pchapman

WTF? How in the world? Leaving that aside, I have some old PISA info, see attached. You may be able to derive the needed info from the seemingly odd way it lists brake settings, relative to the A/B/C/D lines. EDIT: I may have misunderstood your wording. You're probably talking about the mark for the toggles, where one forms a loop. Not that there's no brake eye at all.

The Calvin & Hobbes explanation, for anyone who hasn't seen it:

To be fair to bigots, he isn't technically threatening, saying HE would do the job...just that some people out there might want to do that job. But yeah, there is always the possibility of a vague, veiled threat. "Gee, it sure would be awfully sad if someone decides to make you disappear...[chuckle]."

That's a well thought through list Chuck. I would make a couple minor changes and I'm sure everyone would have their own variants. 3. Get top notch gear, maintain it properly, and equip yourself with the best technology 3. Get gear that is safe for the mission, and maintain it properly. (You don't need fancy new expensive shit. Although that makes it easier. A brand new rig will have fewer limitations than a Vector II. A Vector II may be perfectly fine for some things, but would be more dangerous in a newbies hands, since he may not know all the caveats.)(Certainly there are differing opinions on what you "should" have these days "to be safe". RSL? MARD?) 8a. If you choose to do something intentionally more dangerous, make sure you are doing it as safely as possible in the circumstances. (e.g., CRW is more dangerous than not doing CRW. So learn to do it properly if that's what you want to do.) 8b. Even if risking yourself, don't risk others who aren't involved. (e.g., take a chance with yourself if you want, but don't take off the tail of the airplane or hit someone else in freefall or under canopy. Jumping with a 3rd canopy being deployed from a shopping bag? Sure! But make sure it isn't going to get loose in the door and endanger everyone else.)(DZO's may have a more risk averse feeling on this though, as these days they get all picky about people dying on their DZ's)

Yeah, I guess it would get tougher to get upside down with smaller canopies and shorter risers and some body sizes. It can take a couple tries to swing one's legs up into the risers. I have at 6'1" and 155lb hung upside down on my Sabre 135 with 22" risers but even light pressure with feet on the risers does start it turning so it is pretty finicky. It's only when flying a 'boat' of a canopy that it becomes a bit safer. Attached are a couple pics under larger canopies, I think with big 24" risers. (Fun and all but still not a normal response to a flip through.)

Yeah, probably normally not a good idea. Maybe if you already have experience with hanging upside down in your harness, and know how touchy your canopy is if feet press on risers. Unlikely to be on any official list of steps to consider. But I have seen a buddy undo a flip-through under canopy. I don't know how you would do a front flip, but a back flip is doable if that's the direction needed.

I see that even The Onion humour site supports your observations DirtyChai:

I also find your posts useful, whether or not I always fully agree. Hearing about a little digging into a subject is interesting. Sometimes people out there jump to conclusions. (It is funny though, given the polarization politically in the US, just seeing someone waving a US flag, that can now trigger a reaction, "Oh one of those whacko ultranationalist right wing nuts!"... when it's just the country's flag and could be anyone.)

It sort of goes with the territory. Occasionally it might be to scare newbies but if so, I usually find it to be part of a safety related discussion and not out of meanness. There's a lot to be learned from all the scary tales. Admittedly if one is a newbie it may take some digging to figure out just what the lesson really is, to what degree something was due to bad decisions or just bad luck. (E.g., if someone relates their tale of nearly getting injured on an off-landing, it doesn't mean one should always try to make a beeline for the DZ. Off-landings have hazards, but sometimes planning one early is a much smarter idea than maybe barely making it back onto the DZ grass, which can also injure or kill people.) Part of being told about bad stuff is that it is just telling a tale -- an exciting "war story" so to speak. Skydiving has given me all sorts of tales. Although they are best when nobody actually gets hurt, a tale sounds scarier if something bad happens. It happens here too on DZ; people like sharing their stories. If someone asks about how to do night jumps, they'll get some good info, plus some scary tales. Which may still have some learning value even if they are outliers. For non-skydivers, it is a problem when someone has little info on a subject. You mention skydiving, and the only thing skydiving that pops to mind is, "Hey, didn't some girl die in Ontario in a skydiving accident?" So if you don't want to risk that kind of conversation and want to tell them to shut up, then you pretty much have to do the same and avoid sounding like, "I'm super excited about being into this cool sport (that's probably cooler than anything you do)". If you want other jumpers to be better ambassadors for the sport and be a little more supportive, then you should also try to be more patient with the whuffos and their comments and questions. Even if they sound like dumbasses. Which we all are, when it comes to things we don't know about. Oh, did I tell you, I was once on a load where a guy I knew died? As they used to say more often, blue skies, black death!

Interesting style of parachute. In that second post's link, once can see that the canopy is effectively 7 round canopies all put together -- six hexagonally around a 7th. I've only seen that once before, in a paragliding reserve that was developed at least a decade back. Since the distance from apex to lower edge is small, making the canopy 'flat', inflation is very quick.

I'm no big time rigger so this is just from a few I happen to have seen, with no inside knowledge of what UPT built: Generally there are no huge changes or bulletins requiring a major retrofit or anything. -- Probably better padding now. Not just modern fancy spacer foam stuff but I have seen some early V III's (thru say '89? later?) with poorer padding internally such as in the leg pads and over the shoulders. Crappy stuff that wears out. Only later did they start using better stuff like on Sigma tandem rigs. -- Some early V III's had additional hard inserts in the reserve side flaps I think, along the edges of the flaps down to the bottom corners. Only saw that once. Rare? Maybe something about still refining certain patterns early on?? (Anyone else remember that?) -- I remember one V III from '99 that had leg hardware that got a bit slippery. Maybe just that rig. Might have been some hardware they only used for a shorter time. (Solution wasn't even to start sewing layers on the leg straps but just to wrap gaffer's tape on the slippery hardware, even if it had to be renewed occasionally.) -- Yeah the main closing loop location. It was very deliberately unlike the Vector II, changed to the bottom flap for many years ... Until they changed back to the V II location. Opinions change. -- Skyhook as has been said. Plus the associated Collins lanyard. Plus the staging bungee that came after the Skyhook came. -- One bulletin on stitching in the shoulder area of the reserve tray. Again from limited experience, it tended not to be a problem on medium sized rigs, and any problem is slow to develop. But the stitching can be inspected at repack time and can be upgraded by a rigger (although damn awkward to get the rig under the machine).

Sorry, no time for writing a master's thesis on the subject, after which you would say, "hmm, I still need more proof". You've sucked me in enough into this. So to end my involvement in this, I'll just leave you with one peer reviewed journal article that sticks more to clearly identified voter turnout than less verifiable opinions on causes. Still, no one paper is the end of all discussion and certainly won't be for you. The Transformation of the Southern Democratic Party Merle Black Emory University THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 66, No. 4, November 2004, Pp. 1001–1017 (a reputable journal published by the U. of Chicago press) Cheers. EDIT: We also may have that issue that you could say you're not arguing the point I'm arguing about, that we're arguing slightly different things. It is pretty clear that the Democrats were the ones who went with the civil rights movement more than the Republicans, and so lost the south.

Plenty of printed history is at least partially online. Here you go: E.g. "The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944" from the U of Alabama Press, by a U. of Alabama at Birmingham prof, 2013. (Yeah, some pinko America hater I'm sure.) In his epilogue about the post war era he is fairly damning -- the federal Democratic party was leaving old ideas about economic and racial domination behind, leaving the south to turn more to the more welcoming Republican party. (excuse any OCR errors) (Of course when Gowler wrote "they all became Republicans", he didn't mean every single one, 100.000% of them did.)

You are wrong as history does matter. Then let me restate: Yes history does matter. But you misstate the implications, so "your history" doesn't matter. The fact that some "Democrats" with now-distasteful ideas existed 50 to 150 years ago, has little bearing on the policies of the "Democrats" or their party today. (Although those ideas have somewhat more influence on the practices of the Republican party in attempting to win support.)

I wonder how you would be as a politician in Europe. Angela Merkel says something you don't agree with. You respond, "But you people were all Nazis! Your country, your cities were full of Nazis!" And anything Merkel says, you reply "But ... Nazis!" Um, ok, Nazis were around at one time as an organized force. Although basically no living politician was one, and Merkel's Germany doesn't support Nazi ideology at all. So your answers wouldn't relate in any way to the present or help move anything forward, and would just be blindly obstructionist. (So if you want to mention Dixiecrats as a history lesson, fine, but it has basically nothing to do with the current political situation.)

The Trap System packing instructions are half way down their Downloads page: http://miragesys.com/downloads/ (Although it is a little odd that downloadable logos are at the top and manuals are at the bottom of the page. No biggie.) These days I would guess any rig's value will be increased by having a MARD, to an extent that makes the cost for that option worthwhile. Not to mention its actual usefulness in skydiving. (I don't have any knowledge of how the Trap is doing in service though.)

I think that may be a bit of an overreach. I don't like Trump at all. But still, for Trump to say the 'book is true' is a very general statement, and doesn't mean that he therefore considers every statement in it to be correct, or that he even remembers that particular statement. For me personally I'll leave that 'laziness' statement off in the far corners of uncertainty. There are bookloads of other nasty things about him that are certainly true.

God works in mysterious ways! Yes one should always reload the thread in another window before posting. But it is still handy to see to what degree people agree!

Yes, religion is something common in just about any culture, a source of comfort, and a way the brain tries to cope with things like death or "how did we get here". Much as you say, as an atheist, one might also think of how a departed relative might now be thinking of oneself, as if they still existed somewhere. It can be comforting and help one get through the stresses of life. It will have placebo power. One might even say that a little insanity (believing in fake things) helps keep one sane. But you don't have to be stupid and actually believe in unicorns or gods or dead people being alive on some other plane. One can be intelligent enough to split the comforting thoughts from the reality. (Religion has the stick as well as the carrot -- threats of eternal damnation and all that in some cases. Some Christians wonder how atheists can have a proper moral code. But really, it just shows their own weakness. Atheist to Christian: "So, are you saying you are 'good' only because God is going to punish you later if you aren't? Isn't that like a kid saying he isn't going to beat up a smaller kid.... only because his big brother will beat him up when he finds out?") And one doesn't have to buy into the very specific doctrines of a particular religion, or spend one's time trying to interpret some books cobbled together over a thousand years ago, or follow some established church structure. Those religious types, they sure do like to argue about the details and can't seem to agree on among themselves what the correct religion is. Which gods are the real ones, if everyone is convinced their gods exist? Edit: I now see wolfriverjoe has posted some similar thoughts -- there may be some benefits from religious belief, but it doesn't mean it is true.

Aww hell. "Flare when you hear the crickets" - his sig line back in the rec.skydiving days

Here's what I have scanned from some Reflex document ... with my notes trying to clarify it all for myself ... no guarantees of accuracy!

Good point --Using paraglider terminology, pulling that middle riser would be doing a B-line stall. So yeah one could do a turn that way. If both middle risers are pulled, the B-line stall is symmetrical, the canopy stays square but is dropping in a stalled configuration. More fun for up high. The canopy also had a tight recovery arc. I found an old outside video of me doing something like a 720 toggle spiral really low, and flaring out of it to landing: https://youtu.be/Ty5hl5Hq4vo

I'm not defending the guy, just trying to figure out his reasoning. From the pics: The pin is slightly curved on its 'inside' against the loop The outside though is completely flat, until the pin has been extracted enough for the tapered tip to drop down into the grommet. So it looks like it has to lever up the loop until it gets dragged out, tip pressing on and dragging against the grommet. Now the ad does mention it is made for light closing loop tension -- so I guess it is expected to lever up the loop. I'm guessing he figures that a little awkward levering and scraping against a modern stainless grommet is acceptable and works with slightly lighter loop tension. I'm not sure that scraping is good, and it might also put a lot of sudden stress on the loop and lead to loop damage. Meanwhile the lack of overall curvature on the device is supposed to the chance of pushing it out of the loop just by pressing up against the pack. (For our curved pins, we rely on it to flip or rotate easily, being hard to push a highly curved pin out.) After all, other straight pins like pullout pins or reserve pins are less likely to be pushed out. Still, they can be pushed out if the cover over them isn't solid and the pressure is in just the right spot. This Coffin Nail thing is thicker, so might be 'grabbed' more easily, but on the other hand has the scooped out part where the loop sits so that reduces the chance of it sliding out. It might actually take a fair bit of force to push it out! (Straight reserve pins do get pushed out sometimes, but might be more susceptible to sliding out because of their up-down orientation which is the direction force is applied if someone slumps down against a bulkhead or something. It is harder to apply strong side to side forces on a closing pin.)

Hmm, not sure. Guess I'd start with medium speed openings, taking a moderate delay. The closing-pin-on-a-cord bridle is something that has been used in CRW so an experienced CRW jumper might help for having a look at that. Should be ok but I'm not experienced with them.

Here's the ad for the Evolution in the 1990-1991 ParaGear catalogue. ParaFlight was big on detail and data.