Hi People, I'm the 4 eyed t**t in a lot of these videos.
You are all of course correct, a lot of that stuff is pretty out there when it comes to safety. I think most of us were young and carefree once, and I'm sure you will all be sleeping easier tonight if I tell you that I won't do anything remotely daft these days without a decent cage and harness, which though not making us invincible, greatly improves our chances in the event of disaster. Stepping out of the house is of course a gamble, and we all take risks in order to enjoy ourselves, but taking every sensible precaution that we can without impacting what we enjoy too much is a good idea. Looking back I think that 'suicide hill' and the 'discovery jump' videos are the most dangerous of the lot, I have been in a RRC that rolled and there really is nothing in the roof to save you, any tumble from height is not going to end well. The kinetic rope one is a bit dodgy because of the shackle in the middle of the line (I can't speak for any of the crazy winching bit that happens before I arrive), I didn't want to add that shackle and with hindsight should have just linked the two ropes with the eyes, but people do act as though this could fly off in any direction, when really it is only going to hit the back of one of the motors, though there is the potential for it to come through the back window and hit you on the head, though given that it would still have a length of rope attached to it slowing it down reduces this risk somewhat. People are totally right about spectators being too close etc, but what am I supposed to do? Erect a barrier? You hear people being warned multiple times in that video. I honestly don't think anyone else was going to save that motor for those lads that day, and I didn't expect it to take that much pulling to get free, but it came out. Everyone should buy themselves a Damar webbing products kinetic rope, I haven't ever seen a more rigorous test of a kinetic rope than that. The strap that broke was a Procomp 8000, though it had seen some action by that time.
As for the people that say destroying a discovery is sacrilege, fair play. The next time I get hold of a disco that is as rotten as the titanic I will donate it to one of these people to repair.
Frank is still about and I see him regularly. We will be back out at some point next year, I have a new 110 and he still has his range rover. I need to convince him to spend more money on a cage and less on replacement panels, I'm working on it.
Stay safe, and have a merry Xmas.
after all this is LZ and that is a compliment 
