mr2mk1g

You KNOW the way forward is "highway to the dangerzone" coupled with a rewind section where the jumper freefalls back up into the plane...

Cos your balls drag on the floor when you swoop - the shorter line set on a smaller canopy's not going to change that.

That is a really wonderful text.

Oh I accept that entirely - I didn't mean to suggest that the size was not important, not at all. I was mealy cautioning that it was the design of this particular canopy that was the worst error in his choice, not the only error. If he were to change only one factor - the design or the size, which would you suggest? A square 150 or an elliptical 170? I know many DZ's that would let him jump a square @ 1.1:1 (be it a good idea or not). I don't think I know any that would let him jump an elliptical even if he only loaded it at 0.97:1 Thankyou for highlighting the ambiguity in my post.

Yeah I'd go with that.

I’m at the forefront of a quango lobby group that campaigns across the world for the abolition of the months of September and October and their replacement by one super-month: SEPTOBER. Just think what a better world it would be if we were now in the middle of SEPTOBER!

Looks like it's done the e-mail rounds in Scandanavia.... I wonder what the vote would be like if it included the billions of people who never have access to a PC. (And presuming those people knew about who was running or indeed that there was even a race).

Wow guys – somebody needs to PM me when we start a thread like this. Looks like I’ve missed a “wicked good” argument. Next time you all start an argument that we’ve done before a couple of dozen times let me know and I can come along and whine that we’ve done all this before and drag up a couple of old posts as I can’t be bothered to repeat myself. Not sure I can be arsed to come in on it now at the end of page 7. Er… just imagine I argued for the middle ground. I neither think that gun legislation had a great impact on crime in the UK (up or down) nor that either the US or the UK would benefit greatly from adopting the others laws. I do think the US would benefit from a gradual change in their culture away from guns – arming everyone is not the way to prevent crime… that’s WAY too close to a M.A.D. strategy. (Do you want all countries to have nukes… or do you want no country to have nukes? There is no third option apparently as in this comparison if you have nukes so do the bad guys). Just for the record, to correct what appears to be an error further up the page – we can still own shotguns here, in fact we can “as of right” unlike it ever was with firearms which were always a privilege. Also, whilst the gun legislation here was indeed touted by some dumb politicians and by the media as being a way of preventing violence and gun crime, it was seen as far from that by parliament itself. If you read Hansard (I’ll try and find the link when I have time) you’ll see that when it was debated by Parliament those who actually made the law understood that it was far from being as simple as that. (Handsard is a published record of every debate in parliament). There’s a lovely bit of text I’ll have to dig up again where an MP is telling the house how many guns make their way into criminals hands each year through various forms of theft from the legal market. They are right that if you eliminate the legal market all those guns each year that used to make it into criminals hands are no longer going to criminals. You have therefore cut off one way in which they get their guns. Now of course I understand that many are going to say that’s an unacceptable step to take – the balance of ill is just too far skewed against the gun owner. True, that is a perfectly valid argument to make, and one with which I have ample sympathy. But you must also surely accept that if there are NO guns in the legal market, there can be NO seepage from that market into criminal’s hands. The gun legislation therefore must have had an effect on that source at very least. Now of course that is by no means the whole story – crims are just going to go elsewhere for their weapons. But we have one major advantage over the US in that respect – we are an island; with very good boarder controls. Just imagine for a moment (lets pretend time) if it were possible to completely seal our boarders against illegal weapons AND there are none seeping onto the black market from the legal market. Criminals would have no guns (or at least their supply would be cut off so at some point in the future they would effectively run out). A utopian concept perhaps yes, and probably very difficult to achieve back in reality, but I think that’s what our legislators were aiming for. The last step now is to stop the flow of weapons into our country from outside. We have the ability to do it… we just have to get better at doing it. By the way John – If the city folk want to ban hunting with foxes cos they think it’s inhumane… we’ll they can, that’s democracy for you. Just like when the Northern States wanted to stop the Southern States farming with slaves because it was inhumane. Again – democracy at work. Just because the Southern farmers were a minority doing what they’d always done didn’t mean they were right, and it didn’t mean the Northerners weren’t right to try to stop them. (ok an oversimplification of the situation there but I’m sure you follow my point). Oh, and I’m not in the slightest anti-hunt, but I recognise that the opinion polls are… although on a side note; when people here are given the third option of “I really couldn’t care less” as opposed to just “yes” or “no”; it’s the third option that wins by a long shot. Now for my morning brew and damn… I really ought to start work.

I have the benefit of writing from the UK where such agreements are illegal so thankfully I can make such calls. Besides – waivers don’t stop you suing – just winning. You don’t have to lose a lawsuit for it to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have little knowledge of exactly what waivers in the US are allowed to cover but I was under the impression that you were not able to waive liability for gross negligence. That’s probably the only situation where I would consider suing – when someone’s done something so unbelievably stupid, dangerous and reckless that it falls under the “gross negligence” heading. And I fully accept your comment about being screwed over then having them hide behind a piece of paper.

Yup - same over here. In fact it doesn't have to be frivolus - loser just pays the costs, period. If it's frivolous they get "indemnity costs" which have a %markup on them and a couple of other things that make them even bigger. In fact if it looks frivolous there are steps you can take to get it either summarily dismissed or seek a payment up front for your costs in defending it before the case actually kicks off. Plus there are tactical steps which force the claimant to seriously consider early settlement or face strict costs consequences if they don't get what they're claiming for. Plus we don't have jury awards - so you never see stupidly high awards to entice crappy claims. Plus we don't have punitive damages but for in the most serious of cases - so again no enticement to crappy claims. Plus liability is decided by a judge - so no dumb juries just out to give a pay check to a good actor weeping in the stand. Better IMO... but nowhere is perfect – far from it in fact.

The best one I ever heard is: "Yo momma owes my dog fuck money".

So don't go high - you don't have to. Most of your skills can be practiced inches off the bottom – or at worst a couple of foot.

Depends if you want to vote based on the puppet or the puppet masters. It's just a pity that politics these days has degenerated to that state – on all sides before someone thinks this is a partisan comment.

His quote doesn't point out an accent - nor is it even highlighting dialectal nuances. If the quote truly is what was said, it really was a very poor use of English. As to whether or not that error was due to becoming flustered in the heat of the moment, (not perfect perhaps for a professional speaker but perfectly understandable and hardly an indictment on this intelligence), or a more basic lack of comprehension, (certainly very damning given the severity of the error), I cannot say. Given the number of times we’ve seen such mistakes though you have to wonder...

This thread is priceless. Grown adults acting like children in the playground. You should all save this thread and show it to some children. You will be embarrassed. Now go back to playing nicely in the sand box or no cookies with your milk.

I keep meaning to get a t-shirt made up with “Skydivers Don’t Sue” on the front. I‘d find it especially funny given my profession. As far as I’m concerned the skydiving community is a giant family and as a skydiver I am a part of that family. I don’t sue my family members. Now if I want to be just a customer I can be. I can turn up to the DZ as a customer, pay my money, jump and go home. But then I wouldn’t be a [I]skydiver[/I] I’d just be someone who jumped out of planes. I wouldn’t be a part of the family, just some shmo customer who turned up occasionally. Now personally, I’m a skydiver, not just someone who jumps out of planes. As a customer I am quite happy to use the law to obtain the maximum protection it offers me. If that means suing someone because they caused me bodily injury then so be it. If that means suing someone because their negligence cause serious financial loss to me – fine. But as I said, I’m not a customer at the DZ – I’m a member of the family. I’m not about to start suing my family members, not unless they’ve done something really fucking stupid. Each are to find their own place in this world. Some people are skydivers; some people just jump out of aeroplanes... and we all have different definitions of what “really fucking stupid” means.

I don't care who said it - that's funny as hell.

I'll put money on the DZO not letting you jump that canopy. The size is not so much an issue as the make. It does not matter what advice anyone gives you or how ready for the canopy you are or how shit hot you might be - it counts for nothing as no one's going to let you get on the plane with it. You should be able to find something out there that will be acceptable without losing money though so don't worry that you've made an awful choice. Most common ones you'll find in this country that your DZO will be happy with are Sabre, ZP.EXE, Spectre, triathlon, and several others. That advice should be taken to your local instructors and DZO though. I know of at least one DZ that's unhappy with people being on ZP canopies below B license.

You don’t have to be doing anything particularly experimental to hurt yourself. While I was out in Perris over Easter a dz.comer was working on his fast fall/slow fall in the tunnel (flat), caught a leg on the door going up, this flipped him into a head high position, he lost lift and ended up diving at the opposite wall landing head first. (at least that’s as close as my memory takes me to how it was related to me). One broken neck later and the rest of his training holiday was spent lounging round the pool. Thankfully it wasn’t horribly serious and he was wandering round with little more than a really stiff neck and a pocket full of pills the very next day. I’ll not ID him but if for you all but I’ll PM him to let him know he’s the topic of conversation so maybe he’ll add his memories first hand.

and spark off an argument about bush/kerry.

I clicked on this thread thinking that you'd been banned from the forums and therefore had nothing to do. Thus armed with a copy of Adobi Premiere you had made a video edit for us to watch. Now I'm dissapointed there's no edit. I want my money back.

Sorry if you're not getting the answers you want to hear dude, but we've all been there in one way or another and all can sympathise. Hell most of us are still there in some way. I've got the money for my next canopy sat at home now... can't wait to downsize off the slam-me-open piece of crap I jump right now. But the order's not going in till next season at least. Waiting might suck but we have to do it... because if we don't we can hurt ourselves real bad. Many posters know that first hand. And almost all of them have been waiting for one thing or another far far longer than you and I put together. I only hope I get the opportunity to wait as long as some of the jumpers on here. It might sound sucky - but think what I'll have been up to in the mean time. (It's like my tax wish... I want to be paying £1million a year in tax... that might suck... but think what I'll be earning )

You may find that a lot of people feel there [I]are[/I] an amazing number of people who DO need that pointing out to them. Especially here. People often air on the side of caution and point it out anyway as that's the safest thing to do. The camera forum is also the place where you're most likely to find someone with far less than the required experience trying to find the answer they want as opposed to the answer they need. There are oodles of posts here by jumpers with less than 200 jumps asking how it probably is safe for them to jump camera now rather than wait. The threads invariably progress on to them getting pissed at all the people who tell them it's a bad idea together with them having a go at the fact that low number jumpers are always discriminated against, or words to that effect. Don't jump to chastise the regular posters who have a hard time summoning up the effort to write a detailed post about how it really isn't a good idea to jump camera with low jump numbers simply to get shouted at yet again by someone who doesn't want to hear that advice. They’ve done it before, had the advice shoved back in their face and been shouted at for trying to hold someone back. You criticise being told to search the forum as you’re already likely to have done that. We’ll if you’ve already searched the forum you’ll have known before you posted this thread that you’re going to get a lot of people tell you that no matter what the brand of camera, doing it now at 70 odd jumps is a [I]really[/I] bad idea. I can only presume that your first respondent assumed you must not have searched the forum because if you had your question would have already have been answered for your dozens of times before and thus your post would have been redundant. Your not advised to wait so you don't damage the camera. Your advised to wait so you don't damage yourself. The value of the camera is entirely immaterial to the risk to your life its very presence creates. [trying to explain why you feel the need to rant]

Bet if you were paying the running costs you'd take it over a king air

Target fixation can strike jumpers of any experience level – it’s more an innate psychological reaction as opposed to something that affects only newbies. Check out the thread about a guy swooping into a golf cart: going on a couple of thousand jumps and he swoops into the only damn object in sight. He blames it mainly on target fixation – it can happen to anyone. Yes as a jumper with only a couple of hundred jumps it’s more likely to happen… that’s one reason for lower wing loadings. Yes as a student with only a couple of jumps it’s far far more likely to happen – coupled with the fact that often the skills required to avoid the target aren’t yet present. Don’t think you’re in anyway out of the woods (pun intended). None of us are!