JackC1

The guy that runs the music shop I sometimes use said he once sold an electric guitar and lead to a woman who brought it back 2 days later with an electrical plug asking how the 1/4" jack lead should be wired to the electrical plug because it wasn't color coded.

I pretty much agree with what RiggerLee said. I actually want to survive a head down reserve deployment should I be unlucky/stupid enough to have one. That necessitates a slow(er) opening reserve. I realise this means that I need to pull higher and perform my EPs higher to compensate, it also means my AAD might be set too low to save me. So I want a higher firing AAD and if it requires this BSR to enable it, I can live with that. And this is the crux of it. TSO c23 in all its forms is an FAA specification. The FAA are ultimately responsible for the rules that specify how fast reserves should deploy and the rules that allow manufacturers to modify a rig and maintain an existing TSO. The manufacturers operate within those rules or risk losing their TSO. If you do not like those rules or you think that certain manufacturers are no longer meeting the specifications of their TSO, then your complaint needs to go to the FAA.

Outstanding. Good luck Oli.

Don't be surprised. You have been skydiving for literally 15 minutes and people who have done a hell of a lot more of it than you have seen people like you kill and injure themselves and others far too often. Seriously, either take up skydiving or quit completely.

Your priorities for landing, in order of importance, are: 1) Wing level 2) into a clear and open area 3) flare evenly 4) into wind if possible Don't sacrifice any of the first 3 just so you can meet the 4th.

No. Either jump regularly enough to maintain a level of currency, or quit completely. To turn up and do one jump every few months is not a safe way to skydive.

if youre looking for protection, id say yes. Its ANSI rated and has good protection. Not many skydiving helmets can say that. They look good and are fine for bumps and mounting cameras but thats about it. Urban myth. The Protec full cut skate helmet beloved of skydivers never gained any safety standard.

That's about right. They cost next to nothing, they bring in plenty of cash from the rubberneckers and they really seem to piss off a bunch of holier-than-thou foreigners. Damn good value the Royals, I'd pay 70p a year for the last bit alone.

Fark gorillas: http://vimeo.com/34378027

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate

Thrilling

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 998-1009. But I'm sure you know better.

Think of it like this: say you've got $10 worth of concentration, if you spend it all on the jump and don't save a couple of $$ for pull time, you'll never fix your problem. A couple of bucks is all it takes.

Well, congratulations, you just equated an entire religion to monsters. Bravo. /golf clap. I though he equated religion to cheesy fiction, which I found particularly funny given Ron is so religious himself.

Studies suggest it takes up to 2 months of daily repetition for something to become a habit and early repetitions have a bigger effect on retention than later ones, as does positive feedback reinforcement. If you have a bad habit, the only way to break it is to consciously replace the wrong thing with the right thing and do it repeatedly. It requires a sustained conscious effort, there are no short cuts.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Dummy pull jumps are some of the hardest you'll ever have to do, really. I did plenty of them as do many others. The one thing you kind of need to concentrate on during IAD jumps is the arch. Arching leads to stability and stability leads to safety. Finding the handle is then a case of repetition and a just little bit of luck. For some reason, it also seems to help if you're relaxed about it, being too determined or thinking about it too much doesn't seem to help (at least in my case it didn't). Well done on the landing though. It takes a cool head, a good bit of forethought and some skill to pick out and land on a small target when you realise you aren't going to land where you initially intended. The earlier you realise your situation and can pick those choice "outs" the better off you are. Sounds like you did well there.

I could probably throw away the strap on my G3 and it still wouldn't come off in freefall. I am not convinced a cut-away system of this type would do very much to actually cut anything away. And the camera mount cut-aways I've seen have a bolt through the helmet shell ready to be hammered into your skull in the even of an impact. Again unacceptable. As far as I am concerned, the G3 is not suitable for camera work and I cannot think of any method of making it so.

Fair point, it helps most from jump #2 onwards I guess. Jump #1 I think was a case of "ignorance is bliss". Maybe if you've got a vivid enough imagination and Youtube...

Unfortunately that has become the SOP around here. It never used to be, but some where along the line, the clique decided that the best way to deal with anyone who doesn't fit the dz.com approved standard skydiver profile should be bashed until they leave. Regarding fear, it's normal to be scared (I don't like heights much either) but Tandem Instructors are used to nervous students and take good care of them. Ultimately how you deal with fear is up to you but in this game it really is a good idea to make sure you can still operate normally when scared as freezing up is not a good survival trait. That in itself I find is a pretty good motivator not to be scared, or at least to deal with it more effectively. My policy on dealing with fear was to imagine the perfect skydive from take off to landing, calm and relaxed, with no dramas and with no fear. Repeat that 100 times and you start to believe it. It seemed to work for me at least.

The force is distributed mainly through the leg straps. You can expect 2-4G for a second or two. Very, very occasionally you might get more, possibly up to 10G for a fraction of a second but that is comparatively rare. If you have back problems, explain the situation to your doctor and get their advice before jumping. A skydiving forum is no place to get medical advice.

As far as I am concerned, if you wait until jump run to sort your gear out so that you haven't got the spare attention to do some stupid little hand shake, then your personal admin needs a serious kick up the arse. IMHO this kind of slap-dash last minute bullshit is far more serious and dangerous than simply sticking a GoPro to your forehead.

I'm not buying, not in this case. If you are waiting till 5 mins before exit to put your rig on, you screwed up big time. That stuff should be squared away before you even get on the plane. But you're right that cameras are a distraction. They're distracting people right now in this thread away from the real cause of this incident which was piss poor personal admin prior to boarding. Put your gear on, get a kit check, then get on the plane.

Cameras, cameras, cameras. It's all we hear around here these days. This guy's screw up was getting on a plane when he wasn't geared to jump out of it. A proper flight line check would have caught this and fixed it before it became an issue. The camera is incidental rubbish; it does not distract you continually from the 20 min call all the way to exit, 40 mins later. Before you get on any jump plane, put your fucking rig on. Do it properly, do it before you board and get a flight line gear check. Make it part of your pre-flight procedure and do it every time. Failure to do that is what caused this incident, not a fecking GoPro.

The world does not need any more shit 2-way sit fly videos. In fact, probably the only video a low timer could take that anyone might want to watch is the one where they inevitably get video evidence of themselves fucking up.

Mine is type 24 webbing, velcro, some plastic for stiffening and a few minutes on a sewing machine.