brettski74

While I see your point and it does make some sense, I don't think it would work on a wider scale. Larger dropzones might be able to make it work and maybe even mid-sized dropzones. The difference with FS as opposed to CP is that at smaller dropzones you don't need a load organizer to prevent someone with 50 jumps getting on a 20-way formation. There simply isn't the people or lift capacity to do such large formations. For CP, you can fly a Velocity just as easily when jumping from a Cessna 172 as you can from a Casa C-212. What is the solution for jumpers at smaller dropzones? Another problem I see is time. My home dz has a Twin Otter, a reasonable number of regulars and some very skilled canopy pilots, including one who's competed at worlds. Most of the best swoopers are also camera flyers for the DZ. They're willing to provide tips and suggestions to up and comers, but they are unlikely to have the time to play full-time canopy coach for the DZ. I also doubt it's a position that the DZ could afford to make a paid position to make it worth their while to give up the camera slot. I still don't know what the solution is, and while I could see this working at places like Perris or Eloy, I can't see it working everywhere.

There are lots of ways to look at data, howver, comparing absolute numbers for two populations is rarely considered valid unless the populations are of roughly equal size. Based on the dropzones I've been to, the number of jumpers flying 1.5+ wing loads and having 1000+ jumps is at least 5-10 times the number of sub-500 jump pilots flying similarly high wing loads. A lot of those more experienced jumpers are also working as videographers, coaches, instructors, organizers or are professional competitive skydivers, so on average, they also do more jumps and have to perform more landings. Your analysis would be more relevant if it consdiered the risks on a per-capita or per-jump basis. Comparing absolute numbers is relatively meaningless when there are comparatively few jumpers under the 500 jump mark who fly at wing loads above 1.5. There are many other aspects of wing load limits that are not considered by your position. For example, if we assume that those 40% of fatalities would never have happened at lower wing loads, then such limits could have produced a 40% reduction in canopy related fatalities which many would agree is a good result. There may be other impacts from such limits that may be difficult to quantify, such as jumpers who downsize more slowly learn more about canopy flight in their early years of jumping and subsequently reduce the number of canopy related incidents later in their career at higher jumps numbers. On the other hand, it could also lead people to false conclusions, such as safely flying high performance landings and high wing loads simply requires a certain number of jumps rather than a program of skill development over the course of those jumps, which could increase incident rates. This is all based on speculation and/or anecdotal evidence at best, so I won't try to pass this off as hard facts. I don't think there's an easy answer. Hard data from the dutch experience would be useful in this debate. I think that the data put forth so far in the recent posts of this thread is inadequate to support any decision.

I am not a rigger, but I was curious if you had some 20 year old gear to repack, and a 3 year old manual covering said gear, what is the likelihood of a typical rigger checking for new manuals before proceeding? Is it something that most riggers do for every pack job? annually? or is it just as likely for the rigger to assume that since the manual was written 17 years after the gear was manufactured it should be valid?

Possibly, however, I have a friend with an Oxygn. He can open and close it easily. I can open and close it easily. He didn't do anything special to make it that way, it's just been that way ever since he bought it. Both he and I have some difficulty opening mine and great difficulty closing it. I've replaced the visor once so far. I read the instructions when doing so and opening/closing was pretty much the same as it was after the change as it was with the factory original. There may be a knack, but it also seems clear to me that some Oxygn helmets are easier to open and close than others. Can you suggest the particular lubricant you use? I've thought of lubes but want to avoid something that's not going to stay put. Having some kind of oil or light grease spread across the visor in freefall would be annoying, but maybe I'm worrying about nothing.

Whatever, mate. You clearly have a political agenda to advance here. For some reason you think I'm politically motivated. I'm guessing this is because you're not paying attention and just like shouting at people who disagree with you. My motivation here is your debasement of science. It only takes one climatologist to publish a bunk paper on climate change and the climate change deniers will use that for the next 20 years to claim that climate science is wrong using the logical fallacy of one scientist was wrong therefore all scientists are wrong. Fortunately, you're hardly anyone of importance in scientific debate nor is this forum. As for your contention that Republicans are fiscal disasters, slice and dice the articles however you want. Both articles that you referenced include in their concluding remarks multiple statements that question the practical significance of the results. The Wolfram blog also includes two (not one) graphs which show the opposite result to the one you want and you've totally ignored them. The post 1933 graph shows greater than 2:1 Republican advantage. The graph where he includes inflation also shows a Republican advantage which visually looks to be somewhere in the 2:1 range. You've also gone on to make statements such as: 6:1 was based on hard data, but what have you got to support your 10:1 claim beside opinions and your political agenda? Good scientific research does not omit results because they don't support your hypothesis. You've referenced two articles and come to a very different conclusion than both of them without adding any new data or analysis. This is not good science. Science uses hard data to back up it's claims (eg. 10:1). Science doesn't omit data without any reason other than it conflicts with your hypothesis (eg. 2 Wolfram blog graphs). Science doesn't reference other articles and then come to a completely different conclusion without providing new analysis, data or both to support such a new conclusion. I think Bill put it the best with his cruise ship analogy. There are a myriad of factors that can influence stock market performance. While there are some intriguing results here, we are a long way from proving that the existence of a causal relationship between presidential political affiliations and US stock market performance. To suggest otherwise based on the data put forward is not good science. I'm done. Continue your shouting at people. It seems to make you happy.

I know that some others have noted that the Oxygn sizes aren't as large as some other brands, but I should also point out another potential issue with the "quiet" requirement. If you have a Pro-Track or Pro-Dytter (these exact models) it might be ok for you. I have a Solo and an Optima, which while also L&B products, have a smaller body than the older products and don't really fit snugly into the external slot for mounting an audible. Jumping without something of the right size in that slot tends to create turbulence at the side of the helmet which is quite noisy. I ended up fixing the problem by taping over the slot and cutting a pocket for my optima into the foam of the helmet, but if I'd had more time to consider the purchase ahead of time, it would have made sense to get the Oxygn, not the Oxygn A3. Food for thought on the off-chance that an Oxygn will fit you. I'd also point out that the visor system on the Oxygn helmets is pretty hit and miss. I've seen a few that work very well, but most I've seen (mine included) are difficult to open and even more difficult to close again. As a result, many Oxygn owners never open and close their visors. Some even tape them shut which makes you wonder why not just get a Factory diver if you never open the visor.

You're making a lot of assumptions about my politics and beliefs. People don't need to be a right-wing extremist to disagree with you. I have no interest in making either Republicans or Democrats look good. GWB was a disaster. Obama is in many ways a vast improvement. The Republicans in congress are mostly acting like spoilt children these days. The Democrats are at least trying to do something, although they really need to grow some balls. As for "meaningless", I never quoted anything, so yes, I paraphrased and you should have expected that since I never quoted anything. If I'd said: He stated, "These kinds of comparisons are meaningless." - you might a point, albeit a tiny one. Academic articles paraphrase their sources all the time, but since you believe it wrong to paraphrase in any way... In addition to ignoring his conclusions about how meaningful or otherwise these graphs are, you've also conveniently ignored that his most detailed model (ie. the one that includes inflation effects as well as dividends) showed better performance by investing in Republican years. You're really playing the same game as Fox News. You can do better than that. Fox News is about as fair and balanced as a black bear on a surfboard and as a result have absolutely no credibility in my view. When you similarly ignore data that conflicts with your agenda, you also have little credibility. I often agree with your general position if not your exact points, but it's posts like this that weaken your whole position. This is why academic magazines have peer review before publishing articles. You'll note that your usual supporters aren't here. I wonder why? Perhaps it's because your position here would not stand up to peer review. If you want to criticize and demonize the Republicans, go right ahead, but try to pick a convincing and supportable argument, otherwise you're just playing the same game as Fox News Shouting something doesn't make it more true, but regardless, if you're trying to show that democrats do more to help elevate the poor, why are we looking at the Dow Jones Index? As for the rich, well a large portion of their money is in the stock market and due to the way that they think, they'll pretty much do well regardless of who's in the whitehouse. I'm not a big fan of the stock market. It's become an almost purely speculative vehicle. Many of those rises in the Dow on those graphs ended up being the slow transfer of wealth from novice to sophisticated investors, so in the end, the performance of the Dow doesn't really show much about elevation of the lower or middle classes. If you really want to look at that, I'd suggest finding median and 85th percentile data for incomes - preferably after tax and adjusted for inflation. Unemployment rates would be another potentially good measure as may be inflation and/ affordability ratios. I've no idea how that would look, but it would be a much better indication of government influence on elevating the poor than stock market performance.

You apparently skipped over the conclusions at the end where he stated that these kind of comparisons are meaningless, or the comments about how there are lots of variables which are not considered, like who held the majority in congress. Clinton's presidency corresponded with large increases, but most of Clinton's presidency had a Republican congress, so who should have the credit there? Bush senior and Reagan also correspond to large increases but they had to work with a Democratic congress, so who gets the credit there? This kind of bullshit is one of the biggest problems in American politics. People are too busy having pissing contests to get on with running the country. There's nothing to see here. The education and health care debates, while silly at times, at least had a point.

Did you even read the article? Perhaps you should go back and read it again. Try to get to the end this time.

Relax. Take a few deep breaths. A harness/container system is made from materials that are generally quite flexible and resistant to damage by water. In addition to that, as noted by other posters, most new gear is packed inside an LDPE bag inside the box to further protect it from water and other liquids. Unless the wetness was caused by some kind of solvent or corrosive substance that can penetrate LDPE and also damage nylon and/or stainless steel, your harness/container should be fairly safe. Nothing's impossible, but your harness/container is more than likely fine. That's how it works. You should have expected that. "They" is Canada Customs and the Canada Revenue Agency. Sunrise has no control over this, nor does the USPS. Do you complain when you walk into Future Shop and they charge you GST and PST on your purchases? Since you haven't inspected the harness/container, how do you know that it's damaged? I highly doubt that there is any damage whatsoever. At this point, you really only have two options: Suck it up, pay the taxes and collect your harness/container Don't pay the taxes and kiss your ~$2k that you've already paid goodbye Once you collect the package, you can open the box, inspect it and if there is any damage, contact Sunrise to make appropriate arrangements.

QuoteTheir checks showed that all the appropriate taxes were being taken out so their take home was the same. Quote How do you know what they showed?

I agree. Great, but since this opinion was about canopy formations and menopausal women, I'm wondering how many canopy formation jumps you've done and how many years you spent as a menopausal woman.

Your perspective is similarly skewed because you've only ever been female.

The point is that there is a kind of judicial proceeding which can review the circumstances under which players were cited during a match and dole out disciplinary action. That said, I just re-read the text I quoted, which was about being able to cite players after the match for things the referee missed, so yes, this was not that. I think that German goalie would be in the shit if there was a judiciary committee with such powers.

They do. The question is whether or not people get hauled in there for faking an injury to draw a free kick.

A lot of countries struggle with cricket - mostly because it's boring. I always find it amusing when they keep introducing shorter games to make them more exciting. The difference between Twenty20 cricket and a test match is kinda like the difference between watching grass grow for 3 hours or watching grass grow for a week.

Move to Canada and you'll pick it up. It's kinda hard not to. I was contrasting with ice hockey because that was something Cliff was comparing it to.

You're comparing this to ice hockey, which is a very different game. The places in front of the blue line from where you can't get a good shot on goal are the furthest forward, since the goal line in hockey is inside the end of the rink, so once you're in front of the blue line, passing the puck forward doesn't necessarily convey any advantage to an attacking team. Messing around behind the net might be a useful strategy in some circumstances, but if you want to score, you're gonna have to get it back out in front of the net. The ability to pass ahead once the puck is over the blue line does little to increase the chance of a breakaway. Your guys still have to wait outside the blue line until the puck crosses over and by that time, the puck is well within firing range of the goal and the breakaway is all but over. Having an attacking player waiting to receive the ball ahead of the play and all the defenders but the goalie would be more like having an attacking player waiting inside the blue line ahead of the puck. I'm hardly a soccer fan. I played soccer when I was a kid and also played indoor soccer during my earlier working years but I mostly got into this debate because I found the comparison between ice hockey and soccer interesting. I think it's more of an issue of your relative level of knowledge and comfort with the rules of ice hockey verses soccer. When I first started watching ice hockey, I didn't know all the rules and it was easier to try drawing parallels to other games I understood better. Of course, that doesn't always work, because it's a different game with different dynamics and different rules. There aren't always parallels.

There is a fixed point - the half way line, but if the defenders move further back from there, it will allow the attackers to move up in line with them. This increases the chance of a breakaway. To take the equivalent situation in hockey, the defenders can move ahead of the attackers beyond the blue line and reduce the chance of a breakaway and there's nothing the attackers can do about it until the puck crosses that line. Do something similar in soccer, whether you use the half line that is already there or paint another fixed line for offside, a team could sit their fullbacks 5-10 metres behind the offside line and the chance of breakaways would be considerably reduced because there can be defenders well ahead of you and there's nothing the attacking side can do about it. The existing rule pretty much forces the defence to move up whenever possible to keep the attackers further away from the goal and increases the chances of a breakaway by allowing the attackers to come right up in line with the defenders regardless of where the ball is. I'll agree with you that hockey's rule is simpler, but to suggest that soccer's offside rule prevents breakaways more than hockey's offside rule just doesn't add up to me. The dynamics of the two games are also quite different, so I think that meaningful comparisons will be difficult at best. Ice hockey is played on a rink that is tiny by comparison to a soccer field, has virtually no concept of "out", is played by 5 players who are never really that far from each other and the puck/play moves much faster as a result. It would be impractical to implement a soccer-style offside rule in ice hockey and while a hockey-style offside rule in soccer could be easily implemented, the difference between attackers being stuck at the half line or right back where the defenders are is much more significant in soccer due to the much larger distances than in ice hockey. A hockey style offside rule may make some more sense for indoor soccer if played on a small enough field/court, but that's not the game we're discussing here.

Fixed it for you, but it's a good point. Going back to the hockey comparison, soccer's rule actually allows for larger breakaways than hockey. In hockey, if your team mate passes the puck ahead, you still have to wait behind the blue line until the puck crosses it. In soccer you can start running ahead of the defenders as far as you like, as long as you weren't offside at the moment your team mate struck the ball to pass it to you. Ice hockey's rule is simpler, though because the blue line never moves and you can determine offside without having to consider what happened a few seconds ago.

I've seen offside prevent breakaways in hockey. The mechanism of this is not that much different to what I believe you're talking about in soccer. The only difference between the offside rule in ice hockey and the offside rule in soccer is that ice hockey has a static blue line painted under the ice. In soccer, the line is defined by either the half-way line, or the position of the defender second closest to the goal line they're defending - whichever is closest to the goal line. Either way, as an attacker, you cannot cross that line ahead of the puck/ball and take part in the resulting play or it's offside.

Several people, myself included, have already posted in this thread that the device should have some concept of what is possible in freefall due to the Earth's gravity. Without doing experimental research, nobody here is going to be able to give you the complete and final algorithm, but it starts with looking at second differences in the altitudes deduced from barometric pressure readings. The device's design is flawed if it is programmed to fire less than 1 second after it believed it was in level flight when even on the most paranoid setting (which it wasn't) it would take at least twice that long to reach firing speed, and on the Pro setting (which it was) more than 3 times that long. It's more important for the device to avoid firing when it shouldn't than it is for the device to fire when it should. Whether you like that reasoning or not, statistically, the vast majority of skydivers will never need their AAD to save their life. That being the case, it's difficult to accept a device that might endanger my life by firing when it shouldn't. It's a bad business strategy to do nothing about this. Agreed. I am an engineer. That's a bit of a reach. How do these parameters endanger anyone that is not already in danger? I was not a skydiver when CYPRES was first released, but I was under the impression that many people did bash the CYPRES for some time before it started to prove itself in the field. I for one, don't, so not everybody. I do however, expect that misfires are treated seriously. I may be mistaken, but all of the CYPRES misfires that I can recall were down to either a faulty device and led to a recall, or the device operated as designed and changes were made, such as releasing speed CYPRES. Vigil's attitude until this most recent incident seems to have been "The device is the best. It did exactly what it was designed to do. The end." I'm encouraged by their response to this event so far, but that doesn't mean I don't expect improvements to come from it. Their competition has been shown in the past to be able to determine that non-freefall events did not require activation where Vigil did. This proves that they could have done better. As a current Vigil customer, I'd like to see that they do. I jump a Vigil 2. For someone who has no dog in this hunt, you seem very passionate about it.

Here we go again... You had your rant on this in another thread. This thread is about small form factor cameras, not gear checks or pin checks. Try to stay on topic. If you don't want your gear checked, that's your business, but stop trying to make everyone think they're dumb if they choose to ask for a pin check.

Interesting that a guy with 50 jumps thinks that he has the knowledge and experience to decide both why particular recommendations exist and whether or not they should apply to him/her. That almost never happens!

I've tried Rain X. It doesn't really help at all in my experience and when you think about it, it's more likely to make the problem worse. Fog on the visor is caused by lots of tiny water droplets. The purpose of Rain X is to make the water form beads - ie. droplets. Dish washing liquid seems to intuitively make more sense - break the surface tension and allow the water to form a flatter more continuous film rather than bead. That said, I tried it and didn't see a lot of difference between dish detergent vs no detergent. The best solution to fog with a full face helmet that I've found is to avoid the condensation in the first place. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth and when breathing out, use your lips to ensure that the moist exhaled air is going out the vent and not recirculating inside the helmet. I haven't tried commercial anti-fogging solutions, so that might work, but if you avoid wearing the helmet when not necessary and control your breathing when you are, you should find that you don't really need it.