mr2mk1g

Don't forget these are the same people who sent Walter Peck round to shut down the containment unit at the fire station - that worked out real well.

Do you mean RSL's? You seem to be talking about RSL's...

I have a chin cup on my open face non-camera helmet. I prefer the feel over a simple chin strap - felt like the helmet was being lifted off my head by the wind without the chin cup. With a chin cup it's snug and feels just like my camera helmet. That said, I wouldn't have bothered with the mod but for the fact I retro fitted my camera helmet with a cutaway chin cup and therefore had a standard chin cup going spare.

About a decade ago a rather new member my team received a call from the other side's lawyers on a case we were working on. They turned to me for advice and said that our offer had been rejected and what should he say. I asked if we'd made the maximum offer we were willing to make and he said yes. So I said: "tell them to fuck off and issue court proceedings then". Yeah... turns out he hadn't put them on hold and they'd heard the entire conversation. Got put straight through to the compaints partner who, god love him, backed me up and reiterated what I'd said. Then told me not to do that again. I haven't and my team ALWAYS puts the phone on hold before asking me a question.

"Quantas. Quantas never crashed. Gotta fly Quantas."

Two set to the same altitudes. Why? Because I don't have space for a third.

Plus the old Brits have bad teeth stereotype is born of wartime experience of GI's who, by comparison, did have better teeth than their host Brits. Thing is, it's not the 40's anymore. Dentistry, even here, has moved on in the last 70 years.

Bit of both with a good dose of ex-military thinking at the start and varying degrees of counter culture along the way. They're different because they started out as entirely separate entities without the mixing pot of the internet to homologise everything and significantly fewer people travelling around the world to jump in other countries. Kinda hard to swap ideas as quickly in the 60's when you're posting a mimeograph to another continent via a steam ship (slight exaggeration perhaps but you get the point). They stay the same because the BPA* think their rules are best and the USPA* think theirs are best (*substitute for whatever letters you like). There are also different objectives in play; the BPA and AFP put safety very highly on their agenda for example, to the extent that from a USPA viewpoint they look like outright nanny states. They investigate the crap out of incidents though with a view to us all learning from them. Looking at the distinction in the other direction, USPA rules look like the Wild West - no requirement for an alti or helmet for example... but then it's the land of the free and you're a grown ass man and should be trusted to look after yourself. Incident reporting by comparison is downright grass roots.

I don't even know why its called football - they hardly ever actually kick the ball.

It's just a song .. get over it It's sung to the tune of an English gentlemans club afterall.

I bought my current rig with one of those 50% off vouchers. I bought the voucher here on the classifieds. I ran the numbers against what other deals were available and the purchase price of the voucher was about half the savings obtained from using the voucher. I won. The seller won. I didn't begrudge him one minute for that - he'd gone to a boogie and won a prize. Would suck if that was a worthless prize to them - "great I won a bit of paper. Would have preferred one of the pullups". Sure, he could have given it away but this way two people share the 'worth' of the prize.

Most of the following will be in the how stuff works article. A parachute is deployed by reaching behind you to the small of your back (right hand side) and taking hold of a small handle (a hackey sack or a toggle or a small pillow shaped handle called a pud). This is attached to the top of a small round parachute called a pilot chute which is packed into a small spandex pouch on the bottom of the parachute container. The skydiver will pull the pilot chute (aka a PC) out of the pouch and throw it away into the wind stream. The PC will inflate and act like an anchor in the sky that the jumper will continue to fall away from. The PC is connected to the bag the main parachute is packed inside by a length of material called the bridle and the drag of the PC will pull a small pin holding the container closed and allow the bag holding the canopy (deployment bag or D-bag) to be pulled free from the backpack it's all held in (called the harness and container system). The canopy will then deploy out of the D-bag and inflate into the rectangular shaped canopy you'll see in picture. The D-bag, bridle and PC will remain attached to the top of the canopy and trail behind the jumper whilst under canopy. Refer back to the how stuff works article if nesc. as I'm sure they'll cover the opening in more detail. Note there's no ripcord - they disappeared decades ago on sport parachute mains (though they're still used to deploy the reserve). The point is that the deployment bag, bridle and main PC all stay attached to the main canopy. A reserve (not quite but for the sake of argument) works just the same except the reserve PC, deployment bag (on the reserve called the freebag) and bridle are not attached to the reserve canopy. Say your chap lands his main on target - he can cut away his main parachute with a simple pull of a single handle on the front of his harness. This will jettison his main and he'll be able to wander around with nothing more than a backpack on his back to any observer. He'll still have his reserve parachute in that container. When he wants to escape, he can go to a balcony and pull the reserve ripcord. This will deploy a spring loaded reserve pilot chute from the back of his rig. The spring will actually send it flying a good few feet behind him. The reserve is packed inside its freebag which should hopefully not fall on the floor but remain in the rig on his back. Your chap can pick up the reserve PC and tie the bridle off to something - a hand rail say. The reserve freebag (in which the reserve parachute is packed) is at one end of the reserve bridle and the reserve PC is at the other end. As above, none of this is actually attached to the reserve parachute. Hero can then jump off the building and as the reserve PC is tied to the hand rail as he falls away, his reserve parachute will be deployed, just as if he's falling away from an inflated PC acting as an anchor in the sky. The only down side is that you've left a main parachute and reserve bridle/pilot chute and bridle in the place you just burgled. Depends if that is important to your plot. It does make for a nice, technically interesting little sequence for a non-jumper to read however. If you want to do it without leaving evidence of how he got in, that's also doable in an interesting way though I suspect the average reader may not believe a roll over would be possible. A couple of photos illustrating above though I don't have access to anything great, these are just from a quick google: http://www.chutingstar.com/media/catalog/product/cache/3/image/1000x1000/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/a/bag_and_pilotchute.jpg http://www.skydive-safety.com/Images/Malfunctions/Pilot-Chute-In-Tow.gif

In a disaster scenario, dysentery and cleanliness in general are major health issues. Better to have something to wipe your arse on.

airtwardo I want to know more about all the other shit that went wrong with night pyro that he won't tell us, the demos that shouldn't have happened - but did, about swapping seats on an impromptu mile high club venture, see the teeth marks in his hook knife from the time he cut that static line... And find out just what else is in his u-haul. Mostly, I'd just like to buy him a beer. You?

Btw, read the whole of this how stuff works page: http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/skydiving.htm You'll probably need more help if you want to write that he ties off the reserve PC and jumps the second canopy. Ask if so and someone will explain, prob with photos.

A few points on diction: He didn't start "diving", he started "jumping". He's a jumper or a skydiver. He doesn't sky dive; he skydives. He doesn't have a 'chute. He has a parachute or a canopy or the whole setup, including the backpack, is a rig. Personally I love the idea of landing his main, cutting away, doing whatever the story requires, then popping his reserve and tying off the reserve bridle and jumping. A roll over might look better in a film but in a book tying off the reserve PC will work a lot better. Not sure I've seen it done before in fiction either. If you're going for a Clancy-esque techni-descriptive bit of fiction, you could tell quite a compelling story which would probably still be comprehensible by non skydivers.

Relatively plausible story line. Could be done by a suitably experienced jumper and hell, this is fiction; even I could be expected to do it (probably 9.5 times out of 10 I'd die but I might just pull it off... which is what good fiction's about right?). Note that what you're proposing isn't exactly 100% never been done before - not that this should stop you. See the movie Terminal Velocity where Charlie Sheen jumps into a compound (landing in a chimney IIRC) recovers something and then base jumps off the roof using his reserve. Also film Cutaway where Tom Berenger and Steven Baldwin jump onto a large open balcony area, deliver drugs and then base jump off the side on their reserves. (think I have those references right - it's been a while)

I used to regularly dream as a kid that if you ran fast enough and jumped and got the angle just right, you could glide quite a way in ground effect - several hundred yards at a time. Was a reoccurring dream for years. Oddly now I actually can track I no longer get the dreams.

Few years back I had a client get sued by a motorcyclist who had come off his bike outside the entrance to my client's farm. The guy had slid into a sign which said something like "slow - tractors" or some such and injured himself pretty badly. He was claiming that there was mud on the road and that it was negligent to have a warning sign on the verge. I wasn't particularly concerned as immediately before coming off his bike he had passed a cyclist at high speed who turned out to be an off-duty police officer. The officer, a police motorcyclist himself, had already produced a quick note of his recollection saying there was absolutely no mud on the road and that the guy had just lost control by going round the bend far too fast. Overall I wasn't that concerned that my client would be found liable but figured that as they knew we had the cop and they were still suing anyway it would all end up at trial in 6-9 months time and waste everyone a lot of time and money. Until, that was, a full witness statement came in from the off duty cop. Seems he, being a cop, had been the first responder and gone over to help the injured motorcyclist. First thing the guy said was "there's a pack of condoms in my jacket pocket - can you take them out and dispose of them for me as my wife doesn't know I've been off visiting my girlfriend". Well, it's not for me to tell an independent witness what to say so I duly unilaterally disclosed the statement and would you believe it, chump on the bike no longer wanted to bother with all the fuss.

Couldn't care less. What do you think is going to happen? The tooth fairy of Christmas past is going to jump out on you and say boo? The previous owner of the girlfriends folks place hung himself in the garage. They've a cracking inspection pit for when I want to get under my car and if I ever do an engine conversion the 2-ton chain hoist will do the trick beautifully.

I prefer the Lotus mentality - add lightness till it breaks. Now strengthen that part. They still break but at least when they do they're simple enough to fix on your own - even the radio is an optional extra. Then again they make some really stupid design decision. Change the radiator? Oh, that only means taking the front HALF of your car off. Bulb gone? Simples - jack it up, remove front wheel, take out 3 bolts inside the wheel arch, take the entire headlight assembly off, replace bulb, spend the next hour trying to line the p-clips up so you can bolt the lens back on. Alternator gone? Simple to access that one - you just have to work through a tiny hole in the wheel arch where the rear wheel usually sits... that's not quite big enough for the alternator to fit through. Topping up the windscreen washer fluid used to require removing 3 bolts and removing a body panel - thankfully they changed that and put the washer bottle in the engine bay where it should have been all along!

I tried to answer your survey but half the questions are unanswerable. EG A. I often wish I could be a mountain climber B. I can’t understand people who risk their lives climbing mountains I don't often wish I could be a mountain climber; I do understand why others do it. Many of the following questions have the same problem. You're going to get a low take-up and junk results from the exercise from those who do bother. I suggest you stop and re-write with the assistance of your tutor.

What the fuck did they strip search her for anyway on a charge of paying someone less than the minimum wage? Sov's would have gone apeshit if this happened during the cold war. Hell, the US would have.

Swoop shorts are what some swoopers wear when swooping. Jumpsuits are what most skydivers wear when skydiving. With 41 jumps, how much swooping do you currently do vs. skydiving? Buy the right tool for the job.

If you're not truely modelling any particular brand, consider looking for a cheap 2nd hand power kite on e-bay or similar. After materials, time and arse ache you'd probably come out on top. Try looking for something 2-3m, maybe a Beamer or a Crossfire 2 by HQ. You'll also find lots of cheap 2-line ones which could be modded at minimal effort but a 4-line kite would almost match a canopy, albeit with probably bit a more extreme of an aspect ratio than you tend to see with canopies.