mr2mk1g

Had mine turn up in the post yesterday and fitted it last night. Very nice piece of kit! Just a note to anyone who, like me, is changing out a fixed bracket for this removable one... ...the holes are NOT the same distance apart. You need to re-drill 1-2mm as the new bracket is ever so slightly longer than the old one. This was easily achieved by elongating the single hole slightly. Nice that I got a pack of nylon screws with it too! even if I did buy a bunch with the order.

Look, you can bitch at people all you like, but no level of armour is going to save anyone from a ruptured aorta. That's what is more often than not the immediate cause of death following a hard impact following something like a hook turn. Your extremities can handle, (as in recover from), truly terrifying forces. The point of failure on the human body is the shock absorbing round the heart - it's simply not strapped down well enough to survive the sort of forces we're talking about. You hit the ground and your body stops... unfortunately your heart carries on moving and to put it bluntly, rips free from its mountings. Oh, it carries on pumping ok, but all it's doing is pumping your chest cavity full of blood – that nice life-sustaining blood doesn't go anywhere useful because your aorta - the main artery that carries blood from your heat to everywhere else in your body, has a great big tear in it. Armour will not stop this happening. Period. Armour may help prevent less serious injuries from occurring in the first place, especially soft tissue injuries and limb breaks. Some of the Deonease armour I've seen could be quite nice on your spine too which isn't something to be overlooked... But overall armour is not the panacea you seem to be seeking.

FANTASTIC! I was even thinking of building one of my own. That is EXACTLY what I've been after! It says it's only available for the 1/4" sight... I have no idea which I have. I have the "chunkier" version of the concentric ring sight, not the slimline one... will this thing work for me because my finger's hovering over the "order" button...?

Well I've got a letter of wishes saying what I want done. 1) Scoop out whatever's useful as salvage and donate it. 2) The club gets the benefit of £1500 I have from a couple of free life insurance policies I picked up a few years ago, (marketing thing by my bank). I want the guys drunk, and I mean fall over drunk, not just a normal night out. 3) I want an effigy of me at the wake, wearing my FF gear (if available), and people can buy me drinks, (then get beer fined for doing something for the first time the fuckers). 4) Cremate me. Take half the ash and do a stock ash dive with me and all my friends. I wanna be released in freefall to make sure I get in someone's eye. 5) Take the other half of my ashes (don't worry, I'm 6'2", there'll be plenty to go around even after the scrap dealer's taken a look), and package me up in match boxes. 6) Post the matchboxes to every DZ I've ever jumped at spanning, to date, at least three continents and let's hope several more before its necessary. Have them do mini ash dives for me - hell just dump me out the door at a grand, I won't care. 7) Hit the web and see how many other DZ's will accept a match box of me; I wanna see how far they can whore me even after death. 8) Put whatever's left from the money I leave to the club towards the next gear purchase. edit - and the club gets all my gear anyway.

Well I hope he gets paid every time it's used! I must have seen that shot advertising dozens of different products and services now. It's all over the place.

I know the truth behind the cat clip. Buttered toast always lands face down right? And a cat always lands on its feet; we all know these universal truths. So what if you strap buttered toast to the back of a cat? Clearly it will spin on its axis, levitating inches above the ground.... just like the cat in that video does. Look at about 18 seconds in onwards. That's clearly what the cat's doing. Conclusion: They're not on a zero-G ride... they just have buttered toast strapped to the back of the cat.

Quite common these days in all English speaking countries. English simply doesn't have a third person gender neutral pronoun, so there's little other choice. It's nothing new mind - we've used this construction since Middle English. Modern English used to use "he", but today that's considered sexist and frankly it's just plain confusing. Grammatically speaking, it's no more incorrect than a split infinitive.

I don't see them as causing a problem for the social side either though. In the US they're sticking their wind tunnels on their DZ's. So after your time's up you continue to socialise with all the other jumpers. It also brings wuffos to the DZ who might just sign up for AFF now they know how cool freefall is. In the UK that's not happened, but isn't Bedford just about to build a pool and stuff at their site to encourage jumpers to hang about and socialise? They certainly have a team room where you can turn up and hang out, even sleep in, just like most DZ's let you. As for tunnel rats not being able to exit - that's THE reason why both the BPA and USPA have stuck to their guns that the clock on competition skydives starts the moment you leave the plane. Some wanted to have the clock start in freefall so that teams were already up to terminal (just like in the tunnel), but both organisations have made sure to keep the exit in as part of the competition time. This way teams also have to learn how to be shit hot at exiting and turning points on the hill in sub-terminal air, meaning they can't compete effectively without also having lots of jumps under their belt. Now the tunnels ARE having an impact on competetive skydiving in that us weekend jumpers simply don't stand a chance anymore. If I want to compete I HAVE to do a shit load of tunnel time to keep up with my rivals. Only a few years ago that simply wasn't the case. Now is that a bad thing? Maybe in some ways. It could well put people off wanting to become a skydiver as they know they have little hope of ever being as good as they see on TV... but how many sports is that true of?

After lots of experimenting I personally plumped for a really good quality pair of neoprene sailing gloves. I still have good tactile control and my fingers are warm and toastey. I even got frostbite on the end of my nose the other week but my fingers stayed warm... well not painfully cold anyway. This is what I got: http://www.henrilloyd.com/product_view.asp?catalogue_id=6&prod_id=1094&back_url=product_search.asp&level3_id=&search= I know a lot of people who use the silk liners though. They evidently work for many.

People get into the sport for many reasons. Some to compete. Some just to have fun. Personally I'm in with those who started skydiving as a way to have fun. The more skills you have, the more fun you can have. Tunnel training vastly improves your skills. Thus tunnel training vastly increases the amount of fun you can have. It's as simple as that. Those who are here to compete, well again, tunnel training is the fastest way to improve skills. They are therefore better competitors. I don't get the problem with that. Cricketers spend most of their training in nets. Footballers spend hours running up and down between cones. Baseball players spend hours in front of pitching machines. Golfers spend hours on the driving range. Are these people playing cricket/football/baseball/golf? No. Do these things make them better at playing cricket/baseball/football/golf? Yes. Is wind tunnel flying skydiving? No. Does it make people better skydivers? Yes. And then we're back to the top where the better you are at skydiving, the more fun you can have doing it. I simply don't get the problem.

Yeah, if it cost me any more than say a jump ticket or two to fix I'd just leave the thing bust and find the money for an external flash unit. The built in flash sucks so bad I don't want to use it unless I really have to anyway.

The club's a uni club. They get most of their funding from the uni and the three club rigs are technically owned by the student's union. The fourth one they're about to buy would also be owned by the SU. Breaking away would mean starting from scratch and giving their effectively 4 rigs back. Sucks for them... but I doubt the hippies will succeed. I've suggested they set up a bead stall on the other side of campus the day of the vote. Hippies can't resist a bead stall, especially not if it sells joss sticks too.

I don't have 1500 jumps but I know this one already. buy a spare battery

Think you mean Paul Applegate, known to all as Apples. There's reference to the stunt and rigging here: http://www.bpa.org.uk/skydive/pages/articles/dec02/paulapplegate.htm

Well not exactly. The club just about got themselves ready to place an order and now they're fighting off an attempt to shut the club down by a bunch of fucking hippies. Apparently some twit's tabled a motion to prevent the uni supporting anything which involves air travel within the EU. Would shut the skydiving club down over night along with a couple of others. Now they gotta fight that off before they can spend any money.

Reference your other post about what canopies to buy: I'd look at anything in a semi-elliptical plan form. You've already said you don't want to deal with the consequences of mistakes on a fully elliptical. You mention you've jumped a 135... maybe consider downsizing just one size to a 150 from the 170 you're on at the moment at most rather than skipping a whole step - that's if you're thinking of downsizing at all of course. You've already been recommended a SabreII / Safire II / Pilot. Those are the three primary contenders and are all great canopies, though there are also other semi-ellipticals on the market. Personally I went for the Pilot, though I wouldn't turn down either of the other two, especially the Safire. The Pilot is likely to be cheaper than the other two wherever you look, though I can also second the recommendation about talking to gary@karnagekrew.com – very helpful guy.

pft... you get two for the price of one if you hit a pregnant chick...

Two chimps get into a bath. One says "ooh ooh ah ah ah" (chimp noises) The other one says "Well if it's too hot, put some more cold water in".

giant sunglasses = burger-nips Nobody likes oversized accessories...

Are you huffing camera fart?

Have you tried just going to your SU or whoever allocates budgets and telling them you want to replace your old kit for safety reasons. My exp with university sports clubs is that they pretty much give you a blank cheque if you mention the word "safety". The skydiving club I'm a member of the alumni of told their SU a few years back that the risers on their rig had just been grounded (true). They were about to ask for some money for new risers and before they could get a word in the SU had agreed to pay for a whole brand new rig as the money came out of their safety slush fund or some such. Clearly the club shut up about how risers can be replaced separately and accepted the offer of a new rig. Ask - you never know what they might say.

If you're doing any jump where you're being coached, trained, instructed or otherwise jumping with someone who needs to know what you're thinking... you're better off with clear eyewear. Everything else bar low light conditions is gravy.

That's why I always call those one wheel thingys "monocylces".

I voted I'm trained but not certified. I have done a number of first aid courses over the past few years. I would be certified as a qualified first aider if I bothered to get the appropriate certificate. I have not done so. Oddly enough, being a certified first aider would expose me to more legal liability than being just a pleb. I would be held to the standard of the reasonable first aider rather than the reasonable fool on the street. I'm be happy to give first aid to anyone who needs it and have done so in the past, (though thankfully I've not needed to on a DZ as yet). If I was involved in a DZ emergency I would know the basics and would be capable of applying them, but that is all.

Mr. Booth comments on this very "issue" during one of his skydive radio interviews. From memory, he jokingly laments the fact he designed and released a piece of safety equipment in full knowledge it was actually going to cost him money in the long run.