ghost47

X is the price of the item 0.0825X is the price of the tax We know that X + 0.0825X = $1,500 X is the same as 1X (1 times anything is itself) Therefore 1X + 0.0825X = $1,500 Or (1+0.0825)X = $1,500 Or 1.0825X = $1,500 Or X = $1,500 / 1.0825

This was discussed a while ago in a semantic debate over the terms "hard deck" and "decision altitude." It seems to me that you are conflating the two when you don't have to. In my mind, a "decision altitude" is the altitude at which you decide to chop if you do not have a landable canopy. I think 2000 feet is a fine altitude for that. But a "hard deck" is the altitude at which chopping becomes dangerous, because your reserve may not inflate in time. After you reach your hard deck, and you still have an unlandable canopy, you fire your reserve to get more material over your head, and hope for the best. In my opinion, 2000 feet is much too high for a hard deck. I'd pick something like 1000 feet.

For an O exit, you have three outside: Outside Center is toward the front of the plane, Tail is in the middle, and Inside Center is in the back. Point is in a two-way with OC, IC has a sidebody on Point and is head-jammed, and Tail has his left hand on OC's leg, and his right hand on the bar. On exit, Tail takes OC's arm. At least, that's how I remember doing it. Most rookie teams I know use H. It's a pretty stable exit, and, as long as tail leaves more or less at the correct time, it's hard to funnel.

Everything you described, have you not also seen that with younger students? For example, I can think of a 26 year-old who had a hard pull, and struggled with it until the Cypres fired. Or a 40ish jumper who just never quite got the hang of RW (though, admittedly, this jumper was aware of her shortcomings). It seems that age-related mental decline is a thing, and if a non-jumper suffers from it, that's definitely something to take into account. But I'm not sure the things you describe are specifically caused by age.

Google Jim Hickey skydiver

If out-of-court settlements became illegal, you would need to increase the court budget by about 5000%. 98% of civil cases settle. Also, it currently takes about a year or more to get to trial in California. If you made every case that settled go to trial, then I'm betting if you filed suit tomorrow, if you're lucky, you might get a trial date before you died. Last, if I know that it will take you fifty years to get to trial after you sue me because I tricked you out of some money, do you think this will make me more or less likely to steal money from you?

Um, I would re-read this thread. That's not true at all. To the OP: Obviously you can jump without owning either a jumpsuit or a rig, because you've done it at least 30 times now. In my opinion, if you're going to seriously learn how to belly fly, I'd first get a custom jumpsuit with booties. Assuming you learn how to use your booties, your dives will be more successful, and you'll progress faster. Plus, easier to learn how to use them now, before you develop too many habits without using them. While you're developing your belly skills, you will also be learning canopy skills, and by the time you've saved up for a rig, hopefully you'll be at a comfortable parachute size that you can stay on for at least a few hundred jumps.

Well, my desire to impress you aside, I do think it's useful to have a term for the altitude at which you will no longer cut away a malfunctioning main, but will just deploy the reserve. Further, I think it's useful to have a predetermined altitude in mind, and not just decide as you're plummeting towards the earth. So, in my mind, my decision altitude is 1800 feet (with allowable variances). My hard deck (which I hope to never reach) is 1000 feet. If you don't like "hard deck", what term would you suggest to replace it?

I haven't listened to the podcast, so if they do actually suggest this, then I agree with you. But it seems to me that this is again a confusion of the terms of "hard deck" and "decision altitude." The decision altitude is the altitude by which, if we have no landable canopy, we perform EPs. The SIM recommends (Section 5.1.E.4) that, for B, C, and D license holders, this altitude be no lower than 1800 feet. So, by 1800 feet, if you have a malfunctioning canopy (as opposed to no canopy) that you cannot land, you should cut it away and deploy your reserve. But there is another predetermined altitude known as the hard deck. This is the altitude at which cutting away is likely to do more harm than good, because you're cutting away whatever drag the malfunctioning canopy is giving you (thereby increasing your speed towards the earth), but not giving your reserve enough time to deploy, and thus, by cutting away, you're likely to impact the earth at an unsurvivable speed. In those situations, your best bet is to deploy the reserve without cutting away on the theory that: (a) maybe it deploys cleanly; or (b) at the very least, more fabric out is better than less fabric out. Now, WHAT that hard deck should be I don't think there's a recommendation (I've commonly heard 1000 feet, and that's what my own hard deck is). And I do think there's room for debate about whether the hard deck should be lowered because of Skyhooks (probability of skyhook failing versus probability of unsurvivable impact when you fire a reserve into a malfunctioning main). There's potentially even room for debate about how rigidly we should stick to decision altitudes and hard decks (e.g., if I'm kicking out of my last line twist at 1800 feet, do I cut away, or finish kicking out? If I'm at 975 feet when I decide I can't land my canopy, do I cut away, or just fire the reserve?). But I don't think anybody is suggesting hard decks of 1,800 feet. At least, I hope not.

First opinion is talk to your instructors, and likely go with their opinion. Second opinion is from personal experience: I did not get a jumpsuit with booties until somewhere between 100 and 200 jumps. I did have to re-learn how to fly with them. Booties make the lower part of your legs a lot more powerful. What you can get away with without booties (not having your feet symmetrical, for example) will not work with booties. Far from hampering your ability to learn to fly, I think they will force you to have better body position to avoid flying in circles. So, if you intend to use booties at some point, then I would start using them as soon as you either get your license, or are cleared by your instructors to do so.

For an education. if a lawyer wants to establish that someone acted below a certain standard of care, first (s)he must understand what that standard of care is. One way of at least getting a background idea is frequenting or even posting on forums that skydivers frequent.

Here's the method I've always used: If you have a 1% chance of dying, that means you have a 99% chance of living. So what are the odds of living after one jump? 99%. Two jumps? 99% * 99%. Three jumps? 99% * 99% * 99%. Etc. After 100 jumps you'll get 36.6% chance of living. That means, after 100 jumps, you have a 63.4% chance of dying. That's of course assuming that you have a 1% chance of dying. If, instead, you have a 0.001% chance of dying each jump (1 out of 100,000), then you have a 99.999% chance of living. Over 10,000 jumps, you get 90.48% chance of living. Which means 9.52% chance of dying. Disclaimer: I haven't taken a math class, or significantly used math in my life, for close to 20 years. So I could be wrong. ETA: However, once you get to the 9,999 jump, your odds of dying on Jump 10,000 would still be 0.001%. As would be true with any other jump you do.

So, by your method, if every time you jump you have a 1% chance of dying, then the probability of dying in 100 jumps is 1% x 100 = 100%? To illustrate why that's wrong: What are the odds, when you flip a coin, that you get heads? 50%, right? So if you flip a coin twice, what are the odds that you get heads at least once? (Hint, it's not 2 x 50% = 100%.)

Before following this advice, make sure that an Optimum 176 would actually FIT in this rig, along with a 170 main.

Last Saturday, a guy at my DZ jumping his new rig for the first time had a reserve ride because he was unable to pull his main. It was the first jump on his new rig. The new rig also had a freefly pud as opposed to a hackey. So prior to freefall and being under canopy, make sure you practice extracting the freefly pud, as the motion is a bit different than extracting a hackey.

Assuming you are not a ChrisD clone: 1. Pinchecks can be (and are) done both before and after getting on the plane. A teammate of mine had me check his pin before every jump, around 11,000 or so. 2. What does a pincheck have to do with routing a chest strap incorrectly?

I could be wrong, but I have never encountered someone who purposely misrouted their chest strap as some sort of convenience while putting their gear on. It's happened to me twice. Once I caught it myself on a gear check around 10,000 feet, and once someone else caught it for me before boarding. Neither time did I mean to do it half-way --- both times, I simply messed up.

Skydivers, while they are mostly a welcoming bunch in my experience, are also just a subsection of people in general. As such, you'll have nice people, snobby people, assholes, etc. However, you've mentioned that you work in a hospital. What would your reaction be if someone posted in some hospital forum: "My wife is giving birth soon. I'd like to do my own amnio at home. I've figured out what supplies I'll need, but am unsure how to sterilize the needle. Can someone recommend whether I should use boiling water or something else?" I imagine you might, politely or not, explain that you are not allowed to do an amnio on your own. Imagine further that this person replies, "I don't see the harm in doing this myself, but I guess not everyone has as steady a hand as me, or my commitment to cleanliness." Now, imagine that you get this question not infrequently. Whether right or not, can you see why some skydivers may start answering in a less polite manner? Another way to approach the question might have been: "I'm thinking of doing a tandem soon, and would like to record the experience using a gopro mounted on a helmet that I would wear. Do you think this would be permitted? If not, can someone explain the dangers involved? I don't know anything about skydiving, and would like to learn. Thanks!" I imagine that would generate a different sort of response from most skydivers than your original query did.

I would think for the same reason someone with 100 jumps starts giving advice to anyone and everyone -- they like to be looked up to. They think they know more than they do, and they don't believe that what they're saying may injure or kill someone. It's even easier over the Internet, where the potential injured / dead aren't faces, but just posts on a message board.

This may be an inapplicable comment, but, since it happened to me, I thought I'd make it anyway, just in case: On my first jump in my G3, I had the same issue -- everything looked distorted through the lens after I opened. I had to flip it up just to make sure I was seeing everything correctly. I mentioned this to some buddies after I came in, and said that maybe I needed to get a new visor. One of them looked at it --- and peeled a thin plastic film off my visor that Cookie had placed there to protect it from damage while shipping. Ya. Embarrassing. But it totally solved the problem.

The point is, advice from a non-jumper who refuses to disclose what experience -- if any -- he has in our sport is worth very little to me (or, I suspect, anyone else). It would be like me giving advice on how best to perform open-heart surgery. So, given that you have now refused, twice, to disclose what experience you have, I assume you have little to no experience with skydiving, and therefore will weight your posts and advice accordingly.

I think you've avoided the direct questions I've asked. I'll ask them again: Do you jump? If so, where? How long have you jumped for? How many jumps have you made?

This makes me wonder whether you are a jumper at all. The facebook page I posted (which came up when I googled the phone number in the craigslist ad) went to "Square 1 Jewelry". Most jumpers I know would recognize the name "Square 1." Then again, maybe that's just a west coast thing. So, direct questions: do you jump? If so, where? How long have you jumped for? How many jumps have you made?

FWIW, if you google the number associated with the ad, you get a link to: https://www.facebook.com/Square1Jewelry?filter=2 Which lends some legitimacy to the idea that the person selling the rig is associated with skydiving.

Apologies for the hijack. I doubt I'm a better skydiver than you, but I do jump at Elsinore. Line of flight of the plane is pretty much always towards the lake or away from the lake, so it's not that hard to remember.