pilotdave

Yup: http://www.poxon.org/Craig/Skydive/Fatalities/search.asp?MinDate=25%2F10%2F1998&MaxDate=25%2F10%2F1998&Place=&State=&Country=US&Category=&MinAge=0&MaxAge=78&MinJumps=0&MaxJumps=14000&AAD=&RSL=&Description=&DescriptionOperator=OR&Lessons=&LessonsOperator=OR. Dave

I mentioned a fatality earlier in this thread. I finally had a chance to look it up... A guy stalled his canopy agressively (on purpose) and got caught in his own lines. His reserve didn't clear the mess. Dave

Awesome. Maybe some of the local wingsuits that live in the bottoms of gear bags will come out to play too!

Anybody coming to CPI this weekend for some flocking?? Dave

My dz requires them for anyone involved in student jumps... students, instructors, coaches, video, people jumping with a tandem, etc. Dave

Works exactly the same on the CX100. I just set the focus at the beginning of the day and leave it alone (since I don't adjust zoom). The depth of field is so huge with these wide angle lenses... no need to be exact. Dave

There was a fatality October 25th, 1998 in Delaware caused by someone falling through his own canopy. It was the day of my first jump at a nearby DZ. I believe he was trying to loop his canopy. Can't find the incident report right now... Dave

Damnit, guess it's too late to delete my post and let this thread die, huh? And Nikita, we still haven't gotten over the fact that you are not a hot woman like your name suggests! At least shave the beard!

It's funny how easy it is to make really nice, caring instructors sound like complete assholes. The people you're talking about spend more of their free time helping new skydivers with whatever they need than you could imagine. Those jumpers "give back" by jumping, learning, and progressing. You make every excuse not to do those things. Seriously, I've never seen anyone else that is new and excited about jumping take 2-3 months off immediately after getting licensed because it might be too cold (even though you never even tried a winter jump to find out). While it may not be true at all, it would seem to some observers that you like the idea of being a skydiver more than actually skydiving. Now that instructor may have been a little harsh... but what have you done for him/her? Where would the advice the instructor offers go? What would be the value of spending time helping? Instructors simply don't want to spend a lot of time working with people that are just going to disappear from the dropzone for months at a time. Yeah, I'm being harsh too. We'd love for you to come out more often. We have all kinds of events designed for jumpers like you. If you can't be out every weekend, maybe you could plan to attend some educational events. Dave

I dunno... anyone that takes months off after getting their A-license because it's too cold (even though old, jaded jumpers keep on jumping) deserves to get picked on at least a little.

You can adjust it. I found it uncomfortably hard to work it (too much pressure) until I turned it almost all the way down. Now it doesn't take much pressure so it's easy to use. There's absolutely no feedback of whether or not it's working in freefall... nothing to feel, nothing to hear, nothing to see. So I'd never know if I was blowing hard enough if it was set to a higher pressure. It'd force me to kind of overdo it... which I'm doing anyway. It's not a big deal... I'll get used to it. I could put the camera on single-shot mode instead of continuous if I really wanted to take fewer pictures. But with a tongue switch, it's easy to feel when it's clicking and not just hold it down. With the blow switch, I'm tending to just blow more than I need to. If I could hear the camera taking pictures, I'd be able to control it better. But for now I just need to trust that it's working and not go nuts blowing and turning blue. Dave

People like you with their ignorant comments is what gets to me. Yeah, that was seriously ignorant... he has no idea that all trailers were evicted from the dropzone a few years ago! Seriously though... the same people that give you crap also receive the same crap when they take a half day off to do family stuff. It's nothing personal. I mean it can't be THAT bad... you've only been out once in the last 3 years! Just kidding! PS: Did you hear we got a twin otter this year? Sorry! Kidding! Really!

No... Vegas just remembers the location of the media files. If your card reader is drive F, Vegas will just look there for the file. If you don't want to save your unedited videos, it'll probably work. But I wouldn't recommend it. There won't be any quality degradation, but I would think that it might affect Vegas' performance since the card reader is probably slower than the hard drive. Dave

You'll want to move the files onto your hard drive. If you edit a video with a video file on your memory stick, you won't be able to re-edit or output the edited video without the original. Try saving a project, then pull the memory stick out and re-open the project. Vegas won't be able to open the media file. But I agree about the CX100... finally started jumping mine a couple weeks ago. What a pleasure to grab videos off my camera or off of friends' cameras. I collected all the videos from a 4-way scrambles competition last weekend... thank goodness everyone was using a CX100. Just a few minutes to download the entire competition. Tapes and firewire capture would have made me cry. Dave

Hey Marty, I wouldn't recommend your plan. The reason for the 200 jump recommendation (or higher if you're not as current) has little to do with tracking skill or the ability to wave off wingsuit style. It's much more about overall awareness. In my opinion, you're better off making a couple hundred RW jumps. Learn to play well with others...

I only have CS2, but the lens correction filter can do the same thing. It's just not automated. But you can save your own profiles for your lenses to help automate the process. But I have a 10-22 so I haven't used it myself.

Just another update... I got to put a lot of jumps on my new camera helmet over the weekend. The ultimate switch is working great. I need a lot more practice using a blow switch... I'm still taking about 5 pictures when I want one. For now I switched my camera's frame rate from 6.3 fps to 3 fps. But I either need to learn to take fewer pictures or invest in memory cards. I took 2400 pictures yesterday. Oops. Dave

This one's really old... pic is from my first jump. PC in tow. Dave

Sounds good! Here are a few pics of my setup. A little hard to see what's going on inside the helmet, but all of it is covered by the padding and most of the electronics sits in a protected area on the sides or forehead area. Everything other than the ringsite is attached to the top plate. Dave

200+:8:Probably 200+ pictures taken on my one camera jump of the weekend... testing my new camera helmet and blow switch. A little blowing gets the camera going at 6.3 frames per second. Don't need to blow so much.

I was able to jump it once. The focus problem must have been my imagination. Seems to be working fine. Now I just have to get used to blowing... I think I took 200 pics on the jump. Note to self: short puffs! Dave

A little more open than my DZ... The landing area is just below and to the left of the runway. Dave

I'd love to learn more about DZs that are very successful without student radios. Do you have very big landing areas? Lots of outs? Few obstacles? My DZ requires radios for all students right until they have an A-license stamp on their forehead. Nobody talks to them once they prove themselves, but they have a 2-way radio just in case. Very useful for when they land off. I found out recently that the radio requirement comes from the USPA as part of a water gear waiver (for a tiny pond a long way from the DZ that I couldn't hit if I tried). We've got a pretty small landing area, lots of trees around it, houses, and miles of woods on one side of the airport. AFF out of a turbine plane often means long spots and some students have trouble finding the airport. I've debriefed students that didn't find the landing area until they were on downwind. It's hard to imagine we'd do too well without radios. If we went back to IAD out of a 182, maybe. But if I could learn from a DZ that doesn't use radios, I'm listening. Dave

I have it in one of my suits. Never noticed anything different about it. And it's starting to rip up in a couple places. Didn't get it on my next suit. Dave

How is it deceptive? They don't recommend themselves. They list a few dropzones in Mexico. They have a page for every state too. They list real dropzones in those states. It's clearly a starting point for ProSkydiving but it's not deceptive at all. Dave