DSE

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Posts posted by DSE

  1. Quote

    have my daily gear check where I go over everything. My pre boarding gear check is: reserve pin, bridal, hacky, 3 ring, cut away handle, reserve handle, chest strap, leg straps, altimeter, audible, helmet (since I put it on last). My pre jump run check list is the one I provided earlier. If for any reason something isn't right during those checks I won't get on the plane/won't jump. I'm assuming that's what you met by affecting my decision.



    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?;)

  2. 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...

  3. 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. :)

  5. "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.

  7. 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:P

  8. 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 larger AVCHD cams from Sony are all in the "heavy" range, and I'd strongly suggest not trusting the plastic inserted, metal flange bezel system to hold through deployment.
    Please don't create risk for people on the ground?

  9. JWest

    I'm contesting that "turning it on and forgetting about it" is not possible. This is due to incidents from people claiming they got distracted by trying to film something.



    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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. Anachronist

    I've got a Vector 348 with a semi stowless bag, about 250 jumps on UPT semi-stowless bags. I like them a lot, I've seen some other designs that just looked like people were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. I've never had any issues with them, just pack how the vid describes. It can feel a little funny at first because you don't feel the lines unstowing but you'll quickly get use to it. It basically takes the idea from a BASE tail pocket or reserve line stow system depending on how you look at it; good enough for BASE and reserves, good enough for a main.

    Pros:
    1- Faster packing
    2- Cleaner deployments
    3- Fewer rubber bands to deal with

    Cons: None

    I also had a really unstable wingsuit deployment once and basically tumbled after I pitched (I was jumping a bigger suit than I probably should have been at the time) and the outside vid shows the bag staying completely stable during deployment as though nothing was wrong.




    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.

  14. JWest



    Or you could just take it off wide mode so it isn't distorted anymore.



    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.

  16. quade

    You'll want to read this article about professional internet trolls in Russia. I promise, it's worth the read.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html



    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!

  17. JWest

    But it is true because myself and others have been doing it for years.



    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.

  18. mcordell

    I always find the cost per month argument interesting. People argue the AAD is only $6 a month and so everyone can afford them but nobody takes a $6 a month payment. How many of you would own a house if your realtor told you the house was only $1000 a month but when it came down to it they required $150,000 all at once? The cost per month doesn't matter unless you can pay it per month. It is a legitimate concern that people can't afford them.



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

  20. JWest

    You made an entire post around the term "real" as I've already pointed out how historically manipulative and shitty it is?. Why don't you just call it 'more dangerous'? I use an AAD and guess what, I'm a skydiver. The random guy who did a tandem last weekend, he's a skydiver and his girlfriend is too. You are either a skydiver or you aren't. There is no levels of "realness". You probably use the terms "real men", "real women", "real american". I wouldn't be surprised if you are a sexist/bigot because using "real" is the primary word they use to put down and control people. This thread is a joke. You simply accept more risk than other people and in no way does it make you more of a skydiver than them.




    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.

  21. dirtbox

    Currently editing for a DZ that uses a business card usb. Using a mac and premiere pro with encoder. I do all my edits, cue them all up in encoder (output both 1080 HD and a 480sd version for use with social media and images - files range between 1.1Gb and 1.9Gb). The renders can take up to 30 minutes and transfere to USB takes 2-3 minutes. Works for me, once all the editing is done for the day I wander off, have dinner, go to bed or what ever and when it is done rendering I come back and put all the products onto their USB keys and into envelopes. Real time sitting there doing the work isn't too long and I have plenty of other things to do during the rendering.

    Another option would be to buy 10TB of cloud space from dropbox or Google drive, which would host 5500 media packages that averaged 1.8Gb each, and only post USB to customers that specifically requested it. Host videos for ~12 months on the cloud and send each person a link same day as the edit is done.



    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.

  23. 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.

  24. mccordia

    Quote

    Whether you have 201 jumps or 5,000 jumps would affect my recommendation.



    In both cases Id recommend a small wingsuit for a good 100 to 250 jumps before (if one even has to) upsize. 201 or 5000 jumps doesn't make any change in that recommendation for me..



    Agreed. Whether one has 200 skydives or 20,000 skydives, the first few wingsuit jumps are the first few skydives in a wingsuit.

    Look around on DZ.com articles, you'll find where Brian Germaine (thousands of skydives) had his ass handed to him by a big suit that he was not experienced enough to have been flying.

  25. http://wingsuitcompetition.com/


    Flocking becomes really old after a short bit.

    Currently we have:

    Flocking (can be recorded as records if flown cleanly enough, must be four-way or larger. Currently only flat flocks are recognized)
    Performance (individual competition for time/distance/speed) Recognized as a competitive discipline by FAI and USPA (and other orgs).
    Acro (two way competition, see link above. Recognized as a competitive discipline by FAI and USPA (and other orgs).
    Sequential (four way teams, not *currently* recognized by any body, but a helluva lotta fun).
    XRW (canopy/wingsuit relative work, not *currently* recognized by any body)

    The discipline is expanding, but the short of it is, anybody can buy a big suit, hang flat/dumb/happy. it takes skill to participate in any of the above. If you're just wanting fun/hang time, and aren't interested in social skydiving, then any kind of suit works well. For flocking or acro, the suits become a bit more specialized. The Performance competitions are built for any size of suit. Sequential is for any size of suit. XRW is for med-large to very large suits.

    Either way, *most* wingsuiters have multiple tools in their closets. Find a school with a number of demos. Fly with a few people. Find what you like most and start there.