mr2mk1g

I think you're getting some dangerous advice in this thread about just going off to have fun and not worrying about having tasks to complete. From your posted jump number as "6" I take it you're asking about your consoleS? Those are working jumps. You DO have tasks to complete and goals. They may or may not be given to you by your instructor, but they're there nontheless. They are not simply an oportunity to just go fuck about. It would be good if an AFFI could chime in here as at the moment you only seem to be getting crap advice from people with around 100 jumps.

The clue is in the name. They are "consoles", short for "consolidation jumps". ie, you're meant to be consolidating the skills you were taught during your AFF levels. You should therefore be doing the kind of things you did during your AFF levels – all round awareness, stability, turns, tracking, maybe a flip or two etc etc. Anything else is just fucking about. You're still a student learning how to skydive. Treat your skydive like what it is - a learning experience. Now your first jump after getting your A-licence.... that's where I'd say go have fun. Try whatever you like so long as you do so after getting an appropriate safety brief (so you don't endanger others) and are jumping kit suitable for whatever it is you're wanting to try (ie freefly safe if you're going to be doing something other than pure belly to earth. Note I emphasise "try". My recommendation would be to concentrate on getting your belly skills up to scratch before truly exploring any other disciplines... but trying something out a couple of times for fun and to celebrate graduation is a little different. I'd also encourage you to run all this by your instructor. If they give you a dive plan, stick to it. If they contradict anything on this thread - listen to them, not us.

I got told to pretend I was "fucking a leper". You don't want to touch her with anything but the rubber.

1: symetry is the key. The problem is I'm hesitant to suggest this is a good idea. The real danger is that in the absence of an instructor you can get the position wrong. You therefore build up muscle memory of the wrong position... which is hard to break and will cost you $$$ in re-takes to cure. 2: I'm not an AFFI so I'll not comment. I would have thought though these issues are primarily the concern of your instructors, not you. 3: Yes it may be a problem. Never ever ever skydive under the influence. It's not just your life you risk, but the lives of everyone else around you. Remember you may still be intoxicated the morning after. I would suggest that you, (asside from learning to control your drinking, which is your own busness), at least invest in one of those home breath tester keyring things. If you blow over the limit, ground yourself till you don't.

Considering they surveyed people who watched UKTV Gold (a re-runs channel) I'm surprised! Surely at least half the audience would have been old enough to have actually voted for Churchill??

To those who work in hospitals: Crocs are apparently in the process of being banned (as footwear for staff) in NHS hospitals and have already been banned in Swedish hospitals because they can (apparently) cause an electro-static build-up which has taken out life support equipment on a couple of occasions. Not commenting on the story myself, just passing it on. Plus they're fucking hideous...

Looks like you've done like Dave initially did rigged the cutaway completely back-to-front. From the 2k website: http://www.2kcomposites.com/html/cutaway.html

Why did you buy a Microraven? So the manufacturer posts a max weight. You exceed it. You then get told by the manufacturer that you are exceeding the max weight and the canopy won't land well... I'm failing to see how this is anything but a problem you created for yourself. You've now been told directly by the manufacturer that you're going to hurt yourself if you keep flying this canopy... how about you don't fly it again? Again, I fail to see how this is anything other than another example of us skydivers being dumb in the extreme. A company designs a canopy for anorexics, posts max weights that can clearly only be met by anorexics... then stupid people come along and ignore them. Aside from checking into the weight of everyone who expresses an interest in buying one of their canopies, even when bought via third parties, shops or dealers, then refusing to sell to them and, for that matter, banning all re-sale of their canopies on the second hand market... I can't really see what more the manufacturer can reasonably be expected do to save us from our own stupidity. Ok, they probably know most people are ignoring them and they're arguably open to criticism for still taking people's money... but how far should we really be asking them to go in protecting people from their own dumb decisions? Max weights are there for a reason. Poor landing characteristics are probably the least serious of the reasons why they're there!

My take would be he's there as a trespasser - trespassers have very few rights to infringe Secondly, he's in a place to which the public has general access. As such he has no expectation of privacy. Same reason that if I walk across the background of some news caster's piece to camera outside a mall, I can't stop them showing it on the evening news - I was in a public place, so I had no expectation of privacy. Jurisdictions differ however. I say, let him come forward and complain. Then we'll see who the judge get's pissed at.

Lights and speed are possibly red herrings here. If decided by English courts, the main thing a Judge would be looking at is what actually happened to cause the collision - movements of the vehicles, points of impact etc etc. Lighting and speed may be a very small part of the equation – eg, so what if someone was not displaying a light – they pulled out of a side road into the path of a vehicle when it was only 10ft away. Equally, so what if the driver was doing 55 instead of the posted 50 – the kid would still be dead because he was dumb enough to pull out of a side road right into the guy's path. We don't however of course know the circumstances of the accident so it's all pure speculation. There's just not enough info in the article to make any kind of informed judgment. If both parties were at fault to a degree then the Audi driver would get back a portion of his repair and hire costs in line with any split decision already reached. It's unclear if such a decision has been reached – the Eur 33,000 payment may have been ex gratia for example, or it may have been 50% of the value of the claim representing a 50/50 split in liability. Bear in mind also that notwithstanding the quotes from the driver in the OP, it may not actually be him pursuing the claim against the family. If he's claimed on his motor insurance or perhaps used something called "credit hire" then it may be the hire provider or his insurance co. suing in his name. He'll then be contractually obliged to assist with the suit but not actually bringing it himself or for his own financial gain.

WTF? Go for a second date dude. If you're too pussy, can you give her my number? I can write it down for you in case you spell it wrong. ...shit... how's she gonna call me?

God hates you.

Halogen's can be replaced with L.E.D. clusters (as in slotted straight into the same place the old halogen was just removed from). Same light output, much lower wattage, thousands of times the life expectancy.

lol, when I did my first 5 sec delay there was a hot blonde chick sat behind the pilot with startling blue eyes... I can still remember them disappearing away from me as I counted down my freefall time. When I teach student's now I tell them early on in the stability class that I'll give them a whole £1 if they can tell me after the jump what number is written on the bottom of the plane. It introduces a moment of levity and stresses the good exit position for a first static line jump. During de-brief it's usually another moment of levity when I remind them of my challenge and ask if anyone got the number... especially as there is of course no number written there.

Don't give advice if you can't even tell this guy's clearly not doing an AFF-style progression.

Probably nearly a hundred. Most of those were out of an MI8 which frankly is not really all that different than jumping a plane. A few out of Jet Rangers - those are REAL fun!

Cutting their ties with someone who has in the past made statements and set up websites relating to Skyride may be necessary before the USPA is actually able to take any further action in relation to Skyride. I know there's a substantial conspiracy theory here in this thread... but it is just possible that the USPA is doing this so that they can in the future take action against Skyride without getting sued again. ...maybe.

That would be Sir Douglas Bader. Yes, supposedly G forces didn't have quite the affect on him as the blood had no where to drain to. He was already a fighter pilot though before the war and had to fight hard to be allowed to fly again. I don't give a damn if this is thread drift - someone's mentioned him and as a true hero he deserves a post or two. He became a prisoner after running out of ammo in a dogfight over occupied Europe and (according to him at least) deliberately ramming the German plane out of the air. He couldn't bail out as his prosthetic legs were caught in the damaged cockpit and could only escape to his parachute when the strap on his leg broke. As he'd lost his prosthetic legs the Germans agreed to allow free passage to a British bomber so that they could drop him a replacement set by parachute. The RAF declined the German offer of free passage and said they would make the drop anyway... and then continued onto their primary target and dropped live bombs on it. By this time however Bader had already tried to escape from hospital even without his legs. He subsequently went on to make so many escape attempts that the Germans threatened to take his prosthetics away to stop him. And of course all this is relevant to this website - he has one and a half parachute jumps after all...

The biggest misconception that people have about British people and the monarchy is thinking that we actually give a damn. 90% of the time they're an amusing irrelevance that are pretty good for tourism and thus their positive impact on GDP far outweighs their relatively meagre running costs.

If you know or can ask him his D.O.B you can varify he's a BPA member here: http://www.bpa.org.uk/membercheck.php

Did you try clearing it by releasing and pumping the crap out of the brakes or pulling on any individual lines? (not saying you should have or anything, just wondering how the canopy reacted if you did)

If that's your price range go for this model over the model you posted: http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-VCL-0625S-0-6-X-25MM-Conversion-Lens-VCL0625S-New_W0QQitemZ150203264392QQihZ005QQcategoryZ64327QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem (that's not an endorsement of that particular seller - I'm only commenting on the lense model he's selling). The lens I link to is great, equivalent to about a 0.45 from most other manufacturers and will give you much better quality footage than random non-branded stuff in the same price range. Pay attention to the thread size - that lens comes in a number of different thread sizes and you should be able to get one that matches your camera without the need for a step-ring. The one I link to has a 25mm thread for example - there's one with "30" in the model number instead of the "25" which has a 30mm thread.

And for your money you get $4,000,000 of third party cover... within the UK. Overseas the cover's reduced (can't remember to what off the top of my head) and the US is excluded altogether.

I'm 99% sure who madamfinch is and I jump at the same DZ. To be fair to her, she's not trolling. A load of people ordered of suits and I've seen some of them on and there are genuine fitment issues with the ones I saw. They were all measured by a local Deepseed dealer so my attitude would be that even if it's the dealer's fault for poor measurements rather than the manufacturer's fault for poor design, it's still kinda their problem, (or at least the dealers; I'm not privy to the exact relationship). On the other hand, I got myself a full jumpsuit from them shortly before the rest of the DZ ordered theirs. Mine rocks and fits me exactly as I'd asked. I even got a phonecall from Liam all the way from NZ updating me on the manufacture and exchanged a number of promptly responded e-mails on fitment and some extra custom options I wanted. From my personal experience at least, I have only good things to say about the company and their products. As I said though, madamfinch does have an honestly held different opinion. As of next week I'll be ordering a set of FF pants from Deepseed using exactly the same measurements as I used for my suit, (I still have the pad I wrote them down on). If one set fits and the other set doesn't... well it'll be pretty clear where the problem lies. Pretty cool I have the same make jumpsuit as Nicole Sheridan maybe Liam should get in touch with her for some modelling shots like Tonyfly have done with Roberta Mancino...

No one's really mentionned simply travelling to do it - hundreds of skydivers round the world are already simply holiday jumpers. I understand that jumping in Japan is so expensive that all the sport jumpers there only ever do it abroad. It's almost getting that way in the UK to - lots of jumpers here no longer bother with BPA membership and only ever jump on holidays in the States or during short breaks over in Spain, many still manage over 100 a year. Hell, I'm a year round UK jumper and still more than half my total number of jumps have been done abroad.