Newbie

i watched it last night and was pretty surprised to see the scene where Halle Berry and the actor who plays her son were veg'ed out in front of the tv watching someone talk about skysurfing and camera flying! Who was the woman talking? I heard her talking about Craig O'Brien, but that was about it - very surreal! "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

thats weird i thought that was BPA/USPA reg's? If it's not, and it's Birdman recommends, how comes the numbers differ between the US and UK? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

i mean if i have sub 500 jumps (the UK requirement) I'm just curious, not really contemplating (don't even have the min 200 jump requirement yet), but just wondering how it would work (something to think about for the future maybe) I guess CCI's discretion would come into it too? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

plan before you get off the ground for where you will land out BEFORE you have to make that decision in the air - Empuria has hazards on like 3 sides if i remember, so make sure you know where to go down before you have to think about it on the way down! Other than that it's a great dz, and im going back out in late August! Have fun "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

Stupid question: are you trying to read the DVD in a CD drive or in a DVD drive? Ie can the laptop handle other DVD's? hi not a stupid question, i should have added that in my question. The PC has a DVD drive, but as one other respondent said, it might have trouble playing DVD-R burned discs... "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

Hi - i have just finised a Final Cut Pro project on my Powerbook - i have Mac 0SX 10.2.6. I have exported it as a QT file, but when i burnt it onto a DVD-R and tried to play it on a Windows laptop which has QT installed, it wont even open the DVD - i get an error message when i double click the CD drive saying "device inacessible - incorrect function". Anyone got a clue as to what its saying/doing? Someone said i need to make a "hybrid" file type of the QT movie before burning it onto DVD. Is this right? Is it a Windows issue not being able to read the DVD-R? Any help would be greatly appreciated "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

yup - thanks "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

is this normal? My bridle between the bag and PC gets "compressed" (like bunched together) - i keep having to pull it "smooth" before cocking. Is this normal? Also after cocking, sometimes the apex is above the line where the mesh meets the zp fabric (i forget what thats actually called). I remember reading somewhere that Bill Booth said that a fully cocked PC should have the apex hanging below this line. After cocking normally, if i haven't straightened the bridle line out - its above the mesh/fabric line (just slightly) - normally i therefore have to hold the area where the bridle and mesh meets (i forgot the name of this too!) and have the PC upside down and just tug on the hacky to pull the kill line out by like an extra 1" or so so that it sits below the mesh/fabric line. Is this normal? Thanks. "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

haha i reckon the look on my face must have been something like ! I totally wasn't expecting that stomach churning feeling at all! That's why i loved it so much - by the way, i forgot to ask you, did you see me shaking my head to indicate i was gonna let go? Man we just seemed to loop forever, it was great! I'd LOVE to do a bigger tube for your 300th, if i have enough experience to be able to go up with you guys!

that's what i thought it was known as too, but the other guy who is more experienced than me said it was a donut. I thought a donut was an RW configuration? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

isn't that when you stand side by side? We had 2 hand grips on each others legs - thats a donut right? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

now THAT was a lot of fun - best rollercoaster ride i've ever been on and then some! Pre second skyvan jumps this weekend - tailgates are fuc*ing great! The last jump was done with the tailgate open on the ride up due to an issue with one of the door cables - sat near the door watching the ground shrink on the cruise up to altitude was pretty special too! Hope everyone had a productive and fun weekend jumping as i did - just wish i was still at the dz today - its beautiful outside again "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

nah missed it. I watched a tape of Drop the Celebrity though, where Cheryl Baker broke her leg - that was pretty funny, although man, not enough in-air footage for my likening (although one of the camera flyers did get a nice, close tandem main deployment which was quite cool) Most of them seemed to like the experience though, which was good! "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

http://itv.utvinternet.com/listings/viewprogramme.asp?prognum=1309973&itvregion=london&itvpackage=at&itvgenre=2&episode=6&scheduleid=24256939&channeldate=10/07/2003&channelid=LON "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

I'm not having a go, but my honest opinion is "why?". I think this is pointless - why let pride get in the way of your own survival? If that were me and the CYPRES had done the job i was meant to have done, i would take an ass chewing anyday and spend another day/week/month/year on the ground learning nothing but emergency procedures to drill them into my head, rather than fooling everyone - myself included - into thinking i had done the right thing in the air, when i hadn't. Just my personal opinion on this. "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

did they get it rerouted properly? (im guessing not due to how he deployed with arms out and bent) Can anyone suggest what is probably the best way to deploy if you should hypothetically find yourself in a similar situation and can't reroute the strap before pull time? Proper gear checks will not need us to provide an answer to this, but as we have just read - and do read - not everyone is always as vigilant as they should be i guess Glad the guy was ok though! "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

ah ok i got it now i think. Thanks "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

surely what you have said contradicts what was said above? I'm not trying to be pedantic, i just don't fully understand what is meant here. The way i have imagined it in my mind is hypothetically you have 2 identical twins - one skydives the other doesn't, aside from that they lead identical lives to a tee. Does that mean that if they die purely as a result of natural causes, one is likely to die at 78 (the skydiving twin) compared to the 80 year old non skydiving sibling? Am i missing something from this? Man i was never really any good at statistics in maths "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

Why? Due to opening shock or something? (not that i would know why that reduces life expectancy). Increased stress levels? Lose of financial viability and eating too much ramen? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

especially for TM and JM's, any pro's out there- basically anyone making a shitload of jumps on a daily basis. I was just wondering if anyone gets to the point where its so normal to be jumping due to the frequency that you don't get even a little nervous when standing by the door getting ready to go out. I know a little nervous energy is good to keep you on your toes and ready for the unexpected, but does anyone not get even that level? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

this is weird to me - am i the only person who has/is getting this? I used to love flying when i was younger, then over time i become more scared - im not a white knuckle armrest gripper by any means, but when i get into bad turbulence, i just plain wish i was on the ground. It's an irrational thing that hasn't come about as a result of some post Sept 11th thing (although that sure as hell compounded things) - which is why i don't understand it. At one point in my life (98-2000)i was flying back and forth from London to San Francisco a lot to see my then girlfriend, and i was thinking maybe it came out of that, but from what i remember, it was getting to me even before then. I haven't had a "bad" experience on a commercial plane either - the worst has been severe turbulence one time, that caused passengers in the aisles to literally crawl down them and back to their seats for fear of being launched somewhere, which was pretty scary - that was fairly recently though, like 3 or so years ago, and i was getting worse before that. Now something weird has happened, where, initially right after i had made my first tandem (99) and then completed AFF(last year) i became much more relaxed about flying and the fear of falling if the plane was to suddenly lose altitude. That has now passed however, and NOW what im finding (post AFF) is that it feels very weird to be boarding a plane - whether its commercial or not - without a rig on - i just didnt like it when i made my 2nd commercial flight since AFF (first without my own gear). It's almost like im quite happy to jump out of an old Russian cargo plane and go skydive, than i am to get on a commercial airliner with a good safety record - it's totally psychological i know, and that's why i say its irrational, but it's defintiely gotten worse over time. I made my first commercial flight this last weekend since AFF and it just was not a nice feeling being rig-less. I know having a rig "to hand" in a plane is a ridiculous concept (and a dangerous one if you were to contemplate putting it on and going for the door, for you and your other passengers), but i guess it's almost like a grown up secutiry blanket? That's the best way i can describe it. Anyway is this just me getting this? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

This is generally specific to UK jumpers as we have to have one of these, but others feel free to chip in if im missing anything. I forgot to ask this at the dz on the weekend about what is specifically looked at when i get a check, and someone asked me for one and i said i hadn't been briefed and couldn't do it yet. Anyway i want to know for my own benefit (not so i can do checks on other people, i'd rather let someone with more experience do that). I always check on my own gear before putting it on: 3 rings for proper connection and wear CYPRES on Reserve pin in place Main pin is in place and seated properly Handles are in place (and peel the velcro every once in a while) Seams/stiching on chest and leg straps are good (before the 1st jump after not jumping for a week or more) Hacky is out, PC is in and bridle is routed straight to the PC When i put my gear on, i check: Chest strap routed properly Alti zero'd Leg straps tucked in and not twisted All 3 handles are in place What else is done on a flightline check? Am i missing anything? Thanks "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

damn! According to that image you tracked about 15 miles?! Is that right, or am i reading that wrong?? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

cool stuff! Was just wondering what you meant when you said you thought they weren't using up as much sky as you guys do? Do you mean altitude? Do you guys ride it down lower, and if so what height etc? "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts

this weekend i did 4 solo tracking jumps to practice my tracking for breakoffs as i've never done anything like this before (apart from maybe 1 or 2 jumps where i would do a little 10 second track, turn 180 track back) Anyway i wanted to just hold the position for as long as possible and see where it took me. I ended up averaging about 95-98mph fall rate and ended up about 3/4 to 1 mile away from the dz. Someone on my loads said i seemed quite far away on opening, but i dont know if i was maxing out my horizontal separation or just slowing down vertical descent. Is that sort of distance any good from a 13k exit to a 4k opening? Whats like the average fallrate of good maxed out trackers and what sort of distance can a good tracker fly over 9000 odd ft? On a side note, godDAMN this was a fun type of jump to do. I had a beautiful experience of seeing a cloud at 9000ish ft and trying desperately to "beat" it, but just ended up puffing through the top end of it! I think i got a small idea of what you WS flyers love so much! "Skydiving is a door" Happythoughts