Eule

All, Several people have requested a way to ignore posts from certain posters. This has been a common feature in Usenet news readers for many years (where it is called a "kill file"), and some other Web forums also support it (under names like "ignore list" or "block poster"). Gossamer Forum (the software that runs the dropzone.com forums), however, doesn't appear to support this functionality. I have written a Greasemonkey script that allows you to create a list of posters whose posts will not be displayed. Their posts are replaced with a small notice that the post has been killed. Please note the following important points! This is not an "official" feature of dropzone.com! This script runs in your browser, not on the dropzone.com server. If you have any difficulties with it, contact me, NOT any of the dropzone.com moderators or admins. This script does not delete the posts from the server. The posts are still there and your browser still downloads them - the script just tells your browser not to show some of them to you. If you disable the script and reload the page, all of the posts on the page will appear. Putting a user in your kill file will stop the display of all posts from that user across all forums. There is not a way to ignore someone's posts in one forum but see them in another forum. This script will not stop people from sending you private messages (PMs) or emailing you at your dropzone.com address. You need the Firefox web browser and the Greasemonkey extension to use this script. See below for more information. To use the script: install it, right click on the monkey face at the bottom right corner of your browser window, and select "Manage user scripts...". Select the "Gossamer Forum Kill File" script and click the "Edit" button. (If you haven't edited a Greasemonkey script before, Greasemonkey will ask you for the location of a text editor on your system.) Put the names of the users whose posts you don't want to see in the array near the top of the program - it is well marked. Save the file, exit your text editor, and click "OK" on the "Manage user scripts" window. Hit "reload" to apply the changes to the page you are currently viewing. I have tested it on exactly two sites: dropzone.com and Gossamer Threads' site. I have only tested it on Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Linux, but it should work on other recent versions of Firefox and on legacy OSes. I have not tested it with any legacy browsers. You will need the Greasemonkey Firefox extension to use the script. This software is supplied with NO WARRANTY. If it breaks you get to keep all the pieces. Having said that, I would appreciate any reports, good or bad. A screenshot of the script in action is attached, along with the script itself. Or, go here to install the script. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

The ballot is printed and published on the USPA web site in the Nov. issue of Parachutist. So, it _is_ on the Web site, but you have to dig around for it. I realize that we're sort of in the middle of the process, but I still think it wouldn't hurt the turnout/participation if the USPA had some information about it on the "News" or "Events" page of their site, or even on its own tab. Just the little blurb that MikeT posted originally would be good, possibly along with something like "the next step is [whatever], which will happen around [some date]". Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

All of these need "The Uninsured" stuck on the beginning and "LLC" or "Inc" or whatever stuck on the end. I also haven't checked any of them for possible collisions with existing names, trademarks, etc. You could expand the ones like "Foo Systems" into "Foo Parachute Systems", or "Foo Parachutes" into "Foo Parachute Technologies", etc. Having said all that... "Miracle Pig Technologies" (inspired by slightly buggy automated translations) "Distant Relative Workshop" "Unrelated Workshop" (silly variations on the current name) "Debounce Systems" (you might have to be a bit of an electronics geek to understand this one) "Skyhook Systems" (make the hardware the name, like three-rings) "Stronger Parachutes" (I can't think of anybody who could possibly object to this name) "Hirsute Parachutes" (hopefully self-explanatory?) "Vector Delta Systems" (current product name plus "delta", meaning a change - unfortunate acronym though. Not "Sigma Delta" - that sounds like a fraternity.) "Slot Perfect Systems" (you might have to pay off one of the moderators on here a little bit) For any company name, a possible tagline: "Pre-Second in Parachutes" Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

As the guy who came out with the "getting stuck" comment, let me make clear that it was a JOKE. :) I know that when people ask "is this dropzone any good" they really want to know about what kind of plane they have, is the maintenance on the plane OK, are the staff friendly and helpful, are the other jumpers friendly and helpful, etc. But I'm a smart-ass so I'd rather assume that they want to make sure the gravity works well at that dropzone. Caution: low jump numbers here. The closest thing I've heard of (or experienced) as far as "getting stuck" is when you get under canopy and the wind speed is just about equal to the forward speed of your canopy. If you point yourself directly into the wind, you'll come more or less straight down, and if your canopy is lightly loaded, you won't come down very fast. But you _are_ losing altitude. You're not absolutely "stuck", since if you turn the canopy out of the wind at all, you'll get blown somewhere by the wind. But if the landing area is far enough upwind of you, then yeah, you're "stuck" in that you probably can't make the landing area. I heartily endorse the above product and/or service. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

It's kind of hard to find Oklahomans on the Internet; the Indians keep cutting the damn phone lines. :) Seriously, there are a few of us around here. You can get better-than-3.2 beer, but only at a liquor store - not at the grocery store, quick mart, etc. The liquor stores are not open on Sunday. You can't get better than 3.2 Bud, Coors, or Miller (I think those are the ones) at all - this isn't really a law but the result of some dicksize war the distributors had with the state, I think. Look on your next bottle of beer where they have the "5 cent refund in IA, ..." list and somewhere near there you'll see an "OK+" if it is more than 3.2 beer. Well, they do good maintenance on the gravity... I've never once jumped out of the plane and gotten stuck in the air. :) I like it, but I'm biased... I don't work there but I have made most of my jumps there. They have a Cessna 182 for sure, and the last time I checked, they also had a Cessna 206. The hangar/facilities are as good or better than any 182 dropzone I've been to, but at this point I haven't been to very many of them. Well, if you're not sure, it's not illegal to come out to the DZ and just watch and talk to people. I did that at a couple of DZs before my first jump and that's a large part of why I ended up in Cushing. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Apparently, ATC RADAR can see jumpers when adjusted correctly. I'm not sure all that nylon would show up very well on the RADAR. It probably doesn't care about the difference between belly-to-earth and standing up (under canopy) much, but if you're flying towards the RADAR while under canopy, it might have a better chance of picking up the metal bits of the harness. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

When you come back, can you sneak some non-3.2 Bud and Coors in with you? Dude, you got ripped off! Most tandems get like five minutes! Seriously, one minute is pretty standard if you're going to 14,500 or 15,000. :) There, made it clicky for you. Is about an hour close enough? I've been jumping in Cushing. There is also a dropzone in Hinton, but I think it might be closed... I heard they were closing and their Web site doesn't work anymore. Welcome! Eule Tulsa, Oklahoma PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I am interested too; the previous elections were held before I became a member, but I'd like to vote in the upcoming elections. I just took a fairly extensive look at the USPA's Web site and I can't find anything about the election process on there. There are a couple of mentions that the BOD is elected by the membership, and lists of the current members, but nothing on the elections. I suspect the answer is "it's in Parachutist" but I haven't looked there yet. I find the lack of information on the Web site... "interesting". Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Hello all! MikeT's post about the upcoming USPA election reminded me that there was a forum created for the previous election. Does anybody think it would be a good idea to do that again, or did it not work well last time? (That election happened before I started jumping, and I've only looked at a few of the posts in that forum.) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

This is absolutely pathetic! I'm assuming you are referring to the large number of uncontested positions? I think there was some discussion on this a while ago - this thread had some of it but I'm not sure if it's the one I'm remembering. You yourself had part of the answer, I think... I know a couple of jumpers who would probably do a decent job but who don't have an extra 100-150 jump tickets in their pockets or another week of vacation at work. That's not the only reason but I think that's a significant part of it. On a slightly different note, there was a forum created specifically for the last election; do you feel it would be helpful to have something like that again? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Google and some poking around at the FAA site led me to a Grant Histories page. Scroll down a bit to "Grant History Summaries" and look at the "AIP Summary (All Grants)" for the year you are interested in. At least for 2005, the documents seem to be sorted by some kind of FAA region and not by state, so you may want to do a find in your PDF reader (usually the binoculars button) to look for the airport name you are interested in, or the name of a major airport in your state to get you close. The AIP grants are probably not the only source of federal funds available to airports, but they are maybe the most common one. The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems page may also be interesting; it lists the airports that are _eligible_ to get federal grants. I agree with Elisha that most airports that are eligible for a grant probably get something and would therefore show up in the AIP grants summary, but you never know. Going a little further into things that I think are true but that I don't have a reference handy for, the number of takeoffs and landings is a factor in deciding how much money an airport gets from the AIP grants. So, having a dropzone on an airport may increase the amount of federal funds that airport can get. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Before you went on the jump, were you at all congested? Do you have any allergies that might have been acting up? These can make it harder to clear your ears. You might find Skydive Radio show #54 useful; the hosts talked to an ear, nose, and throat doctor about things like this. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Yeah, but at least you got to sign the back side of the checks. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

It's on the Indianapolis Star web page, but that might scroll off later. The story is here and there is a video linked from this page. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Actually, yes it is. Actually, no it's not. It's pretty good, and the slower you're moving the better it is, but it's not 100%. If you have a GPS receiver, and you can convince it either to log your position every so often or to send the position to a PC every so often, set that up and then put the GPS out in the back yard somewhere, not moving. Let it run for several hours. Plot the positions you got back and you'll get a fuzzy circularish blob. The points will cluster towards the middle, but you have to go a long way from the center before they really thin out. Plus there will be a few "WTF?" outliers. The blob is smaller than it used to be, thanks to "Selective Availability" being turned off sometime between about 1998 and 2000. The Department of Defense was concerned that the bad guys would be able to use GPS too, so error was deliberately added to the GPS signal that can be received by "civilian" receivers. This was switched off as a policy decision. The President could wake up tomorrow and say "OMFG! Terrorists!!!1!" and switch it back on, which would make GPS spotting even more interesting. (As an aside, SA was also switched off during the Gulf war in 1991. Then, it was because GPS was pretty new and the military didn't have enough mil-spec GPS receivers; Army guys were going down to Circuit City and buying every civilian GPS on the shelf and mailing them to Iraq. Sometime around 1992-1993 it was switched back on.) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

What a boring individual you are. I would vote for putting this article (with just a little bit of polish) into the "info for n00bs" article section on this site. That and fifty cents will get you ten milliseconds of lawyer time. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Skydive Radio show #42. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I am currently shopping and that seems to be about the going rate, at least for me and the first filters that most places use - male, 30-35 years old, non-smoker. Once you answer the detailed health questions the actual quote may be much more or much less. I have not been able to find detailed descriptions of included or excluded activities that are just posted on a company's Web site... most of that stuff seems to be in the policy itself, which you only get after they have agreed to cover you. I _think_ it is possible to get a quote, get a copy of the policy, and then decline to buy the insurance based on what the policy actually says without incurring any penalty, but I am not sure. I have been using ehealthinsurance.com to compare policies and prices. Standard disclaimers apply; I don't get money or other considerations from any companies I have mentioned. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

So did you ask the pilot about a jump ticket? This says that the payload is 150,000 kg and that the usable floor area is 230 m^2. Hmm... with an FAA-spec 82 kg jumper and a guessed 13 kg rig for 95 kg per jumper, that's you and 1,577 of your closest friends on the jump. But you'll have to stand pretty close together - each one of you gets 0.146 m^2, or a square about 38 cm (15") on a side. You'll all need oxygen as well. Thanks for the report! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

This is probably the best one (out of the ones you posted) if you just want to buy a box and go jump. It might work a little better if you're jumping later in the afternoon or on a cloudy day; LED displays tend to wash out in bright sunlight. This one is tiny, but it's just the sensor - no display or memory. It appears to have a USB cable. Is that a laptop under your jumpsuit or are you just happy to see me? :) You might be able to get away with powering this one with a 9 V battery. The battery life might be kind of crap (they don't specify how much current it takes), but it should last for at least a jump or two. If 9 V isn't enough, then a 9 V in series with two AA or AAA batteries should make it happy. I just got done working on a data acquisition system that used Crossbow accelerometers like this, connected to a PC with an A/D card for data logging. You could wire one of these to a $20 digital multimeter, but you'd have to interpret the numbers - it wouldn't read directly in G. These sensors run about $150-$200 each though. Standard disclaimer: If you are going to add extra "stuff" to your rig, you need to make sure you are not adding snag points, making it hard to reach your handles, etc. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Why don't you just show us pictures of you getting yours?

I really need to talk to Sangiro about implementing the flashing, 36-point-font [JOKE] tag. It's not quite that bad. I think the last F5 was the one that hit parts of Oklahoma City in 1999, but I could be wrong. If I remember right, that was the same storm system (but I don't think the same tornado) that deleted the outlet mall in Stroud (between OKC and Tulsa). Also, don't say I'm _from_ Oklahoma - my parents aren't related! Right now I do _live in_ Oklahoma. Actually we like the big tornadoes. All of the debris from the destroyed buildings fills in the potholes in the roads (Football knows the city/county/state won't do it) and makes for smooth driving for a few months. I grew up in Missouri and at one job there I worked with a lot of people from California. We got into the standard "I wouldn't live in California because of the earthquakes" vs "I wouldn't live in MIssouri because of the tornadoes" argument. I think the winning statement came from the Missouri side: "Is there a horn that goes off five minutes before the earthquake gets there?" Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Is there a Spanish national parachuting association? (I have searched the Web but I can't find one immediately.) If they don't have much information in Spanish, then write some. :) If you would like to read it, there are probably many other beginning jumpers that would also find it useful. Some of the skydiving associations publish manuals online in English, like the USPA's Skydiver's Information Manual - "SIM". Get a copy of that, and translate it. Don't just run it through Google; that gives you humorous results, but usually not a correct translation. VERY IMPORTANT: Get help from some experienced skydivers and some people that speak English well. I have done a few small projects like this (one about skydiving) and I have found that if you ask someone "translate this for me" it's difficult to get help, but if you do most of the work yourself and ask them "please help me correct the errors" then more people will help you. Or, you could come to the United States and jump in Houston, Dallas, etc. :) (Yes, I know that Spanish Spanish is not exactly the same as Mexican Spanish.) You probably have already found the Spanish forum. Welcome! Buho PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

These are a little more specialized than a generic "sporting goods" store, but bike shops and gun shops may also have them. There are bike tire pumps and BB/pellet guns that use CO2 cartridges. Depending on the local laws, larger Wal-Mart stores often sell BB guns and therefore have the cartridges as well. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Disclaimers: The scale goes by the damage done and not windspeed. The scale has a slightly different definition of wind speed than is usual. The dust devil has to be coming down from a cloud to fit the official definition. Having said all that... That's not a dust devil - that's an F0-F1 tornado. Wuss. Come to Oklahoma and get your F5 rating. :) Eule PS Far more than you ever wanted to know about tornadoes. PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.