MarkM

What?

I think a nonfatal incident page would be good. The people who have the accidents can post the entries themselves, along with commentary on what could've been done to avoid the accident.

Because if you haven't mastered certain skills, you're dead. The 200 jumps aren't important, the skills you need to handle specific dangers in Skysurfing are. I don't have a problem saying "you should have X many jumps before doing Y", because it's a good general benchmark. But I think you also need to go beyond that benchmark and list the specific dangers/skills needed so people can make informed decisions on their abilities.

I don't think those specific items have much to do with 20 jumps. You can not realize you're burning altitude faster head down if you've done 100 RW's. Your rig might not be FF friendly if you've been doing RW. You may or may not have a Cypres if you've been doing RW. Conversly, since you don't have any learned altitude sense you may visually check more as a newbie, maybe that new first rig you bought is FF friendly and since you're a noob you jump with a Cypres. Yeah, but they need to know why it isn't a good idea. What specific skills won't they have to FF solo safely. What are the ways they can train to get them, so they're not a hazard in the air when they eventually start playing around with freeflying.

Yeouch. Glad you're okay and hope your canopy didn't suffer any damage. But look on the bright side, at least you weren't jumping a Saber :)

Is the problem inexperienced people freeflying or inexperienced freefliers jumping with others? What basic skills should you have for solo freeflying? How do you learn the skills needed for freeflying with others? Do a bunch of solo jumps, then transition to jumping with 1 other person who's experienced?

Actually I don't have soft handles pretty much due to arguements you made against them months ago. I guess what I was trying to get across(poorly like I always do), is that there are the things you should do and the things you will do. While you should always aim for doing the things you should do, plan ahead for the things you will do.

Risk avoidance is definately the best system for keeping safe. Be realistic about your limitations and avoid situations you're not prepared for. But I think you also have to be honest about your personality and make gear choices that play into that. I know people who put 20-30k miles on their motorcycle chains because they're a stickler for cleaning. I'm not, so from the get go I know I'll be change mine out at around 7-10k to minimize my risk of it breaking. The "right" thing to do might be to just promise to clean my chain more often, but realistically I'm probably safer just swapping it out sooner. For some people, avoiding loads that have a high probability of collisions may not be realistic for their personality. So they work on another ways to reduce risk. Swooping might be another example. Some people are going to swoop, they just have the personality that craves it. Promising themselves they "won't ever swoop" and getting a canopy around that decision may be more harmful than accepting that they'll probably eventually start swooping and should pick a canopy more safely in tune for learning it.

Good point, and with tandeming you can teach some basic canopy skills.

I would think a small amount of tunnel time wouldn't be bad, just to teach basic stability.

Famous last words.

Laugh. I always thought the biggest benefit of Slinks were that you didn't have the metal slider grommets slamming against your metal links, which can cause nicks.

With street clothes on I have a nasty habit of grabbing part of my shirt when I grab my cutaway handle. There isn't the same problem with my reserve handle because it's a metal loop and my grab for it is different. I'd also think a hard metal loop is easier/faster to find by touch alone. But in the end I guess it's all about risk minimalization. If you're in a high risk for a snag, go soft. If not, buy your rig with the standard silver. You can always swap it out later, no?

Before this explodes into flamefest 2002. I don't think Ralf was saying "no altimeter is fine", I think he was trying to find the context of the jump to put it into perspective. I don't think PhillyKev was trying to throw regs into anyone's face, he was pointing out that in the US the DZ is pretty much required to slap one on a student. If they're not following that reg, then what other regs are they not following? Why would they not put a student out with an alti? Who knows. Maybe they had a bad experience once where a student focused too much on the alti and not the radio. Maybe they just don't feel a FJC student really needs one since he'll be under a chute right out of the plane and will be following the radio down. Maybe they ran out.

Heh, well, yeah, I guess I could just use electric directly but it wouldn't satisfy my need for gadgets nearly as much

If we use fuel cells they run off of, what, hydrogen? You still have to use energy to get hydro, but at least you have more options than just fossils. Natural gas may be hard to transport, but you wouldn't need to. You covert the energy from it into hydrogen anywhere and transport that. Don't like natural gas? Use tidal, wind, solar, whatever. We'd at least be able to explore other energy options, because the end result can be used to make hydrogen. How about grain alcohol? Methanol? Hell, if you don't need a large kit to crack hydrogen I might even be able to build a totally self sufficient sailboat if fuel cells became common motors: wind generators and solar cells for electric, crack the hydro and store into a fuel cell. Depends on how much electricity you need to crack hydrogen and how big/practical the system would be. Give me a watermaker and a decent fishing kit and I could avoid civilization for months with a setup like that.

That's just why people do it. People can't handle not being able to control stuff in their life, so they make it controllable. We all do this. Try not to be so hard on them, it's human nature and they aren't getting the whole story like you are. My condolences to your friends. I've lost a parent and a sibling. If I had a child I wouldn't want to outlive him or her

HSS

Thanks for making the vids Phree.

I badly pinched the median nerve to my left arm, the xrays were to make sure I didn't slip a disc in my neck or something. I took a spill in the tunnel, sorta dearched on entry by looking at the floor, flew way up, hit the wall and went head down and landed on my left shoulder and arm. Got it on video

Hi and grats. But hit the caps lock key once for everyone here

Hey, sex is sex.

Hmm, nope looks like I was wrong: http://law.freeadvice.com/insurance_law/health_insurance/employee_health_insurance.htm

I'm pretty sure there was a law passed a couple years ago that pretty much made it so businesses in the US have to offer health insurance coverage to any full time employee, if that business is over a certain size. It's one of the reasons many corps use temp agencies. Think Clinton signed it back when healthcare reform was the topic of the year.

Hmm, make sure it doesn't restrict your head movement any and doesn't have any snag points that would cause a horseshoe. Otherwise... any reason you don't just buy a protec? They're only about 30 bucks.