dgw

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Everything posted by dgw

  1. dgw
    Ear plugs my friend. I find them a life saver. They work far better than even good “noise cancelling” headphones.
  2. dgw
    Many thanks to all of the mods who worked for years. I particularly wanted to thank you Billvon. Your inputs in the technical forums were peerless, except for that one time you got one thing wrong. I can’t recall what it was, but I’ve long since concluded that it is overwhelmingly likely that I got it wrong, not you. Your forbearance and apparently tireless logic in the SC was a lesson in how to conduct oneself in discourse. Best wishes for the future.
  3. dgw
    I’m not sure who first coined this phrase / point of logic, but I’ve only hitherto heard the late Christopher Hitchens use it in his relentless campaign against irrational religion. Nice to see it enter the main stream media. It is an unarguable observation imo.
  4. dgw
    You might find this interesting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2x0g8nkzmzo it wasn’t so much the apparently hard move to the left (Labour) by the public, and more of a split of the conservative vote. In fairness, the civil service run the country, and left and right in the UK are both centre parties compared to the US of A (I don’t know much about Canadian politics).
  5. dgw
    You can have trigger locks on fuel pumps in the UK, but only if the fuelling is done by an attendant. Nearly all fuel stations are self service these days however.
  6. dgw
    Pack it normally. I’ve pro packed and ‘psycho’ packed them. Pay very close attention to a flat stable deployment. I don’t have a lot of experience on Stilettos, but the only opening problem was an own goal, deploying on the hill on a hop’n’pop whilst not quite square to the relative wind. On my Safire2 or Sabre2 it wouldn’t have been a problem. On the Stiletto, it was an immediate and serious problem.
  7. dgw
    Yes. click the black circle or star to the left of the thread title - that takes you to the first unread post.
  8. dgw
    Problem solved.
  9. dgw
    He can dissolve parliament at any time he chooses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom
  10. dgw
    Do you think that she should lie? To a Court?
  11. dgw

    Ukraine

    dgw replied to SkyDekker's topic in Speakers Corner

    I think that is right. I think a lot of historic wars (in Ireland) were about having a war to lose the least amount of resource, knowing that sooner or later a war was going to happen. No nukes, of course.
  12. dgw

    Woke is a Joke

    dgw replied to winsor's topic in Speakers Corner

    Shameful comment.
  13. dgw
    I have no dog in this fight at all. If the bone is real however, I say pick all the meat off it and fully expose the bone. It seems to me that this issue could be tested by any competent rigger with access to similar harness-container / parachute combinations. I don’t think this website caries the weight it once did in informing people by skilled, knowledgable, and esteemed peers. I do think, however, that Aerodyne should answer this challenge for the purposes of both finding the issue (whatever it is) in the complainant’s video and, assuming the bone is clean, protecting their reputation.
  14. dgw
    Yes. That is what I thought Coolbeans more or less had in mind. I noted your comment responding to me but I couldn’t reply earlier. My thoughts were that, for this sort of idea, more thread / stitches = less riser stretch over a bit longer time than in a normal deployment. That was it. The injury risk is not just acceleration related, but duration related.
  15. dgw
    Here is a study on fall arrest harnesses / acceleration / impulse published by the UK Government’s Health and Safety Laboratory. I think it touches on your idea, and might help. https://www.hse.gov.uk/research/hsl_pdf/2003/hsl03-09.pdf
  16. dgw
    You might want to have a look at some of the injury tolerance research. It might help with understanding the relevance of the opening deceleration and impulse to risk of injury. https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/evidence/reports/Occupant Protection.pdf Here’s an extract setting out some relationships between deceleration, impulse, and injury:
  17. dgw
    I might have missed the point entirely here, but it seems to me that Mr Beans had an idea that ‘fall arrest’ type risers might ameliorate opening acceleration, not by stretching of the risers, but by failure of the thread in the stitching in the sewn parallel ‘accordion’ of webbing. So, I don’t think his idea needs metres of webbing, but it might need meters of thread. $0.02
  18. dgw
    I expect that they would all just coalesce into one group of magnets in the pack job. That might hinder the slider opening correctly, and therefore hinder proper opening. My $0.02
  19. dgw
    Two minor things. Clicking on a fully open thread does not open the thread, it just reloads the sub forum. When one opens a thread with new posts, the first new posters name is off the top of the screen. One has to scroll the screen down to see who the poster is (if one doesn’t recognise the posters avatar) and then read the contribution. This is what it looks like on a random pick: It’s a minor thing but it niggles me a little. I echo the thanks offered above for the effort put into this site improvement.
  20. dgw
    Agreed. I am very much pro RSL / MARD. However, people should arrive at their own informed view. My issue in that regard was that the coach was promoting the no-RSL rig as superior equipment, without at least covering the pros of RSL / MARD rigs.
  21. dgw
    They can be money well spent, but I sound a note of caution. I have attended on two occasions such courses in the UK by a known outfit. On one occasion, the advice for getting back from a long spot with a tail wind was to make oneself as large as possible so that the tail wind would push one more efficiently through the air. I challenged this and eventually prevailed, but only temporarily - by the next day, he had thought about it further and reverted to his former understanding. That advice has also been given by a well known diminutive coach, I am reliably informed by a former team mate. Secondly, attendees at the second course were encouraged to use ‘clean equipment’, by which he meant rigs with no RSL or MARD for reasons of getting stable etc, without at least acknowledging the potential pros and cons of both philosophies. For newer skydivers, this is poor practice. Caveat emptor, and those that fly with them.
  22. dgw
    I note the same. I’ve used the site on desktop, mobile phone and tablet since the inception of the new site. All devices are fewer than 24 months old and are up to date on operating systems. On the iPad, and the windows computer, each time I click on a link, the secure site padlock disappears, there then follows a pause of a few or up to twenty seconds, and the ‘secure’ padlock reappears. As soon as the padlock appears, service is normally quick. I also miss the ‘how many new posts’ red number. That was the most useful part of the old presentation format in my opinion / usage. Many thanks for the effort put in to this.
  23. dgw
    I have a V348 with a Smart 150 and a V348 with a PD160. The Smart is a much more comfortable / smaller fit than the PD160.
  24. dgw
    The attached is from the PD Horizon manual. I'll leave the physics to Yuri.
  25. dgw
    I think the physics of what you say is difficult to refute. I agree with the idea. Safe implementation might be a practical issue, but implementation of the 'standard' method is also potentially a practical problem. Out of curiosity, I downloaded a PD reserve manual to see what the practice is on (a) reserve parachute. It's a TR-375, which was just the first manual that I happened upon. The attached photograph shows the slider packing method to be ES