AirCanada

Yup, I just spent a week in Salt Lake, dialing in my foot lauches / landings on my Swoop. Works fine. Beware of very dynamic roll axis reactions to slight assymetries in the risers. IE. When the lauching, the turn-around from facing wing to facing forward, un-evens the risers slightly... a paraglider wont' even notice this, but the mini wings seem much more reactive. Practice. Josh Briggs Canmore, AB

Thank you all. I will get the line lenghts checked, and look at changing the brake line lenght. No-one mentioned diving it to generate speed prior to landing. Is this because that won't help if there is no flare power left in the canopy to begin with, or because I have too few jumps for this to be recommendable? I have tried brake approaches (ie. Half brakes on final, to a full release, then planing out the surge and dive, prior to final flare), and this helped somewhat, but not dramatically. Anyway, thanks for the responses. Josh.

I have searched the forums for topics related to this, but have only pulled up posts about when to retire a canopy... not how to deal with landing a old one... I have a PD230 nine cell. Old with many jumps (it was free!). It is safe, and has been checked over, and minor repairs made by a local rigger. Problem is, I *always* seem to come in a little hard. All my landings are stand up, but in no wind I almost never get a "tip-toe" landing. It is always a little fast, or a little hard. I have tried slow flare, fast flare, half brake approach to a release and plane out the diving canopy. I haven't tried anything with pulling down the front risers. I have 55 jumps, mostly on this canopy. I also have extensive experience flying paragliders (usually 220 - 260 sq ft, and high performance), and more recently a 160 sq ft speed flying canopy. Almost all my landings under these much more energy retentive canopies are "tip-toe". Given the amount that I skydive (not much), I'm not interested in getting a new canopy... unless it appears completely impossible to fix the problem with a little more skill (ie. I lend it to a number of more experienced jumpers, and no-one can seem to land it nicely). Admittedly, I'm being a bit picky about this, but having had a number of back problems in the past, I'm pretty anal about wanting my landings to be fully dialed. Plus, it's easy to twist an ankle from coming in a bit hot... and 3 weeks of injury recovery really takes the fun out of things. So, any suggestions of things that I can try to get that "perfect" landing every time? Josh Briggs Canmore, AB

Dude, That design was first produced in 1997 (or earlier). It is totally outdated, far less safe than modern DHV 2 rated designs, and offers less performance than a modern 1 or 1-2. It would be rude at best to sell such a wing to someone who doesn't know any better, and more than rude to do so for the price of 1000$. Ripping off, and/or scaring the BASE jumpers isn't nice.

You don't need to do anything too fancy to jump out of your own PG... just fly wearing your BASE rig in the normal harness, undo harness... fall away. The weight of the harness will pull the PG more or less straight down (drifting with the wind of course). You could build some sort of cut-away, but there's no need...

No it's not. However, trying to start BASE with level of mental accuity that your grammer indicates would likely be foolish. And trying to continue BASE without skying more would also likely be foolish.

I'm headed to Twin, and will be hoteling for those nights. PM if interested in sharing.

Good to know of some good experiences!

Thanks for all the good info. I gather from you previous posts that you work for apple. It's nice to get suggestions from someone who doesn't pre- assume that one is an idiot (as some tech support people seem to... or, they just don't know the anwsers themselves). Unfortunately, I don't have the boot disks with me, nor the original RAM, so I can't RAM test or disk repair. However, I already repaired the permissions, and verified the boot volume (from the HD itself, not the CD). Then re-booted... same problem. Black screen, HD running, key board working, machine appears "on"... no screen, no respone. Re-setting PRAM fixes it... but only until the next shut down. So, yes, it's definately going to the doctor. It appears to be the same problem that this guy experienced: http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=4e75a5b9f4fb6df81f7db3855c38b8e4&threadid=65237 'Cept he fixed his with the PRAM re-set. Similar genesis, tho... It all started with me booting in safe mode, and holding down the shift key for a while... Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.

Ok. I wasn't sure what you meant by "uninstall", as there was no "un-installer" in the limewire package, and didn't seem to be any in OS X. So, I googled, and found instructions for using terminal... a sudo command line. That appeared to get rid of it. I then changed the finder (through terminal) to show all hidden files, searched for anything with the word lime, and deleted all limewire related files the regular way, emptied the trash, and then switched the finder back to the normal view. I trust that will take care of it? Thanks for the reply... very informative. Josh.

Wondering if anyone else is experiencing problems with their Intel- Mac... (according to the Mac discussion boards, there seems to be quite a few...) I picked up my custom configured Macbook (2Ghz, White, 120G HD, added 2GB of RAM in-store) on July 13. This was round 2, as the first one I had gotten was DOA. About a week later, I got around to using it, and bringing all my files over from windows land, and I found it... well... SLOW. Only standard software loaded, plus Office for Mac, Adobe lightroom, Acrobat, limewire, skype, and a few plug-ins. Specifically: Slow & jerky to scroll around graphic pdf's. slow and jerky to scroll around RAW's in preview, iphoto, or lightroom. typing lags in word and occasionally mail. lags and jerky with photobooth. lags, jerky, poor playback, slow to load (essentially unusable) with .wmv files and the new universal version of flip for mac. slow and jerky transistions in expose with multiple windows, if any of them are grapic intensive... ie. iphoto. Don't forget, I have 2GB of ram in there. Made an appointment to have it looked at, then, while trying some troubleshooting with apple over the phone, I safe-booted it, and... It was gone. Black screen only on boot. Hard drive started, keyboard active (caps-lock light would go on / off), start up sound, but nothing on the screen, and the little led on-off light was off. Tried resetting the PMU, starttig into the start- up manger... nothing. Told to bring it in. Eventually brought it back by resetting the PRAM, but now, if it is turned off... same thing, black screen on re-boot. Re-set PRAM, turns on, works ok, althought still "slow". On the "bright" side, I never found that it got to hot, the fan never "mooed" at me, and the case didn't dis-color. Any similar issues? Other, unique and strange issues? Sadly, I have owned it long enough to fall in love with the UI, the nice design, and the easily accessible code for little "hacks" of the system (such as getting isync to work with my un-supported phone)... but I can't work with a computer than is this tempermental. By contrast, my 4 year old Dell, while experiencing all of the standard windows bugs and crashes, is still chugging along with nary a call to tech support... ever.

RE: Parallels, I just tested it, and un-installed it. I found the interface to be "choppy", and more importantly it wasn't good at recognizing external ports.... so no USB access. Depending on what you want it for, this may not be an issue. You might want to look at "Cross over Mac" by Codeweavers. Their first version for mac is due out soon... it will supposedly emulate a windows environment for individual programs.... ie. you will be able to install a windows program on your mac, without the virtual windows OS. RE: Hard Drive Space. Funny, I was wondering about that too, on the Macbook-no-pro that I just got. I've had some luck with un-installing programs that I'm sure I won't use. Unlike you, I don't find my new machine (2.0Ghz Dual, 2.0ghz RAM, 120Gig 5400 HD) to be all that fast. I get a lot of spinning beach balls when scrolling through large PDF docs with pics, RAW pics take a while to load, Word often lags a few letters while typing (presumably due to running through rosetta), quicktime is horribly slow and choppy at .wmv files (again, presumably due to the rosetta emulation for the "flip for mac" plug-in) Slick UI, tho... just not as good as the rep would indicate.

Doesn't apply. (Not directly anyway) The proposed rockfall is above the lower grindlewald glacier, on the east face, facing the Schrechhorn. You would be going up the W face, and hucking your meat near the M in Eismeer: http://www.alpineskimaps.com/swit/jungfrau/mapwin.htm Course, it would be shitty to be on that mushroom, when the slab let loose...

Very informative. Thanks.

Does anyone have one yet? What do you think? Is the shared video ram sufficient to work with video? What about HD video? With a build up to a 120GB hard drive and putting 2GB of aftermarket RAM in each of them, the Macbook ends up being about 1000$CAD cheaper than the Pro. The only significant differences then being the dedicated video RAM in the pro, and the slightly faster processor. That's a big price difference.