hookit

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Everything posted by hookit

  1. Thanks for the followup. Good luck with your purchase and if you do go with the hi res lens please post your thoughts on it. I'll do the same if I come across someone who's using it. Blues, Trey
  2. Truly a heart warming story about the bond formed between a little girl and some construction workers. This makes you want to believe in the goodness of people and believe there is hope for the human race. A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot. The young family's 6-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and started talking with the workers. She hung around and eventually the construction crew, gems-in-the-rough all of them, more or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week they even presented her with a pay envelope containing a dollar. The little girl took this home to her mother who said all the appropriate words of admiration and suggested that they take the dollar pay she had received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When they got to the bank the teller was equally impressed with the story and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied, "I've been working with a crew building a house all week." "My goodness gracious," said the teller, "and will you be working on the house again this week too?" She replied "I will if those useless sons of bitches at the lumber yard ever bring us any drywall that's worth a shit."
  3. Yes, you do get pushed sideways (downwind) during a crosswind swoop. What most swoopers do to counter this (if the winds are kicking pretty good) is to give a little more toggle input on the upwind side to steer the canopy into the wind a bit during the swoop. The canopy is actually no longer flying a true crosswind route however, relative to the ground, the pilot appears to be flying perpendicular to the windline. At winds under 10mph it's hardly worth bothering with (IMO) however, if the winds are kicking, it can make the touchdown much easier to deal with. Blues, Trey
  4. Cool...thanks for the feedback. I was just wondering that very thing last night. I had a roll of film developed at Walgreen's last week and then decided that I wanted one blown up. I went to Wolf Camera (a.k.a. Ritz Camera) and decided to get a second print of a couple of the shots as well as a blow-up of one. I was AMAZED at how much greater the clarity was in the reprints than in the first prints from Walgreen's. It was a huge difference. I'm wondering if this is typical...do 'professional' photography places typically do a better job than Walmart, Walgreen's, Eckerd's, etc.? Thanks again for the feedback! -Trey
  5. Apparently you just need to put the www....and it assumes the 'http://' part. I scored a 62.5% making me 'unpredictable'. Hell, I could have told you that!
  6. Here you go...http://www.roadragetest.co.uk
  7. SWEET!!! Be aware though that bikes are notorious for having overly optimistic speedo's. When Motorcyclist did their top-speed test on the Hayabusa the speedo showed about 210 to 220 when the bike was actually doing about 190. It was certainly hauling ass either way but that's quite a difference. That being said...I've had my '96 Ninja ZX9-R up to an indicated 165. Despite the fact that it's been geared down it was still accelerating when I ran out of road and had to shut it down. I'm guessing I was probably somewhere around 150. Now I skydive and the poor bike sits in my garage wanting for attention. Anyone want to buy a '96 ZX9-R? Blues, Trey
  8. Okay...since no one else responded (due, I'm sure, to the fact that no specific questions were asked) I'll give it a go. I have a PC9 mounted to a Bonehead Half Rak using a PC5 D box. It's worked great so far. I use a Kenko .45 wide angle lens and have been pleased with that but now that I'm starting to shoot RW and I may go with a .6 to allow me to back off the formation a bit and still get a tight shot. I got one of the camera guys at my dz to help me mount the D box and I definitely recommend you find someone with experience to give you a hand. Also Bonehead has a pretty comprehensive set of instructions on how to mount the D box and it's certainly worth reading. When you're drilling the helmet be CERTAIN that your camera is nowhere near. The carbon fiber elements can do horrible, evil things to the circuitry in the camera. Another trick I learned from someone here is to pre-blank your tapes before recording. Just put the new tape in the camera, leave the lens cap on, and record over the whole new tape. The reason for this is that the camera places a time signature on each frame it records and if there are gaps in this then the time signature starts over at 0. This makes editing a serious pain in a#! and you can avoid it by simply pre-recording over each tape. That's all I can think of at the moment. If you have specific questions feel free to post. Have fun and be safe!
  9. All right. Since I've got the new still camera and all and there are WAY more settings than I know what to do with on the thing I'm curious to know what settings you experienced camera guys are shooting with. Specifically: Is weather the main factor in determining what settings you shoot with or do you change settings depending upon the subject...i.e. tandem vs. large RW formation (I'm referring more to shutter speed and aperture rather than focus but feel free to expand on any possibilities)? What film speed do you guys shoot and do you change it for overcast (or less sunny) days or sunset loads versus bright, clear sunny days? So far I've only used 'Sport' mode on my Canon which, from what I can tell, goes for a faster shutter speed to capture motion better. Do you guys use Sport mode (or it's equivalent on different brand cameras) also or do you use one of the 'Creative' modes such as Shutter priority? If you use Shutter priority what shutter speed do you use? Okay...that's bound to be enough questions for one thread. Thanks in advance for any feedback! -Trey
  10. Agreed...and Prost was right. I was referring to my pics rather than the abilities of the camera.
  11. Hmmm....go for the Amber instead! Much better IMO.
  12. hookit

    Fear Factor

    That would be sweet. I would say he definitely has a good chance but there's usually a stunt in which luck is involved to some degree. Who knows?
  13. So did Steve-O let you into the Press area?
  14. Unfortunately this is a true statement. This situation will have to be rectified immediately!
  15. The only time I've heard of jumpers not being allowed to open high (as in the case of recognizing a long spot) is during really large boogies and on well organized formation loads where there are so many jumpers in the air that they all break off and pull in stages. I would say it's certainly good practice to not open higher than your planned altitude however I've never seen it enforced as a rule except in the two cases I just mentioned.
  16. Safe for work (relatively safe at least!).
  17. I would land with rear risers. I fly a Xaos 104 at about a 1.8 wing-loading. I've practiced landing with just rear risers before on my last canopy (Vengeance 120) but haven't yet done it on the Xaos.
  18. I just purchased a Canon Rebel 2000 last week and jumped with it this past weekend. I'm very pleased with the pictures. They're not magazine quality but, IMO, not bad for having borrowed a lens and just asked a few camera flyers about how to best set the focus. I like the fact that the Canon is VERY flexible. I can let it make all the decisions such that it's almost as simple as a basic point-and-click camera or I can set everything manually if I ever get around to actually learning photography! I went with the Canon Rebel was because I'd seen it highly recommended by other folks on this forum. And, of course, it does have a jack for the remote shutter release. Good luck with your purchase and have fun with it!
  19. hookit

    Two Years!

    Today is the two year anniversary of my first jump! Since then I've logged 450 jumps at 8 different dz's spread across 4 different states. I've made a bunch of friends and had a TON of fun. And now...I'm off to the dz!
  20. At SDC's Summerfest last year the pilots were flying a crosswind jumprun and I LOVED it. The frustrating thing with a crosswind jumprun is that you have to re-train people on spotting. When you're on a crosswind jumprun the first group can and should leave the plane well before they're directly upwind of the dz. Ideally it should be timed such that the middle group exits the plane directly upwind from the dz. It was very frustrating to see the green light on with the first group waiting until the plane was upwind of the dz to begin climbout. I saw very few people landing off the dz that week. -Trey
  21. That makes good sense. However one thing that worries me about Freaks exiting strictly largest group to smallest is that the solo Freaks (I really like that!) going out last are very often learning to freefly. If someone is learning to sitfly then there is a very good chance that they'll spend the majority of their jump on their back falling relatively slow and possibly drifting over the larger group of experienced freefliers. This thought makes me very nervous when I'm in the larger group of freefliers and I see that an inexperienced freeflier is following us out. I typically ask the inexperienced freeflier to exit before us unless they're planning to open particularly high. -Trey
  22. I actually had tunnel time before my first jump. I happened to be in Orlando on business and saw a flyer for Skyventure in the hotel lobby. I went and took the whuffo course and spent 2 minutes or so in the tunnel. It was just enough time to learn to get stable and turn just a bit. About a month later I did my AFF level 1 followed by level 2 the next day. I passed them with ease. Two weeks later I was fortunate enough to be in Orlando again for business and this time I bought ten minutes of tunnel time. After this I was actually able to combine tasks from certain levels and I graduated AFF early. All of that being said, I've since realized that there's a LOT more to a FJC than just the freefall tasks and, in retrospect, I feel I missed out on some things (although I saved some buck$ and that was definitely a plus at the time) by graduating early. In particular the Emergency Procedures (I still went over them on my own but it's hard to beat having an AFFI put you in a harness and drill you on them) and canopy flight training. I guess I would say that tunnel time could be a benefit to some students. Particularly those who are having difficulty with specific freefall tasks. However, IMO, it should definitely be optional. I'm now a big fan of the AFP method because the curriculum includes so much more than the AFF program. Particularly the canopy instruction. I agree also that the tandem jumps do a good job of teaching freefall stability and awareness while still under the relatively much safer control of a tandem master. Blues, Trey
  23. Count me in on a balloon jump!