skytash

In my circumstance death is actually a preferrable outcome. I won't be around anymore to have to live with the fact that I can't turn my head, let alone move my hands or feet. I don't have any dependents, so for me, death is better than severe injury. Mind you, I say that now, who knows whether if the situation arose I'd still feel that way and I could have dependents some day too. Personal injury insurance is quite different to the insurance the BPA policy offers. Even if I had personal injury insurance, I don't think there is a reason why I shouldn't try to sue someone too and collect even more. tash edited for spelling Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

Sure...They are called I-94s they are valid for 90 days. Who knows, you may forget to catch the return flight but doesn't the Immigration Service then arrange another return flight, that I then also have to pay for and after that the I-94 won't work ever again? tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

you got a spare stash of green cards for us? tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I guess I should have phrased my questio better. If I didn't pay my membership to the BPA, I wouldn't be able to jump at any of the current UK dropzones. The next question, which I think you are alluding to, is, can someone set up a DZ without support from the BPA? I've never tried it and don't want to, and my question is whether it is possible these days. For example, could I get the appropriate marking on a map to prevent others in my airspace? What permisions do I need to set up a runway? Would I want to run a business without insurance in the event that a skydiver hurts themselves and sues me? Without insurance that would be 100% certain bankruptcy to cover legal costs alone, forget any possible damages that may be awarded. I know that there was skydiving before the BPA, question is, did any of those jumpers even think about suing someone for damages if they got themselves hurt? probably not. In those days, before charity tandems etc, skydiving was considered even more extreme and a judge would probably have thrown it out of court. Not anymore I'm afraid. Most of the increase in costs (as said by others) is down to insurance. And none of the current operators are prepared to operate without it and I don't blame them. I had some pretty strong views on what I thought should be explored before the AGM. I then found they had all been explored and found to be of little benefit to bring down the cost of insurance. upshot - don't sue anyone in the sport and make sure that none of the tandem passengers or first jump students do either and we may see a reduction in the costs. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

wouldn't it also mean that none of us could jump in the UK either? I get your point about their wages, but I think that it would also affect my ability to drive to DZ in the morning and get back home again that evening after a day's jumping and hanging out with friends. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I've had a Spectre 135 and a Sabre2 120 in my NJs, with a 120 reserve and Cypres. They are designed for 120 mains, and look a lot neater with the 120 in them than when I had the 135 in them. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I found that with mega booties I needed to add 4lbs of lead to keep the same fall rate I had before. Especially on big-ways (which I tend to do more than say 4-way) I was getting lots of lift when sticking out my legs to settle tension in a loop, creating a different problem for the formation. I'm now getting that suit changed back to normal booties. Mind you - never tried the suit with mega booties in the tunnel, so perhaps I just didn't learn how to fly them properly. I have 2 other suits without mega booties, so decided it was easiest to have all three suits the same and not one with and two without mega booties. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I'm pretty sure the database is maintained by someone in their spare time and I believe that they are committed to updating it, perhaps just haven't had the time to do so yet? tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

The elephants tend to walk slowly in relation to the rest of the traffic (in India at least) so the motorised members of traffic take the right of way. There are significantly more cows around though than elephants and the cows just sit there or stand there and don't really move. People just swerve 'round them even if they are moving. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I know this point of view will be controversial - flame away if you want to! My suspicion is that this is in part to do with the speed that people learn at these days. I'm not knocking AFF, in fact I did AFF after 14 or so SL jumps. I also believe currency is a big factor in learning, so doing 3 AFF levels in a day is a good thing for freefall skills. HOWEVER - it reduces the tacit learning from hanging out at the bar or bonfire and the number of canopy descents people make. Sure, there is high confidence in freefall skills, but likely to be lower confidence levels around canopy skills leading to people being more nervous and more likely to cut away. Canopy skills is one of the areas some AFF instructors don't spend as much time on as they could (obviously not all!). In the FJC people learn the basics. On the level 2 briefing, they are taught stuff around freefall skills. How many instructors go over canopy things during AFF after the FJC? The USPA ISP and the Canopy Handling requirements in the UK will help towards that kind of thing, however I wonder whether more canopy briefing during AFF may provide people with greater confidence around their canopies earlier on. I should add - I cut away on my 14th jump after my spring loaded pilot chute fell over the front of the canopy and when I did my control checks, turned my main into a bow-tie when I flared. I'd never heard of this kind of thing before, but decided the main was not big, square and controllable and cut-away. So I'm one of the people who cut-away early in my career too and that was 9 years ago. Billvon is probably right, it's always been like this some just notice it more than others and at different times. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

hopefully people will understand why I was so scared the first time I went out and had to cross the road by myself when I was living in India! Right of way is directly proportionate to the size of your vehicle and your balls. In what order depends on the size of your balls...

How long is the life of a magnet? It's one of those questions I always ask myself when I see something with a 'lifetime guarantee'. Whose life? If mine, then ok, but how do you know how long I'll live, and what makes you think that once I'm in a cryogenic unit I'm not actually alive anymore especially when they wake me up in 200 years time? If it's the life of the item, then whay-hey, what does that mean? If it breaks after 3 months I could just be told 'well that's the life of that item m'am, we did only guarantee if for the period of its life, here buy another.' tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I think you were on that skydive. In terms of coming back to see everyone, flight is booked to land in Tampa around midnight 27th March. Just need to sort out car and somewhere to stay, if needs be can bring tent for the latter. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

in Z-hills wearing the muffs Janine keeps in the Hard Dock Cafe. tash edited to say thanks for clearing up the funnel allowance, I'll use it when I next need to rather than saving it for when it may really matter, because it doesn't really matter ever - it's all about having fun! Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

doesn't seem that international yet, so contribution of number from one of the overseas brothers-with-boobies; #3906 - issue in November 2003 by Mr Gates. tash ps - the card tells me it's good for one funnel. Who do I need to report to once I've done that and that I've used my 'one funnel' allowance up? Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

another snowshoe! I was starting to think that no-one else knew what a snowshoe was. Here's some pics of my two. Don't think devil cat would work for the website though

I've got a tempo 120 in the NJ that used to be home to my Spectre 135, before I sold the main. It fit a Cypress too. Without the Cypress my rigger had been able to fit my old Swift in it, but as I wanted an AAD, I had to move to a different reserve. When I got my Odyssey NJ, Sunpath packed the temp 120 and Spectre 135 into that too. I now have a 120 in the Odyssey and no main the the old NJ. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

I voted that I wouldn't jump. I will always take a 'plane round again if I'm uncomfortable, especially with a cloud coming and a new DZ etc. If I get bawled out for having done so on the ground, or told I'm not welcome at that DZ again, that's fine. I'm not happy at a DZ where someone considers they have more right to decide on what is safe for me to do than I do. I have no problem if someone has a higher safety threshold than me, eg they won't let me do something I think is safe, but if they want me to do something I don't think is safe - goodbye to that DZ. That can be difficult if there aren't many DZ's in the area I know (been there) but I'd rather spend some time not jumping than being required to do things I consider unsafe. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

PMs go to the Messages section on dz.com. I'll PM you so you can see where it shows up on your screen when you go to the forums and where the message goes. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

sounds like now is the ideal time to give it go! Good investigating there Craig! tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

would need some reasonably sophisticated membership checking mechanism to make sure each member ONLY uses one vote. In my experience there is little legal voting for companies and such that's done on the Internet in the UK. Worth looking into though as there is already a mechanism by which DZ's can look up whether someone is BPA member I think, similar to the one the USPA has, so perhaps that can be used/modified. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

insurer and BPA reserves are definitely separate - they are separate companies and will each have reserves (or not in the case of the insurer from the quote you posted as it says they have a deficit!) tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

on another note, I know that in Germany (and it sounds like it on the Netherlands too) it is common for people to have 3rd party liability insurance as an everyday thing, referred to as Haftplichtversicherung in Germany. That doesn't exist in the UK. The only thing that people have 3rd party insurance for (and sometimes more) is their cars here. So the the BPA insurance is the primary insurance as people don't have their own insurance like you seem to have in the Netherlands. tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

weren't you on council at one point which would give you an insight on what reserves are for? Looking at the accounts as published with the mag etc there is no explanation of the purpose of the reserves. Under company law there is no need for them and as the company is limited by guarantee there is no dividend payout (which is what companies limited by shareholders funds use their reserves for). I'll try and catch up with Debbie at the AGM and find out what the rules are for use of the reserves and try to explain it in laymans terms. Many companies limited by guarantee have terms in their articles of association (effectively the consitution) which fix what the reserves can be used for, although most of the other companies I've dealt with limited by guarantee are charities, and their reserves are often donations with clauses attached to them (eg only the investment income can be used for the charity's activities). My understanding (which I'll check with Debbie) of the use of the reserves is to continue the company's activities, which are 'the promotion and encouragement of sport parachuting and maintenance of safety standards'. I think the idea was that they can be called upon if we stop getting grants from UK Sport. We may stop getting grants as skydiving isn't an olympic sport and it seems like they are running out of money for the London Olympics so they may stop supporting non-olympic sports until after 2012. In terms of using the money to pay claims, I doubt that is possible. I believe (again, not sure DH will know more about this from the insurance committee) that the CAA requires every skydiver to be insured for possible damage caused to 3rd parties or their property during skydiving. In a simple case, this is me hitting a car in the car park and will pay for the damage to the car. In a complex case, this is a canopy collision which causes both parties to not be able to carry on their normal job and claiming compensation for loss of earnings from the other. Now, as person 1 is unlikely to be in a position to cover the loss of earnings of person 2 in that event, the insurance policy pays out. BUT first you need to determine who was at fault, as only the one at fault pays the other. The one at fault doesn't get anything. As we all know, working out who was at fault of a canopy collision is quite difficult, and experts need to be paid for as well as the lawyers representing the two people involved. The way insurance in principle works, is that lots of people pay their £100 per year car insurance, say, but few of us claim. The insurance company collects say £100 from 10 people and therefore has £1,000 to pay for the claim that one of them makes per year(let's ignore the salaries they pay people like me who work for them!). If the costs of a single complex case start reaching £100,000 (which with to sets of lawyers, two sets of medical experts, two sets of skydiving experts can soon happen) then the insurance company needs to collect enough premiums from everyone else to make up the £100,000 they need to pay out. To work out how much the premium needs to be, the insurance company needs to make an estimate of what the costs could be. 10 years ago, that was quite simple. There weren't many of the complex cases around, they were all 'hitting a car' type things, which would possibly come to say £3,000 per year (it was presented at the AGM a couple of years ago). Now that skydivers are sueing each other estimating the costs is a bit harder. Insurance companies use past claims data and other relevant data to work out what the chances are of having to make a payout and how much it is likely to be - that's what the actuaries do and why they are all maths and statistics experts. The data in the UK has been bad over the last few years, and any actuary in their right mind will have to assume that the most recent data is more valid than the old data. It is therefore likely that they will assume there could be x number of skydiver vs skydiver claims per year, each costing £y thousands, so they need to get more money to cover the cost of that payout. Any new insurer would take one look at the numbers and decline to even work out how much they need to collect. Also, most actuaries use similar approaches to working this out, so a second insurance company is likely to quote a similar amount to the current one as there is no real motivation to get the custom of people who will end up bleeding you dry with claims. In my view there are two things which could reduce the cost of our insurance: 1 - no two policyholders can claim against each other (which I don't think is legally possible, there are certain things around excluding personal injury liability from any contract wich is why waivers don't work in the UK) 2 - increase the population of people who are covered, so that the £100,000 cost of claim is split between more people. I doubt we will ever get significantly more skydivers in the UK to make enough of a difference. The German model appeals to me, as the insurance companies insure the skydivers and other pilots, probably including hanggliders, paragliders and PPL holders - so there are far more people covered, and there is a chance that enough money can be made in year 1 to cover salaries, even if not in year 2, but then again it could be in year 3 etc. Also, because there is a large population of people, and everyone has the option to buy their own insurance, there is a competitive market there. As the BPA does insurance for all of us in one lot, there is only one customer to compete for and as said above, why would anyone compete for our business? As much as everyone thinks that insurance companies have deep pockets, they don't really as most of the money they have is set aside to pay for the anticipated claims from the policyholders. tash edited for spelling Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

Agreed. fixed it for the one that's been sitting there since midnight tash Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe