gus

Trouble is, the wide you go the closer you have to be to get a sensible size image. I find my 0.5 to be a pretty good compromise but I haven't tried anything else. Specifically Trev told me his 0.42 was too wide and that everything looked really far away unless you're right in their face. Of course if you've got the skills to stay dead close to your subject then there's no problem . Come to Guildford! Probably the most awesome place in Surrey that starts with the letter G. Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I got my 0.5 Kenko lense and a 30mm -> 37mm stepup ring from London Camera Exchange in Guildford, although their website is pretty crap. "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

Langar's pretty good (much better since the Skreamer content went down ) and the Let's back this w/e I think. More and more of us are moving to the darkside so you don't have to worry about that. Thought I'm loathe to agree with the mad Skreaming one, Hinton's ok too. Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I think it's a TM in/around New York with 30000+ jumps. Anyone know his name? Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

Cool and Groovy (as it was) is based in the uk and has recently been taken over by one of George Pilkington's (sp?) old employees. It now seems to be marketed as Time Out Technologies and can be found here. I've never jumped anything other than ProDytter/ProTrack so I can't comment on their quality but I know people that happily use them. Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

Best position? Head-down with my eyes closed and my helmet off. I'm not sure I'd want to risk surviving the impact. But if I did, the best thing to land on? Now, where was that pillow factory.....

According to ParaGear, my Spectre 135 has a pack volume of 354 and a Safire 119 is 342. Now, that doesn't sound like a huge difference (ie I could sneak a new safire in my current container ) but the question is how reliable is that comparison? Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

Given that Icarus have a manufacturing plant in Spain does anyone know: if I bought a canopy from them and had it delivered here to the UK would it be subject to VAT and duty? Assuming that it came from the Spanish plant. I won a 35% off certificate and I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth using it. And yes, I have emailed Icarus but no response yet. Cheers, Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I have the FFX. The fit and comfort are good, although it's a bit too wide down by my ears. The quality of finish is excellent. My one gripe might be with customer service. They are very friendly and helpful, just not particularly prompt in replying to emails or voicemails. They've got a proper website now: http://www.2kcomposites.com Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I guess you could hold both toggles in one hand to flare and steer by shifting your weight..... Not sure I'd want to try it though!

I love my PC9 but probably should have got the 110. I like to take stills off the video and the PC9 being limited to 640x480 (vs 1024x768 for the PC110 ???) is a bit of a pain. Having said that, the PC9 was cheaper, smaller and the image quality is still really good. Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

That sucks man. Good luck finding something new, it might just turn out better! Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I'll drink to that!

...is that it knocks the living sh*t out of anything else you'll ever do. The worst thing about skydiving is that everything else becomes a bit boring. I've had such a good weekend that I'm seriously struggling to maintain any concentration at work. Even managing to slope off to dropzone.com isn't helping. Infact it might even even be making it worse! Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

My goggles are probably the coolest thing ever. And yes, even without snagging stuff on it, camera jumping can be dodgy so I promise to kick your arse if you ever do what I did! Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

Whenever I hear stories of people ‘loosing altitude awareness’ and going low I can’t help but think that if you’re not up to it you shouldn’t be in the air. However, on Sunday I discovered how easy it is. I got to the dz at 8:30am on Saturday morning, opened the car door and it nearly got blown off, the winds must have been 30 gusting to 40mph. But we sat around, the eternal optimists, until about 2pm when it was called and everyone went home. Except me. It’s a 2.5 hour drive home, I wanted to try and jump on Sunday and I didn’t want the 5 hour round trip. So I mooched about for a bit, went into town, got back to the dz and went to bed at about 10:30pm. Sunday started badly. Despite sleeping on the dz, all of 50 metres from manifest I slept in and missed lift 1, but at least the winds had dropped enough to let us jump. Then all of a sudden there was a free slot and I was on a 10 minute call. Normally that’d be fine but this was going to be my first jump with my new camera and I really needed a bit more time to sort myself out. Did I turn the slot down? No. The jump actually went quite well, I managed to keep the 5-way in frame for most of the dive. I was a bit high above them but I was pretty happy with the results and on a major buzz from my first jump in 6 or 7 weeks. The only problem was that I didn’t hear either of my two internally mounted audibles. I was lucky that I was watching the 5-way break off and that forced me to check my alti. The 2nd jump was a mess: a 3-way flat. I couldn’t get the camera recording and had to exit with it switched off. (Amazingly I managed to start recording at about 6k.) I lost one person all together but stayed with the other, just arsing about and letting him geek the camera. Then he suddenly looked at his alti and started tracking off, on the video you can see me looking at my alti just below 3k. For some reason I didn’t immediately dump: I did a pretty pathetic 2 second track, pulled just above 2k and was under canopy by 1500 feet. A full 1000 feet below my normal altitude and just a few seconds off my Cypres firing. My friend was considerably lower. I was an idiot. So many times I’ve been told that an accident is always down to a chain of things going wrong. Firstly, I was so hyped about jumping that everything else took a back seat. I was tired from not sleeping very well and hadn’t eaten in more than 12 hours. I was rushing about. I recognised that I didn’t hear my audibles (on the first jump) and yet I did nothing about it. I did nothing about it! It sounds SO stupid but it’s true. I was relying on my audibles, I looked at my alti ONCE the whole dive and that was at below 3k. I wasted nearly 1000 feet doing a pretty meaningless track when I could have just turned and dumped. The audible of the guy I was jumping with had somehow moved up inside his Pro-Tec so he didn’t hear his either. That bit at the end of Chronicles (or some video I’m sure we’ve all seen) where the two guys are jumping and the 2nd guy only realises how low he is when the first guy dumps? That was pretty much us. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What bugs me is that I’m not a reckless skydiver. I love skydiving too much to risk my future in it by doing foolish things, but there it is. What lessons have I learnt? Learn from your mistakes. The margins for error are small and get very small very quickly if loose your concentration. Never forget that skydiving can kill you. Gus "Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds."

I used a wide piece of elastic (about 8cm I think) to make a sort of sock for my Pro Dytter, then used cable ties to attach the sock to my Gath. It works a treat, holds the Dytter nice and snug and it's definately more secure than the L&B bracket on its own. Previously I just put a bungee around the bracket before I mounted it, trouble with that is it's a pain to change the bungee when it breaks. Gus

An audible is not a substitute for good altitude awareness. Too many people slap on an audible and never look at their alti again, it's a bad habit that could get you into alot of trouble. By all means jump with an audible but at the same time make a concious effort to use your alti. Gus

I've jumped with them and they're obviously pretty shit-hot in the sky. I'm not convinced that it's worth all that money though. 10 coach jumps versus 30 or 40 'normal' jumps seems like an easy decision to me. Maybe do just a couple of coach jumps to get the video (which is really useful) and some pointers before going off to practice. There's only so much someone can do just by watching you and telling you what you did wrong... Have a great time and don't get blown out to sea. Ask the Babylon guys to see the picture of the Cessna(?) that got flipped upside down whilst tied to the ground! It's pretty neat. Gus

Hi Strynx, The advantage of a collapsable pilot chute is that it doesn't drag your canopy as much when you're flying along under it. Under a huge great canopy the difference might not be noticeable but if you're kicking along at 60+ mph under your Cobalt 65 with a fully inflated pilot chute you'll be deforming the shape of the wing and altering its flight characteristics. I think the only con is that you might forget to 'cock' it before a jump, preventing it from inflating and pulling the closing pin and bag out. You can avoid this with a bungee pilot chute but I've just got rid of mine as they're more subject to material failure as they wear out (IMHO

Hi Jimmy, Congrats on the first (BEER!) jump and good luck with the licence. Maintaining equipment doesn't have to be all that expensive as long as you take care of what you've got. The most obvious costs are reserve repacks (£30 every 6 months in the UK, I think every 3 or 4 months in the US) and Cypres batteries (every 2 years, £40?) and servicing (every 4 years, £150-ish). There will be other occasional costs. Changing velcro if you have it, having the canopy relined, replacing the pilot chute, general restitching. But compared to renting equipment it's cheaper (?), more convenient and arguably safer. What have I forgotten? Gus

The ProTrack, and I assume the Dytter, takes a pressure reading every quarter of a second. From the reading and its reading on the ground it can work out your altitude. From the change in pressure readings over each quarter of a second it can calculate your freefall speed. I think! Gus

Most of you will probably remember the discussion that was going on a while back (6 months?) about a French company called Nervures that is developing a paragliding canopy that can be deployed in freefall like a normal skydiving canopy. Well I was back on their site, re-reading what's there and something got me thinking. They say they've got the glide ratio to 6:1, for every 6 units the canopy travels horizontally it will drop by 1. Fine. Then I found a site which compared paragliders, 8:1, with hang-gliders, 12:1, with sail planes, 30:1(!). So my questions are: What's a typical glide ratio (or the maximum achieveable) for a skydiving canopy? Is 6:1 really that much of an improvement? And when we compare canopies and say that one has a much better glide than another, what magnitude of difference are we actually talking about. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway

Maybe, but check out the Empuria webcam - it looks a lot nicer than Langar at the w/e!!! Gus

No thanks.