yoink

Hey, pull time is no time to meth around. That made me laugh far more than it should have!

You're right that it tends to differ, but it really shouldn't - at least not much. Do lots of reading on here about exit order, particularly about the 45 degree rule and why you need to stay away from anyone using it.

What's a slider turn? Do you mean a riser turn? If so, that's not the quickest way to turn a canopy. Most efficient? Yup - but don't go to your risers in an emergency. Toggles all the way!

Parachutist Certificate Exam 1. Describes your emergency procedures in the event of a malfunction? Look, Locate, Peel, Pull, Punch, Arch. 2. Describe your canopy checks? Is it the right shape? Is anything broken? Can I control it? (Square, Sound, Stable) 3. It is important to check your parachute equipment at what times? Kinda a wierdly phrased question. It depends on the checks. For me: Before gearing up. Before emplaning. Handle checks on the plane. Before exit. After landing. during packing. 4. You should check your deployment handles in what order? In my mind, I only have one deployment handle. So that one first. 5. Upon canopy deployment you are facing another canopy, the fastest way to turn your parachute out of the possible collision is? Right toggle all the way down. 6. Your main canopy opens with line twists, your immediate response is? Is it the right shape? Is it broken? Is it spinning hard? If no - kick out. If yes, or if I can't kick out - chop. 7. Under canopy you find yourself at 3000ft down wind of the 2000ft or holding point. Your response should be? ??? Turn into the wind? 8. What is your minimum decision altitude that you should carry out your emergency procedures if you are unable to control your main parachute? 1200ft 9. Your left hand flight path is going to take you over the centre of the PLA below500ft, your best response will be? ??? Depends - how big is the PLA? If it's large enough, stick with it. If I'm heading for an obstacle, flat turn and take a cross wind / downwind as necessary. 10. Correctly list the landing priority order? Wing level. Flare. Into wind. 11. Which correctly lists the deployment priority rules? Pull. Pull Stable. Pull stable at the right altitude. 12. You have ended up having to land off the PLA, your new intended landing point is in a clear paddock but the surface is on the side of a hill. The wind direction is blowing directly up the hill. What should be your landing direction? Across the hill. 13. You are coming in to dock on a formation. You should never? Shit yourself. 14. Is it possible to land your canopy on half brakes? Yes 15. On your final turn for landing you find you are traveling very fast. You look up and find you are landing down wind. Your reaction should be? Flare as normal and prepare to PLF like a champion. 16. The PLA is surrounded by obstacles of trees and buildings, careful flight and concentration is required to land in the PLA. The obstacles that you can’t see on first glance may well include? eh? Anything. Rocks. Spectators hiding in the grass. Landmines. Attack gophers. 17. Your equipment is fitted with an AAD that is fitted to? The container. - Although I think they're looking for 'the reserve', which is incorrect. 18. You are in the second group to leave the aircraft. You look out the door and see the first group falling directly below the aircraft as opposed to falling away on about a 45º angle from the door. This indicates to you that? Fuck all. 19. The correct exit order for different free fall disciplines is? Students. Flat. Freefly. Tracking. AFF. Tandem. Wingsuits. 20. You are flying a sport canopy in a load of 20 other canopies. Who has the right of way over you? Anyone lower and students. 21. When is your skydive deemed to be over? Back in the hanger. 22. The life and performance of your skydiving equipment can be greatly reduced by ................................? Just about everything. Using it. Sand. UV. Dog piss. Smoke. Fire. High Explosives.

What story are you referring to? Apologies - screwed the link up. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24644203 The initial link did say it was a shooting, but it looks like that's been removed. Either way, I've always said you couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher - mainly because I don't have the patience for it, but now it seems to be becoming one of the more dangerous professions!

And another kid shoots a teacher.... for the second time this week. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ Your turn. How do we want to measure this? 1:1?

Don't focus on this. It's not a race. You are never going to get to that handle before the canopy opens. What the instructor is looking for is that you're stable all the way through the pull sequence. Make nice big, smooth movements. If you reach for the handle and it isn't there, stay in your assymetrical pull position for a second and reach upwards towards your butt. It's likely the handle is higher than your expect. Don't worry too much about it. Dummy pulls are by far the hardest part of static line progression. If you have to repeat it a few times, so what? It's fun! I did at least half a dozen of those before I finally 'got it'.

That's probably what I'd do as well, but I can think of issues with this strategy too - be damn sure where you're gripping your webbing - you don't want any hold of your cutaway or reserve handle. Would I be heads up enough to remember this in the situation? I hope so, but who knows.

Nope. I've worked on the design of schools like that and they SUCK at being educational facilities. They end up being more like correctional facilities, with correspondingly higher maintenance and support fees. I wouldn't want my kids being educated in one. I agree, access control is the key. Stop the nutjobs getting the guns.

Unfortunately I think a lot of adults act like children too. NO! YOU'RE NOT TAKING MY TOYS!!!

Fairly normal psychological response to danger. Goal fixation. His brain hasn't stopped making that chest strap the most important thing in his world yet. Yup. Far from berating the guy, I think this is a fantastic lesson for all of us. You may think you'll be cool in an emergency, but your brain does strange stuff in extremis. 1) Build a routine to check your stuff, and follow it exactly the same way every time. If there isn't time because you're rushing to make a load, have the discipline to hold off... 2) Know your shit. Learn everything you can about your gear, how it works and possible failure modes. I think the Safety and Training forum is really valuable for exactly this - there have been scenarios in there that I never thought of...

yup. I got lucky too.

How many jumps have you got - it matters. It sounds like not too many, so read the guidelines in the video forum. You say you understand that it's a distraction but there's no such thing as 'turning it on and forgetting about it'. Even with the best intentions in the world you WILL alter your habits to accommodate wearing a camera. Even if it's something as simple as turning it on on the way to the plane, you've now changed from doing a hackey check, reviewing your dive plan, checking the landing direction, or any of a thousand other things that you should be doing. After a while, most of these sorts of things become instinctual, then you've go to go through the same acclimatization process for actually flying with a camera. Don't bother putting a camera on now. You'll end up with shitty footage, with 26 minutes of every half hour being the back of someone's head in the plane. To get around that you'll start only turning it on at altitude, and now you've altered ANOTHER part of your sequence... rather than thinking about your exit, doing a handle check or visualizing your dive, you've got to remember to turn a camera on... Trust me, it seems like nothing but 95% of all experienced videographers would tell a low experienced jumper the same - even if you have the best intentions. Save your cash for jumps

Then follow it up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAgE1CUch3Q only by changing the system is there ever a chance of significantly changing the parties.

The entire 96% of people who didn't vote for Libertarians?

Anyone want to bet we'll be exactly back here on the 5th Feb?

I can't bring myself to watch it. I dislike Russel Brand almost as much as the WBC.

Yeah, some folks got a hell of a deal!

We agree on something! Hell, I'd give the entire government pay cuts for the future as well, the senate, congress, the president; everyone. The reasoning? They suck at their jobs... If I let a deadline that affected millions of my clients just blow past, even though I knew it was coming for months, I'd be fired!

Firstly, I apologise for the tone of that post. I was frustrated. Where did I say that? Point it out please. In fact, point out anywhere in this thread where we're even talking about skydiving... The entire point is that Speedflying / groundlaunching is a different sport to skydiving - something many skydivers seem to disbelieve, and should be treated as such. Yes, there are similarities, but there are differences too, and it's not knowing about those that'll kill you. I've jumped Eloy. And Perris. I'm aware of turbulence and I usually stood myself down when it got turbulent. That was how I dealt with it. However the likelihood of encountering it ( the conditions which cause it), the altitude and attitude at which you'd typically encounter it, and potential consequences are different in hilly terrain. You don't (typically) see large dust-devil type turbulence, but more rotor turbulence from other hills, rocks, valleys and the like. (If you're high-wind soaring the type of turbulence is often different again, with wind-shear being a big concern). However, to use your example, if you run through a small dust devil at a dz when you're in your landing pattern - lets say it causes one side of your parachute to fold under. To recover from that you bury both toggles to reinflate your wing. That may take 50ft or so - if you're quick. Scary but might not be the end of the world... ... unless you're typically flying at less than 10ft above the ground at high speed, over rocky ground in an area which is usually difficult for a rescue team to get to... Flying a wing designed to recover from collapses as fast as possible is a good idea in these conditions. It's safer than NOT doing it. As for educating people - what do you think I'm doing? Just because you don't like or even agree with the lesson doesn't make it less true. Evidently.

Roundabouts work well for efficiency I think, but they have one MASSIVE flaw - they require you to look away from the direction you're driving in. So many rear-end fender benders happen at roundabouts in the UK because you see the car in front of you start to move, you look right to check for traffic, pull forward and crunch... you didn't see that the car in front didn't go after all.

Make a switch to instant runoff voting and you'd start to see other parties developing. But of course the function of a power block is to remain a power block, so why would they alter anything that might change the status quo...

Read this on the BBC yesterday about John Boehner: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24433182 While I'm not sure I agree with all of the article, I thought this was interesting:

No problem. I've got cookies and and a six pack at home. I suspect that'll be fine.