ghost47

Dark Tower fan?

OP asked if it was possible. The answer is (quite obviously) yes. If what OP wanted to know was whether it was possible to do again, he should have (and could have) asked that. And the answer would again be yes. However, as many others more experienced than I have pointed out, it's not a good idea. In fact, common sense should tell you it's not a good idea. I mean, normally I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy. And I think it's up to each person to decide what sort of risks they want to take. But you jump at Elsinore. Which means your decisions affect my ability to jump. So please don't. ;) Being that you're from my dropzone, I'm going to assume you're kidding on this one, because I can't imagine the people who taught me (and who I assume taught you) leaving a student with an idea that he's safer 'cause he loves what he's doing. You're safer 'cause you do gear checks, pay attention to what's going on in the air and on the ground, and you've had training. You're safer 'cause you're constantly on the lookout for things, because you've got people checking things for you (like misrouted chest straps), and because you have an attitude of "teach me". But I'd be willing to bet quite a lot of money that most of the incidents we've had this year were from people who really loved skydiving.

Then you know the answer to the question of whether it's possible, so what are you asking? it was not done with a tandem harness I'm pretty sure it was. Or some facsimile of one. See http://expn.go.com/expn/story?id=3055619. And, in the youtube video, you can see the diver on top of him pull something out of Pastrana's shorts at around 0:37.

Then you know the answer to the question of whether it's possible, so what are you asking?

The best advice is to talk to an instructor at your DZ and also to take a canopy control course. General advice that works for me is: 1. While in the air, play with the canopy. Flare until you get to the point that you feel like you've stopped going down (for me, the wind suddenly goes silent). Remember this point. 2. When you get close to the ground, flare slowly and smoothly -- first to that point you figured out in the air, then all the way. If you find that you've flared too early, hold the toggles where they are (i.e. don't let up, but don't continue pulling downward) until you get closer to the ground. You'll have to finish the flare harder and faster, but at least you won't be finishing your flare while still 10 feet in the air. That's no fun at all. 3. Always prepare to PLF, and PLF if you even think it might possibly be necessary. 4. Try to remember what the ground looked like in relation to your last landing. Adjust accordingly.

I don't know whether the OP is a troll or not. But I find the fact that her name is supposedly Krystal Boll to be a bit suspicious . . .

This is true, but there are certain rules of thumb that we can give that more or less hold true. For example, when to say biggest versus most big (or importantest versus most important). While not universally true, usually adjectives of three syllables or more take more / most, and adjectives of one or two syllables take -er and -est. Or whether the word "any" takes plural (if the object is uncertain -- do you have any cups?) or singular (if the object is certain -- any cup will do). In contrast, there seems to be no rule of thumb for which verbs take gerunds and infinitives, and which don't, just that we know some do and we know some don't. These are also often mistakenly regarded as mistakes, as most style manuals (AFAIK) don't say there's anything wrong with split infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions. Of course "right" and "wrong" with language is perception, so just as things may become "right" (as you note) when enough people use it, so do things become "wrong" when enough people think it is.

I don't know if that explanation works for non-English speakers though. For us, of course we know that "I enjoy it" is right, and "I enjoy to do it" is wrong, but that both "I like it" and "I like to do it" is right. But how do you explain to a non-native speaker which verbs take gerunds AND infinitives, and which just one? If there's an answer for that, I'd love to hear it too. Thus far, I can't think of a good distinction -- it seems like one of those things you just know from speaking the language natively.

I've been asked three times now: if both your parachutes don't open, do they teach you some sort of body position to minimize the damage when you hit the ground?

What if you get knocked unconscious on the jump out? Wouldn't that be a time when you'd want the AAD on? The cons may be still outweigh the pros, but that does seem like something an AAD would always help with.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're about to hurtle yourself towards the ground at 120 mph, trusting in a few hundred square feet of fabric and your own skill to save your life. Failure of either can lead to catastrophic injury or death. Everyone gets scared. I only have 52 jumps, so it's natural that I still feel fear, but some of the most experienced instructors at my dropzone with thousands of jumps under their belt tell me that they still feel butterflies before stepping out. Fear is not the problem. It's what you do with the fear. You control it, or it controls you.

But aren't they just giving the same courtesy to you? You hold the door open so that they don't have to open it themselves. That's courteous. But then they hold the door open as soon as they can, so that you don't have to continue holding it open. That's also courteous. It seems to me like they're acknowledging your courtesy, and saying thank you by being courteous back.

It's a phone commercial. Go to http://www.incrediblefall.com At the end, you can pick who survives.

Well, on all technical matters, and matters of skydiving culture, I'm quite willing to defer to more experienced skydivers. But I don't think you can really pull the "you're a newbie" card when it comes to matters of logic and comparison. The way I see it is that the difference between driving a car and jumping out of an airplane is that one is easier and allows for quite a lot more room for error, both for equipment and human failure. But it's a matter of degree -- lots of stuff has to go wrong to die in a car, very little has to go wrong to die in a skydive. I don't see how that's an invalid way of looking at things.

This seems like semantics to me. It's all in how you define things. You could say that the ordinary course of a car ride is that I get in a car, accelerate and brake when appropriate, then stop at my destination. Assuming no catastrophic machine failure and no serious user error, I'll survive the ride. However, if there WAS catastrophic machine failure or user error at certain times (say I'm going 80 down the highway and then notice traffic stopped ahead, and my brakes and airbags fail and my steering locks), I'm almost certainly going to die. In the same way, the ordinary course of a skydive is that I get on a plane, step out of it, pull my 'chute, and land. Assuming no catastrophic equipment failure or serious user error, I'll survive the jump. However, if there WAS catastrophic equipment failure or serious user error at certain times (say anytime that I'm not 5 feet above ground), I'm almost certainly going to die. Now, it's certainly valid to say that the likelihood of catastrophic failure at importune times is higher in skydiving than in driving. It's probably also valid to say that most user error in driving is less likely to be fatal than user error in skydiving. But I don't think it's valid to say that deaths from driving and deaths from skydiving are categorically different because one involves certain death unless you do something and one involves likely death if you don't.

'Course, if the options are: 1. Death 2. Life and many people hate me for something that wasn't my fault. I think I'd pick 2 . . . Unless option 2 ended up with me in a prison cell for life with a guy named Bubba. Then maybe 1 would be better.

When you say develop a formula for "this", what is "this"? Since you haven't limited A, B, C, or M to integers A = (B+C) / (-0.975) B = -C -0.975A C = -B -0.975A M = A/0.025 or ((B+C)/(-0.975)(0.025)) or (B+C)/(-0.024375) Beyond that, I don't think there's much you can do without specific values. (Edited to fix an error)

To add on to the hypothetical, I'm wondering if more experienced jumpers would pull reserve or main. Reserve makes sense to me because A) reserve is more likely to open cleanly; and b) your AAD (assuming you have one) is about to go off, and if you pull main, you're likely going to have two out. Is that right?

If you're able to get on the Internet using your mother's laptop and your current router and modem, then the problem appears to lie in your computer. If you are getting no IP address after turning the computer on, and/or doing an ipconfig /renew, then it looks to me like either the card or the cable (or wireless connection) connecting the card to the router. If it's wired, make sure both ends are plugged all the way in, and then try a new cable. If that doesn't work, try a new card. If it's wireless, it's a bit trickier to troubleshoot, but try to isolate whether it's the router not seeing a good card, or a the card can't see a good router. Replace accordingly. (Also you can try different channels of wireless, and/or temporarily running in the clear to make sure it's not an encryption problem.)

How are you posting if you have no Internet connection? The windows command for releasing and renewing IP addresses is: ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew If that doesn't fix it, turn everything off. Unplug the DSL or cable modem. Count to 10. Plug it back in. Turn everything back on.

I think you should try FRS Health Energy. Did you know that it was originally formulated, tested, and refined by leading scientists as a fatigue fighting and general health drink?

I don't know where you jump, so I don't know the people there (obviously), but I find that when people at my dropzone laugh at me for a stupid question, it's never mean-spirited laughter. It's just good-natured teasing. I took a packing class today, and my instructor laughed at me a lot, but he was still helpful, still answered all my questions, and I knew that he was just giving me a hard time, and wasn't at all trying to make me feel bad in any way. When I graduated from AFF, my FJC instructor told me soberly (but jokingly) that she had talked to my AFF 8 instructor and was pretty sure I hadn't passed. I just smiled and asked if what she was really telling me was that she didn't want any beer. My point is that while I'm sure there are mean skydivers out there, in my very limited experience I've found that when most skydivers make fun of you, it's in fun, and I take it as a sign that I've been accepted (at least somewhat ). Could that be what's happening at your DZ?

Failure is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, optimism doesn't always pan out. I think what might be helpful is to commit to some sort of time period in which you're just going to try really hard to work things out along the lines that the therapist will outline for y'all (and really do what the therapist suggests, even if it sounds like it shouldn't make any difference how you phrase certain things or whatever). Something like 6 months or a year or something. During that time, try your damnedest. If, after that, it's still not working, you'll have given it your best shot, and can move on. But who knows, maybe it'll work out.

Check the prices at: http://skyventurecolorado.com/index.php?page=210 Considering most places charge between $200 and $300 for 15 minutes, I'd be EXTREMELY surprised to find somewhere that would charge you $12 an HOUR for wind tunnel. Not unless that hour included only 1 minute of flying time, and 59 minutes of video watching (and even then, I think that would be cheap).

Being a newbie, I've only had one skydiving dream. I've taken the plane ride up, when word comes that winds are too high, and I can't jump (this has happened to me twice). So I ride the plane down. Except, for some reason, I wind up sitting on the tail of the plane (outside), hanging on. As we descend, it occurs to me that I don't remember if someone turned my AAD off. But I'm afraid to turn around and look, because I'm afraid I'll accidentally let go, and fall off the plane. So I sit there and prepare myself for a reserve fire to pull me off the plane, and go over what I should do if that happens. And then I wake up. Not very exciting, I know, but there ya go.