RandomLemming

I think from now on I'll just fly BA to Barcelona and drive down... It's only an extra hour or so and BA have no weight restrictions only size restrictions at the moment. I can't see myself going anywhere in Europe other than Emp for a while unless it's for a special event. I'm in love with the place!

You sure? I'd really hate to impose on anyone, you know ? Seriously though, I'm going to be down there anyway this weekend if the weather looks any good. I've pretty much nailed my landings while out at Empuria (except for one embarrassing incident) so I'm heading out to do my CH2 nominated landings. And I need someone to just double check that I've put my rig back together properly :D

I don't think we have the option of not having BPA membership in the UK. In the US, you can find non-USPA dropzones. In the UK, all DZs are BPA controlled and I believe you have to be a member to jump here. I seem to remember some rule with regards to the insurance (that hopefully someone else will clarify) that there could only be one non-bpa member per group or per load or something similar ?

Well, I had my first cutaway at 08:31 this morning, and I offered to pay the beer fine, but no-one took me up on the offer. That might be because there were no skydivers anywhere around. The event took place on the floor of Girona airport because the drone behind the desk was not allowing my rig as hand luggage. Ryanair allowed it out of the UK as hand luggage with no quibbles, even though it was 11.8KG, but coming back, even though it was down to 11.5KG they would not allow me to carry it as hand luggage. So I chopped the main, put it in my suitcase, moved a bunch of clothes to my rig bag, and carried the rest of the rig hand luggage. Other than that, Empuriabrava is an awesome place. I passed my FS1 yesterday (which I DID pay the fine for) and had the best time skydiving since Lodi. Highly recommended, just fly BA seeing as they don't have a weight limit on hand luggage, just a size limit.

I'm sure this flight does give you loads of time to jump. I'm equally sure that I'll need the first jump just to wake up after leaving the house at 03:30 :D I'm mainly interested in how busy they get in the week... I'm sure they go like mad on the weekends :) I'm hoping to get around 6 lifts a day because that would get my FS1 sorted before I come home and then I can stop jumping by myself all the time

To be fair, the main reason that the BPA is raising their prices is because their costs went up. The insurance premiums got hiked and they are passing that cost onto their members (don't really see what other option they have). Having said that, I'd gladly pay the BPA more money if I knew how to get them to lobby things like airlines on behalf of their members.

[apologies for hijacking here] Funny story - my flight leaves on Thursday at 06:45 :D How busy are they normally in the week ? Do you know if I'm likely to start my FS1 training on Friday or if we'll have to wait for Saturday to fill loads ?

I was just curious, more about the process than anything else... I was going out to Spain late last year and was getting close to 60 days without jumping, and apparently there I would have had to do a written test and one solo jump to be 'current' again. So I did what any self respecting person would do... took the next day off of work and put two jumps on before hitting the 60 day mark :)

Whoa! I feel less sad about the UK now... How do you stay current with that kind of pattern ?

I'll loan you mine... it works quite reliably and works for anyone with an internet connection... Just visit http://uk.weather.com/weather/local/TN27?x=0&post=TN27&code=code&y=0 Don't ever look further than two days... Now, how to interpret this? Well that part's easy too! If it says the weather will be crap, it will be crap. If it says the weather will be good, it will be crap I'm seriously thinking about setting up a webcam on the weather brick at Headcorn because that is the only accurate way I've found to predict local weather. In all seriousness though, I've only had one day jumping so far this year. I missed two glorious days in January due to being seriously ill, but things have been a bit scarce. Fortunately I'm off to Empuriabrava this weekend, so hopefully I'll get some jumps in there. Not sure how busy they are in the week (never anyone on the webcams), but I'm hoping to start my FS1 on Friday :)

Heh - we actually get a fair amount of sunshine, but those days I'm at the DZ and they have loads of space for me to pack :)

No arguments , I should definitely be packing, and I do when I'm jumping locally and with my own rig. I don't pack when I'm renting because while I'm happy to pack for me, I'm not happy to pack for the next person to rent that rig.

Thanks for the lesson on which bits of the harness are which - I was way off with that one ! I don't really have anything to suspend myself by, so nothing that would be of any use, no :(

Sorry for the stupid question, but what is the MLW ? The lateral straps are the ones that go around your legs, right ? Is the MLW the webbing that goes over your shoulders ?

Hi all, I will ask my instructors about this soon, but I just have a quick question about how a rig should fit across my shoulders. Since receiving my rig back from Aerodyne for harness resizing, it seems _very_ tight across the shoulders. Rolling my forward requires a lot of effort and it feels pretty tight. In your opinion, is this common of a new harness or is it something I should send my rig back to have changed again ? Thanks in advance,

Thanks - those are some excellent links there! I think my biggest problem initially was trying to work out where to look, just not knowing anything about the geography in that area, but I've had some great tips so at least I can get an idea now.

Thanks - that's dead helpful. I need somewhere with a small garden for my dog, so I'm expecting to pay a bit more rent...

I've got about 12 years experience... I've just heard back from the company and they're prepared to offer $100,000 per year plus medical / dental and bonuses. That doesn't sound great if I convert it to pounds right now, but as long as I can live comfortably on it, I would be happy. What is public transport like in NJ? How far out of Jersey city could I live and still get in on public transport ? I'm used to a 1 - 1.5 hour commute each way here in the UK. The DZ situation actually sounds quite good :) Thanks

Wow... How long are you going to be in each place? It sounds like you are going to be covering a lot of space :) If you're only in London for a short time, then the open top bus tours are a good option. They'll take you to a load of the main sights and you can buy tickets that give you priority entry into many of the main venues. Depending on your tastes, London has SOOO much to see. Hell, I spent the weekends of our first 3 months in the country at Foyles bookstore :D I'd certainly recommend the Tower of London (and if you can get those ravens to scram, I'd really appreciate it!). The British Museum is awesome if you're into that kind of thing (not sure what they have on at the moment). Covent Garden is great to visit as well. There's almost always something going on, and some cool places to eat and drink around there. A walk along the Embankment at night is normally quite good too. You can see Cleopatra's needle and other neat things we stole from that part of the world. Things to think about - find reasonable accomodation in advance and get someone who lives in London to give you an opinion on it. There are lots of places that claim to be central, but that aren't. There are also lots of shitty hotels here. Travel - you will probably want to make good use of the tubes , so get an unlimited travelcard to cover your time here, but don't buy zones that you don't think you'll need. If you're just going to be in the city, just get a Zone 1 ticket. If you want to venture further afield, you might be better getting a 1-6 so that you aren't limited but that does cost more. With the tubes, use a street map as well. Don't do what I did when I first got here and travel from Picadilly Circus to Leicester Square on the tube, only to pop out and look at the entrance to Picadilly circus :) A lot of the time it's quicker to walk than to take a tube :) As I said above, open top buses are a good way of seeing a lot and the better ones include a riverboat tour. That lets you see a lot of riverside london in just an hour or two. Personally, I prefer London by night. The city is completely different to how it looks during the day. Instead of gray and dirty, it is lit up and colorful. The whackos come out at night, which makes it more interesting too. If you want a really nice night out, book a riverboat dinner. I took my wife on one for her birthday last year and it almost made up for all the time she'd spent sat on DZs last year ;) The coolest things I've seen so far in Paris are as follows (apologies in advance to all Parisians for mangling the spelling here!) : Arc De Triomphe Notre Dame Eiffel Tower Sacre Coeur

All, This is so far away from the topic of skydiving, but I thought I'd throw myself on your mercy and beg of your combined knowledge. A dream I've had since I was about 7 years old looks like it might be entering the next stage, but I need a load of information about living costs, etc. so that I can come up with a salary to ask for. The office I would be working in is in Jersey City, New Jersey (nearest public transport that I remember is the PATH station at Hoboken). The main office is in Manhatten. Does anyone know what a decent salary for a unix engineer / senior SA / project manager for an investment bank would be in those parts? To bring the topic ever so slightly back onto skydiving, how would I go about finding a place to live? Ideally, I'm looking for somewhere about an hour away from the office, and about an hour away from a halfway decent dropzone. What can I expect to pay in rent for a 3 bedroom house in that part of the world ? When I moved to the UK 7 years ago, I made some huge mistakes. I took two jobs (at the same time), both well under what I could have been earning at the time, and I'm desparate not to make the mistake again. Ideally I'd like to maintain the same quality of life as I have here :) Any advice / links / pointers would be much appreciated! Thanks,

You know, I have absolutely no idea why I didn't think of that. Posting here confirms my stupidity from time to time :D

Longest room in the house is 4.8m. We've got a landing upstairs that is 6m including the small box room that it goes into, but that runs into the bed :) When summer gets here, I'll set something up outside with a mat of some variety, and that should do the trick.

That makes a lot of sense I guess. Later in life, that will probably become true for me and I'll enjoy that too I'm sure :) However, right now, I just sweat and grunt a lot while swearing at my canopy. The idea of taking my eyes off of that slippery mess of fabric for a second to talk to someone just scares me :)

I totally get what you're saying there :) Having said that, I think at this stage of my career, there is a higher chance of me screwing up a packjob than a packer. I'll get there, make no mistake, but it's taking longer than I thought it would. Having somewhere to practice without having to drive to the DZ would probably help a lot too.

I WISH! I'd be much better at it by now. Some people wouldn't have got to laugh quite so much, but I would have been better :D There isn't a single place in my house where I can lay my rig out, unpacked, the house is just too small. I'll keep practicing at the DZ. At the very least, they can bring students round to see how NOT to do things. I'm actually not too bad with the old F111 canopies. It's just this ZP thing that I take an hour for :)