12. Measure the slider with a ruler and make sure it's the right size for that canopy. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  13. Jeannie, would you say the Ravens land a lot smoother than no canopy at all? That's why I'll jump one if that's my option. That said, I have been slowly spending the money to try and move to PDRs. Used ones, so I know they work. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  14. Before they fail. (I am not a rigger. Yet. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  15. I'd get a nice, girly pink. That way when someone sees it they'll wonder "Why didn't he cut that ugly thing away?" and eventually they should figure out "oh, it's a reserve; it's really tough and unadvisable to cut that away." Personally, I like white because it looks "proper". The baby blue just looks gay to me. I wouldn't be sore about this except once I thought I bought a white reserve and ended up with a blue one. That's on the ground. In the air, my favorite color of reserve is, as they say, "open". That orange Swift 245 sure was prettier than the ground... -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  16. I had him put a longer one on for me....it helps Me too. He sewed it while I watched. Reminded me that I can sew quilts pretty well but I have a whole lot to learn in the real world. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  17. I wonder if we should do a poll about wind direction - does "South wind" (or "180" on the wind board) mean the wind is coming from the South or going to the South? -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  18. I agree with your (not quoted right here) suggestion about protectionism - that might be a small or large part of it. But while I also agree with your "nobody wants to die" perspective on the Russians' part _in theory_, it is my opinion (as an American raised during the Cold War) that Russian quality control nationwide had a tendency to lean more toward expendability of people than Americans were accustomed to. At least, that's how some overall quality control stuff looked at the time. Whether that applies directly to the at-the-time engineering and manufacturing of the An-2, I can't say at all because I wasn't there and haven't researched it. The bigger picture that makes me sad is just how hard / expensive it is to engineer any airplane to the standards (engineering or political) necessary to certify it, and as a result the low rate of introduction of new cool airplanes in our rough area of aviation. -=-=-=- So, has anyone jumped an AN-3? -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  19. Karen, don't we have one of these sitting at our airport/dropzone right now? -=-=- I was told the reason these aren't certified so much in the U.S. is because they (like a number of Eastern European aircraft) were not manufactured with enough version-change- and quality-control for a type certification to safely apply to all aircraft of that type, so each one would have to be certified separately. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  20. A couple jumps ago I was spotting for the whole load, basically, and the uppers were very high. (We knew this on the ground, and I picked a climbout and exit position based on this and the number of groups.) The jumpers behind me were very agitated in the manner you describe. I told them they were free to go first, and I easily shifted and cleared the wide Caravan door. I promised I'd wait plenty of time before following them. They did not take me up on my offer. I can't recall if this was because they actually looked out at that point, or some other thought process. So in the end, everyone opened precisely where I intended them to, and we all had no trouble flying back and landing happily, proving* wind charts, a little math, and a couple hundred jumps' experience at that location with that jump run heading can do wonders. (* Really, one jump proves nothing. But I made sure to talk to each of them afterward to try and rub in how well my exit point worked out for them. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  21. So, are skyscrapers hard, fair, and patient? -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  22. I say with enough pilot experience, any extremely-lightly-loaded canopy can be hooked up backwards if the groundwind exceeds the steady-flight forward speed. Then you get to land moving forward. Of course, when you flare, you'll pitch forward and your groundspeed will increase... -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  23. boy that looks like fun. but it does look dangerous too... did you see when he hit the tree... ouch What I didn't see was the three dozen times they biffed it before editing. I want to know how many skydives, how many BASE jumps, how much plain-foot groundlaunching, how much skiing, and how much ski-ground-launching experience the people in that video had. Because it looks incredibly cool / exciting / fun, but I know the fine print is in the ingredients list. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  24. My advice has nothing to do with fatality. How is her health insurance? Someone dying is horrible and tragic and basically we all deal with it and hope it never hits closer to home than it did last time. But someone being injured and running up huge medical bills is also bad. Ameliorating death is not reasonable. But ameliorating the fiscal impact of injury on loved ones and enhancing the quality and quantity of care available to help recover can be done with insurance. Sorry to talk money instead of talking good feelings, but I feel sooooo awful whenever I hear so-and-so had a skydiving accident, doesn't have insurance, and his/her family needs to pay rent and eat. -=-=-=-=- Pull.
  25. If you compare more than two transportation modes, things get really weird. I was shocked when I first learned that walking is hundreds of times more deadly than driving, in terms of deaths per distance. If this was adjusted for deaths-per-time-traveling, I'm sure it would look a lot different. Someone already mentioned this as a potentially valuable comparison adjustment for jumping vs. driving. But with walking they know some of the extra things that go wrong. It's clear that when a car strikes a pedestrian, the pedestrian doesn't have any equivalent protection to the big metal car. And car drivers run over pedestrians with regularity because they can't, or don't, or don't bother, to see them. (I've been hit twice myself on foot, but I escaped injury both times because they were "light" hits and I am moderately bouncy.) In skydiving, and in commercial airline flight, and in bicycling, and in driving a car, there are different things that can and do go wrong and contribute. So this is a field for debate about risk of injury and death based on types and severity of factors. But only numbers are comparable to each other to be able to say something is "more" or "less" than something else, and that's why we try to get the apples-to-apples comparisons of "deaths per distance" or "deaths per time" or whatever. These are all artificial to some degree. I don't care how far I've traveled; I care whether I got to work or the store or to my Aunt's house for Thanksgiving. I don't care how long I was in the plane; I care about how many friends I docked with or tandem pairs I saw smiling in freefall in front of me or students I watched drop off the strut for the first time in their life. But it would be hard to define an objective metric of deaths-per-enjoyment. I'd say skydiving has a lot more enjoyment per fatality than driving my car. (I really only have a great time in my car when it's stopped. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.