temporary17

Yeah I saw it in the photo. I can't remember whether I ever saw it there or if it was laying around or what. I have to wonder who might have thought that was a good idea. Maybe maintenance people used it after turning the power off.

Wooden ladder?! You didn't use that, did you? We used the wooden plank on the roof of that shed. (I think you can see the end of it on the roof there between the tower and that wire.) You'd slide the plank a ways off the edge of the roof, walk out on it, then jump to the tower so that you'd 'land' on it like a bird on a power line, and not be grounded. You needed a 'plankmon', someone who wasn't going to climb/jump, to stand on the plank for the last guy. Sometimes a spark would come off your foot when you left the plank, or your hand when you grabbed the tower. How stupid we are when we're young...

As someone mentioned the other day, didn't the Ingrams wash the bills? Would that wash the silt off? How would it not wash the diatoms off? Did Tom find traces of the dish soap?

I appreciate your attempt to help. Your instructions are pretty clear, even I could probably navigate them, but I'm not tech savvy at all, just turning the thing on and going to the sites I read pretty much maxes out my speed. But also it sounds like your fix would just revert it to the default of the changed format. I didn't like those changes, and that's where my problems started. This alternate account looks and operates like the site did before the changes were made. My hope is that the admins could revert my original account to operate like this one does. I PM'ed Meso in August. He still hasn't read it, much less replied, even though his profile says he was logged in as recent as ten days ago. Meanwhile, I really don't post all that much, I usually just read the site without logging in, but I do log in to check the Incidents threads. Another curiosity, on your post the text is very light, like it's almost hidden. Not sure why that is.

You've got that mostly correct. And I have nothing but good for everybody involved. But to be fully historically accurate, you need to take that one step further back. Vertigo was Mark's company.

I don't know if what I'm about to say is specifically true for 377's reserve rides, but it is a possibility. There was a fair period of time, a transition period, when sport skydivers moved away from using military surplus 'gutter gear' (back mains and front reserves), and started using 'piggyback' rigs (main and reserve both on the back) designed and built specifically for sport jumping. This started before square chutes were used at all, and continued for some years as squares were used for mains but rounds were still used for reserves. 26' navy conicals were popular reserves through that period, then sport gear manufacturers were designing round reserves, and eventually square reserves took over. So 377's 26' conical may have been in a sport piggyback rig. My first reserve ride was also on a 26' navy conical packed in a sport piggyback rig. ------- Actually it is. All the gear in the Cooper case were reserves, with the possible exception of one of Cossey's rigs, IF in fact any of his were taken. Pilot emergency bailout rigs ARE reserves. The harnesses, containers, and canopies are designed and built as such, are tested to FAA TSO standards, and are required to be packed by FAA licensed riggers. Such requirements do not apply to sport mains. (For sport skydiving gear, the TSO standards apply to the harness, reserve container, and reserve canopy, but not the main container or canopy.)

That was to tie the reserve container to the harness so it didn't flop around in freefall. The main structural connection is the two metal clips that attach to the D-rings on the harness. In the original designs, there were either two more clips/rings, or a sort of thread through belt to hold the container still, but as more types of containers were built, those either didn't mix/match or disappeared altogether, so they just started tying them down as such. Again, that was NOT the structural attachment of the reserve container or canopy to the main harness, it just held the container still. I'm not a rigger, so I can't really detail that out for you, but you might PM either JerryBaumchen or riggerrob on here. If you can find 'Dan Poynter's The Parachute Manual' online, that might have such info. That book is considered kind of a 'bible' for riggers. dudeman17

A slow but steady trickle of people looking at this thread. Unfortunately, Meso isn't one of them. I PM'd him almost two months ago - not read yet. A moderator tried to email him and get his attention - no response. I have to wonder if I'm the only one this happened to?

Is that Slim selling Reca's coat?

You wrote a post asking for help. Deisel made you a very compassionate offer. I, too, suggest you take him up on it. In the meantime, I suggest that you NOT look for a job packing tandems or student rigs for a DZ's school. You seem unsure enough about your own life that I don't think you should be in a position where TI's or the general public should be entrusting their lives to you. I would hope that you wouldn't do anything intentional, but your frustration and unsurety might affect your level of care and attention to detail. Especially if you're prone to arguing with your employers. And I would much rather my rigger/packer have OCD than ADD.

Seriously, is there no administrator monitoring this site who can fix this problem?

Admins?

I need some Admin help. My normal account is dudeman17. You recently did something to make changes to the site. Opening the site, it looked normal. When I signed in with my user name (dudeman17) the home page still looked normal. When I clicked into the forums, the format and look was different, with smaller print. I didn't like that. I found that 'themes' menu at the bottom. and wanted to try those to see if I could find one I liked. One of them froze up my account. It lets me go into the different forums, but when I click on a thread, it gives me a blank page. I cannot read the threads or post in them, and cannot use the message function. It will not let me back into 'themes' to change it back. There is an error message at the bottom, saying it needs something run in 'AdminCP' to reset it, but I don't have access to that. At the least, could you please reset my account (dudeman17) to the default settings so I can use it? HOWEVER... I made this alternate account as seemingly the only way to communicate with you. After signing in to it, it looks and operates normally, as my original account (dudeman17) did before you made whatever changes you did. Is there a way you could reset my dudeman17 account so that it looks and functions normally, like this one does? I hope so... Thanks