DSE

no luck. Although the motion blur would be managed better by higher FPS, the aberration coupled with the blur...it's a goner. I can get one letter out of the white car... nothing more. Sorry!

FWIW, it's the guy that *thinks* their methods and thought processes are solid and infallible, that usually run into trouble. Anyone can have anything happen to them. The reason for the recommended number of jumps has marginal relationship to awareness and attitude. It has everything to do with building up habits and no matter what you believe, all the mad skillz, all the internet videos, all the best buddies in the world, and all the cool kayaking skills where you can eskimo roll, spin, surf, rock launch, whatever...won't help you develop the muscle memory, instinctive behaviors, and safety attitudes that having more rather than fewer jumps. I realize to you, jump numbers mean little, and in a way, you're right. The challenge is, you don't have enough experience under your belt to know the difference between a person that has 1000 of the same jump vs someone who has 1000 different jumps. One day, you'll come back to this thread (or some of the others) and realize you didn't know what you didn't know, and someone telling you isn't enough. You have to witness these stories yourself to properly understand why people care enough to try to help you see the folly of your ways. Lose the attitude, people will bend over backwards to help you grow quickly and safely. I've been there (on this forum and in real life) and done that. Truly. Stand up, shut up, and if you do speak, put a question mark at the end of whatever you say. Doesn't that seem reasonable?

higher resolution would allow for reading the licence plate, but the Contour itself has some serious abberation in the corners (most of the cheap cams do). The Prime (another reason it's used for LEO) has an all-glass lens structure, and no abberation in the corners. It's not quite as wide, but it's very, very clean. Resolution is only a small part of the solution; you need to feed good images into the resolution. Then, you need a good compression scheme. The old Contour is a very, very old 12Mbps compression with a challenged lens system. Good for general use...but not for what you're hoping to achieve with it. if you want to send me the original video, I could run Fractals on it...

none of the hand-cams have metal-throughout like a DSLR does. It keeps the cost down, and manufacturers don't care about the stresses we put on them. The AX33...I wouldn't worry much about it. It's a metal receiver with extended plates sandwiched in plastic and metal. Buy a bomb-proof Mack Warranty and never worry about it. :)

Tony makes an awesome camera suit. I prefer the large wings; it's easy to "get rid of" wing than it is to grow bigger wings.

"Active" usually does better these days... Nice footage. Youtube compression does a terrible job. Vimeo is a tad better. BTW, if you want to see it more amazing...shoot 4K, stabilize it gently in post. The extra resolution does indeed make a diff when outputting HD or 2K.

The Replay Prime is a tad better for this, and it can be configured to start/stop when you start/stop the bike (used by LEO). www.replayxd.com It's what I use on my bike too, but don't have it configured for auto/on/off

I was very impressed with Lori Butz' flights in the Foghead at the World Cup in Netheravon last month. Seems to be a very cool mid-range suit. The Foghead is more akin to the PF Ghost3 than to the Havoc (The Havoc has no grippers whereas the Foghead does). I love my Carve

if the camera weighs more than half a pound, jumping with only one attach point is foolish, IMO. Even though the camera seen in this photo is attached at two screw points, it's still braced via zipties (it's not on an FTP, because the bottom of the lens wouldn't fit properly on the flat surface and still provide balance). The Cyclone light in the other image not only has zipties, but also a specially-made aluminum bracket for the side screws. Tie that stuff down!

The bottom line (whether it's really your opinion or you're playing the role like a troll) is that you feel you're superior to the literally hundreds of thousands of jumps pitted against your fraction of 1% of the experience you're pissing against. "Written in blood" may be the hyperbole, but it's accurate. When long-time experienced people offer advice, when hundreds of POV videos online support their/our position, you're that *one* guy who is special (or may be speshul) and we're all a bunch of idiots trying to keep you down. If nothing else, you've become infamous for your armchair skydiving opinions and the rest of us know nothing compared to you, as you've read every DZ.com post and have analyzed every opinion to boil it down to the bare facts. You've absorbed those facts and therefore are a superior jumper to everyone else who in thousands of jumps, hasn't learned what you've learned via analysis and life experience outside of skydiving. You win. Go do what you want to do, but be fully prepared to reap the wrath when you harm yourself, an aircraft, or someone else. There have been several Ted's, Sangi's, and others in this online community. Now we have a JWest.

There are also situations where an AAD has misfired and killed people. They are not faultless. Thinking so is a mistake.

In my list of dead and paralyzed friends, I can point to at least a dozen that died or were life-altered following "you'll probably be fine." Your post is very thoughtful, and appreciated. It presents a perspective on the comment that I'd never really considered.

I'd suggest the Phantom from Robi made the most difference in the world overall, and it's the one everyone seems to still own and still be jumping/not many used ones available. The Phantom and it's cousin (the Shadow) are still the most-seen acrobatic suits out there. IMO, the Tony SBird or Xbird was the first one that opened a lot of people to bigger suits, but no doubt, the Bird series changed the industry. PF and Tony are still the most-copied suits out there as well.

I'd suggest that on some bags, the magnet placement/sewing can be a con. I saw a second magnet-close Dbag with a shattered magnet this weekend, rendering the bag unusable. Some bags sew them in so they can't slam shut, others don't. However, I'll never go back to rubber band stows again either.

And in this one sentence, you've offered a good demonstration of "not knowing what you don't know." Related to your other thread...how much else is there that you don't know that you don't know (yet)? Every person who skydives for a while eventually goes through a "damn, that was really stupid of me" phase. It usually hits around 1000 jumps, and again at 3000 or so jumps. Maybe you'll be the lucky guy that never has that moment.

me? I'm very grateful for all the low-time POV camera-wearers. They post their screwups, and provide terrific training material for those of us that coach.

Great read, and incredibly relevant. During the FAI Wingsuit World Cup in Netheravon last week, a group of Russian "trolls" kept trying to take down the site. The PPC director spent most of the day watching the code, watching the Russian group attempt to take down the site. We couldn't figure out why such a small, obscure site would generate such attention. The article somewhat explains "why." Thank you!

Do you have any idea how many ski, mountain bike, surfer, and other sport fatalities are related to people who "just turn it on and let it record?" It's a very high, and frightening number. Skydiving is actually quite a bit lower, but that has nothing to do with skillsets, it's that objects to hit are a bit farther away and there is a lot of luck involved.

Sweet writing as usual, Annette!

Wicked Wingsuits rents them at a very affordable rate, per month.

https://vimeo.com/11609685 [url]https://vimeo.com/11559773 https://vimeo.com/11547030 These might help.

Point of reference; there are those who have made a skydive; they are not skydivers and their safety is seen to by "skydivers." There are those that actively skydive but do not put themselvse in the category of "skydivers." Then there are those that are actively, regularly engaged in the sport, who are "skydivers." A tandem student is not a "skydiver." A tandem skydive may not be made without an AAD. I do happen to agree that there is no demarcation of "real" between one who chooses an AAD and one that does not. AADs are a choice and should remain a choice, just like RSL's. That said, having witnessed and/or participated in the disposition of multiple bodies, yet I'm quite comfortable with the choices I've made, and fault no experienced "skydiver" for making choices that aren't the same as mine.

Unfortunately, most large DZ customers want to walk away from their experience with a thumbdrive (or DVD) in hand. Many DZ's are well off the beaten path and internet access is damned expensive if not impossible at any rational speed. The DZ I'm working at for this season can't even deliver 512K, and it's too expensive for them to put in a "real" connection. This seems to be the case at many DZ's around the world, but it will indeed be the norm in a very short while. 4K works nicely on a thumbdrive as well, but won't work in the short term for stream/download until HEVC encoders become standard.

it's already been jumped. So has the one it's copying.

Forget tandem editing on a Mac. It's a waste of time for any mpeg format on a mac, it's just that simple. Without going into the several technical reasons why...It shouldn't be taking more than 10 mins on the slow side from ingest to output to thumbdrive. I don't really feel up to writing a novella, but since we're friends in real life and online life, I'm happy to do a consult with you. I'd start by recommending you skip 720p and go to 1080p, since people are generally expecting "full hd" these days. The slowness is the Mac. No, you don't have a lot of options when ordering thumbs.