philh

I just heard there is now a wind tunnel in London . Cant believe its taken so long and how little publicity it has had. I hear and probably best guess is its not very pro flyer friendly but are there any coaches there? If so how do I reach them? Anyone fly in it yet? Any thoughts?

Im looking to go to a tunnel for a few days for some training. I learnt to sit fly in the 1990's skydiving and have bad habits like flying too much with my arms that I want to get rid of. Any suggestions for where to go ? Ideally looking for a good coach with good English,a tunnel in an urban area so I can walk from accommodation to tunnel . Even better would be air to air comms but amazingly it seems no one is using these ( i tried them once at Perris Valley and they were amazing). I was thinking Prague or Budpest. Does anyone know of good coaches there the would recommend ? Any other suggestions for a different tunnel or experiences with these ones? I live in Uk but thinking it would be nice to take a trip someone on mainland Europe for this.

thats a good idea

I am wondering if there is any statistics on incident rates for zero wind conditions. Im thinking there may be reason to expect them to be higher than normal due to 2 factors 1) More likely confusion over landing direction 2) faster landings . On the other hand nil winds does make it easier to get back from a bad spot. Does anyone know if there is such data and whether it shows any effect or not?

No, but Ill see if I can get some, yes I was thinking sit . Thanks

Any tips for keeping my front flips in place? Im catching a lot of air and going up every time I do one.

Yeah, well Im kind of looking for a specific person or Dz the uses them. I find it amazing that it seems barley anyone is using them. The level of instruction possible is far superior to hand signals in my opinion.

I haven't been jumping in a long time and want to get in the air again. May years ago I jumped with a team called Alchemy in Perris Valley. They had these incredible radio systems they used for free fall communication, which were so much better than hand signals. I spent countless number of jumps trying to do head down and was never perfect vertical , one jump with the in air communication system and they got me head down. So my question is , is there anyone today using this system?

Im usually taking people to have somewhere between 4 and 10 mins. Ive never taken anyone for a 1+1 flight so i dont think that applies. Im curious as a tunnel instructor are you taught to get people to fly with straight out arms and legs for their first few flights? or is this something that is down to the instructors discretion? What I find infuriating is I keep seeing instructors just giving every first timers who goes in the tunnel straighten legs signals before theyve even had a chance to try a better body position. Im wondering what recent first timer videos now say is the right position to fly. Next time I will try and watch one but if theres and ( recent ones) online, would like to see them.

I have had a lot of success by taking time to explain who to fly. i dont expect people to be able to do do those moves but by understanding how to fly they often do quite well. I have flow two ways with people after only a few minutes by themselves, this is if you take the time to give them a through briefing.

I sometimes take first timers up the tunnel. before I take them I show the how to fly and do a very through briefing. I teach them the box position, how to turn go, up and down , forward and back etc. A trend I have noticed recently is that when they are getting in the tunnel , the instructor forces them out of a good position and keeps giving them straight legs signal , so that they have extended legs and extended arms . Has anyone else noticed this? If so what is going on? Why are they making my first timers unstable in this awful position?

Anyone know the highest ever deployment of a canopy? If he deployed anywhere near the 50,000 ft altitude of the accident, maybe thats a record?

Is a bail out bottle normal for high altitude test flying ?

One interesting question that has arisen is how did the pilot survive? According to this report ( link below) he did not exit through the escape hatch. So I presume he was left in the air as the vehicle borke up. But I presume after that he would not be connectedt to any oxygen supply. If he deployed quickly before b he went unconcisouss then he would have a real problem with the cold. But if he waited how did he stay consicouss? I presume these pilots dont have AAD's on thier rigs. So what do we think? Also do the difficulties Virgin are having in making a much bigger craft than SS1 imply a company like XCOR whose lynx vehicle is much smaller and can only take 1 passenger is more viable? http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/11/04/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwos-surviving-pilot-managed-to-parachute-from-50000-feet-without-an-oxygen-mask/

Does anyone know any coaches using in air free fall radio microphones? I found them amazingly useful but havent jumped in a long time and want to get some coaching (in the USA ).

and if that projectile never hurt anyone when it hit them presumably the demand for guns would be unchanged or no?

"a 2011 study in the Journal of Trauma compared the United States with similar nations and found that U.S. homicide rates were “6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher. For 15-year olds to 24-year olds, firearm homicide rates in the United States were 42.7 times higher than in the other countries.” http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/mass-murder-shooting-sprees-and-rampage-violence-research-roundup?utm_source=2012-12-18-campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JR-email# Surely this is the issue of concern, why are these numbers so high and what do you want to do about it? If they were deaths by overseas terrorists I suspect there would be a stronger response. I do think we can argue that the higher rate of gun crime in the USA compared to similar countries is due to the higher number and easier access to guns. Does anyone seriously think that the higher homicide rate is due to pressure cookers, even after the last 3 tragic deaths in Boston? if not, you don't have a serious argument.

First off well done to everyone at Red Bull Stratos for such an amazing acheivement. The most watched ever live stream even on the internet goes to a skydiving project. Who would have thought our sport would get such a moment in the spotlight? Awesome job guys. My question is about the prospect for commercial space diving. There was an article in the new scientist and others picked up on it a number of years ago: http://www.sportstechreview.com/2010/09/the-ultimate-extreme-sport-space-diving/ I was lucky enough to sit next to the test pilot for XCOR Lynx spacecraft , who had flown the shuttle 3 times (twice as pilot and once as commander). http://www.xcor.com/products/vehicles/lynx_suborbital.html He said the plan for the Lynx spacecraft is to have one passenger wearing a spacesuit rather than Virgin's 6 passengers, no suit. Hence they are looking at the possibility of the passenger being able to spacedive at the top. So Im thinking Felix's jump is a good step to making that goal happen. Hes shown a human can survive the supersonic skydive. But looking at the number of support team people, the cost of each suit and the spin that Felix got into; Do we think this is just pie in the sky or is it a real possibility for the future?

Thats really cool.

Why is this not mentioned more often as a real cause for the economic collapse? The estimated cost of the Iraq war is in the trilloins of dollars . According to this estimate the cost is more than $4 trillion for the war on terror combined with most of that cost being the Iraq war. Which of course had nothing to do with the organisation that planned 9/11. Now imagine the Us economy was $4 trillioon richer what would the economy be like now? Why do people not see this as a major cause of the downturn. do they really think this money can be burnt in a desert and have no economic consequnces?

Does anyone know if there are any mobile wind tunnels for hire in Europe? preferably the Uk but outisde the uk might be ok too. Thanks

Adam Deen is a well known Muslim blogger. He posted an article attacking a fellow Muslims article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/11/religion.darwinbicentenary The article in the Guardian suggested Muslims should accept evolution and reject fundamentalism. Adam Deen suggested there were many famous scientists such s Stephen Jay Gould who cast doubt on evolution and the Qur'an was not compatible with human evolution. His article here: http://adamdeen.blogspot.com/2008/09/responding-to-usama-hasans-muslim-apes.html He made it look like such scientists cast doubt on evolution, my video attempted to show the opposite is true and that the scientists were being quoted out of context. I showed all my sources including his blog and in the spirit of open debate and discourse he decided that shots of his blog were a breach of copyright and had my video pulled from you tube. I have reposted the video with the shots of Adam's blog removed. I would really appreciate your help by watching the new video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIWd85cMAyo , maybe even share it around. The more hits this video gets the less likely I think it will be for people like Adam to censor their critics. Many thanks for your support.

Lots of naturopaths are sedning me links to Bill gtaes supposedly admitting he wants to kill a billion people by promoting new vaccines.Here is the link : [/url]http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html Of course this absolute BS . When you introduce vaccines and other health care solutions you bring childhood mortality down. When this happens people stop having large families and population growth slows. Ive made a very short video about this . link here: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mwfnjAPoYs

Giving reasons for faith is known as apologetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics Its not supposed be a pejorative term.

This is my debate with Muslim apologist Sami Zaatari: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9U6mRBlLXw and i have posted some videos debunking several Muslim apologists here, the one on the 7 layers even has some skydiving in it: http://www.youtube.com/user/skydivephil?feature=mhum