mr2mk1g

In the UK, he'd just get a wasted costs order against him that'd far exceeded any damages he was awarded.

That's indeed what I meant by "old altitude question" – how long till the low atmospheric pressure caused the drive to fail. Obviously pressure hasn't changed... but last I heard there were a couple of promising developments – such as a sealed hard drive that had been developed. I was just wondering if anyone had any updates and if technology had gotten anywhere closer to solving the "old altitude question".

OK, so went to a different Sony shop today and some HDD cameras do hace a "remote" port. Teach me to ever rely on something a shop assistant tells me... especially when their initial response is "LANC port?" Pity the Sony website doesn't appear to want to talk about their existence, even on old models I know came with them.

Well we might not be getting all the models over here then. I dropped by a Sony shop last night and was told they don't have LANC ports on any of their current line (not that I can actually trust anything I'm actually told by a store pleb... but he did at least look up my question on his computer terminal ). Last week when asking elsewhere I got quite a snotty response that LANC was "old technology" and that "nobody wanted LANC ports anymore". Apparently you can now use new-fangled computer software to edit to the very frame so LANC ports were now pointless. I nodded and smiled and left the shop. Are people still shying away from hard drive based cameras because of the old altitude issues? I'm starting to think that we are really going to be in a shitty position in 2-3 years time when the last of the tape based cameras leave the shelves and we're left with either DVD or HDD, which so far at least I've only heard really negative things about for skydiving use.

You'll have a job finding a side mount bought new. Sony are moving to Mini-DVD and hard drive cameras. Neither work as well as mini-dv in the skydiving environ. Plus they appear to be abandoning LANC ports.

Where are the people shouting "Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!" ?

No, you missunderstand. BPA is about £150. At today's exchange rate that's pretty much exactly $300. Use an exchange rate from say 2002 and suddenly BPA only costs $200. Use other more "normal" exchange rates and you get a much lower cost in dollars than you do with today's exchange rates. Thus the present exchange rate makes the cost look going on twice as bad as it actually is.

I try not to fart on the plane.

You're simply not going to have the slightest bit of trouble, seriously. There's a huge difference in how careful a DZ's going to look over someone turning up with 80 jumps and someone who's got more than 20 times that experience. DZ's in Britain don't always fully grasp the old me customer; you service provider; therefore me right attitude that some visitors demand. Appreciate that, as I'm sure you already do, and you'll have no issues whatsoever.

But they are though. That's what the regs say. The JM is "responsible". That doesn't mean you have to have physically done the check yourself, but it does mean you carry the can if you rely on someone else to do it for you. How much reliance a JM puts on other people is a question for the JM alone. If they are willing to trust Mr. X when they say "yeah he's checked" then that's fine, (and lets face it, we're all know each other so 90% of the time that's just fine). But at the end of the day, it is the JM who ends up having to make a statement to the Coroner about what they did and did not do. It doesn't matter how much you dance up and down and complain "but, but I was busy and it was a back-to-back load and they only asked me as I was going out to the plane". The ops manual says the JM is responsible, thus they are the ones left holding the can when the shit hits the fan. The guy who did the actual check might be there with you, but as JM you are automatically going to be someone the Coroner is going to want to hear from, because he has the regs in front of him and he can see they say “the JM is responsible”. Yes this is an onerous requirement and you’re right, if it were like that there would be a lack of people putting themselves forward for the role. But it is like that, and it's merely the complete ignorance of 90% of skydivers out there about just how onerous the requirements of a JM are which keeps flight lines turning in this country. If people really knew just what they were getting themselves in to you'd have a lot fewer people willing to do it unpaid.

If you're just in country for a short trip then temp BPA membership is all you need to jump here. It only costs £30: http://www.bpa.org.uk/forms/docs/Form%20104%20Temporary%20Membership%202007-2008.doc (this is on the assumption that you've never held full BPA membership before... if you have then you're not supposed to be eligible for the temp membership).

Don't know about APF but with regards to BPA: 1) the USD is in the pan at the moment so instead of 1.2 $/£ its 2.0 $/£ - makes the sums we pay for membership look twice as bad as they actually are. 2) we get a hell of a lot more for our money - like $4,000,000 personal liability insurance - that's the bit that costs us the money, (as in $200 of the $300 total goes towards insurance). 3) there are vastly more skydivers in the US than in the UK and Oz - more people means more buying power and more people to spread the running costs around. 4) the cost of living in the UK is much higher than in the US and people are paid more, thus it costs more to run the organisation. 5) BPA membership is obscenely expensive.

Na - some brit came up with it in the 50's or something. It's simply semaphore for the letters "N" and "D" transposed over one another (for Nuclear Disarmament)... though I guess the Vandals and Visigoths could have had a popular anti-nuke movement??

What on earth is there about a peace sign which "glorifies sin"?

It'd be far more amusing if you flung the seal out of a clay trap and killed the thing with a 12-guage at a height of 30ft.

It's the JM's ass that ends up at the Coroners court not yours, hence it's their call. I'd re-think my attitude if I were you.

Close, but no. It's what people want that determines what laws will get passed, good or bad. On the face of the report posted by Kallend, while people don't believe new laws would have prevented the recent massacre, a plurality of those surveyed did want more stringent laws.

My advice would be: Go to college and get a good degree. Then use that to get a well paid job. Once you've got that, spend your earnings on skydiving and have fun - maybe even pick up a slot as part of the weekend camera rotation. Otherwise... well, you like ramen noodles right?

It certainly matches the ad layout etc. Hit gallery... there are over 300 galleries to look through mind... http://www.ray-ban.com

Alas, poor Andy! I knew him, Popsjumper: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath replied to my posts a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here posted that pillock, who's posts I have read I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

Yes. I just got back from a couple of weeks in Perris with him where he did his AFF. He's a paraglider pilot and ex-trapeze artist so passed straight through with flying colours. It doesn't quite manifest itself like that either, (unfortunately).

See here http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1244676#1244676 where Tonto describes a guy spiraling into power lines following a CRW wrap - his only injury being a bad cut to his thumb from the orange plastic knife which broke when he tried to use it. and then here http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=587030#587030 where rigging65 describes a guy cutting lines on his reserve till his zak knife broke and he ends up using just the blade with his fingers.

Very recently, (as in the last day or so), there was a post on here from a non-rigger who packs his own reserve. He was from Brazil. They have different rules there. He noted that it was perfectly legal for him to pack his own reserve given the licence he had. In fact he pointed out that there were no riggers in his State so he has little option but to pack his own reserve. Different places, different rules.

Agreed. Take the rope that comes with the raft, cut it into an equal length per eyelet. Tie each lenght through an eyelet on the raft and put a big knot or monkey's fist in the end of each lenght - each hanger gets a knot to hold. This way there's nothing to get entangled. Only raft dive I've been about for, the raft poped on exit and the rope, (running round the raft as you describe), wraped itself round the right arm of one of the hangers. He only got out of the situation by deploying his hook knife and cutting himself free in freefall.

I like TLA (three letter acronym), mainly for the exquisite irony that it's not actually an acronym (and neither are most of terms to which it's applied)!