SkymonkeyONE

"look right, my right elbow is in the way, look over right elbow, raise left elbow"

Mermite is what we called the containers they brought us hot chow in when I was a kid in the army. PS: I miss you, Clint.

His real name was't even Richard Kiel, but he was pretty fucking cool. He used to fly his helicopter to Lake Wales and Z hills back in the day and hang out. Tom and Deb Dellibac used to be pretty good friends with him.

51, started jumping at 17 on 10 Jan 1981, SL instructor in 1982, 21 years active duty Army, 9000 jumps, 120 hours of freefall, FAA senior rigger, AFF/SL/T-I, PRO, S&TA, moderated these forums for 8 years, and still best friends with all the original mods. Not bad....

I did over 800 WS jumps on my old Cobalt 85 till I upsized to my Sabre2 97 in 2003.

As was just stated: so long as you are not doing a lot of hard-core acro you are just fine with "older" rigs.

That's fantastic. I still know where my original GTi is.

I live in Arizona and up until about four months ago I lived three miles away from the Casa Grande airport. It is NOT a busy airport and there is NO REASON those guys shouldn't be able to land their tandems right there on the airport. It's a Cessna/Handycam tandem operation and true, there are only a few guys working there, but they stay busy enough to feed themselves. If I were those guys and could not get permission to land on the airport the only thing I would change is I'd quit landing out near the interstate and get permission to land right behind the Airport Tavern which sits on the site of the old, original airport three miles down the road towards town. PS: CG is not that bad a place to live. Plenty of shady biker bars, restaurants, and places to shop. Definitely better than living in Eloy or Arizona City if you work at Coolidge or SDAZ! Chuck

+1

For general reference: I work at a facility where all of our students do 20 minutes prior to their first one-man AFF jump out of a tailgate aircraft. Ten minutes (two minutes per rotation) doing basic body stabilization with only a jumpsuit and another ten minutes (again, two-minute rotations) with a dummy rig on to work on bottom-end sequence (wave-off, practice touches, pull sequence). We put them in for their first rotation with the air turned down so we can manipulate them into a good body position, get them to turn left and right, then forward and back with their belly on the net. If they are squared away then I have them turn up the air and get them off the net right away. If not in the first two minute rotation, definitely very soon into the second rotation. I'm in the wind with them walking the net or flying with them every second of it. Ultimately, the sooner you get a student off the net, the better. Also: it's ALWAYS better to be coached by tunnel coach who is also an actual AFF instructor.

You forgot this one: Insists on ProPacking tandems and has packed at least one line-over.

I don't know how many times we have to have this discussion. Seriously. If you are jumping a wingsuit, you should be routing out the bottom and pinning upward as John just said. This applies to ALL containers, period. Trust me; I've been flying wingsuits since 1999 and have over 2900 flights. This not only prevents the bridle piercing problem; it also prevents pilot chute in tow problems (particularly on rigs with up-facing main pin flaps).

Just throwing this out there for people interested in Hydro Dipping: Clayton Stevens at Raeford Parachute Center has been doing this for a couple of years now. His stuff is very nice. Here is the link to his company: http://www.ctrliquidart.com/about.html Chuck

This is exactly how I was trained to do it by Mark Kruse. Excellent description of the technique. Chuck

Truth! It's ALWAYS best if you are going to take a small girl on her first release dive to have been on at least one of their previous jumps (Cat A or Cat B). In my experience that's the best way to prevent yourself from getting hosed. Chuck

Wow.....Comparing the "who sucks the most RedBull ass so they can get invited to their private event" list to whether or not a particular brand of wingsuits is "better" or not because of their lead time just summed this thread up for me. Unbelievable. PS: somebody shoot me a message when things really heat up.

You really believe it's a rigger's responsibility to tell grown-ass men to NOT jump approved/airworthy/TSO'd reserves? You really believe a rigger should NOT pack that same airworty/TSO'd reserve just because some jackass never took the time to test jump his reserve type or to at least bother to do a couple of test flares prior to landing his reserve? I've seen plenty of people stall small Ravens and Micro Ravens due to their short toggle stroke, but I'm not about to blame the reserve (or the rigger).

Good luck even getting tickets to attend at this point.

True. I'm gonna put this out there as well: If a system will not work under load, then what's the point of installing one at all? The entire point of helmet quick releases is so you CAN get rid of your helmet if you have a line snagged on it and you need to chop. Chuck

When I was working as a Guerilla Chief at the Robin Sage culmination exercise of the Special Forces Qualification Course years ago one of the first things we treated the student A-team to in our camp was the sacred meal of "Opla"........That is, of course, Alpo spelled backwards. None of them ever refused it. Chuck

Jeff, If you think ANYONE at ANY dropzone is obligated to keep track of you (or your lost gear) then you are mistaken. While it is true that a rare few US dropzones do have ground personnel who are tasked with loading planes and doing a canopy count, those places are the exception. I can promise you that the first time you chop a $3500 main and you choose to fly back to the main landing area instead of attempting to land safely as close as possible to your gear then you will understand how fiscally flawed your plan is. You MIGHT get lucky and get some others to help you go retrieve your stuff or you might not.... I didn't say anything about flying yourself to a dangerous landing spot. Land as close as SAFELY possible to your gear. Hopefully one of your buddies will follow your freebag if they see you making an effort to follow your gear. When you own $50k worth of gear like I do to make your living you will want to take care of it. Not letting a main hang in a tree for three days or sit out in the blazing sun for even one hour REALLY makes a difference. Bill Von Novak is 100% right in saying that it will never work because people will not consider such a device until after they have already lost that $3500 main. Chuck

I can't argue with that since I've done exactly the same thing with swooping canopies in the past. If you can afford it, it's a fantastic plan. Carry on. Chuck

I need a bumper sticker with that on it, Rick!

I'm not exactly sure why anyone would want to own both (in the same size) since they are both designed to do the same job. I own a lot of suits, but I run a school so I do generally have multiple suits by different manufacturers with the same general wings size (acro/phantom/student-intro sized). No reason to own multiple suits in the same size with wings that large in my opinion. YMMV.

Did you also let your USPA lapse? I don't have the answer in front of me, but it's covered in the IRM.