The Skydiving and Aviation Related Photo Thread! (OT)

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climbski2

Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
May 4, 2013 - 12:30pm PT
Flight in the last operational B-24 with one of the original pilots.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 4, 2013 - 12:52pm PT
Tfish, what the hell is on the underside of the Cessna's wing?
And I hope you had sunscreen on yer bare arms!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A very sad accident this week - it seems that upon takeoff the load in this
747 shifted rearwards causing an unrecoverable stall.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
May 4, 2013 - 06:10pm PT
JayMark,

Cool! Somebody knows what I'm yacking about. The Sratostar was a pretty pathetic parachute, but prior to that, everyone was jumping rounds with big belly mounted reserves.

The Para Commander came out and that sucker was so full of vent holes that it boggled the mind. It did have some forward speed, so you could target a landing spot. Nothing like a square.

Yeah, JM. My buddy John Hoover jumped a StratoCloud. Those were actually good BASE canopies other than the pack weight. I can't even remember my first real rig. I don't recognize that first El Cap route to be my real rig, because it had so many steering line entanglements. I cut it up and used it for stuff. It was total junk. 3 malfunctions in 25 jumps (luckily none on that El Cap jump).

Malfunctions used to be fairly common. Later in my jumping career, the skydiving canopies got better and better. This was all prior to the first BASE specific canopies. The market used to be so tiny. At one point I was in the top 10 in the world with 100 BASE jumps.

By the time I had a Sabre, gear was super good. Sabre's were super fast and you could jump a tiny one. What ended my BASE career was jumping a 1500 foot antenna with the Sabre, because I was too lazy to get my BASE rig together. I opened off heading and flew through the wires.

I landed and was pretty freaked out. My son was about 2 years old, so I hung it up. Never did another one. Skydiving went out the window shortly afterwards. Too much money if you have a family to take care of.

All in all, I'm happy with my choices. My son is in college, handsome like his mother, (who is smoking hot), making good grades and is generally a good person. That is a chore worth nigh anything. No regrets.

Damn. I can't think of the name. Everyone was jumping 220 sq ft seven cells fairly rapidly. Nine cells came out very quickly, but they were too hot for BASE. One guy had a Unit, one friend had a Pegasus, Ravens were good when they finally came out. For the life of me I can't remember the model of that rainbow canopy above, and it was a very popular paraflite model.

The way that we used to pick BASE canopies was skydiving. Some parachutes just wouldn't open straight, or had line twists, or a slow snivel on the opening. Then we would nab that one canopy and use it for BASE. It sounds sort of primeval these days, but back then the quality control was so poor that a certain model could have great ones and shitty ones.

I got that rainbow rig above from a dead guy's estate. He was kinda reckless and inexperienced. He had a malfunction and cut away too low. His reserve was barely out of the container, and he landed kind of on his ass and backwards, so it had these eternal grass stains on the pin flap and the inside of the container.

It was brand new, man. The rigger sewed it back up in 30 minutes and then I skydived and BASE'd the sh#t out of it.

Some people were freaked a little about the death rig, but it was super cheap, modern for the time, and I always had this reply to questions about its history:

"What are the odds of it happening twice on the same rig?"

Then I became a horrible low pull artist and got banned from a few DZ's for a while.
JayMark

Social climber
Oxnard, CA
May 4, 2013 - 08:04pm PT
Base104,

That all sounds so familiar. I started in '63 on a Double-L also and then modified a 28 round in to a 7 panel TU. Before I got the Strato Star I was jumping a Thunderbow Piggyback. That thing was a load. I was a Navy rigger in those days back in '64-68. Home DZ was Arvin til 67 and then Calif. City and finally Taft. Many trips to Elsinore and Perris Valley followed. No base jumps though. It's fun to hear about your experiences. We probably know a lot of the same jumpers, although maybe frequented different DZ's. Hottest canopy I jumped was the Moriah or something like that, again an early 7 cell from the '80s.

Did you know Spike Yarder, Spikes Beech ? We lost it in the '80s in a crash on take off at Taft. The have a reunion up there at Taft occasionally. Those were the days, much like the 70's in climbing.
Vegasclimber

Trad climber
Las Vegas, NV.
Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2013 - 09:57pm PT
Reilly,

As soon as I saw the video and read about the manifest that was my guess. That was a sad deal for sure. Nasty video of what a full blown stall at low altitude looks like.
Vegasclimber

Trad climber
Las Vegas, NV.
Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2013 - 10:02pm PT
I know more then I would like to about old rigs haha. The DZ I started at, InStead Skysports, was a bit of an outlaw place with a lot of the old gear still in use.

I started there as a packer when I was 16, and did my first IAD the day after my 18th birthday with all my own gear. Had a Condor container with a leg pocket, a Titan 260 main and a Pioneer 28 reserve.

My first mal was on a Pegasus, had a super hard opening and looked up to a bunch of confetti flying off of it - blew the center cells all to hell. Not a fun ride.
ElCapPirate

Big Wall climber
Reno, Nevada
May 6, 2013 - 02:13pm PT
Yesterday!



snakefoot

climber
cali
May 6, 2013 - 02:48pm PT
wild stories BASE104, truly a different age with the specialized gear now.

nice Ammon, nothing like burning a hole in the sky.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 7, 2013 - 05:12pm PT
How fast were they, Hankster?
snakefoot

climber
cali
May 7, 2013 - 05:22pm PT
hank is also sponsored by T&A
Vegasclimber

Trad climber
Las Vegas, NV.
Topic Author's Reply - May 7, 2013 - 06:07pm PT
Dayum Hank! Saying that LZ was gnarly is an understatement. Well done! That was some sick stuff!
ElCapPirate

Big Wall climber
Reno, Nevada
May 7, 2013 - 08:03pm PT
Awesome Hank!
thekidcormier

Gym climber
squamish, b.c.
May 7, 2013 - 08:32pm PT
Righting hankster
Tfish

Trad climber
La Crescenta, CA
May 9, 2013 - 12:11pm PT
Reilly, the thing on the wing of the 182 in my pic is the janky door.
thekidcormier

Gym climber
squamish, b.c.
May 9, 2013 - 12:27pm PT
Does anyone here jump at Lodi? I'm hoping to get a days worth of jumps there new the end of the month....

Does anyone have beta on whether there's transit to the DZ from the town of Lodi. Or like a DZ shuttle to get there.

I'm rolling on the train...

If anyone is willing to share some beta please PM me.
snakefoot

climber
cali
May 9, 2013 - 12:35pm PT
kid,

call the dz and get a hold of a local... beta will flowith
Vegasclimber

Trad climber
Las Vegas, NV.
Topic Author's Reply - May 9, 2013 - 12:50pm PT
Ammon jumps there often, he can probably point you towards some good beta. Overall, the jumpers there are pretty cool and you shouldn't have a problem getting rides.

Whatever you do, do NOT PISS OFF BILL. He will toss you off the DZ without a second thought lol. Best just to leave him alone unless he talks to you. He's a bit....cantankerous? Yeah, that works. Blues!
ElCapPirate

Big Wall climber
Reno, Nevada
May 10, 2013 - 09:57pm PT
I really like Bill and have a lot of respect for him. If I had to manage a bunch of misfit skydivers and BASE jumpers I'd be a bit cantankerous too, ha ha. But, yeah that's good beta. Don't lie to him, or cause any problems. Just say, "Yes Bill", if he asks you to do something. And make sure you get on as many loads as possible, ha ha. And don't forget to have fun!

I have lot of friends that go back and forth in all directions. Message me and I'll try to work something out, for you.

Damn if I didn't forget to switch my camera on the right setting today, after taking a pic of a desert antelope yesterday. But, this is a pic of a friend from yesterday:


TomCochrane

Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
May 11, 2013 - 01:34am PT

Many stories emerged on 9/11 outside of what happened in New York and that field in Pennsylvania. This is one of them.
An article from the Washington Post

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, put an F-16 pilot into the sky with orders to bring down United Flight 93
By Steve Hendrix, Friday, September 09,1:20 AM
Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
alt-tag
“I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off,” says Maj. Heather “Lucky” Penney, remembering the Sept. 11 attacks and the initial U.S. reaction.
alt-tag
The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan.
Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.
“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her charge that day. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”
For years, Penney, one of the first generation of female combat pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her experiences on Sept. 11(which included, eventually, escorting Air Force One back into Washington’s suddenly highly restricted airspace).
But 10 years later, she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: how the first counterpunch the U.S. military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission.
“We had to protect the airspace any way we could,” she said last week in her office at Lockheed Martin, where she is a director in the F-35 program.
Penney, now a major but still a petite blonde with a Colgate grin, is no longer a combat flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly hauling VIPs around in a military Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own vintage 1941 Taylorcraft tail-dragger whenever she can.
But none of her thousands of hours in the air quite compare with the urgent rush of launching on what was supposed to be a one-way flight to a midair collision.
First of her kind
She was a rookie in the autumn of 2001, the first female F-16 pilot they’d ever had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had grown up smelling jet fuel. Her father flew jets in Vietnam and still races them. Penney got her pilot’s license when she was a literature major at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a graduate program in American studies, Congress opened up combat aviation to women and Penney was nearly first in line.
“I signed up immediately,” she says. “I wanted to be a fighter pilot like my dad.”
On that Tuesday, they had just finished two weeks of air combat training in Nevada. They were sitting around a briefing table when someone looked in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. When it happened once, they assumed it was some yahoo in a Cessna. When it happened again, they knew it was war.
But the surprise was complete. In the monumental confusion of those first hours, it was impossible to get clear orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still equipped with dummy bullets from the training mission.
As remarkable as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington. Before that morning, all eyes were looking outward, still scanning the old Cold War threat paths for planes and missiles coming over the polar ice cap.
“There was no perceived threat at the time, especially one coming from the homeland like that,” says Col. George Degnon, vice commander of the 113th Wing at Andrews. “It was a little bit of a helpless feeling, but we did everything humanly possible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see people react.”
Things are different today, ­Degnon says. At least two “hot-cocked” planes are ready at all times, their pilots never more than yards from the cockpit.
A third plane hit the Pentagon, and almost at once came word that a fourth plane could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed within an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.
“Lucky, you’re coming with me,” barked Col. Marc Sasseville.
They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support area when Sasseville, struggling into his flight suit, met her eye.
“I’m going to go for the cockpit,” Sasseville said.
She replied without hesitating.
“I’ll take the tail.”
It was a plan. And a pact.
‘Let’s go!’
Penney had never scrambled a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started going down the list.
“Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and let’s go!” Sasseville shouted.
She climbed in, rushed to power up the engine, screamed for her ground crew to pull the chocks. The crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage as she nudged the throttle forward. He ran along pulling safety pins from the jet as it moved forward.
She muttered a fighter pilot’s prayer — “God, don’t let me [expletive] up” — and followed Sasse­ville into the sky.
They screamed over the smoldering Pentagon, heading northwest at more than 400 mph, flying low and scanning the clear horizon. Her commander had time to think about the best place to hit the enemy.
“We don’t train to bring down airliners,” said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. “If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing.”
He also thought about his ejection seat. Would there be an instant just before impact?
“I was hoping to do both at the same time,” he says. “It probably wasn’t going to work, but that’s what I was hoping.”
Penney worried about missing the target if she tried to bail out.
“If you eject and your jet soars through without impact . . .” she trails off, the thought of failing more dreadful than the thought of dying.
But she didn’t have to die. She didn’t have to knock down an airliner full of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves.
It would be hours before Penney and Sasseville learned that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an insurrection by hostages willing to do just what the two Guard pilots had been willing to do: Anything. And everything.
“The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves,” Penney says. “I was just an accidental witness to history.”
She and Sasseville flew the rest of the day, clearing the airspace, escorting the president, looking down onto a city that would soon be sending them to war.
She’s a single mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks often of that extraordinary ride down the runway a decade ago.
“I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off,” she says. “If we did it right, this would be it.”
TGT

Social climber
So Cal
May 14, 2013 - 09:57pm PT
Naval aviation entered a new era today.

[Click to View YouTube Video]

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