Cloggy

Raft jump!

What are you using? Stick electrodes? For aluminium plate try to get hold of a pulsed MIG welder. I welded some 5mm thick plate and tube with that (a long time ago). I found that fairly easy to do and that turned out looking not too nasty. But a pro-welder helped me to set all the parameters on the machine, I wouldn't have a clue to do that myself. As I understood the pulsed welding allows you to weld at a lower temperature, not overheating the material (very important with aluminium). Otherwise you could use TIG (AC!).

There are some typo's in the German text. I suppose that happened when retyping, but if that is how you received it, it looks like a fake or they have a dyslectic buchhalterin. If the letter doesn't state the offence you committed and the time and date I'd send them a letter and reject it. Liestal does list a Beatrice Donatz in the Behoerdenverzeichnis http://www.bl.ch/docs/ak/jpd/statthalter.htm so you could drop her an email. That's a pretty steep fine... What did you do, expose yourself on the Liestal market place??

Isn't maillon just the french word for link? More trivia: they are a french invention and are made near Geneva, I think the company is called Preguet. Edited... Geezzz Sparky, didn't get it at first... lol

And you'd be carrying all this as well... http://www.spelco.de/shaps.htm And the press release is over here: http://www.esg.de/en/press/pressreleases/?tid=877

Lovely. A few years ago I thought about becoming a demolition engineer as I had some experience with explosives (and ok, I admit, it seems like a fun job blowing up stuff). But not enough career 'opportunies' as less and less buildings are imploded over here due to environmental rules.... Turned out I'd probably have to wait a few years for an object to take the final exam...

I'm at similar jump levels and wingload, so maybe I'm not the person to give advice, but at least I can tell from my experiences. My reasoning went something like this when looking for a new canopy: -I want to progress quickly, for that I need a challenging, fast and small canopy (and the 'cool' factor is in there somewhere as well, I want to do those long awesome swoops too...). -It is a lot of money so I don't want to buy something that I will get bored with in a few hundred jumps and have to sell off at a loss. So I need something that is small and fast and that will still be fun after 500 jumps, even if I know it may not the most sensible thing to do (money factor). -But don't worry, even if I know it's too much for me at my present skill level and I know I have to be really carefull the first xx jumps, I'll survive and master the canopy after a while. Because I'm a great canopy pilot , I think I have a good feeling for flying and am always learning and always have good stand-up landings on target (overestimation of own skills). My guess is that quite a few people end up buying a canopy now that requires future skills. If you're careful (or lucky?) you'll learn without injury, but as margins are small, the inevitable mistakes could hurt a lot. And when something unexpected happens (landing out in a forest/backyard, avoiding canopy collision) the skills are not there yet to save your ass... I progressed slowly to Sabre2 170, I really felt and feel kept back going this slowly: regulations over here... But on the other hand, at every step there was something to learn, things I thought I mastered did work slightly different under a new canopy. Because the progression steps weren't that big, margins for error are larger: I could try new tricks, master them, without hurting or killing myself: instead of just surviving you have the room to actually play and learn something about the canopy (use that list of canopy control exercises that is on here somewhere). This story is getting way too long, what it boils down to is: give yourself the time to progress and learn, it could save your ass later on (and IMO will make you a better pilot). Going from a 1.3w/l ragged square to 1.7w/l elliptical in one step does not make sense to me. Spend at least some money to rent an intermediate (e.g. semi-e at 1.3 w/l) for say 30-50 jumps. It'll give you also an idea what type of canopy and w/l you're ok with. Initially I thought I'd be bored with the Sabre2 quickly (sometimes am: riser pressure/recovery arc): now I know it'll take me a few hundred jumps more to have my 180's/270's consistent. Before that time I feel I don't have any business jumping smaller/faster. Needless to say that I became a bit more humble after botching up a few landings even recently, something that would have ended quite differently with a small elliptical. Bart

$5.95/gallon

Fucking time delays... Looks like the fucking censor couldn't get the fucking bleeps in sync... He's too bleeping late every time

Magic eraser... Sounds like the melamine foam stuff. I myself wouldn't let it near my container. Melamine is a resin that is almost as hard as glass. The cleaning action comes from the the foam being abrasive on a microsopic scale, scraping off and embedding the dirt particles. I'm not sure if this would cause actual damage to the fibres in container webbing or what happens if broken off melamine particles embed themselves in the webbing, but it doesn't sound too good to me. Please understand this is just my interpretation: it could be perfectly safe, but until proven otherwise.... If you want to know more, do a google on Basotect. I'll put a question out to BASF, see what they have to say on this.

Hiya Piisfish, Nice pics.. I want to do that too Would anybody know if a Sabre 2 (wl 1.3) is any good for GL? (Altitude around 1400/2400m) I got a fair amount of paragliding experience with a few starts on ski. And can you survive just using toggles or do you really need to know how to fly on rears too?

Wow... Amazing.. Touch and go seems rather scary to me... What if your canopy collapses and you're of the cliff again. Take a look at chutes.mpg too I want to try GL in feb, I'll at least take my kite with me to La Clusaz. But still scraping the courage together...

I found what this means

I'm spot on average... Male that is... But I got all the 3d shapes ok. Could be a skydiving advantage, rotating shapes in 3d all the time

I guess it shouldn't be expensive at all... Engineers love destructive testing Try to find a tech college. They might have a test rig for pull testing? Make it into a student project. Otherwise, steel cables and slings etc. basically anything used for lifting or hoisting needs to be pull tested and certified every year or so (At least on this side of the world). So a company doing that kind of work should have a test rig. Maybe if you walk in there on a friday a'noon with a case of beer??

Strange currency? Ten dix??

Somebody know where this was taped? Just curious. Might be St. Hilaire?

The one I hear most isn't in the poll. "Aren't you scared/frightened/terrified to jump from that high/an airplane"... Gave up explaining that exiting the plane is not a stress point (at least not to me). Next time I'll say I'm totally terrified every time, but that I seem to like it

So jealous... I was supposed to go paragliding near Grenada (Spain) last week. Just couldn't get the holidays approved... It's incredible how the wings have improved over the past years. A twitchy competetion wing from say six years ago is easily outperformed by a recent fun to fly and stable intermediate. And if you want you can do some radical stuff. Wing overs, fast spiral. But better not touch the front risers...

Haven't tasted it, but 6% isn't that strong... Just 20% more alcohol than most pilsener . Most bockbier runs between 6 to 8%. But ehmm, you're a skydiver... you're not afraid of beer, are you? Just try it! Or you refuse to drink halfs??

http://www.milbestlight.com/swf/game/game1.swf

Brand new, only 100 jumps on this third lineset

Hmm, not very well informed on the workings of the Neptune and some misplaced allegations w.r.t Alti-2 IMO. Yeah right, ask any car manufacturer for the protocol to mess with the engine management system... What response would you expect? I suppose you'd have to follow the manufacturers specs if you don't want to lose your rigger's licence? Who are you going to sell it to? Without valid TSO? Not on a road or DZ near me, I hope. What if you cause a lethal accident with your modified car or premature opening on your improved rig? Well, this was covered by Kelk and GravityGirl anyways. And business reasons aren't valid reasons? If I was the author of Paralog, spending significant time developing this software jointly with Alti-2, to mutual benefit, I'd be really pissed off if Alti-2 released the comms protocol open to everyone. This is a serious allegation to make where you suggest Alti-2 makes an unsafe product. Well, just write a script that exports the data from Paralog to awk or whatever you fancy. BTW you don't regard it questionable to decompile and reuses someone elses intellectual property? That is not what I read: it says that if you were using your own protocol, you could inadvertently change some settings which could have safety implications. Trivial? Probably. Just go ahead... I think you imagination has run a little wild here. The Neptune isn't wide open. You can't just go around zapping it. You'd need some physical intervention to update the settings and updating the firmware needs some more work. Tamperproof enough for me. I fail to see this fundamental flaw. See above. This would actually be a good idea. There is always the possibility that someone would take the trouble to place a doctored firmware on the Alti-2 server. Reverse engineer to your heart's content, but I fail to understand why you expect Alti-2 to make the comms API public.

One of the guys on my DZ has a green cutaway pillow with this:

Yes, I understood. Just thought you maybe might get her company to change hotels? Anyway, it's probably only 10mins walk to the ferry. And definitely the best way to get around town is to rent a bike.