Sandman,
I think that he's doing fine. I believe that he is in Russia at the moment (skydiving of course). I don't exchange mails with him but I keep an eye on his dropzone's website and there are recent pics of him in the gallery.
GtoRA2, the risk is indeed about the same as riding a bike in traffic. Of course, if you ride or jump conservatively, you have less chances to have an accident than if you act aggressively (driving at high speed or making high performance landings). However, I honestly don't think that skydiving is safer than driving a car. Like scuba diving, the dangers are very real and you have to approach the sport with respect. Like a popular GoFast T-shirt claims, "You'll be fine as long as you don't do anything stupid"
Drediock I'm not calling you a liar but this is a pure BS story. You can't talk during free fall (well you can but the 120 mph wind makes it totally unintelligible) and this video is most certainly fake. There is a lot of urban legends going on about a videoman forgetting to put on his rig before jumping. I believe that all those originate from a true incident which happened in the early 80s in the UK: an experienced jumper was videoing tandems after a night of work. He was seriously tired and, at the end of the day, forgot indeed to put on his rig. This fact was unnoticed by all during the climb to alt because the videocams of those days were heavy and bulky and were strapped on a special harness (now they are mostly fixed on a helmet) and this harness made the absence of rig less noticeable.
The poor guy jumped to his doom without realizing it. A terrible detail is that the tandem master immediately noticed what was wrong when his buddy flew in front of him to video the fall of the tandem pair. He explained later that he had to act like nothing special was happening because trying to grab his friend during the opening would have greatly endangered the tandem passenger... Talk about a hell of a choice...
AFAIK, the tape was studied by the police and then kept by his friends who never made it public.
Chairboy, it seems that the pilot was in a hell of a hurry
. I have the chance to sump at a DZ which is a bit of a tandem factory. It has disadvantages but OTOH the planes are big and require higher ratings for the pilots (i.e. single and multi-turbines). No hotheads inexperienced cessna pilots here. Most are professional and don't take risks.
BTW, if you want to fly for free I recommend you to pass the rating to be able to drop skydivers. It will pay your flying hours and skydivers are generally a fun bunch of people.
Thanks for your posts about your progression as a pilot, BTW. I really enjoy to read them and love your tongue-in-cheek humor.
Stay safe and have fun
