pilotdave

I'm not a helicopter pilot, but there is a flight school at the same airport as my DZ and I know someone that went through what you're talking about... and learned to skydive in there somewhere too. That school will hire all of their CFII graduates as far as I know. They get paid peanuts and get no benefits (other than flying every day!). 1000 hours is the magic number where they'll go off and get real jobs. My friend flew tours of the grand canyon for a couple years after leaving the flight school. Next job was corporate/charter in a very fancy helicopter (which I just so happened to do a tiny little bit of engineering work on to get it certified). I was surprised how fast she got there... but only after building those first 1000 hours as an instructor. When she had a fairly minor skydiving injury (broken finger that required surgery), she couldn't fly at all because of the cast on her hand. No insurance and no income. Not an easy way to live! And before forking over 5 figures to a flight school, make sure to read up on Silver State Helicopters... and what happened to their students when they suddenly announced bankruptcy. Dave

Can you clearly and concisely quote the far that states parachutes have the right of way over planes? Dave

I'm just looking at modifying my FF2 to hold my CX100. It looks to me like I'll be able to move the existing braket upward (just have to drill new slots in the helmet). And I'll have to add a new slot to the bracket to attach the camera, which may be the tricky part to keep the self-retaining thumbscrew feature. I think I have to do some cutting around the lens opening on the door to get it to move smoothly past the lens, and more cutting at the back end to get the door around the large battery. But it doesn't look too horrible... and I should be able to leave the strap on the camera. Dave

I recommend sports mode for learning (or forever, as many people choose). It simply works great. I personally use Tv mode. I did a tandem video this past weekend (I don't do them very often) and used 1 stop of exposure compensation because of the white clouds that would be in the background and a high overcast. I looked at my pics when I got down and was happy with them and satisfied that I picked good settings for that jump. Then looked at another video guy's pictures coming off the printer from the same load, using sports mode. Difficult lighting, but they came out just as good as mine if not better. And I've got a better camera and better lens. I know another videographer that chooses to use "P" mode, which is fully automatic but lets you make some adjustments like exposure compensation (which he doesn't use) and doesn't use automatic flash. I've told him many times that it's probably a bad idea to use a mode that could lower the shutter speed down to nothing if it wants to. But he's been happy with his results with that mode for years. In the end, there are a ton of different ways to set a camera or skydiving and they'll all work pretty well most of the time. With a modern camera, you can get great results in almost any conditions without knowing anything about how a camera works. Not that I recommend it. Instead, I recommend starting in sports mode and learning how to look at exif data. Learn what works and what doesn't. When you figure out what setting you might want to adjust, change modes and adjust it. Dave

I know your question is more general, but I'll be more specific since I was standing there taking pictures of the whole thing... or at least the end of it. I don't think you did anything wrong. Don't know if you want to get into the specifics on here but basically a jumper with 1000+ jumps flew the pattern too close to you and then appeared to panic and overreact a little when your canopy drifted sideways a little bit on final (crosswind landing, following the traffic). That jumper made an overly aggressive avoidance turn and then didn't fully or evenly flare, causing a less than graceful landing. Turbulence may have been a factor as well, since you were both close to a treeline. But my thought is this... that jumper didn't need to be near you. That jumper didn't need to be near that treeline. You've got less experience. You're allowed to land too close to trees and drift a little on final approach. Nobody should be so close that they have to dodge you. And when someone does have to make a turn on final to avoid someone, they need to make that turn carefully. When a 5 degree turn will do the trick, don't make a 45. But for future reference, stay away from that treeline (you already knew that) and stay in your lane on final if you can (turbulence may have prevented that). Just my unbalanced opinion.

Don't put the hypeye where it is easy to bump on climbout or with a riser on opening. I don't recommend the side of the helmet. Gee, cookie's advice was to buy everything they sell? Shocker! Just kidding. Do what the other guy said and tape everything in place. Put it on your head, start recording where you're looking, and then check out the video to make sure it's not wildly different than you think you should see. But in general I'd recommend getting a purpose built camera helmet instead of modifying your existing one. Dave Dave

Geez after reading this thread I want to disconnect my skyhook, remove my cypres, and throw away my helmet. Safety devices sound worthless! I am learning that I would have been better off spending all that money on jumping and learning to never need a safety device! I already have dirty laundry packed into my reserve container so I don't have to worry about that. Just kidding, it's clean laundry. Problem is that history has shown you can't train out the need for these things, when you need them. I'm not saying a skyhook is an absolute necessity in a rig, but it's a much better feature to want in a first rig than thick padding or tie die. How many people choose Mirage for their cool ads and badass looks? It's nice to see some people shop for safety features. Dave

Who was that? Another from the same jump and a new one. Good eye contact throughout the barrel roll huh? Dave

Then I'm all for it. You do NOT have my permission to die skydiving. Nobody does. Your death could fuck things up for me! It's unacceptable! If I could take that freedom away from you, I would! Dave

Thanks. Yes, I deleted it. Decided to let someone else argue with him.

Just study all the category quizzes in the ISP section of the SIM. Dave

I don't recommend trying to use one suit for freeflying and RW. Chances are it'll make you worse at one or both. In my opinion, you are better off getting a decent fitting RW suit, with booties. Your freefly suit can consist of whatever you happen to be wearing that day, with the shirt tucked in. An RW suit makes a big difference. A suit that helps you achieve the same fallrate as the people you're jumping with will help you learn. I'd go with two cheap suits over one really fancy one. Skydiving costs every penny you will ever have for the rest of your skydiving career. No reason to try to save money.

http://forum.altimaster.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1 There's a link to it on alti-2's homepage. A new version of NMU comes out for every update. 6.0.3 is available in the newest version. Dave

I agree. Skydiving is FAR more dangerous than skiing, skateboarding, etc. It also is less tolerant to mistakes. There's no bunny slope in skydiving. Skydiving is also FAR less accepted as a sport than all those other dangerous activities kids do. And it's a much smaller market than any of those other activities. And I bet there's insurance available to skateboard parks that isn't available to dropzones. I soloed a plane at 16. Glider pilots are allowed to solo at 14. I don't have a huge problem with 16-year-old skydivers. My DZ allows 16 year olds to do AFF (not tandems), but only if they come from a skydiver's family and under strict rules so we're comfortable there won't be any legal problems. But I wouldn't want it to be open to every 16 year old in the general public. It has to be taken very seriously. I don't think the USPA needs to regulate ages except that I don't think dropzones will do it themselves. If USPA dropped the age 16 requirement, US dropzones would start taking 8 year olds for tandems in a heartbeat. I don't mind the USPA putting a stop to that. Dave

More from the past weekend.

A couple tandem videos, an AFF or two, some RW, some RW videos, one 5-way CRW, and even a 7-way freefly (AKA watching a 6-way from a bit of a distance

I picture you walking around with an old rotary phone. Now my whole image of you is changed and I assume you're going to star in TV commercials advertising tandem skydives or something. Dave

A couple of frowns from yesterday. Dave

I started using Carbonite online backup a while ago. I create data a lot faster than it uploads, so my computer was constantly uploading when idle. 100+ gigs uploaded over weeks. Then I had my OS/apps hard drive fail. My pictures and videos are stored on other drives. Anyway after replacing the failed drive and reinstalling Carbonite, my backup seems to have disappeared and Carbonite says it can't back up that drive because its removable. Its an east's docking station... internal hard drive as far as windows knows. I called tech support and after a wasted 2 hours they told me I would get a call from a higher level person. I missed the call and am never home during their hours, so no resolution yet. Might ask for a refund and try mozy next. Back on topic, I use lightroom to manage photos. I use a directory structure by date. I upload many shots each week to my website, and caption and keyword them. I pretty much use the website as my index when I am looking for a pic. I find the date and filename on the site and then browse to the right folder in lightroom. Dave

Oh my experience is the same as yours. But his lens is fogging when he climbs out. I'm assuming it has something to do with the sudden temperature change from warm to cold, but I don't know. Never had that happen. Dave

I don't have a solution for you... but I'll just say that my 10-22 does fog on occasion. And when it happens, it's usually internal to the lens... not something I can just wipe off. But I've only had it happen at cloud level, not exit altitude. The fogging was a real surprise on the 10-22... never happened so bad on my 18-55. I once had to hold the lens out the door of the plane during the climb to clear the fog from the previous jump. Worked great actually. Not that I recommend holding a lens (off the camera) out the door of a plane. But who knows, maybe you could keep your lens cold by holding it out the door for part of the ride up. Fog might clear by the time you exit. Dave

Saw an interesting one the other day. An experienced jumper had a nasty huge bruise on her arm caused by a gopro being jammed into it on a linked exit. Just because they're small doesn't mean they don't get in the way any less than a "real" camera. Dave

From this past weekend. Dave

Obviously setting an audible high isn't automatic death. It'll be fine most of the time. But I know I don't know the difference between my first and second alarms on my audible. I use it on most jumps and have been using it for probably 1700 jumps, and I still couldn't describe what the first and second alarms sound like. If I missed one alarm and caught the second alarm and wasn't paying any attention to altitude other than that, there's a good chance I'd find myself pulling low. But of course we all have an internal clock and start expecting pull time to be coming up, so we're usually pretty aware of our altitude as we get close to pull time. The problem will come when things aren't normal... like when your buddies convince you to freefly with them. Your internal clock will be all screwed up and you might miss that breakoff alert. Now don't get me wrong, the chances are low when you keep the alarms set to the same altitude every time and pretty much freefall (or fly) for about the same amount of time on every jump. But switching between jump types, pull altitudes, etc... well... I believe we should know our altitude throughout the jump, not just when we hear a beep and thing we remember what altitude it was set for. Ever seen someone track off at 8000 feet because their audible was set wrong? I've seen someone with thousands of jumps do it. And then of course turn around and come back.

Hmmm... been using mine daily and haven't had that one happen yet. There are some replacement alarm clock apps you could try. But I'm too scared of my alarm not going off. Dave