pchapman

Yeah, probably normally not a good idea. Maybe if you already have experience with hanging upside down in your harness, and know how touchy your canopy is if feet press on risers. Unlikely to be on any official list of steps to consider. But I have seen a buddy undo a flip-through under canopy. I don't know how you would do a front flip, but a back flip is doable if that's the direction needed.

I see that even The Onion humour site supports your observations DirtyChai:

I also find your posts useful, whether or not I always fully agree. Hearing about a little digging into a subject is interesting. Sometimes people out there jump to conclusions. (It is funny though, given the polarization politically in the US, just seeing someone waving a US flag, that can now trigger a reaction, "Oh one of those whacko ultranationalist right wing nuts!"... when it's just the country's flag and could be anyone.)

It sort of goes with the territory. Occasionally it might be to scare newbies but if so, I usually find it to be part of a safety related discussion and not out of meanness. There's a lot to be learned from all the scary tales. Admittedly if one is a newbie it may take some digging to figure out just what the lesson really is, to what degree something was due to bad decisions or just bad luck. (E.g., if someone relates their tale of nearly getting injured on an off-landing, it doesn't mean one should always try to make a beeline for the DZ. Off-landings have hazards, but sometimes planning one early is a much smarter idea than maybe barely making it back onto the DZ grass, which can also injure or kill people.) Part of being told about bad stuff is that it is just telling a tale -- an exciting "war story" so to speak. Skydiving has given me all sorts of tales. Although they are best when nobody actually gets hurt, a tale sounds scarier if something bad happens. It happens here too on DZ; people like sharing their stories. If someone asks about how to do night jumps, they'll get some good info, plus some scary tales. Which may still have some learning value even if they are outliers. For non-skydivers, it is a problem when someone has little info on a subject. You mention skydiving, and the only thing skydiving that pops to mind is, "Hey, didn't some girl die in Ontario in a skydiving accident?" So if you don't want to risk that kind of conversation and want to tell them to shut up, then you pretty much have to do the same and avoid sounding like, "I'm super excited about being into this cool sport (that's probably cooler than anything you do)". If you want other jumpers to be better ambassadors for the sport and be a little more supportive, then you should also try to be more patient with the whuffos and their comments and questions. Even if they sound like dumbasses. Which we all are, when it comes to things we don't know about. Oh, did I tell you, I was once on a load where a guy I knew died? As they used to say more often, blue skies, black death!

Interesting style of parachute. In that second post's link, once can see that the canopy is effectively 7 round canopies all put together -- six hexagonally around a 7th. I've only seen that once before, in a paragliding reserve that was developed at least a decade back. Since the distance from apex to lower edge is small, making the canopy 'flat', inflation is very quick.

I'm no big time rigger so this is just from a few I happen to have seen, with no inside knowledge of what UPT built: Generally there are no huge changes or bulletins requiring a major retrofit or anything. -- Probably better padding now. Not just modern fancy spacer foam stuff but I have seen some early V III's (thru say '89? later?) with poorer padding internally such as in the leg pads and over the shoulders. Crappy stuff that wears out. Only later did they start using better stuff like on Sigma tandem rigs. -- Some early V III's had additional hard inserts in the reserve side flaps I think, along the edges of the flaps down to the bottom corners. Only saw that once. Rare? Maybe something about still refining certain patterns early on?? (Anyone else remember that?) -- I remember one V III from '99 that had leg hardware that got a bit slippery. Maybe just that rig. Might have been some hardware they only used for a shorter time. (Solution wasn't even to start sewing layers on the leg straps but just to wrap gaffer's tape on the slippery hardware, even if it had to be renewed occasionally.) -- Yeah the main closing loop location. It was very deliberately unlike the Vector II, changed to the bottom flap for many years ... Until they changed back to the V II location. Opinions change. -- Skyhook as has been said. Plus the associated Collins lanyard. Plus the staging bungee that came after the Skyhook came. -- One bulletin on stitching in the shoulder area of the reserve tray. Again from limited experience, it tended not to be a problem on medium sized rigs, and any problem is slow to develop. But the stitching can be inspected at repack time and can be upgraded by a rigger (although damn awkward to get the rig under the machine).

Sorry, no time for writing a master's thesis on the subject, after which you would say, "hmm, I still need more proof". You've sucked me in enough into this. So to end my involvement in this, I'll just leave you with one peer reviewed journal article that sticks more to clearly identified voter turnout than less verifiable opinions on causes. Still, no one paper is the end of all discussion and certainly won't be for you. The Transformation of the Southern Democratic Party Merle Black Emory University THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 66, No. 4, November 2004, Pp. 1001–1017 (a reputable journal published by the U. of Chicago press) Cheers. EDIT: We also may have that issue that you could say you're not arguing the point I'm arguing about, that we're arguing slightly different things. It is pretty clear that the Democrats were the ones who went with the civil rights movement more than the Republicans, and so lost the south.

Plenty of printed history is at least partially online. Here you go: E.g. "The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944" from the U of Alabama Press, by a U. of Alabama at Birmingham prof, 2013. (Yeah, some pinko America hater I'm sure.) In his epilogue about the post war era he is fairly damning -- the federal Democratic party was leaving old ideas about economic and racial domination behind, leaving the south to turn more to the more welcoming Republican party. (excuse any OCR errors) (Of course when Gowler wrote "they all became Republicans", he didn't mean every single one, 100.000% of them did.)

You are wrong as history does matter. Then let me restate: Yes history does matter. But you misstate the implications, so "your history" doesn't matter. The fact that some "Democrats" with now-distasteful ideas existed 50 to 150 years ago, has little bearing on the policies of the "Democrats" or their party today. (Although those ideas have somewhat more influence on the practices of the Republican party in attempting to win support.)

I wonder how you would be as a politician in Europe. Angela Merkel says something you don't agree with. You respond, "But you people were all Nazis! Your country, your cities were full of Nazis!" And anything Merkel says, you reply "But ... Nazis!" Um, ok, Nazis were around at one time as an organized force. Although basically no living politician was one, and Merkel's Germany doesn't support Nazi ideology at all. So your answers wouldn't relate in any way to the present or help move anything forward, and would just be blindly obstructionist. (So if you want to mention Dixiecrats as a history lesson, fine, but it has basically nothing to do with the current political situation.)

The Trap System packing instructions are half way down their Downloads page: http://miragesys.com/downloads/ (Although it is a little odd that downloadable logos are at the top and manuals are at the bottom of the page. No biggie.) These days I would guess any rig's value will be increased by having a MARD, to an extent that makes the cost for that option worthwhile. Not to mention its actual usefulness in skydiving. (I don't have any knowledge of how the Trap is doing in service though.)

I think that may be a bit of an overreach. I don't like Trump at all. But still, for Trump to say the 'book is true' is a very general statement, and doesn't mean that he therefore considers every statement in it to be correct, or that he even remembers that particular statement. For me personally I'll leave that 'laziness' statement off in the far corners of uncertainty. There are bookloads of other nasty things about him that are certainly true.

God works in mysterious ways! Yes one should always reload the thread in another window before posting. But it is still handy to see to what degree people agree!

Yes, religion is something common in just about any culture, a source of comfort, and a way the brain tries to cope with things like death or "how did we get here". Much as you say, as an atheist, one might also think of how a departed relative might now be thinking of oneself, as if they still existed somewhere. It can be comforting and help one get through the stresses of life. It will have placebo power. One might even say that a little insanity (believing in fake things) helps keep one sane. But you don't have to be stupid and actually believe in unicorns or gods or dead people being alive on some other plane. One can be intelligent enough to split the comforting thoughts from the reality. (Religion has the stick as well as the carrot -- threats of eternal damnation and all that in some cases. Some Christians wonder how atheists can have a proper moral code. But really, it just shows their own weakness. Atheist to Christian: "So, are you saying you are 'good' only because God is going to punish you later if you aren't? Isn't that like a kid saying he isn't going to beat up a smaller kid.... only because his big brother will beat him up when he finds out?") And one doesn't have to buy into the very specific doctrines of a particular religion, or spend one's time trying to interpret some books cobbled together over a thousand years ago, or follow some established church structure. Those religious types, they sure do like to argue about the details and can't seem to agree on among themselves what the correct religion is. Which gods are the real ones, if everyone is convinced their gods exist? Edit: I now see wolfriverjoe has posted some similar thoughts -- there may be some benefits from religious belief, but it doesn't mean it is true.

Aww hell. "Flare when you hear the crickets" - his sig line back in the rec.skydiving days

Here's what I have scanned from some Reflex document ... with my notes trying to clarify it all for myself ... no guarantees of accuracy!

Good point --Using paraglider terminology, pulling that middle riser would be doing a B-line stall. So yeah one could do a turn that way. If both middle risers are pulled, the B-line stall is symmetrical, the canopy stays square but is dropping in a stalled configuration. More fun for up high. The canopy also had a tight recovery arc. I found an old outside video of me doing something like a 720 toggle spiral really low, and flaring out of it to landing: https://youtu.be/Ty5hl5Hq4vo

I'm not defending the guy, just trying to figure out his reasoning. From the pics: The pin is slightly curved on its 'inside' against the loop The outside though is completely flat, until the pin has been extracted enough for the tapered tip to drop down into the grommet. So it looks like it has to lever up the loop until it gets dragged out, tip pressing on and dragging against the grommet. Now the ad does mention it is made for light closing loop tension -- so I guess it is expected to lever up the loop. I'm guessing he figures that a little awkward levering and scraping against a modern stainless grommet is acceptable and works with slightly lighter loop tension. I'm not sure that scraping is good, and it might also put a lot of sudden stress on the loop and lead to loop damage. Meanwhile the lack of overall curvature on the device is supposed to the chance of pushing it out of the loop just by pressing up against the pack. (For our curved pins, we rely on it to flip or rotate easily, being hard to push a highly curved pin out.) After all, other straight pins like pullout pins or reserve pins are less likely to be pushed out. Still, they can be pushed out if the cover over them isn't solid and the pressure is in just the right spot. This Coffin Nail thing is thicker, so might be 'grabbed' more easily, but on the other hand has the scooped out part where the loop sits so that reduces the chance of it sliding out. It might actually take a fair bit of force to push it out! (Straight reserve pins do get pushed out sometimes, but might be more susceptible to sliding out because of their up-down orientation which is the direction force is applied if someone slumps down against a bulkhead or something. It is harder to apply strong side to side forces on a closing pin.)

Hmm, not sure. Guess I'd start with medium speed openings, taking a moderate delay. The closing-pin-on-a-cord bridle is something that has been used in CRW so an experienced CRW jumper might help for having a look at that. Should be ok but I'm not experienced with them.

Here's the ad for the Evolution in the 1990-1991 ParaGear catalogue. ParaFlight was big on detail and data.

The plain Evolution, I believe that was F-111 style fabric - still should be good for some hundreds of jumps. The later Super Evolution is ZP on the top skin. I put some jumps on a Super Evolution 140 and still have it. Fun to play with and it was someone's regular canopy... but these days I'd say it is so weird that it isn't worth using regularly. I can't recall what all changed from the original Evolution, but they went to a conventional slider and ZP. Pilot chute controlled reefing was a thing in the early days of squares and ParaFlight gave it one last try it seems on the Evolution. But companies were able to make sliders work reasonably well without the complexity. (Not that all normal slider equipped canopies open well.) The Evolution's lines cascade side to side instead of front to back, attaching to every chamber. Bit of a pain in propacking where one faces 10 lines to each side when flaking... but one just doesn't try to be exact and count. (Some sizes had 23 not 21 chambers though.) At least one only has A,B, and C lines, no D lines. It is made for those old (unreinforced) triple risers, and mine uses a 6 grommet slider. So putting it on regular risers might be a little odd, even though the A and B risers I think stay close together. My Super Evolution tended to spiral a bit on opening, like a Vengeance (though even that is a dated reference!), but always came out fine. (ie, it would FLY in a turn at the end of opening and not try to twist up before turning) The lines are a very soft, thin Spectra which also makes packing messier. They are rated to 600 lbs so there's no strength issue. Since the front risers connect only to the A lines, pulling down the front riser only can easily tuck the nose under. Great fun at altitude as one can do a quick turn by collapsing the nose, spinning around, and then letting it recover. Don't "front riser" down low though. They fly with a flat trim. The selling point back in the day was that it had a great glide ratio, because of an efficient airfoil and trim. Glide ratio wasn't a marketing thing later on. They pack "big" I think, partially because ParaFlight used an odd sizing calculation. E.g, for my "140", they call it 140 without the drooped outer chambers, but with them, it is a 154. But those outer chambers are really part of the canopy as seen from above so should be counted. And some packing charts show the "140" to have a greater volume than a Sabre 1 170. So expect some bigness. Good luck!

From an outsider's perspective, it seemed like it was just too much specialized gimmickry, that wasn't easy to get started with, combined with the lure of advances in freeflying. Plenty of fun stuff to do not on one's belly, that didn't need a board or the restrictions that came with it. Although I wasn't into skysurfing, it also seemed that the skill level had gotten so high that there wasn't much more to be accomplished. (Usually that isn't technically true in most things though.) The best guys could for example do controllable spins at a ridiculously high speed. Hats off for their great skill, but they still looked like spinning idiots. Certainly the loss of the X-games was part of the reasons. In the 90s whuffos would ask "Do you do the thing on the board?" whereas nowadays they might ask "Do you do the thing with the squirrel suit?"

Interesting, as I have almost never heard of a reserve closing loop breaking in the era of Cypres style closing loops. It must have happened out there, after all, one does occasionally see a pretty fuzzy loop. How many pack jobs or jumps was the loop in the rig for? (In some places loops get replaced all the time without notation, in other places riggers tend to note on the card if a loop was replaced.) It is a reminder that closing loops do wear not just on top, but on the sides of the eye (from dragging between grommets on a very tight pack job), or inside the eye (possibly from rough temp pins roughly inserted again especially in a tight pack job). And in your case maybe a rough grommet. Of course with good technique one can minimize such wear, but the tendency is for loops to take more of a beating in this era of tight rigs. (Heck over the years I've had a couple times where I put in a brand new loop, then scraped up the loop so much in trying to close the container with maybe a slightly too optimistically short a loop setting, that I've replaced the loop again, before finishing the pack job more carefully.)

Just to note for anyone not checking the actual page, that's the New Yorker's Borowitz Report, which is satire. Yeah I know, hard to tell the difference these days.

@ Rush: Don't you even try to provide information to back up your claims? A coherent defense would make the right seem less crazy. People agree that Hillary was pretty arrogant and dumb about the way she handled things with her personal email server. Comey didn't like what he saw, but as BillVon keeps saying, the FBI didn't find anything criminally proscecutable. For example, this summary of Comey's speech on the email scandal in July 2016, from the LA Times: Very careless, sloppy, not just her but the whole State Department...that all fits, and I think people across the political spectrum agree. But your chant of 'Comey found crimes!' doesn't fit.