xavenger

Just in case this was of interest to some UK base jumpers and "adventurers" (!) ... This talk is 25 mins away from www.skydivenorthwest.co.uk which you could also visit if you were in the area ... Leo Houlding - World class climber, alpinist, base jumper and adventurer presents an entertaining and inspiring talk about his latest adventures. THIS FRIDAY. The presentation, which is sure to be an amazing event is suitable for all the family and is being held in Windermere School, Cumbria, UK on Friday night. There’s also a silent auction of some fantastic prizes such as “A day of adventure with Leo” and a raffle on the night of various pieces of outdoor/adventure equipment. 6.30pm-7.30pm – Welcome drinks 7.30pm-10.00pm – Presentation with interval Families are welcome including children that are able to comfortably sit through a show of 2.5+ hours of presentation and audience questions and answers. Adults: £12 Children: £8 Book your tickets today by calling 015394 46164. Location of event: Windermere School Patterdale Road Windermere LA23 1NW

I have never jumped at Skydive Jersey - so this is second hand information, but a friend of mine went there some time ago and had a very similar experience. He was utterly cheesed off with them - though I'm not sure he was messed about quite as much as you! How infuriating for you, I wouldn't have been able to keep my cool, sounds like they messed up your holiday. Hope you have better luck on your next one ... try Florida next time ... !!!!!!

Hi there We run http://www.affschool.com and a few other skydiving web sites too. We're looking for AFF instructors who are based in the UK who would be willing to travel to Skydive North West (Cark), Black Knights (Cockerham) and travel with us to Spain to help us with our AFF courses. Most of the work would be secondary AFF instructor stuff and mainly on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. The demand for our courses is pretty high and we're a friendly bunch. There is a contact form and phone number on the http://www.affschool.com site, if you're interested in being on our list of people to call to do this - please get in contact. regards James

I was chatting to a Type-1 Diabetic this evening who has done a tandem and is very keen on going through AFF and so I just wanted to check something out .. Are you a Type-1 Diabetic, or do you know a jumper who is? I am just trying to get a feel for any special considerations - assuming that this person is given consent by their doctor. Does adrenaline increase glucose metabolism in a way that would potentially be more problematic for a Type-I Diabetic? (I doubt it to any serious extent) i.e. If someone's blood sugar checks out OK shortly before a skydive - are they good to go, or are there any other considerations that I haven't thought of? Sorry if these are silly questions!

Hey I have a HC3 and when I'm filming it only allows me to take a maximum of 3 photos. When filming stops it then copies those to the memory stick. It's as if, when filming, it can only store in the cameras own memory (buffer) and when thats full .. tough. Is anyone else able to take more than 3 photos whilst recording and if so, was there anything special you did to accomplish that? Thanks in advance James

The Cookie Composites unit for the HC3 is, according to the guys there - going to be top mount. They feel it's too wide for side.

Hope Jason at Cookie Composites doesn't mind me posting this here .. But I've just received an email from him saying their HC3 proto-type is complete and they are currently building molds. They envisage about 8-10 weeks before they have stock ..! Thinking of getting a full helmet system from them, any one else gone the whole hog and done this with any other camera?

Yeah I was wondering whether the air pressure would effect the disk heads in some way - I take it that is a "done deal" then .. no hard disk in freefall for the time being.

Hello everyone Well, my better 1/2 has recently given birth to a little girl (which I have on good authority is mine) and it got me thinking about buying a new camcorder to preserve those special moments. Erm .. that and .. well .. I'm about to start jumping some camera. ;-) I was just about to buy a HC3 and came across this little beauty: DCR-SR90E Hard Disk Drive with 30Gb for up to 21 hours of recording time. 3Megapixel CCD, true widescreen and 5.1 Dolby Digital® capabilities. Hard Disk Drive crash protection system with 3G sensor and buffer memory http://tinyurl.com/lsnoo I reckon thats about 7 hours in highest quality. Have any of you lot seen one of these? More to the point have any of you lot jumped one of these or do you have any thoughts as to whether the HD will take the hammer in freefall? :-) James

Boris Take a look at www.affschool.com We are based just a little bit further up the road in the Lake District, but also occasionally work at Black Knights. We can tailor something to fit your exact needs and might be able to do you a deal if you call :-) James

Not read the full thread .. but in response to the first poster. You assume that wind tunnels are something to do with skydiving. I predict in 10 years there will be twice as many pure tunnel flyers than there are skydivers - easily. That is people who enjoy tunnel flying but who have no desire to skydive. Tunnel flying is a sport in it's own right. Its not just training tool for skydivers. I enjoy tunnel flying just as much as skydiving - just in a different way. Sure it helps my skydiving but that's not why I do it. Regards James http://www.tunnelflyer.com

Hey As more and more tunnels open around the world, we're going to see more and more pure tunnel flyers, that is people who like tunnel flying - but have no interest in leaping out of a plane whatsoever .. or skydivers who have "twigged" that the tunnel is cool BECAUSE it's different to skydiving. Also, as tunnel flying becomes established as a sport in its own right I think the skydiving community will come to see it as something quite different to how many perceive it at the moment. Most skydivers perceive tunnel flying as a training tool for skydiving .. instead of an incredible, fun and potentially extremely athletic environment in its own right. I've done a shed load of tunnel (erm .. not by some of your standards maybe) and a lot of my skydiving friends just don't "get it" .. they think it's a waste of money. When I explain to them that I tunnel fly because I enjoy it in its own right.. a lot of them don't really get it. Them suggesting to me that I am doing too much .. is like me suggesting to them they should cap the number of skydives they do, yeah right. If you've found something that puts a smile on your face in life .. you should keep doing it. (well .. you know .. within reason .. and this doesn't apply to Michael Jackson).. Ofcourse .. once these same skydivers have been in the tunnel a few times.. the penny starts to drop .. but it's slow going with a lot of them. The tunnel is different to skydiving .. sure there are parallels and cross overs but it is different and that is actually a GOOD thing. We have new things to try and learn, we can have new competition formats eg - stamina events etc. There aren't that many pure tunnel flyers here in the UK yet and by pure tunnel flyer, I mean someone who only uses a tunnel to fly .. or a skydiver who has "got" it and isn't convinced that what we do in the tunnel should be a replica of what we do in the sky... I think I know personally all these pure tunnel flyers in the UK .. this is going to change soon though .. we have 2 very different but incredible tunnels .. yeee haaa! How many pure tunnel flyers do you know? Or .. are we all here in this forum? I think dropzone.com is a brilliant web site .. but that in its current format it will not be well suited to the up and coming wave of tunnel flyers. There are people I know who tunnel fly who don't get what it is to do with skydiving .. they don't make the connection, this is a good thing for the sport because - personally I think the connection with skydiving - is damaging to it's growth. Very few people want to do something even remotely associated with plane jumping. Anyway .. How many pure tunnel flyers .. tunnel junkies .. tunnel rats do you know .. what's your guess as to how many there are right now? Regards James http://www.tunnelflyer.com The discussion site for tunnel flyers

Had a very similar experience. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1597292

I assume they decided not to cover it because there were too many claims. Insurance only works where the value of the claims is less than the revenue generated by the entire group of policy holders. It would only take a handful of serious accidents and subsequent claims for it not to be worth their bother. Eg .. A friend of mine hurt himself in America the other year .. it cost him $180,000

Hey scientist_chick I have an AXA annual travel policy that includes the hazardous sports cover option. I renewed it on the 21st August 2005, so only a few weeks ago. I have checked with them and luckily for me I am STILL COVERED for skydiving because I renewed just before they made the change to the policy. So, if you renewed your policy before the change then you are still good to go until your current policy runs out. Unfortunately, it sounds like you renewed just after the change. Buggers!!! I've spent year recommending Axa to people, next year will have to try someone else! James

Ahh the much fabled "Blastuov" facility. It was used in the cold war for training spies, powered by Gorbachev's hot air. The heating was turned off and it was used in the late 90's as a frozen food facility, the only place in the world where a dead chicken could be frozen in 4 seconds and made to fly again at the same time. When it repoens they are not sure whether the vodka bar is going to be free or not, so I don't know where you got that from, but yes it's been confirmed all the staff are former Miss Soviet Union's. It's a great place to work on centre point turns.

Well for the record I never need cheering up when I'm tunnel flying, so stop trying to mince me ;-) Seriously though, I have done a lot of tunnel and this has more umph than I think I could ever need or want.

I weigh 100kg and have an incredibly aerodynamic body shape (a stomach the size of the stay puff marshmallow man) ... I've flown in Bedford and they could pin me to the net at the top if they wanted too - knee flying! In fact I think Paul has tried once or twice. Not sure what that's all about ;-)

Well, sorry to clutter up the board with a post of very little interest but in the absence of any one else around me this evening who cares in any capacity about Skydiving - I had to get this off my chest and tell someone! After an accident on my 200th jump back in July 2004 when I broke my tib/fib/foot/knee etc I am about to return to the skies tomorrow. I'm excited - but cannot quite believe just how nervous I am. I think I will be shitting myself, hopefully not literally. My non-skydiving buddies just don't get why I want to return to the sport especially in light of my "healthy but sizeable apprehension" but as I keep trying to explain to them, the greatest things in life are rarely easy. See you in the skies soon. :-) J

Why not give the rig to a skydiving buddy to look after? Surely you know a skydiver or two you can trust to look after your gear for a few months. I've had gear unused for that long before and had no problems with it at all (though I repacked before jumping it) tho I did keep it in a dry spare bedroom. Just get a mate to stick it in the spare room!

a formation of course?

Her body position is awesome .. she's booty flying!

I often jump with my cell phone for similar reasons .. in fact I broke my leg last year jumping away from home .. and although my "landing" had already been spotted and I knew people were on their way to help .. it enabled me to call my girlfriend and keep her informed .. also some 8-way team mates to tell them I wouldn't be helping them in the nationals the following week ;-) Phoned about 5 people whilst lying there for the ambulance to come!

The moment I got my A-licence I went out in shorts and tshirt, being very careful to tuck in my tshirt in a way that wouldn't come out and start flapping everywhere or getting in the way of handles. Was great fun .. major shock on the old control front - you forget just how quickly you adapt to flying in certain dress. I was flapping round like a looney (and no I don't normally - at least not anymore!) However. My mate did the same, on the same load and managed to his first ever accidental down-winder on the runway of all things. Yikes. Didn't hurt himself seriously .. but had some amazing gravel grazes.

Like you say it may well be because there are more Sabre 2s out there .. until you get a larger volume of incidents (which of course I pray doesnt happen) it's difficult to tell whether it just a statistical blip/grouping or something that indicates a wider pattern. I am without gear at the moment but about to start jumping again after a 12 month injury layoff - so am about to buy again in the next few weeks. I do have to confess this has put me off Sabre 2s just a bit. A couple of my friends who have complained of hard openings (nothing serious just a grumble about it) are on Sabre 2s .. Hmmmmm!