tkhayes

technically speaking, we were NEVER at war. It was a UN police action that the US backed when Truman sent troops there. Did Congress ever pass a real 'declaration of war'? Either way - another problem we do not need to solve in the world. stay the fuck out of it.

depends on what you want to run with it. light loads, you can buy a simple AC adapter from Radio Shack, and a 12V female plug, then cut the end off the adapter and resolder it to the new socket/plug.

PD might make the canopy, but it is part of the Sigma system. UPT publishes the manuals, PD does not have such a manual for the Sigma main. They do have a service bulletin for the reserve on their website, but apparently nothing else. I expect that PD makes the stuff, the support, use, and operations of it are up to UIPT and they will answer to that.

certainly we would not want to base anything on facts...... Bottom line. More Mexicans are in jail because more Mexicans are in the country. Less 'white Canadians' are in jail because less 'white Canadians' are in the country. Proportionately, the numbers probably work out pretty damn close I expect. The CONSTITUTION of this country (so staunchly supported by so many right-wingers) does not allow us to discriminate in the ways of this Arizona law, simply by the way people look. And that will mostly likely be challenged in court and struck down (eventually) If you want all the illegals out of this country, then you better start getting ready to pay 5.99/lb for fruit and vegetables, because the 'white guys' aren't going to pick that stuff for less than a $15-20/hour union job

800-SKYDIVE is a network owned by the Skydive Miami people in Homestead FL. Basically you would buy area codes through them so when people dial 800-skydive, they get funnelled to your telephone #. We used it for a while, inflated phone prices and not much traffic. A good idea, but unless there is a nationwide advertising campaign to promote it, it does not mean squat. and promoting it via area code does not work either. Dial 800-SKYDIVE from Tampa and you get a recording saying there is no dropzone in the area currently subscribed.... I would envision an 800-SKYDIVE call center where your recommendation as a dropzone comes via the location relative to the caller and the amount of $$ you pay them to promote you. Anyway it is not a scam, just a disfunctional service at this point

why not a good idea? I do it every jump. look up, see the steering line twisted. spin the toggle on my finger a few time to untwist. that simple. takes 10 seconds. does not need to be perfect, but if you do it every jump, the packers will not have to worry about a spun-up line, and for that matter, the next person to use the gear will not have to either.

and I am willing to bet that Bill Booth himself denies in court, anything that is not in the manual - as would any manufacturer I expect

actually you reinforced most of what I said - since I make a living at skydiving, it is somewhat easier for me to have the business deductions. I do track car mileage and deduct what is business related. I do have a home office and it is used for that business, which i can demonstrate via the emails, the documents, the accounting, etc that goes on there. I do actually have a profit, not a loss, so I pay some taxes, but yes I claim all the deductions I can Sure, if you make $500 a year and claim $5000 in expenses, eventually the alarm bells go off, but I am not sure I was ever in that range. But I operated 'money-losing' skydiving for a long time as well.

http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Manual/SIGMA-MANUAL-COMPLETE.pdf the manual has pretty clear packing instructions and if you vary from that and have some sort of an accident - you actually might be found liable for not following their published instructions. Are the steering lines twisted up? They do get that way easily on their own. Every jump, look up and untwist the steering lines by spinning the toggle(s) around on your finger, it only takes a few seconds to keep them unwound

$10B? That is it? when we are spending $3,500B+ in the 2009 federal budget? 0.28% of the federal budget? Ok then you are right, they cost us $10B/year. But I rest my case. Given what we go through in this country every year on everything else, this money is not even worth chasing down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States Scroll down to 'Crime" Argues that no more crime is committed by illegals than by anyone else. And I agree. Why do you see more Mexicans? Because there are more Mexicans than 'hungarians'. There are more of them in emergency rooms and more of them are in jail and more of them are working on the farm for that matter. Eastern Europeans also run crime syndicates in the USA; WHITE people with guns, who murder, rape and sell drugs and human beings and worse. But we passed a law that will likely NOT stop any of them because they look 'normal' Emergency rooms are filled with WHITE people who do not pay their hospital bills, as well as illegals. I sat in the ER here in Zephyrhills and watched a "mexican' family deicde on what they could afford there and then PAID for it in cash. It is simplay a paradigm that is not true. You actually ARE being racist when you segment one portion of the populace, or one color and blame societies problems on them without basing it on fact. So show me the facts Welfare is the same way - all 'lazy black people' are on welfare, when in fact, most people on welfare are CHILDREN, and most women on welfare are WHITE. Even if you took welfare completely out of the budget, we would save 1% of the total federal budget. I think we haev bigger fish to fry. Are Mexican gangs running drugs and violence in our country? Yes they are. Is that bad? Yes it is. Do I want it to stop? Yes I do. Legalize all the drugs that they are selling and the problem almost instantly goes away. We take their money away at the source and now they have nothing to do. Instead we spend billions trying to chase them around. If you think that stopping some Mexican guy in Phoenix to ask for his ID is going to get rid of the gang problem, then ...... I have no idea what to say.....

good reading. Most of them seem to think that it is wrong, unjustifiable, possibly illegal, or at the very least, the laws governing such things are woefully outdated and need to be addressed. But of course, rather than tackle those issues, we are just going to go ahead and do it anyway......

The CIA should not have access to military weapons, nor should they be allowed to even operate such attacks or even be able to order them. I am not sure that even the use of them is constitutional. We have a military defined and funded in the Constitution, I think it is pretty scary to have some sort of 'secret military' that operates apparently with little oversight and outside of the boundaries of the military. The CIA serves a purpose, but neeeds to be reeled in when it comes to actual combat operations.

there are a lot of 'ifs' in that hypothetical situation. One, you assume that illegals get all kinds of govt assistance and I doubt that is true, given that most of those services require many forms of identification and such. Many, if not most agencies of that kind have tightened up their requirements and screening - (have you tried to renew a drivers license lately?) While illegals have no place in this country, the federal government has the job to do, not the local militia with the swastikas on their arms...... Stopping people just because of what they look like to ask for ID is simply WRONG. What about the illegal UK, French, Hungarian people who all look 'white and normal'? The problem is solved by securing the borders. The borders get secured by patrols and troops. The government pays for that through TAXES. No one (it seems) in this country is willing to pay TAXES to the government, even if it means getting REAL work done, yet most complain that the government is not doing a good enough job. The problem is simple to solve. We have 100,000 troops in foreign countries when they could be here guarding our borders. But once again, America and its politicians cannot see the forest for the trees.

sorry all of you - but I make the best BBQ. period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0T2X1dXcI I remember this one from years back. They pulled over a family because their car looked like on eused in a robbery......pulled the whole family out of the car and cuffed, them, no explanation for what is going on, the family is yelling at them to close the dorr so the dog does not get out on the freeway. The 'deadly killer' dog jumps out of the car and the cop unloads his shotgun immediately on it. from here http://www.volunteertv.com/cumberland/headlines/16341331.html the family apparently sued and won something. Too bad it is civil, not criminal when the cops make a mistake that costs a life...... i bet in this new case the family will nto be able to sue since they were obviously 'drug dealers'

there is a big difference between 'national IDs' which serve some purpose for security, versus having the right to stop you and ASK for that ID just because of the way you look. personally I am not necessarily in favor of adding another layer of bureacracy just for identification. We already have plenty of IDs out there. Paaports, SSN's, drivers licenses. Maybe we just need to tighten up the regs on those first and make them a little more stringent.

if you do not like where you are - find somewhere else. sometimes that is tough. I understand fully that people do not have the money they used to have and I also understand that skydiving is NOT necessarily the 'all-encompassing life-changing' thing for everyone. So if you want to jump less often, the dropzone still likes your money I would hope; and I try not to make it too difficult to stay current and/or help them with that goal, even if it is one jump per month. But I am also realistic about it - i.e. If you are going to jump once eveyr 6 months, then you are never going to learn how to skydive and it is going to be expensive. But no need to be condescending abou tit.

pretty much everything I have said so far, have been already mis-interpreted, and then changed into something that it is not. So I will stop commenting on my own thread.

we have no real 'policies'; land into the wind, follow the other jumpers down, if you are doing Hp landings, then you need to get your own pass, i.e. you cannot be a hazard t others, and if you do something stupid, on ANY jump, then expect to be spoken to about it. We have a huge landing area, no need to separate it.

I saw Theo hanging out with Jim, Elvis and MLK last week at the donut shop here in town. At least that is what I saw.....

glad it worked out for you (yaaay!!) - we just finished 'tightening up' our weight restrictions for tandems and I find myself saying no to more and more people as I get older and (sometimes) wiser. It can be done, people can lose weight. Once you have a license and have those accomplishments, you can get as fat as you want, even I live with that and struggle to keep it down, but if I as a first jump student today, I doubt I would be able to learn to skydive.

that was March of 2001 so yes, i guess you could say I learned - given that I am still here.....

I count 5 fatalities this year already related to canopy/winds/landing. Are we ever gonna learn anything?

I do not remember ever turning a student away for being scared or performing poorly. Even with poor performance, there is always some other method of training or jump you can do with them (tandem i.e.) to keep them progressing and helping them along. I have turned away 3 or 4 students in 28 years for being complete assholes who already know it all and are too arrogant to be bothered following the rules of the road. That is always a hard decision to make as well - even assholes have a right to jump i suppose, but i draw the line usually when no one on the dropzone wants to jump with them - that is always a good clue as to their ability to progress any further.