jmfreefly

Just a word of warning on tying knots there. I have seen some reports of knots getting hung up (on the guide ring) momentarily during landing maneuvers (mostly high speed, but could still cause some heartache). I usually try to fingertrap the excess right away. If I need to adjust, I just re-fingertrap. I also don't sew them, and maybe once a year I will have to re-fingertrap the little bit that creeps out. j

I pretty much use Auto, or sometimes when I worry about backlighting (all white cloud backdrop, that is very bright), I sometimes use the beach and ski mode. But I am almost always trying to fly with the student/tandem taking up most of the frame, so it isn't much of an issue in that case. I use slo-mo enough in my student videos that I wouldn't want to use the sport mode. I have used it for some other footage/goofyness. j

The MonkeyKam bag is not the bag that my buddy has with the gripes. I have heard that the MonkeyKam bag is better designed for usability, but I neither confirm nor deny that statement.

I think MonkeyKam sells a bag (or they were planning on it). Supposedly good reviews on the design. I guess Morpheus makes the actual bag.. http://www.monkeykam.tv/monkeykamera.php I have never seen one, so I can't comment first hand. A buddy of mine has a headhunter puuch, and he had a few grumbles with it. The two main issues with it were that the cable routing prefented him from orienting the camera differently in the pouch, that there was no way to view the record light easily, and that he couldn't get to the record function on his PC 110 (touch screen). He ended up carrying an extra remote around to set it to record. j

Not saying you can't get good results in sport mode, but it definitely changes the nature of the video. In some cases, it has some cool 'effects'. As in the 'stop motion' effect on prop blades. I personally find the mode distracting at times. If I wanted to mimic that effect, I could (in most cases I think) do that post-process (on an NLE). In effect, that mode trys for a faster 'shutter speed' for better 'stop motion'. (quotes used to relate still photo terms to video). I could understand using that mode if you were tracking something fast moving, but in freefall, we don't move that fast relative to one another (generally). Truthfully, I am unclear how it does it, but for everything, there is a downside. Back when I was using that mode, I seem to remember some strangeness when I was doing slo-mo, and it seemed to be more grainy. Those may be entirely subjective comments. j

Depending on your setup, you could get a lot of buffeting.. what box are you using? I also dislike the use of Sport, as it changes the nature of the video somewhat. That may be a compounding factor, but.. I bet it is just the way you are flying/videoing. Just the fact that you are turning your head to look at your altimeter is a dead giveaway that you are 'flying with a camera attached to your head' and not 'flying the camera'. To really get that 'tuned out' of your flying, you have to imagine that your head has a glass of water on it, and that no matter what the rest of your body is doing, that glass of water (and your head) stays put. j

High and back, lead with the head and dive. High and close, lead with the belly and arch.

I call Beer, monkey man. Have to pull some stills tonight from those jumps. j

Yep, I know that pull! Once we were searching for a hole, while I was at the front of the plane in my birdman suit. I was almost crying to see two huge cloud formations forming a valley, basically right over the dropzone, and being stuck while they were looking for the spot. By the time we completed a go-around for the clouds, they had moved off. Good for the other jumpers, but I missed my chance to 'base jump' in the 10k foot high 'cloud canyon'. But that all being said, it was the right choice, for more reasons than just traffic. If you have a malfunction, and end up screwing around with it enough, or chop and deploy your reserve low, you can easily be in a spot where you wont be able to make it to a good landing area, or not be able to set up to land into the wind. These scenarios do make it harder to come out unscathed. j

Well, Scott, even you got fooled for a second or two!

I have a Cookie box. It comes with a captive thumb screw that works very well. Zero risk of line snag. I put some self-stick neoprene pipe wrap material in the box to help stabilize the unit, and to allow the camera to be dropped in and threaded quickly. I like the cookie box much better than the bonehead boxes that they are selling nowadays. j

Yep, some fun flights. I'll try to pull some pics from my video camera and post them also. I think the rule of "Make sure you are looking at the right airport" was reinforced. j

Ha, that is a funny phrase. They are sending cypress 1 batteries, not cypress 2's.

There is no best lens, obviously. There are a bunch of threads on this subject. In brief: (my viewpoint) The less wide angle the more accurate the video. (no 'big nose' syndrome with many wide angles). The downside is that a) you need to be much more precise in your sighting and flying (parallax issues compound this). The wider angle, the less exact you need to sight and fly (sort of), but the closer you can be (making flying around much quicker,etc.) All that being said, I started with a .5, and now I fly a .42 Hi that is really wide (but quite aspherical for how wide it is). j

An AAD isn't a 'sensitive electronic component'? I would contend that it is very sensitive, to measure barometric pressure as quickly and accurately as it does. Uh, yeah, but that is apples and oranges. Your computer is grounded. I have zapped more than one computer component from static (stupid me), when installing and not grounding myself properly. Static can do a lot to electronics. I had to send back my Palm m515 and get a replacement because of a fairly common problem of static discharge when docking. The Palm worked fine, but couldn't hotsync anymore. Not according to Airtec/SSK. They claim it is a problem with static electricity during deployment. Again, according to Airtec/SSK, they had instituted a design change that had different shielding. Also, they claim that there are only a handful of cypress 2's in the US that exhibit the problem. I asked specifically 'how many in the world have this problem', and they (US rep) wouldn't / couldn't give me a number. But, irrespective, does a quality control problem give you a better warm and fuzzy ? I have contended all along that there is no way to know that it is only 'minor'. If it is, as you hypothesize, a quality control problem, it gives even less confidence that it is 'minor'. I am fairly sure you don't really believe it is simple. Like someone else commented, FXCs do it all without these issues, but they certainly aren't very reliable at their deployment altitude. But I completely agree with your point that this problem should be solvable from the outset. Trust me, I doubt there are many out there that are as frustrated with static issues, now that 2 our of 3 AADs needs repair/replacement (Cypress 2 and now my Vigil). j

ha.. ok, so you posted the email, and I posted the attachment.

I just received this from Kim (Vigil USA). I am fairly certain this shouldn't be a problem to post this, but I am certainly not representing the company. Until Vigil USA/ Kim chimes in, I guess this is not official.

According to a poster higher in the thread, it appears they replaced it. j

Man, I don't know what your minimum focal distance on your eye is, but that is pretty dang tough for me.. especially in a dim plane. I wrote to the folks that make the cam eye 2 about a redesigned plug, and they were very helpful (repaired my cameye2 / put their updated plug on it). I would just contact them and tell them your problem. I bet they could help you out easily. j

Yeah, and make the wings even wider and more rigid.. and maybe make a rigid device that you wear on the feet to aid in stability. Oh, and you could enclose the guy in a lexan bubble.. oh wait, we have that already... its called a glider. I have had all the same thoughts as you, and I find myself asking 'where does it end?'. I mean when does human flight become something more mechanical? Most of the early birdmen had rigid structures, and that was part of the reason they pretty much all died. (we are talking in the Valentino days). I would be wary about anything that prevents movement (to help resist forces), especially in a cutaway situation. The popular science article on the birdman had several interesting points and some good anecdotes from Jari about flying wings that were just too big. The most impressive to me is the drawing that shows how much surface area would be needed to match the loading of a flying squirrel. j

Exactly why the rant at the link is a bit silly, in my view. They removed all their Vigils and replaced them with Cypress 2s, under the view of 'put a proven product in place' (my paraphrasing of the rant). Yet the Cypress 2 had a similar static electricity problem (still waiting to get mine back from this problem being fixed). Granted, it didnt cause a misfire, but it is just as 'unproven' in many contexts. Each of these products has issues upon release, and no matter how many jumps a test jumper puts on it, there are things that the general public do that a test jumper may never do. The original Cypress went through its growing pains too. Don't get me wrong, this all annoys the heck out of me (being both a Cypress 2 owner and a Vigil Owner). Thank god I kept my Cypress 1 in one of my rigs. j

ha! I wouldn't mind doing the job, except for two major things: 1) When she did her tandem, she left her shoes at the dz. I knew she lived up somewhere close to me, so I brought them up for her to pick up. After trying several times to get her to pick them up, she finally had me mail them to her (like maybe 20 miles away). What a dingbat. 2) She said she wanted it done on a very tight budget. ha! (and of course it was on a weekend!) j

Just got an email from a tandem student whose video I shot almost 2 years ago, asking if I would do video at her wedding. Unfortnately it was on a weekend, and wasn't enough incentive to drag me from the dropzone. Anybody else get offers like that?? j

Yeah, I had the same questions when I travelled to OZ for the Equinox Boogie. Turned out I could firewire footage from PAL without any problem, and all of the non-US tvs could handle NTSC without any issue (they are way smarter than we are..

Not a Premiere user, so I can't comment on project settings. I know in AVID, the project settings are pretty significant, and not easily swapped -- I would have to just re-create a new project in PAL or NTSC. But I guess there is a larger question of what is the native format of the footage (Pal or ntsc)? The conversion can sometimes be clunky. (maybe the source of your problem (??)). j