mdrejhon

New newsletter now sent out to 250 members who joined Rainbow Skydivers: ------ Rainbow Skydivers NEWS -- August 13th, 2010 -- NEW BOOGIE INFO! INDEX - Gay Way World Record REGISTRATION FORM. - Andre Van Heerden mentioned in Philly Gay News! - Night Jump on Thursday Night August 26th - More LED Xmas Lights Needed - Bring your LEATHER Chaps or Underwear for the Underwear Jump! - Mark Rejhon is DEAF - Organizer Contact Information (Texting & BBM) ____________________________________________________ Gay Way World Record REGISTRATION FORM. You want to be on the Gay Way World Record? 100 jump and B license minimum. No deadline, but your chances are better if you fill out RIGHT NOW -- ASAP! http://www.rainbowskydive.com/forms/gayway2010_registration.doc Then email the form to [email protected] -- ASAP! ____________________________________________________ Andre Van Heerden mentioned in Philly Gay News! Philadelphia Gay News has a wonderful article from an interview with fellow Rainbow Skydiver Andre Van Heerden: http://epgn.com/view/full_story/9108313/article-Family-Portraits--Andre-van-Heerden ____________________________________________________ Night Jump on Thursday Night August 26th Attention, attention! Night jumps is now on the first day of the boogie (THURSDAY NIGHT)! You can jump solo or participate in a NIGHT GAY WAY WORLD RECORD attempt too (target: approximately 5-way in size, with a VERY high altitude break off for safety reasons). To participate in the night time gay way record, you should have already done night RW already. Otherwise you can jump solo! You should attend the sunset jump of Thursday night, the safety briefing (by the dropzone's safety officer), and have your own night-jump gear. Night jumping is beautiful, and pretty safe if conducted properly. Please review your SIM to re-familiarize yourself with night jumping procedures. ____________________________________________________ More LED Xmas Lights Needed We will be bringing 15 strings (2,000 bulbs) of rainbow-colored LED christmas lights to decorate the entire dropzone during Rainbow Boogie. However, this isn't nearly enough for a big dropzone -- if you are driving early (i.e. Wednesday or Thursday) please bring ALL your mixed-color LED Xmas lights to make the dropzone even more dazzling! Only LED is accepted, no old fashioned incandescent lighting. (LED is more efficient, safe, and not a fire hazard). If you have glowsticks, bring them too. They are useful for both the night-jump and for the dance/DJ party on Saturday night! If you plan to bring LED decorations, please notify me at [email protected] ____________________________________________________ Bring your LEATHER Chaps or Underwear for the Underwear Jump! A now-famous Rainbow Boogie annual tradition, Saturday sunset jump is an underwear jump. Bring your leather pants, leather chaps, or your favourite underwear for this jump! Lingerie is acceptable wear on this jump too, especially if you are a girl who wants to be on this jump. This year we want to fill the ENTIRE OTTER this time around! Please note, the dropzone has the right to refuse certain inappropriate wear (so cover-up your genitilia). Participation is OPTIONAL. You can WATCH, if you prefer! NOTE: For safety reasons, NO LEATHER HARNESSES during this skydive, please -- straps are a snag hazard. ____________________________________________________ Mark Rejhon is DEAF I'm the boogie organizer, and I'm hearing impaired (deaf) since birth. If this is the first time meeting me, speak to me slowly. I can speak and lipread. Sometimes I will use my BlackBerry, laptop, or a notepad to communicate. There will also be a whiteboard or easel whenever I am assisting in video debriefs. I am also a member of Deaf Skydivers at http://www.deafskydivers.org/ More about me: I load-organized last year's Gay Way World Record, along with assistants. My primary jumping discipline in the last 2 years have been big ways. I have attended 9 Perris Big Way events (50 and 100 ways), as well as several other major big way events including Men's World Record 2009, Kaledioscope 2009, and Z-Team 2010. I have a long-term aspiration to be a part of The World Team for the next World Record. I rely on Perris' safe big way jumping techniques as a template for Gay Way World Record. ____________________________________________________ Rainbow Boogie August 26th-29th Map Directions Directions: http://bit.ly/RainbowBoogieMap Boogie Info: http://bit.ly/RainbowBoogieInvite Carpools: http://bit.ly/RainbowSkydiveCarpools Hotel/Camping: http://bit.ly/RainbowSkydiveHotels ____________________________________________________ And you want to be on the Gay Way World Record? Fill this form out ASAP: http://www.rainbowskydive.com/forms/gayway2010_registration.doc --- end of newsletter ---

For a bigway outer... The moment someone becomes a good tracker, you're LOOKING DOWNWARDS to scan your air and then you see the ENTIRE base at the bottom of your vision still in the process of breaking off -- below your altitude, because a big way outer who's become a fairly reasonably good tracker, manages to fall significantly slower than the base before it started breaking off. This has happened to me on a few 100-way jumps, beginning last September. Noticed this by accident. It's kinda a weird sensation to accidentally happen to see 70-80 people below your altitude just by looking down and briefly glancing your eyeballs towards your wrist altitimeter for a quick glance -- and then simultaneously happening to see so many people below your altitude. Oh, just like everyone else, I've of course botched my track a few breakoffs (such as a random second delay by missed kick signal), and been in the bottom 50th percentile, or I mis-arched for a brief moment. But that seems to happen less and less... Oh, and I accidentally noticed that bending your head downwards seemed to even help my track (better track arch). Just don't forget to scan and look upwards from time to time too. Tracking teams REALLY do help.

Thought to ponder: On a 100-way there are a lot of people tracking very close together, so small direction changes in tracking are dangerous. If you're a part of a very dense breakoff wave, especially in the middle waves, when you pull, you can sometimes have a really good view of a canopy deployment not too far from your airspace, off to the side. Both left and right. In massive big ways, there are breakoff waves specially designed to minimize the chances of someone pulling above or below you. So more often than not, you have a really good view of your tracking buddy to your left and to your right as you're all fanning out after the tracking-team phase (the first few seconds of your breakoff wave) (For those not aware: Breakoff wave: Large big ways, usually beginning at 20-ways and up, have breakoffs at different altitude to gradually shrink the big way in an orderly fashion. There can be two, three, four or even more breakoff waves. The bigger the big way, the more waves. For a 60-way typically, the outside part of the big way breaks off first, then 1000 feet later, the middle part of the big way breaks off, then 1000 feet later, the center base breaks off. Breakoff team: Usually consists of 2 to 5 people. During a breakoff wave, clusters of people breakoff have to track very close to each other intentionally by levelling with each other (track shallower/steeper as necessary) during the first few seconds to make the tracking start orderly and safer -- then spreading out with your best tracks. You already have a good sense of where your nearest tracking buddies are after the tracking team phase. The best trackers have to actually slow down (for everyone's safety), but only for the first few seconds, to stay in the breakoff team, before finally rocketing off. The worst trackers are quickly caught on video or brought up in concern by adjacent break-off team members who observes a diving person in their team. Breakoffs are now video debrief material, the center videographer being told not to pull until some overhead tracking video is caught. Not always. But way more often now. Discipline of non-safety is quicker this way than other methods... From things like the world record attempts of the 1970's to 1980's, to the incubation of the Perris Big Way camp where 250-jump wonders can do their first 100-way, to the 2006 World Record of 400 people .... Many organizers have learned that the breakoff-wave and the breakoff-team techniques have resulted more consistently in biggest separation between people at pull time. They 4 or 5 videographers during Perris Big Ways, so they often focus on 1 or 2 breakoff teams at a time, sometimes switching teams and sectors in different jumps. A good breakoff team of 5 looks like a "V" of flying birds, almost close enough to touch each other. Breakoff teams are typically not necessary (overkill) in single-plane big ways, so are not often practiced at most dropzones, and are not even praticed at even State Record size events (often even when the big way is big enough to warrant it). Breakoff teams are recent cirriculum that is now standard practice in big ways, now having been integrated into the Perris Big Way camps, well known to be the world's best. People who are not familiar with this, need to study this.

This is the next news letter that was already sent to the group: Rainbow Skydivers NEWS -- July 31st, 2010 -- BOOGIE COUNTDOWN! INDEX - Successful Philadelphia Gay Pride Booth! - Rainbow Boogie 2010. 60+ confirmed, 100+ maybe! - Can't Get Time Off? Come for WEEKEND ONLY! - Airfare SALE! - Carpool from Philadelphia Airport (PHL) and Atlantic City (ACY) - Optional Gay Way World Record Registration Form on August 1st! - BOOTHS at Rainbow Boogie 2010 ____________________________________________________ Successful Philadelphia Gay Pride Booth! Several dozen new gay tandems are coming as a result of the booth presented at Philadelphia Gay Pride! See the photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228730&id=738476857&ref=mf ____________________________________________________ Rainbow Boogie 2010. 60+ confirmed, 100+ maybe! Coming up last weekend of August (26-29), the the world's only annual gay skydiving event. 60+ confirmed and over 100+ maybe on the Facebook RSVP page! Forgotten about it? Go read all about it and confirm your attendance at: http://bit.ly/RainbowBoogieInvite ____________________________________________________ Can't Get Time Off? Come for WEEKEND ONLY! Boss won't let you get away? Get the time off for WEEKEND ONLY! Saturday's airplane hangar party and the Saturday sunset load underwear jump load is WELL worth attending for just the weekend only. Come after work Friday night August 27th. Go home Sunday night August 29th. We will pick you up at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) if you need a ride. ____________________________________________________ Airfare Sale! There are some bargain airfares at the moment on some sites. Come fly to PHL (20 mins away from dropzone) or ACY (1 hour). http://www.expedia.com http://travel.yahoo.com http://www.orbitz.com http://www.virginamerica.com http://www.jetblue.com We can pick you up if you fly to PHL. For more info, see http://bit.ly/RainbowSkydiveCarpools ____________________________________________________ Carpools from Philadelphia Airport (PHL) or Atlantic City (ACY) See carpools at http://bit.ly/RainbowSkydiveCarpools Hotels and camping at http://bit.ly/RainbowSkydiveHotels ____________________________________________________ Optional Gay Way World Record Registration Form on August 1st! We are releasing the application form for the Gay Way World Record shortly. Invitation is open to experienced jumpers, with a B license and 100 jump minimum, with sufficient RW experience.Instructors will verify appliation forms for eligibility. Attendance on Thursday and Friday for practice jumps is strongly recommended if you do not have prior big-way experience. Note: Participation is optional. There are several volunteer coaches willing to jump with Solo and A-licensed jumpers. There is freefly, wingsuit, and other types of jumpers coming too! ____________________________________________________ BOOTHS during Rainbow Boogie 2010 We are currently expecting at least three booths during Rainbow Boogie 2010, including: Aerodyne who's sponsoring a concurrent event called Advanced Skydive Project that runs at the same time as Rainbow Boogie. FREE DEMOS of Aerodyne canopies! Blue Skies Magazine is currently being expected as of this time of writing, and we may also have an artist presenting skydiving paintings, as well as there's the Rainbow Boogie "who's who" board. If you are interested in setting up a booth at Rainbow Boogie, please contact Mark Rejhon, Michael Gamble and/or Liz Mann as soon as you can. We welcome additional booths! ____________________________________________________ Questions? Email Mark Rejhon on Facebook or at [email protected]

When W is said alone, it reminds me of George W Bush being invited to a tunnel because I remember there was a W skydive sometime ago. FWIW, I quickly figured it out that W likely referred to wind tunnel, but W has a lot of meanings... That said, I was smart enough to figure it out near immediately, and realize I was reading a non-native-English writer, so context focussed on the most likely word...

1 hour in a day is strenous for a first-timer. Split it up throughout the day and you'll be OK. 15 minute blocks sharing with some other people (so that it takes 30 minutes to do 15 minutes). With about an hour or two breaks in between for debriefs. You'll likely be VERY sore. My first half hour in a tunnel in one day, made me more sore, than my last two hours in a tunnel in one day.

Better yet, disassemble the phone. Whatever you do, whatever method of resusciating a wet cellphone, definitely REMOVE THE BATTERY as quickly as you can, as well as DO NOT TEST THE PHONE until it is 100% certain it is dry. Water+cellphone is usually harmless (I've seen 10-minute-soaked underwater BlackBerries get resusciated), but water+electricty+cellphone equals ZAP! (internal damage) .... It may mean you may have to refrain from testing your cellphone for 3 days, but there are some amazing resusciation stories at places like HowardForums, CrackBerry Forums, etc... Throughout the Internet are various techniques of resusciation of wet cellphones, including rice-in-bag, to more drastic such as phone disassembly, incandescent lamps, rear windshield of parked car in sun, on top of heating radiator, rubbing alcohol baths for cellphone's motherboard (in case of very dirty liquid exposure), intentionally rinsing saltwater/poolwater exposed phones under more-harmless tapwater at cruseship/beach toilets to "buy" extra time from danger of corrosion before attempting ot dry, before beginning drying process, etc. Many no-no's including never using microwaves, never using airdryers (sudden warmups and cooldowns are bad). As always, do your homework first about wet-gadget recovery...

N/A

Once someone is experienced enough to be trusted to do this safely (coach/instructor with good big way experience) pairs can instead practice the tracking team even in a 2-way or 4-way before fanning out. In a tracking team stage of a big way, the goal is to track side by side, and not to out-track (but you already knew that) until after a few seconds, then you can turn it into a tracking race, but it has to be carefully preplanned, with the known tracking-jump safety techniques and big-way jump safety techniques especially since you're not tracking directly away from each other, but spreading out instead like a tiny radial section of a big way. Extra altitude is recommended. (i.e. tracking team at 6K, tracking spread-out race at 4.5K, and pull at 3K) (For those dz.com readers reading this thread and not aware, modern 100 ways and bigger, use tracking teams to chunk out compact tracking groups that intentionally stay close together for a few seconds before fanning out. For massive big ways, this increases safety. This means the best trackers in the tracking team needs to relax their track and slow down for the rest of the team. Which means they have to resist the temptation to start tracking fast until the end of the tracking team stage of the breakoff.)

Big way training can also help people become better jumpers in other disciplines. Becoming a good tracker, helps you when you're interested in wingsuit flying -- something I've been thinking of. Solo's aren't really good for big way practice. Go to a tunnel instead and do big way training techniques there instead with the same money. Lots of good tips in this thread already. Delayed exits can be fun -- you're using your buddy as target practice Tracking jumps are fun, you get to learn how to adjust the speed and angle of your track, by tracking relative to other people at close range (when you get good enough, you can track close enough to touch them or dock on each other during a track). One of my favourite non-big-way-RW jumps was a 23-way tracking jump at Perris.

Speaking of which, WHEN will I get to jump the JET?????

Semi-eureka moment: In other words: It's as if the propeller is simultaneously tacking the vehicle left and right, because the propeller has the ability to alternate sides rapidly, averaging out to a direct-downwind motion that is faster than the wind itself. It all makes much better sense now. It is not perpetual motion because energy is being actually being captured from the wind. Just that the propellers are causing the same kind of cross-tack forces in both left/right directions, that cancel out to a direct-downwind motion. (I think the OP linked article shows a variable pitch wind-capture propeller. It appears you kind of need a variable pitch prop optimized for this, so you can adapt for optimal energy capture for every speed, including slower and faster than the wind. You'd need to pass through the stationary wind factor (going the same speed as wind) and inverse your pitch I think, for proper operation while going faster than wind. If I am not mistaken.) Still does not explain everything. I need more thought experiments, before it makes more sense. Hmm. And some scientific articles, that relates this, and the forces, to how sailboats are well known to be able to go faster than the wind.

Guy Wright had Z-Team 80 ways to Skydive Air Adventures at Clewistown, instead of Deland, due to some "paperwork" issue relating to the airplanes. This is probably the same thing...

Is that 5,000 to 10,000 actual video transfers per day? Or standard web page hits? Popular videos can spike to over a million if it goes suddenly "viral", although that more often happens with YouTube. The cost can be quite unpredictable, and the hosting service sometimes have to come back and ask for the upgraded service. Someone does need to ask the original owner how much it cost, but at full price, it can cost well over $100 per month especially if traffic more than doubles, and that's over a grand per year. If it spikes in popularity, hosting service comes calling and forces you to leave or upgrade your plan. (I believe that's part of what happened with Skydiving Movies, earlier?) One alternate method is to make it a wrapper for a Skydivingmovies YouTube channel, meaning it becomes a website that has embedded videos using other servers for the video (i.e. YouTube). That would essentially be free bandwidth. That said, it would have to be more attractive to skydivers than just uploading directly to YouTube.

Door fear disappeared a long time ago, between 50th and 100th jumps. Because of impatience to get to altitude, I actually get more relaxed when the door opens. I do have to mind safety things such as not banging myself on my way out of the door, etc. What fears me up the most, is the landing even after 600 jumps -- half of skydiving deaths are landings under a perfectly good parachute. Oh, and flying in crowded canopy traffic.

Another thing I thought of: Does your BIOS have USB keyboard support enabled? Is your keyboard directly plugged into the USB port, rather than through a hub? Try different USB ports for the keyboard -- try a rear USB port instead of a front USB port. In rare cases, this results in the keyboard not functioning for BIOS setup and Install disc -- until the USB drivers are loaded by the booting operating system. (Making sure this stone is not left unturned. If it's hanging there before loading the blue Windows installation screen, then it's probably not the SATA driver being the problem yet -- because it's not yet even able to boot from the install disc, right?)

Craig helped me in one of the Perris big ways (Men's World Record) What I heard indirectly, is that SkydivingMovies cost thousands to operate and ran at a pretty major considerable loss. If someone wants to bankroll a few thousand dollars, or volunteer many hours uploading videos (intact, with descriptions) to some kind of a SkydivingMovies YouTube Channel. Plus time & money spent transferring gigabytes of archived video data, which may now be incomplete and disorganized, now that the website no longer exists. It may be that someone needs to step up and pay for somebody's time (i.e. a few hundred dollars) to even bother to get this work started because somebody has kids and cannot take time off work to pull out an old backup, copy it to media or additional hard disk that costs money, and send it off to an unproven volunteer who might just 'sit' on it. (It has happened many times before). What is needed is the right mix of platinum-reputation volunteer resources, financial resources, and/or website+coding resources. Show your 'stuff' (not just significant money, but also programming skill, volunteer time, etc/). It may be that at this time, just offering hosting services just won't cut it anymore. There's considerable time-effort to produce a replacement volunteer group, is quite difficult, including the transfer of content, operations, privacy trust, liability issues, hosting stability, programming skill for a custom site -- Even the shoestring approach of converting to sometihng more standardized such as a SkydivingMovies YouTube channel, and creating a skdyvingmovies website with embedded YouTube videos to save on bandwidth costs -- even this shoestring approach still requires considerable volunteer time, too. Or even if keeping the existing scripts/site/etc, and finding a compatible hosting service, there's inertia restarting. Once the site ground to a halt, there is now a new surge of volunteer time necessary to get momentum back up (i.e. transfer to new hosting service, new volunteers, etc) And that time/money may just 'not' be there. Remember, we're talking about people with a job and family buddy... That are reluctant to return to working on a losing endeavour (lost time that takes away from family, takes away from job, takes away from skydiving -- even if free hosting is offered). Thus, it will take a massively up-stepped approach to resume skydivingmovies -- far beyond just offering free hosting service. For example, even a sudden unsolicited 3-digit or low 4-digit PayPal donation may not be enough; someone may also need to donate computer-geek time simultaneously too, with that. Someone just needs to find out what the 'price' is.

For those who can open a console as root, there's the good old fashioned lobotomy: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

That's my main parachute, and I don't think it's a strange one. It was very popular in its day. Care to elaborate?

That boot order should, ideally, work. But try it both ways to see if there is a change in behaviour, like "Press key to boot from DVD..." might disappear or reappear.

Important note: Many computers don't have a CMOS battery (they use a permanent capacitor). Some motherboards don't have a battery. For these machines, there's a jumper you change or remove to clear the CMOS. Alienware, last I heard, uses the jumper method. That said, I think it's fixable by changing BIOS settings. First, try changing your boot device, and reordering the boot devices.

Or get a hand-me-down sofa to crash on. Then donate it to the dropzone when you're done with it. Some drop zones can't have too many sofas.

About thirty years ago, my dad worked for the Canadian Embassy, and although we lived in a surburb in Rockville, Maryland -- I got to have the Grand Tour of Washington DC for many years. I revisited Washington DC approximately every ten years. I think distribution is very uneven. There are rich and luxurious portions of Washington DC with lovely neighbourhoods and what looked like Paris-style settings, luxurious outdoor cafes and all. And there were 'downtrodden areas' that we drove past. But it all looked pretty to me as a kid. Certainly, Dad drove me through the preferred areas, but they apparently exist... Even ten years ago on my last visit, they still existed. What I remember the most was the metro with the brutalist station architecture, and its 'technology magic'. Its automatic retractable turnstiles and magnetic stripe cards in the late 70's/early 80's -- was the highest tech in the world at the time, and I was only a curious 6-year old at the time. It might help the skydiving industry, when government big wigs (even just a few) become regular tunnel fliers. They've got more than enough money to burn, and I think the tourist market would swallow up the rest. And there are many rich suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, that would make the trip to DC for the tunnel. It's probably a much richer market (within 2 hour driving distance) than say, New Hampshire.

Ha ha, but just a quick explanation of legitimate context of my posting: It was meant to help OP attract locals who know more about the areas surrounding Perris/Elsinore. Just generically mentioning California, will attract a few useless posts, while fun for a laugh, is mostly useless to OP.

Hello, Fellow Canadian made this: Disabled Skydiving Manual Not an endorsement for her to jump, BUT, a dropzone must have the power of knowledge to make a good call...