Snowflake

This is nothing new. Steve has been moving towards this for at least 5 years. The owners knew this when they bought the place. He's had electricity run for part of it for years. You can see the transformers when you drive in. There will still be plenty of outs.

SoFPiDaRF official answer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ZodAzECeU

No prob

That is Ray. You can PM me your info and I will forward it to him.

Classic!!! So, you guys are all hanging out in front of manifest window signing and waiting on the plane. Carrie the manifest chick opens the window and says 'time to load head on out there.', and shuts the window I start snickering, and tell everyone at the table to watch this and point at Carrie. You guys continue your discussion. Carrie opens the window again and in an exasperated voice yells "time to load". She stares at you guys with a what in the fuck is wrong with you look. I and the rest of the table are rolling by now, but I manage to tell her that they'll never hear you, so yell as loud as you want. At which point in time she caught a clue along with a number of compliments on her intelligence. and got one of ya'lls attention visually

Looks like someone might be a little bit high... Oops. Yeah, that should have read "then drugs are not as good as skydiving." And this seems to be an admission that drugs screw up your brain, and therefore supports my position that it's not good public relations to describe skydiving to the general public as being "like drugs". The drugs we're talking about are of two types. Illegal drugs are considered a bad idea by a large majority of the public, and therefore we don't want to equate skydiving to that. Prescription drugs are highly controlled and can only be taken with a doctor's permission, and are therefore something that is only done as an absolute medical necessity, and not just for recreation - making them also a bad analogy for skydiving. I suggest that we need to use some other way to describe the joys of skydiving, rather than comparing them to drugs. Common American phrases: I'm addicted to x. I'm a/an x junkie. x= activity of your choice Have you seen my crackberry? So, what the fuss?

i found a new sig line! You sir are a shit stirrer!

Up and back eh? Get some lessons (not joking) BTW, I'm over 40 by 6 years as of this writing. +1 the only reason you would even kind of need to put your arms behind your torso is to compensate for leaning forward with your torso. The only reason you would need your arms above your torso is to speed up and there are other ways to compensate for that. Ive had both my shoulders come out of socket more times then I can count. A normal person would have had surgery by now, but for some reason I manage to rehab out of it, although I do have a lot of scar tissue and other damage visible on MRI and X-ray.

That's why I always have a pull up chord in my container. If i land out I can stuff my canopy and lines in the container and close it. That makes it easier to traipse through Treacherous territory and avoid snagging my canopy or lines. Plus I have my hands free in case I have to crawl over under or through obstacles.

First I'd check with a rigger and Atom or whoever manufactures the container. My experience with a wings sized for a 170 is that I could put a 135 in it. I jumped it with the 135 for 2 or 3 years and had no problems. That being said you have a different container so check with a rigger or Atom for a more definitive answer.

Actually Lisa we don't disagree at all. Lets take AZ for instance. The main landing area is one of two ways. If for some very strange reason everybody landed towards the buildings I would land out. On the other hand at SSM I would follow the majority unless it got to freaky in which case I'd land out. I try to practice "when in Rome...." when I'm at a non local DZ. Personally I don't care to much about wind direction or speed if it's under 15-20 mph

Your contradicting yourself. If everyone else on the loads pattern is 90 degrees to the predetermined landing pattern the safest thing to do is to follow them. Otherwise you have people landing in different directions. Let me put it this way. Use the predetermined landing pattern unless everyone before you lands in a different direction. Edit to add that I made no mention of wind direction or landing into the wind.

AT SSM the ticket you signed when you dropped of your rig, said that if the rig was left for more than 90 days they would use it as rental gear. After being there for more then two years some guy came back and picked up his rig, which was my favorite rental rig at the time.

I would agree except he said that the other jumpers were landing facing west. To me first person down sets the landing pattern trumps a predetermined landing pattern.

Here's a thought if you use the type of bag Phree was talking about. Leave in a 2 way connected exit with the person who has the bag. Then all you have to do is reach over and either pull the top or pull the handle of his arm and then pull the top. I have the pics from exit to deployment if you want to see what it looked like. I had maybe 70 jumps and 8 months in the sport and it went of without a hitch. All you have to do is fly a 2 way exit.

Funkadelic!!!!! Eddie Hasel(RIP) and Michael Hampton were/are two very under rated guitarists and when they played hard they did not fuck around . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXq4GlHgROQ It's not a song it's a journey

Doesn't bigger and smaller need to be defined better? In your example the "smaller" person would fall faster if he/she masses the same or more then the "bigger" person. The mass for the smaller person could actually be a little less than the big person, but I don't know the math. Now lets say the bigger person has a mass that's twice that of the smaller person. Then the bigger person would fall faster. You have to account for the density of the falling objects. To put it another way. A ton of bricks will fall faster than a ton of feathers. Unless you constrict the size of the feathers down to the same size as the bricks. Don't know if that helps. I'm sure someone who understands physics will come along and unmuddy the water.

Is that where the 20 year lifespan that some countries have came from?

***3) BASE rigs are packed without a slider for "low" stuff and with a slider for delays above 4+ ish seconds - its not the gear (so much) that determines the opening speed, its whether a slider is used or not. *** Are you sure about that? Although I don't BASE. I thought it was slider up for terminal or long delay jumps and slider down for short no delay jumps. I don't recall ever seeing a BASE rig open without the slider somewhere. Just my .02

Were they Velcro keepers? Is it possible people weren't used to setting brakes back then? Do you even set brakes on a round? I ask the latter because if people weren't in the habit before they upgraded to square. They might forget if their in a rush. Just a thought. I had riggers look at my keepers. I Put slider bumpers on. When I did replace the risers the Mfg found no apparent problems. I don't know if they put jumps on them to try and determine the problem, but I haven't had a break fire since they were replaced. The guy who bought my container has had no problems either.

None of the above. You proclaimed a design error that puts users in mortal danger 10% of the time a minor flaw. Either that was a very bad attempt at humor or you're quite suicidal, in any case please remind me not to take gear advice from you. Could you be a any more melodramatic? Mortal danger? I had 20 or so misfires and I'm still here. I had no problem unstowing the other brake thereby getting my self out of mortal peril...lol. I'm glad I didn't realize how much peril I was in or I would have freaked out and the lord only knows what would have happened then. As far as gear advice I offered none. Also, I would never dream of offering advice to such a knowledgeable and experienced skydiver like yourself. Remind me that I never want to jump with or meet you in person. Your much too smart for me.

And that's what you call minor design flaw? 10% of openings resulting in brake fire? Did i stutter or write in a foreign language?

I've Had 2 brake fires resulting in reserve rides. I had the risers replaced and the problem disappeared. I can't remember if they changed the design, but I'm on my second wings container 3rd set of risers and still no problems. Could have been a minor design flaw, because every 10th jump I had a misfire before I changed my risers. My .02

I would have bought a new container and everything else used if I hadn't gotten such a great deal on my complete rig. I downsized from the 170 the container was sized for to a 150 and then a 135. No problems except I didn't like the the aesthetics of the rig with a 135. I almost had more jumps with the 135 then all the other canopies combined. I also had several riggers look at it because I didn't like the way it looked with the 135. None of them indicated that I had any issues with the 135 configuration

Interesting. I have been "slamming" my canopy down in front of me since right after I got my first canopy. After my forward motion stops and I have my feet firmly on the ground. I reach up behind the rear risers, just below the lines. I push on the risers while bending at the waist and I'm done. Seemed like the simplest solution at the time. The one drawback is that when I want to kite I have to make a VERY conscious effort not to "slam" my canopy down when I land.