mr2mk1g

By the way, thanks, US intelligence, for releasing the guy's name to the media after UK intelligence services had asked them not to do so as there was an active investigation going on and they didn't want any accomplices or other cells going to ground.

Some train of thought comments: Power kites are typically attached to their flying lines by larkshead knots, generally these are attached to the kite lines at knots so that the larkshead knot does not slide along the line and generally there will be a choice of which knot to use. If you have a 4-line kite (you'll want a 4 line kite, not a 2 line one) all of the lines coming from the canopy should terminate at 1 of 4 lines (plus two further lines at the rear for the brakes). If the trim is different to parachutes, that is something you'll probably want to fix. Parachutes rely on their trim to inflate and stay inflated when in flight. Screw up the trim and the canopy will not want to stay inflated and may just turn into a streaming mess. This is easily seen with power kites by pulling on the rear line sets hard and collapsing the kite. A simple method of adjusting the trim would be to simply have the rear lines attached to the suspension lines one or two knots higher than the ones on the front suspension lines. If you don't have a choice of knots, just add some. As above, you'll also want to work out how heavy you want to make ted. Skydiving parachutes are loaded at about 1lb per square foot of canopy all the way up to well over 2lb/square foot on higher performance parachutes. Kites are measured in square metres (at least over here they are anyway) but some basic maths will help you convert the figures. The higher the loading, the faster everything happens. A higher wing loading might actually be helpful with a little thing like a bear (it might not want to inflate at loadings of 1lb/square foot but you'll have to try it out. I'd start low and work out what does or doesn't work. You may have issues with deployment. High aspect wings like power kites (large ratio between it's width side to side vs depth front to back) are easy to spin up. Kites like the one you have are not designed for deployment into an airflow and will not behave well. Skydiving parachutes, even the most extreme versions, have a significantly lower aspect ration than power kites and much less taper to them. Simply put, higher aspect parachutes with more taper are known to have more deployment issues, potentially spinning up - for example reserve parachutes are much squarer as we're looking for reliability over fun factor. Make sure Ted loads the parachute equally left to right. If not he'll have at best an in built turn and at worst the openings will spin up.

Thing is though, if the election campaign itself becomes tainted by collusion with Russia (assuming that's demonstrated) how can Pence take over? He would be just as much in office due to collusion with a foreign power. Might be different if the downfall came about due to exposure of a cover up though, I suppose.

Someone needs to do a 'Downfall' video of Trump ordering Comey's sacking.

and in tomorrow's news: 'We knew you American pig-dogs were cowards!" states Kim Jong Un via facebook shortly before 'President Trump authorizes all out attack on Korean Peninsula'. Target: Seoul

There's a reason that rag is known as the "Daily Fail" over this side of the pond.

Maybe. Depends on the instructor and how 'sensible' they're willing to be. A good friend of mine qualified in the UK and got only a few jumps under his belt on an A-licence before leaving for Oz for a few years. Did a few hundred jumps out there before coming home. Bad weather day and half an hour with a friendly instructor going through his log book and he jumped straight to a C-licence and several stickers.

This all looks very odd to someone on the other side of the pond. We have 1 group - everyone. Everyone* pays in and everyone is covered, all of the time. *Everyone in employment and earning over £11,000 at least. Everyone pays 12% of earnings up to £43,000, over which you only pay 2%. Employers pay a further 13.8% of salary and there are a couple of other nuances and provision for the self employed etc. It comes straight out of your pay packet - you don't even have to do the maths. If you earn less than £11k then you don't pay anything but everyone's still covered. This pays for not just medical care, irrespective of prior conditions but also unemployment and disability benefits and also a state pension. Who knew healthcare was so complicated?

Years ago on a ZP EXE170 flying top mounted stills and PC101 (or something similar) on the side, had a hard opening for no apparent reason. Neck whiplash for about 2 weeks and a couple of sessions of physio. Despite it being a Sabre 1 clone the canopy was usually well behaved. Couple of years ago had a Stiletto 150 that would smack the shit out of me on virtually every opening. Was a closet queen with only about 25 jumps on it (avowed at least but it really did look it) even though being something like 15 years old. Tried all the usual tricks but couldn't get it to open nice so it went back in the closet. Probably why it had sat in a closet for so many years. Last year in August (my last jump for reasons that will become apparent) on a Crossfire 1 149 with a line set about 50 jumps old. Best opening canopy I've ever jumped, love the thing. Tossed the PC and BAM and I head-butted myself in the chest. Immediate, serious pain in the upper back about T2/3 ish. And that was the end of my season. Pain settled to a nagging ache in about a month and I guess that took about 3 more months to dull and by about the end of Jan I no longer felt much of any pain. This was my first jump on the gear after having a replacement bridle installed (same PC) and that was spun up to high hell by the time I landed so something clearly amiss with the kill line length. Can't think that was the cause however... suspect I may just have still been going too fast on deployment so it was probably self-inflicted. Will have to test it out on some hop+pops. No way I'm taking it to terminal until I'm sure it was just my fault for not bleeding off enough speed.

Driving a somewhat temperamental Lotus Elise that has a known propensity to blow its head gasket if it gets too hot (and I'd already replaced it a year or two before). Left work and within 5 minutes I'm driving along the motorway when I look down and see my temp sat at 101.2... (they normally sit stable at 98-97 Celsius, especially on a motorway) Odd I think, shouldn't have had enough time to get that hot... and it's not as if I've sat in traffic long... oh well, it'll go down now the traffic's moving. As I watch, it ticks up to 101.3 then 101.4. Hmm, fan should kick in any sec. (thermostat triggers at around 101-102) Then 101.5. Crap, what the fuck is going on? Why the hell is the temp still going up even though I'm coasting along at low revs doing 65? Lots of air moving through the rad - shouldn't even need the fan... There's my junction in less than a mile... but by now I'm up to 102 and the temps still going up. The fan defiantly should have kicked in by now. I'm going to blow the head again if I don't stop now! So hazards go on, I pull on to the hard shoulder and turn the engine off while I coast to a stop to keep the air flowing over the rad. Fuck, why is the temp still going up and why the hell can't I hear the fan? Shit, I really don't want to do this sat on a fucking motorway hard shoulder - if I can just make it up to the junction there's a layby another couple of hundred yards after that. Crap, but the way this temp is going up I'm going to cook it before then. I turn off the ignition all the way then back on again and there it is... The temp in the bottom right of the display, sitting at a healthy 84... I've been looking at the fucking trip mileage haven't I and the engine hadn't warmed up enough to show a temperature at all until just now!!! The temperature doesn't even display in points of a degree.

To start with there's no reason you have to do it from altitude - you could do it as a hop & pop or even as a static line if the DZ has the equipment available. A group of my friends got a whole plane load of experienced people to do a static line jump just for shits and giggles when one of them had a celebration jump. Just make sure there are gear appropriate briefs for anyone who has never done a static line jump before - hell, probably a good idea for anyone unless they're an instructor given the likely passage of time since they were last on the rope.

Bertone X1/9 Toyota MR2 Mk1 Toyota Supra Toyota MR2 Mk2 BMW Z3 Lotus Elise S2 111S (still have) Honda Civic Gen 8 (still have) So 7 in 20 years, two of which I still own... and only 1 of which actually had rear seats.

I thought that was illegal - that all presidential communications had to be recorded? There was something recently about even Trumps tweets are now being stored for some presidential library. Genuine question.

I recall being asked once whether it was safe to microwave water. "Yes... but why do you want to microwave water, you have a kettle and a hob?" "There's no timer on our oven so we wanted to use the timer on the microwave to time our use of the oven but we didn't think it was safe just put the microwave on with nothing in it." Showed a degree of creative problem solving I suppose.

Fit what - you or the canopies? For canopies, it tends to be one size up or down from the canopy size the container was designed for. Push it beyond that it you impact on safety. Or do you mean harness size? That rather depends on where and how it doesn't fit you but you'll probably find there's more leeway, albeit generally at the expense of comfort. Again though, push it too far and you can create very real safety issues. Try asking other jumpers if you can try on their rigs on a bad weather day and figure out what sizes fit and what don't, ideally with the assistance a rigger or instructor.

Well, not starving, I imagine. ***How would you convince the ministry that you should in fact be a controller? If you wanted to, the usual ways - doing a good job, coming in early, fixing the lock on the broom closet etc. If you didn't want to do that, you would just get your 1% (or whatever COLA there needed to be) raise and no promotions. The taxpayers. Presumably that would be a better deal for them than "no work and welfare." Yes, but you have all three of those points with just a basic state safety net - without having to pay for a massive ministry to administer it AND with a massively more significant incentive to actually get off your arse and work.

Hey Dave, I've been thinking on this for some time as well. Not sure I've reached a conclusion yet though. I've so far been leaning away from a right to a basic job and salary though - I think the mechanisms that would actually make it work in practice favour a kind of state basic minimum safety net (which would have to be pretty freaking minimal - enough to keep you off the street/starving but that would literally have to be it) so that the moment you decided to get off your arse and do something you would be in immediate profit, no matter how basic the job. If you have a basic salary for a basic job - what's the incentive? (Besides the fact that this has already been tried - in Communist countries - and it didn't work out well). There was no incentive. Sure you could work hard sweeping up (if in the future the robot vacuum hasn't done it) but if the best you can hope for is a bigger broom and a 1% increase in salary, so what's the point? How would you convince the ministry that you should in fact be a controller? Who pays for the ministry? If you can just about scrape a very basic existence together without physically starving however without ever lifting a finger... then there's both incentive, as the moment you get a job you significantly increase your quality of life and the basic human needs of everyone are met without there being live-aid style concerts being held for this years famine victims of Colorado (or wherever). I'm not sure my thoughts would be palatable to all though (and oddly enough, I'm thinking of the left rather than the right, who might otherwise be assumed to be the obvious objectors) - the basic minimum would have to be fairly miserly. Low enough to make life fairly unpleasant, if liveable. Smoking, Sky or cable TV, a car, alcohol, etc would not be affordable. An extremely austere/ascetic life would be necessary. It will mean a very significant cut in what we currently understand as norms for unemployment allowances. That in itself may help fund the idea though. To be clear to those who aren't aware of the concept behind universal basic income - everyone would get this without means testing (and the cost entailed therein). The tax system would ensure that those that earned enough would not profit from it but those who chose not to work would at least not die in the gutter, those on low wage would be significantly better off than those that decide not to work, those in the middle would be more comfortable, those above them would effectively ignore the payment as insignificant - it would fade into just a tax cut. It would also work for the elderly and disabled. I think there would have to be some allowance over this basic payment for disabled on the basis of their need for aids etc and basic inability in some cases to work even if they wanted to. The elderly - assuming sufficient lead time for inception - would have the option just like workers to either have their own non-state pension to top up the allowance (cf work) or to simply rely on the basic state provision - but it would be a harsh life and one not to be recommended and if the system were adopted, I don't think the idea of pensioners living in poverty could remain the political football it currently is - it would be a choice not to save when in work. I have of course not costed this. My gut is that it could be made to work and more cheaply and effectively than what much of the west currently has in the way of state aid/tax breaks etc. I think it could actually be made to encourage work more than the current system. No, I don't have any figures. Yes, it cuts against my instincts but there does seem to be a kernel behind the idea that might just actually work in practice better than what we have today.

Is everything bigly yet?

Virtually all skydivers will answer yes to question 1 - not necessarily because they personally have experienced a malfunction but because they will almost certainly know someone who has. Up your scale for question 5 (not that it actually has much relevance). You currently have it as a maximum of 100 jumps on a canopy - you can put thousands on a canopy with periodic replacement of the lines. Overall, the survey is exceptionally brief and vague. I'm not sure what actual usable data you will develop from it. Hope that helps.

https://media.giphy.com/media/l4xVGOegQxqe9za4E/giphy.gif

Pfft - who need leg straps when you've got a go-pro on?

Oddly enough, a recent trend has emerged in getting things like this (not dangerous goods / skydiving / airlines specifically) resolved is to kick off on their facebook page / twitter feed. Nothing like a bit of instant bad publicity to start the wheels moving. Don't swear and make sure you come off as the good, hard done to guy.

Riskiest job in history I can think of - being a principal member of the Beatles. 25% shot dead, 25% nearly killed in a home invasion, only 50% unhurt in their career. After that it's probably US president - they're running at about 1 in 10 successfully assassinated in office and the numbers only get worse if you include full blown attempts on their lives.

... I guess the swoopers here can related to that. The lander was under a good canopy but femur'ed on landing. Someone should have stressed in ground school how it needs to hold its flare if does it too high.

Or just a couple of fingers round the break line above the guide ring on the locked side and flare from half brakes. With the non-locked side, rather than taking a wrap, fly in half brakes through the pattern then flare as normal on that side whist keeping the wing level. This way your non-locked side serves to tell you when you're at your normal depth of flare to prevent you from inadvertently entering a stall. On moderately loaded canopies, flaring from half brakes shouldn't be too much of an issue.