Eule

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Everything posted by Eule

  1. The site has been updated. There are 136 dropzones listed. For this update, I added Witbank and Delmarva. I also converted the GPX file that McDragon posted and picked up a few more UK dropzones. Keep those cards and letters coming! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  2. So, something like $500,000 without the glass, huh? :) Maybe the "jump" trim level gives you steam gauges. Or maybe they figure the ones that are used for jumping will get sold to people who bring their plane around to many different DZs/boogies, where the fancy GPS would come in handy. Quest also seems to be a relatively new company. I can't quickly tell for sure, but it appears that the Kodiak isn't based on some other aircraft. This could be good (no compromises in design) or not so good ($ole $ource for airframe part$). Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  3. Doesn't seem to work under Firefox 1.5.0.9 on Linux. I get the controls (play, stop, etc) at the bottom but no video, even after waiting a few minutes. With a little fooling around I was able to download Trailer_High.flv but I don't appear to have the right codec to play it. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  4. You are totally alone. Nobody else has dreams like that. You should seek psychiatric help. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  5. Agreed - those are good interviews. Skydive Radio shows 16, 17, and 35. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  6. Hmm... many possibilities for the classic "X and Y" formula... In general: Latitude & Longitude - based on your nick Peanut Butter & Jelly Apples & Oranges Pump & Dump - a common stock-market scam Slice & Dice Ken & Barbie These may not make much sense outside of the US: Jen & Barry - "Ben & Jerry's" is a brand of ice cream Mork & MIndy - early 1980s TV show with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber Mechanical things: Bored & Stroked - Not nearly as naughty as it might sound (ask a motorhead) Drilled & Tapped - Make a hole, then put threads in it Various combinations of some of the four basic forces: Lift & Thrust Lift & Drag Thrust & Drag Booze and other intoxicants: Gin & Tonic Rum & Coke Wake & Bake Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  7. What I have seen a couple of experienced jumpers do is to wear sunglasses for the ride up (C-182), then take them off shortly before jump run. They put on clear goggles to jump with. I think the idea is that they don't have to deal with the light and glare for most of the ride up, but they take the shades off soon enough that their eyes can adjust before they get out. It's a small DZ so sometimes they just stash the sunglasses in the plane somewhere and retrieve them when the plane lands. Otherwise I _think_ they stow them inside their jumpsuit somewhere for the jump. Personally, I have to wear prescription glasses, so I just use some clear Flex-Z over-the-glasses goggles. (To give you an idea, i'm using your basic $10 desktop PC keyboard right now. Without my glasses, my eyeball has to be no further than 6 inches (15 cm) from the keys to be able to read the letters clearly.) Sometimes it's a little fiddly to get my glasses, goggles, and Protec to agree about where they need to be on my head, but it's not that big a deal. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  8. Ninja Elf is pissed because he has a 7 cell round that doesn't swoop worth shit. At least it has slider handles. I hope that slider doesn't get tangled in his Ninja Elf Hat when he gets it down. I don't think he's mad about his equipment. That face kinda looks like a reaction to a nut-under to me... Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  9. Even if DZs reopened the following weekend, the damage to the economy was significant. I think that's true, but the original statement only seemed to me to be talking about the direct effect of the attacks on aviation: Emphasis mine. Again, I don't disagree that 9/11 affected many parts of the economy; I just don't like it when 9/11 is given as a reason without explanation. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  10. Probably a default in the software (Gossamer Forum) that hasn't been changed. One guess is that it might default to underlines because otherwise you get questions from users as to why they can't access any threads - if they don't see the underlines they might not just try clicking on the thread titles. I started to work on the matrix of active tab vs. what happens when you mouse over the inactive tabs and I think I've figured it out. If it's a tab you've visited before, the text gets darker but is not underlined when you mouse over. If it's a tab you haven't visited before, the text gets very slightly lighter and is underlined when you mouse over. This appears to be deliberate; part of the CSS for the forum page includes a.menu:link,a.menu:visited { font-size:11; color:#330066; text-decoration:none; font-face:'Verdana,Helvetica,Arial'; font-weight:400; } a.menu:hover { font-size:11; color:#800080; text-decoration:underline; font-face:'Verdana,Helvetica,Arial'; font-weight:400; } Hey, you're in Oklahoma; it's not like there's anything else to do. :) (Actually, I think I recall you saying that you were moving to Mississippi or Louisana or somewhere like that.) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  11. Overall I agree with what you wrote. I do have a couple of comments... Nit: PDF would be more portable and less likely to harbor a virus. 9/11 gave me the clap! I think 9/11 gets blamed for lots more things than it should. My understanding is that jumping was shut down for one weekend in September 2001. Maybe what you are talking about is either airport access issues at smaller airports, or the fact that taking a commercial flight to a boogie or far-away dropzone became much more of a PITA than it was before. I think both of those are possibilities, but just throwing out 9/11 as a justification without further explanation isn't a good idea. I think this is a good idea but might be a "hard sell" to many DZOs. I'm not a DZO, nor do I work at a DZ, but I get the idea that many DZOs treat skydiving as a zero sum game. They don't want to spend money on advertising or other promotion that won't bring jumpers to _their_ dropzone. Ford doesn't pay to run ads for Chevrolets, either, but Ford and GM and all the rest _do_ work together to promote building roads and passing laws that will favor motorists. If you want to know where the really good restaurants are in France, ask... a tire company? Yep - they figure that people might drive more to get a good meal, and hey, that means they can sell more tires! From what I see, this kind of thinking is not common among DZOs. You've probably seen it, but a couple of months ago, this thread had some relevant data. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  12. You could just bolt pneumatic-tired casters onto the bottom of a regular creeper, but I don't know how well that would work, since those casters tend to be a lot taller than hard-tired casters. Moving forward and backwards would be OK, but I think the creeper would tend to tip on side-to-side movements. A better way would probably be to fabricate some brackets in kind of a "Z" shape. The bottom part of the Z bolts on to the bottom of the creeper board, and the caster bolts on to the top part of the Z. The board would sit close to the ground, between the casters. This would be more stable, but would also limit how close two creepers could get side-to-side, which might be a problem for dirt diving some jumps. Further afield, make the creeper board a little longer in the back part (between your legs), then bolt a weedwhacker/chainsaw engine to it or maybe an electric motor. Put a fan on the motor shaft and maybe a bicycle innertube around the bottom outside edge of the board - a hovercreeper! Or, use regular creepers, but take the casters off of the bottom. Build a plywood platform with a grid of closely-spaced small holes. Put a big blower under the platform and you've made a giant air-hockey table. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  13. Doing a search on "creeper design" found this thread with some ideas. I agree with that thread that it's worth spending a few bucks on the casters. Besides the places mentioned in that thread, Grainger and McMaster-Carr have a decent selection of casters. Grainger has branch offices in larger cities, but sometimes they don't want to do retail. The university may have an account with them, and many large industrial and warehouse facilities will have accounts, if you know anyone that works at a place like that. McMaster doesn't have branches but will happily take a credit card and ship it to you. As far as bolting the casters on, the simplest way would probably be to use carriage bolts. If you do this, you might want to work it so the heads of the bolts are flush with the board - this way you're less likely to feel the bolt heads when you lay on it. The easy way to do this is to crank on the nuts until the bolt heads sink into the plywood a little. The right way is to "spot face" the wood with a spade drill bit that is the same diameter or slightly bigger than the bolt head, then drill the clearance hole for the shank of the bolt. You can use the same approach to use normal bolts, but you have to go a little wider (for socket clearance) and a little deeper (the bolt heads are a little thicker). With either kind of bolt, use nuts with a nylon locking ring, or plain nuts with Loctite (a little drop will do ya), or even a nut and a jam nut. This will keep the nuts from backing off. Another way is to buy some T-nuts - these are nuts with a spiked flange. You drill a hole in the wood, then hammer the T-nut into the wood from the top of the creeper. Then put the caster on the bottom and install a regular bolt up through the caster into the T-nut. You do need to choose your bolt length carefully so you end up with enough threads engaged - too short and the bolts will tend to tear out of the nuts; too long and the bolt ends will poke you when you're lying on the creeper. If the bolt is just a little too long, an extra washer or two under the head will probably do it. If it's a lot too long, thread a nut onto the bolt, cut the bolt to length with a hacksaw, and then thread that nut off of the cut bolt - the nut will help fix any threads that got boogered up when cutting. You might use the same nut for this on all your bolts, then throw that nut away when you're done, as the nut threads are liable to be a little boogered up by then. The "correct" tool for this is a thread cutting die. For this approach, use Loctite on the threads to keep the bolts from backing out. Don't use wood screws or lag screws to attach the casters. You'll strip out half of the holes when you try to screw them in and the ones that you don't strip out will pull out after a short time. For padding, a couple of types of foam were mentioned in that thread, and you can find more at your local craft store. If you use foam, cover it in something... it tends to tear, and some kinds will oxidize and start to crumble after a few years. For covering, you can get vinyl, fake leather, Naugahyde (do you have any idea how many Naugas they have to kill to make that stuff?!), or similar at a local fabric shop. Use staples (from an industrial staple gun - not your office stapler) or large-headed tacks to hold the material to the bottom of the board. If you don't want to do padding, sand everything really well. Paint it if you want. Paint or no, do a few coats of polyurethane varnish - this will make it smooth and help with the splinters. If the creeper will get stored by leaning it against the wall, you might want to put some rubber bumper "feet" on one of the edges. This will keep it from sliding on a slick floor when propped up against the wall, and will help keep the covering from wearing out on any kind of floor. One of the photos in the above thread shows a creeper with handles cut into the wood. That's convenient but it might be a minor PITA to get the covering on if you use padding and covering. Another way would be to get some nylon webbing from your friendly local rigger and make a soft handle. Clamp the end of the webbing between two blocks of wood and drill a hole through the wood and the webbing. Then bolt the webbing ends to the wood with a bolt, fender washer, and locking nut. If this is for the University skydiving club, you might be able to commandeer some University resources to help make the creepers. You'll probably have to buy the parts yourself, but the engineering and/or theatre departments will probably have a workshop with the needed tools that you can use. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  14. This glossary may help with the terms. There are at least two books specifically aimed at newbies: Parachuting and Jump! and there may be more. If there is more than one dropzone reasonably close by, it might be useful to spend an afternoon at each one just checking it out. You don't have to jump... just hang out and watch and ask a few questions. Different dropzones have different styles/feels/"vibes" and you may find that you like one more than another. Welcome! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  15. Let's see... the airplane got stuck in the mud at the end of a closed runway.* Sounds like a normal Texas driver to me. :) Eule * Yes, I looked it up, and even though the paved runway is closed, there is a working grass runway. PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  16. The site has been updated. There are 131 dropzones listed. For those of you just tuning in, I am collecting all of the files posted in this thread and putting them online at the above site. At that site, you can also download one file that contains all of the dropzones that have been posted so far. For this update, I added all the files that have been posted here since last time, and corrected the indexing of Skydive Burnaby in the file of all dropzones. It was on the right place in the map and I had already fixed it in the HTML listing, but I forgot to put it in the right province in the file of all dropzones. Keep those cards and letters coming! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  17. They're the crazy ones. If they screw up, all the pointy rocks are only a few feet away... if we screw up, we usually have at least a couple of thousand feet to fix it. :) Welcome! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  18. I live in scenic Tulsa, Oklahoma and I also jump at Cushing. Maybe I'll see you around later this spring. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  19. I think mnealtx is on the right track. Statements like "Leading skydiving experts have confirmed that it would be possible to jump undetected out of the cockpit window of the 757 moments before it crashed into the Pentagon. One expert even attempted to provide us with a digital photograph proving it could be done, but the ECHELON system destroyed the photograph." are probably being written as we speak. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  20. Andy Rooney didn't say it. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  21. My total tunnel time to date has been 30 minutes in L-1/AAC and 30 minutes at SV Arizona, in that order. I am by no means a tunnel expert but I would tend to agree with the above. I do think, though, that once you're reasonably good at moving horizontally and stopping - so you don't fly out of the air column - the L-1 design is a lot better, just because it's _outside_. If you're flying, the scenery is better, and if you're watching, it's both easier to see and more impressive. If somebody is showing off their mad tunnel skillz in SVAZ by flying up and licking the fans, the watchers have to stoop down and look way up through the glass, past the glare of the lights, to see them. At L-1 you can either look up, if you're on the "deck", or look straight across, if you're sitting in the bleachers on the roof. From a construction point of view, I suspect that an L-1 might be slightly easier to build. The motor and fan are underground; your structure doesn't have to support four 300+ hp motors on the second or third floor. Right now, though, SkyVenture does seem to be ahead of L-1; there's something like half a dozen SV tunnels operating, compared to one L-1. Standard disclaimers apply; I don't get money or other considerations from any of the companies mentioned. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  22. There were some threads on this in spring 2005 and summer 2006. ... ah... *gasp*... ... Opinions vary. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  23. The attached image is from Chapter 11 of the FAA's Advisory Circular AC65-9A. It shows that, on the ground, there is a "hazard area" in a 25 foot (about 8 m) radius in front of the intake. This area doesn't change size from idle to takeoff power settings. The "hazard area" behind the engine does get bigger with increased power settings. I extracted the image from page 5 of the PDF that might be available at AC65-9A chapter 11. That link may not work - IMHO this is because the FAA's Web site is poorly designed. If the link is broken, you can probably go here and drill down to it: "Current ACs By Number", then click on "Next", then click on "AC65-9A", then on "Chapter 11.pdf". Note that AC65-9A was last revised in 1976, so newer jet engines may differ. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  24. Thanks for the link. I agree that it's a good article, and there are definite parallels to skydiving, among other things. It's not protected text, but rather a series of images. It appears to be a lower-resolution copy of the "camera ready" version that would have gone to the printer. You'd have to run it through an OCR program to get plain text. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.
  25. Your "Skydive Tampa Bay.kmz" attachment was just a folder labeled "Skydive Tampa Bay" - it didn't have any placemarks in it. You might try it again. The three attachments that blueskypol posted worked OK. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.