MikeJD

When I first read this story as a teenager, I'd envisaged the collision between the two airmen having happened almost as soon as they'd left the aircraft, while the guy with the parachute was deploying. It seems unlikely to me that a first-time jumper bailing out of a plane would wait very long before getting a canopy out (unless for some reason he had been struggling to do so). I wonder if the tale just got taller with the telling, to the point where the chuteless airman had freefallen for thousands of feet before his encounter with the other guy - because I think my version would make the rescue far more viable. If the parachute wearer was deploying at sub-terminal, the canopy may well have been opening 'behind him' due to the throw-forward effect, which would have left him exposed for the other airman to collide with his legs. The forces involved would probably have been lesser too. I also agree that due to the sheer numbers of bail-outs that there must have been during the war it's certainly possible that this could really have happened - it only had to happen once.

Obviously if a poll has too many options then it becomes unwieldy, but I think it also makes a big difference how the camera is worn. Many of my friends now jump with a chest-mounted GoPro due to a rule change saying that cameras can only be worn on the top of a helmet if the helmet has a cutaway system. In addition to practically eliminating the snag risk, I find a chest-mount for a camera reduces distraction. The downside is of course that you can't alter the camera view by turning your head, but there's also an upside to that because it leaves the wearer free to concentrate on the important stuff rather than on getting the perfect shot. Once I've turned it on, the only time I think about the camera again is when I screw up and remember that it will have been caught on video.

It's human nature to enjoy a spook story. Whether you're a jumper or not, it's fun to get a little vicarious thrill by relating tales of danger and death from the safety of the bar or the bonfire. Additional to that, for some non-jumpers I think resentment plays a part - their impression is that skydivers think they're something special (and in some cases they're right). Because of that, when someone gets killed or injured they will seize on the story, and you'll see and hear a lot of comments about it being the deserved result of selfish, reckless behaviour. Finally, although this is certainly a risky sport it's generally nowhere near as dangerous as people like to imagine it is, and that applies to both participants and non-participants alike. There's a certain type of skydiver, happily in the minority, who's in the sport only because of that perception of danger and the fact that they think it makes them a more exciting personality. Those people are probably the ones who jump the least and tell the most spook stories.

It sounds like real fear to me - and as is often the case with fear, you experience it most during the anticipation of the event. However, it's important to recognise that there's nothing wrong with this - you're doing something wholly unnatural to your species that goes against all your instincts of self-preservation, and it takes a while for your brain to acclimatise to that. If this is a new thing since you completed your AFF, it might be to do with the fact that you don't have anyone holding your hand any more and that can also be a little daunting to begin with. If as you say you feel fine in the plane and during the skydive, then there's no safety issue (as would be the case if your state of mind meant you were unable to function properly or think clearly). I would say once you get to the dropzone you need to acknowledge to yourself that you are fearful, but power through it and concentrate on the reward that comes at the end, and meanwhile try thinking of your apprehension as a healthy thing that will keep you alert and safe. Do that enough times, and the fear will gradually dissipate to a manageable and even enjoyable level. Just about all skydivers feel some degree of apprehension before a jump, so don't let them tell you otherwise. Visulisation can also help, and it's something you can do anywhere at any time - relax, and in your head picture yourself manifesting, gearing up, boarding the plane, exiting and having the skydive of your life, and remind yourself of why you are doing this. Brian Germain, who's a member here, has written a book called Transcending Fear that you might like to check out. I haven't read it, but I know many skydivers have found it helpful. Good luck!

I'm pretty late to this thread, but I wanted to start by saying thank you for caring about your tracking! Too many people in the sport track poorly, and either don't know they're doing it or don't care enough to fix it. Tracking as a means of getting separation at the end of a dive - which I know you're not talking about here - is literally a life-saving skill, and everybody should learn to do it well. I think a lot of people who track steeply do so because they get off to a bad start - often by bringing their arms in too quickly, which puts them into a head-down position, or by having their arms too high (which it sounds like you've already fixed). With an efficient tracking position, you should find you can actually reduce your fall rate relative to your regular belly-fly position. There's a video here that I found referenced on another dz.com thread. It's specifically about tracking on break-off, but even so I think there are some useful tips in there that apply to everyone, regardless of the type of dive or the tracker's build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Spjpu7dxfc

Little harsh, don't you think? At least he didn't call it a 'shoot'. To the OP: I pay for more pack jobs than I should because I've become lazy, but I'm still more than capable of doing my own and I'm completely baffled by experienced skydivers - and yes, they exist - who are stuck on the ground after their first jump of the day because there are no packers available. Don't whatever you do end up being that guy!

Just astonishing. I'm not an apologist for Sadiq Khan, and I think it was possibly a mistake for someone in his position to publicly refer to Trump as a 'buffoon' - presumably the origin of this spat - but surely it must be obvious to anyone that the mayor's remark about not being alarmed genuinely was in reference to the increased police presence. No 'fast thinking' required. In any case, even if it had been in relation to the threat of terrorist attack I would still absolutely have agreed with him. Trump reminds me a little of that eccentric uncle who regales everyone with stories of how he single-handedly defeated Hitler even though he wasn't even born until after the war. I can't quite figure out whether he doesn't know, or just doesn't care, how transparently bollocks so much of his bluster is, but it makes me cringe. I'd be too embarrassed to invite him to a family barbecue, never mind to represent America on the world stage.

And again - 7 dead and 48 injured in London last night. But as shocking as these attacks are, I really don't feel as though I or the people I know are under serious threat. I worry a lot more about the ammunition that these events give to the racists, the extreme right-wingers and those who would sacrifice our civil liberties for the benefit of keeping us 'safe'.

This is going to sound old and farty, but for me one of the best reasons to deny new jumpers the opportunity to wear a camera is the fact that they are so very keen to do it. The instinct to film everything one does (and post about it) is, to me, one of the sicknesses of modern society in general, but particularly in relation to skydiving it betrays a lack of perspective - and that lack of perspective would be encouraged by relaxing the rules. For a percentage of newbies, skydiving is just something cool to be seen to be doing. I think many of those people may not be jumping for very long, but for those who do stick it out they discover that, hey, this is actually a sport - something that you can learn more and more about, excel at, compete in, and find hugely rewarding for its own sake. This reminds me of those occasional threads in which newbies post about listening to music while skydiving - why on earth would you want to do that? You learned to skydive so that you could experience a phemonenal new world - every aspect of it. If your first impulse is to video yourself doing it while listening to your favourite playlist, then you're kind of missing the point. It becomes just like everything else you do.

I hate them too, but we call them hiccups. I don't know where 'hiccough' comes from really, although it seems the more popular term in the States - they're not really like any kind of cough. But they are very annoying.

I see that originates from The Daily Fail. That alone makes it unsuitable for me, whether I'm at work or not. ;)

I see the backlash is well under way, with many lambasting Colbert's remarks as 'homophobic'. That's the twitter community for you, though, always itching to be morally outraged. I must admit I haven't seen the show itself, so I may be missing some context, but I doubt Colbert meant to say anything at all about gay sex - if he'd made the equivalent remark about Hillary there might still have been plenty of outrage, but none of it accusing him of being a bigot. From what I've read, Colbert's analogy was simply implying that one premiere is sexually servicing another, and it's the detractors who are making a deal of the fact that both are men.

Congratulations on your first chop!

Thinking about it in those terms, the quad design does lend itself better to some sort of parachute recovery system activated by AAD - that might be feasible, given that I'm assuming this vehicle is significantly lighter than your typical small fixed-wing aircraft. Heck, you could even design it to jettison the whole chassis/ motor assembly in an emergency (but, look out below!) - or perhaps a parachute canopy combined with autoration effect from the rotors would be a better idea.

I do have to admire his pluck

Despite the suggestion that the guy actually travels in that thing at the end of the ad, he is quite conspicuously not inside it when it takes off.

Indeed. I laughed out loud when I discovered that he wasn't even on board at the time. I'd call that cheating death by quite some margin.

But don't put it inside the microwave. ;)

Stock photo, I'm afraid.

I'd say there are two factors to consider - the rules of the governing body in that locale, and then on top of that the view/ assessment of the Chief Instructor or DZO. Presumably you mean in Australia, and presumably you're talking about AFF or a static line FJC rather than a tandem. I don't know what the APF says, but in the UK the BPA has an upper age limit of 55 for first-time students, so there would be no question of a BPA dropzone training a 70-year old - they wouldn't be allowed to. Maybe it'll be relaxed at some point, but right now those are the rules - however, I know for sure that other countries have a higher (or possibly no) age limit.

Point Break generation here. I'd done a handful of static line round jumps in the late eighties, but had given up (mainly because my jump buddy broke his leg, and at that stage I hadn't made any other friends at the dropzone). Watched Johnny Utah fly like an eagle in 1991, and asked myself why I hadn't carried on. I phoned around some dropzones, discovered this great new innovation called AFF and realised that was the way I'd get into the sport properly this time around. I did my first jump the following summer, and fell in love with everything about skydiving. So yeah, like a lot other newbies around that time I started jumping in earnest because of a silly movie - but I guess after 24 years I've paid my dues and don't have to consider myself a tourist any more, or be embarrassed about that. So thank you, Kathryn Bigelow - you changed my life.

I agree, it was just an interesting outlook from a kid. Have you taught him how to think critically? Critical thinking isn't always intuitive or natural. It's a skill that has to be learned and refined and honed. Same thing with objectivity. Evaluating sources, comparing differing views, looking at situations without allowing your own prejudices too much influence (that's the hard one). There are sources out there that are reasonably objective and trustworthy. Many agree that NPR (US) BBC (Britain) and Al Jazeera (UAE) are at or near the top of that list. Yet when you read the same story on each of them, there's a slightly different spin. So they aren't perfect, and I don't know anyone who claims they are. Yet many of the detractors claim that their follower claim that. The problem is that there are people out there who don't want the truth to be told. So they spread plausible lies. Partly to get their version of the story out there, but largely to make it harder and harder to ascertain the actual truth. It's a work in progress. He's pretty good hence the kind of discussion we were having. Totally agree on different news sources and BBC is my goto. But I still find they have a slant on things. Most vividly for me I remember the dodgy dossier saga. All the UK media outlets put a spin on it, the government at the time clearly let them or even encouraged that spin, but when you read the report it was a huge stretch to see Iraq as a threat to the UK. That taught me to go to the source whenever possible, the gap between reporting and fact was quite big. One problem is that the internet, which should be making us all better-informed and more open-minded, may well be having the opposite effect. There is so much material out there now that whatever your bias it's easy to find any number of 'facts' that appear to back it up. I like the idea of sites like http://www.procon.org that deliberately present both sides of an argument and so (in theory) allow you to make up your own mind on controversial issues. I think the most depressing internet effect is the bandwagon-jumping that's generated by viral posts on Facebook and in particular Twitter, where ideas seem to gain credibility just because of a sort of mob mentality. We also see a lot of fake news stories propagated that way. Incredibly powerful, incredibly dangerous.

Considering the length of his career, the huge respect he commanded as an actor and the fact that he was still appearing in recent movies, I'm surprised this seemed to go practically under the media radar. Maybe it's to do with more important stuff happening in America at the moment - or maybe we've just reached celebrity death saturation point.

Count me in with that group! On a recent visit to a 38th floor open-air bar in London, I alternated between admiring the view and really, really wanting to go back indoors. The barrier was barely more than waist-high, and irrational though it is I could easily imagine myself toppling over it. Interestingly, wearing a BASE rig makes a huge difference - I found Bridge Day seriously intense, but not as scary as standing on a balcony at height with nothing but my shirt on my back, regardless of having no intention of jumping off it!

No thanks to the people in the video at the top of that page who thought it important to retrieve their bags from the overhead lockers on the way to the emergency slides - or indeed to film their own evacuation, presumably for posting on YouTube later. Any details about what happened there? All I've seen is that he was killed.