nacmacfeegle

"Yup, study not done in America...crazy Brits not liking sex..." England Dave, it must be England, or maybe Wales......Its not the case in Scotland, nobody asked me! -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"who actually took the time to learn some Klingon...odd folks," Definitely odd, everyone knows Romulan is where its at these days! -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Add me to the list of peeps that have been "Holy fucking shit that hurt like a bitch" Oooh me too, I've been slammed by 1st generation sabres, but mostly by angry butterflies (Monarchs). Once it was so bad I broke 6 lines and blew out a couple of cells at the leading edge....riser ate my timeout too. And a french tree ate my freebag! That was an expensive jump. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Cuz there might be a pot of gold down dar laddy! " Nearly always the case Chris, buts the DZO's wallet. Its probably easier searching for the elusive end of the rainbow, than trying to prise open the 'darkroom' though.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

A different couloured mouse trap?, maybe a shiney one! Interested to see that AAD has a new definition, no longer automatic actuation device.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Try a search for "black death" on this forum, you'll probably find what you want. For example, this from Quade "We learned that the bright blue friendly sky was balanced, yin/yang style, by a dark forboding ground. Since the ground snuffed the life it was/is death. Unsafe practices, as a group were termed black death. The exit count used by my 8-way teams and several others was Blue sky/ Black Death. Sport parachuting became Sport Death. While the Black Death thing was an insider thing which translated to Hey yall, lets avoid danger up there it later got adopted and/or banned by folks who did not and do not understand what it means. So just as goodby means God be with you Blue sky/black death is a salute to the sky/earth that means something like lovely up there/watch out. " THere's loads of threads about it. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Its not the spin speed thats important, although its a good indicator. Its the read write speed which must be maintained above 5mb/sec. go here, download raptest and run it. http://www.canopus.com/US/products/free_utilities/pm_free_utilities.asp Go here download enditall, install it and run it before starting up Premiere shutting everything down that you don't need. http://www.pcmedixwebs.com/enditall.htm Finally, partition your disc to make a separate drive for your footage, choonz, graphics, titles, and preview file storage, set Premiere up so it writes the preview temp files to the same drive. Defrag once a fortnight or so, if you are working heavy on the edits. I did the suffering many years ago, its a whole lot easier these days, believe me! -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Check the bands on the d-bag *before* you start..." I keep 'double bands' on my D-bag, which is basically a spare band on each attachment point, if one breaks during packing, the spare is right there under your nose! And never ever have less than one appendage on the blob until the first stow is made. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I'm pretty confident that body position wasn't an issue and despite the fact that initially I thought I might have been going too fast (I have video of myself headdown, but I did spend several seconds on my belly slowing down), I figure it was either a bad pack job (only one persone to blame, me) or my slider wasn't all the ways up" Okay, slowing down for more than a few seconds might be a good idea. Lets take a worked example. If we call your kinetic energy in freefall at 120 mph to be 1 whump. At 150 mph your energy is about 1.6 whumps. At 180 mph its 2.3 whumps. at 200 mph its 2.9 whumps. Your Kinetic energy is proportional to your velocity squared and this energy has to be dissipated during opening shock. This is why its important to slow down to normal "terminal velocity" even on solos. I generally allow myself 1000-1500 ft to slow down which is generally more than "a few seconds". Slider down or partially collapsed will give you a brisk opening, no doubt about it. Consistently hard openings will not only wrack your body, you may eventually experience premature structural failure of your main. I don't believe body position is likely to influence opening shock all that much, apart from slowing you down prior to deployment. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

You saw a glory, they are pretty common, but nevertheless pretty. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=396055;search_string=glory;#396055 For some more stuff and discussion. If you see one when in solo freefall, you can't really fail to fall thru it. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I'm set up the same as you. Odessey too. I had a cutaway (No RSL) and res ride on the system a while back...No biggie. Reasons for this setup? I jump a 1.6-7 ish loaded main, not prone to spinning mals (spectre) but I do jump with mini risers, I weigh 220+. The risers are fitted with inserts, and the cutaway is fitted with hard housings (standard nowadays), the looped cutaway goes some way to mitigate the hard pull effects I may experience if I do spin up, and makes a little compensation for my fashion driven choice in risers. The reserve pad is there to prevent snags on climbout, I've spent a lot of my jumping carreer on the camera step. I used to move around a lot so there were many 'unfamiliar aircraft' to catch me out. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

What you actually want is a scratching post. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

By the way Rich, if your gonna do some safety research you d better spel Safety bettr... A "saftey" is what us Scots call you southerners. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

IL76 on military charter, what do you expect? Trolley dollies and a nice in flight movie...? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Just hurry up and let the critter in, this raccoon suit is starting to itch! -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Nah, never, I absolutely refuse to discriminate against people like this. I'm pretty ugly, am a strange shape , and have about 19% of my body covered with burn scars, mostly hidden, and pretty well healed but I can't really be too choosy! Try this as an example, if you gave birth to a kid that were to be born with down's syndrome or something similar, would love that kid any less? No? I didn't think so. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Just to clarify - I have landed both crosswind and downwind on a number of occasions when the designated landing direction was crosswind or downwind and that's the way we all had agreed to land. I have never deliberately chosen to do it when I had free choice of landing direction. " Like John says, most annoyingly at a well known UK boogie after being told off for landing into the wind....

Try placing an ad on UK wreck board... http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=uk.rec.skydiving and Dirtdive http://www.dirtdive.co.uk/ Also phone some of the gear dealers (Kit Store, Thomas Sports etc) in the BPA mag, then you can also phone the various DZs and ask to speak to their gear shops, or explain that you are looking for gear and they may be able to either put an ad on their notice board or whatever...... Good luck. Edit aha, I see you have already found dirtdive How critical is the reserve size? PM me if a 170 res would suit.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Re-cycling is pretty big where I live so yeah most of the above. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

If you make it to Rantoul WFFC, I heard that Spaceland Anomaly were going to be organising some stuff there. Trent, Ged, and Stevie are cool guys, Trent posts here from time to time, so PM him (username Trent...go figure?). I would be tempted to join them for some organised stuff to try out those honed skills. Wish I could go play too.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Twists in static line deployments are very common, more common than freefall deployments. I think the reason is that the bag is in a lot of turbulence (from the fuselage, props wings etc) as the canopy deploys (from s/l), there is not a lot that you as a jumper can do to avoid them, arching hard helps a lot. Freefall deployed twists are mostly due to poor deployment body position, eg dropping a shoulder. Again this is very common for students. They should'nt be a real big issue as you will probably be jumping a lightly loaded canopy. You can of course pack some wild twists into the pack job, but again at your level you are unlikely to be able to influence this..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"no luaghing - I couldn't do DP's" Rolling around clutching my sides, neither could I, everybody gets stuck on something. First thing to do when choosing gear is decide on your budget, eg, new or used gear, everything else will be driven by that. Once that is fixed, you can start phoning around to see what is available. Its normally a sellers market, so be prepared to compromise your gear choice. If you're buying from new, by all means ask here, but ask 10 jumpers for gear advice, and I bet you a pull up that you WILL get 10 different answers. Its nearly always a good idea to discuss things with your instructor, CCI, S&TA guy or their equivalent at your DZ. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Dancing monkeys, hula girls, some air guitar, a floating guru, and a caravan with floats....nice one Fudd. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Kewel, a nice worthwhile cause and some decent quality pictures for a change. Its a shame skydivers might get 'tarnished' by this, I doubt the public realises the difference between BASE and 'normal' parachuting. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

From memory, your coming up to St Andrews right? Okay, the East Neuk of Fife can get some really nice warm weather, you'd be surprised, its one of those micro climate things.....But I'd recommend you bring a pair of tracky bottoms, they will be more comfy than jeans, I doubt you will need shorts. Trainers, will be fine footwear, a couple of tee shirts, sweat shirts etc and a fleece, it can get chilly. The classrooms are relatively warm, nearly all your training will be indoors, with periods of hanging around outside watching stuff. Maybe a lightweight jacket would be useful. The plane has a door and heat, so the ride to alt shouldn't be too bad, think a couple of layers... Finally, you know where you are going right? if you want maps etc PM me. I'll be down there this weekend, I'll look out for you. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson