mr2mk1g

Hmmm... if you pick through the thick rhetoric you realize that all that has been said is that the UN does not consider the reliance on Memoranda of Understandings to be sufficient to abrogate the UK's duties under the 1951 convention on refugees. The Foreign Secretary and his legal advisers evidently believe such an Understanding would be adequate. I personally don't know. I suspect the matter has not yet been fully tested and acknowledge the fact that there are certainly arguments is support of both sides of the issue. I think the UK govt. is going to find far more serious challenges of their decision on these very grounds however than the UN will mount. It's a very real question that will have to be overcome domestically never mind internationally. I wouldn't be surprised if Tony's wife finds herself up against the govt. on this very point some time shortly. Personally I think reliance on the Memoranda will just about do. Whilst I do have some concerns about the fact that these exclusions do not appear to attract a right of appeal, they are foreigners we are dealing with who remain here by our leave. As they have no right to remain here we can withdraw our leave at any time we wish and indeed for any reasons we wish, however unreasonable those reasons may appear. The only issue is that if they claim the protection of our country and ask for asylum on the grounds that they will be subjected to torture in their country of origin. We would then have a duty under the 1951 treaty not to return them to their country of origin if we think they might be subjected to the torture they claim. Evidently opinion is divided as to whether or not a Memoranda is sufficient to allay such fears.

ah - on closer inspection Section 5 requires: The three month requirement applies to students but you were closer than I was. I can't find any currency requirements for people B and above other than for things like demo's and instructors etc.

Going uncurrent so soon after qualifying is a bad idea. There are no formal currency requirements for A license holders here though... but you may well have to do a recurrency jump if you just turn up to a DZ having not jumped since you qualified 3 months earlier. Jump as often as you can once you qualify. Try to make it to the DZ at least once a month. The weather more than allows for this even during the worst winters; just get hold of some decent thermal base layer stuff and some warm but grippy gloves that allow lots of movement (they do exist if you look for them). Cloud cover often doesn't stop you doing hop+pops. It's the canopy ride that's more likely to kill you anyway so these are great for currency. If you go uncurrent, talk to instructors at your club and either do a conservative solo or jump with them as they recommend. Remember - DZ's don't just shut down here over the winter (well most don't anyway). There's plenty of jumping to be had if you want it.

In his letter of appology the Doc should have explaned that she needs to take extra care in her life as she's also a retard.

um... hence the really shocked face.

The French.

...did somebody say boobies?

You realize some govt. official is compiling a report somewhere based on this thread title alone! I hope you're willing to go up before a Congressional hearing in a couple of years time and explain your part in how the country went to war on the basis of "bad intel".

yup - a buddy with low experiance misrouted his bridle due to rushing a couple of weeks back. He now considers his whole container to be an ecconomic write off as it's not that much more expensive to buy a band new wings than it is to replace his reserve handle, cutaway, freebag and reserve PC... all of which he lost. He figures resale value of what's left of the container almost makes it an even swap.

Really??? The 150 made the 168 feel slow???

Yes and no. I have no issues with giving the convicted sentences of 20 or 30 years for a murder... I just think that if you're going to send them down for 20 years call it "20 years". There's little logic in calling it "life" when you're not actually planning on imprisoning them for life. The logic comes from the fact that technically if a lifer is ever let out they are merely on parole and thus could go back to serve the rest of their original sentence if they do anything else wrong. Therefore in a way their sentence really is a life sentence, it's just that for the latter portion of it you're allowed to go back home on certain conditions.

I wonder what property prices in Israel are. They have a desperate need for land because of a high population density... it is quite possible that the $300,000 is far from as good a payout as it might sound to you Americans. I know it wouldn't buy you a can in which to shit in many places in the UK... its about the average price for a first home buyer property (outside of London of course). I thought land was in even shorter supply in Israel.

I concluded it was pretty much the same thing without all the bugs and glitches.

I wasn't saying you should have been held back as a student (I'm sure that's enough for a whole other thread) I was just doing a little maths based on what was normal for a student to have undertaken. If you followed an unusual student progression then that maths is based on the flawed assumption that you followed the same progression as most others and therefore the same conclusions can't necessarily be reached. For the silly quiz, of course D is hopefully the correct answer so long as your coach also hasn't made a human error. But then they're human - I personally try to rely as little as possible on other people not screwing up in order for me not to die. Of course that's sometimes necessary... but why do it though if it's not absolutely necessary? The facetious quiz was simply me being an arse and trying to illustrate just one reason why most people want you to at least be competent at sit before learning HD. As for just trying out HD I hope you got some tips, I'm sure you'll get more. If some here also try to help you out on how to best learn HD because you asked about "learnin head down", then that's our bad.

Ok man, if you quit venting at me and actually listen you'll not hear me say anywhere "you shouldn't do such and such till you have X many jumps" or anything like that. I don't care how many jumps it takes you to get these skills; I only suggest that you get them before you try acquiring head down skills. If you were turning a dozen points during your non USPA student progression that's cool, maybe you've already got all the life saving skills learnt from belly RW that you need to keep you from killing your friends. If you'd completed a USPA student progression it's unlikely that you would have been doing such jumps so early for safety reasons. This is the only reason I mentioned your jump numbers at all - I did the maths and from a normal USPA student progression you would normally be sat at your pooter now with a massive amount of experiance gleaned from a whole 5 RW jumps. You were saying you wanted something new - so it sounded like RW must have been something new if that's all the experiance you had at it. If you've done a non-standard student progression then that may not be the case. I'm simply saying you'll be a better flyer, faster if you learn some other skills first before you hit head down. I'm not in the slightest bit concerned how long it takes you to obtain skills themselves though. You might be the mac-daddy at belly RW because you have a 3 foot cock which allows you to steer yourself about the sky for all I know - I don't care. I don't care how long it takes you to get the skills that make the next step faster and easier, I'm simply suggesting you get those skills because it makes the next stage quicker cheaper and safer. Why do people advise this? Because you will be a better flyer sooner than if you just flail around in a back track for your next 50 jumps. If you don't want to hear that advice that's not my problem. If you'd rather go off and become a poor freeflyer spending far more money and time trying to become a good freeflyer than you might otherwise have had to before ranting at anyone who suggests there's a better way, knock yourself out. I just hope that doesn't happen literally, cos what you have planned so far seems like a wicked good way to achieve it. I'm not telling you to not be in a hurry – I'm saying because you are in a hurry the best way to get where you are wanting to be as fast as you can get there is to learn how to do X,Y and Z. Pop quiz for you. I'll even make it multiple choice. Here's the scenario; you go out with a HD coach. You start to flail. You're no good at sit (you only got up on your feet in the last 2-3 jumps after all) so you fall out of HD onto your belly. You're now doing 120 mph and your coach is doing 180mph. What is your closing speed? Is it: a) fast enough to kill us both. b) fast enough to kill me and remove both his legs at the knee. c) fast enough to knock me out so I wake up in a field spitting dirt with my reserve billowing about my head only for my S+TA to ground my ass for having a cypres fire. At least get so you are really comfortable in sit, can recover from instability into sit without even thinking, and you never ever (and I do mean ever) go flat by mistake. After that things are less about not killing your coach and more about not having to put his next two kids through college for him.

50 jumps total. 20 head up jumps. At least 25 student jumps. How about you try belly RW? Sounds like that's going to be something entirely new to you. One big reason people are advised to do belly RW first before they move on to FF is that you are able to learn the principals of flying relative to others in a more safe environment than FF affords. Closing speeds in FF have killed and or maimed. Closing speeds on your belly are lower (generally) and therefore offer a less dangerous forum for learning about flying relative to other people before you then go on to learn about freeflying with other people, forearmed with the skills you already have from your previous RW experiance. The advice is not there to slow down your learning curve - it is there to speed up the learning curve, as well as keep you alive in the process.

Many times I have shown the pilot my hairy arse and never have I got extra altitude.

Did they hold the flair to landing or did they let the toggles up after realising they were high? Did they attempt a PLF?

Personally I think the only thing to note is that trying-it-out is trying-it-out and that is very different from learning it. The advice on learning HD is almost always to learn head up first... that's different from just trying it out. Other than that just remember it's you and your gear alone up there. Even if there's no one else to collide with you can still kill yourself with inappropriate gear choice. So talk to someone who knows about FF gear and remember you don't know what you don't know - just because you think it's freefly safe doesn't mean it necessarily is.

Toddlers get fed up with crawling, haul themselves up onto their legs and start to run about like a spaz. They run around like spastics because they haven't perfected walking yet. If you want to fly around like a drunk spastic then go ahead and have fun. If you want to actually progress and learn a discipline, listening to the advice of those who are trying to help you progress faster, is a great place to start. Also note how Trae didn't actually post advice on how to learn a new discipline. He posted advice on how to try it out a couple of times. His advice on how to learn it is to get coached and that you shouldn't try it out too many times before you get coaching lest you start to think flying round like a spaz is how it's supposed to be done. P.S. don't backslide into my group while trying this out or I WILL kill you! Sadly I'll also be dead because you would have just blown through me at 50mph.

Well there's a recent thread in the incidents forum regarding an unfortunate individual who has been left a quadriplegic from a hard opening: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1744335#1744335

nah - that's Bovril. British Marmite is a by-product of beer manufacturing.

Yup, I agree, I'd look pretty dumb if I went in and didn't have my cypres on. I just think that your skydiving priorities are your skydiving priorities and no one elses. It should read 1)You get a parachute over your head... The fact that you have a gizmo on your back shouldn't come into the equation.

They can't confirm and control compatability with the reserve system and don't want another rig's failure to be attributed to the skyhook. My posts here are from my memory of Mr. Booth's post - his own words on the subject are on the forums somewhere.

It's an RW patented product. No one else can produce them unless they come up with a novel way of doing a similar thing... even then there could be issues. Mr. Booth has indicated that he would open it up to other manufacturers in the future just as he has done with his previous inventions. His reason for not doing so straight away is that it he feels it is such a great product that he would hate to see it get a bad reputation by killing a couple of people due to poorly made or installed copies produced by other firms. By keeping production and installation of the product in house he can ensure QC and compatibility so that it always works as it should. Then the product can then build up the reputation it deserves and people won't miss out on using simply because it got a reputation it didn't deserve. Imagine if Airtec, in an effort to save costs, had farmed out the manufacture of US cypres units to a Mexican company for example. Say a couple of US skydivers go in because their shoddy Mexican cypres's didn't work right. Suddenly no one across the world want's a cypres irrespective of where it's made because the product as a whole got a bad reputation from these couple of incidents. So no one would wear a cypres... and everyone would be denied the use of a great product simply because of a short sighted marketing decision. Mr. Booth has said that once the skyhook built up a proven track record and its status as a life saving item is unassailable he'll allow others to produce it under license... assuming things don't change in the mean time at least. Until then you'll have to buy a vector.