matt3sa

Im a Tandem Instructor and there are a lot of factors to consider here. The positioning of the harness (in your waste area) can either help or make it more difficult to lift your legs. Most of the time, position the hip sections of the harness closer to the front of the passenger. This puts them in a naturally seated position and makes lifting the legs much easier. There are however downfalls to this approach with people that have thicker legs or for lack of a better description a big ass. If you have thick legs or a larger sized rear end I typically slide the hip sections further towards the sides of the passenger. This makes for a better fit for these types of passengers, but certainly does make it difficult and sometimes impossible for passengers to lift their legs. Without seeing a video or photo of how the harness was positioned it would be difficult to tell.

What dz taught UFC fighter Mike Swick to skydive?

Awesome. http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialSwick?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase#p/u/10/ESPU_u0n73c

I've got about 6 or 700 tandems and I've only had one that passed out. It was 2 or 3 years ago when we used to duct tape the handcams to the students hands (which we no longer do since the incredible invention of the gopro's). I'm 5'6 170 and this guy was 6'2 230. He was doing a jump just before going to boot camp for the air force. He got completely wasted the night before and had nothing to eat that morning. Every thing was good until the parachute opened. I was giving my typical "point the camera on you" guidance and then I noticed his camera hand go limp. I said again "point the camera at you" and used my left foot to force his left hand to aim the camera at him for a second. When I released my foot and his hand dropped I realized what was happening. He was out cold. I began practicing methods for hooking his legs in a somewhat upright position for landing. I was uncomfortable with it, but I'm certain he would have been uninjured if we had landed with him being unconscious. Fortunately he woke up at about 3 or 400 feet and still remember my instructions about picking his legs up. He was nauseous and dizzy for the next 3 hours while his friends made jumps.

I'm curious as to what are the most common tandem mals. I've got 1400 + jumps and I had my first mal at jump 1331. It was a right side tension knot on a sigma 370 with the larger sized lines. I've heard that that is a very common mal for the sigma's. Just out of curiosity please state your tandem jump numbers, tandem mals, and gear type with information regarding your equipment. Much appreciated. Thanks. Apologize if I missed a previous post on this.

Dutton,

I think you said it best. These posts always draw a mixed bag of responses. No disrespect to any of those of you who consistently tell people that they aren't ready due to statistics provided by the jumpers via the internet. Preaching via the conservative route is often the safest way when requesting and giving information over the internet. While there are a lot of people that make poor decisions regarding their gear, there are (in my opinion) an equal base of talented canopy pilots that are capable of progressing a bit faster.

Brumby, without anyone seeing you fly your gear NO one can tell you if you're ready for a Velo via internet forums. This is the absolute worst place to get an endorsement for making a gear change with high performance canopies. There are a lot of very talented and very knowledgeable canopy pilots on these forums that are an incredible wealth of information, but again I don't feel as though anyone can flat out say that you aren't ready for it. It would be different if you had like 50 jumps and you were inquiring about velocities lol

I had them installed on mine. One of them broke within the first few jumps and the cost to ship it back isn't worth it. I didn't notice any differences in anything other than an extra step for packing.

It's difficult to judge without seeing your interaction with him. Bottom line for me is that if he's licensed his gear preferences are his choice (or the S&TA's) if he's soloing. If you were tactful about it and didn't sound cocky then it's definately for a good cause. I will say that I've been to other dropzones where staff naturally assume that you're jumping equipment that you shouldn't be and start very untactfully ridiculing people because they don't know you. They have a certain cocky stigma to them like their shit doesn't stink and just feel the need to solidify their status as an "important" skydiver. I guess what I'm saying is that it's all about how you communicate your thoughts and opinions. If their decisions are going to directly impact the safety of others (realistically), then certainly something needs to be said. Just my two cents.

DSE,

Thanks that's exactly what I was looking for (straight answer). To all the others, the USB stick idea is brilliant. That would be extremely fast and the customer would have a better quality video. Archiving with a recovery fee sound brilliant as well. For those of you who are distributing with memory sticks, are you still editing?

Mtt

That's exactly what I was getting at. I fear that a large majority of our customers aren't going to have a blue ray capable home dvd player. Is it safe to assume that making blue ray disks is the only way to deliver near hd quality?

beowulf,

I'm really just looking to avoid losing quality. I'm not necessarily looking to target blue ray player owners. I want to burn direct to a regular dvd - r. I'm assuming your method involves rendering the H.264 to AVCHD and then burning to a blue ray disk?

Charlie, I'll look into that. It sounds more like what I'm looking for. Thanks.

I've noticed the video is slow to adjust when there is a significant light change. My guess is that the camera is still adjusting when the photo is taken. I don't think there's anything you can do about it. In the picture you posted, if the camera was rolled more towards your left shoulder it may have not felt the need to adjust according to the extreme brightness change in the left side of the photo (towards the front of the plane).

I'm at a small low key 182 DZ. I only do about 300 tandems a year from APR to OCT. My pay may not be a good reference because we're a small operation, but normally I get 35 for a tandem or 50 for handcam. I currently use a gopro with the cookie mount (for handcam video). This was the first season that I had the gopro, and I've been thinking of doing the same as your dz and getting an additional gopro for photos. I've tested mine for hc photos and they come out great. Typically our dz charges 70 for hc. I would expect to charge 100 for photo and video out of a handcam setup. I would personally expect an extra 10 or 15 dollars as a TI for doing that. I suppose it would depend on what you currently pay your people and what you charge. I also edit all of my videos at the end of the day. I see you didn't get much of a response, so hope this helps.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased the appropriate hardware to render HD video efficiently. I'm now learning that any time HD video (h.264) is burned to a DVD + or - R that it's encoded and compressed to sd quality. I'm aware that blue ray is the most likely solution, but in consideration of delivering the product to the customer, how many people actually have blue ray players now a days? Is there any way to make this work without switching to blue ray? I want to have a finalized HD video (or at least a video with barely noticable quality loss). I've been using Vegas and DVDA. Any help would be appreciated.

Exactly what indyz said. I place the hip joints over the hip bone area and never have an issue. Just be aware that fat people with big butts are a little different. I don't live them as far forward for that body type.

I didn't read every post. I stopped after page one. I think your intentions are good trying to draw attention to these types of issues, but I also don't agree with the class you've defined as being problematic (sub 500 jumper who's been jumping hp canopies at 1.5wl or less since 100 jumps).

Not everyone is capable of jumping what you refer to has high performance, but there are enough of us out there that simply have the skill and intellectual abilities to fly canopies like this at those jump numbers. I was flying elipticals that are you your "high performance" WL range around 150 jumps and I rapidly downsized and started flying Velos around 400 jumps (after putting 100 jumps or so on various elipticals). I'm injury free, and I know that there are a lot of jumpers that have taken a similar path. If this guy has been jumping canopies like this since 100 jumps and he's "sub 500" I'm guessing he has at least a couple of hundred jumps that demonstrate his abilities on that particular type of canopy.

Again, I agree with you making skydivers aware of issues that can happen, but please stop blaming the choice of canopy and WL. Blame the skydiver for not making smart decisions while under the canopy.

I'm a big fan of the Cookie model. Attached pic.

Trial and error. Keep the brief as simple as humanly possible while emphasizing the things that are important to you at this phase of your career. Don't overwhelm them with information that they probably don't need. Stick to body position instructions and keeping their hands in the harness. I wouldn't even mess around with letting them pull. You don't even have to give them the command to let go of the harness. Make it all about you at first. They won't know the difference! As you go along, your brief will change drastically. I was starting with 10 min of brief and now I'm closer to 2 or 4 minutes depending on the questions they ask. Hook up a little earlier than the others. Remember that the more your hips are pressed together the more control you'll have, but over tightening can discourage a good arch. Remember that giving them the toggles after you do a canopy check gives you lots of time to make necessary adjustments and disconnect lowers etc. Goodluck.

I had troubles with my class 3 as well. I had a kidney stone way way back my senior year in highschool. They required me to have over 2000 dollars in tests to verify that I didn't have any stones left. It held me up for almost a year before the faa actually got me my medical. Its a bullshit requirement. Im even more annoyed when I have to annualy mail uspa a copy of the medical. Its the same copy that I have to dig out every single time.... make a copy.... mail it again etc... I mean common uspa.... you have the same copy from the last two or three years. You know how long its good for! I hope the costly medical regulations are revised if they are up for discussion.

I checked out their website. I've heard of realxstream before. I heard that there's a thousand dollar setup fee and then a cost per video. I scavenged their website and it's just your typical bullshit sales pitch with no specific information. Either way, we push out 350 tandems a year here. It's a low key/slow pace operation, and a setup fee and cost per video isn't going to cut it for sure. It appears as if they have just a software program, but again no cost information. I haven't even purchased the cameras yet. I'm using this information to make an educated decision on what we're going to go with for cameras. Appreciate the information though.

DSE,

I read up on some of the other responses to lenses for HD cameras. I understand the concept of what you're saying. However, am I incorrect to believe that throwing a "non-hd" rated wide angle on a new hd camera will still look far better than an old school hc-21 on tape? I personally don't care if the HD is top notch. We're just shooting handcams. If we stuck with old school they would still buy it. Either way it seems to be an upgrade for them.

In that case, I wonder how many TI's are using hd for handcams and furthermore what the majority of them are using for a setup.

What you mentioned about the lens is interesting me. Are you saying that it's a waste of time to go with the lens? It ruins the quality? Or are you saying that your making the camera (donkey) special because he has a silver saddle? After all, wide is very important for handcams (IMO)

What do you use for video editing software? How long from the time you insert the card to the time you pop out the cd? Any recommended pre requisites for cpu specs?

I found a post on this from 2008, so I'm looking for more current recommendations. I've had a Sony HC-21 for several years. It's been a good camera, but I'm looking to step it up to HD and would preferably like something smaller for handcams. The GoPro was initially very appealing me due to the compact size, however I found a few things about them that I didn't care for. For one, no view finder. Honestly, the lack of a viewfinder wasn't a deal breaker, but when I found out that each time you press record/stop, a new file is generated... that's a problem. We're still using old school video boards, so 3 separate files without the ability to pause or use slow mo (via a camera remote) becomes an issue.
I'm open to any suggestions. I've considered using a laptop and trying to figure out what video software would be the most efficient, but with a small staff I end up editing a lot of my own videos. Real time stream with on the fly effects (while simultaneously recording) seems to be the fastest way.
Any suggestions for small HD cameras with very wide (stock) field of view and/or ability to use a royal lens would be great. Thanks.