SkydiveJack

Sounds like a normal turboprop jump plane landing to me.

Here are a couple of photos I took at Oshkosh in 2010. The plane has been beautifully restored and still has the big 985 engine. You can see that it has 196 painted on the cowl.

Andy was a good person and a good friend. We had a lot of fun together whenever I visited Headcorn and he visited Z-hills. Blue Skies Buddy!

I jumped an AN-26 in Poland back in 1989. It sure climbed fast. They needed to slow it down more for jump run.

I make the claim that my skydiving skills saved my life. A long time ago, at a construction job, I fell off the top of a set of portable bleachers that were folded up. It was 22 feet from the top to the concrete floor. I went off sideways and time slowed down. I focused on getting my feet below me by grabbing the folded up rows of bleachers as I was on the way down. As my legs swung below me I got my feet and knees together and prepared for a PLF. I hit, rolled and laid there surprised that I wasn’t screaming in pain. I had a slightly twisted ankle. The foreman saw me fall and ran over as I got up and walked it off. The best part of it was that he sent me home and assured me I would get paid for the full day. I got in my car and drove to the DZ and made a few jumps!

It happened at Z-hills in the mid 1980's.

The uproar over the Not Guilty verdict in the Casey Anthony trial is due to what I call the Nancy Grace Effect. Grace made the death of Caylee Anthony her cause célèbre and then other network talking heads jumped on the bandwagon. Their motivation was their rating battles and this caused a media feeding frenzy. This trial had nothing to do with the justice they publically espoused and everything to do with advertising revenues and personal fame for these tabloid news reporters. Suddenly the Florida Attorney Generals Office was under a huge amount of public pressure to prosecute Casey Anthony. So much pressure that they rushed to court with a weak case and lost. It’s possible that if the Florida AG Office took more time they could have developed conclusive evidence. On the other hand, it is also possible that Casey Anthony is truly innocent of the murder charges and was simply convicted in the court of public opinion. The bottom line is that the US Legal System has been vindicated again. Without sufficient evidence a person will be found innocent, despite what everyone thinks they know in their heart to be true. Our legal system is based on factual evidence, not on theories spun by tabloid pundits. This should be a lesson to those in the public who seem to want their McJustice served up at the drive thru window by Nancy Grace and friends.

Yeah!!! C-49J!!! I remembered correctly! I better remember. I have well over 1000 jumps from that airplane. We did some incredible skydives out of her. I have a 29 second 40 Way logged out of Southern Cross during the annual Z-hills Easter competition. We also did the first Night 40 Way out of her. And I was on her once when we lost an engine on take-off at 400 ft. We had 40 jumpers onboard and the pilots were able to climb to about 800 ft, slowly turn around and land safely. When the engine crapped out on take-off the sound of all those assholes slamming shut at once was deafening!

Could be Sparky, but I really can't remember now. I confused myself. I do know it had a different type name from the standard C-47. Hopefully one of you guys down there in Texas can take a look and tell us what it really is. Pretty please?

Here's an interesting little tidbit about Southern Cross. If you look just behind the co-pilots seat you should find the metal Manufacturers Data Plate. It should say that the type of aircraft is a C-49, NOT a C-47 as everybody thinks. In fact I think it might say C-49J. It has to do with some differences between its production run and other standard C-47's. The obvious difference is the Wright engines. Edited to add- After posting this I'm starting to think that the type number is something other than C-49. I might have it right, but maybe not. However Southern Cross does have a different type number than C-47, which is the standard Army Air Corp designation for the civillian DC-3.

WOW! A Brazilian skydivers in one formation? That’s amazing!!!!!

I’ve had the pleasure of sitting around a fire listening to Ed and Jim tell the story. If you’re ever having a bad day at your job just remember what these guys went through. It kind of makes things seem not so bad!

Thanks for posting this Kevin! What is the story on the SRB parachute that we see split from base to apex during its final reefing?

Only you would go there Twardo! Hey Everyone, thanks for the votes. It's really helping make a young child happy! If you haven't voted yet please go to the link in the first post. Thanks!

Rick was an all around good guy. He always made me smile whenever he walked in to the room. My thoughts go out to Patty and family.

I have voted for other peoples contests here so now it’s my turn to ask a favor. I would appreciate it if you could go to the link below and vote for my 12 yr. old cousin Millie’s design in this contest. Her drawing is the Red Pick-Up Truck driving by the palm trees. It is actually quite good! If you could rate it as a 10 it sure would help! It looks like the two designs below hers are slightly ahead. Seems that you can also give them a lower rating like 0 or 1. So vote for Millie and vote often! Thank!! http://shop.saltrock.com/doodle/noodledoodle

From the South Park guys, a true Broadway Musical- The Book of Mormon http://www.facebook.com/TheBookOfMormonOnBroadway?ref=ts&sk=app_105329372892362

Off the top of my head, it was around twenty years ago that the USAF Thunderbirds had a horrible accident. It was when they were flying T-38's. During a training flight they came out of a loop too low and the four man diamond flew into the ground, killing them all. Apparently the leader screwed up and the other three followed him right in. I remember seeing an aerial photo of the crash site and it showed four impact craters in a diamond shape. I’m sure this was a consideration for the Blue Angles when they stood down. And I’m sure it weighed heavily in the mind of the Commander when he resigned.

Back when I was a kid and used to walk ten miles uphill each way to the DZ, we didn't have those fancy high performance rounds. All we had were Cheapos and Strato Rocks to do CRW with.

One thing has been changing. Back in the day, when we did something stupid we normally just killed ourselves. Now lately when we do something stupid we are often taking someone with us. I’m really disgusted with the direction this sport has taken.

Hi Krip, You mentioned in the other thread that the reunion was in August. What are the dates? Is there a particular motel everyone is staying at? And for everyone else, Fulton, Missouri is where I started jumping!

About 9 or 10 years ago I was flying a Lear Jet back from Iceland into Goose Bay, Canada in the middle of the night to refuel. When we got handed over to the tower there was initially no response. Fortunately there was good weather and we decided to just do standard uncontrolled airport callouts and land visually. Before we landed we heard a couple of unintelligible transmissions on the radio. After we landed and parked I went in and called the tower. I let it ring for a few minutes and finally the controller picked it up. He was drunk on his ass. Totally out of it. I made a few phone calls to the authorities and recommended police and ambulance go to check on him. In the back of my mind I knew that it was possible that he might have a medical condition that was affecting him. We ended up taking off visually and picking up our IFR clearance in the air from Center. I found out later that he really was drunk. And the whole thing was hushed up. I never heard a thing aboot it in the Canadian news.

It's a Lodestar.

Was this Santiago as in Chile? Anybody know what kind of aircraft that was?

Next time try Key Word “Decapitation”.