377

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Everything posted by 377

  1. I loved my well used Fury 220, my first square. Finally upgraded to a ZP Triathlon and found that the upgrade wasn't much as much as I had expected performance wise. I love my Tri but the Fury flew damned near as well. The Fury was an old Crew dog canopy with trim tabs. I didn't do Crew but I loved my "autopilot", what I called my trim tabs. After opening, I would trim the canopy for absolutely straight flight and then hip steer most of the way down. The Tri flared better, but just a little bit. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  2. Yes, mine did initially have the "sea anchors", yellow nylon tape pieces as I recall. I bought it from a Navy guy who had returned from Iwakuni Japan where they had a sport parachuting club. The timed out Navy canopies from the air station found their way into sport rigs instead of being scrapped. My rigger, Perry Stevens, refused to do an IR on it. He said the sea anchor tabs were not in the TSO. He said they had to be removed. Perry removed them and did a very careful job, leaving no trace. He only charged me the normal IR price ($20) for all the work. It's funny, the ONLY cheapo standup I ever did was on my 26 Navy Conical reserve. It landed far softer than my worn out 1951 USAF orange and white candy stripe C9. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  3. Nah... not Cooper. Got some crucial facts wrong in his taped interview. Cooper opened and cut suspension lines on a reserve not a main while aboard the NWA 727 airliner. Also his alleged landing area is way way off all the other accounts including FAA ATC radar and cockpit crew interviews. Remember a 727 ventral door placard was found by hunters in an area that matches the FBI accounts of the flight path. The story about Reca being threatened with jail after the skyjack and recruited by spook agency MIBs who gave him numerous passports and KGB ID is just not credible to me. If his promoters got their facts right, Reca was one bad ass jumper. D 99 and a USAF Para Rescue Jumper (PJ)!! Case closed? NOPE. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  4. 26 ft Navy Conical reserve. I needed it. It worked. Cost $25. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  5. 377

    How Green Is My Skydive

    "...there are patents on 200+ MPG carberators" Patents are public documents, with full text and drawings freely available on the Internet. There are only so many BTUs in a gallon of fuel. No fuel metering or combustion enhancement system can change that number. I don't like limits, but they exist nevertheless.
  6. Fury is a fine conservative canopy. That’s what I jumped before I bought my Triathlon. They handle very similarly. Fury is built like a brick. Look at the line attachment structure. Have fun. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  7. I’d sell the PC, you’ll get top dollar for a new one on eBay even if it is a MK 3. Buy a big Triathlon with the proceeds and save those knees. I daydream about jumping my old rounds and then good judgement kicks in. Old bones break easy and heal slowly. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  8. Fortunately, I missed the first gen marginal square canopies. I was still jumping a surplus Cheapo at Pope Valley well into the 1970s. I was always years behind the latest gear due to financial constraints arising from college and grad school. When I finally started making decent money in the 90s, the gear had matured and you could buy a conservative square canopy that would deliver creampuff landings reliably. Sometimes being late to the party has advantages. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  9. PDR 193 loaded at 1.25 to 1 worked well for me in 2005 over Rantoul Illinois. Didn't like Ravens, squirrely flare response. Back in 1972 I rode a Navy surplus 26 ft conical reserve to a stand up landing on the target. Not bad for a reserve that cost me $25. I like PD reserves. Reliable, well constructed and, at reasonable wing loadings, easy to fly and land. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  10. As long as that sound wasn't a crack, I was happy. The orthopedic surgeons were probably quite disappointed when squares replaced surplus rounds, but then swooping was invented and bountiful times returned. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  11. Recording from my receiver while aloft over Byron CA. W3IUU in Maryland can be heard clearly amidst breaks in the pileup of West Coast stations. https://soundcloud.com/eric-meltzer-3/marks-hf-jump-m30 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  12. 377

    How Green Is My Skydive

    Well written, thoughtful, hard data, zero self-serving rationalization. I am giving up bottled water to help compensate for my skydiving. I had no idea bottled water took so much oil. Tap H2O in my area is actually just fine. I am addicted to skydiving and can't quit, but I can quit bottled water. Can we do better? How about a big tethered balloon with a pulley attached? A ground mounted solar powered winch can take us up. ;)
  13. Those are great photos! I have a few PC jumps. After making my first 100 jumps on surplus rounds, the PC was an absolute dream. Beatnik is right about the Jumbo PC. Bigger is not better with PCs. It's counterintuitive but correct. You are better off under a standard size (24 ft) Mk 1 IMO. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  14. Welcome to the sport Tim! 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  15. Well, we were kinda at the top of a hill, courtesy of a $24 ride to 13.5. Your co-worker was too pessimistic. Hams routinely talk many thousands of miles without elevation or huge antennas. All it takes is good ionospheric reflectivity. Solar activity influences it a lot. Sunspots help. I talked to a station in the Antarctic from my CA home. I live 18 ft above sea level and use a simple single element rooftop antenna. PM me your email and I can send you an MP3 file (too large to attach here) taken from my receiver output during descent. You can clearly hear the Maryland station W3IUU calling me and acknowledging my reply. We had a lucky break in ionospheric skip conditions. Only running about 3 watts transmitter output, powered by AA cells! 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  16. Indeed, we even had the so-called "fish", a lead weight on the distal end of the long wire. Right out of the 1940s. Had to remember to fly a very clear landing approach staying WAY above any power lines. Wouldn't want to drag that baby across any high tension lines or wind generators. Stowing the wire into a compact bundle that wouldn't tangle up on antenna deployment was a challenge. No room for a reel. We ended up making taped paper bands around coiled sections of wire. I ripped the bands open as I deployed it coil by coil. Worked fine. Surprising how well the VHF and UHF gear transmits from inside the planes. We have no trouble talking to the ground during the climb to jump run. 144 and 440 Mhz. Works in King Airs, Twin Otters and Caravans. The live 5.8 GHz ATV worked well, from exit at 13.5 to landing. There is some really good cheap drone video gear nowadays. Most of it exceeds FCC power limits for unlicensed users, but the FCC doesn't do much spectrum cop work these days, too busy dismantling net neutrality. Anyway as hams, we are actually licensed to use high power the 5.8 KHz band. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  17. On Sat March 31st, a new parachute to ground radio distance record was set. I talked with fellow ham radio operator Lloyd G. Rasmussen W3IUU in Maryland while I was flying my canopy over Byron CA at about 8000 ft. Worked many other closer stations during my descent. My radio was a book-sized battery powered Yaesu FT 817 putting out slightly less than 5 watts on 14.250 MHz USB. Lloyd is blind and learned about my upcoming jump through a network of blind hams. I had a busy jump. My Triathlon 190 canopy opened with a lot of line twists but since I opened so high (hop and pop from 13.5) I had plenty of time to kick them out. I was carrying a chest mounted Go Pro camera driving a 5.8 GHz transmitter for live air to ground video. I also had APRS telemetry gear that broadcast my GPS data (position, course, ground speed and altitude) also heart rate and blood oxygen percentage (from a fingertip pulse-ox sensor) to ground stations that auto-posted the data on the Internet in real time. Had to unwind and deploy a trailing wire end fed dipole antenna. Also had a VHF UHF radio to communicate with the DZ and get up to date winds aloft info. My resting HR is 67 BPM. The telemetry data showed a peak of 173 BPM!!! during the more stressful parts of the jump. Worst SpO2 was 84%, getting better as I descended into denser air. This stuff is mostly a yawn for experienced skydivers but the ham radio community gets a big kick out of it. http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This%20Month%20in%20QST/May2016/GLIFFORT.pdf 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  18. I have a KAP 3 for my skydiving history collection. Built like a TANK. Makes the SSE stuff look very fragile in comparison. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  19. Fascinating posts, especially for us engineer-jumpers. Designing an advanced tech AAD is damned complex, far more than I had realized. Things have come so far since the SSE Sentinel days. The market is small, the product liability risk is high and no matter how well you design it, users will inevitably ignore instructions, install it wrong, skip scheduled maintenance etc. Plaintiff's lawyers will sue you regardless of liability releases, user error and lack of product defect. Sure glad somebody is willing to take AAD design to the next level. I wish them the very best and look forward to becoming a customer. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  20. Perry was my FJC instructor at his Oakland Airport based Stevens Paraloft in 1968. 50 years later I am still jumping with no accidents or injuries. Perry taught me (and thousands of others) how to skydive safely and for that, I am forever grateful. Perry had me do so many practice cutaways and manual chest reserve pulls that I thought it was complete overkill. It wasn't. In 1972 I had my first malfunction over Pope Valley CA. Perry's training all came back to me. I had chopped my 28 ft surplus cheapo and was under my Navy 26 ft Conical before I could really think much about what I was doing. Later he developed the Stevens cutaway System (an early RSL) that made cutaways even safer. One thing that really impressed me was that Perry (politely) kicked one young woman out of the FJC and refunded her money. The guys were pissed at Perry because she was very attractive. This student consistently panicked when Perry put her through stressful (yelling at students was part of the drill) suspended harness cutaway training. Too often she pulled the dummy reserve handle before cutting away or did nothing as the clock driven training altimeter wound down through zero. She just couldn't get it right. When I was learning to spot with Perry at the controls of his Aeronca Sedan known as THE RAT, he gave me tips on how to really see where the plane was in relation to where the target was. Thanks to Perry I became a decent spotter. When I was repeatedly tumbling out of control on my early solo freefalls (there was no AFF offered then) Perry counseled me to just relax and on the next jump I got stable. Perry did a lot of IRs and rigging for me when I was a college student and always gave me affordable prices. He upgraded my double shot Capewells to shot and a half, installed an SCS RSL and did various harness and canopy repairs. I was the last up jumper still jumping surplus gear and he helped me keep it airworthy. Skydiving and skydivers owe a lot to Perry Stevens. I sure do. May Perry rest in peace. He enhanced lives and saved lives. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  21. A surprisingly real looking dummy MA 2-30 altimeter. Who would have guessed? Check out this video of the fake one. It even has a working lights set and zeroing dial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vewpEre9hR4 There is another dummy MA 2-30 out there but it's for GI Joe type action figures and is tiny. Scroll down: http://www.hottoysph.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=151 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  22. He is the skyjacker who actually made it out of the 727 only to lose the cash bag on opening shock when an attaching belt broke. He was in prison for many decades. After his release, he recorded an account of the skyjacking. His account of the jump is absolutely fascinating although I doubt that it is accurate. He recounts a stable freefall as he slowed down from his fast exit speed to terminal velocity, very unlikely for a first-time jumper. Listen starting at about 21:30 minutes. https://youtu.be/S2OEx-dWP0U 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  23. Cossey sometimes liked playing with the Cooper nuts, confirming stuff that wasn't true etc. He caused a big ruckus once when he confirmed that a found canopy was Cooper's and it made the papers. He was just playing around. Cossey was a frequent gambler and carried a lot of cash. I'd start looking down that street for clues rather than descending into the DB Cooper rabbit hole. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  24. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/li-sex-discrimination-gay-parachute-1.16964983 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.
  25. I did not mean to imply that Bill has a monopoly on safety. The tandem fiasco and Twin Otter AD compliance FAA beef clearly show otherwise. I just think the portrayal of Bill as a callous businessman who cares nothing about safety paints an inaccurate picture. I’ve been jumping for half a century and at many different dropzones. I’ve seen unsafe jumpers scolded, temporarily grounded and bans threatened, but Bill is the only DZO I’ve seen who actually kicks them out permanently. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.