mr2mk1g

Thank god for that. I was only discussing this the other night and we concluded it looked like the end for both proposed tunnels. I do hope at least one of them gets off the ground.

You can't prove that... You can't prove that he did have them. The burden of proof is upon those who want to go to war... they have not discharged that burden. You can't prove that he did have WMD. This report now out gives a firm conclusion that he did not have them. Not proof, but far far away from saying he did as you are saying. Where is your proof? Try and find some in an official document written by a team who's been in the country for a long time... guess what - thats the report we're talking about now, and it says exactly the opposite of what you are claimaing. You are starting to sound like one of those nuts who wants people to prove that NASA went to the moon.

It’s not the cutaway force I’m worried about. It’s the fact that some designs have been noted to lock off against themselves when subjected to a load. I am quite happy to admit that I am out of the realms of my formal education when it comes to the design of cutaway systems so the engineers amongst you will have an advantage on me here. The only real experience I have to draw on is playing around on weather hold with different helmet cutaway designs. When the wearer was suspended by their helmet with the aid of two assistants, it was observed that some cutaway systems would lock up under the weight of the wearer while some others continued to work efficiently. I noted that the cutaway system I had built for myself at the time would sometimes lock depending on the angle at which it was worked. Other designs always locked against themselves despite having the handle/cable/user interface completely removed from the system. My point being that whilst the cutaway forces were still easily manageable on these systems, the cutaway mechanism itself was vulnerable to failure simply by virtue of a load being placed upon it. I’ve since switched to a design which was noted to work regardless of whether it was loaded or not. I must add the caveat that it is perfectly possible that the examples tested were simply poor examples of their respective systems or indeed merely faulty. Without having a designer present it is not terribly easy to confirm one way or another but it was still an interesting comparison to make.

She probably wouldn't have been able to hear you if you were skydiving at the time - wind noise on the phone and all. On a serious note - IGNORE your 4 jumps. A non-skydiver will consider you to have already taken up the sport and will not understand that you are not a sport skydiver yet. If your 4 jumps were over a year ago then from the sports point of view you are going to have to start from scratch. You are in virtually the same position as someone who has never jumped from a training point of view. As I said though, the insurer won't get that concept – 4 jumps is 400% more than they will have done. Your conscience should be clear if you don't mention them.

You do realise that all across the world similar jokes are being made with the title "American Test for Preemptive Strike" but with content that reads any one of the following: “Do we want their oil? (or any other resource).” “Will it please my daddy?” “Do I need a war to get re-elected?” “Is there some thing we can create to make it seem like we’re under an immanent threat? Not my view of course, I just wanted to check that you realised what everyone else is joking about…

but you still find yourself giving advice...

Education is expensive... and you have your evenings free. There are some very intelligent, very educated and very very attractive women out there. I would have no compunctions about marrying an ex stripper. If they were currently a stripper now and were going on to be something else (stripping's not exactly a career now is it) - again no real problem with that.

But we plan for the worst-case scenario don't we... the worst-case scenario for a cutaway system on a helmet is a canopy attached to the jumpers head via their helmet. In that instance why not use the same system as we have on our mains? – it’s performing the same task. And if some manufacturers can't make a ring system work right the answer is simply not to use them as opposed to flatly abandoning the whole concept based on a couple of poor examples. There are ring systems on the market that work perfectly. It’s not that hard to produce your own. There is little need to persist with a concept that has been shown to be inferior when another is freely available (save for cost, aesthetics, and comfort where applicable together with the informed acceptance of the risks inherent in abandoning the most efficient system available).

Hold a PC “upside down” by its bridle. Should the apex sit level with the point where the ZP and mesh meet or should it be above or below that line? For the avoidance of doubt, this is a collapsible PC and the kill line has plenty of slack – the determining factor in the lie of the apex is the tape within the PC. cheers

he was the kiddie....

It probably works fine – it’s right next to his “milliard” key. Guess he felt the need to dumb it down for you guys.

I know this probably isn’t going to be a popular response but… Given that people abandoned pin and spring cutaway systems for their canopies years ago in favour of the three-ring-circus, why on earth are some companies persisting in trying to sell us them for our helmets?

I have had PC in tow on a great number of hop+pops with my current kit. Kit is a Wings W13 built for a 170 main/160 reserve – housing a 170 main/160 reserve. 28 inch ZP PC with approx 100 jumps on the system. It closes up nice and tight although the closing loop certainly is not what you would call too tight for freeflying – I am able to pull about an inch of excess past the grommet when packing. Various different delays out of various aircraft. Worst results occur in the lowest airspeeds. Solution is usually to spill my burble by turning to look. On the odd occasion that this hasn’t worked I have reached around the back and manually pulled the pin by grabbing the bridal and yanking. I consider this to be a non-event caused by a combination of the low speed deployment and a tight pack job. It doesn’t appear to matter if I pitch in the prop wash or 5 seconds after exit. 10 second after exit and it opens right up but when we do our hop+pops at 3k a 10 second delay is not always particularly desirable. A longer closing loop for hop+pops would solve the problem but that would introduce its own set of risks on freefly jumps. Overall this issue certainly doesn’t concern me; it’s merely annoyance value. Now if it happened at terminal there would be something wrong...

But that's a pants way to bid. All you do is push the price up. You only win stuff that way by paying more than you can get the item for. It's a crappy way of getting a deal. Never bid on anything until the last 30 seconds. THEN bid the highest you are willing to pay - not simply just enough to beat the current bidder. I'll say this again as it's quite important: BIDDING EARLIER SIMPLY PUSHES UP THE PRICE FOR SOMEONE ELSE.

Just ask an OZ guy on here who posts as "Dangles". No prizes for guessing how he came up with his name.

You can get injured walking down the stairs in the morning. The tunnel is a nice "safe" learning environment - especially where you're flying with an instructor as you will be doing. But as with everything in life it has it's risks, just like walking down the stairs.

Actually did have a crack at it - although it's now 1am and I've been at the DZ all day. The result is a very good conversion of the office... but the man simply wouldn't work out right. Ive attached what you asked for but I reckon the finished product is complete pap. It's attached for information purposes only as I will need another go at it probably with a different bloke. The office on it's own I'm very happy with though (also attached). But the man lost all of the image quality when I had to shrink him by 40% to get him even close to the right size. As is, he's still far too big for the photo. With this degree of resizing the image quality becomes too poor for use. I had the sign right to start with but couldn't be arsed to fix it when I screwed it up after resizing the picture as by then the image quality was so bad there was little point doing any further work to it. As the quality became so poor there was also little point attempting a good job inserting him. If you found me another man I could maybe have another go at inserting him instead. Someone who is closer to scale with the office would mean the quality wouldn't be so drastically affected and I (or anyone else sitting out a rainy weekend) could insert him almost seamlessly. What you doin with it anyway? Trying a little 419 eater?

"Hooked on a Feeling" - Blue Swede AKA the "ugachaka" song or the "dancing baby music from Ali McBeal". Except I have the orriginal stuck in my head complete with words, not just the "ugachaka" chorus line. Fuck me it's annoying. I keep trying to think of something very different like Ramstein or something to boot it outa my head...

Well in the UK you'll often simply be told the landing direction prior to boarding or exiting the plane by the JM. Woe betides anyone who breaks the direction. We don't often have the same problems with variable winds though as some US DZ's. It's a relative oddity to have had the winds do a 180 by the time you get down. Then there's the old brick under the arrow trick. That thing's gonna point where you want it if you jam it with a brick (etc). Simple rule then - always follow the arrow. This just needs constant monitoring, but then here we effectively have a guy dedicated to watching the PLA all day anyway. Again, this is more prone to difficulties where changeable winds are the norm. Perhaps the first down rule was created by some of the really big US DZ's that also tend to have problems with variable winds. I guess many other DZ's might have looked to their bigger brother and thought - "well if X is doing it, perhaps that's the right rule to us", without realising the rule's created mainly because of the difficulties with winds they have at X and thus might not be the best solution to another DZ?

I can have a bang at it tonight. The building blocks you've given us should be about perfect for it - (first two at least) - I figure the third guy was shot with a different lens to the building so will look odd. By tonight I mean in about 9-10 hours ish before I'm available to take a look at it.

Lay a new patio. Be adventurous in your choice of aggregate. er... well ok - not that extreme, but they don't deserve to be with you any longer.

Never had new DZ fear as I went to 5 different DZ’s during my RAPS training alone. Not exactly great for progression but has meant that different planes and landing areas have always been second nature to me. I have the same number of jumps as you and I’ve jumped at 13 different DZ’s. I have holidays already planned/booked to 14,15 and 16. I also just did my first () demo last week into an area that had never seen parachutist before and was surrounded by hazards and had no outs. You will breeze through jumping at Elsinore and wonder what you were worried about. It’s a huge landing area – just take your reference point from the chuffing great lake, there can hardly be an easier landing area to spot. You’ll have already seen an aerial photo of the DZ and guess what... the DZ looks just like the photo.

I've had good experiences with Jessops on line. They have a good stock of 2nd hand cameras too which would suit your needs perfectly. Their 2nd hand cameras come with warrantees and most of the time have just had a full service before sale. The best bit about their online shop is the fact that if you see something in Scotland you like but you live in London - they will ship it to your local Jessops free of charge for you to take a look at. You get the ease of buying on line with the security of seeing the actual item in the flesh first at a reputable physical shop. http://www.jessops.com/shop.cfm I've also bought from professional e-bayers but always insist on collection in person if the purchase price is above the £200 protection you have. Take a print out of the description and don't be afraid to walk away from the deal if the item differs in any meaningful way from that description - that is perfectly legal and e-bay should support you in that step.

Exactly - the slave owners didn't deserve the right. Do you think that someone should have the right to go into a pet store, buy a puppy, take it outside and jump up and down on its head for fun? Should people have the right to buy a cat, take it out and physically pull its legs off simply because it amuses them? Would people call that acceptable behavior or would they call it unnecessary cruelty? Do you think those things are acceptable? Seriously do you? If that is what you really think I want to see you post that. Now how do you distinguish between acts such as those and the act of having a pack of hounds rips the fox apart? They don’t need to do it culling - you can do that with rifles and it is done with rifles. Hell I've done it myself on many occasions – that’s a sport in its own right. It's certainly not for food; - we don’t eat fox and I’m quite sure the hunters are able to feeding the dogs themselves. It's for fun, pure and simple. Fun – just like jumping up and down on that puppy’s head. Assuming you said that jumping up and down on a puppy’s head purely for fun is not acceptable, why would having a pack of hounds to rip a fox apart purely for fun be acceptable? Are they that different that you are able to make the distinction? Neither serves any purpose; both are done simply for fun. I personally cannot see why they can't call off the dogs and kill the fox. It's perfectly acceptable to some huntsmen who do that very thing. So why do others demand to have that grand finale? If they weren't so insistent on having the final coup de grass perhaps they wouldn't have the whole sport taken away from them. I don’t have a thing against hunting in general, I’ve done it many times myself and will do so again in the future. But I simply cannot understand why the barbarism at the end of a fox hunt is necessary. A hunt can be carried out quite successfully without that happening. It’s far from necessary and it serves no purpose beyond the gratification of those who watch. Hell, in the US fox hunts take place almost exactly as here in the UK except there is rarely any intention of actually catching the fox. Not even in the US do you want to rip the animal apart. Nor do I actually understand why some people actually desire it. It’s barbarism, pure and simple. As far as I’m concerned those who want that right do not deserve to have us protect it – just as the slave owners didn’t deserve our protection of their minority right. If they’d just stuck to hunting without ripping the crap out of the fox as was proposed years ago they would more than likely have been able to keep their sport. I’m afraid they have brought their misfortune upon themselves.

A civilized democracy stands up against injustice -especially on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. Isn't that why we're still in Iraq? Or should we just move on outa there now we can't find any WMD and quit trampling on the rights of the minority Ba'ath party? If the people believe allowing a pack of dogs to rip foxes limb from limb is an injustice against something that cannot stand up for itself, I'm sure as hell not going to disagree with them. Do you think that the Northern States should have stood up for the minority group of Southern farmers using slaves because the "niggers" belonged in the fields? So what if it's an injustice - just so long as we protect the farmers rights and traditions eh.