cdunham

At 3am? OK, that's 6am "real" time, but still. Well, Sunday was great. I guess we just needed the extra day to appreciate it more. Of course, I have a mild case of frostbite from the 9am load (zero at altitude, no gloves), but so what? By the way, Pepperell truns out to be a great place to go when you are skipping work, and they know to look for you at your home DZ. So I'm told, anyway. Carl

The Ranch in Gardner, NY has it right at the top of their Web site: Shawanga! Fly, Baby, Fly! (the last part is new w/i the last few years, I think)

Well, after spending most of last weekend and again today sitting around waiting for the winds to die down, I have just about had it. I'm fucking pissed about this weather we have up here in the Northeast. All week, it's been great. In fact, it's great here at home, the problem is there isn't a dz for 100 miles! How do you folks in the real North (and Seattle

I hate to sounds cynical, but what do you want to bet that her CO, or some other unmentioned senior officer had a hand in this? This seems like one of those things that has a "story behind the story". Or maybe the armed services are leading us to a new age of enlightenment! (yeah)

Well, that's nice for you, ditch

Here's a very old Usenet thread worth following. They make some good points about the measures, how to compare, and even some (old) data points: http://www.afn.org/skydive/usenet/1993/sep/0108.html One quote: If you want a good statistic, here's one. If you skydive for 50 years and make 100 jumps per year, there is about a 1 in 25 chance that you will die skydiving. Over that same period you have about a 1 in 4 chance of dying from cancer. Worse if you smoke. Pammi, does your ex smoke? Carl

Check this out: http://www.noexcusesrigging.com/ArticlesEssays/LayOverview.htm You could probably pull the numbers from his charts. At the very least, he gives the name of the person that has been compiling the stats over the years (Paul Sitter - in 1995, his email address was PSITTER@AOL.COM). Good luck. Carl

Also, did you try contacting the USPA for this data? That have 1998 and 1999 data on the Web site, they should have the 1997 data handy around the office somewhere.

PT, how are planning to structure the comparison? Days spent jumping would be nice, but doesn't match any driving thing well. Miles driven is good for driving, but not skydiving. Hours doing each might be OK, as long as you treat a day at the DZ as 8-10 hours, rather than counting freefall hours, something like that. You could also do lifetime (or annual/monthly) risk exposure, if you knew what the average driver/skydiver spent doing their thing. Or just divide the raw numbers - fatalities "per capita" as it were. Also, are you doing just fatalities, or can you get disabilitities and injuries as well? Another useful thing would be to compare different types of driving. An answer I often give to whuffo question number one is "do you ever drink and drive?". Actually, I usually make a wisecrack about never having seen "a perfectly good airplane", but you get the idea. The point being that I think the last time I saw an analysis like this, it showed that driving overall was safer than skydiving (although not by much), but driving while impaired (how impaired?) was much more deadly. Now, for those of you who do both, sorry.

Is it possible to block a thread?

I knew I could count on you guys, thanks! Looks like step 0 is getting more accomodating gear. What I have now has too many exposed grabby parts and velcro. Oh, well. Like I need another excuse to buy new gear.

Anyone have some good material on learning to freefly? There is a decent article on skyXtreme about doing head-down, but says to start with basic sit position. Feels like I came to the second day of class. Doh! Ideally, I would want to have someone teach me, but aside from that, there must be some basic info out there to bone up on before the weekend. Tanks! Carl -- Only five out of a hundred live according to what they think and believe in their minds. And four out of those five think and believe what others tell them to think and believe. --Dr. William Mitchell

It has no teeth in it.

Don't forget romanjii, which is the character set that this posting is in, and is used for a lot of foreign words/brand names, etc. Supposedly, katakana is taught to children first, but dropped later in favor of kanjii, so things written in katakana appear "childish' to native speakers, again like this posting.

Count me in. You can't miss me, I'll be jumping this HUMONGOUS black and purple Raven III, unless I can score some hot demo canopy.

LOL! You too?!! I especially hate watching them surf in on a sweet carving turn, and land like they were born doing it. Damned demon spawn!!

Going to work on Monday when the weather is better than it was all weekend.

Do you know how to write object-oriented code?

Well, it's not so much the size as the pressure inside. You know, with the right cross-section to weight ratio, anything is possible! I have noticed that they expand a bit at altitude, and shrink as the ground gets closer. Landings can be a little tough on them. Sorry Alex, I think you are going to have to suffer through this again . Carl --- Wait, did someone say something about a teather?

I've got a couple of balls that tend to match my fall rate pretty well. I'm fairly choosy about who I let use them, but if you are interested, let me know. Carl --- Doing what I can to increase the overall entropy of the universe.

Gosh, I hope you are feeling better!

Yeah, one would think that the Darwin effect would kick in at some point, but some of these people have been jumping forever, which makes it tough to convince the younger ones that it's not a good idea. Not that it's all that rampant, but there are the little groups, you know the ones. More common at the smaller DZs.

There was a guy I saw once who had built one of these that he was able to drop from his r/c plane. No shit, there were a couple of times where he was flying it around during a weather hold and people actually thought someone was still jumping! (Hey, how do I get on that load? Well, try shrinking down to 3 inches! LOL). It wasn't super-realistic looking up close, but it would fool people (OK, at least me) for quite a good part of the flight. It had actuators for steering toggles, so he could fly it in really nice. Didn't swoop too well as I recall

Dude, I'd be happy to see fewer people drinking/smoking/whatevering between skydives, never mind the night before. Carl

Good point, SP. All these things are proven and safe, the choice comes down to your personal references wrt the trade-offs involved. BTW, I have had to deal with the pud coming loose a few times and it's not really a big deal. All you have to do is feel for where the bridle enters the container and grab it there. You are right, you will never find the pud flying around back there, but the bridle is always in the same place. Also, I was recently looking at the Voodoo web site and it looks like the pull-out they have in these pictures is somehow secured under the right closing flap. Is anyone familiar with this arrangement, or am I just out of touch? Carl