Jeff.Donohue

Awww, give Justin a break, he's not used to the whole SI/metric system. Hell, he was only a mere 3.729 furlongs short of Tony.

"...faster than 120mph..." Waaaaaait.... I wasn't there! The joke: I end up doing more than 120mph every time I try to backfly... Great job, guys. Sorry I missed it.

501(c)(7) status might not be available if your tandem work is too significant of a portion of your revenue. See http://www.irs.gov/charities/nonprofits/article/0,,id=96189,00.html "A section 501(c)(7) organization may receive up to 35 percent of its gross receipts, including investment income, from sources outside of its membership without losing its tax-exempt status. No more than 15 percent of this amount may be derived from the use of the club's facilities or services by the general public or from other activities not furthering social or recreational purposes for members." You can read more about it here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf You'd be filing a Form 1024, most likely, and you'd need a separate EIN (Tax ID number) for the club, which you may or may not have. It will take quite a while (6 to 9 months, last time I checked) before you obtain the formal designation. I second BruceT's recommendation that you talk to your University first...

Now we just need to add a door and we have a perfectly safe jump plane, right?

I think what he's saying is that the skyhook accelerates the deployment of the reserve, whereas if you pull your reserve handle, it will deploy the reserve normally (typically taking longer to deploy than if it had a skyhook on it, all things being equal). Having used my skyhook three times, I can tell you that a skyhook RSL is damn fast. (Thank you, Mr. Booth.) The RSL, on the other hand, should deploy the reserve no faster than if you had pulled the reserve handle at the same time. The difference with an RSL, if i understand the theory correctly, is that the reserve pin gets pulled out faster if an RSL pulls the pin since you have to move your hand(s) from right side to left... Edited to add: to Councilman's point, it doesn't do much for you in a total.

Now just fill that bad boy up with Helium and see what flight times we can get... If my math is right, all we would need (at sea level and assuming temperatures and pressures are the same) are about 15kg of helium to lift a 90kg object... Of course 15kg of helium with the same pressure as the ambient air is gonna make for a pretty puffy suit...

"I have never heard of the swage failing on a reserve ripcord." IIRC, there was a fatality about seven years ago at my dropzone as a result of precisely that.

"O.K. now you'll be coming out here and you'll be doing a stable fall face down frog modified. Now out here comes the static line 'cause it goes like from this to here see, and then the pilot chute will open and it'll pull the bridle out and then the main canopy will be open see, 'cause they're all connected, and then you'll be down here and you'll be looking up here at the WDI indicator and you'll also going to check for Mae West and if that's not there then you need to check here for 4 panels and a hole. Then when you come down you're gonna find the piece and you're gonna land over here and you're going to get in this position - except you don't wanna do that - because that means you in trouble, so what you want to do is you wanna get right here and then you're gonna come round here and you're gonna fold up and you're gonna do a toggle and jettison and always watch the horizon O.K?.." (If this makes no sense to you, move on... Those in the know will get it.)

No, that's Atmo. (I keeeeeed, I keeeeeeed.)

I haven't flown an Intro, but I've flown in flocks with people who have. I'm amazed at the range the suit has (when you consider the wing isn't attached at the torso). Really neat design.

Oh, man, this calls for at least three camera angles (you, me, Rick...). For the record, I don't think Lurch will crater. I think he will somehow become the first case of human spontaneous combustion while in flight.

Personally, I am a fan of good skydiving karma. A lot of times, when you have a cutaway, you have a horde of people looking for it. Only one of them is going to find it, but it might be luck. One solution is to just throw a party with the money you saved. Everyone has the opportunity to benefit, and hopefully all have fun. Just a thought.

My POV video from Flock U from April to early June 2008 is now up. Comments/criticism welcome. http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv=dI_luwlNXt0 Better video/audio quality at: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=7020

Instead, it just kept thwacking Rick...

Hi Phil. Yeah, I always field stow (and I have a Vector3, which has the true lock toggle set up which in theory should keep the stow secure). The problem on this jump was that I think I was in a hurry -- on the jump before -- to get out of the field and get packed up (last jump of the day, running late to get home, etc.), and I don't think I stowed them quite as well as I normally do. We can see the result of being careless even once... Oh, and just clear up some confusion: what I screamed out during the flight had nothing to do with the packer (Christian was down in VA when this got packed). Nor does it have anything to do with any sort of religious conviction or faith. That's about all I'll say about it.

I'm the OP. Going through the questions that have been asked both here and on skydivingmovies.com: Background Let me start by saying that if I was in elementary school, I would be writing, "I will not be a dumbass" 100 times on the blackboard. I consider myself very lucky to have not killed myself by cutting it away the way I did. This video was filmed in November 2007. The video was posted to my YouTube account, http://youtube.com/user/huxley71 in January 2008. I had not planned on posting it to skydivingmovies because, quite frankly, I think I committed every mistake known to man (and some novel ones that I am considering filing a patent for). I was encouraged to post it by a fellow jumper on the odd chance that it might help someone else. Me At the time, I had very few wingsuit jumps (as was noted, you can clearly see that I don't fly forward very far/fast and I drop like a stone out of the plane). I had about 40 RW camera jumps at the time. I have had a few more wingsuit jumps since then. However, I was and am a rank newbie, although every so often I like to think I am progressing. As I will explain below, the mal had very little to do with it being a wingsuit dive and a lot to do with it being a camera dive. While I think my statement that "wingsuits are not just another skydive" is true, I think it would have been more relevant to say, "camera jumps are not..." Wingsuiting was the newer of the two things to me, though. As an aside, I got a video camera to take clips of friends and because I wanted to share our sport with friends and family. I don't consider myself a videographer (even an aspiring one), but rather "someone who jumps with a video camera, too". I will leave wingsuit video to guys who do a great job at it, like Scotty Burns or Matt Hoover. The helmet had a cutaway mechanism (the picture at the beginning of the video is not of my helmet but of a "stock model" FFX that did not have a cutaway). I did not carry a hook knife at the time. I do now. What Worked I was flying (badly) a TonySuit Mach 1. I was able to unzip my arms normally; I did not need to cut my wings away. The suit created no issues for me, other than a dry cleaning bill after the jump. What Didn't In retrospect and after thinking about it for several months, I think that the malfunction had far less to do with it being a wingsuit jump and a lot more to do with my inexperience and dumb decisions relating to flying a camera helmet (putting a ring sight on there in the first place when I really didn't care so much about the video, looking up to watch the pretty canopy colors go "whoosh" over my head, etc.) combined with sloppy toggle stowing. Ironically, I got extensive training (thanks, Flock U) on how to fly a wingsuit (even though you wouldn't know it from my poor flight performance in that video -- I've got better with experience). On the other hand, I got no training (didn't seek it out) on how to fly a camera helmet. Dumb. For what it's worth, I normally stow my excess exactly as recommended by UPT, however it only takes one moment of being sloppy to create a problem like this. To answer one question: the steering line did indeed pull my head back while I was struggling with it. How I Dealt With It In short: wrongly. My procedures for dealing with an entanglement were utterly out of sequence. I should have cut the helmet away (and, if necessary because it was still entangled, removed the RSL hook and cutaway the main). Why didn't I? Probably panic. Fear makes people do dumb stuff. The "duress" I referenced had to do with personal life stuff. The skydive (malfunction and all) was actually one of the better things that happened to me that day. However, it is clear to me in retrospect that my stressed out mindset (plus the fear I mentioned before) had a bad influence on my responses. I had a Skyhook RSL. I am not going to wade into that controversy, but I had one. The canopy was a Sabre2 210. It was wingloaded at roughly 0.9. Even "big floaty canopies" can spin up.

1. Purple Mike 2. Lurch 3. DSE 4. QuietStorm ( a.k.a Space Cadet & LT Adderall ) 5. Jeff Donohue (a.k.a, the retarded skwrl)

And miss out on all the fun? I think not!

Amen to that. I fly a Sabre2 210 (a huge canopy, weighted at around 0.9) and I've had two chops due to line twists. The first was at about 60 wingsuit jumps, the second was at 70. I still consider linetwists a pretty common occurrance (usually, I'm saying out loud, to nobody in particular, "Awww, line twists again?!?!"). If it happens on my 210, it can happen on whatever the original poster is loading at 1.5.

This is a state by state thing, but generally clubs are not-for-profit corporations (which are different than a charity or a tax-deductible non-profit). Generally, the members are treated as "shareholders", although the by-laws my include provisions that change their treatment (and there may be different classes of members, etc.). Anyway, on liquidation, the debts of the club must be paid first, and anything that is left over would be distributed to the members (usually, that's pretty much nothing). If the corporation was run properly, the liability of the corporation doesn't pass on to the members (in the same way that if you run a for profit corporation properly, the individual shareholders aren't liable for the debts of the corporation - with a few exceptions).

I hate to ruin Lurch's great unveiling, but I managed to get a still shot of the new suit in flight when he wasn't looking. (Pic attached.)

~45 to 50 mph. (with a wingsuit )

Per the 2008 SIM, "Minimum container opening altitudes above the ground for skydivers are: (i) Tandem jumps--4,500 feet AGL; (ii) All students and A-license holders--3,000 feet AGL; (iii) B-license holders--2,500 feet AGL; and (iv) C- and D-license holders--2,000 feet AGL." Your altimeter has no idea what your "container opening" altitude is. It is going to record as your "deployment altitude" the point at which your fall rate decreases below a specified threshold (my understanding is it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but I haven't looked into this). Here's a simple example: you exit the aircraft, do an otherwise unremarkable skydive, throw your PC, your container opens (meeting the SIM requirement) but you have a bag lock. At that point, your altimeter will still be in free fall mode because your fall rate is still high. Another example could be a long snivel (but depending on your altimater, body position, etc., the snivel might slow you down enough to show as "under canopy"). Conversely, I know other wingsuiters who can get their fall rate down to the point where their Neptune registers them as "under canopy" for most of free fall. Having written all this, [insert the usual disclaimer about talking to an instructor here].

Awesome.

Oh man, now I'm really regretting missing this: "stupid human tricks" are my specialties.