riggerrob

This reminds me of my buddy J.P. who used to work as a body guard for the busiest abortionist in Vancouver. The doctor was 60-something years old and could not run because he lost a chunk of leg muscle during an earlier assassination attempt. Sorry folks, but I believe there need to be limits on public protests. Anti-abortion protesters need to stand "X" number of yards (meters in Canada) from abortion clinics. They should stand far enough back that they can be seen, but maybe not heard. Patients entering abortion clinics are stressed enough already. To much more stress might push them into a spontaneous miss-carriage. How would anti-abortion protesters feel about that sad train of events?????????? Wounding or killing abortion clinic staff is a SIN ... and should be punished by jail time. On the same note, protests outside the houses of public officials should be banned because they need a good night's sleep to allow them to think clearly while making public decisions.

The problem is that English has two sets of rules and two or more sets of vocabulary. 49 percent of modern English vocabulary has French origins while much of the rest has Germanic origins. Celts, Picts, Gauls, Bretons, etc. were largely shoved aside when Romans invaded the British Isles around the time of Jesus Christ. When they Romans left a bout 400 years later, a series of waves of Germanic-speaking Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded. Starting around 800 years after Christ a cold snap (see Little Ice Age or Younger Dryas) encouraged Vikings to seek warmer climates in the British Isles. In 1066, a bunch of French nobleman replaced the earlier British Kings. In 1066, William the Conqueror brought a Norman dialect of the French language. Mind you, William the Conqueror was a fifth-generation of a character called Rollo The Viking, so Norman French had been influenced by North German Viking dialects. French remained the language in the royal court for many more centuries even though most peasants only spoke an early dialect of German. Then after Shakespeare's time, the Great Vowel shift erased many of the Bard's raunchier jokes and hopelessly confused English spellings.

In this country (Canada), a certain "group of motorcycle enthusiasts" who do not like to be mentioned in public live quiet lives most of the time. They live in quiet residential neighborhoods with very little petty crime. They drive clean cars, duly registered and rarely drive much faster than the speed limit. etc. Bottom line, they don't want petty crimes attracting police attention. For example, many years ago, a young skydiver became a "prospect" for "a certain group of motorcycle enthusiasts." After a skinny, petty criminal snuck into a hangar and stole 6 skydiving rigs, he got 5 of the 6 returned in short order, no questions asked. The only modern rig disappeared. If it was fenced, it was fenced out-of-province.

"Marials" is a silly word that I invented to mean "marriage ritual" or "wedding ceremony" or "handfasting rite," etc. but rhymes with "burials" or "funerals" of "end of life celebrations." Call it poetic license.

An RSL will always pull a reserve ripcord faster than a human. Back around 1990, AFF I/E Rick Horn made a training film for the US Air Force. The training film included a couple dozen intentional cutaways both with and without RSLs. Despite all his recent experience, Rick was never able to pull his reserve ripcord before his RSL did. The only way a human can beat an RSL is if the main does not release ... or is still inside the container as Wendy suggested. IOW an RXL will not pull your reserve ripcord during all types of malfunctions. All that being said, it is still a good habit to pull your release cables completely clear of your harness and promptly follow through with your reserve ripcord.

Dear winsor, "God in the gaps" is a popular theological explanation. This reminds me of a Sunday sermon that I wrote a few years back entitled "Religion or Science, what is your best guess?" Back in the good-old-days whenever some one asked a question (e.g. Why is the sky blue?) the most common answer was "Because God wanted a blue sky." Over the centuries, humans gradually filled in the gaps in the "God" explanation with observations and measurements of the wave-lengths of various colors of sun light, etc. My sermon posits that science claims to explain all the mysteries of the universe, but much of what we accept as scientific fact today will be laughed off as poorly-informed speculation a few decades in the future.

Armored vests and armored SUVs (think fancy, pimped out Lincoln Escalade with tinted windows, etc.) were banned for civilian ownership in British Columbia because only drug dealers were using them. The majority of shootings in Vancouver are done by or to people "know to police."

I would like to see a link between red flag laws and psychological counselling. In comparison, in some states, if you accumulate too many traffic tickets, state laws compel police to suspend your driver's license, then you need to attend "X" number of hours of driver training before you can regain your license. This re-education often includes a few months learning how to ride a bus (aka. inability to drive a car).

Aim for a wing-loading of 0.7 pounds per square foot. That is the wing-loading that most students start at along with BASE jumpers and precision landing competitors. BASE jumpers often have to land in tiny clear areas between rocks and hard places and cannot always do a full flare before landing. In practice, this means that most students start with 280 square foot canopies, though I have been known to hang small female students under 230 square foot parachutes. Also remember that USPA, CSPA, BPA advise students to quit jumping when winds exceed 15 knots because that is when lightly-loaded canopies start landing backwards, people get dragged and landing injuries increase. Even after thousands of tandem jumps in turbulent Southern California weather, I quit jumping when winds reach 22 knots because it gets too turbulent and I collect too many bruises. More than a 5 knot spread between gusts also increases the number of bruises during landings. By 22 knots, winds start developing weird and wonderful vertical drafts that can slam you hard during landings. The ideal winds - when you don't want to run out a landing - are around 10 knots. That way a less-than-perfect flare will set you down with minimal horizontal speed.

Possible, with precautions. Try visiting an aviation medical examiner (doctor who examines pilots) to discuss vision limitations ... or an optometrist when routinely examines pilots. Also consider doing a simplified jump like IAD or static-line when your parachute will start to open almost immediately after you let go of the airplane 3,000 feet or 1 kilometer above the planet). S/L will reduce the number of variables you need to deal with. If BPA proves problematic, consider going to a DZ with fewer obstacles (rivers, lakes, wires, roads, alligator farms, etc. Even people with perfect vision have difficulty seeing wires from above. Perhaps visiting a desert skydiving school will further reduce the number of landing hazards you need to avoid. The better schools already equip students with radios and station an instructor - with a radio - at the target to talk students down. However, radios are not perfect and sometimes fail, so you need to understand the entire parachute steering process before you board the airplane for a solo jump. For back up, many schools also have a huge white arrow on the groudn beside the target. Few students can understand the arrow from 3,000 feet away, but it becomes clearer the closer you get.

Large numbers. Since 1960, the majority of women in Quebec are on some form of birth control on a regular basis. The majority of people living in Quebec are still nominally Catholic, but only attend church during major high holidays, marials and burials.

When packing pull-out pilot-chutes, the key is keeping most of the pilot-chute bulk in the lower right corner of the main container. That way, the first part of your pull only has to pull the pin. Then the second part of the pull extracts the pilot-chute. Kind of like a 2-stage trigger on a gun. Manuals from other manufacturers of pull-out containers: Javelin, Vector, etc. will provide good hints. Finally, take a close look at compatibility between the pull-out handle and the container. Flying High started with "fuzzy rat" all-Velcro handles, but eventually shifted to handles stiffened with a piece of plastic.

That reminds me of my grandmother back in the-good-old-days a century ago. She barely graduated high school herself before she got a job teaching in a one-room school house. She was only expected to teach for a year or three before she found a husband. After that, married women were expected to work at home. A generation later, my mother had to study - at a teacher's college - for a couple of years before she was qualified to teach kindergarten. To keep her job and get raises, she eventually had to upgrade her education (summer school at Bishop's University) to a Master's Degree. A generation later, my nieces need a 3 year Bachelor of Arts Degree, plus a couple of years at teacher's college to qualify for Ontario teaching licenses. After that, they are still expected to take summer school courses to complete a Masters' Degree if they want raises and promotions. Most recently, I was encourage to take up teaching English as a second language, but (despite my Bachelor of Arts Degree, lots of coaching qualifications issued by the Coaching Association of Canada and CSPA and 18 years teaching skydiving full-time) I would still need to study at University of British Columbia for a couple more years to earn a high-school teaching license. Yes, it is possible to get into TESL with only a short course, but then you end up as little more than slave labor in an East Asian country. Perhaps I should take a second look at the YMCA's TESL program considering that they are building a new YMCA within spitting distance of my apartment.??????

Try to think of this from the perspective of a British Red coat fighting in the American Revolutionary War. Even worse if he is a Hessian (mercenary from Germany) press-ganged into fighting a war thousands of miles from home where he does not understand the local language. He knows that George Washington can only feed and cloth a small, uniformed Continental Army. Meanwhile, he knows that a non-uniformed Minute Man killed his buddy last week with a squirrel gun. He also knows that the same Minute Man will toss his rifle in the weeds to resume plowing any time Red Coats march by. He has also heard rumors of Washington's supporters using tar and feathers to terrorize people who remain loyal to King George. How does the Taliban differ from Minute Men?

My experience with the Superior Court of British Columbia points to the opposite conclusion. The problem arises when arrogant lawyers start to believe that they are more important than victims or surgeons.

That doctor is too bright to waste her time arguing with lawyers. This reminds me of the surgeon who repaired my knee. He only provided me with a copy of his simple, straight-forward surgical report but refused to engage in conversation with the lawyers hovering around my lawsuit. The surgeon - rightly - believed that arguing with lawyers was worse than a waste of his time. The surgeon's time was far mroe valuable knee-deep in my knee.

Correct! French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Romanian and Rato-Romansh (sp?) are all based upon Classical Latin. Romansh is only spoken in a few valleys in Eastern Switzerland. In other news: modern German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Afrikans (South Africa) are all based on Old German. But it gets confusing when a language includes two or more roots. For example, modern English many be based upon the dialects imported by Germanic-speaking invaders from Jutland (Denmark), Anglia (Germany), Saxony (Germany) and plenty of Vikings (Scandinavia), the language adopted almost half its words from the French invaders who arrive in 1066. While William the Conqueror may have spoken French when he landed in 1066, he was the 5 th generation grandson of "Rollo the Viking" so English nobility spoke French for many centuries.

Good point. Employers should be held responsible for all decisions made on their premises. Employees should net fear unemployment if they disagree with decisions made by their employers. The last time fear of poverty forced me to compromise my opinions on seat-belts ..... I never fully recovered from those injuries.

My experience with the Superior Court of British Columbia points to the opposite conclusion. The problem arises when arrogant lawyers start to believe that they are more important than victims or surgeons.

Just be cautious about which branch of the military you assign to investigate alleged war crimes. Canadian Captain Robert Semrau's (?) trial was a flaming fiasco and wasted millions of Canadian tax-payer dollars. The trial include flying a stack of military legal types to Afghanistan many years after the crime. What they could learn years after the crime is a mystery to me??????????? There was also the miserable treatment of Canadian snipers serving in Afghanistan. It seems that a Canadian Army padre was offended by some snipers' black humor. My brother's (retired Warrant Officer) suggestion was to hire padres with tougher senses of humor. A recurring theme in "Canadian military justice" is to hold Canadian soldiers - serving in Afghanistan - to the same standards as Toronto municipal police officers. ... a ridiculous concept in a country as poor as Somalia or Afghanistan. When I tried to make a comparison between the behaviour of Russian soldiers invading Ukraine (2014 to present) with Quebec Provincial Police Officers in Oka, circa 1990 ... my high school history teacher cousin was shocked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Part of the problem is that the Canadian public never hears about some of the nastier things done for their benefit. What was that quote from an American SF type who said "We are rough men who do rough things to other rough, nasty, brutish people (e.g. Taliban) to allow gentle people (e.g. citizens of the USA) to sleep peacefully in their beds?" The only difference is that North American soldiers attack nasty people (e.g. Boko Haram) on the far side of the planet.

Atair did do a research and development program with the University of Alberta (?) about custom, non-woven ribs. Instead of traditional load-bearing tapes sewn to a fabric matrix, they laid individual threads along load lines. This sort of construction is used on composite, competition sails, (see America's Cup competition) but is prohibitively expensive for mass-consumption. It allows them to construct sails with molded-in 3D curvature for best possible airflow. They start with huge, 3D plugs, lay threads in successive layers, then bond/glue them all together. None of those wealthy yacht owners seem to care if a set of sails lasts more than one or two seasons.

Still too big a fine. Anyone who disagrees with same-sex marriage should be allowed to quietly step aside without penalty. The same goes for abortion, trans-gender surgery, etc. Any medical professional should be allowed to quietly step aside without penalty. As for the county clerk who refused to process paperwork for a same-sex marriage/civil union/whatever ... she should have quietly stepped aside and handed the task to a less biased co-worker. Please remember that our world is rapidly changing and many things that are legal now were illegal until recently. For example, when I was young, homosexuality was illegal in Canada. Homosexuals were routinely arrested, jailed, fined, etc. Even for decades after Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced that "gov't has no role in the bedrooms of the nation", Canadian Military Police routinely arrested any service member suspected of homosexuality. You will never change the minds of some people. You can only wait until they retire. In the meantime, when asked to perform a duty that clashes with their moral or religious values, they should just quietly step aside.

Please tell us more about your general health and diet. People falling unconscious in the airplane is exceedingly rare. Over 30-some-odd-years of teaching skydiving, I have never had a student faint in the airplane, though I have had a handful faint after their parachutes opened. Back during the 1970s and 1980s, we used to suffer one static-line student per hundred jumps or one per thousand jumps fainting after their parachute opened. They ignored steering commands on the radio and wandered off to land in the forest. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon getting them out of the trees. For some silly reason, I am better than most at climbing trees, so I got tasked with extracting then from trees. NOT my favorite task. We had to do tandems for a decade (1983 to 1993) before we started to understood the physiology of fainting under canopy. It seems that most of the fainters were city-slickers who were not very active in their Monday-to-Friday lives. The spent the morning on a hot, dry, drop zone doing physical exercises involving climbing in and out of the airplane mock up, rolling around on the grass, etc. They forgot to eat or drink, so were hungry and thirsty by the time they got near the airplane. The fear and excitement of an airplane ride burned through their last reserve of blood sugar. Outside the airplane, they relaxed as soon as they saw an open parachute over-head. They relaxed so much that they fainted and wandered off towards the forest. That is why most skydiving schools now insist on students doing a tandem or three before attempting static-line or AFF. We now encourage all students to sip water, munch on snacks and visit the toilet before suiting up.

Yes, I used to have a copy when I was a Rigger-Examiner. Most of that pamphlet is still valid. It just needs to be updated with the more recent variations on 3-Rings and the stainless steel hardware coming from France. Please delete the chapter about stainless steel hardware coming from South Korea.

American and Canadian police interrogations are boring compared with the rest of the planet. Annoy a cop in most other countries and you WILL get beaten.