Bob_Church

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Posts posted by Bob_Church

  1. "Curious about the capewells "wired up". Hard to see one being accidentally cut away, you needed a bit of force to pop them in the first place. (unless, as a few of the boys did, filed the lugs on them so opening the covers practically initiated the cutaway). "

    They were two shots. The jumpmasters and DZO said that they did that to keep someone from accidentally pulling one at 500 feet. It was my first jump, so my response was "ok."

  2. My mom isn't happy about this decision. She says skydiving is dangerous. To be honest, I have no idea if she's right or not B|

    I think the biggest problem that people have with skydiving is that they think it is ONLY dangerous. They see it as an expensive form of Russian Roulette so why do it. My impression on that first drive to the DZ was of a bunch of people sitting around a cable spool playing cards and getting their nerve up for another jump. All of this in grim boring colors. What amazed me most was seeing that it was a sport with different brands, nice colors, all of it. And most importantly, people skydiving because it's so much fun.
    Maybe if your Mother could see that aspect of Skyiving it might help.

  3. My first high speed malfunction which would have been a cutaway except that student gear had the cutaways wired shut was in 1978. I had three more before 1984 or so. These were pretty much due to the old gear we were jumping. It had a long way to go. In fact it wasn't until 2015 that I had another cutaway and I can say with no hesitation that that was due to sloppiness on my part. I did a poor, supposedly temporary, job of sewing up a keeper, then instead of getting it to a rigger the first chance I had I ignored it.
    If you take care of your gear it will take care of you. I consider Skydiving to be a dangerous sport than can be done safely.

  5. Grunt, another factor is that once you get some jumps in you might realize that you're a fellow mutant who actually enjoys being in the sky and isn't in such a rush to get to the ground that they'll risk busting their ass for it with smaller and smaller canopies. I weigh 165 and jump a 210 Hornet. The Hornet flies flat anyway and combined with the low wing loading I can cruise around for a long time and cover some serious distance. I enjoy it. A lot.

  6. Does your dropzone have a dealer? Sometimes that's a good way to go since you're dealing with someone who will be there after each jump and won't want to hear about your bad landings due to the wrong canopy choice.

  8. "My left hand hadn't even gotten to the reserve handle by the time my right hand pulled the cutaway. (No RSLs are used in CRW) As I pulled the reserve, I looked down and saw that I was directly over that set of sewage tanks that Bob described. There's pretty much nothing to do on a cutaway following the reserve pull other than stay stable and hang out. I didn't even want to look over my shoulder for fear of getting unstable. I know now that it was a pretty quick deployment, but I had time to think that maybe cutting away wasn't a good idea, because those tanks were getting big very quickly. Just then, the reserve opened. I popped the brakes loose, thinking, "OK, which way was the landing wind ?" At the same time I realized that I was too low to turn and landed straight ahead. The reserve ride was approx. 20 seconds. "

    It's really amazing how time shifts during a malfunction. On the jump we're talking about someone watching probably would have trouble seeing the lines clear, it would happen too fast, but I felt each rubber band separately, pop......pop.......pop....
    then woke up under the open SAC. Those 20' canopies open hard.
    My first malfunction was on my 9th jump still on student status. I'd been given a canopy that wasn't supposed to be jumped, it had knots tied in the lines so of course the sleeve never budged. Those student rigs had the shot and a halfs wired up so we couldn't accidentally cut one away. When you lay a belly mount reserve on the packing table with the bungees attached and pull the handle you can't even see the flaps retract, it's that fast. I felt like I was watching one of those stop motion films of a flower opening up. It just slowly and lazily folded back. I had enough time to think that it wasn't going to open. It did, but it was a spooky sight watching the white reserve with no pilot chute to hold it taut dancing beside the straight as an arrow sleeve being held by its pilot chute. Once the reserve opened I sighed with relief, then *BAMMMM*. I'd forgotten about that stainless steel spring in the pilot chute.
    Then I started thinking about things we'd said about steering an unmodified round reserve and decided to try slipping but as I reached up two things happened. One, it started to oscillate a lithe, and I looked down and saw that opened reserve pack where there's always been a canopy packed and waiting. It was a stark reminder that I was down to my last parachute so I just folded my arms and told it to take me wherever it would.
    But that time shift thing, if you could do that on command even when not skydiving you could rule the world.

  13. Pat Works saved my life in 1981 or '82 (I've GOT to put my logbooks into a database for searching). I'd read in one of his books about how hypnotic ground rush can be when you get low and terminal so I would practice my cutaway procedure constantly in the hopes that it became muscle memory. One afternoon after a really sloppy 2 way I had a total, which is especially rare since I was jumping a borrowed rig with a ripcord deploy. But you can screw up anything if you go about it right. I ended up going through 1 grand head low and terminal at z-hills and he was absolutely correct. My eyes and brain were locked on the sight of the earth spreading out at high speed. Fortunately, while all this was happening, my body took care of things. I reached up to the R2s and pulled them then pulled the reserve handle. I remember feeling every single rubber band pop free then woke up under canopy directly over the sewage tank and choppers. The 20 foot SAC (Strategic Aero Conical) opened hard but flew surprisingly well, allowing me to land it, going down to one knee, in the gravel road leading to the sewer plant.
    It was just like Pat had written. Never develop a need to look at your handles and do everything you can to develop muscle memory of your emergency procedures.

  14. I'm not against nuclear energy but there is something that I'm very curious about but can't find an answer to. That is, "how much coal does it take to run a nuclear power plant?"
    When they shut down the uranium enrichment plant in nearby Piketon it devastated the coal industry here. There were at least three coal mines dedicated to running two power plants that would supply electricity to Piketon.
    The problem is that this is woven into so many other things that I can't tell what is what. US produced coal was already under attack so I can't say which mines closed due to that or to Piketon's closing. And I don't know how much of the HEU that Piketon made was for power plants and how much for weapons.
    But if anyone here knows I'd appreciate finding out.

  15. JohnMitchell

    ******What could be better than watching Raquel Welch pack a parachute:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqWTXeNKiyw



    Talk about holding tension.

    :D:D

    You know, we should keep this link for any noob who asks "Howdja pack them old round chutes, anyway?"

    And seriously, I think the skydiving stuff holds up a lot better than just about any other movie I've seen, even down to the fact that the captain of the US team still has to have a job to pay the rent. There are a few silly spots of course but overall it wasn't bad.

  17. quade

    We have, we are convinced through various means, that we have been professionally trolled a few times over the years.

    That said, most are simply people who have different opinions; some of which they hold for no factual reasons, but instead because they "feel" what they're saying is correct even though that can be demonstrably not the case.



    Sort of like any rainy day at the DZ.

  18. quade

    ***Serious question. Is there trolling on this board? I had assumed not, considering who uses it, but I'm starting to think I was mistaken.



    We would prefer you NOT troll.

    We realize some can't help themselves because it's literally impossible for some to tell the difference between reality and fiction. It's not that we cut them slack though. They just refuse to acknowledge it's the Sun in the sky and not the Moon.

    I never troll. It's a cheap thrill and I prefer getting out of airplanes. What I'm saying is that I'm not good at spotting it when I'm being trolled, but I'm starting to get that feeling.

  20. jakee

    ***The reason is that if we accept a popular vote we have to assume that 50 states and Washington DC have not screwed up their count through ineptitude or dishonesty. It's not a matter of high numbers, but where those numbers come from.



    But if a state screws up the count and awards its electoral votes the wrong way, it's ok to accept those? Mistaken electoral college votes don't matter?

    It puts it on the State that carried out the polling. Each state is allocated an amount of influence they can have on who becomes POTUS. Whether they accurately and honestly count their votes only affects that influence.

  21. Over around the Dayton area there's a trucking outfit that uses an emblem on their trucks that looks like Air Force but I don't think they're really government. I don't know who they are, and I sure as hell don't know who they THINK they are but if you see a truck with that emblem coming at you you just have to get out of the way. Nobody drives worse than those clowns.

  23. I just saw the old Raquel Welch movie "Fathom." In a lot of ways its no more than you'd expect from a movie in the late 60s but I was surprised at how relatively good the skydiving stuff was. I mean relative to other movies and tv shows, not reality. There's a lot of silliness but less than most movies, even ones being made today.
    Has anyone else seen it? And remember it?

  24. If a state "finds" ten million votes for its favorite son it doesn't affect the election results. This favorite son would have already won all of the electoral votes anyway.
    Each state, and dc, conduct their own polling. And so, each state can only control the EVs that they have. If they have sloppy counts or dishonest counts or anything else they can only affect their own EVs. The United States has allotted a certain amount of influence to each state via the EV. It's up to that state to determine who gets its EVs. A state cannot have more influence despite the number of ballots it claims to have or how it claims those ballots were determined.