sriddy

Kinda makes you wonder how many crawl in your mouth at night while you're sleeping.

Do you put the toggles back in their keepers after landing? They can get tweisted up pretty quick if they are just flopping around on the way back to the packing mat. Probably not your problem, but just a thought.

Congrats on saving your own life! According to the rigger whose school I pack for, tension knots in the steering lines can be caused by excessive twists in that line. He has me walk the lines for this reason. Here's do I do it: With the toggles unstowed, pick a side of the canopy to work on and grab the steering lines at the tail of the canopy (There are 4 on each side of the 9-cells I pack) hold them between your fingers in order (outer to inner) Run the lines through your fingers and don't let them cross over each other. these lines cascade into one steering line. Beyond the cascade point, the line is flat, so run that through your fingers not letting it twist. This pushes the twists towards the toggle. Flip the toggle around to remove the twists, set the brakes, and repeat on the other side. If this is as clear as mud, get a rigger to show you how. Glad you're still with us!

I'll be there. They have Boogie in a Box going on this weekend. There will be all-chic 4-way and big way organizing, plus I heard a rumor of jello wrestling Sat night. Edited to add the official word: This Saturday (August 2) is the 4th Annual Boogie in a Box. We will be organizing all-girl skydives on Saturday—big-ways and fun dives all out of the Super Otter. This year’s party theme is World Wide West Point Wrestling (WWWPW)! And this may prove to be the most infamous of the parties yet! Come as your favorite WWE, RAW or Wrestle mania champion for the SMACK DOWN event of the year! You heard it… WRESTLING! 150 gallons of industrial jello for the largest jello-wrestling event that West Point has ever seen. It will be huge! Who will be undefeated at the end of the evening? Who will be the indomitable force of the DZ? You will have to be there on Saturday night to witness it yourself! It is the SUMMERSLAM main event! One lucky raffle winner will get to choose his lady wrestling opponent (And she chooses her tag-team partner). All proceeds will help send our women of West Point to Jump for the Cause 2009 – the Women’s World Record (and fund raiser to save the Boobies!) in Perris Valley, CA. Oh, and to compliment your jello-covered bodies, we will have plenty of liquor-imbibed jello-shots for you to ingest. Come one, come all, to the most entertaining BASH of the year!

Actually in most cases the new commercial pilot is quite capable in handling emergencies. It's kinda like a new intern straight from med school. They are on top of the latest in technology and proficiency. It's been stated that a 1000 hour pilot is nearing the most dangerous point in their career. Complacency coupled with lack of recurrent training....can mean bad things. Or to give it more of a skydiving twist, who would be better to listen to? A new A license jumper quoting the SIM or a 5000+ jumper quoting what was considered ok 30 years ago? An example would be break and pull altitude. The SIM says pull at 3000ft (or a little lower depending on license). The guy with years of experience says its perfectly fine to break at 2500 and dump at 1500. I witnessed a jumper auger in under a spinning mal after she took the old guy's advice. (She survived, but broke herself in several places including the pelvis) Granted, experience can be a good indicator of an opinion's validity, but judging by experience alone can be misleading. Personally, when opinions and advice are flying around after the beer light is on, I ask myself if the their experience is backed up by either reputation (like in billvon's example) or credentials (S&TA for example) But I'm just a newb, so what the hell do I know?

I pulled a real boneheaded move about a month ago. It was after an uneventful 3-way out of a Porter. It was one of those no-wind days, so the correct landing direction was less than obvious. The first guy down landed to the South, so I set up to do the same. On the base leg, I saw another guy off the my left, at roughly my level, heading West. Then he turned South. Cool, we're all on the same page. So I turn South for final. Great. Heading for the peas, heading for the peas, gonna be a tad long, but close. OH SHIT!!!! I'm about 30 ft up when I see a guy coming from the left touch down in the peas (landing in towards the West). FUCK! So I pick my feet up to keep from dragging the top of his canopy while I give it too much right toggle (more panicky than I like to admit). Once I got about 10 degrees of turn I give it full left toggle, then full right toggle before the canopy was back over my head. I salvaged enough flare to make the landing injury free, but it was ugly enough to make the entire dropzone cringe. Turns out, the guy I saw turn South was just taking a hitch in the pattern to line up with the peas. As luck would have it, the DZO was in the landing area to talk down a student and saw the whole thing. At first, I thought about taking the long way back to the hangar to avoid him, but instead I went right up to him to talk about how dumb I am (and more importantly, how to become less dumb.) The primary lesson to learn is if there is a canopy on your level, don't fucking lose track of it. Instead, I assumed he was gonna stay pointed South and then target locked on the peas. Granted, he didn't see me either until I crashed in front of him. And he was the lower canopy and technically had right-of-way. But, this all reinforces a lesson from motorcycling. Don't assume other traffic will keep you safe. Its better to operate with the assumption that you're invisible and everyone is out to get you. I later talked to other instructors about practicing flat turns for obstacle avoidance. Since all I broke was my pride, I feel I learned these lessons at a discount rate. So I'm glad it happened for two reasons: 1) It pointed out how much canopy skill I don't have. Good to know when I think about downsizing. 2) When I was jumping Casa loads this past weekend, my head was swiveling so much I felt like that chick from the Exorcist. If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough. Personally, I'm trying to be less dumb.

Just another newb here, but from what I read on the PD site, the bag of an RDS system is connected to the slider instead of the top of the canopy. So if the bag gets hung up by going over the front of the canopy, it will prevent the slider from coming down fully.

I did a sign jump for a Mother's Day present. I forgot to tighten the strap on my goggles, so they flipped up on my helmet about half-way through the dive. It turned out to work with the theme of the sign by making me look silly, but it sucks not being able to read your Viso.

Damn, dyslexia with fun can be. Here's the real one: http://www.usajobs.com My bad.

http://www.uasjobs.com http://www.studentjobs.gov Check out these two sites for civil service employment. Working with NASA, or DOD possibly FAA could put him in the Aerospace field.

Glad to hear the cleanup for you personally doesn't involve your house. Really sucks for your neighbors though. Sorry to hear about all that.

I have a few friends that work for Suffolk Fire. They were pretty busy yesterday. Actually, one of them sold a house in Driver (really small Suffolk community) last year. Yesterday, the country store next door was flattened.

:4:0 On Sat: 2-way drill dive 6-way that looked like bumper cars, never got the first point... Jumped with a sign to be used for a Mom's day gift. Ended the day with a solo. Sun: Sailboat race. Really great weekend!

I'm guessing he means 21 stone, which is about 290 lbs. As to the OP question, I have no idea because: A, I'm a noob B, I have no idea where the OP is located

:7: I had passed my check dive the previous weekend, so all I needed was three more jumps for my A. So Saturday, I was on a mission. Solo, pack, solo, pack, solo. Woohoo! got my A, including the ceremonious stamp on the forehead. Then I went on a 2-way with a friend. It was a swoop and dock, but a little too ambitious for newbs, so we kept chacing each other's fall rates and never got the dock part. Sunday: Another couple 2-ways and a solo. One of the 2-ways was with the guy that got me into skydiving and introduced me to this dropzone. It was very cool to finally be able to jump with him. And I already paid the beer debt for my A.

You too? I love mine, although it doesn't get much attention this time of year. As for the girlfriend thing, mine seems pretty cool with it. She'll even text me at the end of the day to make sure I "didn't break my penis." Talk about priorities. So this isn't a complete hijack: I'm still a student, and if i take a few weekends off, the next time I'm on the ride up, all I can think is, "What the FUCK am I doing???" Once I'm out the door, I think, "Oh right, AIRGASM!!!" If this sport is for you, you'll find a way to work with the fear. If it's not, no biggie. You'll find something else you'll enjoy.

0:4:0 I got in three solos and an AFF check dive. PASSED!!! I have all the boxes checked, so all I need to do is throw myself out of a plane three more times and I'll have an A. If the weather is good next weekend, I'll have it!

The preference is to have someone else do it. But, then again, if I had the ability to do it myself, I'm sure I'd be pretty fucking antisocial.

No shit. They spent an entire hour discussing these long cylindrical UFO's that moved too fast to be seen by the naked eye, but were caught in a few frames of video footage. Its called lens flare dumbass!!! They spent an hour on something that baseless. Ratings for credibility, fair trade I guess.

Line stows on the container? Ouch! Glad they figured that one out later on.

Congrats! May we never meet on a professional basis. Don't get me wrong, meeting on an informal basis is perfectly fine.

You should try flushing when she's in there.

Get my A Get my own gear Get my B Get some RW and FF experience and decide if I want to concentrate on one of those. (Not smart enough to know yet) Most important: FAIL to break myself or anyone else.

A friend of mine supposedly had a rigger that was so competent, he kept packing his reserve 3 years after [the rigger's] death... This was back in the 70's, if I remember the story correctly.