mr2mk1g

Quick note - BPA third party cover doesn't extend to the states - everywhere else, but not the US. I don't think USPA third party cover is even £100k. It used to be $50k last time I had USPA but I'm not sure what it is nowadays. I agree though that it's not really enough, but that's a whole other can of worms. For jumping in Belgium, if £100k is enough cover to let you jump then getting BPA may be the cheapest option. It's £106 this year and assuming you're back in the UK this financial year you'll be able to use it back home. It's cheaper at least than the 180EU local membership you've been offered, which would be useless back in the UK.

Wow, you are weird. Have you done your jump yet? I guess I would have to run them over with a car I owned more than 15 years ago. I think that's probably the first time in my life I've had to consider being a serial killer... not exactly the usual MO and would put me in the Mr Magoo category rather than in with Hannibal Lecter. Rather less satisfying than I would have imagined being a serial killer to be. "A census taker once tried to test me. I ran her over and her liver fell out. I didn't do anything with it, just drove away eating fava beans and a nice Chianti. futhfuthfuthfuthfuth". Doesn't have quite the same panache.

If you are a BPA member you have it already. Covers you for up to £5 million at BPA centres and £100,000 at overseas non-BPA dropzones. Your proof would be your BPA card and maybe get them to look at the BPA website which confirms the insurance details - in fact I think there's the insurance schedule on there in PDF format somewhere. If you're not a current BPA member... I dunno I'm afraid, I've never had to look into that.

Yup, we Brits still fielded the Swordfish torpedo bomber (biplane obviously) right through to 45. Because of the biplane configuration it could be launched from aircraft carriers without needing to steam into the wind and could even be launched off merchies so was ideal as an ASW platform in the middle of the North Atlantic. The Gladiator also saw action across most theaters in the early war. The Fins and the Sovs I think probably saw the last biplane only actions but that would have been in the 40's also. I swear I recall biplanes being employed during the Balkan conflicts to drop bombs. That would put their last combat usage in the 90's at least.

Another option is slider stops on the risers (as in some webbing sewn to the risers just above the 3-ring). You collapse the slider and pull the gromets down over the stops and they wont ride back up over them on their own. No worry about attaching yourself to your canopy, even if only by magnets, and it works irrespective of the shape of your reserve flap.

Only thing I can think should have been done differently is either: 1) Advice should have come on a headed compliments slip rather than a post-it note. or 2) Should have had an engineers check log indicating its strip and showing what was wrong/why it cannot now be fixed because of parts unavailability or whatever. I would have expected to be billed for 2).

Pound sign only within the US. The world's bigger than that - everyone else uses £ for the currency and lb for the weight. It's a "hash" and denotes "number".

In the UK everyone's essentially bi-lingual when it comes to measurements as metrification wasn't that long ago, is far from complete and still ongoing on a rolling basis. The weights and measures we use in everyday life are a complete hodge-podge. We buy petrol in litres but cover distance in miles and then work out our petrol consumption in MPG. Engine sizes are measured in ltrs but power output is in BPH. Milk and beer is still in pints but coke comes in ltrs. We tend to weigh ourselves in stones but bake in lb. and oz. though we buy the ingredients in kgs. We state our height in ft and inches but everything else is measured in metric, except distance in miles and the size of land in acres. Strawberries come by punnet. Ale can be bought by the yard. A pound of gold weighs less than a pound of lead while an ounce of lead weighs less than an ounce of gold. We like to fuck with people. This means most people are pretty happy converting between two, even switching from one measurement to another on the same task. I might buy 2x4 lumber specifying its length in meters for example. For wing loading you either know your weight in pounds or convert from stones by multiplying by 14. The size of the canopy in sq ft is happily understood even though we'll pack on a tarp bought in meters squared. Our botch job of a system (which will probably be fully metric in another 50 years) is probably even more confusing to outsiders than the seemingly random US system. It does mean though that we can use virtually any measurement interchangeably and either convert at will or just mix and match and overlook any incongruity.

$1 mil is a pretty shocking figure. We have $7.74 mil third party liability insurance just for hucking ourselves out of planes in the UK and the cost of tort litigation over here is a fraction of in the US. Hell we get more than $3 mil cover on motor policies.

Possibly because it has an entirely different etymology to the other N word. They share no relationship whatsoever aside from an entirely coincidental phonetic similarity. I think it came to English via Norwegian IIRC... or Swedish... one or the other in any event. Certainly has nothing to do with your skin colour.

The tinfoil hat brigade were already out in force long before today: http://imgur.com/a/Nx8EU Not particularly surprising that the mother would want to buy into the claptrap no matter how nonsensical it is to the rest of us.

Stumpy - he's short, not a cat.

Yes, that's correct. They act like levers - the longer the lever the greater the mechanical advantage. Think of prying something open with a screwdriver vs prying it open with a 3ft pry bar.

I always set suicides aside when looking at stats. They're intentional, however you look at them. Sure, There's the argument that the suicide was a easier as a result of the availability of the gun but bollocks, it was the intended result. Take away the guns and they still want to kill themselves. It's a separate issue. But even then you're still still left with gun crime stats that are simply mental by comparison with most of the rest of the developed world. That's ok by me - it's your country, run it how you like. But we're free to think you're a bunch of nutters as a consequence of those choices. Cast it as you like but much of the rest of the world think Americans are a bunch of coocoo's. Purely a result of the laws on subjects like this. Oh and the Boston thing: it's simply been seen as a contrast between the classic brit response of "keep calm and carry on" and what's now more commonly being associated with the US as "panic now and freak out".

Your best angle may be international visiting jumpers. US DZ's must have millions of jumps per year done by travelling teams and fun jumpers. That's partly because there's the weather, the facilities and the coaching. But it's also because of the ticket price and the exchange rates. Southern Europe (just as an example) also has DZ's with the facilities, coaching and weather. This tax will mean they're cheaper and it's a global market. That's lots of lost revenue (and taxes) from people who will no longer travel to the US and spend their money in local businesses as they can go to a big DZ in France or Spain where they can still get top class coaching out of big planes in the sun... and pay less than to do so in the US. Congressional reps love to bring money in to State. You can dress this proposal up as meaning money will not only be lost from the State but from the Country.

Discussion on another forum a doc posted and said the large 'wound' on his side looked like a thoracotomy incision.

Because they're noisy and smell of sick and poo.

Bear in mind no one knows why these two did any of this yet. Sure, they hail from a predominantly Islamic area of the world though the family fled the place 10 years ago. Reports from people who know them seem to indicate they're just normal guys. Hell one quote is "An unidentified friend told CNN that he 'hung out, went to parties, smoked some weed... its not like he's some foreign dude." Sure, it could be that they're seeking to join the global jihad and they're secretly hardcore Islamic nutjobs. They could be just be a pair of common or garden nutters with no particular ideology. They might just as easily be right or left wing nutters of some form. No one's actually flown a flag yet. Continuing to jump to wild conclusions based solely on where the family hails is just that - continuing to jump to wild conclusions - what everyone here is castigating the press for doing all along.

Seems they are being linked to the bombing and are brothers, legally emigrated from Chechnya / a Chechen area of Russia. White hat guy who is (as I type at least) at large is called Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. So says the news reports at least.

And how piss easy it is to make. Oh and the article calls it a high explosive... really? Can you really not be arsed to even do any basic research into what you're writing about?

One thing to keep in mind is that the moment you start chucking stuff out of airplanes FAA rules become important. If you're thinking of building a harness therefore it's going to have to be TSO'ed and have a certified reserve attached for starters. That takes it a long way from something you can knock up in the garage or even have a friendly rigger build for you.

You have a rig with an RSL but you wish to disconnect it - say camera jump, skysurf or demoing a canopy on risers without an RSL ring or, whatever. Where are you going to put the RSL snap shackle - just leave it dangling? Tuck it somewhere to come loose again? Or you could snap it to the cutaway hard housing so it won't go anywhere, minimising the risk that it will snag on something and cause a premature reserve deployment. Thanks for the shows and congrats on Rocket!

You might be a newbie if: you don't know why some people in some circumstances might choose to hook their RSL shackle to a hard housing. You speak about it as if you honestly think people are doing it out of ignorance, as if they've miss rigged it in error rather than through an informed, (albeit possibly misguided), choice. Really? You guys really don't know why that's sometimes done? I'm calling noobie in you guys.

News last night was that broadcasters were considering what to do when the weekly music chart is run on Radio 1 at the weekend as the Wed night mid-week figures put "Ding-dong the Witch is dead" at the number 1 slot after an on-line campaign to get people to download it. Bad taste but I did Didn't help that the news report was followed up by one saying the Mali government was "ashamed" after a camel they had given to President Holland as a traditional gift had accidentally been eaten in a stew. They promised to give him a "bigger and better looking camel" to be shipped to a French zoo.

There is also an emergency handle on our equipment for if you are coming in too quick to land safely. Pulling the handle allows a skydiver to do a go-around and attempt the landing a second time. An electrical backup device is available using ground penetrating radar which assesses the suitability of the landing area. In the event concrete/asphalt etc is detected the device will automatically initiate a go-around so that an alternate landing area can be selected. Advanced versions of the device can be purchased which link to commercially available mapping software and suggest a potential alternate landing area. Much debate has been seen in the skydiving community as to whether such devices should be mandatory for newer skydivers but the issue is divisive and as yet no consensus has been reached.