Bob_Church

I floated on an eight way and since we were getting low I just cleared my back and waited until opening altitude. This was a boogie with groups ahead of and behind us so I didn't want to go flying off but I couldn't open high either. One of the people in the seven way broke, did a turn and flew directly below me and tossed out his pilot chute. I didn't think about anything, I pulled into a delta and it seemed like I felt his pilot chute fly past my feet. It was that close, I saw it going by. I thought I should let the guy at least know, he was a low timer, so I took my lumps for being the high man in a near collision but I thought it was worth it to let this guy know that whoever had the right of way wasn't important compared to surviving the jump. As I went into the delta I was looking straight down at him as he was reaching for his pilot chute. My legs were still wobbly when I got down.

It's that strange Jerry Lee Lewis kind of thing where you dance between Heaven and Hell and have this thing for young girls.

At Ravenswood in the 80s we'd often take off from the airport but jump down at the county fairground, which would be abandoned on those days. One day a group came including a young woman who was huge. But someone wanted her money so we watched them try to get her into a jumpsuit and give up, barely strap her into a rig and take her up for a static line jump. We looked at each other and said "this isn't going to end well."After awhile the plane comes back, we gear up and go up. The first thing we saw when we got over the courthouse was the EMS truck pulled down into the field where she'd landed. Well, for certain values of landed.

IMO this came about because of the Great Depression and the election of FDR. There was no 'Imperial Presidency' prior to then. And it has been getting worse ever since. And that is because the US legislature simply will not do it's job ( IMO ) properly. Jerry Baumchen I think a lot of Big Government came from the Mississippi flood of 1927. John Barry does a great job of explaining it in "Rising Tide." And even though he's only mentioned once or twice, maybe two sentences towards the end, knowing what came before Huey P. Long goes a long way towards explaining why he was so loved.

About the stiff neck and having difficult clearing your back, I feel that coming on and figure it will be a problem in a few years. At most. But I was wondering about wearing a mirror on the back of my hand. Is there any reason not to do this? I'd have to be careful that it actually worked and let me see someone rather than just giving me a false sense of safety. I remember someone talking about this in a letter to Parachutist many years ago but does anyone have experience with it?

Asking someone to stop touching you is fine, but turning it into a gay thing feels like Junior High School. He had no reason to bring that into it.

I just wish HST was still around to wade in on all of this, though I felt like it was him when I read lurch's post. I was rereading "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" during the runup to the 2016 election and I'd go for chapters at a time reading stuff that could apply just as well to today as it did then. You could slap a 2016 label on it and sell it and most people couldn't tell the difference. Does anyone here do seances? I'd pay real money to find out how he feels about Trump in the White House.

I think a big problem with what you suggest about training and programs is that here in Appalachia people have seen for decades now what we actually get with these programs and won't believe it until they see something real instead of more local Leftist getting big paychecks teaching unemployed coal miners how to surf the web. They notice that the same people who advocate these programs become the administrators who suck up all the money while just offering more catch phrases. They're tired of hearing "well, uh, we have to do something" to not only excuse but make themselves out as local heroes for being vampires feeding on the poor they claim to be helping.

I've been trying to remember and I don't think I ever saw Goldeneye. But that bungee jump was always showing somewhere, you couldn't miss it. I think having this type jump as an opener would still fit in well with the progression. The Spy Who Loved Me will always be my favorite though, with Moonraker a close second though for very different reasons. All the inside jokes made that one. And seen BJ Worth on the big screen. The last time I'd seen him we were both standing in the bed of a pickup truck drinking beer while watching 16mm stuff being projected on the side of the main building at Z-hills. Don't get me wrong, he wouldn't know me, but I enjoy the memory and talking with him. It seems the more successful a skydiver is the easier they are to talk to. There is already such an opening scene in a James Bond movie, GoldenEye. The bungee jump? There have been skydiving and base jumps (Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me) and I think this would be a perfect progression.after the bungee jump. Bond misses his plane and jumps from a motorcycle to catch the Porter midair Oh, I never got that far in GoldenEye.that was 5 minutes later. Not very patient, are you ?

As long as they don't use an invisible airplane. They had an invisible car in one a few years later. From memory Bond drove it off a cliff being chased by the laser beam from an orbiting super-weapon, and then parachuted over a tsunami filled with icebergs. That was a bit much for me. During the lead to Daniel Craig becoming Bond they talked about how they needed to change the way they were writing and one of the movie makers said something like "we had an invisible car, for God's sake, something has to change."

Mine came yesterday. I was about to scan and post it but they ended at A License 84311. Looks like you have to wait until January's issue.

I might make a bet if I had it in my hands. I 'think' it is a MiniSystem; however, TampaPete may have the real answer. Do you have the phone number of the local FBI office? Jerry Baumchen No, but I'm sure they've got mine.

Thanks, that gives me a clean place to start. Bob

If you compare Ian's two photos & your photo, you will find that the StyleMaster has one very distinct, easy to see difference. On the S/M see the piece of 3" Type 4 webbing where the side flap meets the back of the container? Neither of the other two containers have that. Jerry Baumchen I was thinking "bets on what it is" not if it's a Stylemaster or not, since it isn't. I'm not sure how well the photo shows it, but I could tell it wasn't from standing there looking at it.

As long as they don't use an invisible airplane.

There is already such an opening scene in a James Bond movie, GoldenEye. The bungee jump? There have been skydiving and base jumps (Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me) and I think this would be a perfect progression.after the bungee jump. Bond misses his plane and jumps from a motorcycle to catch the Porter midair Oh, I never got that far in GoldenEye.

I sent a copy of your request to a friend who knows rounds. I mean KNOWS them, and hopefully this will help. Also, if you end up needing to know a detail about any particular canopy let me know and I'll run it by him. "There's no rule of thumb for how large the apex vent is in a round parachute because of many factors. But. primarily, the porosity of the fabric and the geometric porosity of the canopy are the big drivers for determining how much venting there should be for the particular type of inflation that is desired. Some round parachutes have no apex vent. Many have an apex vent only because it's a very difficult task to completely close the apex. A ParaCommander is an example of a parachute where the central vent served no useful purpose except to make fabrication easier. If you ever saw the NOVA channel program about the parachute system for the Mars rover "Curiosity", you would have seen me come in to help them when they had an inflation problem in the NASA wind tunnel. It appeared to me that the apex was initially venting too much air so I installed a textile "washer" in the vent area and all was good after that. Of course, the parachute that went to Mars had no washer but it did have a vent that matched the size of the hole through my washer. I just measured a T-10 vent and it's about 19.6" in diameter. "

There is already such an opening scene in a James Bond movie, GoldenEye. The bungee jump? There have been skydiving and base jumps (Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me) and I think this would be a perfect progression.

I don't know if there is a name for it but it shows up in most newer swooping videos.

I'm going to take a shot at updating and maintaining it. I'm still going over things but hopefully over the next few days I can start catching the list up and keeping it that way. I'm going to see if USPA has a list of S&TAs as a possible way to find incidents that I've missed and didn't get documented. Any help or advice is definitely appreciated. feel free to email me at Bob Church [email protected]

Well, I've still got work to do on the damned antenna so the next time I'm over there, probably this week, I'll get the info off the container or card. In the meantime, place your bets.

No, I confess I never touched it. I was too busy with that damned antenna.

People have decided to be afraid of Trump launching a nuclear attack and are going to be, despite the fact that he can't. The President, any President, of the US can prevent the use of nukes or authorize their use. The football doesn't have a launch button in it, but you'd never know it hearing people yell about it. What I can't figure out is why people feel the need to create things to be frightened of.

I think that's tripe looking for a reaction... If you genuinely think the US is the biggest threat to humanity then you're as deluded as rush is. NK? Maybe - they've got a nutter with nukes who is answerable to noone in charge or China possibly, due to their unbelievable pollution and CO2 emissions that'll probably doom us all. China has dead rivers and cities where you can't see the sun at noon. And yet people act like it's a different planet and all of that poison will never get here.