bofh

One does not have to send the cypres II away for maintenance at exactly four years. The maintenance period is four years plus/minus six months, so one can send it in for service when it is convenient. One can also watch when the next maintenance date is in the display during startup. Since the batteries does not have to be changed between maintenance, there is even less risk of it interfering with ones jumping.

Nico Emanuelsson had a cypres fire last year during a landing in Sweden. He noticed when it happened and landed without injuries. There was another cypres activation in Sweden during a high performance landing resulting in some serious injury. I don't remember who it was, nor if it was during 2008 or 2007. The Swedish safety committee can provide more information; sff (at) sff.se.

I have both. The Foretrex is nice to have when you want to know your speed, how far you've run and the distance and direction to a waypoint etc since it has a display. I've used it a couple of times when retreiving canopies. One can use it to navigate through clouds too. The WBT is better when you don't need a display, like recording a track/jump, geotagging photos etc.

Me too. I flip it open as soon as I'm about to grab the toggles and then use the digital side during canopy flight. To me that's the best of both worlds.

The Wings manual says:

Hi there! I'm making a training program to help teams make their training of the compulsory rounds more efficient. The program currently only shows: "Round 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5" which isn't very sexy. Does anyone know about any pictures that I could freely use to visualise the randoms?

Then again, a part of that problem is in the rules. As it is now, it is the "freefall system" that must be able to produce the right output via the right protocol/hardware. An external converter (most likely a computer) could be used, but is not allowed, and I can understand why, given the simplicity of making the playback slightly faster, but then again such things can also be covered by rules (like allowing all teams to inspect/use any conversion system, the competition organisation should approve of it etc). Its good with standards so the more there are the better...

Many new consumer level cameras are now appearing without IEEE-1394. For competions this presents a problem since our rules say; "FAI COMPETITION RULES FOR ARTISTIC EVENTS" 2007 edition, cut from section 5.7.2: "The freefall video equipment must be able to deliver a PAL digital signal by means of an IEEE 1394 (firewire) compatible connection." I have no suggestion for a new wording for that rule, but I feel it needs to change due to the changes in the available technology. If that rule is changed this requires changes to the equipment the competion organisations are using, so it doesn't come without a price. I've been in contact with my countries IPC delegate and she suggested that other IPC delegates should be informed about the issue now, so I suggest that other people interested in this issue contacts their IPC delegates.

I don't mean to suggest that you shouldn't look at it and that it can't be a great deal of fun to notice a much larger freefall time than in previous jumps, I'm just questioning the practice of sharing it. I'm quite sure someone will not practice their pull & emergency procedures just to get a better "first flight time" because of it. But that should not be relevant to the first flight, should it? Sorry, forgot to add that the Altitrack measures the average of the distance/time from 15 seconds after exit to 7 seconds prior to deployment. Perhaps Jumptrack does the same? And to add what I forgot in the last post; congratulations!

Perhaps it shows the speed in Skydiver airspeed (SAS)? With SAS, the speed isn't altitude/time anymore. Anyway, what's the deal with presenting flight time and speed on your first flights? Perhaps I'm just old fashioned, but the first flight is about practicing pulls and emergency procedures, not getting record speeds compared to other first time flyers...

You don't have to state in advance that you want to receive organs, if you should need any, so why state in advance that you want to donate them? Seems like reasonable defaults to me. By assuming consent, all the people that can't be bothered with signing some form to agree are considered organ donors, their relatives don't have to make that decision for them and there are some more organ donors, which is badly needed. I can't see anything bad with this. If someone doesn't want to donate their organs (which I can't understand why), they have ways to say so. As for the fear of some doctor letting you die to get the organs, it really makes no sense. If the doctor is willing to do that, they can just as well ignore your wishes regarding organ donation.

This is yet another of those posts... I've got a crossfire2-129 (@1.4) and a safire2-139. I jump the safire with wingsuits and the crossfire for other jumps. I'm not doing much more than double-front approaches and trying to let the canopies plane out on their own. In both cases, it is quite near the ground. Sometimes I make a 90 degree turn a bit high and try to keep the speed with double front risers. When asking local swoopers about learning to make hook turns, I've gotten some mixed answers. Some say it would be better for me to have a little smaller crossfire to learn on since the recovery arc would be a bit longer, others says its better to learn on the safire as the speed would be slower... What's your opinions?

Yes, and nude a few times.

Lots of bad managers in the broadcast production world? I'd imagine it would be much more effective to teach the person the proper way of doing it instead of spending a lot of time of getting a replacement...

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I can't help myself. I have a FF2 with a PC107. I cut off an A/V-cable and soldered a female-connector to the other end of it, drilled a little hole in the FF2 and glued it in place. I can have the male-connector plugged into the camera while it is mounted in the helmet and by connecting another A/V-cable in the new connector on the helmet, I can dump (in analog of course) without opening up the helmet at all. The IR-remote works somehow when it is pointed at the front of the helmet (perhaps via the tiny space around the lens?). 15$ and 1h of work.

I would. I like the vanity trinkets that only can be gotten by buying new gear.

You should try the lotus position, with the feet above the knees. The wind makes it quite easy to get the legs in the proper position. Its a bit harder with a proper arm position though... I did it naked once, but I tend to fly backwards a bit in that position so I am quite small in the video (and the sub-zero temperature made certain parts even smaller).

I didn't like the Wings risers much at all and changed them to a pair of Vector risers before the first jump (which I took from my old Javelin and it did get to inherit the Wings risers...). I didn't like the way the toggles are kept, the way the steering line slack is to be stored and the lack of reinforcement around the second ring (like almost all other risers have today). The dive-loops are better than on the Vector risers though.

I got Sony's VCL-0625S for my PC-107 (in a FF2). Its a lot cheaper than a step-up ring together with most other converters. If you get a new camera, sell the old converter with the old camera and get yourself something that fits well with the new camera. I've used it a lot for freefly video and am really happy with it. On the FF2, the converter sits right in the hole with nothing sticking out (which is a minor pain since one has to tape the lens protector over the lens instead of just snapping it on).

I'm not a rigger, but this is what I recall from talking to a rigger about it: A 12 month cycle was considered in Sweden, but one of the main arguments against it was that the reserve pack shrinks the longer it has been packed and thus the tension on the reserve loop becomes less, increasing the risk of a premature opening. Apparently the military has had some problems with that (they have a 12 month reserve repack cycle). The proposed change also involved a rigger inspection of the system every 6th month so the riggers would see the system just as often.

I've got no experience with their canopies, but I've got a gear bag, a freefly suit and today I got a camera suit from them, all of good quality.

I believe the advice was to follow "masterrig"'s advice, that is, the person with the username "masterrig" that wrote what you should have done in the very same thread.

The 350D has a long exposure mode setting to minimize the noise. I believe the 400D also has that setting. When set, it will continue to measure after the shutter has closed for a while (I believe it is as long as the exposure time).

In Sweden at my DZ, we only go through the theory of it. I've heard of two people dying in water, one cut away too high (was mentioned in basic training) and one landed in a river with strong currents and didn't get out of the harness in time (some inflatable floatation device rules have been added since then).

Yes, try to get it on video (or just jump with her and let her tell you what she saw). If you usually travel forward after the transition to HD, take heading next to her or even let her film/watch you from the side. If you feel you go out of control and travel towards her, just transition back to sit and regain control. I've got the same problem, my problem is that I try to do the transition too fast and don't pull up my legs enough. That gives me a lot of rotational speed, making it really hard to come out of the transiation anywhere near stable... When I try to make it really slow it is a easier and I'm a bit more stable after the transition (but I still end up moving backwards a lot and losing speed when overcompensating for it repeatedly...).