Hugo

Gravity checks always seems to get tandem hearts jumping! I was in a Porter on a load with a very attractive tandem jumper and they were 'really' mean ;) Apart from the talk they did 45 degree banks showing her the resort below! Then a number of gravity checks. Man, helmets were floating and all sorts. I was even hanging on!... She loved it though, on landing she jumped up and down screaming and hugging the tandem master and cameraman, saw her vid later in the bar and wow..what a tandem ride ....hehe! Back to the original topic... On most of my early jumps say first 15/25 I concentrated on the exits quite a bit. Of course variation is important but it was always being able to control or as least work with the changing wind that I was interested in. It took me a while to really feel the relative wind kick in. I figured this might be an important area later on with linked exits etc. Seems to have helped or at least I felt I could think about other matters in the jumps knowing I was relaxed about the exits.

Sorry not too sure on the formatting ;-/ but... ------------ Jason said... > Did he get a premature deployment or was he just all kinds of unstable when he deployed.?? ---------- I'm not too sure, I watched it throughout, the delay between the entanglement and cyprus fire was a long time. so i would assume it was a normal to semi-low pull. It 'felt' like (for want of a better word) unstability or some other interference (hands,arm etc.) although I can't say with any certainty. Lucky he came round before landing too, I saw him do two quick turns before he went out of sight.

Yup, your right, he was just getting some music put to some of his videos at a local shop. It worked out that the bloke doing the editing called up Meridian and told them about him! The fact he spends most of his time up trees I'm sure helped get the spot but it was mad! He had the chainsaw accident a while back and since the local pub agreed to put up a charity box we thought about giving the hospital something back. We'll try pushing it a little further with local press/tv... they can only say 'no' ;) The pub is in Reading and it's all early days. If I can get some address at the hospital for donations I would feel better about asking for donations here. Maybe we could advertise "DropZone.com" somehow for the donnations, if it did happen! ..Ugh, the possibilities are endless! I think it's better we make it work and keep it realistic ..but who knows! I'll have a look at the site, thanks for that. All flights and jumps are already paid for as we'll both be there doing some anyway. Although we agreed that if we got enough sponsorship we might get some good footage done so the skydive evening in the pub has something to show, the pub has one of those massive projector screens, so it would work. That might mean giving the cameramen a few quid for their efforts and time. Or maybe getting one of the freefly schools to do a freeflyjump. We want to do the t-shirt thing to advertise the charity and possibly the pub. If we can get local press to advertise them both then everyone will be happy! We've really only got the idea going and we're probably not going to be doing it for a number of months yet. We really need some time for the sponsorhip stuff to get rolling anyway. I'll keep posting as thing develop.

Whilst on my AFF I saw a pilotchute entanglement, apparently around the throat area, making him blackout, not a bad investment for him that day. He was a freeflyer and I'm not sure how experienced either. One of those jumps I just happen to be watching. Anyway, the incident stuck like glue... I don't think I'd ever feel 'comfortable' jumping without one.

Ok my brother is doing a charity jump. 'All' the proceeds are going towards a local hospital, which in fact saved his life on a tree surgery accident.... Yup a chainsaw! He's planned to go for some jumps anyway but wanted to do something while he was there. The local pub has said they would put a collection box and possibly do a skydiving evening. So we got thinking about getting some T-shirts printed and doing the whole skydive video thing for the pub. The local newspaper will run a story and we're trying to approach the regional TV company (Meridian TV, UK), to give the pub a pitch. We were originally thinking of going to Florida but it looks like we'll have to keep it reasonably local and we'll probably go to Empuria. Do you think we could approach say the Babylon team or any cameramen for help, ...anyone know if they'd help! We want as little money, if any, to come out of the pot ...any thoughts? Anyhows, if anyone has done one, organised one or can think of anything that might be of interest or help, it would be appreciated.

I just had a peek at the end credits and couldn't find any reference to song titles or band names, dunno where the box has got too, maybe they're on there.

I too remember the film with Patrick de Gayardon (think it was him?!) and a team of people doing helli jumps into the cave. They actually had some ground footage of one of them going "through" the hole so you actually experienced they're fall rate. Not sure if it was terminal though as they were definately flat and jumping solo! ...nutters ;p

I was at Hinton in the uk last week, and it was really cold. Our Cessna had no door which didn't help and added to that I thought I heard someone mention -15 at 10,000 which was our jump alti! ..Still, it was quite beautiful. It was my first time in gloves too. Everything went well except I found getting my fingers in the loops on the control lines not as easy as usual, guess it's just a matter of getting used to it.