MikeJD

I think it depends on what you want to achieve. If it's to salve your conscience then yes, giving up skydiving may help. If it's to save the planet from climate change, then I don't believe that you (or indeed every skydiver) hanging up his or her rig will have any appreciable benefit whatsoever. Giving up jumping and dedicating all of your free time to ecological campaigning just might - but it's still unlikely. There are so many ways to cut this. You express the skydiving impact as 5% of the average American's carbon footprint - can I argue that because I'm not planning on having any kids (American or otherwise) I'm still at least 95% in credit? I don't mean to put down your ambitions, by the way - they're noble, and we should all be taking some responsibility. But unless you're willing to suck all the joy out of your life then I think there is always going to be compromise.

Entertaining film, and always goes down well at the DZ on a bad weather day (of course you can't always hear the dialogue over the hoots of derision from the audience). Naturally there's plenty of nonsense in there, but at the same time it gives a much more rounded picture of the sport than other movies featuring skydiving. We get different disciplines, wind tunnels, a national competition, a discussion of the term 'whuffo', closing pin necklaces, aircraft mockups, packing etc. etc - all through the distorting mirror of a Hollywod movie, obviously, but even so you can tell that actual skydivers are behind it.

I've never smoked, and I'm very grateful for that - I'll never have to find out how hard it is to stop. Maybe that's the reason I find it pretty tiresome when friends repeatedly 'give up'. They make a big deal of it, you make the appropriate noises of support, and then before you know it they've fallen off the wagon and are puffing away again. For me, by the time we've been through a couple of cycles like that it's a case of 'Give up, or don't give up. If you're not going to commit, I don't want to hear about it!' I don't actually have a big downer on smoking as a personal choice (although I'm glad it's not allowed in enclosed public places any more). Few of us can say we never do things that are bad for us.

They're the main aircraft used at the UK Nationals. I've jumped several, all owned by Skydive Hibaldstow in the UK - HA-ACO is one of those. They operate at Hibaldstow, its sister DZ Skydive Spain near Seville, and on loan to various other dropzones. Here's an interior photo of one of them, giving you an idea of the seating - maximum three on the floor near the door, and everyone else on benches. I do love the Dorniers - they're not pretty, but they certainly do the job!

Another vote for the G92, for all the reasons you mention. For those who don't know it, seating is typically on two benches running the length of the cabin and jumpers straddle the benches so that they are facing fully aft. The only time it's not comfortable in there is if you're at the rear end of one of those benches, and the people who got in before you have left you virtually nothing to perch on - then it's hell. On the other hand, it gives your calves and thighs a pretty good workout! For me it's a shame that Caravans have become so prevalent in the UK, although I understand it all comes down to running and maintenance costs. In my experience, when they're full of jumpers and fuel, most are noticeably slower than other turbines. They're also cramped and the C of G rules prohibit bigger launches.

I'm actually surprised that doesn't happen more often - more than once I've seen someone get up to exit and realise they're still attached to the plane - particularly in the case of single-point restraints. I guess the reason we don't get more people hung up is that in most cases the restraints aren't long enough for them to get to the door.

Good luck with that, Nigel - it's four years since he last logged in!

I saw my old 8-way team's sticker in the Caravan we were jumping at the weekend - brought back some memories and made me smile. I think discretion is needed, though - it's not your aeroplane, and you need to have some sensitivity to the first-timers and tandem students who are just passing through. One of the stickers I see regularly features the words 'CAUTION - UNDERGONE NO TRAINING', vertically arranged, with the first letter of each word in bold. Someone's had a good go at scraping it off, and I'm not surprised - Aunt Mabel doesn't need to be looking at that while she's riding to 13K strapped to a madman.

I think as a community we have an odd attitude to the danger of the sport. On the one hand, a lot of jumpers revel in it - witness the Incidents forum. It's a valuable tool, but people will chew over the minutae of an accident - in my opinion - long after the basic lesson has been learned (and let's face it, often it's the same lesson). Yet on the other hand, after all that navel-gazing, we go out and take the same fundamental risks we've always done. I agree with Krisanne that it's good to consider what you'd do in different situations as events stack up - but the most important thing is to break the chain at the first link. I think there's too much time spent ruminating on what-if scenarios in relation to the amount of effort spent actually putting the essentials into practice when we get up there. I was just discussing with a teammate over the weekend how flying canopies in traffic is unnerving because there seems to be so little teaching of basic etiquette regarding right of way, stack positioning, predictable patterns and so on. Tracking is another good example - too many of us are no good at it, but it's easily overlooked. People (including me!) are driven instead to dedicate 120+ posts to the drama of discovering a chest strap flapping around in freefall.

Ctrl+alt+delete works for me in Windows 8. If you do that you should get a little power symbol come up, which in turn allows you to shut down. I'm gradually getting used to Win 8, but I can't say I view it with any warmth. My biggest gripe is the forced restarts to accommodate software updates - I know there are ways to work around them, but they're fairly involved and I don't think I should have to. I should be able to tell Windows that this isn't a convenient time for it to shut down my computer.

Iran has one twice as powerful on board its new jet fighter.

That'd be a switch.

Some funny answers here

My 4-way FS team (along with lots of others) practise an all-hands-in exit pulse in the plane that's designed to mirror the one we'll do in the door. As chuckakers said, this sort of thing can be a distraction if you're not careful. Since I'm responsible for initiating it I've made it a habit to be very predictable - mainy by always starting it at the same altitude during the climb. That means everyone knows it's coming, and can have done their gear checks/ sorted out their helmets etc. in advance. I never start it while people are still fiddling with their stuff. I also make sure it happens well before people have to start worrying about the door or the spot. Nobody outside the team gets a handshake unless they initiate it, because I don't want to force it on them. I still think it's nice to show solidarity with the whole load, so a thumbs-up or similar works for those further back in the plane - that also means people aren't moving around too much to reach over. Unneccesary moving around = bad

You've probably heard it said that you have no friends below 2,000 feet. I'd be more conservative and say you have no friends once you exit the aircraft. Putting parachute rigs on (properly) in freefall is for the most part the stuff of Hollywood screenwriter fantasy and so, for the most part, are in-air saves of other people. They happen, but they're exceptional. In my career I've only come across two gear issues that were spotted mid-dive. One was mine - a riser that had escaped the cover, resulting in a fired brake, because I'd stupidly allowed the velcro closures to get too worn. In that case somebody pointed it out to me and I was able to get some separation, pull high and then deal with the (unpleasant) opening. The other was someone else's floating reserve handle. In that case we were able to 'stop' the skydive and make sure nobody got above her, but we didn't succeed in communicating to her exactly what the problem was before pull time. It's not as easy as you might think. It's so much nicer when you discover these issues in the plane or, better still, on the ground before you board . I always gear up completely before getting someone else to check me out - and there's even a specific order in which I do it, from hoisting my rig onto my shoulders to tightening my leg straps to fastening my chest strap to putting on my altimeter to fitting my booties. If I do any of these steps out of sequence, or if I get interrupted partway through, then it feels 'wrong' and I have to double-check everything in the same sequence. It's a useful quirk of our brains (or at least of mine!) that we can feel uneasy when these routines are upset. Of course, that cuts both ways because if you don't concentrate then giving someone else a gear check can become a matter of routine rather than of actually looking for issues

Thanks. I certainly didn't mean to put Douggs down in any way - he's obviously a highly respected and well liked guy, and he comes across well in the article. I've just got very sensitised by the number of posts I've seen over the years that suggest people's lives can't be fulfilling unless they do what we do.

Thanks for the link. A good read, but for me it's spoiled in places by the elitism and sensationalism that we see too much of in skydiving and BASE. The author's obviously experienced more than his fair share of tragedy, and it's particularly sad that he lost his girlfriend. But it bothers me that articles like that perpetuate some familiar myths: 1) We are all deliberately flirting with death - 'we are making a conscious choice to put ourselves right in front of the reaper and tell him, “Catch me if you can!”' 2) Anyone who doesn't jump is a poor sap who's simply sleepwalking through life - '...the rest of the world goes on living life with blinkers, working until they retire and dying the slow, miserable death of life, they haven’t realized that life can be gone in a split second, taken away forever.' I can't relate to either of those sentiments, and I think they detract from the article.

Well, if I'd known someone was going to be asking this question ten years down the line I'd have registered with a more serial killer-y username. As it is I don't have much to work with - my surname isn't even Myers. Best I can offer is that once I had my victim secured I'd introduce myself: 'Hi, I'm Mike. And I'm going to force-feed you whisky until you're dead.'

At some point, when enough beer's been drunk, there will be a plan formed to launch a 16-way tube on the first load tomorrow morning. That jump will never happen.

Exactly - and pretty famously so, in the attack on the Italian navy at Taranto - the first ever ship-to-ship battle (it says here) using aircraft only rather than guns, so a pretty significant and pioneering action.

If it slips another month then you could take in West Virginia and stop off at Bridge Day in October.

That immediately put me in mind of this.

Hmm. I wonder whether that's 'without a parachute' or 'without deploying a parachute'.

Actually I've never liked that one. It has a nice ring to it, but it's nonsensical. We're still more properly 'flying' while we're inside the aircraft - otherwise we wouldn't be needing that parachute thingummy.

That was a hell of a story! Strange assertion that 'This has to be the only combat use of biplanes since the 1930's', though. I can think of several examples from the early 1940's and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more recent ones.