dorbie

There's that context thing again. There are locals who are biased in the extreme acting as the reporting agents for organizations like Reuters. This is just the most obvious manifestation but there's a litany ove past problems, Pallywood etc. This is just one symptom.

Your right to get up and drive to work in the morning affects the safety of others, where do you draw the line? Every normal skydive affects the safety of people on the ground, it's unavoidable. There's a chance bystanders could get hurt or killed. This is just one of the excuses for banning BASE jumping in otherwise 'safe' remote locations. Enforce your beer line, it's better than the slippery slope you'r so ready to climb on to.

On a gurney, under a pile of rubble, on the ground, in an ambulance, held up in the air.....what do these all have in common? A DEAD KID!!!! I can hear the next one. "Hey, the report said the infant was blown to pieces. That's BULLSHIT! Only his arms and legs were gone. His head is clearly attached to his torso, which appears completely unscathed I might add. Damn liberal bias". (insert witty/detracting/discrediting deliberate mispronunciation of media source's name) If that was the point then there would be no need for embellishment would there? Photoshopped images, lying captions, duplicated images days later and posed photos, no bias? Why do it? Why defend it? P.S. yea and it's biased and wrong of anyone to point any of this out of course.

Yanked: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3287774,00.html

I concur the photo caption was misleading. These are obviously decoy flares dropped by the f-16. However, don't these split or multiple eject? Having seen video of F-16's flying strikes nothing looks untoward with the pic itself, only the caption (supplied by the photographer) is technically wrong. Having said that, the pic, even shot through a 300mm telephoto, shows a pretty close aircraft - so yeah... It was an F-16 conducting a strike. I'm puzzled that the original stories are being used to discredit Reuters! It was Reuters who released the original story! In effect, Reuters have cleaned up their own house, and publicly stated their actions. It's hardly grounds to attack Reuters for dishonesty when they're being so transparently honest. The whole story is about Reuters sacking a photographer for being dishonest and thus not adhering to Reuters' standards. Mike. No, Reuters was outed by bloggers then cleaned house. This is just another example, but this indicts the entire gathering process, you have a pool of photog's running around staging shots and in this case photoshopping images. The flares are definitely clones by someone who thought they were bombs. An image diff shows NO difference. Aside from superficial obvious similarities, no diff and pixel level alignment of features in a smoke trail is impossible. Even if the features were identical and not a chaotic phenomenon it would still be vannishingly unlikely. Those images show a cloned trail with the smallest feature identical. IMHO the "bomb" is an internal reflection from the lens elements which has also been cloned and in the wrong place for some of the flares. This story is in a broader context of the news gathering process in the region and the manipulation of the facts, eventually they might get out after the headlines: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/07/D8JBLITG0.html Here's another one, the caption misleads about the time of the bombing, a 2 for 1 I suppose: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014919.php Another 2fer: http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html But maybe you think it's just fine to run around posing with the corpses of dead kids throwing them on & off gurneys and in and out of ambulances to get the right shot, to lie to the world if it's a means to an end. Whatever your thoughts on this it should not be presented as news.

Bill are we to take it from your response in this thread that you are now a conservative right-winger or did you just lose self-control when you saw the shiny bait?

That smoke clone was obvious, I'd say he needs practice. Here's another Reuters clone job that has been spotted more recently. http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/184206.php Materially it changes a potentially precision strike to appear like something else entirely.... if it wasn't a flare not missiles as Reuters calls them. I'd say Reuters has a problem here but it's only surprising it it's utter brazenness.

Well they can look at the recoded firing parameters and/or reported information and determine whether it would have happened with alternative AADs based on documented claims. It's not really my claim it's theirs and I took it at face value, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me. I'm not necessarily saying that there aren't another set of parameters that would have given you the best of both worlds, but as a philosophy it can (and they claim has) lead to saves in some circumstances where cautious settings wouldn't and it should be up to jumpers to determine where they want to draw the line. But cherry picking parameters erodes the margins and the philosophy, it moves the tradeoff and it looks OK with hindsight, but it says nothing about future saves the circumstances of which might happen in the margin. In my view this has similarities to student cypres vs expert cypres. We don't get DZs banning student cypres because of fires riding the load down when someone forgets to deactivate, primarily because everyone totally understands the explicit design choice that leads to the product difference and uses it intentionally for the added margin of safety for novice jumpers, and follows the different operating instructions. It seems the Vigil issues are a bit less explicit and they should spend some effort educating their customers around their product design philosophy and issues, that has to include acknowledging the problems with some types of jumps.

I'd known it best as nail polish remover. It's a powerful solvent for lots of stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone I might test it some day if I can get some spare cable, but for cleaning my cables I'm taking the advice here and on other threads.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cutaway cables should be lubricated the same way as machine guns - in the desert. Use some sort of light oil (i.e. WD40) to loosen the dirt, then wipe them almost dry. Dry, clean Lolon has excellent self-lubricating properties. Lolon only sticks when it has too much grim, sand, salt, ferrous oxide, gunk, etc. on it, ergo, the less lubricant you leave on cutaway cables the better. Good to know thanks. Do you clean the inside of your hard housings then?

I think it's a bit unreasonable comparing one AAD to another and demanding exactly the same behavior. When you compare the Vigil to jumping without an AAD it's still an easy decision. I jump a Cypres 2 but Vigil is getting beaten up unfairly here and banning is a bold move. It seems that Vigil did detect a pressure change in that instance. It seems clear that Vigils are twitchier than other AAD's but that's part of a philosophy, they've made design decisions that by their estimation has given them two additional saves. Think about that, there are two skydivers walking around today (or maybe they're bowlers now) that might not be here had Vigil set their parameters to avoid some of the pressurized flight activations and the hangar (wind gust?) activation etc. I'm not saying their right, but I don't think it's anyone's place to dictate where the limits should be. No system is perfect, people should relax and pick their AAD based on where they want to draw their threshold for activation (among other criteria). And if you want to risk a fire when you open your sun-roof on the drive back from the DZ, or can't jump the jet with it for your added margin of safety sobeit. Maybe it's worth the cutter and repack to you in the unlikely event that you induce a fire.

An industry standard has been and still is WD40, I believe it is the same product labled CRC in some countries. Mick. CRC is a company that makes all sorts of products. I was told during training to avoid WD-40 because it's sticky and attracts dirt. Some bikers spray it on their license plate to collect road dirt faster, but I suppose most coatings would do that. I'm disinclined to start collecting it inside my hard housings.

I think the question kinda misses the point about Coulter.

I have a can of CRC Heavy Duty Silicone Multi-Use Lubricant in a red can. Is it OK to use to lubricate my yellow (Lolon-F) cutaway cables? Can says it contains Acetone, Heptane, Dimethylpolysiloxane & Hydrocarbon propellant. I did a search and saw some posts about avoiding the Ace Hardware red can due to residue, then someone replied saying CRC had lots of products but avoid the red can, but with no explanation leaving me wondering it that was confusion with the Ace product or if ACE just rebrands it. I did some test sprays and I think the acetone screws up a lot of plastic surfaces people have used for testing. It seems that there's no residue except the lubricant after the propellant evaporates on the right surface. Here is the exact product: http://www.crcindustries.com/auto/content/prod_detail.aspx?PN=05074CA&S=N It seems sound enough, before I take the plunge, has anyone used this on cables? Will Acetone react with Lolon-F? Thanks.

Wrong, Israel started this in 1948 by existing.

But reversing the setup would make sure that there wasn't a problem. It would also mean fewer aborted swoops for the pocket-rocket guys. Only if you could move the runway.

Yea it's murder by the troops hiding behind civilians. Binding the hands of a nation as it's civilian population centers are being mercilessly rocketed is murder. Lebanon should have disarmed the terrorists as per earlier agreements. There's no ideal solution that appeases your squeamishness. This is the real world and this is what happens when you harbor murderous fanatics and let them stockpile an arsenal of weapons that can only be used to indescriminately murder the citizens of your neighbor.

If Canadian assholes in Tiajuana were rocketing San Diego and Mexico said there was nothing they could do about it you can be damned sure the US would go over there and sort it out even if it meant dead Mexican civilians. Now maybe for you it would take a rocket to land on your home or a member of your family before you got it, but I can see a problem with the situation long before it gets to that point. In fact I can see the problem with the situation Israel faces now in Lebanon. Similarly the source of weapons funding training and individuals should and would be addressed in a better world. Your other comment is a complete non sequitur but the US gave stinger missiles & funding to support the expulsion of an invading Soviet military targeting military personnel and assets from an expanding threat that had an arsenal of nukes pointed at us, there's was a difference. Not all things are equal and one misrepresentation of a wrong does not make another wrong a right nor does it tie our hands now. We don't get to see the alternative if the US hadn't done that but it might just include hundreds of millions enslaved under Soviet rule to this day or worse.

Your definition of murder is askew. That's why you just don't get it. There will be less sewing and reaping when nations like Iran and Syria are held to account instead of hiding behind murderous surrogates and implausible deniability. It used to be that you used to have some tennuous fig leaf to hide behind to claim you're not involved in crap like this before you'd get the benefit of the doubt. Syria and Iran's fuelling of this situation is overt and they get a pass, and it leads to more of the same. I sometimes wonder if they're just astounded that they can get away with this. Their support and encouragement is the elephant in the living room and as long as it is ignored this situation will not improve.

Since the supposed aim is "destroy Hezbollah", do you see Israel invading Syria or Iran? This gets to the heart of the problem. The entire world knows these terrorists rocketing civilian populations indescriminately and kidnapping soldiers are surrogates for Iran and Syria but few will accept any action on this because it'd just be too ugly and gosh darn it there are international laws against that sort of thing. It's high time Iran and Syria reaped what they have been sewing for decades so they think long and hard before daring to export murder and mayhem again.

Skydive San Diego has a similar setup, I've never seen anyone have a problem. The wind there is consistent and they always setup in about the same place & swoop in the same direction with the crossing point towards the latter half of their swoop. Given that loading is done on the runway and to get to that you cross the entire field + ultralight operations etc, there isn't necessarily a good (upwind) alternative. YMMV.

This has happened before, see this thread: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1662858

My FFX is for a 60cm noggin and it fits like a glove.

Says $232 here: http://www.riggingsolutions.us/product/Helmets/helmets.htm Extras are.... extra.

The French keep doing the same thing trying to maintain their language purity (shows how obliveous some of them are to how language develops). Technical and business words which had crept into the language get redefined. My favorite: start-up -> new plant (in French)