larsrulz

Hector! I know I'll be there jumping the westwind! Maybe you can get a video of my sit from a little bit closer than 500' this time PL# -122 I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

You aren't gonna get Sushi in Rantoul...just not gonna happen. Champaign has a Sushi place...I know of one and could be more. PM me and I'll ask around (given I live in Champaign). I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

If they really went that slow, then good luck activating a expert cypres... I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I just think it would be cool to say that you've flown in a plane but never landed in one! I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Bloomington also has car rentals, but minimal as they are a small airport (much like Champaign). I reiterate much what the others said. Champaign is a lot closer. For those coming into midway or o'hare, and aren't/don't want to rent, Bluebird Charter Coach runs multi-daily trips down here from those two airports. If you reserve, they even stop at the Fanmarker Inn in Rantoul; those interested can call them up at 1-800-400-5500. Heck, they'll even drive you from the Champaign airport to Rantoul for $10. But I have a feeling there are numerous people who'll be giving rides...heck I'll pick-up/drop-off if someone needs. Btw, it'll take you 2.5 hours to get from Midway to Rantoul since you'll have to do a fair amount of city driving to get to the interstate. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Whatever you enjoy and/or feel safest doing. Did a H&P sunday after a FJ student; I dove and did a quick 180 so I was head high for deployment. I generally feel most stable in a dive, but mostly the pilot thought I was landing with the plane and JM, so we were going rather quick and it was safest to dive down. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I was driving down to the DZ saturday and I topped off my tank when it was about half empty and gas was $1.839 a gallon....when I got home and filled 'er up it cost $1.859 a gallon. Not to mention I saw $1.899 at a different place on the way home!!! I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

At least he drinks a good American beer. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I'm a pilot and I find that pretty funny, as long as he doesn't mind pushing the plane back to the hanger. Although sounds like the pilot wasn't a big fan of the jumper...so maybe he was a bad target. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

0:10:0 Helped with a FJC sunday, so now I'm all ready to take the coach's course. Also, did a 23 point 4-way...hot damn were we flying through those points! I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I went with blue hammer. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Quade: The page there does show that lift to drag ratio is independent of velocity. I agree with that...I haven't said L/D is dependent on velocity. This is one of the cases where glide slope and L/D are not equal; if you do not fly at best glide speed, then you do not fly at best glide slope. Bill: I didn't say the flight controls of a glider and a parachute are the same (plus I've only flown a TG-4, so I'm not talking about HP gliders). Merely that they fly similarly since they both...well glide under the power of gravity. As for the issues of dynamic stability...that's because a parachute is as flying wing while a glider is an unpowered airplane, so longitudinal stability to two TOTALLY different beasts. The fact is still that they both produce lift and are unpowered...that's all I was getting at really. I don't know how paragliders work for trim and such, so...well, I just don't know. You talk about pitch stability from design, but this is exactly what goes into the glide slope of a parachute. The pitch stability is influenced by the velocity, much as explained above with the whole canopy dive/plane thing. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I can pretty much agree to disagree with you on the other stuff. But I still have a problem here. Having flown a glider, they act (in flight) very much like a canopy acts, which I believe everyone here can relate to. I mentioned something in my original response about how you can see the different glide slopes of a canopy. When you let out of a front riser dive, a canopy planes out and momentarily picks up a very high glide slope. If you go into full breaks and quickly release that, a canopy will dive at the ground gaining a very steep glide slope. This is because at any given wing loading, the trimmed glide slope requires a certain speed for the canopy to fly at. This speed is necessary for the proper amount of lift to be produced. Too quickly and there is more lift than is requested, too slow and there is too little lift. This here simply explains why a canopy dives and planes out. The exact same thing holds for gliders. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

You need to decide what you want to do. There is no reason you have to get good at one thing before you try something new. If you wish to be average at both FF and RW, then do that. But if you wish to be competative at RW and good at FF, then you'll need to work on one at a time. As for getting better at whatever you decide. It depends on your dropzone. At some DZs, there are people who will help you out fresh off your A license. Some DZs will have people that require you pay their slot if you wish them to jump with you. Others will require you pay them and their slot to jump with you. The best way, IMO, is to find a fellow new A license jumper, then start jumping with them. You may become a better jumper by 100 jumps with a coach, but you'll be able to make twice as many if you jump with a friend, and the learning curve isn't all that bad if you try. If you do have a problem with your friend, then you two can jointly pay a coach slot for a jump or two to see if they can help the problem. Most importantly...just have fun and start jumpin'! I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Come on, I hardly ever purchase the textbooks for class, let alone actually read them. My two paragraphs you are responding to don't really mention all that much about any sort of aerodynamic formulas. The majority of aerodynamic formulas are empirical anyway. As for airflow in the case of parachutes, all theories go out the window in my opinion, and it's due to many other things other than low WL. Yes and no, but mostly yes. Read my original reply: "A parachute does not work the same way in which a aircraft wing works. I'm still personally uncertain about what force causes a (square) parachute to "fly," but (I believe) the majority of the force causing flight is air deflection as opposed to pressure differential." So I do agree with you. Quade, in response to your clicky, I don't believe lift equations should be spat out at FJ students...hell I recently wouldn't even go into this with an instructor during a [A and B license] canopy class he was teaching. None of this is necessary for a student nor PSTer to understand. My comments are no longer in response to Gary's original question about the teaching for pattern issues, they were merely disputing and explaining the second half of the discussion. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

It's hard to lose huge when 90% of the country votes party lines 45/45, so there is a maximum swing vote of about 10% of the population. If you mean 5% as huge, then possible, but its doubtful. Neither candidate will be able to pull a sizeable chunk of the other party voters to his side. Also, I don't think you mean loose, unless you mean to say the left is about to fall out of its hole. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Saddam is in legal custody of the sovereign nation of Iraq. It doesn't much matter what this guy attempts to do as the US Supreme Court has no say. If Iraqi courts wish to make his detention declared unconstitutional by their constitution, then so be it. And it doesn't matter that the US still has physical custody of him, the Iraqis have (and should have) final say in this matter. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

"The letter said that in 1996 and 1997, the Pentagon "engaged with limited success in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm." During the process, "the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members were damaged," the letter said." I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Yes, it's true that wings needn't be curved, but Bernoulli's theory still explains why a balsa wood airplane flies. The weight is in place in such a way that the aircraft trims itself for best glide. If you take a flat piece of balsa and place it horizontally in a wind tunnel, absolutely no lift will be produced. Once you make an AOA w.r.t. the relative wind in the tunnel, then the pressure on top of the "wing" decreases and lift is produced. I was merely using a standard GA wing because it best explains why a wing with an AOA equal to zero (steady and level flight) can continue to stay aloft in such a configuration. Look at an aircraft tail (which has no camber), without deflection of the rudder there is no yawing occuring. As soon as you deflect the rudder, the airflow "inside" the yaw is slower and hence of higher pressure, which pushes the tail out. Kutta-Joukowski and Bernoulli fundamentally explain lift in the same way, one approaches it from a circulation standpoint, one from a dynamic pressure standpoint. What we are talking about here (with Bernoulli's theory) is basically venturi effect, yes. Now simple Newtonian mechanics themselves do not explain lift. They are the basis for continuum mechanics and hence can be used to apply conservation of energy and prove Bernoulli's theory, but they alone do not explain lift, i.e. you can't sit there and just say "F=ma explains why an airplane flies." In that both theories are derived from continuum mechanics, i.e. conservation of energy. They don't explain lift the same way If it sounded like I was saying it directly alters the L/D, that is not what I meant. Altering the weight alters the speed a glider flies out, as there is no other way to alter the speed of a glider (as gravity is constant). This means that changing the payload changes the speed which changes the glide slope. You idealy want to ballast a glider for best glide. Bernoulli's theory in my above response explains how lift is produced. No, it isn't the entire explanation of how an aircraft flies. But go ask an aerospace academic the equation for lift and they'll give you L = q*S*Cl, where q is dynamic pressure, S is planform area, and Cl is coefficient of lift. Even a barn door, inverted wing, or hanging-body-under-parachute will have a coefficient of lift, so this equation will give the lift force due to any object through any fluid. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

This is the attitude of many of the experienced jumpers at my DZ. One day someone with way more jumps than any of them talked to me about all the advise I had been getting. There is no rule that says you need to perfect one discipline before you start another. If you wish to be average at three disciplines rather than really good at just one, then there is no reason not to do all three. Of course if you wish to be competitve, then you need to consentrate on that one discipline, but there is no reason you shouldn't be able to freefly and RW and CReW at 50-100 jumps. As long as you are not dangerous in the sky and have a proficient skydiver to help you learn a discipline, then by all means go learn to sit! I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Not exactly, an aircraft wing works because the path over the wing is longer than that under the wing. The means that a little block'o'air going over the wing must go quicker than its buddy who goes under. The block'o'air going quicker has a lower pressure which causes that block'o'air to want to displace the higher pressure buddy above the wing. This causes the fluid (air) around the wing to lift the wing up, which is basically how lift works. What I was talking about was the fact that (I believe) parachutes do not work like rigid wings work. If a pressure differential produced lift in the case of a parachute, this would cause the canopy to collapse from the bottom up, which obviously doesn't happen. What (I believe) occurs is that a parachute is deflecting the airflow, so newton's laws are what is keeping the parachute aloft, as opposed to those of bernoulli. I'm a little confused by the above comment. But fluid mechanicians agree that bernoulli's theories of dynamic pressure are correct. They don't contradict any of newton's laws...care to explain what you mean here? See, that's a completely different issue all together. Loading a glider more heavily DOES change its L/D, albeit indirectly like a parachute. The only thing that affects an objects L/D or glide ratio is the airspeed at which that object is moving. An aircraft has a variable thrust which can keep that airplane at whatever speed it needs to be flown at no matter its payload. A parachute is under the constant "thrust" of gravity. When there is more force (forward and downward) due to a more heavily loaded canopy, the thrust to keep the canopy moving forward does not change. This means the trim condition is such that the speed for trimmed flight is higher. I've kind of lost track at where I was going with this, but rereading your reply...I wholeheartedly approve of the use of "more draggy." I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I'm not sure if I'm good enough as Kallend, but I am getting my master's in aerospace engineering not too far from him. Issue #1: Glide ratio refers to the horizontal distance traveled for any given unit of vertical decent. So a parachute with a glide ratio of 4.5:1 moves 450 feet forward (in a no wind condition) for every 100 feet it drops. Issue #2: As for lift to drag ratio, this is (related to) the efficiency of a rigid wing. A parachute does not work the same way in which a aircraft wing works. I'm still personally uncertain about what force causes a (square) parachute to "fly," but (I believe) the majority of the force causing flight is air deflection as opposed to pressure differential. A non-airlocked canopy (airlocked don't help that much in this instance anyway...but) does not have enough rigidity to resist the force of lift if it was due to a pressure differential. Issue #3: Back to your original question, those listed parameters do not directly effect the glide ratio. The glide ratio is effected by the trim and airspeed of the canopy. I assume everyone has noticed that their canopy levels off after releasing it from a front riser dive (hence how one makes pretty swoops) while a canopy will make a steep dive after releasing it from full breaks (hence why you don't do full breaks at 50'). Now those parameters listed by piisfish effect the speed at which a canopy will fly, which effects the glide ratio of the canopy flight itself. So yes, piisfish is right that those parameters affect glide ratio, but they do not effect it directly; rather the airspeed is effected by those parameters and hence alters the glide ratio. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Our DZ is having pilot issues currently. I don't know your situation, but as you explain it they have to pay you for time worked. They don't have to give you work through your "two weeks" if they don't want to. I assume there is no contract that lays out the rules, so there is no rules at to "two weeks notice." One thing though, if they gave you in flight time in their aircraft whether to get a certain number of hours in type or the likes, then they can invoice you for those training hours if and when you choose to leave, which may mean that needn't pay you until you pay off that flight training.. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

Like Anne said, check out Archway. They do water training about once a month over the summer. It is $15 which includes the gear, and it takes about an hour or two sunday morning (depends on class size). I would assume Greensburg and Wayne County both do water training...have you checked with them? I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

I assume you're joking...firefox is a POS. Mozzila 1.7 works just fine, but their newest firefox is crappy. Any sort of speed benefits are sorely lost due to firefox's loss of functionality and featureness. I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF