RiggerLee

We were looking at that. It is a little out of our price range. We were talking to some one at nasa about trying to buy one of theirs. They retired some recently but they can't find them. No one can figure out what happened to them. I remember when a guy had one out at Eloy durring the big Christmas boggie. He had a video adapter for it and was vedioing loads. he made a tape that year called The Utter Video with a blown up rubber glove as the mascot, you had to be there. If we could get one of those... Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Does any one know where I can find an old Cinetheodolite like they used to judge style or early RW. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Even better. Is there a pay phone at the hospital or clinic? Nice is he called back and got some one in the waiting room of the local equivalent of planned parenthood. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

To some degree the manufacturers make determinations as to what they consider to be minor and major repairs on their equipment and who the authorize to perform them. So in a since they are determining the privileges of the certificate. Just saying it's in some of their manuals and SB. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Where is my "What aad?" option? Some day I'll probable buy one. But I've gotten by with out one for what? the last 25 years. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

What I don't understand is why you would start this all over again. What did you have to gain? Other then just starting shit which is likely to create a problem, get beat up, car keyed, tires slashed, raped, murdered. Lot's of options of how this confrontation cold end and a good percentage of them are bad. I don't know what was up before. Maybe there was a legitement hard no issue for him. Example: maybe he did not realize that you are, for instance, a filthy disgusting sub human smoker. Yes, I'm allergic. That would be an example of valid deal killer and at least he was straight up about it. Second option is that he's a predator. It was a test to see if you would get up and chase after him and beg him to reconsider. This would mark you as week and vulnerable and easily controlled. A perfect victim that he could abuse. Ether way, Why go there? Steer clear and count your self lucky. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Sorry, I meant to say easier to use THEN the gun type. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

You can use a smaller soldering iron. One of the pencil always on ones works fine. You can get a special cutting head or just get a largish one and hammer and file the point flat. some thing equivalent to this... http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7583C/HOT-KNIFE-HANDLE-ONLY http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7580A/HOT-KNIFE-ELEMENT-AND-CUTTING-TIP http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7601T/REPLACEMENT-TIP-FOR-HOT-KNIFE-ELEMENT It doesn't show much info like wattage but it's one of the beefy ones with decent power and the tip gives you thermal mass. It's easier to use the the gun type. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Or you could just tell people that you'r into S&M, which is not completely untrue, considering the slightly masochistic nature of the sport. Just start waving your arms around, gushing about harnesses and how you were suspended last weekend. Take a picture of your self in the drop zones hanging harness. By the time you get to how you met these guys and did these awesome four ways all weekend and would you like to see the video? They will be running away. The subject will never come up again. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

With out seeing the rig on you it's hard to say what is happening. Generally the rigs are too wide for small girls. Try making sure that the chest strap is tight. If you pull the yoke, the part that comes over your shoulders, inwards a bit with the chest strap it may help to keep the pull of the yoke on opening on your shoulder rather then on your arms. Even under canopy you'll find your arms banging into the yoke as you reach for your toggles and fly the canopy. Saw this a lot in CRW, Canopy relative work. So if you can have your instructor shorten your main lift web so that it fits you better, helps to keep it from rising off your shoulders, and make sure your chest strap is pulled in as far as you can get it, it may be easier on your arms on opening and under canopy. But the truth is it really wont go away till you get some thing that fits you a little better. You may have to get over being so girlly. Think of it as a badge of honor. A cool conversation starter as you invite people out to the drop zone. Your attitude will change. Before you know it you'll be showing off your first good scare, braging about your ripping hook turn and growssing about the stupid barbed wire fence the farmer put up and how it ruined your swoop. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

5. McElfish. 6. Sentinel. ????? I suppose 12 out of 14 isn't bad. I do find it a little disturbing that I might have to classify my self as an old guy. I don't think of my self as that old. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I have a 7TU. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

This is not the most high tech way to do this but It's how I build line sets. Keep in mind that I'm not really set up properly any more I'm just improvising on the floor of the rocket hanger. I set up two cam pull cargo straps across the floor using some old line to reach the wall and a heavy bench. I tie the line to one hook. Mark the points on one end for the insert. Clamp the long tape to it with hemostats. Pull the line around the other hook with a little extra length. And I just loop it back and forth laying out that set of lines, A's, B's, C's... G's what ever. Tie it back off to the first hook. I have a set of matching Bungees, fairly stiff. I take the loops of line off the hook and holding them tightly pull one bungee at a time and hook a loop. So now they are all under tension. Go and mark all of the lines at the first end. By then the lines are fairly set. Go and mark the second end based on the tape clipped to the lines. Unhook the bungees and cut. Chain link and label. I can hammer out a set for one of our big canopies including finger trapping in under a day and that's 1,300 yards of line to cut. This shit isn't magical. With just a little care you can do it your self. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

You don't think those skydivers and packers are actually reporting taxes do you? Cash and carry! Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

One issue I've seen in stiffeners with a grommet through them is the size of hole punched. If you use a normal... 0A? punch to make the hole it will be too small. If you see the plastic trying to pucker out after you set the grommet that implies that the hole is too small. You have a lot of stress built up in the plastic around the grommet. The grommet flares outwards and expands when you set it. Ok for fabric but a problem with hard plastics. You see the same thing with Polycarbonate or things like that. Setting rivets through it, like making a slide up door. You have to drill the hole in the plastic larger so the rivet will not stress it. So use a slightly larger punch. Like... 1A? I'm too lazy to go down stares and check the numbers on my punches. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

And it was ugly. Would you want to be seen landing that canopy? Did you see the colors in that thing. Must have used every scrap of rejected fabric in the shop. All of it left over from the late 80's and 90's. Even the risers were hideous things. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

And he's off and running! Quag, you're inspiring a whole new generation of designers. I think this makes two. Before you know it there will be a whole new crop of manufactures cropping up at every drop zone. You'll be buying your canopy from the local rigger. I can't wait till they start selling kits like they used to. Build your own canopy! It will be just like kit planes or ultra lights. You can buy the plans and print them out. Or for a bit more you can get the peaces pre cut in the mail. Just sew it together. Who has spare time on their laser cutter? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Based on your weight I'd start with some thing in the 170 range or even a bit bigger. You can always load it up. Put on a weight vest. Depending on how you're cutting your panels, it probable wont be that much more fabric. It doesn't scale directly. I think you'll find a more direct correlation between cord length and fabric then surface area. The rest is wastage any way. And cord changes with the sqr root of surface so not that much more fabric for a bigger canopy. There will be much bigger "steps" in fabric with changes in lay out at some point with size but I don't think you're in that range. And bigger canopies are easier to build. Errors stay constant with size. So for a bigger canopy they become negligible or at least much smaller. with smaller canopies every thing gets more critical. And there seems to be a disproportionate change related to canopy volume. How much air is actually in the canopy. I seem to recall that Aerodyne used that in sizing of their CRW canopies at one time. Bottom line, a small canopy, you don't have to squeeze a lot of air out of it to collapse it. Not saying that any thing looks bad in your design. Just saying small is less forgiving. Look around for an old rig out of some ones closet. or build your self a belly rig and jump any size canopy you want. Built my self a new one last week and jumped it on Tuesday. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I agree. Don't know how big you are but if I was going to spend the time building one I'd play with some thing bigger. Regardless of what you normally jump, square footage above your head is your friend. I'm assuming you've read ^^ guys thread, My Little Project. It's getting really long but he's worked his way through many hurdles in terms of construction fabrics sewing patterns etc. Or hell just e-mail him. He's a nice guy. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I never understood why women were so skittish till I met a couple at the drop zone. They had a history of bad/abusive relationships. Attracted them like magnets. Oddly it was mutual. They seemed to be drawn to the one person in the room that would fuck them up worse then any other and these guys could smell them from a distance like a shark smells blood. My point is that I never would have conceived of how many assholes are out there or how bad relationships could become. Until I watched this I never knew how predatory some guys can be. It was to the point that it freaked me out. Lessening to these guys actually frightened me a couple of times. What do you do when you meet some one who's a potential rapist? But if these people taken from a random group represent a certain percentage of the population that should be a fixed number. The concentration should be higher in any hunting ground. A singles bar could in theory be a dangerous place. Is the internet any different? It's essentially a bigger singles bar. And if it's dangerous because it's anonymous then that actually makes it some what safer as well. You can't get ruffyed through a terminal. You have the ability to spend time getting to know them. A lot more time then you would have before making a decision in a bar. A serial killer might be able to hold a straight face for an hour till the bar closes. But you could spend weeks feeling him out on line. A lot more opportunity to get a read on him with your radar. And when you do meet it can be in public and it's not like you have to be alone. It just seems to me that in theory the internet, if used properly, could be safer for women then hanging out in bars and walking across a dark parking lot to their car. The original question was more about cultural changes, politeness, curtisy on the internet. I think it relates more to changes in the value system of our overall society. At first I thought it might be in relation to population density. Big city, if your rude to some one you'll never have to see them again. The internet being the biggest city. But that's a cop out. Their are societies that have gone the other way. Japan as an example, has always had high population density and was an extremely polite culture. I think that's broken down a bit recently. It may be that they have hit their threshold but I think it's more about contamination to their society. I think these changes are more related to a sort of degeneration in the moral societal structure. If you look at changes in our entertainment you kind of see a reflection of what is tolerated. Once apon a time Leave it to Beaver was pushing the envelope. Now they are not even faking the sex in main stream movies. They brag about it. And they digitally merge under age actors heads onto porn stars fucking on screen. Computer generated kiddy porn on the big screen in main stay movies. Had to look it up on Wikipedia to see how they got away with it. When I saw that on net flix I was shocked, No way can that be legal. I think behavior on the internet is just a reflection of this It's a reflection of our society. It might be one of those trick mirrors that magnify the image but every thing you see is really there. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

My best translation: He's working on his data set of existing airfoil shapes. As I recall he was photographing the end ribs of canopies or tracing them. This gave him kind of a wiggle out line. There are a lot of ways to draw a curve. One is to set some points and generate the curves between them. The points are his "knots" and the "splines" are his curves. There are lots of preramiters you can set. Like the line goes straight through the points so the slope is the same on both sides. And how the curve changes between the points. Add infinitum. He's basically trying to draw smooth curves through the lines he traced off other canopies or photographed. There are even ways to automate this to let a computer optimize the shape for you to get as close to all the points as possible. You can if you wish make this as complicated as you like. His computer is having a hernia trying to crunch the numbers for him. The guy clearly has a computer fetish and worships at the alter of Intel. Not judging. It's not my place to criticize his religious views or his sexual deveancies. As some one who was actually really into math, differential geomitry, and curves back when I was in school, I got two words for him. Ship Curve. Look it up. Hell, make your own. Find some thing springy and use it to smooth out the edge of your pattern. Done. Now take it and go start cutting fabric. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Returning to your original question. First off I must point out that I don't have direct experience with any of this never having been a part of the dating thing but standing on the out side of all of this I've had the opportunity to do a lot of people watching. I'm not sure that this is really a bad thing. Our lives can be really small. I mean that in the since of the number of people we know. In the grand scheme of things, how many people do you really know or interact with? The people that you work with? As the most extreme example, think about a drop zone. The old joke, you don't lose your girl friend, you lose your turn. It's like you're trapped inside this microcosm with just a couple hundred people in your whole universe. If you set around long enough watching "As the Prop Turns" you see all the same characters pairing up, breaking up, trading partners, and starting all over again. And they are all trapper there together. There is no escape. I remember one indecent. I was on the floor talking to one of the other packers, She had been around the dropzone for years, and she was freaking out. There were no less then eight of her former lovers there packing on the floor with her at the same time, and I think a ninth was up on a load. It was a boogie or event or some thing and every one showed up on the same day. Half of these guys didn't even live in the same state any more. It's not really healthy. I don't know what the word would be, insestues, In breading... It's like why dating close colleagues at work is a bad idea. You're just too close. If you have a nasty breakup it's hard to have to show up, smile, and work with that person every day. So I think the fundamental idea of internet dating is potentially a good idea. Expanding the boundaries of your world is not a bad thing. But it's up to you how you use it. You are responsible for how you treat people, whether it's in person or on line. Your behavior is all on you and is a product of your fundamental character. If as a society the nature of that character has changed over the years I think it says more about our society then it does about the medium. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Is it just me or does any one else think he looks like a Kirbal with that helmet on? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Returning to some of the comments by the original poster. Your wanting some thing that will come in slow and land softly. I've seen this before back in the 90's when we were making the transition from the older generation of F111 canopies to ZP canopies. An older jumper wanted me to take in his break lines so that his PD nine cell, f111 canopy, would come in slower and he thought land better. What had actually happened was the break lines had shrunk and he was already approaching in partial breaks. The canopy was also aging, but that's another matter. His response was to come in in a bit more breaks to reduce the decent rate but his landing kept getting worse. It took a lot to convince him to let me let out his break lines so the canopy would be in full flight so that he could have enough flare authority to land. It's a mind set from that generation when people actually learned to shoot accuracy and land in the peas. Who even thinks about landing in the peas any more? It's also a product of the generation of canopy at the time. The old school answer was to land better go larger. Today the quality of your landing is more about the amount of flare authority you have. And the landing can be much nicer and more consistent. It's a fundamental paragon shift in both technology and mind set. Having said that you are not going to get acceptable landings out of any modern canopy, short of a student canopy, till you understand this. So my advice to you is don't get hung up on whether it's a seven cell or a nine cell. That's not what you should be focused on. There are advantages to them but they are not necessarily the ones you are thinking of. You're actually being given some fairly good advice but ultimately the quality of your landings will depend on your ability to learn to convert forward speed into lift to kill your decent rate. That's it. Period dot. You can land any canopy of any size if you can learn to zero out it's decent rate. You're going to learn that the speed of the canopy is your friend in this. On some canopies, in order to have enough margin for error, many people like to have extra speed to make their flare envelope more forgiving. This is where front risering and turning on landing come in. You probable wont be in that range. I think you would ultimately be happy with almost any of the canopies suggested to you. Personally I would recommend some thing like a Pulse. It's relatively flat trimmed and packs up smaller then some other canopies. I think you would prefer it's flatter approach over other canopies that are more ground hungry. As to the size, it's not a question of how well you want to land, it's a question of how fast you are will to have to run. People land really small canopies just fine but they run or slide really fast on landing. I think you would prefer some thing fairly large in the 190 to 210 range in any canopy you choose. And that meshes well with the performance range of the Pulse. I'd also encourage you to bite the bullet and buy a new modern reserve. One of the new low bulk ones. It will let you jump a larger reserve canopy and some day you may appreciate that. Read that, not die. Not dyeing is good. And when you land off you don't want a canopy that needs a runway. And rigger like to pack them. They will smile when you walk through the door of the loft. I hate to tell people to spend a lot of money but just go and do it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

To clarify the above comment, I don't think you find it difficult to get some of these packages "going" but getting from them any thing resimbaling the truth out of them is another story. Models are famous for lying to you. They can produce tremendous amounts of fabulous looking data that has nothing to do with reality. The "Expert" part is being able to get them to give you real answers. Alot of that has to do with learning to understand where they break down. And models do break down. You've got this idea in your head that CFD is some magical thing which can give you answers from on high like holly writ. It's not like that. Their are points where it "breaks", shit it just can't handle. And it will feed you garbage on a silver platter. For example, the nose. That big open hole with shit washing in and out of it . Total fucking disaster. any normal CFD program will shit it self trying to deal with that. Their was a study where they tried to simulate it. Really hard problem. Obviously no one from the industry. They chose a very pore airfoil and had the nose cut all wrong and only go some thing vaguely decent when they almost recreated the angle on a canopy. interesting study. Really showed the importance of the nose and nose cut in terms of the in and out flow in relation to the stagnation point. But it was a bear. Absolute monster of a problem. And that was in 2D. So how do you actually think you're going to do this? One way, a classic way, would be to do a two dimensional section and then expand that into the finite wing. That's how a lot of planes are done. Thing is a lot of the techniques for doing this break down at low aspect ratios. Any thing below about an AR of 5 is low. You're talking 2. And keep in mind that you can't even do the wing section, see above study and how far it diverged from the original wing section. So what do you think that you're going to do? A big huge panel problem in a big 3D space? Very complicated and remember the nose. It shit it self trying to do it in 2D. Doing some problems in CFD are not hard but trying to get truth out of it on some thing like this is hard, as in fucking impossible. And how do you know if any thing it's saying is real? Well, you have to validate it, ie. build a canopy. Smartest thing would be to take an existing canopy. Di-sect it, take it apart, it's the only way you'll really be able to measure it, and then try to model it. Can you actually get your model to recreate the "real" data? And if it can't do that then your model is bull shit. And where does that real data come from. People have rented time in BIG wind tunnels where they could kite full size canopies. That's "real" data that you might be able to try to match your model against. And I think you'll find that you're mashing things around so much that you might as well abandon the CFD and just do curve fitting to the real data that you have any way. My take, learn to build a canopy. Get a little data recorder and get some real world data from it. Tweak it and jump again. Repeat. Actual real data. Let's say you spend a year trying to make your CFD work. Well you've had to do the other to validate it any ways. In the mean time you could have spent a year building canopies. That's a dozen canopies maybe two dozen if you were really set up and on the ball. And you would have real world data from all of them over a spread of trims for each of your models. And it's real. Real data not made up bull shit and you've learned to build a canopy which is the other half of it. But that's just my take. My recommendation. Get a data recorder. Start recording data on a base canopy. Start tweaking the trim on that canopy to see how it changes and works. Do this for a couple of canopies. Then try drawing your own rib. Build the canopy and run it over the same spread of trims as the others you have played with. See how they compare. Start building up a library of real flight data for all of these designs. It will give you a good base of real data as you incrementally create your own. And you learn to sew on things. And you get to jump and play with them. Doesn't that sound better then jerking off in front of a computer screen. If you really want to do that then you should at least watch porn and not a CFD program trying to crunch numbers. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com