LongWayToFall

The link posted above says he was wearing a rock climbing harness under his shorts

I heard somewhere that the rule of 50/50 (50% have fatal injuries, 50% survive) is 30ft over hard packed ground and 100ft over water. I think this covers adults, so figure if you are fit you have a slightly better chance (ie not grandma falling off of the roof)

Sweet topic! My friend and I have done a batch of beer or 2, but our favorite is making cider. So easy, so cheap, and you can get really trashed on it too. The most basic cider is just an assortment of 1 gallon containers of apple juice from your local grocer, and yeast. this gives you about 5%. Easily add sugar, honey, or apple juice concentrate to up your gravity, and along with champagne yeast towards the end of ferment and you have some strong stuff! My strongest batch was about 14%, and went down like water. Hooray for homebrew! My next step is 5 gallon kegs and carbonating for the bottles using the co2 tank.

My first 2 jumps or so had sinus issues, where it felt like little tiny bubbles were popping in them, it was quite annoying. It made me want to sneeze. Luckily, after about jump 3 this sensation went away completely. I'm sure others will respond regarding allergies, but this should not keep you from jumping. Have a good one!

It has already been mentioned, but is it possible to get an FAA waver for this sort of thing? how did they pull it off legally (or not) in good stuff? Was the aircraft drouge chute a factor in the waver?

uspa customer service rocks, I didnt update my new mailing address and missed out on a bunch of issues, and all it took was one email and they sent me a care package with a ton of mags.

i like the dude getting dragged at the end. the first para ski?

You know, if there was still a pilot in control of the aircraft, you could have him roll inverted and apply down elevator, which would provide you some extra energy to clear the plane, and eventually you could hopefully have the aircraft in a nose vertical stall, and you would have no airspeed at all, increasing your chances of getting free of the airframe. During this time you might be able to get multiple people out. Not sure if a 757 can do that, but if possible it would be one heck of a ride! I think i will settle for watching video

There are lots of threads on dropzone.com regarding shoulder dislocations. I happened to have the same surgery as yourself, and as you said, it now is stronger than the other uninjured shoulder. So, obviously you will not have strength problems if you choose to jump. Not sure you will just not to mess with it? what kind of excuse it that?

i know somebody who recovered a few bodies from bridge suicides, aparently if u jump from high enough and land feet first you have a good chance of the tops of your legs coming out where your collar bones are! damn, dont know if i wanna survive that. if i had the time, i would probably go head down and see how fast i could get before impact.

hahaha, man that pic is great. wish i had some to contribute

On my last jump i was chewing gum, but didnt realise it untill most of the way through freefall. i spit it out just before i deployed, i was thinking that it would suck to have it stick to the top of my canopy after i opened haha.

Call me ghetto but i liked the cover. getting my mag in the mail is one of the coolest things about coming home one day a month, and when the pic makes me laugh im even more excited to open it up. It sure doesnt have the wow factor of a big way or huge stack, but whatever, i got a kick out of it.

Snatch force is the force you feel when your decelerated bag/canopy reaches line stretch and begins your rotation. Opening shock being the force you feel after this, caused by drag of the airstream on your slider/canopy. The time period I am talking about is after line stretch, before maximum force being applied to the risers. check out this diagram:

http://www.pcprg.com/should03.gif

The time that there is a registered amount of force on the risers untill maximum force, is about 1.5 seconds. During this time there has to be some sort of deceleration, but to what speed? I am just saying that when the peak of force hits, you want to be going as slow as possible, because this will hopefully reduce it. If you are jumping a higher wing loading you will almost HAVE to be going faster at that time, because drag during that 1.5 seconds will be less than a larger slider/canopy above your head. But again, i have no experience in this stuff.

I think the reason weight has something to do with peak forces is that there is time between the initial opening shock, and the peak force shock. During the start of deceleration the slider is up, and slows you a certain amount before you feel the peak shock, which is right when the cells begin to inflate and right around the time the slider starts to come down. Because you were slowed, the peak forces are less than if the canopy began to inflate instantly, like a slider-less base canopy. If you are jumping a smaller canopy, you can argue that a longer deployment time might make your cell inflation/slider-drop speed close to the same as a larger canopy, it will not be the same because the smaller area of your canopy will make your slider up velocity faster. Imagine a slider that is tied so it will not decend down the lines, when it opens if you are a 250lb jumper you will be going faster than a 150lb jumper correct? It is this difference in speed apon cell inflation that could save your canopy from explosion. But who knows, Im a noob with hardly any experience in anything, these are just simple observations and I most likely am completely wrong.

just because you are confident that it will happen again is no reason to stop jumping. Throughout the day we have many moments where if we no longer had control of our bodies, we would die. you could have a seizure in the bathtub and drown, crash while riding your bicycle, or even plow your head through this screen and have lightning bolts come out of your ears. At least skydiving will only kill you, not a dozen other people on the sidewalk or freeway. Look at it this way, if we lived 10,000 years ago some animal would have already eaten you while you were having a seizure. Hope to see you in the skies again

yeah, surgery is not fun, you will have your arm in a sling for 6mo and probably wont be able to jump for a solid 9mo or more. But do like everybody else is saying and go to the doctor. After I had an MRI they were able to show me exactly what tendons and ligiments were stretched/torn, once they know that they will tell you what needs to be done. However, the fact that you can pop it out and back in with such ease makes me think your stuff is damaged to the point that surgery will be the only option. If you had dislocated it once or twice and then did a whole bunch of physical therapy then you would probably be alright. But yeah, go see a doc

If it pops out and back in that easily, you should seriously consider surgery. I had my right shoulder dislocated from a motorcycle accident, and after that it would pop out if i threw something or put a load on it in a wierd angle. I would not think that just being in freefall will dislocate it, i mean, physics wise being in freefall is exactly the same as lying down on a really soft bed, the weight is distributed evenly. But if it DOES come out in freefall, you cannot expect yourself to be able to put it back in. Talk with a doctor, and figure out what exactly is torn. You will probably have the choice of micro surgery or the full blown one. Micro is better for range of movement, and is suggested to baseball players etc, however the more involved one (they actually open your shoulder up instead of using probes/narrow tools through small holes) is going to be your best bet for keeping it solidly in place. I recovered complete movement even with the full one. I got a bunch of dissolving clips and a single metal one, but i swear to you that my right shoulder now is LESS likely to dislocate than my left, they really tightened it down while they were in there. haha but yeah, get the surgery and in 9-12mo you will be able to jump without worrying about not being able to pull!

im sure you have seen the video of the guy swooping the snowy mountain slope, what would have happened if he had just touched down? doubt he would have died, if you could find a spot that was perfect i say its definitly doable. i would wear some sort of steel plate on my chest to act as a ghetto landing skid, and plenty of other protective items.

damn, my bad! any mods feel free to delete, or if somebody can tell me how i can...

Gary busey is dope. yeah, the starship troopers book was pretty sick, way better than the movie

not sure if this has been posted before, but my friend showed this to me, pretty crazy!


http://ebaumsworld.com/videos/flyby.html

Thanks for all of the replys! Bill brought up a good point, if you can keep your gear warm enough on the ground and in the plane, it can only bleed off so much heat on the drop. I wonder what components of the rig would run into problems first as the temp keeps dropping, line stows mabey? Thanks again
Micah

Hello, i was curious if anybody knew what the coldest temperatures you can jump in are. obviously this would depend on humidity, but mabey you can give me some sort of idea.
Thanks!
Micah

I see how having 2 handles would complicate things, but i was just wondering if there was an alternative to what i always hear in my safety videos "disconnect any RSL and cutaway", it just seems like locating a little yellow tab would take allot of time, if not being impossible in some situations. Thanks for the responces!

Micah