robinheid

If Obamacare stands, skydiving and other extreme sports will be outlawed along with jelly doughnuts and Twinkies because they increase health care costs for everyone else. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Bingo. Unless I missed it, everyone so far in this thread has forgotten to consider Occam and his razor in their dissertations. You don't get "rollercoaster stomach" when you jump from a plane or a building or a balloon because you're operating at 1 G. You do get "rollercoaster stomach" on a rollercoaster because as you go from 1 G to zero G, the urine in your bladder stays where it is in space while your body moves downward through that same space -- causing the top of your bladder to collide with the floating urine, thus causing that tingly "droppy" feeling routinely mis-identified as being in your stomach. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Advertise it on basejumper.com as a base water canopy. I sold my Fury a few years back to one of the Potato Bridge locals for that very purpose. And if it still flares decently, they can land it on the ground too. As for jump numbers, too many variables to say what 500 jumps would do to its condition. Were they "green grass" jumps made in Florida or nasty dirt jumps made in SoCal or Arizona? Packed on grass or carpet or dirt? Packed inside or out? and what was the wing loading on those jumps - i.e., was it jumped by a big guy or a smaller person? that's why others have said to have a good rigger check it out so you can get those answers; and best to use an old fart because they know more about f-111 than the kids do. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

How do the French not act like everyone else? Oh wait... I give up. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I enjoy telling folks that skydiving is safer than fishing. Around 3000 folks die in the US every year by drowning, which I conveniently classify as "fishing" deaths. I generally will give a disclaimer regarding the number of participants. Seriously, people do tend to underestimate the danger involved with water, and especially if the water is cold. Maybe somewhat obvious since 3000 folks die each year in this country. Even in Kansas, people die every Memorial, Independence, and Labor Day weekend in drowning accidents. LOL... every year in Yosemite more people die from drowning than have died in BASE jumping accidents there in all years since 1978 combined -- but then, government wankers never have been very good at math -- or common sense. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1! LOL... I was just about to post these words myself until I saw that you'd done it already. Had a similar thing happen one time at Perris when a low-timer had some kind of hard-pull/premature brake fire sort of adventure after a 2K pull -- and I said "why are you pulling so low?" And she said "because I have a C license now so I can." So I explained how modern-canopy opening distances are much longer than those being jumped when the 2k limit was set, and some other related things, and as I did about a half dozen other low-timers slowly gathered around and listened.. and when my little impromptu talk was over, two of them said "I just got my "C" too and I'll think I'll stay with 2500 or above. Thanks!" So really, regardless of whether your words sink into the brain of your target, you never know into whose brain they may sink, with positive results down the line that no one will ever know about because the result was something bad that didn't happen. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

More than once over the years -- and the interesting thing was, it sometime TOOK years before the "thank you" came because that's how long (and how many more jumps) it took for them to realize that the ***hole intruding on their fun was actually trying to keep them sufficiently ambulatory to have even more fun. Of course, then there were a couple AI (***hole Intrusion) targets who died before they figured it out. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 for that approach, even though it didn't help much in that particular case. There's a base jumping instructor who does something similar with his students: He has them write a letter to their loved ones explaining why they're dead and why they decided to base jump even though they knew how dangerous it was. IIRC, it doesn't stop many of them from going forward with the training, but does help them get their minds right about doing it (if any base jumper can be said to be of right mind). 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

agreed. but it makes you wonder, if both jumpers are experienced and are not jumping for hire (fun jumping) are they really breaking any rules ? In any case, a person should have the blessing of the T I/E and the mfg. doesn't mak any ****ing difference in my book. if you look into all the known tandem fatalities you will find more than one case where "untrained funjumpers" got into deep shit and killed themselves and/or the pax. so no matter who, where, when, why: doing tandems without proper training by an I/E is the worst idea you can have. and if there is no Strong, PDF, Racer I/E around go for he other company - there's loads of them Where do you get your data? There are incident reports in the back of the Vector2 tandem and SIGMA manuals that show untrained instructors in the report. Okay, thanks. Guess I tend to remember the untrained fatalities less than the highly experienced fatalities because the former aren't as systemically problematic as the latter. Nice to know too that a tandem fatality list is required reading for the rating (IIRC, when I got tandem rating in 1986, there were at that point no tandem fatalities to list). 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Thanks for posting that link, it's a fun video. I always get a kick out of newbies who jump out of the plane and then check their altimeter 2 seconds out of the door. News flash pal, you're 100 ft lower than when you jumped 2 seconds ago. Pssst.... 46 feet. Wouldn't it be 64 feet? 32 feet per second per second. Yes, it would be. In vacuum. LOL... My Old Timer's Disease is showing... actually, it's 62 feet... 16 + 46 = 62. And for the first five seconds you are for all practical purposes in a vacuum because the air does not affect the acceleration profile until that point. See the attached chart that shows what I mean; as soon as you hit five seconds (about 85mph), your rate of acceleration drops off significantly as air resistance becomes a factor, and by the time you get to seconds 8-12, you're only accelerating about 4 feet per second per second. The "vacuum formula" does work for the first five seconds, though, especially if, unlike Dave and me, you can do basic math. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

agreed. but it makes you wonder, if both jumpers are experienced and are not jumping for hire (fun jumping) are they really breaking any rules ? In any case, a person should have the blessing of the T I/E and the mfg. doesn't mak any ****ing difference in my book. if you look into all the known tandem fatalities you will find more than one case where "untrained funjumpers" got into deep shit and killed themselves and/or the pax. so no matter who, where, when, why: doing tandems without proper training by an I/E is the worst idea you can have. and if there is no Strong, PDF, Racer I/E around go for he other company - there's loads of them Where do you get your data? IIRC, one of the more disconcerting things about most tandem fatalities is that they involve highly experienced tandem masters more often than they do lower-time or outlaw tandem masters (the recent 10,000-jump+ Jim Fonnesbeck/passenger fatality = Exhibit A for the affirmative). The accuracy of your assertion aside, the bottom line is that the liability associated with tandem accidents, even in countries other than the sue-happy US of A, is such that any DZO or airplane operator who knowingly let's an outlaw tandem master jump with a paying non-jumper customer is too dumb to be flying airplanes or runnig a parachute center. A case in point was the Fumio Kubo fatality in Japan about 10 years ago. I forget the details but IIRC something in his paperwork wasn't quite right and that, along with some Japan-centric legal issues, resulted in the closure of the DZ, which had operated for years and was run by one of Japan's most, senior, respected and high-profile jumpers. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Thanks for posting that link, it's a fun video. I always get a kick out of newbies who jump out of the plane and then check their altimeter 2 seconds out of the door. News flash pal, you're 100 ft lower than when you jumped 2 seconds ago. Pssst.... 46 feet. But I digress. Good "tell" you noticed there. I wonder if he really has 300 jumps to be checking his alti that much... of course, maybe he just likes looking at his reflection in the alti glass... 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

His response was something like "Oh, I'm ok with it." Said he had made 30 jumps on it already. Said he "knew the risks". It was explained to him that the fact that he was 2:1 on a Velo at less than 300 jumps clearly meant that he either didn't understand the risks or simply didn't care. His overall attitude was that of the bulletproof type. He wasn't a smart ass or rude, just bulletproof. Acted like he had heard it all before (which he probably had) and that everyone around him just didn't understand his mad skillz. Good on ya, Chuck... you're picking up where the late great Al Frisby left off in Perris. He used to walk up to peeps being willfully stupid and tell them they were going to bounce. They all shrugged him off until the second or third guy in a row did in fact bounce not long after he ignored Al's assessment. After that, peeps started paying more attention to Al's assessments. Dude's response to your assessment reminds me of the old saying: "If you aren't worried, you obviously don't understand the problem." 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Yes! Of course, how much it counts depends on how much you weighed to start with. If you were 150 pounds, you've reduced your weight by ten percent and your wing loading by n percent after counting the rig weight. If you were 250 to start, then not so big a difference, but at the sizes common these days, even a five percent decrease in wing loading can pay dividends on that day you need it. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Indeed... and when you lose a few cells for a moment or longer to that turbulence, the more square footage you have left in the remaining cells will probably determine whether the ambulance-in-residence peeps will have to go to work. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It would be especially hard because making the hi-per canopy flyers pull lower increases their risk because everything happens faster whether there's a problem or not and I for one always pull higher on my small canopy than I do on my bigger one. That said, the mix-and-match issue you outlined is in fact a primary challenge at big-turbine DZs -- and a challenge that, once again, could be more easily met if there was a more solid academic foundation laid during basic parachute training, which should be separate from and prior to freefall training. Jumpers who know basic aerodynamics and the way wings actually fly are better able to meet the mix-and-match challenge because that knowledge allows them to better adjust their flight path to achieve vertical as well as horizontal separation from other canopies in the air. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

"And when it wasn't an interesting read, it was a fascinating read. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

You lost me there. Egg samples, please. 44 A couple of relevant threads come to mind... Using the 45 degree rule Ignoring Spotting and exit separation calculations Re-inventing emergency procedures Okay, thanks. Concur. Too many things have become customary that make jumpers less independent and autonomous... it's like, why spot when the pilot does it and all I have to do is go when the light turns green? There was a briefly notorious case in Perris some years ago where Skip evans was flying the Otter one day (instead of his customary DC-3) and when he turned on jump run, he turned on the green light instead of the red one because, in his DC-3 the procedure was "green light means jump run. Spot and go when it's time." So when the green light went on, everyone on the plane just ran out the door -- two or three miles from the drop zone! The worst part was, they were all mad at Skip; it never occurred to any of these 20+ skygods to look before they leaped. And FYI, I don't oppose recommended wing loading charts and would even suggest that making those charts part of the ground school I've proposed would be a very good thing. The sooner we get people educated about everything that they're doing and the gear they're jumping, the more likely it is that they will start thinking about all the elements that go into parachuting rather than just drooling and running out the door like Pavlov's dog when a green light goes on. I just think creating a regulatory hierarchy where people are forced to comply with a boatload of new wing loading rules and standards, etc etc, that can never even fractionally account for all the variables attendant thereto, is a really stupid way to deal with the situation. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Yo! If you live in Colorado for the open space and natural setting then why exactly did you settle in the most densely populated part of the state next to an airport? 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

...and send a bill for the bullet to their family! You're confusing Norway with China... a little issue with your short-term memory, maybe? 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

AFAIK, the Perris pond is history too. As one young gun there said to me Wednesday, "swooping is a dying sport, in more ways than one." Or to update what Skratch Garrison said a few decades ago after a dozen people bounced in two years at the Gulch, mostly from sub-1000-foot deployment altitudes: "Pulling low Swooping is a rush; it's just not practical." 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

C'mon, DP, lighten up. What could possibly go wrong? Seriously, though, your "seasoning" comment a few posts up is right on. If you look at the military, "time in service" and "time in grade" are significant elements of the rank structure -- to the point that they sometimes count more than actual rank. You learn things by being around any activity for an extended time simply because you are, uhhh, around the activity for an extended time. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

You lost me there. Egg samples, please. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I usually use a curling iron if you can get the little buggers to hold still long enough. Gives them some added turn performance though. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

What is it about this DZ that makes it a C license DZ? It's a C-size landing area... 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."