mattjw916

The first time you severely bruise or break your coccyx is the last time you will ever debate whether butt landings are a good idea. I landed on mine once while doing some ridiculous jump spinning back kick against a heavy bag while I was working out back when I used to do Tae Kwon Do and that was probably the singularly most painful injury, other than a motorcycle crash, that I ever experienced. Walking up stairs to class for the next week or so was pure torture. I'll take a PLF and a trip to the laundry room over a ricochet off my ass and a trip to the emergency room any day. Bang in hard enough and that's a handy way to get some sort of compression fracture of the spine. No thanks. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Truer words have never been spoken. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I'm tempted to say fake until confirmed NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I want 3 minutes and 3 seconds of my life back... I think sitting close to the TV while watching old Joe Jennings videos would be more stimulating than that. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Personally I think skydiving is more fun when it's disorganized... not every battle is worth fighting IMO. I stopped telling people I jumped quite some time ago unless someone asks me if I've ever done a tandem or something of that nature. It's generally not going to net you anything in the corporate world by seeming like some sort of adrenaline junky. I don't mix my school, work, or recreational friends, hobbies, etc together. my $0.02 NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I have a Matter Pro-Concept freefly suit, EG Sky "swoop shorts", and some Tony Suits freefly pants that I absolutely punished on the boogie circuit and slid across every grass field I could find (and some desert too) and they're still hanging in there. The Liquid Sky suits look pretty trick to me. I was thinking about ordering one of their more subdued/classic designs. I hear nothing but good things about them for tunnel and freeflying. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Team America: World Police engage! So who exactly are the good guys over there? Or even the "less bad" guys... spend some time on liveleak and it seems like both sides are just murdering the shit out of each other on an ongoing basis. It's like two large angry dogs fighting and you decide to wound one or both of them. Why? I don't see any value at either the tactical or strategic level. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I see robot fast food dispensers on the horizon... These people are on drugs if they think they're going to make over $30k/yr with benefits for pushing buttons shaped like food, mopping some floors, and doing basic math. Anyone who has taken even the most basic macroeconomics course knows that high minimum wages increase unemployment, drive up input costs, which in-turn leads to higher prices. If you want to make some bucks come pick strawberries in SoCal. It's HARD work, but it pays a LOT more than McD's. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

when you're wealthy, there's no such thing as winter NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

and on that note static line becomes fashionable again... now go do those AOD and PH checks, Ditch NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

get video! That's pretty sporty on anyone's scale... It's your choice but you think you can downwind that in between some parked cars after bailing from a stalling plane at 2k? What can you do under that canopy at 1.6 that you can't do at 1.3? Just some questions you should ask yourself. Remember as the aforementioned Brian G would say, pain is a powerful teacher (at least I think he said that, it sounds like something he would say anyway) NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

The ZP part isn't the issue, IIRC the bottomskin is made of F-111... if you buy it new it's no problem but one with a lot of jumps on it (many, many hundreds, packed outdoors, lots of off-landings, etc) might exhibit a weaker flare or other quirks compared to a similarly aged ZP canopy like a Sabre 2. I jumped some pretty haggard rental canopies including some Silhouttes in various sizes and they all landed fine though. Most issues can be solved with a brake line replacement or a full reline since Spectra goes out of trim pretty fast. But that said, a docile canopy won't really care as much if it's going out of trim versus some HMA-lined swoop machine. When in doubt ask a rigger you trust to check it out which usually costs somewhere between a case of and $20. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

rofl, then stop downsizing until you work out what the problems are here's a general list of modernish 9-cell canopies that are mellow when lightly loaded: Sabre 1 (get one w/pocketed or oversized slider unless you like fast openings) Sabre 2 (the "benchmark", it's a PD canopy, no downside, fly the opening for best results) Silhouette (easy to pack, no drama, won't last as long though) Pulse (even easier to pack; waiting for mine to arrive!) Safire 1 (w/brake line mod opens _really_ slow, loved mine, drama free) Safire 2 (solid choice, good resale) Pilot (solid choice, good resale) Lotus (rare, airlocked, flies great, can be a pain on a windy day, rare) Fusion (similar to Nitron but less aggressive, no complaints) If the canopy's name sounds like something related to a deadly weapon, an explosive material, something to do speed, etc it's best to avoid it for a while. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

any landing you can walk away from is a good one; if you can reuse the aircraft again it's a great one NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

You can still get in shape without "giving up" so much though. The thing is with diet plans like that, and whatever the latest fad diet is, e.g. Atkins, gluten free, etc, the vast majority of the time people implode and rocket back up to their old weight because their meal plan basically tastes like a bowl of cardboard soaked in the tears from a towel sitting on the floor at Curves. Be selective about what you put into yourself, i.e. exclude HFCS, bottled water, corn-fed anything, antibiotic laden meats, most anything from Wal-Mart, ridonculously high-calorie Starbucks options and mixed drinks, etc. But don't be so inflexible or picky that you can't enjoy a night-out and order something sensible from the menu (without making the waiter roll their eyes when you hit maximum autism over what's in each dish). If calories out > calories in, you lose weight. You don't get bonus points for damaging your kidneys, getting scurvy, or eating like a peasant during the potato famine. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Not sure I agree with all of that. I don't think I ever felt pressure to downsize because I flew in the tunnel a lot, and believe me, I flew a LOT for a while there before I got lazy and tired of converting my paychecks into warm air. Being a freeflyer can be very dangerous. Being a freeflyer without an AAD is even worse IMO. All the skill, tunnel, jumps#s, etc won't pull a handle for you if you're unconscious. Having a premature deployment or someone accidentally dumping your reserve because they thought that handle was a good place to dock will land you in the emergency room pretty easily, assuming your canopy is still land-able and you have the capacity to control it. I could probably dig up some headdown deployments from back in the day on my hard drive... you can almost feel the bones breaking (and on a couple you actually can see them snapping). But I digress. An old Special Forces NCO once said to me that the minute you don't think what you're doing is dangerous, or you aren't scared, it's time to quit. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Telesis with an SOS? http://www.parachutesaustralia.com/s2/prod_telesis.php Not exactly the same thing but that was the first thing that came to mind... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I think the landing "priority list" when I started was simply: Don't hit the ground at the same time your canopy does... and don't toggle whip yourself into the ground... And if you have to downwind it, don't tumble and front-flip through your lines because it annoys your packer. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Learning how to not end up in that situation to begin with would be a better way to spend your free time IMO. Maintain your gear properly and don't do stupid shit. The answer is generally going to be "it depends" but regardless of what's going on you have the rest of your life to sort it out until the ground or your AAD decides for you giving you a fresh set of problems (or no more problems, ever). Don't complicate your EPs... just practice them now. Humming it down while dicking with a hook knife or playing untangle the xmas lights will probably result in an honorable mention in Parachutist magazine for all the wrong reasons. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I'll admit the slow-mo of firing the reserve into a horseshoe malfunction in vid 6 puckered up my butthole a bit. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

"optimal" can still mean tight in my experience on a Mirage, especially if it's a super-slippery new ZP canopy... even had a very experienced rigger complain about my reserve size once even though it's the "optimal" size for the container generally you can fit a range of sizes into containers but that's going to depend on the canopy... check out this article by PD for an explanation: http://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/packvol.pdf also, from this doc: http://www.performancedesigns.com/packingchart.asp you can see that sq ft, even from the same vendor, does not mean you can just simply cram anything with the same number in the same container, e.g. a Vengeance 135 (airlocks) has a similar pack volume to a Pulse 170 (partially low bulk fabric) which is smaller than a Sabre 2 150 ("normal"). Of course the canopies all have various line types, shapes, fabric, and features. from personal experience I have had a Jedei 150, Nitro 150, Nitron 170, and a Safire 189 all in the same M5 sized Mirage G3 adjusting the closing loop length as appropriate with a PDR176 above them in my G4, M3 sized container, I have an R-Max 148 which my rigger complained about, and a Nitron 150 which I would consider "tight" but not oversized (and conforms to the container manufacturer's recommendations)... YMMV NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

this plus it's nice to go back and read about a fun jump you made with someone that you're never going to jump with again NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Long time owner of a couple Mirages: tuck tab into the container flap side... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

relax, have fun, and take your time... If you don't have a bunch of jumps don't worry about trying to master all the turns and fall-rate changes right away. My advice having a ton more tunnel than freefall time at this point would be to focus on doing nothing in the tunnel first of all. It's harder than it sounds when you first start out. Once you stop potato-chipping, tracking into the glass, and can maintain a heading without trying, then worry about the rest. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

sweet, any idea about the specs? NSCR-2376, SCR-15080