hoym

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Everything posted by hoym

  1. 0:16:0 One tandem on Sunday. 15 Jumps on Saturday. Including... 6 tandem 3 camera 3 fun 2 aff 1 coaching First time I made 15 jumps in one day.
  2. Wow, you know a lot about jeeps. I just picked up my 'project' a couple of months ago. Haven't really started on it though. Hope it's done within the year. With help it might be possible. It's a '73 CJ-5. It came with both 304 and 360. The 304 is currently installed but I hope to go with the 360. It came with two T-5's and a Scout T-18 with the Scout Dana 300 TC. Again, I hope to go with the T-18 but I think I need to convert the long T-18 input shaft to the short style. I've heard this is possible. Any experience? Like I said, (for me) it's a big project. I had a '75 CJ-5 about 20 years ago. I remember it was a lot of fun and got me in all kinds of trouble.
  3. Okay, I don't know if this counts or not. Keving Bacon was in Kiefer Sutherland who was in A Time To Kill with Donald Sutherland who was in The Puppet Masters Which is a movie that I starred in. Okay I didn't really star in it. ALRIGHT, you don't even see me in it. But I did get my name in the credits. You just need to keep waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and eventually, yep, there it is. 5 seconds of fame name in print.
  4. This is a two part question. First Question... Do you ever see or look at the medical statement part of the waiver that your tandem passengers fill out? Or do you rely on the manifest/office staff to review the waiver at the time the customer fills it out? Now I'll tell you about this 75 year old tandem passenger. We have the harness fitted and we're getting ready to walk to the airplane. She holds out her hand and says... “Here, you better hold onto this.” and drops a small vial into my hand. I pause a few seconds and then ask, “Oh, what's this?” Slight pause and then she says, “That's my nitro.” pause, pause, pause... “Ohhh, uh, you must have a small heart problem?” She looks me straight in the eye and says, “Nope,,,, It's a big one... Congestive heart failure. But this (skydive) is on my list and I'm going to every thing I can until I'm gone.” This lady was great and she had a great attitude. She had been a pilot since she was 20 years old and while she can't pass the physical for her pilot's license any more, she still flies when she can talk any pilot into taking her up. Anyway, attached is a picture of us after we jumped. And no, we didn't need the nitro. The second question is would you have taken her after learning about her heart condition?
  5. The laser pointer is great! I used one that was designed for a gun sight. Two screws mount it flat to the surface and it shines parallel to the cameras and eye sight.
  6. I made a simple 'L' bracket. In addition to the thumb screw, I attach a strap to the top of the camera and the 'L' bracket where the neck strap would attach to the camera. It might be more than is needed to attach it but it is secure. The 'L' bracket is a bit taller than the camera. The hope is that it might take the hit from the ceiling of the airplane instead of the camera. Also, there is a little support for the remote cable attachment point. Not much but a little bit none the less.
  7. Last Saturday I jumped with the 550EX flash for the very first time. The sun was straight overhead and I was worried about too much shadow on the vector tandem. So, I attached the flash for the first time since I rigged it up last winter. What I'm wondering is, did the flash have any possitive affect? I'm not sure is it worth the extra weight. I think it helped a little to soften the shadow of the straight overhead sun. What do you think?
  8. It's been a long winter. Jump season finally started for me. I got to shoot camera for two 4-way teams and one tandem. Here are a couple of pics from that. Other than the three camera jumps, I did 7 tandems and one fun jump that got a grand total of 7/8ths of one point. Hmmm. Anyway, it's great to be back in the air. -mh.
  9. From the reading that I've done, the R800 look great. It is the printer that I am planning to buy. I haven't gotten any first hand experience with it but it looks great from the reviews and other on-line feedback and reports. Let us know if you decide to get it.
  10. I've looked at this host as a potential provider but have no actual experience. 2gb of space and 20gb of bandwidth for $15/month. http://www.hosting4usa.com/hosting.asp?inc=overview
  11. I got a PM from a guy who noticed that I had checklists taped to the back of the 'L' bracket of my camera helmet. He asked me to post them so here they are. I had to re-type them and so there are a few changes here that I intend to make to the original. BEFORE LEAVING HANGER Part 1 1. Still Camera, ISO 200 A. Clean Lens B. Check Battery C. Flash Card D. Bolt & Strap 2. Video Camera A. Check Battery, & Spare B. Set Infinity Focus C. Check Zoom D. Clean Lens E. Bolt & Strap 3. Helmet A. Top Pad 4.Remote Switch, ready BEFORE LEAVING HANGER Part 2 1.Weights 2.Suit w/ Switch Routed 3.Goggles/spare 4.Lens clean cloth 5.Rig 6.Altimeter Hand/Chest 7.Chest Strap 8.Wings Attached 9.Spare Batteries BEFORE LEAVING PLANE 1.Camera MF, tv 400, ISO 200 2.Plug in remote 3.Still Turned On 4.Test switch 5.Check Handles / chest strap 6.Swoop Cords 7.Goggles at hand 8.Get Pin Check 9.Helmet on 10.Goggles on 11.Video on / Test CamEye AFTER LEAVING AIRPLANE 1.Take good pictures 2.Be Safe (Edited to add: 'Get Pin Check')
  12. This winter I got the flash mounted onto the helmet. On the back is a Strobo Frame plate. The flash is thumb screwed to a bracket that mounts to this. Then I tie the flash to the still camera 'L' bracket with a strap and quick clip. The strap help keep the flash remote cord corralled. The flash setup is all new and I haven't jumped it yet. Here are a few more pics showing the flash setup... -mh.
  13. I top mounted both my 10D and PC-1. Somebody posted pics here of his PC style video mounted in back of his SLR. I thought that would be a good setup but when I tried it, I found the same thing that PhreeZone said. It needed a 2+ inch riser to keep the still camera out of view of the video. I experimented a bit and found that the PC-video camera in front of the 10D worked. I thought for sure the video camera would be in the view of the still camera but it is not. Part of the reason this works is because of the 1.6 Field of View of the DSLR's. The outside perimeter of the lens is not used or 'viewed' through by the sensor. I liked this setup because the CamEye button is mounted on top and seems to be a bit protected and I can use my right hand to activate it and its easy to find and my hand doesn't pass in front of any lenses. The 'L' bracket I made for the still camera gives a little bit of protection to the camera. It is attached to the top of the camera and will not allow the camera to twist. And, it offers a little bit of protection to the remote cord where it is attached to the camera. Edited to add: I forgot to talk about pic 0465. When I mounted the cameras, I also mounted the laser site. I took this piece of paper and taped it to the wall. The still camera, video, laser, and eyepiece, are all mounted in parallel. The two circles line up exactly with the two cameras. The red dot lines up with the laser and the black dot lines up with the eyepiece. All four are centered with their respective target whether the helmet is inches away or a hundred yards away. This way I know if I've got the right side of his jaw in the center of the site, his forehead will be in the center of the frame no matter how close or far away I am. The laser makes it very easy to check the alignment of the site by my self. Here are a few pics.
  14. Hey, Way Cool! Thanks for sharing. -mh. (Note to self: "gotta try this!")
  15. Pair of 512s. I get about 200 pictures per card. There was only one day last year when I filled one and had to switch to the next. -mh.
  16. A couple weeks ago, I started playing with Neat Image to reduce the noise from my high iso images. The images seem to come out a bit soft but nonetheless, I've been happy with the results so far. They have a free version for home non-commercial use. It was rated #2 out of 18 similar products in some review I read somewhere. http://www.neatimage.com
  17. Wow!!! very Very VERY nice!!! How long did it take to put that together?
  18. There is usually a lot of good information on www.dpreview.com I found the following. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakdcs14n/ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinions.asp?prodkey=kodak_dcs14n
  19. I'm shopping for the same thing. Here is a recent review that I found. http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,115124,00.asp Let us know what you end up getting. -mh.
  20. Here is Canon's site. http://www.usa.canon.com/eflenses/lineup/index.html I bought Canon's 28-135. It has worked okay for me. Some times I wish I had a longer lens, something toward the 200 to 300 range. And an 'L' lens would be nice. And my own King Air, and a... and a... Anyway, the 28-135 was about $400 and works for most of my walk around stuff. -mh.
  21. With a jump run into the wind, I think it is ABSOLUTELY true that freeflyers should not exit first. And the stronger the winds, the more important this is. But what about a cross wind jump run (winds same perpendicular to jump run direction from exit to opening)? It seems that on a cross wind jump run, that exit order between flat flyers and freeflyers would not matter because the separation at opening altitude would be even greater than the separation between the respective exit points.
  22. Mr. Kallend, I finally got some time to look at most of the information on your web site. Everybody, if you haven't taken time to check it out, you should. I ESPECIALLY liked the... '* Annotated animation of the above, by Tim Wagner' The Annotated animation should be a must see for everyone. I think it adds a lot of merit to the idea of cross wind jump runs. I haven't seen much discussion about using cross wind jump runs but I think it could help prevent slower falling belly flyers from being 'blown' over the top of the faster falling head down flyers. Thanks again. -mh.
  23. No, I had missed that. I'll look more closely later. Thanks. -mh.
  24. There are some folks out here who have put a lot of thought into the exit separation equation. I would like to know what distance would be considered safe separation. The distance may be different depending on size of group, style of jumping, opening altitude, others? But how far should we let the plane fly in distance between one group to the next? After you know what distance you want, then determining the number of seconds will be a little bit easier to calculate.
  25. I've attached my version of the separation calculator spreadsheet. This one is quite simple. You will see that it doesn't take wind direction or speed into consideration. But, I think that is okay for a general calculation to give a ball park look at exit delay to achieve a desired amount of separation. If everyone on the airplane fell at the same rate (say 120 mph) then I don't think wind speed or direction would have much bearing on the results. Everyone would be falling through the same mass and their 'drift' due to the wind would be the same relative to each other. Separation distance at opening point relative to exit point would be about the same for each group of jumpers. You just need to know the distance of separation that you want in advance and then determine/calculate the number of seconds of delay needed to give you the desired distance. It seems to me that if you have someone jumping head down doing 200 mph, and the next group of belly flyers doing 120, then wind direction and speed will play a bigger role in the difference in drift between a fast falling group and a slow falling group. I think the impact is greater if the jumprun is on the windline. It seems that the impact of wind direction and speed would be diminished on a cross wind jump run as drift along the line of flight would be attributable to the 'throw' of the airplane. This should not be too different for different styles of jumping. The amount of 'drift' attributable to the direction and speed of the wind would be perpendicular to the line of flight of the jump plane. So, the amount of separation would be roughly the same between head down or belly flyers on a cross wind jump run. In fact, as I think about it now, on a cross wind jumprun, the stronger the wind is, the greater the amount of separation that would be obtained because the belly flyers would be 'pushed' by the wind for a longer period of time than the head down jumpers. However, it is too late for me to think about the wind blowing in two different directions at different altitudes. Let me know if there is any merit to these ideas. -mh.