MikeJD

Wow, those are nice. Living in the UK we get even less opportunity to photograph storms - we don't really do extreme weather of any kind. Unfortunately uniform overcast and steady drizzle don't make the best subjects.

This is cracking me up. I have to say, the moment I saw your original post I could see how the thread was going to pan out. You might as well have asked for a steer on Microsoft vs Apple. The problem is, lots of people with an opinion haven't had comparable exposure to more than one rig. In most cases they'll have owned one type long-term, and at best put a couple of jumps on some of the others. And as ever nobody wants to be told that they made the 'wrong' choice, hence asking for recommendations is guaranteed to start a flame war. I'd check out the Javelins, Infinitys and Icons at your local DZ, and with the owners' permissions try a few on - but be mindful of the fact that the harnesses might not be sized to fit you. And talk to an experienced rigger, since they at least will have worked with plenty of each type while doing inspections and repacks.

He don't. Then what does he did? God. I very nearly literally spat coffee over my keyboard.

So, is he suddenly using a lot of 'English' spellings - analyse, criticise, memorise?

I was wondering whether something like that could be done. Presumably it'd also be possible to rig some kind of photo-sensitive shutter release so that the lightning flash would start the exposure. A system like that would presumably be fast enough - certainly much quicker than human reaction time. The benefit of having the flash trigger the shutter would be that you could still explicitly set the exposure time.

There's always money to be found. It's like an automatic reward for tidying up. I have a habit of putting bank notes into my suit pockets instead of into my wallet. Whenever I have a clearout of unwanted clothes, it's payday!

I think there's too much emphasis in this thread on the purely physical question of whether or not listening to music blocks out important aural warnings. To me the pyschological effect is far more significant. For (I'd say) most people, a musical soundtrack changes the way we perceive the world. It provides drama where there is none, and calm where there's drama - it makes everything slightly unreal, as though you're living within a movie. That's part of the appeal, and it's something that was first noted when people started wearing the old Sony Walkman back at the end of the 70's. You don't need to have jumped with an MP3 player to understand the effect - you only have to walk down the street with one. When I skydive, and especially if I have a malfunction, I want all my sensual input to come from what is actually happening to me right now, not from the guitar riff that a songwriter came up with to provoke an emotional reaction. This is also the reason I don't think you can equate being deaf to skydiving with music - the effect is very different.

Appearing soon in a straight-to-DVD budget sci-fi movie. Painted black.

Good news about your health and your friends. But the thread is only 4 hours old. Give it time.

I'm always nice to Shah.

Yeah, and then they go too far the other way and become a complete heel. OK, so nobody uses 'heel' that way any more. But it's the best I could do. Time wounds all heels! ~feel better now? Arched hard to get that one didn't you? I thought I kinda 'nailed' it. Toes are the worst puns ever.

Yeah, and then they go too far the other way and become a complete heel. OK, so nobody uses 'heel' that way any more. But it's the best I could do.

OK: so apparently the UK is a good place to learn Farsi, and no French women shave their legs or armpits. I'm thinking you might be in the wrong forum to learn anything about understanding other cultures...

Amazingly, I've never lost a cellphone outdoors, but I mislay mine around the house all the time. In fact, just about the only calls I make on the landline these days are to help me track down my cellphone! Least expected place I ever found it was in a waste basket - that could only have happened through my cat knocking it off the bedside table.

Yeah, I think that's the 'make the passengers nice and sleepy' pressure.

Hm. Well, again, with an open-topped cup the 'pour hole' is always centred.

There are some desperately unfunny British shows too - a really good one only comes along once in a while. The vast majority of the comedy on our TV is still imported from the States. Some of it is ok, some of it is terrible, and much of it is really old! A quick perusal of today's listings reveals all these US shows: Everybody Loves Raymond The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Friends Frasier Home Improvement MASH Scrubs Malcolm in the Middle Everybody Hates Chris The Simpsons Futurama Two and a Half Men Family Guy American Dad South Park.

You had a yard??? "House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!" "You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!" "Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph." "Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US." "We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!" "You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road." "Cardboard box?..." etc...

Didn't I hear a similar story about the exiting White House staff doing exactly that just before Dubya moved in? Hey, maybe she's a 'Democat'. Glad she's ok. Hopefully she didn't ingest too much of the stuff.

It sure would. 1969912, got nothing for you I'm afraid. But I hope it gets sorted.

Hadn't thought of that possibility, but it makes a lot more sense. It'd hardly be the first time it has happened - and given that nobody would have seen exactly where the 'body' landed, it could take a pretty long time to find it.

Assuming there wasn't also a plane crash, then at least one other person ought to know what actually happened. But it's not that uncommon for falling objects to be mistaken for people - cutaway canopies are quite often reported as such. No matter how 'reliable' their witnesses, this may well be something and nothing. Let's hope the latter!

The question for me is not whether it can be done, but what happens after it has been? We already have a perfectly good means of getting wingsuiters safely back to earth. It's affordable, it's portable - hell, it's wearable - and it's been proven to work over many thousands of jumps. If you want to prove that someone can survive a landing without a parachute, it's already been done, multiple times, by accident. I wish Mr Corliss well and I certainly hope he doesn't hurt himself attempting this - but I can't see it as a game-changing event in any way.

For not letting me drive on that trip to Bridge Day.

Seems to me we need at least one skydiving fight in this list. And I'm not talking about the lamentable 'Shoot 'Em Up'! So, James Bond and the bad guy in the opening sequence of Moonraker. Two men, one parachute - pretty high stakes! And all filmed with real skydivers in real freefall, instead of shoddy green-screen. Shame about the silly bit where Jaws gets his fall broken by the circus tent, but we can overlook that. Plus, the whole sequence is preceded by one of the best lines in a 007 movie - "Any higher, Mr Bond, and my ears will pop!"