outrager

Yo! There's quite a crew of skydivers/base jumpers doing rope access/NDT inspections on offshore oil rigs in UK and Europe in general. Now, is anybody working in this area on USA side of the pond? Drop me a line if you have any info on American specifics, will appreciate it! bsbd! Yuri, BASE416

Taken from FBA forum: "From GPS Track to subtitle": http://larve.free.fr/gpx2srt/Site/gpx2srt.html Looks like an awesome toy for wingsuit base. Check out the video on that page to get a quick idea.

Any kid who played a real-time strategy game knows that you must control as much of the world's scarce resources as you can. It might be spice, or it might be oil...

Yes. Political reasons aside, the immediate cause of the war was heavy shelling by Georgia of Tshinvali (the capital of South Osetia) and villages in the area, followed by Georian forces invading Tshinvali. In the process they have killed lots of civilians (most are Russian citizen) and a dozen of Russian peacekeepers. This would push any nation to respond, even without a political underlining. On a political scene, in a nutshell, US and Russia are fighting over control of Georgia. Very much like Yugoslavia and Kosovo, with sides reversed.

From Pressurized web site: "For flexibility reasons, Team Air Paranoia uses mostly helicopters to launch BASE jumps from."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/01/bush.poll/index.html WASHINGTON DC (CNN) -- A new poll suggests that President Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history. art.bush2.ap.jpg A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll shows 71 percent disapprove of President Bush's job performance. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president. "No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Holland said. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952." While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn't until the Truman years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings. CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, "He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974." President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent Don't Miss * Bush pushes 3 nations on nuclear issue The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68 percent opposed it. "Americans are growing more pessimistic about the war," Holland said. "In January, nearly half believed that things were going well for the U.S. in Iraq; now that figure has dropped to 39 percent." The numbers on the Iraq war come on the five-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he proclaimed that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." The record-low support for the war in a CNN poll could be one reason behind the president's unpopularity, but it probably is not the only one. "Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same -- bad," Schneider said. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted by telephone from Monday through Wednesday among 1,008 adult Americans. The poll's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

You should stop pulling the numbers out of your, errr, back door. 35mph is a ballpark for S3 and Vampires. Prodigy on skydives last year was measuring in 60mph avg range. Thinking about it, i never measured vertical on recent base flights. Vertical speed is a bit slower now - maybe Robi can time Kjerag flights from the video? That would also get a rough idea about horizontal speed. 2.0 is a glide from the best flight, average ones would be more like 1.7. That's plenty to fly over the bar at ITW, but not enough to make many of the other interesting sites. There's one feature that makes Prodigy a unique choice for some of the gnarliest sites, though: you can do a massive running exit, clearing huge ledges, and you can also safely pull very low.

No.

Did an exact replica of 2003 mushroom flight yesterday, pulling over the same house. This time checked the altitude precisely (by GPS instead of barometric) and it is 2075m, not 1950 as we thought earlier. So the 2k barrier has been broken already 4 years ago, and mushroom is still the highest - a bit over some other 2k flights opened recently. There is still 200m more to get here, and plenty of higher mountains to fly... bsbd! Yuri.

In BASE environment a standard practice is to pull in full flight. You get a clean deployment and do not loose any altitude. This method may not work very well with standard skydiving gear. bsbd! Yuri.

So far nothing even remotely close to any flight data?

Yo! Now that the season is almost half through, has anybody flown Rigor Mortis and Mach 1 in the mountains? I am quite interested in start and L/D data, if you have it please post or PM. bsbd! Yuri.

V2: zero wind, best flights from #1 were to the fence line past White House. 2.0km distance, 930m alt, pulling at 150m and substracting 100m for the start gives L/D of 2.9 (same as at ITW). As a side note, 6m/s tail wind adds about 300m distance or 0.5 L/D at this site Prodigy: #8 to LZ, 1.5km distance and 930m alt, pulling at 100+m, L/D comes to about 2.1. The wind is not a big factor at this site. bsbd! Yuri.

There were a few recent #s in the Hybrid thread. Better flights are pulling at about 500m over the road, 1750m distance/1200m total altitude. Will post more data when we fly bigger stuff. bsbd! Yuri.

Not exactly correct. It should be "V2s are speed and glide demons, M1 gives you a huge wing and is easy to fly at low vertical and horizontal speeds". Nothing can currently match V2 for glide, period. See perfomance in numbers and discussion in Stupino thread. bsbd! Yuri.

Birds are excluded! Other top fliers have improved a lot this year, so today Loic would have no chance in his old S-Fly. So, he just came out with Pro-Fly and he is the best that nobody can touch. Now if he was flying a Vampire.... oh my god! bsbd! Yuri.

If you'd like to see that, measure and post the numbers! BTW who are you talking about? 7 foot tall would suggest a huge wing span and consequetly a crazy L/D potential

This is the most ridiculous phrase i have ever read on this forum ROTFL He actually passed over you, but that is a minor detail Robi did 2 maxed-out flights in the 90 minutes before comp jump - that should have automatically disqualified him as a perfomance pilot for at least a couple of hours. It is impossible to fly this tired. You did not do these flights, and that makes a HUGE difference. All the talk about "everybody flocking all day" is pure BS for 2 reasons. One, the main factor, it is a short-term fatigue from those jumps immediately before the comp that makes a difference. Another, well, you should know the difference between a maxed-out entire flight and a flock freefall Anyway, guys, quit kidding yourself. Even if you put this particular race as a draw with each one winning 1 flight, the big picture is obvious: Jeff is the only guy flying M1 fairly well. On a good day, he managed to beat Robi on 1 flight and loose on one. Now i hate to say this, but as good a flyer Robi is, he is not representing Vampire perfomance at the moment! He is not in top physical form right now. There are now many pilots flying considerably better. Look at the Stupino results - and they do not even include top 3 (or more) flyers! Here is some math for you: the best 3 Vampire pilots i know presently fly at roughly 0.5 L/D better than Robi's (and yours) comp flights. That, Jeff, is a HUGE difference. If you look at an average between top 3 Vampire pilots (or top 5 if you wish) and top 3 or 5 M1 pilots, the difference will be closer to 1! It is incredibly big difference, and this is why you, Jeff, will NEVER post any perfomance numbers, so i am posting them for you. They are quite horrible, except for the freefall time (he he, he said fall. Argue all you want :) More math for you to interprete Stupino results and account for the wind: i have just made 5 or 6 flights at ITW with #4 at the table (just above Robi, equal perfomance). The true glide with base rig was consistently around 2.1..2.2. You can substract another bit (around .1...2) for skydiving rig and another bit for fatigue (2min instead for 45sec). This makes a very conservative estimate of about 2.0 (probably a bit less), and the rest - about .6 - was the wind. As a side note on "its a pilot", this #4 kid has about 15 flights on V1 and about 35 total WS jumps, combined base and skydiving

AFAIK on a first fresh flight Robi outflew everybody by a margin. When Jeff outflew Robi on a final jump, it was Robis 3rd flight in a copule of hours - i personally would be absolutely wasted after 2 maxed flights and couldn't fly at all on the 3rd. This was simply not fair. bsbd! Yuri.

Why am i not surprized? Does this finally settle the best gliding suit debate? bsbd! Yuri.

Can anybody post which suits were used by, lets say, top 10? bsbd! Yuri.

I use 38 with normal canopy and 36 with Trango. More data on the new rig: Measured V2/Hybrid LD+/Trango combo on an average flight at ITW. Was open under canopy at 440m after crossing the road (Neptune MSL numbers, looking at display after opening, substracting LZ MSL, and crosschecked with my GPS). It means pull at 500m+ (Trango opens slowish). Dont even want to post the glide ratio as it sounds ridiculous Exit to the road is 1220m alt and 1750m distance by GPS. New rig makes a big difference on Prodigy flights as well, crossed the road at about 300m on the last ITW Prodigy flight. bsbd! Yuri.

Robi's interview: http://dnevnik.hr/naslovnica/vijesti/hrvatska/20070525_17794_50300.php The wall is 6sec vertical, then huge ledge and small talles into the water. Exit to water is 240m, or about 8sec. With a good run, good flight and pulling exactly in 1sec window you can just make it Prodigy rules!!! bsbd! Yuri.

Another quick update on Trango fabric for your peace of mind. I wanted to see how water landings would affect the canopy, so while we were at Stane's place we got a new piece of the light-weight fabric wet, abused and then sun-dried 3 times in a row and then tested for permeability. It increased, naturally, but still remained much lower than that of a couple of regular used base canopies laying around, including my own Troll.

Quick update: the rig definitely makes a noticeable difference in L/D. Got open over the bar at ITW at what must've been USPA legal altitude yesterday It has also performed very well on some tight sites in Spain. Waiting for the snow to melt on higher grounds...