3mpire

Condoms are 98% effective at preventing pregnancy. Just sayin'

Where did you get that statistic? I'm not flaming, just curious. I often have these types of conversations with people and having real numbers like that is hard because I'm not aware of reliable, centralized stats. If you know of a resource I'd really be interested in checking it out

Are you for real? i don't think you're for real. This is an epic troll lol

I learned on SL so hop and pops was basically my first 12 jumps and to-date are one of my favorite jumps to make (the lower the better ) Forgive my ignorance about AFF, but isn't exit stability a criteria for passing a jump, and if so, what is the definition of "stable" that is applied? In my progression leaving the aircraft with a stable arch and doing practice rip-cord pulls was THE criteria for getting off the SL, and even then a few more where I actually pulled before I was given the reward of full altitude having demonstrated I can exit and pull. If in AFF you are evaluated on your exit and you exit poorly then you shouldn't be progressing, right? By the time you get to a hop & pop, exiting should be an existing skill in the student's tool set? I know I can read the SIM to see what the text says but I guess what I'm interested in is an AFFI's perspective on what they look for in exits since so much of that can be subjective? Is there any reason why we shouldn't expect a student to exit in such a way that they could deploy within 5-10 seconds no matter what their altitude?

or a not-every-day-hula-hoop for night jumps ;) http://www.astralhoops.com/

Don't remember the jump number, but as I was stepping over a tandem student's leg I lost my footing and fell out of the door. Logbook entry said: "fell out of the goddamn plane" So now I tell people I've jumped out of a plane x times and fell out once.

best answer to this question yet. this should be a sticky.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/balloon-girl-minimyth.htm According to this 500 party balloons lifts 7lbs.

i'm pretty sure he's missing a few gopros. I couldn't see any in the first shot and only one in the second. he has so much real-estate to work with there, especially since he doesn't have handles visible so there's even MORE room for gopros.

I knew that people have done this--a skydiver in minnesota did this at a state fair once for a fundraiser. but i never knew people did true cross country flights. not like a pull and clear at 13k cross country but like a general aviation cross country leaving the state type deal! central oregon to montana is hundreds of miles

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018708922_apuslawnchairballoonists.html Two men flying matching lawn chairs suspended by helium-filled party balloons over Central Oregon last weekend said Tuesday they were floating along peacefully at 14,000 feet when thunderstorms grabbed control of their homemade craft like a giant hand. "It was so nice, so beautiful, so peaceful," for the first three hours of the flight, said Iraqi adventurer Fareed Lafta, who joined lawn chair ballooning veteran Kent Couch in an attempt to fly from Couch's gas station in Bend, Ore., to Montana as a warm-up for a future flight over Iraq. "I remember I can hear the cow when they moo, the dogs. Everything was so peaceful and so nice. "Then we were in this thunderstorm." Couch said it was like some giant hand grabbed hold of their craft. "It felt like a wind just raced up and grabbed the balloons and just squeezed them," said Couch. "Ten of them popped at one time. It sounded like a string of firecrackers being let off. I would say that's probably where we felt threatened." Normally, shooting out one or two balloons would cause them to drop, but they were still ascending - fast. When they started to fall, they dropped ballast, but kept falling. "This makes no sense," said Lafta, a veteran pilot and skydiver. Couch said Lafta asked if they should jump with the parachutes they strapped on before climbing into their lawn chairs. "I said, `I don't want to jump,'" Couch said. "`I'm not ready to jump yet.' "By the time we got in our landing mode, I wished we would have jumped." They were buffeted for an hour and a half. With half their 800 pounds of ballast and nearly half their 350 balloons gone, Couch said they would never make it to Montana, a trip of some 400 miles. Flight by helium-filled party balloons is a constant process of releasing ballast and shooting out balloons, Couch said. "It was really, really dangerous for us," he said. "The best solution is to get down." The owner of a gas station and convenience store, Couch started flying lawn chairs in 2006, after seeing a TV show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters. After successfully flying to Idaho in 2008, Couch got an email from Lafta, inviting him to put together a tandem lawn chair for a flight over Iraq to inspire orphans of terrorist attacks. Lafta said he had long wanted to fulfill a childhood dream inspired by the 1980s Care Bears cartoons, about bears with special powers who lived in the clouds. The flight was scrubbed after failing to secure government permission. Despite the setback Saturday, both men plan to go ahead with the flight in Iraq, attempting to break an altitude record this October from a site to be determined. "Why not?" said Lafta. "We have a lot of fun. And more experience that makes us safer in future." On takeoff they were not concerned about the weather. Forecasts called for lightning storms, but that was hundreds of miles to the east. Winds initially took them northeast, then pushed them back southwest, before they started going east. At one point they were stuck about 20 minutes over the Facebook computer server center in Prineville, Ore., unable to move. With an eye out for an open spot to land, they started shooting balloons with the Red Ryder BB rifles they each carried in plastic pipe scabbards by their lawn chairs. "We'd shoot a few and start to descend, but it would lift us back up," Couch said. "I finally got exasperated and really started shooting balloons. "We felt just like `The Rifleman,'" a 1950s TV Western. "We were cocking and shooting, cocking and shooting, pretty darn fast." As they approached the ground, the wind was pushing them along at about 30 mph, and they could see their chase crew below. They dropped a rope, trying for a clearing in some trees, but the heat from the flat ground forced them up. They dropped more ballast to clear some trees, Couch said. They shot out more balloons and came into a newly mowed hay field, about 40 miles east of their starting point. Banging along the ground, they released two clusters of red balloons to prevent the craft from floating off, then jumped. They couldn't hang on, and the craft floated away anyway, coming to earth on a ranch five miles away. It now rests in Couch's driveway, headed for a museum. "I made a commitment to Fareed and the orphans of Iraq," to fly again, Couch said. "Otherwise I'm on the ground for good. I think it's out of my system. "My wife, Susan, says, `I've heard that before.' She's making me sign a contract."

in my state that is known as June.

when living in a trailer next to an airport sounds like heaven.

That's because you're the unicorn of blood donors I wish I could do double reds but I'm APOS so I can't.

Thank you everyone who donates! When my partner gets transfusions we always joke that we hope it's some young blood. Getting on a bone marrow registry is great, too, because sometimes when you have a blood disorder that requires frequent transfusions a bone marrow transplant can be the only option. I'm happy to see that others also give, and for any of you lurkers out there reading this thread, join the party and fill some bags! If you can't donate because of health reasons, that's nothing to be ashamed of. You can help in other ways, like volunteering for the blood bank or helping to spread the word. we all can do our part, and families like mine are able to have happy babies at home as a result.

I donated blood today, did you? If you have never thought about doing it, you might want to give it a try. It is very easy, and each donation can help save up to three lives. I have a seven week old baby at home, and the only reason he is here is because of blood donors. it's an amazing gift you can give! plus, it can't hurt from a karma perspective. if god forbid any of us pound in and need transfusions to survive, it will be because of a donor. so pay it forward! get motivated!

32 more comments and you'll have a 100:1 comment to jump ratio! that's pretty bad ass

should we point her to the big O thread?

sounds like a plan. i hear these kinds of questions from time to time and really there isn't any other answer. just practice, over and over, until you get it. no short cuts. no easy way out. just do it over and over. it's not hard, it just takes repetition. your confidence will build as you do it over and over until you won't need anyone to look at it and you'll be totally confident jumping it. bring some beer or buy some jumps or whatever you need to do to get a little guidance to get you started. once you have it in your head, go home, and pack it every single day when you get home from work. 2-3 times a night. every day of the week. you'll be fast and efficient within a few weeks if not faster. then next summer when you're making 15 minute calls without breaking a sweat, look for a newbie and help them learn to pack.

get away for the weekend and use the two hundred bucks you would spend on the tandem on some lingerie instead and make him happy. when it's your birthday, tell him you want to strap yourself to another dude and jump out of the plane. he can pay for that, and can't complain, because he got what he wanted on his bday sounds to me like you're the one who wants to skydive anyway, so win win.

mr. bill you're doing it wrong

Want another fun one? See if you can count how long it takes the group exiting after you to exit as you're coming down the hill. Try to identify what type of exit they attempted and did it succeed. Another fun one: look at the winds aloft and determine where you think your opening would be based off of where you plan to exit. when you land ask yourself did you open where you thought you were going to. even remembering to look down after you open and take note of your position is an awareness thing a lot of new jumpers don't do. put it all together and you should be able to say how long the stick behind you took, how their exit was, and exactly where you opened. bonus if you can guess what the deployment altitude of the other jumpers was (even though technically you should know before you leave the plane, of course)

Subjectively speaking I only recall feeling the "droppy" effect on my first non-static line jump. Having been accustomed to feeling the risers pulling on my shoulders a second or so after exiting, NOT feeling that familiar tug made it feel like falling. but that is different than what you are describing, because in the case of a s/l you are being decelerated almost immediately, so naturally free fall would feel different. ever since the only time i've gotten the droppy feeling is from jumping a helo

right but if you look at the video it appear he has a spring loaded pilot chute that was released but wasn't pulling the dbag out and then he did something with his other hand and it released, so I don't know if it is a two stage deployment where first you get the spring loaded pc out and THEN you deploy or if it is always like that?

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/msnbc.com/47278026 check out that funky deployment sequence at the end