Divalent

An excellent free software program for this is "Format Factory", at least for personal use. It will allow you to trim front and back, change video resolution, and output to just about any video format known to man. I don't know how it might fare in a working environment, so YMMV. http://www.pcfreetime.com/

Here is one I'm pretty sure you will like. First person out gets in poised exit position with left hand free. Second person gets out facing the rear using the right hand to hold onto the door frame. Both people use left hand to form a "compressed accordian", gripping the other person's leg strap. After you launch it, try to do frontloops, backloops, and even just 360 degree turns. It isn't easy coordinating the moves. You will probably come down laughing. A fun variation of this position, if you like wild rides, is for each to extend their legs into a tracking position. The formation will start to spin really fast, hold as long as you can, then as soon as one lets go, so does the other. Each of you will fly away while rotating. (then get back together and do more stuff) (Also fun to try to launch this as a 3 way from a turbine. All with left hands: front float grips rear float's left leg strap, rear float grips inside's left leg strap, inside grips front float's left leg strap.)

Lots of good advice here. I would encourage you to talk to your instructors about a plan. I would add two things, though: 1. when ever you are doing a jump (solo or coached), make sure you have a plan for both the free fall part and the canopy flying part. Even if there is no coach or instructor to sign off on it, you can get experience with the maneuvers. (So study the A-card so you know what to work on). 2. You will eventually have do do 2 hop-n-pops. Unless your dive plan precludes it, when jumping from higher altitude, pretend you are doing a hop-n-pop exit (with a practice touch instead of a pull) so that when you get to the real hop-n-pops, you will be comfortable doing a clear and pull without tumbling.

As I coach, I don't teach canopy skills beyond explaining in the simplest possible way the drills that are required for the specific dive flow, and I don't insist much on them anyway. Except for one thing. Flat and Braked turns. I say, if you need one life saving skill out of the next few jumps, that's the one you want because you might need it at any time. I agree; these types of turns should be in every jumper's tool kit as early as possible. Here's a link to an excellent description of flat turns, braked turns, and flare turns. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2121715

Not hardly: a competent lawyer (and even most incompetent lawyers) will sue just about any and all persons and entities he can identify that could even remotely have been involved in any incident. (And they won't ever know what's in your bank account until they name you as a defendent.) And if it wasn't your fault, you are more likely to speak up and point your finger at who was at fault (with useful details about why they were at fault) if doing so will help you avoid liability. (IOW, you are more likely to throw someone else under the bus if *not* doing so means you might get run over.)

I did a similar thing on my AFF level 6, where a single instructor exits with you, but not linked, I messed up the agreed upon count, by kind of double clutching it and then deciding I'd pause and redo. Only problem was, the instructor thought my double clutch was me letting go, and he jumped off. A few seconds later I'm in the air looking for my instructor and see him way down and way over there. (I caught up with him, and everything went fine after that.)

I don't care what all the other guys are saying; it does *not* make you look fat!

Concrete Rebound Hammer wouldn't lose to Trump.

I got a Lapa 2 recently, and my experience with the range is much like yours: had to get within about 50 ft with a smart phone to detect it. (It holds the signal much farther if you move away, so the best test is how close you need to get before it "finds it", as opposed to how far you get away from it before it loses it). 50 ft would, IMO, be of only marginal benefit, as it's much shorter than your visual range (unless the canopy was in a really densely vegetated area). A dedicated receiver that has nearly 500 ft range would be ideal. In that case, it would be worth a DZ shelling out more $ to protect all the canopies they own (tandem and rentals). And then fun jumpers could borrow that to find their own. (BTW, the Lapa has a user-replaceable battery, so yearly cost for the unit after purchase would be just a the cost of an inexpensive battery. Otherwise I suspect the technology is similar to the Tile.)

I got my daughter (college senior) a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 to replace her aging bulky laptop. Its smallish, light weight, runs windows, has a touch screeen, and key board. The neat thing is that the hinge fully swivels so that the keyboard part can rotate all the way around to lie so that you end up with something like a tablet. Not as light/compact as a tablet, but great for when using the computer for things a tablet is better at. But had the normal laptop functionality (although perhaps fewer connection ports than a bigger laptop). Here's the device I got her. But they have a line of products with more power/memory/larger screen, etc, depending on your needs. http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-Pentium-Integrated-Graphics/dp/B010DODAWM

Based on a count compiled from incident reports on this site, in the last 5 years (2011-2015) in the US there have been 6 tandem passenger/student fatalities and 5 tandem instructors fatalities. This out of an overall 105 US sport skydiving fatalites in that time span. So about 5% (just students or just instructors) or 10% (students plus instructors) of the total fatalities were tandem related. What I don't know is what percent of all skydives in the US are tandems. (And does a tandem count as 1 or two jumps?) Generally the cause of tandem fatalities are either equipment malfunctions or turbulence when landing. Not from canopy collision, swooping, collisions in freefall, loss of altitude awareness, or other stupid stuff that fun jumpers do.

Awesome!

Check out the section of their web site (http://citizensforquietskies.org/the-lawsuit/) dealing with the appeal: it is Mile-Hi's fault that CQS are proceeding with the appeal, because Mile-Hi refused their offer to drop the appeal if Mile-Hi would waive the costs and fees they were awarded at trial. What mean people Mile Hi is, and what unfair victims CQS are! They initiated a lawsuit, lost on the merits and had costs and fees charged to them as the losers. It's the defendants fault for dragging the case out by not accepting your offer to just walk away as if the suit was never filed (of course, except for all that money you had to spend defending against baseless charges.) Transpose the logic over to the criminal area, it would look something like this: you get arrested for some crime, you go to trial (refusing plea deals), and the jury finds you guilty and sentences you to 5 years in jail. Afterwards, you just tell the DA you won't appeal your conviction if they will waive imposing the sentence! It's freakin' brilliant logic, if you think about it. Why don't all losers of criminal and civil cases do this? (And how could Mile Hi be so stupid as to refuse their generous offer?) I mean, if CQS had won the law suit, I'm sure CQS would have gladly given up all they had won in exchange for Mile HI not proceeding with an appeal. Right?

A guy goes to his doctor and says, “Doc, I want to live to be a hundred!” So the doctor asks him, “Do you smoke?” No. “Do you drink?” No. "Stay up late at night?" No. "Eat rich food?" No. "Drive fast?" No. “Sleep around with loose women?” No. "So", says the doc, “then why do you want to live to be a hundred?”

Well that very thoughtful of you. I hate those assholes who go in, leaving their locked car occupying one of the better parking spaces.

While the discussion about this is fun, I suspect the main issue is that a new way of doing things brings about new, but unfamiliar, ways that it can fail. So you find yourself asking whether the benefits of the new way are enough to offset these new disadvantages. With the "old" key system (pre 1990's era), it was pretty simple: if you wanted to unlock the car and start the car, you needed a key. And to drive the car, the key had to be physically connected to the car. Keys were cheap to duplicate/replace. And they were durable: drive over them, and they still work. And the method to use them (insert key, turn) was familiar and simple. Next they made keys with some sort of electronic recognition thing in them, presumably so that someone couldn't cheaply duplicate the key and steal your car. You could copy the key, but it only worked to unlock the door. Benefit: some miniscule reduction in car thefts, at a cost of making replacement keys more expensive (~$100). IMO, totally not worth it. Next adding an electronic door lock/unlock remote fob so you could more easily lock and unlock the car, as well as find your car in a dark crowded parking lot. IMO, all added benefit, with no downside. (If you lose the fob, you can still use the key to lock and unlock the door). Now keyless ignition: what is the benefit? Seems like it has all the same failure/disadvantages of the simple key system (lose the key and you can't unlock or start the car), but in addition even more costly to replace. And, as several accounts above show, its now possible to start the car and drive away from the key, so you are more likely to lose the key. But I don't have keyless ignition, so maybe I'm ignorant. For those here that like em, forget about telling us to RTFM to understand how they work, and instead tell us the benefits over a simple key system that offset the disadvantages.

Your maths are a little off. If you enlarge a cube by doubling (2x) the area of the sides of the cube, then you've increased the edge length by SQRT(2). Volume would go up by (SQRT(2)^3) or about a factor of 2.8. OTOH, if you meant to say that you've doubled the edge of each side of the cube (so increasing the surface area by a factor of 4) then the volume increased by factor of 8. To get a 4 fold increase in volume of a cube, you would need to increase the edge length by a factor of ~1.59, resulting in an increase in the surface area by a factor of ~2.52.

QFT. (And also John Mitchells advice)

It's not the best video to illustrate the phenomenon, but you can see that the puck is rotating about its own center of mass as it flies off once the string is cut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzgasHgVOy8

Ya could have just said "719!" Which reminds me of this joke I heard long ago: [JOKE] Ralph just got placed in the "lifer ward" of the state's maximum prison, to begin serving a life sentence. The warden ran a tight ship, and allowed the inmates little freedom or activities to occupy their time. So except for a brief 30 minute solitary exercise walk, the inmates spend all their time cooped up in their cell, enduring endless boredom. Most of Ralph's fellow inmates had been there a long, long time. He introduced himself to his cellmate, Cliff, an older quiet man, whose personality seemed, like most of the other inmates, to have been worn down by years of monotonous existence. He unpacked the few personal belongings they allowed him to have, and then laid down on his cot, wondering how things were going to go. And how long it might be before he, too, had the spark of life drained out of him. Hours passed with very little chit chat being exchanged between the other inmates. As darkness fell on his first night, Ralph prepared to retire for the night. Suddenly a loud yell "ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN!" shattered the silence. Seconds later, the ward erupted in laughter. "That was strange", Ralph thought. The laughter subsided. But then a minutes or so later, another loud yell "FIFTY SEVEN!" broke the silence, followed, seconds later, with another uproar of laughter. This "number-followed-by-laughter" was repeated a few times before Ralph ask Cliff what it was all about. "Well," said Cliff, "most of us have been here ages. We used to entertain ourselves by telling jokes at night, when the bustle of the day was over, and the guards would be a little more lenient. But it wasn't too long before everyone had exhausted all the jokes they knew, and then repeatedly retold them over and over. Soon it got to the point were we knew what the joke was once the first few words of the joke were uttered. So to shorten the process, we assigned numbers to the jokes that we all knew. Then to tell a joke, instead of actually repeating the words of the joke, you'd just call out the number of the joke you wanted to tell." "Hmm ... So how many jokes do you guys know?" asked Ralph. "One hundred and twenty seven", replied Cliff. "Would you like to try telling one?" Ralph pondered that question a bit, and thought "why not? Seems like the only communal activity here, and I might as well try to fit in". "Sure" Ralph said, "I'll give it a go. Let me think of a number..." "EIGHTEEN!" Ralph screamed. Silence. Three seconds, five seconds, ten seconds. Obviously there wasn't going to be any laughter. "So what happened, Cliff? Is EIGHTEEN no longer a joke, or maybe it is a crummy joke no one really likes?" Cliff replied: "No, 18 is a great joke, usually very funny. Perhaps it was the way you told it." [/JOKE] So with that intro, let me just say: 82!

An interesting story. Was the cutaway a soft handle or a d-ring? I'm thinking you could get a lot more force onto the cable with a d-ring, as a hooked thumb in a loop is more secure than a hand grip.

A man goes to the doctor with an earache. The doctor says "I'm afraid you're going to have stop masturbating." The man says "that is what's giving me an earache?" "No. It's upsetting the nurse."

No one cares more about your life than you do.

Jeeze, guys, ease up will ya? If you haven't read the whole thread, let me summarize briefly: 1. In the OP he stated he was going to downsize, and gave his experience with his current canopy and the reasons he was doing so, and was just looking for a second opinion, although he seemed pretty fixed on doing the downsize. 2. Many here advised him not to, with a variety of reasons and perspectives. 3. Initially he was resistant, kind of arguing/pushing back. 4. Then it finally sunk in and *HE CHANGED HIS MIND*, and decided, based on the advice he got here, that he would stick with his current canopy. I mean, come on, what more do you want? It's a DZ.com thread success story. Congratulate him! Who cares if he doesn't yet realize each and every god damn wrong thought he had on the subject? What is gained? He's still relatively new (as am I) and hopefully after a few more hundred jumps when the thought of downsizing occurs to him again, he will have more time and experience and wisdom and will approach the decision in a better way. Right now, how about giving it a rest and wish him well?

Of the "tile" type trackers, I'm hoping that Stone Tether can deliver on their promised capabilitites. https://stonetether.com/ They had a Kick Starter last year and were projecting delivery in the spring of this year, but it looks like they won't be shipping until later this month. (FYI, "tile" type trackers are small (~1 inch square) things you attach to an item, and they emit a signal that can be picked up via a smart phone.) I like the Stone Tether best for a number of reasons. Cost: $25 (about the same as other tiles) User replaceable battery lasts about a year. (the other tiles you discard when battery dies) Range: up to 500 ft. (Others are only 100-150 ft) Just sew a little pocket onto your d-bag, put it in, and remember to change the battery once a year. 500 ft (or even 300 ft) range would be adequate (if they can actually deliver a product that has that range). If you know generally where it is, a small search party with smart phones should be able to find it in one sweep of an area. So, *Assuming they deliver a product that is close to that they promised*, the cost is very reasonable and the range is adequate for the task. Hopefully I'll have one in a few weeks, and will report of what I find about it's capabilities.