brettski74

You couldn't find a friend with a drill and do it yourself?

I agree that for a well designed camera helmet with a small camera on it, the snag potential may be small. It's personal choice and up to you to decide whether you think the chances of a snag are higher or lower than the chances of a low reserve pull. You wouldn't, but who said that your malfunction on your main had anything to do with the camera helmet? I spoke about a snag occurring during the cutaway. You could have a malfunction totally unrelated to the camera helmet but have the risers snag your camera during the cutaway. Think what could happen if you had the left side front riser passing in front of the camera box and the rear riser passing to the rear of it. Now what? Again, this might be a low probability occurrence, but this is the type of thing that people worry about when disconnecting their RSL for camera jumps and a smaller side-mount camera probably increases the riskof this kind of snag unless the camera box is carefully designed. In any case, I was answering a question. Personally, I leave my Skyhook RSL hooked up for several reasons. First, I think the chance of a riser snagging my camera during cutaway is small given the size of the camera box and the typical spread between the front and rear risers under load. Secondly, I don't jump camera all the time and I think that it's more important to keep my rig set up in a consistent manner for all jumps, rather than risk doing something silly connecting and disconnecting an RSL all the time. Thirdly, I'm not yet jumping anything crazy. As my needs and/or equipment change, I might revisit these decisions.

Actually, I've seen this exact approach work extremely well at a relatively busy dropzone running at times, multiple turbine aircraft. I've been there on busy weekends, quiet weekends and during two boogies. The landing direction there is always indicated by a large, orange, canvas triangle, perhaps 40 feet by 10 feet, in the middle of the main landing area. It is set by the DZSO throughout the day as required. That said, there are a few conditions at this dropzone that I think would need to be met elsewhere for it to work as well. The main landing area is relatively large, but much longer than it is wide and as a result, the direction in the main landing area is always one of two directions, parallel with the length of the main landing area. There is a large student landing area behind the main landing area and another large alternate landing area on the other side of the runway. If you don't like the main landing area or the indicated landing direction, you land in either of those. The DZSO is a dedicated staff member responsible for the landing direction, among other things, and is not jumping while acting as DZSO. Landing direction infractions are enforced. First infraction is a carton of beer. Multiple infractions will get you grounded. I don't think this approach would work well where the DZSO, S&TA or whoever is responsible for setting landing direction was also busy jumping as an instructor, tandem master or fun jumper. I don't think it's worth the effort unless you're at least flying a caravan or larger aircraft. For smaller aircraft, while there's still the possibility of collisions and such, the lower number of canopies makes it much less of a problem. I also don't think it would work terribly well anywhere where the landing direction is not limited to one of two directions. I do think that a large canvas arrow or triangle on the ground works better as an indicator of landing direction than a windsock or even a tetrahedron. It's impossible to misread due to your viewing angle, although it's still possible to have a brain malfunction. The landing direction is set per load. If people are already setting up for their pattern, it's too late to change. Change it for the next load. You agreed to jump according to dropzone rules when you signed the waiver and got on the plane. Besides, if you don't like the landing direction in the main landing area, you are welcome to land in whatever direction you like in the student or alternate landing areas. If you landed downwind in the main landing area and got hurt, that was your choice. Changing the landing direction while canopies are already in the pattern and landing defeats the purpose of having a reliable landing direction indicator. See above. If people are set up for their pattern and/or landing, you don't change the landing direction until everybody's down. People love to pull this one out. Have you heard of negligence? If you're worried that an industrious lawyer can come along and try to blame you for indicating the landing direction you should be just as worried that some industrious lawyer will come along and cite negligence on your part for not providing the safest possible environment for your customers to skydive. Have an alternate where the landing direction is open. Now it's their choice whether to land downwind or land their own way in the alternate. Because grown up skydivers can get it wrong. Besides, no matter where you jump, the dropzone *does* set rules dictating how the landing direction is set, so like it or not, you've already taken responsibility for the landing direction. Not having some kind of consistent rule for landing direction at a dropzone would be asking for trouble. As a grown up skydiver, you don't decide on your landing direction. You look at the available indicators and use them to figure out how best to follow the dropzone rules, whether that be first man down, tetrahedron, windsock or whatever else. Already been said, but if the wind direction can change while people are in the pattern, it sure as hell can change during the 20 minutes or so between wheels up and canopies down. Nice in theory, but not always compatible with other goals in the sport, such as if I'm into bigways, I'm going to have to accept some degree of ordered chaos when landing with 100 other canopies. Having a better plan for indicating landing direction is essential there. At all the P3 events, they have someone designated to hold the tetrahedron for all landings. If they're sure that this is a better and safer way to ensure everyone lands in the same direction, why are you so adamant that it can't work anywhere else or in less chaotic situations? Your point seems to be all about liability, which really doesn't hold water. You can be held liable for negligence, too.

Fixed it for you. It is a standard disclaimer. Skydiving helmets are a small enough market niche as it is. Doing all the design and testing to get certified for a certain level of impact protection would increase the cost even more. You'll find better impact protection in helmets designed for cycling, skateboarding, snowboarding and motorcycling, although some of those may not be well suited to skydiving. Beyond that, what exactly do you expect the helmet to protect you from on a skydive? I rely on my helmets for the following: protecting me from bumping my head in the plane or during exit from the plane. hold my audible altimeter hold my camera (camera helmet only) keep the wind out of my face (full-face only) If you're expecting a helmet to do more than that, you're kidding yourself. Also, there's plenty of discussion on this already. Do a search and you'll find plenty more information along the same lines.

I don't think you have any concept of the level of skill required to pull off something like that. It's not something that the newly minted A or B licence skydiver is likely to possess. The NOTAM is the least of your worries. There's also liability insurance and a Pro rating that you'll need, not to mention a pilot and plane. Even still, while most demos go off without any major issues, pro rated skydivers with thousands of jumps have screwed up on occasion and taken out people in the crowd, in the military band playing the event and other items and personnel. You crashing into and injuring your waiting guests is not how you or your wife would want people to remember your wedding day, I'm sure.

Nice! But I think that many will not get your brilliance.

This is how I interpreted the subject - a lawsuit where a judgement against the DZ or DZO could make the DZ unable to continue operations.

Forget the anemometer. Use a pitot tube, or for something more realistic, you could just jump with a GPS that has the ability to store your tracking data for later.

I don't think you can generalize like that in the first place. What is the suit over? If it's over something like the Lodi tail-strike case, the guy's a dink, but there may be other perfectly legitimate grievances between two skydivers where one of them happens to be a DZO. Secondly, while I'm not a huge fan of lawsuits, I'm also not a huge fan of over-regulation and unnecessary restrictions. It's really not the USPA's decision over who can jump at any given dropzone. It's also none of my or your business unless you happen to be the DZO of the dropzone in question. That's a decision for the DZO and his/her staff.

What cameras are you comparing yours to? What wide angle lens are you using and what wide angle lens are the other cameras using? Not all lenses are created equal. If you do a search, you can find some discussion of the relative clarity of images produced through different wide angle lenses. From memory, I think the Royal lenses tend to be among the best single element lenses, however, all of the single element lenses are operating at or near their limit on a DV camera.

Different how? Is it perhaps blurry? I use an HC40 without any problem. One thing you may need to be wary of is making sure that it's on manual focus. It will default back to auto focus at times - I think it generally happens whenever I remove or replace the battery. Change it to manual focus and get it set up to the right focus on the ground. Make sure that you have the wide angle that you're going to use on the jump, too. Some wide angle lenses may affect the focal length enough to warrant resetting the manual focus.

Those look like standard Grand Caravan numbers, although the stats for the supervan don't increase the useful load all that much, so your argument may still be valid. I'd be more worried about how tight it will be in the cabin and how much weight you'll need to put at the rear.

The dropzone in that video isn't next to some tropical paradise, either. That dropzone is in CANADA! It's my home dropzone - Skydive Burnaby, just by the northern shores of Lake Erie and the team in question is Stratosfear who are former Canadian National champions. I believe that jumping solo eventually gets boring for most people, but there are a few that still keep on jumping solo by choice for hundreds of jumps or more. That doesn't mean that when you go somewhere new you can't take in the scenery, but if sight-seeing is what you're looking for, rent a helicopter and go for a scenic ride. You'll get a lot more for your sight-seeing dollar than you ever will skydiving.

Jumping from a helicopter is the only time I've ever had that falling sensation in my stomach during exit. As far as I understand it, this is usually caused by falling faster than gravitational acceleration, which I in turn attributed to the downdraft from the main rotor. Other than that, it's a lot like jumping from a balloon. Dead air initially and no control, you hear the sound of the wind slowly building and then you can start to fly.

I'm about 5'9", average build and currently about 185 pounds. Note that I'm rounding off those speed numbers for simplicity. 118mph is probably more representative of my neutral fall rate on my belly. I fall a lot slower in a hard track. Somewhere within the 97-105 range would be typical of my descent rate at the end of tracking away from a 4-way if I'm not being lazy. If I'm really working, I have a few jumps where I've gotten it under 90, but that's the exception. Anything under 95 more than likely required some hard work while tracking and was probably a longer track than a typical 4-way break off.

Why not? While your descent rate in a track may be lower, and should be if you're good at tracking, your airspeed may well be higher. For example, my stable box position falls at around 120mph. In a decent track, that might fall to 100mph, but if that's managing a 45 degree glide angle as some people have noted is possible in a decent track, that gives me a combined horizontal+vertical speed through the air of around 140mph. Your data only shows the vertical descent rate, not the total combined airspeed, which is what your canopy will deploy into.

That is not correct. The main drag force on your d-bag and canopy pull directly in line with the relative wind, but that doesn't mean that is where the canopy/d-bag will be. There are other forces acting on the system and the system does not react instantaneously to those forces. Gravity is acting so as to pull the jumper and canopy off of this line. To see this, consider the gravitational and drag forces on the load and canopy separately. Given the relative sizes of the forces involved, this difference is probably small, but it will be there while the system is undergoing angular acceleration.

Let me start by saying that I don't know the reasoning behind the "don't deploy in a track" advice, however, while there is some validity in what you're saying, you're also missing something. When you deploy falling straight down, the forces of drag and gravity are acting in roughly opposite directions and your body and the deploying canopy are in roughly the same relative positions as they will be when the system stabilizes. When you deploy in a track, the canopy starts deploying behind you. Somewhere between your throwing of the pilot chute and achieving stable canopy flight, your body needs to transition back underneath the canopy. Exactly how this transition occurs and what effects it can have on the opening I'm not qualified to say, but I could see at least two effects that might change things. First is that as your body starts to transition back down underneath the canopy, it will exert a some force on the nose of the canopy drawing it forward. Granted, the relative drag of your body as compared to the canopy will mean that your body should be affected by this more than the canopy, but since neither of you are fixed in any way in the air mass, both will be affected. Second, as you start to swing back under the canopy, the load will be shifted toward the front of the canopy, meaning that the load on the rear suspension lines is reduced. There may be other differences that I haven't thought of, also.

This is nothing. I'm surprised that nobody has yet said probably the most important point on this topic... Did you ask an instructor or coach at your DZ these questions? That would be a much better place to ask. They know you, your skill level and the gear you're jumping. You know them and that they are probably qualified to give you a good answer. They're right there and can give you an answer on the spot rather than waiting for someone you don't know on the other side of the world guess an answer that may or may not have anything to do with your situation.

Because we're already on our bellies. You are not. Aside from that, the priority is to get everyone away from the centre of the formation far enough to find clear air for deployment. This is more easily achieved when everyone is tracking off and looking in the same general direction. I may not be able to see who's above me while tracking but they should be able to see me. If they were on their back while I'm on my belly, neither of us would see the other.

Why is it that you're so sure that above you is the only place you need to clear? I'm curious how you clear the air below and in front of you while back-tracking? That's where you're headed. I've had people on a 100-way track below and underneath me. If I was back-tracking, there's no way I would have known that there was someone underneath about to deploy into me. As it was, I could see them coming and adjust my trajectory accordingly to avoid the problem long before it happened.

$600? The x-shut website lists the titanium version as 188 euro. I'm also curious as to why the titanium version? According to their published breaking limit data, even the aluminium version looks plenty strong enough for a camera mount and about half the price. The strain limit is equivalent to a suspended weight of over 700kg and the lever out force required is equivalent to a suspended weight of over 400kg. There's no data for the titanium version, but I expect that it's stronger than the aluminium version and similar strength to the stainless steel version. I realize that you already have it, now, but I'm curious as to what led you to choose the most expensive material available.

In my opinion, Cookie makes a superior product. The only drawback is the cost. You can get a complete Rawa setup for less than a similar Cookie setup. Main differences in the two that I would note are: Rawa seems to build their helmets and helmet/box pairs as an off the shelf item requiring little or no customisation. As a result, they tend to be more of a pain to customize due to features like glued in padding and rivetting the box in place. Cookie helmets are better suited to customisation. Rawa boxes - at least the one I have for my HC40 rely on pressure from a form-fitting box to hold the camera in place, while Cookie typically use a bolt in the base of the box/camera to secure the camera in place. This makes it possible to open the box and access the camera without totally removing it from the helmet. This could be used, for example, to open the screen while filming on ground/in plane or do things like adjust the focus. Rawa boxes use a gnurled, allen key bolt to close the box. While you can use your fingers to tighten and loosen it, it's a loose piece that you can lose if you're not careful and it sometimes can be quite tight and difficult to move after a few jumps. Cookie uses various styles of closing mostly using shock cord as the primary means of keeping the box closed in flight. That and the much larger head on the camera screw that secures the camera means that getting access to and/or removing the camera is generally easier. That said, I haven't seen the CX100 boxes from either manufacturer and it's possible that some of these features may have changed since I bought my Rawa. I ended up buying a Rawa helmet for my HC40 because of the price, however, given the opportunity to go back, I'd probably spend the extra money and buy a cookie.

Do labels really matter? [Crazy]

Yes. You're missing something. You should be leaving enough separation between exits so that each group has enough room for their break off. For larger groups, you should be waiting longer exiting after them. If you're doing a 2-way, it may be prudent to try to break off so you're both perpendicular to the jump run. If you're in a 4 way or larger, the people you are most likely to have a collision with during or after opening is the people in your group, so your first priority is to get adequate separation from them. Turn 180 from centre, track an appropriate distance to get clear and then look, wave, throw. If you do this and find yourself too close to the next group, then either you're tracking too far on break off, or there was insufficient separation between exits for the upper winds and group size. If you're unsure about this, talk to the instructors at your home DZ.