bofh

There is also a lot of music licensed under various free licenses, such as the Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/audio/. One site with a lot music licensed under CC is http://www.jamendo.com/.

There are quite a few songs released with various free licenses. Look for creative commons amongst others: http://creativecommons.org/audio/ - the site has links to sites like: http://www.jamendo.com/

Its perhaps easier when the suit fits properly? My last jump last year, I jumped out without holding the grippers and then tumbled some, but I just reached back with both hands and took them, while flying the rest of my body to get stable. Lost perhaps 50 meters and some of the forward speed. I most often also grab the gripper again aftar I've pulled.

Is it just a local custom at my DZ to support the student's head during deployment, just in case it's hard one?

So if one get 10.000 rushes of adrenaline, that's 35 days you miss at most? Even if it would be true, what's the big deal?

At least my old Sabre-170 was terrible in the slightest bit of turbulence. It was jumping all over the place where others almost hadn't noticed any turbulence at all and I choose to stay on ground a lot more with it than I feel I have to do with my Safire2-139. With the safire, it takes a lot more turbulence to affect the canopy to the same degree. I believe it is due to its higher speed, thus both penetrating the turbulent areas faster and keeping a higher pressure in the canopy.

I don't have so many jumps, but I'll share the little wisdom I've picked up along the way. A good dive has a perfect exit. The chance of that happening is less if you spend time starting the camera instead of focusing 100% on the line-up and exit and taking the time to relax before the lineup. If you don't care about the camera during freefall, you'll get a loosy video that you don't want to see anyway. So why increase the risk without getting some reward from it? As with most other things, the most important thing is to know when to say no. I had 50 video jumps, reasoned like you, I'll only leave it on and took my camera with me on my first demo jump (around my 320th jump). Nothing bad happened, except that I didn't spot before I exited and pulled a bit too high (causing the last jumper to have to fly in breaks for almost his whole jump). A bad spot or another airplane under us and it could have been a really bad jump. The video was pure crap too. I like to think that I had performed better without the camera on that jump. Instead of spending time to check that the camera was on, recording and that the helmet was straight on, I would have had two extra seconds to relax and then remember what's really important. The old rule of only adding one new thing per jump is as good as ever. For each jump I do, I become a little more aware of everything around me. I notice I have more and more time to do things and I'm able to add more and more things to my checklists. It is perhaps not something that one notices every day, but if one looks back one starts to notice that it is now easier to detect other groups, other canopies, airplanes, bad spots etc without losing concentration of whatever one is doing in the current jump. Figure out what you want to be good at and concentrate on that, you'll learn it a whole lot faster. If you want to be good at filming, stay on the ground with the camera and learn everything you can. Distance, framing, settings, etc is much easier (and cheaper) learned on the ground. The best video-men I know are first of all really good at flying their bodies. They learned that in FS and/or FF, not by strapping a camera on their head. I'm sure you'll learn that a whole lot faster without the camera too. If you already know all this and you've got skills that are way better than your jump numbers, think like this; if you ignore the recommendations, others that only believe they have your skills will ignore them too. In the long run, that kills our sport.

My first canopy was a Sabre-170 and I had it in a Javalin J1 from -98. It fitted, but was tight.

My altitrack has shown rather some rather slow freefall speeds when I've had it in standard dive type mode, canopy + freefall measuring and I've been on my belly. It has been in the middle of the jump when I've had my hands on my chest. I've been expecting strange readings in those cases so it has never bothered me.

Our technical committee does the same thing in Sweden. At least here, it is often no more than checking that the gear is acceptable and adding it to a list. In the case of canopies there are also classified as HP or not as we have special rules for flying HP canopies.

I ordered a custom coloured Safire2 139 in the middle of november 2005 and got it way too soon, in the middle of december 2005. I was quoted three months when I ordered. Since we didn't start to jump until april 2006, I just had give it a hug now and then for four months. Almost torture...

This claim needs to die. Talk to tdog about an analog failure. At my DZ there are much more analog altimeters than digital, yet I've not heard of a single analog altimeter that all of a sudden became incorrect. People have hit them against things, broken the glass and whatnot and the few cases there they were broken, they were not the least surprised that it didn't work. I've seen a few people that were surprised that their altimeters still worked after the abuse... On the other hand, almost all of the Neptune owners have had incorrect readings from their Neptunes (and no, it has not been old software or old batteries), showing everything from -100 to +100 meters after landing. I think that says something about the reliability of things. On the other hand, I think people have different expectations. An analog altimeter is often allowed to show +-50m (before tapping the glass to move the needle). I don't think people accept that from their digital altimeter.

Sorry, I didn't write the right instructions. Quickly press the right button on the front and when the the green light lights up press the right button again and hold it down until the green light lights up a second time and release. Now it should be in backlight setup mode (the green light should be lit) and you turn on/off backlight by pressing the right button again. Wait three seconds and the green light will turn off and it should go out of setup mode (the green light will turn off).

Yes, the dial is moved by a motor so with a dead battery it won't move. When turned off, the dial is moved to the six o'clock position to make it more obvious that it isn't working, I have no idea if it does that before it uses up all the battery (I assume not).

In what way is it a suicide rule? To me it is about doing the best thing of a bad situation. I'm sure it has happened, but I've not heard of anyone dying because of a downwind landing. I have heard of plenty who have died after colliding, died after noticing too low that they were flying downwind and did a 180 degree turn into the ground to correct this. I've seen a student bounce 2m up in the air after starting to do a 180 degree turn with his huge manta after noticing that he was going downwind (amazingly he got away without any injury). I've talked to people that landed downwind in 15m/s, did PLFs and got away without any injury (they learned quite a lot from it). I really hate it when the first guy flies down to his setup height, does a left hand 270 and then all of a suddon the rest of the lift has to readjust their landing pattern, but at least they start heigh enough for people to be able to readjust their landing pattern rather safely and then perform a safe downwind landing, possibly having to perform a PLF at the end. I also fully support verbal abuses of the first guy landing. There is only one thing that is worse (except accidents of course) and that is when someone then decides that downwind landings are so scary and they should always land into the wind. Not only are they not flying the same pattern as everyone else (causing some others to follow and they will have to perform a much later pattern change with the usual risk of people doing low turns into the ground or missing some other canopy and colliding), but all of a suddon there are people landing towards each other, canopies brushing and there is a high risk that some serious accident will happen. I take a broken arm any day before I collide face first into someone else which can be a very real result when people don't all land in the same direction. If I had to ground only one of them, it wouldn't be the first guy landing.

The match value is just a random value you must match to activate the function (turn off and erase the logbook are the functions that use it). The reason for it is to avoid activating the protected functions by misstake or by someone who doesn't know how to use the unit and just presses some buttons. Backlight on/off and altitude adjustment are done just like how a protrack is activated for configuration. Press one of the front buttons once and when the green light turns on, press the same button again and hold it until the green light goes out. Which button does what, I don't remember, but the manual and the summary page tells. The unit will leave these adjustment modes after some timeout. If the altitude was adjusted it will enter flight-mode and no longer automaticly adjust the height until after a jump or some hours.

My crossfire2 (ordered at december 29th) gets the same colours as my safire2 have: T7-8, L6-7, R13-15 in gold, the rest in blueberry. I've never seen it from above so I've got no idea how easy it is to see. The colours were chosen purely for looks.

Perhaps this has changed with newer models, my Javelin J1 is from -98, but what I don't like about the closing loop placement is the fact that it forms a gap when the loop is pulled up towards the top of the container during packing. That gap in turn sometimes catches some lines when I put down the bag (I insert it with the lines towards the ground, then turn it to get the lines towards the bottom). Its not a big deal, just lift the bag, check the lines and put it down again. I'm sure there is a good reason for this design, but from a packing point of view I would have wanted to have it turned 180 degrees so that gap was closed by the loop during packing.

I don't think it is as simple as digital = reliable or vice versa. It depends on the model and sometimes the unit. Friends' neptunes have show all kinds of readings after a jump (with new batteries and latest software). Other neptunes have worked fine.

Depending on the layout of the dropzone, a left hand pattern might not always be safe. My home DZ has a very long and narrow landing zone next to the runway. With a left turn pattern and some winds we have to fly over the runway before the final turn. Since we are not that busy, we let the plane make a go around, but if we were more busy we would restrict flying over the runway and having a right hand pattern instead.

A couple of years ago a new jumper at my DZ had such a hard opening with a spectre (150 or 170, I don't remember) that he fractured some ribs, punctured one lung and lost his memory from the break until the helicopter picked him up for transport to the hospital. Some of the line attachment points had tears in them, but the lines were intact and he managed to land it, except that he fainted when he started to flare. I don't remember exactly what the investigation's conclusion was, but I think they believed that he had pulled while unstable and after a steep track.

There is a thread about the HV-10: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2459110;search_string=HV-10;#2459110

Quality and price do not always go hand in hand... As I understand it, reserves are cheaper because of the fabric and 7 cells are faster to put together than 9 cells plus the fact that they are sold in larger volumes so the development cost becomes lower per unit. Main canopies have a shorter market lifetime and there are more models out there to choose from so their development costs are higher per unit. Or maybe is it so simple that people don't come back and complain about their faulty reserve...

Does it work for him?

There's the new Neos and Reserve too.