riggerrob

" If the reserve risers pull the main riser cover tuck tabs open as they deploy the reserve, so what? Once the reserve has gotten past riser stretch, it is almost impossible for a late-deploying main to interferr with reserve inflation.

Thanks, I filled up my old logbook a few weeks ago, but the Para-Gear order will not arrive for a few weeks yet.

If you are going to sell your soul to Uncle Sam - ignore most of the promises made by recruiting sargents - and have the sense to enlist in a parachute-related trade (i.e. parachute rigger). Once you have completed basic trades training, try to get posted to a base that has a skydiving club, then devote all your spare time and cash to skydiving. Hint, most military skydiving clubs offer major discounts to young soldiers. While the social aspects of skydiving are fun, have the good sense to stay away from the drugs. One DUI will ruin your chances of joining the "Knights. If you are smarter than me, you will do your 20 years in the Army, then use your pension to supplement your modest earnings as a professional skydiver. And I do mean modest earnings. It will be a few years before the current shortage of tandem instructors forces DZOs to pay decent wages.

Stability and fall rate are two separate issues. Stability comes mainly from the angle of your hips. Flexibility is the only way to achieve a good arch. Follow Michele's advice and take a Yoga class or an aerobics class that emphasises stretching. Mantis is an unstable body position that is only used by senior formation skydiving competitors. Mantis slows the fall rate and slows the learning curve, so is not recommended for students. Good instructors can guesstimate fall rate and adjust by swapping jumpsuits. Most skinny students wear snug fitting Spandex jumpsuits to make it easier for instructors to stay with them. By the same token, instructors jumping with skinny students often wear baggy jumpsuits to help adjust fall rate. Fall rate is a separate issue, but is mainly adjusted by hip and shoulder angles (at the risk of over-simplification). Once you have learned to do your best arch (this will take 10 or 20 jumps) then you can contemplate adding weights. Weights are a last resort. Few instructors are willing to hang weights on students because they don't help with stability and increase the risk of landing injuries.

Hint: if the tandem masters and POPS are sitting it out, then maybe you should too. Tandem masters cannot afford the time off work to heal and few of them have medical insurance. All POPS have been dragged a few times and know that they heal slowly. A popular Sunday afternoon pass time in California City is for TMs and POPS to sit on the balcony watching the the young guys get dragged through the cacti.

Fortunately, most scary students never come back. Thank God! Over 20 years of instructing I have seen a few students that I never want to see again. Just last month I told manifest that I want nothing more to do with "Dread Lock Boy." I dropped him the day after his first jump course got rained out. When he showed up, I quizzed him on procedures that should have been covered in his first jump course. He gave me so many wrong answers that I spent the next 90 minutes re-teaching the first jump course. His classmates confirmed that he was not paying attention in class and was inventing "novel" procedures far faster than the ground school instructor could teach the correct procedures. About ten years ago I told a pair of "fat bottomed girls" that skydiving was not their sport. Something about them not having enough leg muscle to lift their feet off the step. On several ocaissions, first jump instructors have discretely introduced their worst students to (tandem instructor) me and suggested that they do a tandem jump. I have also told a bunch of students to jump on a regular basis or don't jump at all. Those were all static-liners. Sloppy PFF students are usually smart enough to retire on their own. When tandem students flail, I just smile and hand them their certificates knowing full well that they only intended to do one jump in their lifetimes.

"... the risk of having the main risers or coming loose and interfering with the reserve could be potentially very dangerous." I thought we reduced this risk in the late 1970s with Velcro risers keeper straps. Then Velcro riser covers were introduced in the early 1980s. Finally, tuck tab riser covers were introduced in the late 1980s. All the manufacturers have been steadily improving their tuck tabs since then. The chances of a cutaway main riser interferring with a reserve deployment are pretty slim these days. There is a much higher risk that the main will start to deploy when the reserve container emptys. The last thing I want is two canopies fighting for air.

Yes, It is possible that a cell phone or radio scared the Cypres on the gorund. Another possibility is that the reserve loop was way too long. If the closing loop is way too long there is a slim chance that the loop got pinched between the top of the pilotchute and the underside of a flap. I encountered this problem on an obscure version of the student Telesis man container. After he saw the problem demonstrated on the ground, Sandy Reid announced that R.I. would not build anymore of that version. A couple of years later, the biggest user of that version asked me to convert all of their Telesis to a simpler configuration. I haven't packed a Vector I pilotchute in the last decade. Mind you, I have packed dozens of Vector II pilotchutes into Vector I containers. Sometimes it was a hard sell and I simply refused to repack the rig without a strong pilotchute spring.

Actually the British "V" for victory sign pre-dates the Second World War by a few centuries. Churchill's "V" for victory sign dates back to the Battle of Crecy or Agincourt. After the British archers thoroughly trounced the French, they cut off the first two fingers on every French archer's right hand, thereby rendering them useless in battle. Back in those days a popular insult was for a British archer to hold up his right hand and proudly display his two most important fingers.

Husky dogs work great at discouraging JWs. Especially 80 pound Husk dogs straining at their leashes. I never got around to telling the JWs that we had a very friendly 80 pound Husky dog who only wanted to lick their faces. He! He! Another great way to discourage JWs is to agree to visit their church, provided they attend my church. My church meets at the open door of a Cessna every Sunday morning. We say a few prayers then step outside to practice flying like angels. He! He!

Merry Christmas Art. Now be a good Skydog and heal! Love from Rob Warner

Prospective pilots at Pacific Skydivers need the minimum flying hours to keep the insurance company happy (usually 350 hours), have made at least one jump, be skilled at washing airplanes and be willing to sell their soul to the DZ for 7 days a week over the summer. They have to sit through the annual day of pilot refresher training and write a couple of open book exams. Then they go for a check ride with our chief pilot. During the check ride they have to fly by the numbers, Pacific Skydivers' numbers and keep the air traffic controllers happy. Any hint of enjoying their job, i.e. buzz jobs sends them packing.

Tandems were invented for girlfriends like the on dumpster just mentioned. In the old days there were too many accidents involving girlfriends who were only jumping to keep their boyfriends happy. Smart first jump course instructors hand off their worst students to tandem instructors.

danvan has done a thorough initial analysis. Like him. I do not trust Gaths to keep me awake for the fire. I have been wearing ProTecs for the last 8 years. A composite helmet - like a Bonehead G3 would be nice, but I have a hard time justifying the price. Another thing I never understood was mounting expensive audible altimeters on the outside of helmets. If my primary reason for wearing a helmet is to keep me awake after tandem riser slap, why would I mount an expensive altimeter where it is guaranteed to get slapped?Maybe someone can explain the logic to that location.

Are you sure we are not related? Sounds like we have the same older brother. I moved to the edge of the continent and have not visited him in a decade.

Just give your Harley its own drip tray in the corner of the garage. Replace the kitty litter on a regular basis and hang a poster of an antique Harley with a scantily clad slut on the wall and your Harley will be happy.

Last year's Christmas bonus consisted of $1000 towards flying lessons. This year's Christmas bonus consisted of a cell phone. Officially it is a leash so I can be on call to drive the fuel truck over the Christmas holidays, but I only expect one or two calls. Oh well, at least I got a bonus, considering how naughty I was this past summer.

The brand name "F-111" went out of production when George Harris died circa 1984. After George's death, a dozen other companies tried to copy his calendarizing process (hot rollers) with varying degrees of success. This led to the whole "mystery bulk" conmfusion of the late 1980s when different weaving mills produced F-111 like fabric of widely differing weights and porosities. My last F-111 reserve was an F-111 Defender round reserve build by Mid West Parachute Sales circa 1983.

Will ladyskydiver or someone else please explain to me the old-wives-tale popular among first-timers of skipping breakfast in an attempt to avoid motion sickness? Skipping breakfast has the reverse effect on most people. All but one of the tandem students who have vomited on me skipped breakfast. I saw the same phenomenon when my brother skipped breakfast, then almost fainted when he stepped off a early morning rollercoaster.

I tried wearing a heart rate monitor once. Most of the in-airplane data was lost when an IAD student crushed my wrist (and monitor) against the door frame. Ouch! The only remaining data was an after-opening pulse of 70 bpm, lower than my normal resting pulse back in those days.

I have had 2 tandem and a half dozen IAD students refuse. Oh well, they just paid for an expensive plane ride.

To expand on what billvon just said: few women jump heavily-loaded canopies because for light-weight women to get high wing-loadings they need to jump really tiny canopies and really tiny canopies have really short lines and those really short lines cause really fast turns, turns far faster than most sensible women want to make.

I have been jumping an Ariel 150 on and off for the past year. There are two reason why I don't jump the Ariel more often. It is packed into my back-up rig without a Cypres, secondly, my other rig has a Diablo 135 and a Cypres and I prefer to wear a Cypres while doing PFF. This Ariel has never opened hard and it lands better than half the ragged-out Sabre Mk 1s I jump. The only reason this Ariel has not sold is because Ariels have zero resale value in this market. Oh well, it looks like I am stuck with a well-behaved Ariel.

New Cypri come from the factory with new batteries installed. Opening boxes and opening Cypri and swapping batteries around would be more labor-intensive than most lofts have the time for. As for a dealer selling an 11 month old Cypres as new .... the customer deserves some sort of discount.

3 female cats Demi, who just strode into our apartment one day as a teenager Angel - given to us at a street fair as a tiny kitten Red Bluff, who acquired us at a flea-bitten motel in Red Bluff, California. She has the longest fur, but never outgrew her kittenhood malnutrition.