bravoniner

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Posts posted by bravoniner

  1. Quote



    Does anyone know of Jeff Russell? One of the early D license holders. He was a great friend of mine when I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground at 18. Some say I still don't know my ass from a hole in the ground at 62.


    Bill Catalina



    I have a couple of logbook entries signed off by Jeff when he was jumping around Madison, WI, in the summer/fall of 1971 (I think he was doing something at the university at the time). He signed as "J. A. Russell, D-1031/USPA IE-71." Great guy, as I remember.

    I actually beat him on a beer jump with a 1' strike just at dusk on September 12, 1971. Beer never tasted so good.

    Lost track of him (and a lot of other jump buddies) after that.

    B9

  2. Quote

    To say that it was a fun time in Skydiving is a gross understatement, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world.



    Hey, no kidding! It was all adventure, with nothing pre-packaged or choreographed. Others may have already done the stuff we were trying to do, but it was always the first time for us.

    No regrets. Not one.

  3. I don't think it was much harder technically, but most DZs didn't have anybody around who was really qualified to teach or coach RW. So, you just read whatever you could get your hands on, and then went up and tried it -- teaching yourself 30 seconds (sometimes more if you had the $$) at a time. It was also tough to log more than two or three jumps a day at your typical one-plane DZ. It took awhile to make things happen at that rate.

  7. Sonofagun! It WAS a 60' trailer -- 12' X 60', to be exact. Doc Schwerin wrote it up in the April 1970 issue of PARACHUTIST.

    A few more names from the old PRV days: Bill Meise, Doug Schrady, Tom Vance, Steve Schimming and Tom Brissey.

    Bravo-Niner

  8. Shoot -- it couldn't have been a 60' housetrailer; that would have been HUGE! But it was long enough to pack two rounds indoors -- side-by-side -- even though we kept the kitchen pretty much intact.

  9. It was in the SOUTHwest part of the state, near Richland Center. The clubhouse was an old 60' housetrailer, gutted out so we could pack inside in the winter. We usually had one or two C-180 jump ships on call, had a nice pit of peas, a really good "home-cookin'-style" cafe right on the airport, and our usual post-jump watering hole -- "Eddie's Riverside" -- was right across the highway. The hilly scenery around the airport was pretty nice, too.

    Names: Milt "Doc" (and Arla) Schwerin, Heyo "Doc" Tjarks, Bill "Bugs" Eaton, Harold Schara, Ron Wilson and Don Henke. PRV also hosted the UW student club, Badger Skydivers: Jack Severson, Dale Patterson, John "Fubar" Battalio, Carl Turnquist, Jim "Schmitty" Schmitt (who had a pretty early FB number), and many others. Our primary jump pilots were Otto Hammerly (out of Milwaukee) and Cy Munz (local).

    I'm missing a lot of names, but you get the idea. Many other Wisconsin jumpers whose names I KNOW you'd recognize (Phil Goetsch, Steve Duell, Ray Mahon, Bill Buchman, etc., etc.) made occasional jumps at this DZ back in the day. Any of this start to ring a bell?

    Blue w/Cu,

    Bravo-Niner

  10. The dive shop I worked with some years ago wouldn't take students younger than 15, even with parental consent. Reason: there seemed to be a pretty good statistical correlation between compressed-air diving at younger ages and juvenile bone necrosis.

    Maybe there's newer data and research now. But, at the time, we thought it a serious enough risk to say "no."

    Bravo-Niner

  11. Hey, Tuna -- remember Pine River Valley Skydivers from the Richland County airport at Sextonville, WI? PRV jumped there from about '67 until the county airport commission (actually, one single-minded jerk on the commission) showed the club the door circa 1971.

    Fun times.

    Blue with Cu,

    Bravo-Niner

    P.S. I think I may have more old patches somewhere. I'll post additional images if and when I find them.

  12. -20 seems like a common number ... that was my coldest jump, too. (My car wouldn't start, so we ended up hitch hiking to the DZ with our rigs on our backs.) I saw -28 on the jump plane's OAT at one point on the way up; not sure what it was when we finally got out, but it WAS bloody cold!

    One nice thing is the air is so dense that you float like a feather under canopy (even an old round!). I also remember one especially vivid visual image from a canopy (PC) ride through a snow squall: the snow flakes were all stationary in space -- our relative descent rates were the same.

    Bravoniner

  13. You are so right! I'll never forget my first PC jump ... light toggle pressures, turned on a dime and actually penetrated a little bit. I never looked back (as though cheapos were anything to look back on!). Not a half-bad canopy, actually, if the winds weren't honking and you had a decent spot. The only real downsides I remember were the pack volume (kinda bulky) and a vulnerability to burn pinholes.

    Blue with cu,

    Bravoniner

  14. Can't recall its N-number, but I made my first couple of jumps out of a 196 in 1969 at the now-defunct Rainbow Airport south of Milwaukee. I think a jump pilot by the name of Steve Schimming bought the same plane some years later and operated it briefly at the Badger Skydivers' DZ at the Waunakee, WI airport (near Madison), where I made a few more jumps out of it. By then it had been equipped with a fancy all-plexiglass jump door.

    I lost track of this 196 afterward, and would be interested to know if anyone knows its fate.

    Blue with Cu,

    Bravoniner

  16. ***

    Your reply should almost go in the 'Ever jumped with anyone famous' thread...!:ph34r:

    Mr. Douglas certainly qualifies!B|



    Yeah, what a ship!

    My last jump was out of ol' Mr. D: 13.5 over Deland. Traveling in style!

    Blue w/cu,

    Bravoniner

    P.S. This is probably the subject of another thread somewhere, but whatever happened to Mr. D? I seem to remember hearing the owners laid her (him?) up after blowing an engine and, after one thing and another, the airplane never got returned to service.

  • Quote

    the howard dga 15 is good airplane.back in 1966 the one they had at united parachute club in Pa. went in .aircraft stalled at about 500 feet(pilot error)and barrel rolled left onto its back and went in with a full fuel load .only one jumper survived after exiting the aircraft while the door was straight up.second jumper got out too low. steve snyder had a howard at the time (he named his first son Howard) but after the crash at united no one wanted to jump it.so he sold it to poppenhager.



    Same one (I think) as was operated at the Air City Airport, Sturtevant, WI in the early to mid-'60s. It was one of two I'm aware of with a tri-gear mod. See the photo at my 03/06/04 post regarding Air City.

    Blue w/cu,

    Bravoniner

  • How about a ten-year lay-off? I broke the drought at Deland with what was, at the time (1984), an AFF 5 - 6 dive with Rocky Evans out of Mr. Douglas. Tom Piras had looked through my old logs and said that's what we ought to do; so, we did.

    Spent plenty of practice time in the plane, in a suspended harness and on the creepers, but let's see -- first jump in ten years, first jump on a square, first jump with everything on my back, unfamiliar DZ, performance anxiety -- yeah the ol' mouth was pretty dry. Actually said to myself, "You really don't have to do this, y'know." Then I replied, "Yeah, but I'm going to do it anyway." Nervousness aside, I knew I was ready.

    Out the door and both the fear and the ten years were gone in a flash -- big grins all around. All maneuvers completed without fuss, a nice, easy standup on target, and a sign-off to "do anything you want." (Recurrency requirements are a bit stiffer nowadays.)

    Nervousness, if you direct it constructively and are otherwise ready to jump, will help you stay alive.

    Bravoniner

  • Lots of cutaway talk earlier in this thread about pulling the wire loops in 1 1/2 shots with your thumbs. I once rode a streamered PC longer than planned while working on getting a gloved thumb up through one of those rings (I got the other one first try). A better plan (I was told later) is to bring both hands downward while going for the rings with all four fingers on each side. That way you're four times as likely to engage the rings first grab. Anybody else heard this advice?

    Lucky for me, I guess, I finally got both thumbs in the rings and never needed to try the "preferred" method on 1 1/2 shots after that.

    Bravoniner

  • Mike:

    I think it's part of Les Preludes by Franz Liszt. I'm taking a flier on this one, so let me know if that's right.

    Bravoniner

    P.S. They used this one in a lot of the old Flash Gordon serials, too. Maybe Carl was trying to build a bridge.

  • John:

    Offhand I can't remember if they used a DGA in the movie (I've got it on tape somewhere around here, so I should take a look). If they did, I know it wasn't the one based at Air City (THAT I would have remembered!). I think there were two tri-gear DGAs in jump service about that time -- the other one was working the West Coast. I heard that Air City's got rolled up in a ball somewhere a year or two after the DZ closed.

    Bravoniner