DSE

I'll second the Gravitygear.com site. Bonnie busts ass to take care of her customers. Even called me late one night while she was driving, calling from her cell.

I think the spiritual side entirely depends on where you're at in life and at what point you are in your personal growth. For me, skydiving is spiritual for reasons I'll never attempt to put into English. Suffice it to say, that it's the only thing in life that I know I have virtually absolute control over. Once the aircraft is at altitude, it's all me. It's my acceptance of my training, my experiences on previous jumps, my pack job, my decision process. Sunset dives are so incredible, I've been moved to tears more than once. For some, they're adrenaline junkies (as a motorcycle rider, former rodeo rider, scuba freak, and cliff jumper (water), I guess I am too) and they're looking for their next fix. Some folks just love the ground rush. Some want something different in their lives, some simply want to....jump with no other motivation behind it. It can be a balance in your life, it can be an addiction, it can become a way of living, it can be a social experience, it can be all or none of the above... It'll be whatever you make it to be. One thing for sure...once you get your knees in the breeze...you'll find an inner "you" that you maybe didn't know existed before. And for the rest of your life, you'll know you've gone up in more airplanes than you've come down in.

I usually pack myself, but sometimes you wanna be on that "one more" load, and end up being late for something else, so I'll pay a packer to pack/put away my rig. I also usually tip them. That said, I also enjoy testing various packing methods for one of my rigs, and so will have a packer show me how they do it differently, and I'll pay for that pack too. In other words, it's sometimes a learning experience and sometimes a convenience. [edit] ironically, just as I was posting this, a friend sent me a link to a story that I'd not read. Apologies if this is an old story, but I thought it's somewhat on-topic, and a good read. http://www.usnaweb.org/parachute.html

Nah...the kid was tracking away from his buddies, and apparently didn't realize he was tracking the flight line/jump run. DZO heard about the jump yesterday, and had a quiet chat with the group this a.m.

Welcome to the forums, little lady! It sure was a lot of fun jumping with you when you were in Utah. All the boys here wonder where that cute Georgia girl went. Come back to Utah soon where the skies are always blue and welcoming you. Besides, where else do you get to exit over a big, beautiful blue lake surrounded by mountains with 50 acres of landing area?

Fender jobbers out their Squire series guitars to Samick, who is an OEM manufacturer of low-cost and usually low-grade instruments. Squire is a trademark of Fender, but they're not anywhere close to the quality of the Fullerton instruments.

Most folks here probably can't afford Ultimatte. Chromakey requires two things for a successful key: 1. proper tint of green (if working with digital) or blue(if working with analog) 2. Proper lighting. Lighting is EVERYTHING. You can key off of bad wallpaper texture if you have even, color corrected lighting. Most NLE's today can do a reasonable job of keying, but if you're starting with DV footage, you're dealing with 4:1:1 compression, which makes artifacting a problem. The easiest way around this is to use a garbage matte and a gaussian of around .001-0.003 on the matte. Serious Magic Ultra, at a price of $399.00 is a very good competitor to what was the industry standard at 5 times the price (Ultimatte). http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?text=chromakey has a lot of information on getting successful keys. HDV is much easier to key due to the greater resolution, but more importantly to the color sample of 4:2:0. But the true key regardless of format, is lighting. One other small caveat, try to avoid your subject wearing large amounts of black. This too, will mess with the key significantly, and will absorb spill that is a bear to get rid of in post. PM me if you'd like any particular assistance. I can usually look at a picture of your key setup and identify problems.

grabbing all the risers (two in each hand) and pulling wide on deployment will help, but part of the question (or answer) might be in either the packing job or the position of your body on deployment. Are you sure you're not twisting your body, or shifting your angle at pull? When you pack, are you keeping lines even and equal in your tray? Are you leaving enough line between the last stoe and the risers? For a while, I was packing my lines reasonably tight from riser to stoe, and was experiencing line twist on almost every jump until a person at the DZ watched me pack (I'd mentioned my twists), and he pointed out that I needed more than just 10-12" of line. So, I dropped a line stoe, and problem went away. Maybe that will help?

Plan the dive, dive the plan. Group A is a bunch of idiots. Think exit order, folks, exit order. and again... Plan the dive, dive the plan. I'm in complete agreement, but wondered if I was off my rocker. The "A" group is a group of young guys that are a lot of fun, but that often change their dive plan mid-jump. Usually no one cares, but in the mentioned skydive, I was in Group B, and both myself and another were a bit surprised to see a body in our airspace quite a distance below us. Mentioned it to a couple other more "leader-like" skydivers at the same time we told the kids "don't change the dive-plan, if you can't get together, don't go to freefly." The "wiser/experienced" guys kept insisting that it "just doesn't matter much." AFAIC, I don't want to see anyone more or less straight below me as they're getting close to pulling. BTW,exit order is always discussed prior to boarding the aircraft. The question here isn't exit order, but rather a young group arbitrarily not sticking to their announced plan.

I'll toss in another "hmm..." into the mix.. Group A leaves, decides that they can't hook up, so changes their skydive to a freefly skydive. Group B didn't leave enough separation, but they were already doing a freefly skydive. Last person in Group A and first person in Group B end up very close to each other, and because person A ends up at 3K first, he deploys very close to where person B is heading. Who screwed up worse? A or B?

I've now gotten two suits from Freaknsuits, and found Amahra to be completely awesome to deal with. Angela is good as well. They turned my first pants around in about 20 days (I'd paid for the 14 day rush, so it went a few over) and they gave me a break on the cost of the second because of the delay on the first. I gave them some very general design ideas, they ran with them and made me a complete one-of-a-kind outfit that is similar to no one else. Without charging me an arm and a leg. So..after buying a Tony Suit for my fat ass when I'm falling with smaller people, a DakineRags (are they out of biz?) freefly suit, a Dakine Rags pair of pants...I'll happily do biz w/Freaknsuits any time.

Bigway and Peeks, Thank you very much. Neither of these resources have what I was imagining; both have what I needed.

That would work as well. I'm looking for the more "squiggly" or minimalistic type of graphic, but the one you posted is pretty applicable too. This is for a small graphic to be put on the lower corner of an event card for a specific day-event, so I'm looking for something simple/not busy.

I'm looking for a modern/current line graphic of a canopy. Can anyone help me out? Something similar to the newer logo that the USPA is suggesting? If I could draw worth a damn, I'd draw it myself.

N3229, and it is a very special King Air.

When I read the story, I thought the same thing, but then realized it's just the "script" for the story they aired. It sounded good on television, but looks kinda weird in print.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=345226 Saw this on television tonight. Always nice to see a skydiving story that doesn't involve ambulances.

You win, I'm lazy My point about iMovie was poorly phrased. I didn't mean that it brought editing below a grand as much as it brought it "to the masses". Before iMovie 1.0, a grandmother would never think to edit her home videos. It really started the [as Jobs would put it...] "Digital Video Revolution" for consumers. It was the Starbucks of home movie editing... coffee existed before, Starbucks made it ridiculously popular. Those are my two cents, at least. We're doomed to disagree, I'm an Apple guru and you're an Adobe/peecee guru. At least we both agree that cameras are a good thing to make a living out of. C4 looks pretty cool... Actually, I'm an FCS guru too. Certified instructor, etc. I rarely use Adobe, only for AE. I also rarely use FCS tho, mostly for Motion and Shake, and of course, DVD Studio Pro. If you're in the area, happy to get you into C4. I'll have my Winbook w/me.

The Skydive Utah DC3 is now history. Quite a story there, but not mine to tell.

Read again what I wrote. I'm not EVER around tandems. Ever. One jump, I was around 300 feet away, and that was unintentional (they got out quickly and fell fast) I jump with friends that know me well, and never am closer than 30 feet. Ever. The jump with the 10k guy, was one I hired video for used for a publicity purpose for the pax. I wasn't near them in the air, just on the same load. In other words, I'm working on my body flight, and keeping smooth movements, not working on getting close. Never flown with a tandem, and don't expect to for a long, long (add a few more "longs" in there if you want) time.

I don't have a velocity. but I can swoop the hell out of my stiletto. I don't have anything of value to add to what's being said to you Jarret, but I'll say this: One occasion, I saw with my own eyes, a guy with over 10,000 jumps get seriously hurt being in the wrong place near a tandem. Watched video of a tandem jump that had just come down, similar situation. Cameraman had over 3k jumps. If the first guy hadn't had more than 10k jumps, he wouldn't have had the right instincts. He probably would have ended up hurt a lot more than he was, and same for T/I and pax. Second guy, same exact story, but he didn't have the instinct. The T/I saved all three of them from injury. At 15, I know the world seems like it belongs to you, but there have been hundreds who have gone down this road before you. Last week I jumped with a kid that practically lives in a tunnel that his relatives manage. He's a great freeflyer. He sprained his ankle on landing. I forgot to mention he just got off AFF status. Having one set of experiences doesn't nullify requiring others. I'm a fantastic cameraman on the ground. I could teach you things you can't even imagine you don't know. In the air, I just started jumping a camera, and I don't go within 30 feet in any direction of the RW jumpers I'm flying around, and never over. I don't plan on getting close for at least another 100 jumps, and even then...I might not. I'm smart enough to have someone else telling me what my skills are and aren't. Because even when I'm 30' away from others in belly flight, there are still lives at risk. My ground camera knowledge carries little benefit right now, and while that's exceptionally hard for me to currently accept, that's the way it is. I'm a reasonably competent flyer for my jump numbers, but developing the instincts needed only come through humility and a lot of jumps. The second part is tough to achieve, but the first part is the most important, IMO. While it's hard to have these guys pounding on you, you also need to accept that you're being cavalier. Being cavalier with your own life is stupid but understandable from a young adult. Being cavalier with anyone else' life is criminal. You wanna be old? Or bold? Cuz you can't have both.

Not quite. Adobe Premiere (preceded by Evergreen which eventually became Final Cut Pro) copied Avid, sold for 599.00, and was the first sub 1K value editing application. Ulead Media Studio Pro came shortly thereafter, and then FAST released their tools. Then came Ulead VideoStudio, which set the bar for 99.00 applications. iMovie wasn't even remotely a conception at that point. Doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, but it gets tiring reading about how Apple "innovated" all these things that are common. It is true however, that iMovie forced Micro$oft to develop a very poor copy of the iLife tools. Micro$oft should quit trying to emulate Apple and just be good at their own thing, especially on the media side of the river. Editing software... Depends on what you need to do, want to do, and dream of doing. In the Apple world, you have choices of: iMovie-free Final Cut Express-299.00 Final Cut Studio-1299.00 Avid Express HD-1599.00 On the PC side: Adobe Premiere Pro-499.00 (Also in a full bundle for more $$) Also has hardware available. Adobe Premiere Elements-99.00 Avid Express Pro HD-1599.00 Also has hardware available. Avid Free-Free Avid Liquid Pro-499.00 Also has hardware available. Canopus Edius-499.00 Also has hardware available. Pinnacle (now Avid) Studio 99.00 Sony Vegas Movie Studio-89.00 Sony Vegas full version -599.00 Sony Vegas Platinum-129.00 Ulead Media Studio Pro-299.00 Ulead Video Studio 89.99 There are a few others, oddballs such as AIST, Blade, etc, but they aren't strongly supported. All of the above have extensive training available via books, DVDs, websites, etc. Personally, I'm a big fan of Sony Vegas and Avid Express. If you can edit on an Avid, you can edit anywhere in the world and be reasonably fast. Vegas is very intuitive, IMO, whether you're dealing with the low cost versions or the higher dollar professional tools. Premiere in the bundle is a great choice, but as a standalone, I feel it's weak, and has a steep learning curve for what it accomplishes. Avid Liquid is a great tool, very fast to use, but requires a MONSTER new computer setup. Canopus Edius is a fair editor, unless you buy into their whole monster system, wherein it becomes a very nice app, and is finding it's way into many broadcast houses now that Canopus is owned by Grass Valley. If you're deeply interested in sports/video editing, I'm doing a training session on editing extreme sports at the C4 Sports Expo in Las Vegas starting this coming Monday. Bonehead is there in Sony's booth, along with other manufacturers of extreme sports hardware, and editing software. [edit] Forgot to mention, if you'd like to attend the C4 Sports Expo, PM me, I can arrange for a few free passes. It ain't the WFFC, but since skydivers are into extreme...there is a LOT of it there.

Cards and/or USB should work just fine. You'll find 802.11B/G spots all over the place. You don't have an airport built in? I thought all the G4 i/powerbooks did? Either way, you can pick up a USB dongle at any Walmart, Target, etc over here, for very little money.

What you're almost assuredly seeing is 1440 x 1080 scaled down to 640 x 480. when you view the two compared side by side that way, you're comparing apples/oranges. Believe me, I'm a huge advocate of HD, I've written several books on the subject. But you have to keep things in perspective. Compression of DV is interframe, compression of HDV is intraframe, you've got a lot more happening in HD, but you're still seeing it as an SD signal. Having the additional resolution makes for a better image in some ways, but if not managed right, it's got a much greater potential for failure. Geez, I sound like people in the Safety forum telling people to not downsize. HDV is great. HDV can be incredibly awesome. We own around 20 HDV cameras of various models/brands. You've got to understand the format, and how to set it up right. Don't expect to just buy one, set it on your helmet, and start shooting. Add the widescreen component vs the 4:3 you're currently shooting, it can become even more difficult. If you're *really* interested in going HD, PM me, I'll arrange to get a book to you. "HDV: What You NEED to Know." I know the author. He's a prick, but it's a good book.

Just goes to show you why you can't believe specs. Whilst I'm a fan of the HC3 for skydiving *only* (it's junk for any production use) it has no where near 1990 actual pixels in the display image. You're reading hype, not reality. Can't speak for the quality of the others, because they're not in the realm of cams we deal with here, never shot them on a chart. HDV is another story...own them all, charted them all, and written novels about them. Oops, I'm doing it again...sorry, LTDiver. ~edited to correct name.