LukeH

I don't know about Megapixels but I like this Cannon.

What battery pack do you use with the flash and where do you mount it? What is the cycle time for full power flash?

What a waste... There are better ojects than a cliff for first few base jumps. There are better places than LB for first few cliff jumps. There are better exits in LB than LM for lower experienced jumpers. LM is not a good place to go Handheld. All of these things should be fairly obvious to anyone that does a little research or is an 'experienced' jumper. The odd weren't being stacked in his favour... School boy errors... that cost a life.

As others have said the easiest way is to buy a PCMCIA Firewire card. However if your laptop is old (more than 2 years), you may not have the necessary Processing power, Memory or Storage space to edit digital video, or it maybe frustratingly slow. Edited to add: Opps I was still asleep, thought it was a laptop for some reason. PCI is what you would want for a desktop of course.

What fo you mean valved? Is there a mechanism to close of the vents after the canopy is inflated? How do you activate these so called Valves?

Once pressurised you shouldn't notice a great differece between the flare on a Blackjack and Ace assuming they are the same size, configuration and condition. Your observation probably has something to do with the fact that it was an "Old Ace". It does have an identical airfoil to the Blackjack after all.

The vents help the canopy to become a flying wing in a shorter time (and vertical distance) then an unvented canopy. Once fully pressurised the canopy will behave in exactly the same way as an unvented version of the same wing (assuming values on vents). So if you have an offheading and are facing something, yes you will start to move towards it sooner under a vented canopy (all other things being equal) and therefore you have a shorter time to react to the offheading. However an inflated canopy will respond to control inputs better and I'd rather have one if I hit something. Another potential drawback of an unvented canopy that I have heard from a much more experienced jumper than I is that they MAY be more more prone to offheadings. I believe his thinking was if a canopy can inflate quicker via the vents, there is more POTENTIAL for uneven inflation too. I'm not so sure I buy that, and feel that the issue he is worried would be compensated by achieving full pressurasiation in a short time.

Canon Digital Rebel XTi (Canon 400D in Europe) Assuming you don't want to spend a fortune on accessories to get him started the 18-55mm (kit lens) will do and a 1GB Sandisk Extreme III CF card. He will also need a mounting plate and a bite switch to use it for skydiving. Don't get sucked into buying other stuff like extra batteries cases etc. Someone on here recently said that Costco had a good deal on this camera, otherwise you might try B&H at the link below. Assuming he has a decent computer, Digital is the way to go. If he isn't already into photography he will learn much faster with digital because of the quick feedback, and he won't spend a fortune on prints. B&H Review

Cookie Composites have a box for HC96. Looks nicer than any of the current BH boxes. It ships in 3 weeks, order now for a discount. http://www.cookiecomposites.com/proddetail.php?prod=02HC96

1.5Ghz - depends on the type of processor... I'd advise going for 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo or more. 512MB RAM - This is cetainly bare minimum. I'd advise anyone buying a computer these days to buy 2GB if at all possible or else buy 1GB with room to add a further 1GB in the future. 80GB Storage - A Hard Drive advertised as 80GB will actually only have 74GB. They advertise 1,000KB as 1GB. -Each hour of DV footage you capture will take up about 13GB. -When you render your project and want to create a DVD you will need additional space for this too. -You should reserve 20GB of space for your OS and Applications. -HD's operate best when there is 40%-20% free space. HDs are cheap, I'd recommend at least 160GB, but you really should go for 250GB+. There are lots of other considerations too. I think your budget it a bit low for a reasonable editing machine. If you want a monitor too, expect to pay $1,000 - $1,200 for the complete PC (something not too fancy). It's hard to beat Dell for Price/Performance ratio. Buy a decent PC now, and you can expect it to serve you well for 4-5 years. If you buy the bare minimum now, you can expect to be frustrated with it in 12-18months C-ya

Nice work.

look under the drivers seat, mine seems to always end up there.

You are correct about the buffer. The others commenting about memory sticks etc don't know what they are talking about. Also the stills taken while shooting video are of a lower quality than stills taken while not shooting video. But probably better than captures from the DV footage.

1) I don't really care how many jumps you have (even if it's SIX THOUSAND SKYDIVES) or how many of them are in a wingsuit of some sort or other. Each suit needs to be learned and making a comparison of one suit on which you have many jumps against another that you have relatively few is just plain stupid. 2) The Vampire V1 and V2 were never designed to be flocking suits. Neither was the S3 or the modified S3 they call S3S, S6 or Gibralter or whatever the new marketing name will be next week - the one with the wider leg and bigger deflectors on the arms because "bigger is always better". A decent pilot in any suit can flock, of course if you tailor a flock to a particular type of suit it will be harder for others to play... duh! The V1 and V2 take quite a bit of time to learn and fly in different flight modes, I have said many times that the Phantom is a better choice for flocking. Would you bring a Jet to fly in formation with Cessna 152s? 3) Saying the V2 is a step backwards from the V1 is crazy talk. I'm not even going to get into that, you are clearly showing ignorance on that one.

*cough* help from me? i don't think so. all i did was say it was wrong in my earlier post.

No. You have names in the wrong places and at least one of your colours is wrong. What is the point??

Hey Gus, Whatever about the bullshit, and equations and theories, my opinion for what it's worth, it that a decent pilot with a decent exit can get a V2 type suit flying in 400 - 500 feet. I haven't measured it, it is just a guess based on observations of a few WS exits. I think 500ft is a good ballpark figure to use. I doubt it's dramatically more or less. -Luke

This setup is not a wingsuit nor is it trying to be one. Forward speed will obviously be higher because of the lower drag. (Core to the design) However fall rate will be higher, because of the lower surface area (even with good lift creating ability). Glide ratio I would expect to be lower than that of a good WS Pilot in one of the high end suits. Different sites and different styles of flying require different tools. Sugar glider (I mean pre GS1) V2 and the G3 are three very different animals designed for different things. But I'm sure all are lots of fun.

For some reason, it does work camera to camera but it will not work Camera to PC. At least not with the consumer grade Sony cameras, and Premiere or Windows Movie Maker. I'm not sure where the problem lies, perhaps it's with the driver for the camera. You can transfer to and from various formats and cameras, but you can only capture with firewire from a camera that is the same format as the footage.

i recall hearing somewhere that groundeffect only happens when you are < half the wignspan above the ground.

I disagree, I believe this issue can only happen to muppets. You are a muppet!

you can and people have already explained how. however the leg pouch is much nicer. i guess you'd like to because it's what you know. leg pouch is the way to go....

Sept 2007

Be carefull with the Canon quoted frame rate. It depends on what you picture content is and even more so on the ISO. Higher ISOs result in a lower frame rate. I'd also GUESS that if you are using Autofocus this MAY affect the frame rate too. The quoted data for the Digital Rebel XT / 350D was: 2.8 fps, 14 JPEG or 4 RAW frames

Main changes: 1) 10.1 MP 2) 9 Point Auto Focus 3) Anti-Dust (sensor shake and dust map) 4) 2.5" Screen replacing both main and settings screen of XT/350D 5) Larger buffer, 27 Large Fine Jpegs (up from 10) and 10 RAW (up from 4) Expected to be available Mid Sept for $799 (body only), so expect to find cheap Digital Rebel XT / 350D for the next few months. See here for more details.