FlyingRhenquest

Members
  • Content

    2,199
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never
  • Feedback

    0%

Community Reputation

1 Neutral

Gear

  • Main Canopy Size
    200
  • Reserve Canopy Size
    220
  • AAD
    Vigil 2

Jump Profile

  • Home DZ
    Mile Hi Skydiving
  • License
    B
  • License Number
    37920
  • Licensing Organization
    USPA
  • Number of Jumps
    500
  • Tunnel Hours
    14
  • Years in Sport
    4
  • First Choice Discipline
    Wing Suit Flying
  • First Choice Discipline Jump Total
    100

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. I've had nothing but beautiful openings on my Safire 3. If you explain your problem to NZ Aerosports, they might be able to modify the slider for you to slow the opening down a bit more. But you'd want to plan for openings that last for 1000 feet or possibly even a little bit more. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  2. Fly more in the wind tunnel. Most people I take can get around reasonably well without much assistance from the coach after about half an hour in there. The coaches tend to push you down the freefly road and try to get you on your back right about that point. I'd suggest resisting the temptation to go down that road until you can get into the tunnel and feel your whole body relax when it hits the wind -- maybe once you actually feel comfortable on your belly, do 10 minutes with no objective other than have fun. It was at the tunnel that I first actually relaxed in the air, and then I was all like "Oh! So THAT's what my instructors were talking about!" Once you can relax on your belly, THEN go into freefly. When you can relax on your back the same way, you'll be ready for the next step. Get the video too -- if you work through a coach to book coached minutes, they'll usually include the video in the price, if you bring a thumbdrive along. You'll be able to see what you're doing with your body position much better after the fact, and form a plan to correct it the next time you go in. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  3. As I recall, some company makes a prop conversion for otters, but it's either not for the otter Mile Hi is flying, or the FAA hasn't approved it for the otter Mile Hi is flying. They haven't flown the otter for the past couple of months anyway, for unspecified reasons. As I recall, something like 70% of the traffic from that airport is as loud as or louder than the otter. Several stunt fliers fly out of there, and there are a couple of other planes (Including a jet or two) that regularly go over my house that are much louder. Getting rid of the dropzone won't end the complaints about noise at the airport, it'll just get rid of an important economic driver in Longmont. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  4. If you'd told me any of the stuff I'd be doing in AFF a year before I did it, I'd have laughed at you. I was also a bit worried about my first malfunction as it didn't happen until around jump 160, but it was like I'd had the AFF training a day earlier when it happened, and I cut away and got to the ground otherwise uneventfully. The neat thing about this is every single person who goes through the program has a unique experience, even though the program is completely standard. We all have things we have problems with, like door fear or being able to hold a heading on jump 3, but things no one else could have predicted are going through your head as well. The best advice is try not to worry too much about the future until it gets here, and deal with what's in front of you right now. You'll be surprised at how much you're capable of, when you finally get there. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  5. I've always wondered why people think that. If you're working on skills you'll use for the rest of your skydiving career, why would it be a waste? It's not like you have nothing to show for it -- time in the tunnel will help you fly better, and it'll be fun. Seems like a win-win to me. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  6. There's Skydive New Mexico, which is about an hour and 45 minutes South of there. From what I hear, there aren't a lot of options in New Mexico. I just drove through there and it was windy as hell for the entire time I was in the state, might have something to do with it... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  7. Sure, if they passed a law also allowing weed. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  8. I've taken my Flysight on many a regular skydive. I have some code and libraries on GitHub, in my repos. See the gpx2kml, coordinates, time and data libraries, specifically. The Flysight is incredibly accurate as long as you turn it on in the morning for a few minutes, and then again a few minutes before your first jump so it can pull the GPS satellite ephemeris from the satellites. gpx2kml generates a KML data file which can be viewed on Google Earth or anything else that can read KML. I originally wrote it to take a gpx file from the android "MyTracks" app, which was the first thing I started to experiment with. I thought to take my phone with me on each jump, with MyTracks recording, so that I could see where I was on the map. The code does a pretty good job of detecting when you deploy your canopy, although I never got around to implementing exit and landing detection. The phone's GPS sampling turned out to be entirely inadequate, often losing some or all of each jump and always having some data points out of place or missing entirely. The Flysight, on the other hand, appears to have no such problems. I get very accurate reads from it on every single jump. If you could access its data in real time, I have no doubt you could make an altimeter from it, although I'm not sure I'd trust my programming or the GPS system quite that far. I have encountered circumstances where my Neptune has been fooled by some maneuver or other performed by the pilot and gone into freefall or under canopy mode briefly. No software is perfect, you just need to understand very well what its limitations are. Anywhoo, all my code is licensed under Apache's license, so it'd be pretty easy for me or someone else to implement code to shovel a bunch of jumps into a program and spit out a bunch of KML. I mostly haven't because the extra gear it involves is usually more than I want to mess with. If you could just turn tracking on for a device you can carry with you and then do your jumps for the day, it wouldn't be a hassle, but the Flysight's limited battery and a phone's limited accuracy make that difficult. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  9. Heh well, I think it's OK to get excited about your progress in the sport. After all, for most of our history, humanity could only dream about what we do and look longingly at the sky. It sounds like you're taking your canopy progression at a reasonable pace. The Sabre 1 is a great canopy, too, I know people who swear by them. Congratulations! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  10. Or maybe publish a data and interchange standard that anyone could adhere to for USPA digital logbooks. It's not particularly difficult to set up some authenticated REST services that anyone could use to edit and update their online logs. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  11. The rigs I saw on some military group in Eloy a couple years ago had their AAD display and controls mounted on their shoulders where everyone could see them. Seemed like a very nice design detail. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  12. Awesome! I think if someone had thrown me in a tunnel when I was a kid, I think I'd have been much more athletic. I'd love to see a day when flying in a wind tunnel on a regular basis is available to all school children. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  13. I have a Xerox Phaser 6022 color laser you can get for cheap right now on amazon.com. I've been using it for a couple years now with no problems. Toner is a bit on the pricey side, but the non-xerox brands work great and cost half as much. The printer whinges that it's not xerox brand toner but that doesn't seem to affect printing at all. It doesn't come with a document scanner as I didn't need one. Some of the big brand names are just rebranded Okidata laser printers and some of those were actually really nice, so if you need a business laser printer (It kind of sounds like you do,) you could go shopping around for one of those. I was really surprised at how affordable some of those printers were when I went looking. It's definitely worth checking out laser printers and it's definitely worth springing for one that does PostScript if you plan to use Linux at all. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  14. For me, age really wouldn't be a consideration. I hang out at a lot of airport restaurants and have met a lot of older pilots, and those guys are really sharp. If his vision and hearing are good and he's not suffering from dementia, I'd totally fly with him. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?
  15. Sounds like they wanted to sell you a $20 log book that's less useful than a $6 notebook. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?