Fast

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Everything posted by Fast

  1. Not really. At your experience level though, any difference will make learning difficult. Stick with one size until proficient with it, then another size until proficient with it, then another. I just a 370 for tandems, 139 for wingsuiting and a 96 for everything else. Not super hard to go back and forth but I also have thousands of jumps of experience. When I was learning something new I pretty much only jumped that. You need consistency of gear between jumps so that you can actually learn about the other factors, wind, location, flight planning, etc. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  2. This is a super side issue to the thread, but it's always flabbergasted me that the IRM is paper only. Make a paper copy cost a reasonable markup to the actual print cost + shipping. Distribute the electronic version for free, downloadable and printable. Recoup IRM cost on the backside in the rating application fee. I just don't get it. It would save a lot of trees and shipping and printing. It would also make it easier for wannabe instructors to get ahold of the material to know how to study. It's a total lack of thinking outside the box and embracing technology. I have been complaining to USPA for years about the fact that their website is broken in Safari/Chrome/Webkit/Firefox. Excuse after excuse after excuse. I even offered to fix it for them. The first time "not enough people use those web browsers" then "we'll look into it" then "well we are getting a new membership database, can't fix it till after that". YEARS, our national professional organization can't fix a simple web glitch. It's mind boggling to me. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  3. Fairly common for the large DZs. Most DZs that require this kind of thing the volume of students that you would be doing would overshadow the cost real fast. Where I jump what's required is a staff t-shirt. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  4. Cause they all knew each other prolly. We routinely book groups of 20+ tandems at our dz. We can only take 3 tandems at a time because of instructor/rig limitations and a desire to keep the plane turning and having room for sport jumpers. If you try and spread out the booking they all just show up anyways with the first person and it's too hard to keep track of. If we bought 8 more rigs and stopped allowing sport jumpers we would make an absurdly large sum of money every week. Wouldn't be a very fun place to hang out though. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  5. Yep. I can think of a lot of women I'd like to see in zero-G. I think Vskydiver would look cool with her hair all floating around like that. I looked into the Zero G flights as a Bucket List type thing. There's one coming up in Philadelphia the middle of May. I'm not sure if I'll be impressed or not. Skydiving has made a lot of things I used to think were impressive seem less than exciting to me. I'm a weirdo. http://www.gozerog.com/ Fuuuck... expensive. I like the zero g feeling, I may or may not have experienced it at some point on the way to altitude :P 20-30 seconds x 12-15 for $5k..... ehh. I would need to be way more well off to fork over that kinda money. I could buy a whole rig for that :D ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  6. Most of the posts in this thread make me feel too young (at 31) to talk about concert experiences hah. Worst by far was a Britney Spears show in the early 2000s. I was working as a stagehand, so I didn't have to pay for it. I mean, I don't hate all of her music but talk about a person with no stage presence or emotion. It was a spectacle of bad lip syncing. If you're a band/singer I have 0 tolerance for people who don't get up there and sing, that's what I am paying for. If I want to listen to the songs I can do so at home. The absolute most stunning visual performance I have ever seen was recently at a Pretty Lights show for his analoge future tour. We had balcony seats and mostly just chilled out and watched it though most of the people there were up and dancing. My uncle has been involved in stage production my whole life and moving head intelligent lighting has fascinated me from the first time I saw it as a little kid. They also had a ton of lasers, dunno it was just cool. The music was good too, a decent fusion of pre-recorded DJ stuff and live drums/horns/keys. The performance that I feel the artist gave the most at was a Coldplay show at Alpine Valley (about 10 minutes from my home DZ, we fly over the concerts all the time in the plane, it's neat). I was 20-30 rows back and Chris Martin just gave everything he could to the show. I have been to a couple of huge electronic music fests too which are really in a whole different world and I don't really consider them concerts for the most part cause people aren't playing music. Just a crazy experience. Here are some pictures for fun! EDC Chicago was cool because well, pyro and skydivers are cool: Demo jump I wish I could have been on! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  7. It's not etiquette at all, it's business. The sport as a whole can't survive without sport jumpers but individual dropzones can. If I want to make as much money as I can I turn planes with all tandems. That's the bottom line, if my goal is money I don't really care if there are sport jumpers around because they don't help the cause. If the goal is a well rounded DZ, then in most cases you accommodate by not having planes full of tandems and book accordingly though even at times there can be a need to push tandems ahead (like, not enough time to finish in a day, sport jumpers generally understand that because happy tandems do AFF). ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  8. I like it! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  9. Just out of curiosity, what would you say is wrong with the picture? Those are hanging harnesses. They are used for training purposes. They are often (always?) old gear that is no longer safe to jump, and is set up to give realistic training to students. I'd rather see a bunch of "garbage gear" hanging from the ceiling than nothing. They are using pallets for platforms. Probably not the best idea, but certainly workable and cheap and easy to do. Not every DZ can afford brand new gear and custom made platforms for ground training. It doesn't mean the DZ is unsafe. And yes, I know where that pic came from. I agree, that doesn't speak the the quality of training in the least. At a fancy shmancy place, the instruction is likely good but you may be treated like a number, they have to make money to pay for all that stuff after all. You also might be treated perfectly well. I think that the best means of choosing a place is finding a dropzone that is close to you and has reasonable lift capacity for how much they book. Ask about how many jumps you can do, how long it takes students to get a license there and how they deal with prioritizing aff vs tandem. Ask questions that are meaningful to you. Do you want a place that is 100% serious down to business and locks up the doors when they are done or do you want a place where people hang out, etc. Also, please note asking online for opinions is like asking 100 different people if Ford or Chevy is better, make sure you've got a nose plug for all the bullshit and a fire retardant suit for the flames. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  10. Cool ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  11. I have been using the full creative cloud subscription for over a year. It works great and I haven't had problems with it. It works offline just fine, you only really need to check in with the servers once a month. All things considered, it's a great deal, lock in at 9.99 for the first year, it will at most go up to the single app rate of 19.99 after that, or at least that would be my guess. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  12. Nah, that's not what's been happening. Just like ADD and ADHD years ago, they keep expanding the 'categories' and are therefore 'diagnosing it better.' That's why the ever increasing 'autism' rate will keep going up until they move on to the next thing on the list. Every group of kids has it's social 'pecking order.' So that kid off in the corner playing by themselves is probably doing that because they're tired of the other kids always taking their toy. They don't get along so they don't hang out together. Nowadays they're diagnosed as being 'autistic' and lumped in with ones that really ARE having problems that need treatment. So, we have to find some type of link to something and it ended up being vaccines. Decades ago there was a big investigation into ice cream as a possible cause of childhood polio. Cases of polio spike up in the summer, kids eat more ice cream in the summer, does ice cream therefore cause polio? Now, there may have been a secondary or even tertiary impact as kids gather around in groups and share ice cream cones like kids do. One kid is a carrier and infects two or three others. There should have been a "but" in that sentence I wrote right after the comma. I also agree with you. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  13. There is no arguing against the numbers. The math/statistics are clear without question, vaccinations are less risk than the myriad of diseases. This will only become more and more true as the number of people in the world grows and the time it takes to move around lessens. Not to mention people who are skipping them, they cause more risk of these diseases. The crazy thing about all this is that I have a hard time understanding what people do who don't trust doctors. I mean, if you get sick with something that could be prevented by one of these vaccines you're going to end up at a doctor or hospital anyways. I mean, do you turn down all injections ever? I do believe that mistakes are made and sometimes malicious intent surfaces, worldwide conspiracy to hide that vaccines cause autism is pretty high on the tinfoil hat list to me. I don't have children yet, but will at a point not too far away and I believe this is something important to have done. For their safety now, in the future and in the event of any kind of catastrophic failure of society (which is also unlikely). ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  14. Speaking from the standpoint of working in a lawfirm the last 5 years (not as a lawyer)... irrelevant. Your ability to navigate the system (criminal or civil) is determined entirely on how much money you can throw at the problem. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  15. Yeah this is a super smart way to approach it. OP prolly doesn't understand all the concepts well enough to see the whole picture though? ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  16. I am an instructor as well and don't see any reason that they should object to this given your circumstances. Be more clear about the fact that you really will have a hard time without some kind of light protection for your eyes. Bring a doctors note if you have it explaining the condition. I rarely am able to make clear eye contact with students anyways because they are so spazed out. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  17. What good is a thread about halloween costumes without pictures. Here is my wife, we spent awhile on her costume. Full motion animation with all RGB LEDs. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  18. In a turbine it comes down to keeping staff happy. I have taken people on tandems in the 250-260 range, but honestly... fuck that (no offense meant to the OP). It's just too hard on my body. (I am on the lighter side so it was a legal jump) ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  19. I'm excited. An appropriately programed computer won't fuck up my order at the drive through when my self driving (seriously coming soon to a car near you) car takes me for fast food at 2am. In all seriousness though - the issue is quite multifaceted. I mean, I have been working on a very basic project with an arduino for a halloween costume. The things I could do with some money behind it would be amazing. Just having a vision for that kind of thing - the kind of thing we couldn't have even dreamed about being reality 20 years ago. As a kid I played with capsela toys and you could do very low level basic robotics with it. Lego, etc... The toys of today are designed around those things and training the minds of our youth. Too bad there are going to be too many of them (over population). This post couldn't possibly be long enough to get a handle on my train of thought on this subject. It's very frustrating. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  20. The local DOT here has started putting them in at freeway exits. It's astonishing how much faster everything goes. They didn't even use them as stop sign replacements - major intersections that were stop LIGHT controlled were replaced with roundabouts resulting in substantially less congestion and I find them very easy to use. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  21. This. I hold no stock in any organized religion for this exact reason. Be nice to one another, mind your own business, don't do harm. Live your life that way as best you can and you're going to have less problems. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  22. Yeah, I was going to post this one. Such an awesome voice. I also agree with the other comment about Boyce Avenue I also think that this version of Radioactive is on par or better: Here But I am a sucker for acoustic sounding redos ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  23. Neat. My dad was just telling me about Ansel Adams who was basically doing a lot of the stuff we take for granted in photoshop in an actual darkroom, well before digital photography was even a thought in someone's mind. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  24. This ^^^ Scan to a PDF and email. (Or, as someone mentioned above, take a photograph of it.) Works for membership application and for license applications. (And bonus is that the scan is an electronic copy in case something goes missing, or if you visit a new place and need to prove things between the submission time and when you get your card.) Now if only they could make their website work in the set of browsers that > 70% of the internet uses, it might seem to outsiders like it's a real professional organization. It's not like it didn't get mentioned to them like 3 years ago that the site doesn't work right. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka
  25. I was not intending to insinuate that these were the same organization. I did not mean to imply it is the same organization either, which is why I put 'official in quotation marks. There are only 4 real dropzones in Southeast Wisconsin not associated with Skyride Skydive Milwaukee / Sky Knights - Club Operation, Turbine - East Troy Skydive Midwest - Owned Center, Turbine - Sturtevant Atmosphere - Owned, Cessna - Ft Atkinson 7Hills - Club, Cessna - Madison I run / jump at Sky Knights so obviously suggest that and believe we have a better safety record. But of course my opinion is highly biased. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka