Plaedouh

Maybe I'll make it there, maybe I can't.. Guess we'll have to wait and see. Oh, and Mikkel, thought I mentioned it before... the clemsonskydiving.com link doesn't work, and hasn't worked for months. Though if people DO wanna see that spectacular page with all of the club shenanigans, they can go to http://www.clemson.edu/~dixsky

Whoa...calm yourself Sheena. Is it really necessary to jump down someone's throat when they post somthing that might, in part, be an echo of something that was said before? Is it that hard to overlook it? Besides, no one anywhere posted the "weapons of mass distruction trick"... so you have yourself a moo point anyway.

go to google.com, type in "miserable failure" and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. for an encore, try it with "weapons of mass destruction". I laughed. I cried. Then I laughed some more.

I do have to concede a point you have, that there are some attitudes here (yes, yours included) that come across as too antagonistic to do anyone some good. However, you do bring up some good questions a lot of people can learn from, including myself. First, paperwork. Yes, paperwork is real important, namely a log book. The purpose of a log book isn't just to show who you jumped with, or how fast you can turn points or whatever your taste may be... it is to show how frequently you jump, what your tendencies, strengths, weaknesses and habits are, as well as how current you are. Many DZs won't want to do a whole lot with you if you claim to have xxx number of jumps, but can't prove it, and prove when they were. 2 days, 2 months, or 2 years...whenever your last jump was, your log book is the primary way to show a new DZ how safe they can expect you to be. Second, the quizzing on "basic information" such as freefall speed, freefall time, deployment speed, etc. That's stuff you *must* know, not just to get an A license, but to be a safe skydiver. If a dropzone chooses to let someone jump from their plane, and fall toward the ground at speeds above 120mph, it is really really important to have a basic understanding on what factors are going on around you, so that you know and understand how to react, so that you can save your own life, and not put yourself or anyone around you in danger. None of us want to see you, or anyone get hurt in any way in this sport. There are some basic things we all need to understand, so we're not being reckless when we exit the aircraft. By knowing fall rate, deployment speeds and the important issues related to them, you can jump safer. You're jumping out of a plane, I hope safety is one of the bigger issues you find important to you. Miscommunication's happen. Maybe you were joking when you said you wern't sure of your belly flying skill. Maybe the instructor didn't catch the sarcasm. Those things happen, next time we'll all know to be sure things are communicated clearly. I've forgotten my goggles on a jump, and I know plenty of people who have too. While anyone who does certainly deserves to be laughed at, that's all that it warrents. No big deal. And honestly, the coach/instructor probably could have caught that with a 30 second gear check. Spiraling. Would it have gotten you closer to the dropzone? Yes! It would have gotten you *down* closer to the dropzone. You would have found you had a better chance to get back if you got yourself out of the strong upper winds asap. All the rest is just jibberish from here. People came out to get you, and while it may have not been the most convenient end to the jump, you were able to walk away (best part of the whole story here, you were able to walk away completely unhurt). Don't be unsettled a large group was not sent out for you. People were able to see where you were landing, and in that case it only takes one or two people to recover you. It is too bad they couldn't get right to you, but these things happen. I have jumped at this DZ several times, and I have seen some of the DZ regulars, and even an Instructor land off... way off, and only one truck was sent out to find that individual. I have landed off there twice myself, once I was picked up, once I walked the full way back. Point is when someone says they are going to get you, we all trust they said that because they know where to get you, and the fastest way to do it. It sucks you had such a negetive experience, because it happened at what I have found to be one of my all time favorite mid-size dropzones. I do hope this doesn't jade your experiences and interactions from here, because can take away from one of the biggest reasons we all become so absorbed in the sport...the people we jump with. In the end I think everyone needs to just take a deep breath, and put this down as a learning experience, for all of us. In all honesty, I do want to thank you for bringing this all up, because all in all, some important things have been brought to the surface. I know by following this discussion I have learned some things that I will apply to my work with students in the future, as well as new visitors to Dropzones I work at. edited because i can't spell for shit

C&P at 22k? Did you have bail out oxygen? That sounds like one hullava ride. :) I do just want to say this to the general thread. I think this thread has run it's course, and prety much anything that can be said has been said. I'd just hope people won't keep beating a dead horse, this whole thread kinda has a weird vibe to it now. Just disecting this more won't really fix anything. All this frightens and confuses me. Can't we all just get along?

Great advice. I second that.

Hey girl, welcome to this place. Hopefully you'll have some fun and maybe even learn some stuff around here.

Thanks for the tip. I've only made it out to Jumptown once so far, last year. Great place. Hopefully soon I'll get the opportunity (and agreeable weather) to get there a lot more frequently. Funny thing is, my jumpsuit already looks exactly like everyone else's there, so I know i'll blend in.

I just started using the Yahoo toolbar because it blocks popups too. So far i'm quite happy. As for spyware, most people I've talked to say AdAware is the best free spyware detector and eliminator you can get for free. YMMV

I'm not worried, not even the Air Force could catch Santa. That Mofo is FAST. (this is posted all over the net, and i can't find the actual author) SANTA CLAUS: AN ENGINEER'S PERSPECTIVE There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.

Hey everyone. It's about time I posted one of these here. I'm Mike, I've been jumping for about 3 years now. I just made the trasnition from broke skydiver attending college to broke skydiver entering the "real world". To find my job I moved from mild South Carolina (GO CLEMSON!) home to the Boston area. For the last few months it's been quite the transplant. My jumping has seriously cut back until I can afford it again, and that's just kicking in now. Talk about withdrawl pain... that's the biggest reason I stumbled in here, because I just miss all my skydiving friends and the atmosphere I had to leave behind. I'm thrilled to have found this place, this has a realy healthy atmosphere, and I've seen people giving some real solid advice to students just entering the sport. That's just awesome. Anyway, just saying hi, and hopefully I'll be able to contribute in some small way here, too. Oh, and if anyone knows of any DZs in the greater Boston area who might have some use for an enthusiastic static-line instructor looking for work, I'd love to hear from ya.

-Freefall: +/-120 sec -Normal RW suit w/long sleeve tshirt, shorts under, w/ gloves -2-way RW jump exited around 23k, opened about 3k (ZHills, March 2002) landed about 2 miles off. Only one guy on the load made it back, he pulled about 6k

I know of a rigger who many of us suspect "pencil packs" his own rig on occasion.... I wouldn't bother trying that, myself. Hate to start my posting around here with a bitch and moan post, but all of my friends who skydive are avaraging 1000 miles away, and no one around here has much interest or knowlege of the sport. Yet.

Hello one and all. Haven't really posted around here much yet, though odds are that's gonna start changing. Anyway, I'm gonna vent for a second. I'm a broke recent college graduate who's only priority as of late has been finding myself a job. Transplanted myself home to the Boston area from South Carolina a couple months ago. Well this week I got said job after months of searching, whoo ha! NOW I want to celebrate. SO I pull together some money for some jumps, somthing I had to budget out for the last month. Weather is prety damn good this weekend for jumping around here. I pull out my rig... and what do I find but my reserve went out of date LAST TUESDAY. Holy hell, that sucked. Yadda yadda now I'm challanged to find myself a new rigger up here. I can't make anything like the Jumptown boogie next weekend because of Thanksgiving plans... I miss jumping. So yeah, one of those days. How was jumping for everyone else?