cpoxon

The tracks are: 1. Foo Fighters: All my life 2. Idlewild: A modern way of letting go 3. Pearl Jam: Rearview mirror 4. Red Hot Chilli's: I could die for you

From what you've told us and in my opinion, definitely consider the GTi as your minimum. I did one jump on Classic at jump 505 and then ordered a GTi. With your experience and currency you are probably more than capable of a Skyflyer, although a demo would be good first. There are people out there jumping SF3's with a 10th of your experience. How often will you be jumping it, who will you be jumping with, what will they be jumping, and how do your body sizes compare may all be pertinent questions, or you could just get a Skyflyer and fly dirty :-) As technologies advance, as with the SF3, is the SkyFlyer soon going to replace the GTi as the all-rounder?

104 - 1 classic, 55 GTi, 48 Skyflyer since 1st of July 2001

Not sure if Lou was being funny and talking about filming his arse, but in case he wasn't check out 2kcomposites Side-FX

Was considering putting this in the Wingsuit forum but it's not really a wingsuit, but a rigid wing, and it is general skydiving news, much as I'm loathe to promoting Felix as he seems to do a good enough job of it himself. From today's London Metro. A URL is visible on the XC-K1 wing and it is [url "http://www.502channelcrossing.com/"]www.502channelcrossing.com[url]

Ok, so skydivingmovies.com is shut down :-( Here's the direct link to the movie http://wm.atomfilms.speedera.net/wm.atomfilms/full/adren_24_hour_wmp_300.asf

Sounds interesting. I run a few web-servers off my 512/256 ADSL line at home. No way it could handle the current bandwidth requirements of skydivingmovies.com but I'd be interested in sharing the load. Would have to invest in a new hard drive though :-S Andy/Dave, do either of you have a DVD burner to distribute the initial file store to hosts? How would it work with the single URL access? When's it going to go down? Can't say I'm surprised. I am surprised they put up with it for so long!

Grabbed stream and uploaded to ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com/public/BASE/adren_24_hour_wmp_300.asf Does he really name the object?!

Whilst going through my back issues of Skydiving researching fatality information, I also pulled out any historical wingsuit stuff. I may post it all one day, but for now,

Here are a couple, Gerard Masselin and Rudolf Boehlen WARNING! Although not particularly graphic, these films do contain images of dead peopel. BSBD

British Pathe have converted a few more films. I've added them to the BritishPathe directory on skydivingmovies.com There are a couple about Col. Kittenger's altitude records (2760.03 and 2786.02) and one about BirdMan Gerard Masselin's fatal accident (3084.21) EDIT: WARNING! Although not particularly graphic, 3084.21 contains images of a dead Gerard Masselin.

Well, technically in the UK, that would be my arse. But funny you should say that; a friend and I were discussing humourous embroidered "bumper stickers" for the rear deflector. Such as "Wide Load, Please Pass". We came up with quite a long list but I think it's on my machine at home. I'll post later.

"Are you really a BirdMan Instructor?" "Yes, just kneel down in front of me and check out my patch". Thanks for the help guys :-P

As some of you may know, I recently got my BMI rating :-) We've got a reasonably large boogie (by British standards) coming up, where I'll be hawking my wares and I'd like to have the patch installed. I'm trying to decide where to stitch it on. It can't really go on the breast because it would be largely covered up by the rig. Was thinking about putting it on the flap between the two zippers but it only really gets wide enough about the belly button level and looks stupid there. It doesn't look too bad in the hip/thigh area or just above the knee but I'm favouring on the shoulder, epaulette style (as opposed to down the arm like the BirdMan logo - plus I've got a ProTrack logo I want to put down the other arm). My concern about putting it here is that this is part of the arm wing that inflates; you can get to the underside through a hole under the armpit so there's no risk of sewing any wings together but i'm wondering if it could affect inflation/flight in any way. I doubt it, but I'd like to see if anyone has any experience. Also, I'm worried about getting it level but that's my problem! Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

That's why I took it; I'm her stalker! :-P

A few shots from the ground of the last big-way jump Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

Whilst I was in Florida, I got a chance to jump an Alouette Helicopter. Being the tight-arse that I am, I wanted to maximise my freefall, from a low (5,000 feet) expensive (2 jump tickets) jump, so I took my wingsuit. The jump was uneventful but the opening was interesting. The problem was an uneven opening. Eeking out the altitude, I threw the pilot chute at 3000 feet. As I felt the canopy deploy, I felt the harness on the shoulders wider than they normally are and also unevenly seated. In turn, I unconciously felt my body bend sideways slightly to "lean into it", which all contributed to a horibbly uneven opening resulting in line twists. Once the canopy finished twisting up, it started to spin, which is unusual for this canopy (Crossfire 149 loaded at 1.5:1) as it usually flies straight and level when twisted. At this point I was seriously considering chopping it, but as the canopy started to spin, it also started untwist itself quite rapidly, so I decided to stay with it. As I came out of the twists and levelled out, my alti read 1500 feet. I'd eaten up 1500 feet in 15 seconds and not looked at my alti during that time, but I can't say I was surprised and was happy that I had a reasonable idea of where I was. You can see on a ProTrack graph of this jump the speed decreases until about 22 seconds and 3000 feet which is where I deployed. I think the first peak my not be truly representative, but the second one, where the canopy is spinning towards the ground, indicates a maximum speed of 50 mph before it stops. As the ProTrack was set to slow mode, it captured the canopy deployment and concurs with my estiamte of 1500 feet for when it finally cleared. There are a couple of contributing factors to this. The first is the uneven deployment, emphasised by I believe a loosish chest-strp. I was fairly uncurrent wingsuit wise. I'd only done a couple of wingsuit jumps a week before, a fun one and my BMI evaluation. As such, I spent too long looking at my canopy and not undoing my arm zippers getting to the risers. With free arms, I probably could have stopped this a lot sooner. When I'm regularly jumping the suit, I naturally unzip the zippers whilst deploying, but when I'm uncurrent, I seem to forget about this. Deploying at 3,000 feet although not contributing to the problems (unless perhaps sub-conciously I felt rushed at the pull due to the height)reduced my margins. You can see a video of this jump at ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com/public/CraigPoxon/AlouetteBirdman.mpg There are a few other fun, small videos in there from my trip to the States, a couple of my head-down jumps, me shooting a shotgun/M1 Carbine/AK-74, my "swooping" attempts, and the planes used in the 120-way doing a flyby. Sort your view by date for the most recent ones.

I attended the class at the BirdMan offices in Deland. I don't think there is a regular schedule; you'd need to contact them to find out when the next one is. If you don't already have a suit then the prices for a new one are on the website, basically between $618 and $799, or you can get a second-hand one cheaper. If you don't have a suit then BirdMan could probably hire you one ($10 a jump I believe) but since there is some in-air evaluation you are certainly going to need to be familiar, which should probably mean you have your own, as you will certainly need it to jump with your first jump students. I paid $150 for the class, plus slots on one evalation jump. May sound a bit steep but I got to spend a very full day (plus some time the next day) with the experts picking up all the tips. A lot of stuff was covered in the ground school and I learnt a lot. Also, there a few goodies thrown in with this, a 50% Wings voucher, a 30% SF3 voucher, a t-shirt and a couple of BM-I patches. Travel? Well it cost me $450 to fly from the UK, $250 for a trailer for 2 weeks, about the same for a rental car, plus petrol to get to Deland from ZHills, but then I guess it depends where you are coming from. Oh, and I think I spent about about $20 on food and beer in the Perfect Spot too :-P What's involved? As I said in this post. There is a day of class work where the BirdMan Instructor checklist is covered in detail. You practice giving the brief to your fellow classmates and are assessed on that. Then you do an evaluation jump where you are expected to be able to give signals to your student in flight if they need them and assess them. Conact Kim or Jari for further information.

I assumed he was just confused by the names... Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

That's 2002 TB. If Jari did do it again, he kept it quiet when I saw him on the 18th!!

Not forgetting your good self!

Ooh! Ooh! Basically what's on the BirdMan Instructor Checklist, although that one looks a bit out of date. This is quite bare bones though and a lot of time is spent on the course on the underlying issues. You should see the large amount of notes I wrote around the checklist. The basic outcome is a standard level of instruction and you are evaluated on your teaching. In the air, you are required to evaluate a students performance and give signals that were briefed on the ground to improve their flight and awareness. I was worried about the in-air evaluation because of my size and skill (especially compared to Jari!) but like I said, he plays a good student! Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

Not so sure. She found it quite scary, but she did enjoy it, although a sharp opening on her second jump aggravated a previous neck injury.

Don't think so. Scary Perry Trowbridge. Met Kramer in ZHills who said he'd jumped (served?)with you though.

I've just returned from 2 weeks in Florida. I was based mainly at ZHills whilst the missus participated in the new WORLD RECORD 2-point 120 way! But I did spend a couple of days in Deland attending a BirdMan Instructor Course with Jari and Kim. Those guys are thorough! I learnt an incredible amount. Who'd have thought a day in the classroom could be so absorbing; hardly noticed the blue skies outside after a couple of weather days! :-P Next day, after passing the ground school, I finally got to jump with Jari for my in-air evaluation. That was a hell of a lot of fun; Jari plays a good student! Passed that too so I'm now officially a BirdMan Instructor! It was also cool to meet and share the class with Scary Perry, Travis, Emily, Annie and her two daughters (Olivia and ?). Was a pleasure to meet you all. Thanks to the loan of a demo-suit from BirdMan, I was also able to take my beer student through her ground-school and inaugural flight; my girlfriend Caroline after she'd finished with that silly flat flying stuff and she was the perfect student. :-) Somehow, I managed to acquire 7 suits ( a mixture of Classics, GTis and even a Skyflyer) so I have a nice demo fleet if anyone wants to come and give it a go (probably at Langar subject to CCI approval) and maybe even progress onto a more advanced suit (if they fit) before you buy one. Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live