IvanPeters

In that case, you'll like this: http://www.ivanpeters.com/movies/cowtandem.htm

We use an old camera with a busted lens. If you have lots of money to spend you could go for one of those Sony video walkmans or something like this. Ivan

He was not saying that is is important to do a half loop. He was suggesting that if you don't have the general flying skills to be able to do a half loop then maybe you don't have the general flying skills to be near a tandem. I don't have an opinion on this as I don't remember ever trying to do a half loop in a camera suit and I don't film tandems anyway. But I'm going to give it a go at the earliest opportunity and then I'll decide if I agree or disagree. Ivan

I assume that Gigital means Digital. MiniDV is digital. Most, if not all, formats now available are digital. I think there is little difference in quality between the formats (with the possible exception of compressed formats like MPEG). Things that have a bigger effect on quality are the general quality of the camera, the size and resolution of the CCD, the size and quality of the lense, the effectiveness of the anti-shake technology used, etc. The differences in the formats are more practical. How expensive is the media, how easy is it to swap tapes/cartridges/disks, how does it cope with vibration, how much footage can you fit on one tape/cartridge/disk, etc. MiniDV is what most people in skydiving use. It's small and light, reasonably cheap and reliable. The fact that most other people use it is a good reason to do so yourself. You'll be able to borrow tapes from others, lend tapes to others, copy stuff from tape-to-tape, etc. Ivan

I'm not sure that this is 100% technically accurate, but I believe the general idea goes something like this: Video resolution doesn't change. There are some small variations in the number of lines generated by different cameras but the general idea is that an NTSC image is 720x480. That's about 350k pixels. Cameras with higher resolution CCD's use the extra resolution to better calculate the colour values for each pixel. In theory, the higher the resolution, the better the calculation. I've not seen any footage from any of the current sub-megapixel cameras but I've always been able to see a quality difference between the older ones (say a PC-101) and a megapixel camera (like the PC-120). But there is more to it than just the CCD resolution so I would expect the current crop of sub-megapixel cameras to be better than the 101. I have found it harder to see a difference between a one megapixel camera and a two megapixel camera (like my TRV-60). I believe that if you want to do widescreen without loss of quality then you need a 2 megapixel CCD as it has the spare capacty to handle the changed form factor. The 3 CCD camera has one CCD dedicated to each colour (red, green and blue) so it doesn't need all that extra resolution to do the calculations. Ivan

Cool. I want one of those just for the gadget value. Just have to find 300 Euros somewhere. Ivan

Well, based on this thread, there are at least two cases of it having happened. I am not aware of lost hook knifes being a common occurrence so I'm going to guess that there have been significantly less than a million tries. Well, it seems I spoke too soon. I lost my hook knife on opening today. I watched it fly away very close to my canopy. Luckily, lines and canopy escaped unscathed. Ivan

Well, based on this thread, there are at least two cases of it having happened. I am not aware of lost hook knifes being a common occurrence so I'm going to guess that there have been significantly less than a million tries. Ivan

You missed "I have one rig and need more." Two rigs and a dedicated packer would be nice. Maybe three rigs in case one is out of action for a bit. Ivan

It is common, when registering a domain, to have to supply a contact email address that is on a different domain (if your hosting company is going to cut you off for non payment of bills then they need another, working, address to contact you on). Do a Whois on my domain (ivanpeters.com) and your'll find my work address as an administrative contact. If I lost my job I would have to change it to something like a hotmail account. This Rose Pearse has obviously bought some web space and a domain (from internetters.co.uk) and set herself up as a web design and hosting company. This DZ hired her to design and host their site. What doesn't quite add-up is that they appear to have enough money to have a fleet of aircraft but clearly haven't spent much on their web site. But, perhaps they are not internet savvy enough to know how bad it is. Ivan

I generally don't notice a problem but there have been a few occasions when things have been mysteriously off-center. Guess I'll have to get the drill out and try it on the other side. Ivan

Interesting. I now know that I am left eye dominant. But I mounted my sight on the right because it seemed to feel right at the time. What sorts of effects are known/thought to come from having the sight on the "wrong" side? Ivan [Edit for spelling]

Did any of those people say they had done it? It might seem logical to say that pulling on the rear risers in normal flight slows it down, so doing that to one in a downplane should bring it back above you. But a downplane is far from normal flight. It might be an interesting thought exercise to wonder if that would work but do you really want to be trying an experiment like that while you are heading rapidly at the ground? I think your AFF instructor failed to mention anything about the riser idea for good reason. Ivan

Do what I did. Get a Mac Ivan

6.0 or 6.0.1? 6.0 had a known problem with dropped frames exporting to tape. You can download a free 6.0.1 upgrade from Adobe. I used 6.5 with XP for a couple of years without a problem. I don't think I used 6.0.1 with XP. If something used to work and now it doesn't then the general rule is that something has changed. I've worked in IT support and users will swear blind that they haven't done anything and it just stopped working on it's own. Software doesn't wear out and stop working. There is always some sort of trigger. Although it may not always be obvious. The trick is to identify when the problem started and then identify what changes happened between the previous time it worked and then. Changing from 2000 to XP is a pretty major event. If the problem started when you upgraded then the upgrade is a good candidate for the cause. It's a good idea to have up to date versions of all your software when you upgrade the OS. I am pretty sure 6.0 was released before XP and 6.5 was released after XP, so I would suggest upgrading to 6.5 if you can. Ivan