riggerrob

Mr. Poutine claimed that Nazis were operating in Eastern Ukraine, which gave him an excuse to invade. Mr. Poutine also has slim historical evidence to back his claim. Many centuries before Mr. Hitler invented Nazisim, Jews were employed by the Russian Tzar to collect taxes in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc. This practice made theses Jewish tax-farmers unpopular symbols of the oppressive Tzar, so poor peasants reacted with pogroms (riots, stampeding, arson, lynching, etc.) for many centuries. Pogroms against any Jews were a recurring theme in Eastern Europe. Then during World War 2, some Ukrainians aligned themselves with the invading Germans and helped ship a few thousand Ukrainian Jews to concentration camps. Circa 2014, the Ukrainian Azov Battalion resisted the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Some Azov Battalion members were severely right-wing, bordering on fascist or Nazi. They even held torch-light parades and waved their version of runes. Please remember that the runic alphabet was the founding alphabet of Kievian-Russ, a good 1,000 years before Hitler. Yes, some Azov Battalion members counted Jew-bashing as a popular sport, but that element was suppressed when the Azov Battalion was integrated into the regular Ukraine defense forces. The most ardent right-wing Azov leaders drifted into politics. Please keep in mind that Mr. Poutine's distorted definition of "Nazi" no longer meshes with Mr. Hitler's definition of Nazism. Instead, Mr. Poutine includes anyone who opposes him. So, yes, there is slim evidence of Nazism in Ukraine (circa 2104), but you really need to drink Mr. Poutine's brand of Kool-Aid to understand his attitude.

Yes, we'd often turn onto jump run and I'd encourage the next student to lean his head out the door to look at the target. Often the previous student was on short final as the second student was climbing out. That was the best way to avoid low-altitude canopy collisions.

I would never argue against an AAD. Back before electronic AADs (e.g. Cypres) became fashionable - during the mid 1990s - every third accident report included low pull or no pull. Or it included the words 'cutaway a malfunctioned main at a reasonable altitude but pulled the reserve ripcord too late or not at all." Back around 1984, I watched one of my IAD students do a low cutaway from a partially malfunctioned Para-Commander. Then he never completed the full pull on his S.O.S. handle. I was a good 10 seconds before we saw a white reserve canopy. Fortunately, Saint Francis Xavier Chevrier was on duty that day and saved the student's lazy ass. That sold me on the concept of equipping students with AADs.

Minimum 18 years old is a grey area in Canadian Common Law. A decade or so ago, I had to explain to a Vancouver-based lawyer about a precedent that had been set in an Ontario court during the early 1980s. Back in those days, many Canadian DZs allowed 16 or 17 year old students to jump as long aa a parent signed the waiver. Then a 16 year old girl landed a malfunction during a static-line jump. She did not respond to the sight of a badly-distorted (long way from round) Para-Commander overhead. She broke her spine and was paralysed from the waist down. She was confined to a wheel-chair for the rest of her life. The lawyer representing the DZ was too lazy to inform the DZO of the verdict, so he heard about it on his car radio. Douh! I later worked with a guy who had also driven Handy-Dart buses. He said that the girl was messed in the head before she jumped and on several occassions, he had to pull her out of bars before she was old enough to drink legally in Ontario. Since then few Canadian DZs drop students younger than 18 or 19 or 21 or whatever is the age of majority in their province. Quebec seems to be the only exception, but Quebec does not operate under British Common Law, instead they prefer the Code Napoleonic. American tandem manufacturers specifically prohibit taking students younger than 18. Fast forward 30 years and I had to explain this to a Vancouver-based tort lawyer. It was a scary conversation. Silly me expected that an aviation lawyer would understand case law and precedents. Then he tried to spina yarn about an IAD jump that he did with Dave Williamson in Nova Scotia. I remain cynical as to whether he ever jumped. Next thing I knew he was trying to convince me that letting his 14 year old daughter was a good idea. He was disappointed by my response: NO! It felt like every conversation with him was a test. He was "helping" me with a personal injury lawsuit, but bungled that case 3 ways to Sunday! He wasted 9 years losing a simple case!!!!!!!! So the "16 with parental consent" is one of those silly Canadian laws that is still on the books, even though it has been obsolete for more than 40 years.

An earlier rumor stated that Russian soldiers came from poor, backward villages well outside of Moscow, so for them, a washing machine was a rare luxury. How those privates or sergeants expected to transport their stolen washing machines all the way home is a mystery to me.

Looks are secondary to function. The more important question is: "Will there be enough tension on the main closing loop to prevent premature deployments?' That question is best answered by your local rigger.

I disagree. Mammals are born with three instinctive reactions to danger: fight, flight or freeze. Politicians later learn a fourth response: filibuster. "Fight" means pulling more handles to improve the main canopy overhead ... or replace it with a better reserve canopy. "Flight" means running away from the problem ... pulling cutaway handle. "Freeze" means doing nothing and hoping or praying that the big nasty problem loses interest and goes away. S/L, IAD and AFF instructors try to screen for those reactions during ground school. Most of the time, ground-school instructors screen out the least competent students.

We teach "if it is not square, get rid of it and follow through with the reserve ripcord. Problems like line-overs or pilot-chute-unders are best dealt with at 2,500 feet ... er ... shortly after opening. Any lower than that is a waste of altitude.

We try to avoid collisions by spacing students from heaviest to lightest and when in doubt, take extra (airplane) passes to create an extra minute or three of spacing. I can only recall one canopy collision between students during this century (see A.I.M. reports in old issues of Parachutist magazine).

Tandems and wind tunnels are part of the process of screening out those students who are not emotionally tough enough to handle high-speed, high-stress sports like skydiving. Do any wind tunnels use reverse-clock-altimeters to train AFF levels?

In most other countries, the term "militia" refers to army reserve. I served in the Canadian Army Reserve, Sherbrooke Hussars, Sector Est Milice, Mobile Command, etc. and we reported all the way up the chain of command to the Queen of Canada. Canadian Army Reservists wear the same uniforms, fire the same weapons, follow the same Queen's Rules and Regulations, etc. as regular army soldiers. When a regular army regiment is assigned an overseas task (e.g. United Nations peacekeeping) they often take along 40 percent reservists to top off the ranks, because few regiments are at full-strength during peacetime. I guess that the word "milice" makes more sense in French. Trivia question: What do you call a North American who speaks English and French? What do you call a North American who speaks English and Spanish? What do you call a North American who only speaks English?

Russian accounting!!!!!!!!!!

His name was Clark Thurmond and he lived in Texas. He was/is a friend of Manley Butler. I sewed together two of his Para-Kits and put hundreds of jumps on them. Recenlty I donated those canopies and my copy of the Lone Star manual to CSPA's Technical Committee.

Will proceeds from the sale go to the governor of Gibraltar or some Ukrainian charity?

The money would be better spent on anti-suicide fences.

Try to find a psychological coach to help you get through your fear. May I suggest the book "Transcending Fear" written by Brian Germain? Brian has also published several www.youtube.com videos about psychological training for skydiving.

Part of the logic for removing pilot chutes - from chest-mounted reserves - was that old umbrella style pilot-chutes had wimpy springs that contributed little to launching the pilot-chute into clear air. Umbrella style pilot-chutes were considered obsolete by the time I started jumping in Canada in 1977. The last time I saw an umbrella style pilot-chute was in 1986, at the West German Army parachute school. Mind you, the WGA was in the later stages of developing a replacement for the T-10 system.

Yes Phil, Vancouver certainly attracts more than its fair share of immigrants from China. Punjabi (Sikh) may be the second most popular second language in Vancouver, but both Cantonese and Mandarin are close behind, meaning that the combined number of Chinese-speaking immigrants make up the dominant second-language. In some suburbs of Vancouver (e.g. Richmond) I am sometimes the token/only English-speaking, white-man in a shopping mall or restaurant. In comparison, while French may be the most popular second language in Eastern Canada, French its only spoken by 1.5 percent of Vancouverites.

Harbor Air just flew their electric Beaver from Vancouver International Airport to Victoria International Airport. It only needed 24 minutes to fly from the South Fork of the Fraser River to Pat Bay. I have taken off from Pat Bay Airport dozens of times when I did tandems for Victoria Skydivers. 24 minutes is a typical route for Harbor Air and is the longest flight that their electric Beaver has flown to date.

Good use of the Junior ROTC.

This mis-naming comes from lazy people dropping the "semi" part of the term "semi automatic." Most jurisdictions allow civilians to own semi-automatic pistols and long guns that only fire one bullet per trigger pull. In Britain, they are called "self-loading." OTOH "fully-automatic" machineguns are prohibited from civilian ownership in most jurisdictions.

I don't know specifics of the program at Pietermeritzburg, but several civilian DZs were doing assisted freefall jumps well before Ken Coleman invented the AFF program and sold it to USPA circa 1980. Bob Sinclair was one of the first with his "buddy-Jump" system that saw him leaving the airplane holding his students' arms. Bob also invented an extended main ripcord that was sew to the student's left sleeve. This zap-handle allowed Bob to pull a student's ripcord even if they started spinning. Tom McCarthy developed his own assisted freefall program in Gananoque, Ontario during the 1970s. He started by giving every student a KAP3 auto-opener and teaching them how to pull their own ripcord during their first jump. Other Canadian DZs (e.g. Claresholm, Alberta) deveoped CSPA's Progressive Freefall Program. A key difference from USPA's AFF program was an insistence that students demonstrate a few stable exits from lower latitudes (S/L or IAD) before going to the top with a pair of PFF instructors. Few DZs do "pure AFF" any more. Instead, most DZ use a variety of methods to teach AFF students pre-skills like canopy control and the basics of freefall stability using tandems, solo IAD jumps and wind tunnels. Once a student has demonstrated basic skills, they often do assisted freefall accompanied by only a single instructor.

We discussed this topic over on the womens' forum a few months back. Wendy made some good points about arm strengthening exercises. Any good weight-training coach can help you start with light weights to develop correct technique, then slowly increase weights. I often see this problem with students and saw it in myself when I returned to doing tandems after an accident. The problem is that too many of us try to complete the flare by pushing our hands down in front of us. This version only uses triceps muscles (back of upper arm) during the later part of the flare. To draw in more muscles, modify the path that your hands and toggles take during a flare. Start your flare by pulling both hands to your collar-bone. Then raise your elbows and continue pushing your hands down the zipper on the front of your jump-suit. This version still uses triceps muscles, but also pulls in pectoral muscles and perhaps some latimus dosi. When you keep your hands - almost - touching your belly, you r greatly increase the strength available.

The 2 days of classroom instruction required to earn a Canadian PAL is not nearly enough training to carry a concealed weapon in public. You need additional training in situational awareness, risk assessment, risk avoidance, driving out of the danger zone, escalation of force, identifying targets in dimly-lit areas, shooting while breathing hard, shooting around obstacles, legal consequences, perhaps some medical training ... the list goes on.

I suspect that the original poster was trying to limit the numbers of amateur or part-time or low-volume of FFL holders. If you limit the numbers of FFL holders, you make it easier for police to monitor them.