EatSleepFly

All good brother! Me too, mostly.

Sorry... I didn't see an option to delete or I would have. I haven't been on here in quite some time, apparently, lol. There will be a new thread coming up, probably called "Kevin Keenan eats his reserve handle in the loading area," or something along those lines.

Edit: Ya know what, forget it.

I'm mostly a lurker but you were a moderator here and I think an active AFF instructor when I first started skydiving and found this forum in 2001. I've always valued your input. Welcome home!

Was fascinated by it on the X-games in the late 90's. When I got to college (ERAU) in 2001, they had a skydiving club that jumped at Deland and it was relatively cheap. Did AFF and my first ~20 jumps there, then didn't jump again for almost 10 years- busy with career moves, mainly. Kind of wish I hadn't taken such a long break, but oh well. Got back into it in 2011.

I had a cutaway on a coach jump last fall, forcing me to land in a back yard near the DZ. I turn around and see my student with 15ish jumps stand up her landing 50 feet away from me. Said she couldn't find the DZ (it was an unusual spot that day), so she followed me. I was impressed!

No, but I packed a regular (I think- it was my gf's demo) Pilot 132 into my I33 and it fit just fine.

Not true. For one thing, all flight instructors have at least a commercial certificate by default. However, only a third class medical is required for a CFI to give any kind of flight instruction- regardless of whether the student is licensed or not. The FAA does not consider a CFI to be using the privileges of a commercial certificate when giving instruction, therefore no requirement for a second class. If the pilot receiving instruction is qualified and acting as PIC, there is no requirement for the CFI to hold a medical certificate at all.

Not even close.

I tried the A5000 for tandem stills for a bit at the beginning of the season. Had a lot of issues- tongue switch adapter problems, freezing up, etc. Not sure if I got a bad one or it was user error or a combination of both, but I sold it and put my trusty old XTi back on and I'm glad I did. I'll be sticking with Canon for tandem work for the foreseeable future.

What mode are you shooting in to get those kind of bursts with autofocus? I got an A5000 to try after talking to a couple people and reading reviews on here, but I'm having some issues (probably self-induced). For one thing, it's pretty slow using Continuous AF in Tv mode- maybe 1.5 fps, at most- sometimes slower. Single shot AF in Tv is much faster but a lot more of the shots are out of focus. I use Intelligent Auto with the flash for in-plane/hangar shots and it works great. Haven't tried either of the auto modes in freefall- should I? Also, I recently had to replace a worn out tongue switch. Put the new one in (Conceptus- same as the old one), and it worked fine on the ground, and in the plane, but I got very few or no freefall shots (yes, I was pushing on it). Happened three jumps in a row, so I gave up for the day and took it home to troubleshoot. Took the tongue switch out, along with the $90 Hypoxic 2.5mm to MULTI adapter (), and of course couldn't duplicate the problem no matter how hard I tried. I did notice that the 2.5mm plug is pretty loose in the adapter, so I'm wondering if that was causing some of my issues- although if it was, I wasn't able to recreate them at my kitchen table. Any thoughts?

Not necessarily. It depends on what your BAC was. First offense and below .15, it's at the discretion of the AME to issue.* Above .15 and/or a repeated offense and you're absolutely correct- the AME has to defer it to the FAA Aeromedical division and it gets costly and complicated (but not impossible). Recency also affects it- if you only have one offense and it was more than two years ago, the AME should be able to issue it as long as there is no history or diagnosis of dependence or abuse. *Even though the AME can issue it, the FAA can overrule the AME and void it once they get the paperwork. This applies to every medical certificate application.

Thanks for the info. I also found that Hypoxic makes a 2.5mm to MultiTerm adapter so you can use existing Conceptus switches. Perfect since I have a few of those and wouldn't trust the reliability of modifying them for paid tandem videos. http://gethypoxic.com/collections/camera-switches-and-adapters/products/sony-multi-terminal-to-2-5mm-shutter-release-adapter

Is there a port for a tongue switch or does it require some modification? Sorry if this has already been discussed, but I've got some best buy gift cards and I would love to get my XTi off my head.

Poor student or not, it sounds to me like the instructor did the bottom end entirely contrary to the IRM and contributed to the student's two-out.