dorbie

If this ends with us having to put our rigs in checked baggage I'm blaming you.

Another poster in this thread has stated that in Australia, trading while insolvent is a considered a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. If that's a fact, and Gary is found to be guilty of this, then Gary has in fact committed a crime as its defined in Australian law regardless of whether or not it was done with the specific intent to defraud customers for his own benefit. I noticed that, there are multiple definitions of insolvency, e.g. cash-flow insolvency vs. ballance sheet insolvency. There is also not always a neat delineation of when a business realizes it is insolvent. There is another big if in your statement that effectively says that "if Gary is convicted of a crime then he's a criminal". Who would disagree with such a statement? Intent however may play a role in determining guilt; mens rea. Anyone running a business on the decline at some point has to come to the realization that it's not going to work out, that's got to be a tough pill to swallow. Picture someone torn between disappointing his current customers (and losing his business, his job and his reputation) or trying to make it work by getting more customers and using those funds to fulfill older orders in the hopes that improved margins help him recover. I've seen people label this a Ponzi scheme, but that is simply inaccurate, it does not rely on unattainable inexorable growth, it's nothing like a Ponzi scheme, but it will end just as quickly if the business reputation is lost and the bubble bursts.

No it doesn't. This isn't a court of law, and in terms of who took the money these jumpers are out, KK is (or was) a one-man operation, so the person responsible for the theft is Gary. If KK was an established corp with doznes of employees, then yes, it becomes less clear who is responsible for what, and there is a distinct possibility that the owner of the corp was not the guilty party. However, in this case, the owner who is also the sole-employee is most certainly to blame, he's the one who took the money and did not deliver the goods, and he is the one who recieved the benefit of the ill-gotten funds. I don't know what it is about this situation that leads to improperly applied business or legal princiapls, but between gary spouting off about cash flow in his made-to-order gear dealership, or you claiming his innosence based on the pricipal that he could 'hide' behidn his corportate name, but lets all 'keep it real'. A dude named Gary took a whole pile of money from a bunch of people, and never ordered or delivered their gear. There's no way to explain that situation away, that's what happened, and it's a crime. It does, again you can repeat that it doesn't until you're blue in the face but you haven't established it was theft. KK has traded in one form or another since 2006 and only turned south in late 2010. I'm not declaring his innocence, but I find the version of events where he wound up with a struggling business with cash-flow problems far more plausible than a claim that in the last few months Gary went from running a growing business for 4 years to running a criminal enterprise. Businesses that go under are always going to have their disgruntled creditors but it's not all out and out fraud. One of the most active critics on here actually got his rig AND a demo rig loaned while he waited on it. The key issue would seem to be when this started happening and how soon Gary should have called it a day. The argument that because he did not take the cash deposited for an order and immediately place that order with his supplier makes it intentionally criminal is IMHO bogus. It's not how businesses are obliged to operate, but it does seem likely that Gary played fast and loose with the status of orders at his cash-flow problems worsened.

If it can be shown that the business engaged in fraud, the directors can be held personally responsible, Pty Ltd notwithstanding. IF I had wings I wouldn't need to buy jump tickets.

The distinction matters in the context of the discussion, which as usual you have redacted to respond to a point I did not make.

Wether or not Gary (Karnage krew) is financially viable it doesn't change the fact he owes people money. You are saying since he doesn't have the money, he doesn't owe them(customers) The way Karnage Krew was structured and the fact that is is now effectively defunct DIRECTLY and UNAVOIDABLY affects whether or not Gary Lucas owes anybody any money. You can make silly assertions all day long online about it, but Gary is not Karnage Krew, they are different legal entities, but it does depend on how he set up the company. Man up and let us know who you are then, otherwise you have no credibility in this forum. I'll stand on the substance of what I've written, case in point, this little exchange where reality lends my post all the credibility it requires.

Your statment still doesn't change the fact that he still owes his customers lots of money seriously your trolling isn't fooling anyone Not trolling, go look up what that means. The business entity named Karnage Krew owes people money, but it's also clear that KK is no longer viable. You seem to have no problem with people saying absolutely anything including wildly speculative bullshit in the absence of facts but post another perspective with what facts I have and it's trolling?! Well' I'm done here. Best of luck.

He planned to have 10 demo rigs, all vectors, I know that in November of 2009 he was able to order 4 stock demo Vectors (not the 10 he wanted) at a 50% discount. I've seen people say they had their hands on them on the forums here and even in this thread, they existed, whether he got the rest I dunno. I agree it seems incompatible with a deep discount business, but he used the investment windfall to purchase his fleet of demo rigs and they were deeply discounted. He could probably have survived that. The real problem would only arise longer term in sustaining that fleet. He'd sold 5 rigs in one weekend and had 4 loaners covered by the stock vectors he just ordered. I know this because I was trying to get a cheap rig on the back of his big order and he was doing that for me in consideration of the work I'd done for him, but my inclusion fell through because UPT didn't have all the stock rigs needed in the right sizes. Speculating that there were no demo rigs or it was all a ruse is just more noise in the pile-on. Gary was selling gear for 4 years, and it seams to have gone south for him in 2010.

In fairness he sent me emails like that all the way through my order with him. Emails saying that there had been errors with the order, delivery had gone wrong etc. All were jokes. Despite the negative feeling on here for him, he did have a sense of humour, so I doubt making a joke comment like that was really what he then went nad did with your money. I'm obviously one of the lucky ones who ordered a full rig from him, got it in the time frame stated and at easily the cheapest price available at the time. £2200 or £2300 for a container, main and reserve was pretty good. Anyway, my point being despite all the wrong things he has clearly done, don't jump on and blow out of proportion small things that were almost certainly just jokes. Yup and this kind of record indicates that he was a legitimate businessman who screwed up and over extended himself. Then he lost his reputation as he tried desperately to make it work. In losing his reputation any chance of a recovery (if there was one) was lost.

You can file a criminal complaint, it'll be up to more level headed individuals to determine if criminal charges are appropriate under whatever laws apply. Yea right, anyone who doesn't see it your way is a retard. I'm not too keen on defending him, but I am offering another view of the story. You got burned, you're unlikely to get even. You should take some satisfaction in the fact that Gary lost his business and burned himself and his business partner more than any of his customers.

And what has he won? A cash up-front business is in trouble. He lengthens his supply chain to keep his business liquid and tries to appease his suppliers by using the liquidity generated by the delay to cover his debts. It backfires when customers start calling his suppliers to discover that orders have not yet been placed, then it all implodes. I don't know what Australian law says on the matter, and the OP certainly got screwed, but I doubt that gary took money with no intention of fulfilling orders but Karnage Krew should certainly stop the carnage now. Gary, Is that you? LOL, nice try. Sorry to disappoint but not everyone is baying for Gary's blood. He fucked up his business and lost more than a rig, you should keep that in perspective. If he's won then it's victory from the Charlie Sheen school of winning. You should put the amount of damage he's done "in perspective." Businesses that go under always cause this type of damage, especially if the owner hangs on too long trying to make a worsening situation work. There are always creditors, otherwise the business would be in the black and wouldn't fold. I've suggested why Gary was perhaps overly optimistic/aggressive in architecting his economic recovery having done it before with KK. You'd feel a lot better if you put down the pitchfork and tried to develop a better understanding of what actually happened. Your aneurysm isn't going to injure Gary. I could see your point if Gary was legging it into the outback with a suitcase full of cash, but in reality he fucked up, lost everything he's worked for for 4 years and is swimming in red ink. Going out of business is not a crime.

And what has he won? A cash up-front business is in trouble. He lengthens his supply chain to keep his business liquid and tries to appease his suppliers by using the liquidity generated by the delay to cover his debts. It backfires when customers start calling his suppliers to discover that orders have not yet been placed, then it all implodes. I don't know what Australian law says on the matter, and the OP certainly got screwed, but I doubt that gary took money with no intention of fulfilling orders but Karnage Krew should certainly stop the carnage now. Gary, Is that you? LOL, nice try. Sorry to disappoint but not everyone is baying for Gary's blood. He fucked up his business and lost more than a rig, you should keep that in perspective. If he's won then it's victory from the Charlie Sheen school of winning.

Anyone thought of chasing said partner? Depends how it's set up, if they're limited you'll be SOL. Just remember that that guy got screwed bigger than anyone because he put cash into Karnage Krew for a portion of the company and ended up with a share of what you see unfolding.

And what has he won? A cash up-front business is in trouble. He lengthens his supply chain to keep his business liquid and tries to appease his suppliers by using the liquidity generated by the delay to cover his debts. It backfires when customers start calling his suppliers to discover that orders have not yet been placed, then it all implodes. I don't know what Australian law says on the matter, and the OP certainly got screwed, but I doubt that gary took money with no intention of fulfilling orders but Karnage Krew should certainly stop the carnage now.

I'm sorry to hear this. I've seen Gary on his trajectory from very small unknown to a seemingly reputable dealer and now this. It leaves me wondering at what point it all turned south for him and how much of it was real. Early on I helped him out with some artwork for gloves, T-shirts, magazine and web ads etc. but it was jackanory every time the issue of my payment came up (all I wanted was one of whatever my art got printed on which was a trivial request). The story would be stuff got stopped at customs or he was sending it via his visiting bro and finally he said he got screwed by the exchange rate and was digging himself out of a hole. Eventually, years later he did send me a couple of T-shirts to make good on the deal. I always took pleasure seeing his reputation build online here and saw the dichotomy between my experience and his customers (which we should remember he treated well until now) which I put down to his customer centric approach, and bit my tongue. He's seemingly in a hole now from which he is unlikely to climb out from because his reputation is in tatters and he apparently doesn't have the liquidity to keep suppliers happy. I'm not here to join the pile-on, I just wanted to offer the observation that I think Gary has been here before and dug his way out, but that was before he had the overheads of his store etc. and while his reputation was still intact and his suppliers weren't pissed off. The story I got was that a few years ago Gary got a load of orders from the UK and wound up losing a small fortune due to a sudden change in the exchange rate ( I think the markets bear this out ). Anyway he kept everyone happy, and clawed his way back to success. Once he'd recovered he found a partner and invested in a store. He seemed happy and excited about future prospects. He was ordering demo/loaner rigs to cover order periods etc. with hindsight adding to his overheads in unsustainable ways. Now it's collapsing around him but I suspect a the recent predicament has a lot to do with Gary not giving up on a failing business that he's guided through tough cash-flow problems in the past. Many businesses use customer deposited funds to cover expenses to purchase goods for future deliverables for other customers, they also use delays in paying suppliers to help with their cash flow, especially when experiencing cash-flow problems. It's an easy situation to get sucked into but it's a slippery slope if you don't have the margins to cover your overheads. On the other hand it can tide you over through a lean period while you focus on growing profitability and nobody is any the wiser. The finances of a company is a single pool of cash people, there are no customer ear-marks on a bank balance, just numbers in a ledger somewhere. Some are accusing Gary of criminality etc. but this may simply be a case of an ailing business where the owner needs to bite the bullet and declare bankruptcy. His lack of willingness to do this is because he's been here before and managed to pull it off, and he did it when he had significant debt, owed suppliers and struggled to fulfill orders, but he pulled it off anyway when it would have been easier to walk away. Now his situation seems worse if KK is taking money to pay disgruntled suppliers who then refuse to fill orders, and telling customers things to keep them at bay that only do more damage. Maybe it's time to stick a fork in it and stop the damage. There's nothing more to be done especially when the reputation that could help bring in new orders at more sustainable margins has been lost.

BSBD. Thanks for showing me my way around my reserve, and everything else.

Cool, head tracked fixed display. Existing hanging harnesses already use weighted toggles. Using a projector would be better than a monitor IMHO. And you wouldn't need to head track. the differences would be minor against a big screen. The bigger the field of view the better. It just comes down to cost. Not really sure what head tracking adds to training in this application with a monitor. It would give you a marginal benefit in FOV but introduce a factor that doesn't exist in reality. Good idea for tracking the toggles though. Just flying the pattern over a realistic model has a lot of training value and is a solved problem. Building it or packaging it for a DZ is laudable, best of luck to you.

That’s like comparing apples and oranges. You have to compare canopies of the same size to get accurate feedback. Sparky My statement is factually correct, the sizes cited are EXACTLY the same as my canopies. I'd have gone into more detail but he'd already chosen. I agree these canopies are really very different and pointed out I had downsized from one to the other, which is a reflection of the relative performance of each. It's a bit of a strange request.

Is there a rigger on the SF Bay Area peninsula who can I&R my Javelin Odyssey? RSL is still on it. My apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum please point me in the right direction, rigger locator?

My first two canopies I downsized from that size of Triathlon to that size of Pilot. The pilot is much more responsive.

It's all better than holding cards up, that's the point right? I know how much they cost I used to build them, both domes and virtual reality HMD based systems. w.r.t. training I used to implement these systems, so how many training simulators have you helped design & build? (RFPs ain't design) "needed as it works now" is a classic procurement fallacy. As I said, each system has it's strengths and weaknesses. If you compare a dome to an HMD the dome would have its strengths as well as being qualitatively better until HMDs stop sucking, e.g. poor field of view and typically poorer binocular overlap, tracking latency and inaccuracy, no EPs. And frankly they're a pain to use, maintain adjust and keep callibrated. These are negative training features if you want to realistically compare merits. It doesn't have to be a dome (sphere), it could be a grey walled cave setup. Anyhoo, if someone has a spare room at a local DZ and wants to invest in some projectors and a PC........

P.S. the scope of what you build varies depending on your training objectives too. Possible objectives and my thoughts: 1) Flying the pattern in an immersive environment 2) Traffic & collision avoidance (might require more screen) 3) Malfunction recognition - need screen coverage above 4) E.P.s - rules out VR HMDs, but could be done with a harness in a dome. Consider that with a helmet mounted display you don't get to see your own hands or harness, just a virtual representation and may not see anything even approximating them without additional technology when you're off the toggles. There's no one simulation solution that's better than others, it's always a tradeoff. Domes have been assumed to be cost prohibitive because usually they cost a million bucks.

I understand the tradeoffs. I don't think a full sphere would be required but more than a hemisphere would. You get diminishing training value the higher you go but you need to train "head on a swivel" with this application. You have to consider the tradeoffs of this system vs flying a canopy while looking through shitty VR HMD goggles with tracking and rendering latency etc. Try it, it sucks balls, always has. When it doesn't they'll start using it in real training sims and eliminate millions in "traditional" costs. Traditionally such systems are very expensive but many things used to be expensive that technology makes possible in a garage workshop now, if you're prepared to put in the labor. The computer hardware for this used to cost millions, now it's a PC. I've helped build such systems in the past and personally solved and implemented the projection geometry problems in rendering software. Here's my patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6369814.html I have a better way of doing this on modern hardware now. The biggest challenge IMHO is the physical fabrication of a high quality spherical screen. These days the projectors and graphics power are relatively cheap and can easily handle the rendering. An PC sporting HydraVision type of setup would drive as many projectors as you would need for a small dome. The main cost would be in the projectors (with the right amount of free skilled labor).

They'll be counting the cost of the building etc. You could build one for a lot less on your local DZ if you had a room to spare and I could do a better job eliminating the silly VR goggles and throwing a couple of cheap LCD projectors onto a screen with distortion correction. It would take some labor to fabricate a decent screen but it would be worth it. I worked on VR systems for years, head mounted displays suck.

When considering the flare as a two stage process 1) you convert vertical descent into horizontal motion/energy 2) you plane out converting horizontal motion/energy into lift losing energy to drag and additional induced drag. Stage 1 does not change, only stage 2 changes. With stage 2 when landing into high wind you have less work to do. You do not want to "complete" your flare to the point where your ground speed is negative, i.e. you go backwards. So IMHO your flare should remain the same except your second stage during the planeout will end early. Now, if you are landing a large canopy that has very little plane-out in high wind this means that there is a lot of induced drag during the first stage of the flare. It might be said of such a canopy that it doesn't have much of a two stage flare. In this case in high wind you may find yourself going backwards before you enter the second stage flare. With a canopy like this someone might suggest you try to shorten the flare time by beginning a more aggressive flare slightly lower flare to avoid going backwards in windy conditions. This has risks and is NOT universally applicable to other canopies, it may also be counterproductive as aggressive flaring increases the angle of attack and induced drag. You may wind up with an incomplete 1st stage flare so you should be ready to PLF if you try it. You would be safer not jumping in such conditions until you have mastered landing another canopy. Unless you're jumping a lightly loaded tent of a canopy it really takes a lot of wind to make you go backwards before stage 1 is complete (if you're doing it right), so problems in high wind may be related to just completing a stage 2 flare by rote instead of touching down when groundspeed equals zero and killing the canopy flight (or however else you chose to end the jump).