tkhayes

Freefall Express has never had a 'rental agreement' in place with Skydive City for the aircraft hangar. Actually, in the 15 years I have been at Skydive City, I have never seen any written agreement of any kind between Skydive City and Freefall Express.

It may very well be that easy, but... hard to explain it all here, but we are heading in that direction at least......

The day after the meeting in Deland (Monday right?), that Billy shows up at Z-Hills, with his brother Joe (who is supposedly opening the Deland dropzone, not Billy), and Tom Dessert, Freefall Express' mechanic, Marius Ivascu, two body guards, one of their many attorneys, and a locksmith and attempted to take over our aircraft hangar. police, hours of pain in the ass, and in the end, they left with a bunch of parts and stuff from the hangar. (which is still filled with Freefall Express stuff) Bill Richards recently 'gave' one share each of his Skydive City shares to his brother Joe and Tom Dessert, making them now shareholders of Skydive City, albeit, small shareholders.

The City of Deland had another meeting on Monday I think - did anyone hear anything about it?

we do not rent trailers but pipandjudy@yahoo.com have a few for visitors.

back in the day, the trailer park was a sand pit with electrical fires and the dropzone made no money. Today we have a nice park with full amenities... and we make a dollar or two as well so we can keep improving it

prices are what you might expect for a private RV park with full amenities on a dropzone. The full service slots have their own meters, you get sewer and water, but you have your own electric hookup - $325/month and $225 if you did 20 jumps in the previous month Temp slots for part-timers are $15/night or $300/month for electric only. That gives you electric, no water, but we have hot showers laundry food, a fabulous new bar, and fill-time turbine aircraft all the time. 30A and some 20A available, first come first serve. Tent camping is still free but we expect people to be jumping, see ya there

I heard something about PD (www.performancedesigns.com) doing a daily giveaway until Xmas. They say 'items from their gear store' but I wonder what - anyone win anything yet? TK

I doubt there are any more ambitious or lazy people than there were 30 years ago. But there certainly are more poor people AND more extremely rich people than 30 years ago any way you look at it. You cannot characterize them 'poor people' as lazy and expect it to stick. Hence I disagree And Madoff was a criminal, he did not 'lose' any money, he lost other people's money. The current state of rich is still extremely rich and it is mostly due to tax cuts and favorable corporate de-regulation (for the corporations and the rich) When we had high(er) taxes, we had better social programs, less unemployment and fewer poor people - figure it out.

I disagree

Hmm, I thought corporate profits were through the roof? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/corporate-profits-q3-2010-_n_787573.html So now all those corporations and rich people should be hiring people right? After all, that is what they say they will do when we lower taxes and there is more money in the pot - it all trickles down to the little guy right? http://www.cnbc.com/id/38682634/Would_Cutting_Corporate_Taxes_Jumpstart%C2%A0_US_Economy Oh but that's right - it is just an opinion, NOT reality. The reality is that the rich get richer not matter what, and the poor get poorer at the expense of the rich, but the rich keep the politicians in office so they get what they want. Oh there I go again with my commie Canadian socialist thinking.....

exactly why the tea party, when it comes right down to it, will never get anywhere, Constitution would have to be changed along with a million other state and federal laws. Not happening. THe NAZI party has a lot of ideas that 'good ol folk' share too, but they will never get anywhere either.

my experience with Groupon was that I could NOT negotiate the terms. It was their way or the highway

I thought that the news this week was that the cost of the TARP program was only going to end up being $25B. Far cry from the 700B or whatever it was. Nice to get all that money back. I heard we even made money on many of the things we invested in..... Oh yes, and the other news this week - corporate profits are way up. But unemployment is still high......so much for that argument that if we give the corporations all the money through tax breaks and such that it will all filter down to us little people.....like via jobs or something.....

The City of Deland is just kidding themselves if they think they are dealing with the 'mild-mannered' Joe Richards - when in fact, his brother Bill Richards is the controlling interest in pretty much all the companies, Freefall Express, Blue Skies and whatever else they want to pretend they are part or not part of. Bill Richards is currently suing Skydive City, myself, Joan Murphy, and Sue Perkins-Stark. Freefall Express has filed lawsuits against Tadpole Aviation LLC (my Cessna 182 company) and against Marko Jaakkola, the pilot who used to work for him, but now flies for us through Vertical Air. I could fill hundreds of pages of legal crap here, but it is too much work. - maybe some day. Bill Richards (also a partner in Skydive City) testified in court here in Pasco County that Skydive City's lease with the City was in imminent jeopardy and that he is the only person who can save the corporation from being squandered away by the current management (me, Joannie and Sue). Then when we finally got a vote at City Council to approve our new lease (Otober 25 of this year), Freefall Express's attorney, Joe Richards and Kay Hoiby-Griep showed up at the City Council meeting to try and block the lease from happening. sheesh! Anyway, anyone who wants the real story on what is going on can read it between the lines (or call me) TK

right wing conservative christian opinions are without common sense.....

IMPEACH!!

sorry but I disagree with most of everything that you state - not everything, but most of it.

certainly if you own your own planes, there is probably yet another small margin and incentive to keep them flying too. The biggest reason we did not go with them was their refusal to even budge on the price or the terms. i have to accept theirs or no deal. They sales guy was a complete asshole and had no respect whatsoever for my bottom line. Therefor, he does nto 'earn' my business

as I said, it is successful regionally yes. read my post above to explain the dollars that I see. Florida does not sell tandems for more than $200, I see that SDC and CSAC are both over $200. If I could sell tandems for $239 then i would be making even more money than I am now. We have 15-18 dropzones in Florida and 8 million people in the entire state. There is a lot of competition here and there are still idiots out there willing to do tandems below cost for 'image'. I am not. Everyone does stuff for cheap, occasionally. not 1000 times, and I will not apologize for trying to make a dollar and pay my bills/staff and me and the other shareholders

$109 minus 2 airplane slots, about $36 leaves $73 minus tandem/I and packing, about $45 leaves $28 minus wear and tear on rig and maintenance, is at or about all that is left (explained in other threads) leaves ZERO or worse, negative [sarcasm]At least everything else at the dropzone, like electricity, rent, taxes, staff is free[/sarcasm] sorry dude, the $100K that you are talking about is a fantasy. if 20% of them don't show up and I get to keep the money, well then there might be some profit in it, but I actually have a conscience and am not interested in ripping off that many people. If I sell 400 tandems even somewhat below regular price, then I make just as much money and Groupon does not get a cent of it. I do not have a problem with Groupon making a dollar - I have a problem with them making a dollar at my expense. Not to mention, the Groupon sales guy here in Tampa that I was dealing with was/is a complete dick

it is quite regional and successful in some areas where in others they are not. In Florida they demanded $129 tandems and they take $20 per. Guaranteed to sell 1000 tandems for us - which i did not doubt, but there is no way I am selling tandems for $109 and hoping to pay for my costs. If they sell 1000, then they get $20,000. They make a bundle and I operate below cost. For $20K, I can probably hire a large PR firm and do a substantial amount of my own advertising for a year. No matter what I tried to negotiate with them, i.e. $149, they did not want it. So we refused. All this crap about 'bringing friends' and 'buying video' - and the expiry dates. Great! Just what I need - a bunch of pissed off customers 'cause they spent $129 and get nothing for it. That is a whole lot different that spending $10 on a Groupon pizza deal and never redeeming it and losing my $10. Who cares. Our philosophy is that I have 11000 tandem emails in my database. If I sent them all an offer for a $129 tandem, I bet I get just as many tandems and I do not have to pay anyone else $20 per. I am tired of advertising leeches that suck the money out of my business. If they are truly advertisers, then they have a genuine interest in helping my business make money - not just theirs.... no way jose

I work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day running a dropzone in the winter....

that's why i quoted several sources and several surveys/articles. When you see consistent results from various sources, it gives credibility to the the information. you disagree with that? Or perhaps you have other surveys that you can quote that consistently show the USA as the best place to live......?

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html USA is 11th with 7 EUROPEAN countries ahead of us. http://internationalliving.com/2010/02/quality-of-life-2010/ USA is 7th with 4 EUROPEAN countries ahead of us http://www.bestcountriestolive.com/best-country-to-live-in-europe/is-america-the-best-country-to-live-in USA does not make the top 10 with 8 EUROPEAN countries ahead of us http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ US ranks 4th, but 6 of the top 10 countries are EUROPEAN. so the simple conclusion? European countries are pretty good at what they do and perhaps we could learn a thing or two about running a country. Not necessarily "Being just like them", but at the very least we need to learn what they do well and try to emulate it in some way.