mr2mk1g

Well, we've had a couple of full circle scenarios on here before. Unfortunately the two I can think of both ended up in the incidents forum. One dead, I think the other guy was "just" very very seriously permanently injured, but can't recall off the top of my head. I think there's even a link to one of them in this thread somewhere. That's why I responded to the thread in the first place - remembering the last time I read about a guy in the incident's forum and thought: "damn... that was the dude last month who was told he was over-cooking things... " THAT sucks. THIS is WAY better. And you're right - there's no need for any 'I told you so's' from anyone – we told him he'd fuck himself up. He didn't. He came to his own judgment that he was going to change things instead. Cool.

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2836&string=chipmunk

Hey Marko; nice one! Seriously.

Getting the same thing myself. Intermittent problem. Get the following on a white screen:

Unless they've made major changes in the last couple of years... good luck with that.

Depending on how anal you want to get, chambering a round on the range and walking away from the weapon could be covered by "negligent handling" of the weapon. Can you even get a military M60 to fire from a closed bolt? Did anyone check if the primer had a mark from the firing pin (sear failure)? Had the weapon been fired recently (bog standard cook-off)? I'd be surprised if it were simply heat from the sun which caused the round to cook off... but I wasn't there.

Hey, it's titanium - with titanium foil you only need 0.028mm and even that will give you 95 times more protection from cosmic noise than aluminium foil and with Grade 2 titanium you even get protection from super-cosmic noise, which aluminium foil fails to protect you from at all... blah blah blah, [insert meaningless salesman babble-bullshit here]... so you wanna buy some? Buy now and we'll throw in a free cable... it's only 55x the price for soooo much more protection... here look I'll even throw in a mounting diagram --->

Nicholas Alkemade. Google him or search here - I've made at least half a dozen posts on his fall, and there'll be others too. I've got a copy of the certificate the Germans gave him somewhere on my bookshelves if I can find the time to dig it out.

That does not to say you can't go through cloud during your actual jump of course... your fall doesn't necessarily follow the exact same path as your line of sight - as such you may legitimately be able to see from the plane the ground between your opening and landing points but then proceed to fall through cloud to physically get to your opening point... at least in some circumstances. It doesn't follow however that it's an especially good idea though, even if it's technically legal.

premium version

Looks like it is, yeah. Retail for a brand new one is £185 + VAT, (17.5% so that's £217.38 after tax if applicable). From 2k, that's about $375 or so before tax, (which I don't think is payable if you're ordering from the states... not 100% sure). 2k Composite helmets are made to measure though so I'd be surprised if you're be able to hit the retail value on the second hand market. I have no idea though what the second hand but new market value of the helmet is... as with all things I guess it'll be whatever someone will pay you for it. And unless they've made a significant change to the cutaway system, it looks from the photo that part of the cutaway system is missing from that helmet, unless you've got that separately somewhere of course. There should be some webbing with a ring on it, loop of line, a grommet, some Teflon cable and Velcro and the like somewhere. They come seperately so you can set it up yourself specifically to your own measurements. If you're missing all that, that's going to knock the price down some, though these parts I'm sure can be obtained for not much money from 2k Composites, but without it you're not delivering a complete – jumpable helmet.

Sit down with your mate and have a good chat with him. It's important you know how he wants things. I like the marble collection personally, or some of the Nambe one's look kinda cool. http://www.qualitycremation.com/catalog.htm

Is it just me, or does the one on the left look like a hairy Yoda?

Jesus Christ - it took NINE posts for someone to say Square 1... How was that not the first response?

Over here, uninsured driver's are dealt with rather harshly – and rightly so. They're looking at a fine up to £5,000 and 6-8 penalty points (accumulate 12 points and it's an almost automatic disqualification). They're also likely to get at least a temporary ban (period of months) or disqualification if the circumstances are more serious. New drivers (who've had their licence less than 2 years) will automatically be disqualified and have to re-take their test after a prescribed ban. You can also get done for this if you let someone else drive when they're uninsured. Oh, and accidentally kill someone while uninsured and you're going to jail for up to two years with a minimum mandatory driving ban of at least 12 months on top. We also have an agency called the MIB who you can sue if you're hit by an uninsured driver. This way any smash doesn't directly affect your policy but funding the MIB costs motorists about £30 each annually in increased premiums as part of their insurance premium. In addition to all that, Parliament is presently talking about legislating to allow the vehicle to be confiscated and ultimately crushed if it's driven uninsured. Even then however, we're still running at about a 1/4 million convictions per year!

I jump a side mount and have hard protection for my camcorder. My motivation for this setup though was not in the least bit related to protecting the camera. I jump an FF2 which at the time of purchase I considered to offer the best snag protection of any camera helmet on the market. That's why I went for a helmet setup with hard camera protection... the protection that hard shell offers however was simply ancillary to the fact it also protects me from line-snags.

Where about's in the country are you? You could always just pop down to your local DZ, share a couple of beers with the locals, chat to an instructor or regular - approach us... we don't bite. There's loads of good info squirreled away on this website: http://www.bpa.org.uk/progress.htm (follow the links from that page also). You can pick up a free starter magazine at any DZ and probably from the BPA direct (I think). There's also a UK specific web forum like this one at http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk/cms/ Alternatively, if you have any specific questions, post here - you're sure to get loads of input.

There's also one from about 06 called "The Falcon That Flew with Man". Includes lots of base jumps, including wingsuit jumps, and the whole point of the film is to fly relative with captive falcons. They had accelerometers mounted on the birds and concluded they could actually 'out-accelerate' gravity.

Helmet bag bought from 2k. Has soft fleece stuff on the inside so protects it from scratches and very minor bumps etc. I drive a 2-seater sports car so I don't have space for a rigid case or I'd use one - there's next to no impact protection with a bag. DV just stays mounted in its box and the stills just sits inside the helmet. Not ideal, but it's ok so long as I'm not throwing the thing around. Long-distance, like when travelling overseas, I just pack the helmet with my clothes and stuff it full of underwear for the trip to it won't get crushed. Camera's either go on my person for shooting things from the trip itself or are packed into a proper, commercial camera bag to keep em safe.

BTW, the route goes within a stone's throw of Empuriabrava DZ. All three team members are jumpers (though the other two are a little uncurrent) so we're going to be stopping by for a team jump... or at the very least I'm going to do a jump even if they don't.

Route: http://www.calais2casablanca.com/rally.esp?PG=route This is my 'trial run' at an easy one before I do the "Mongol Rally" in the next year or two. That's a whole load more hardcore as it's London to Ulan Batur in Mongolia, whereas most of this one is within Europe.

Pics and video: yeah I'm looking at putting up daily updates, prob onto a dedicated website... maybe just here or something... we'll see how lazy I am over the next month. My Stroboframe's coming off my helmet and going to be bolted to the hood and probably a couple of other places too with a quick release wing-nut on the back. Solar charger: luckily I just happened to get given one for chrimbo so I'm set there already.

Yup, very similar... except the car has to cost less than £100. We bought ours for 'one burger'.

No, that's good info mate, cheers. I've seen the alligator clip types and we could easily do that - my only concern would be running the battery dry even while the alternator's running. The only time I've ever used an inverter was in a diesel min-bus running a laptop playing a DVD and halfway through the trip everything cut out as we'd flattened the battery.

Myself and two friends are about to embark on a rally down from the UK, through Europe and into Africa. We've been fixing up the car and now have it as mechanically sound for the trip as we can and are moving on to the interior. So a stereo and speakers are going in shortly... but we also want to be able to charge laptops, phones, cameras, etc etc while on the go so are looking at inverters and the like. The simple plan would be just to whack a multiway cigarette lighter adaptor in there for phone chargers etc and the portable fridge (small and DC) we're taking and use one of the sockets for an inverter to run a laptop or something. I'm concerned though about taking too much power from what is a stock battery/alternator setup. Anyone have any experience with inverters etc. What's the biggest one we can safely use without over-doing the stock car electrics? What the max amount of power do you think we're going to need for the fairly meagre electrics we're looking at taking? Would you be looking into beefing up the electrics or fitting extra batteries? cheers for any ideas