elton01

Finished roughing out the helmet. I'm machining the hinge as we speak. I'm going with a poor man's rough rendition of the BH cutaway hinge. It looks good on Matt's and is clean. I weighed the helmet as is right now and it comes in at 2.9 lbs without any accessories. It needs the top plate, hinge, closing clasp and of course cameras. I hope to keep it under 8.3 lbs when fully done. I think it will be achievable.

Thanks guys, I'll wait to hear from Angela before I jump.

Hi guys, Angela from FreakNSuits just finished making a camera jacket for me. The workmanship is first rate. One thing (through my own mistake in measuring), is the fact that the arms are about two inches too long. I cannot get the wing to fully tighten until my arms are almost fully extended. I would like the wing to be fully tightend by standard "box" position. If I use temporary velcro "cuffs" and tighten them where the arm should end on my wrist, then fold over the excess, I can get the wing to tighten right where I want it. Once I've test jumped a few times, I'll mark the sleeve, cut the excess and resew on the cuff. The one thing I've noticed though, and I'm not sure if Angela puts them in, is swoop cords to allow the wing to be tightened. Has anyone else gotten a camera jacket from FreakNSuits that doesn't use swoop cords? Is it supposed to be tightend just by the pulling of the trailing edge using the arm only, no cords? If anyone else has a FreakNSuits camera jacket, please let me know. I've sent Angela an email, but it's the weekend so I probably won't get a reply till this coming week. I was just curious if anyone else could tell me what the design intends. Thanks, Elton

Hmmm, I still jump my old 1984 Centaurus container and 1986 Sidewinder when I'm looking for something different. They have a Clipper and Turbo Z respectively with round reserves. Piece of S**t death traps, they'll be the end of me one day, mark my words.

Yeah, I get the same issue occasionally. All I do is allow it to charge for 5 minutes, (red light on), unplug, then turn the camera ON, then plug the USB cable in, it starts up in windows 7 and recognizes the drive with no issues. If you still can't recognize the drive, then pull the SD card and reformat/reinstall. It might help.

So, Today I wrapped my helmet plug with the following: 1 layer carbon 2 glass 1 carbon 1 glass 1 carbon I left it rough on all the edges, with plenty of overhang. I made sure that the important middle was well wet out and bonded. It has been indicated by the red lines in the photos where the finished edges of the helmet will be located.

Hey Lilchief, Nice setup. One thing I did notice, and it may not necessarily apply to your setup, since your cables seem pretty well fixed, but you may want to get some very small gauge silicon tubing and glue it around the edges of the cutout on your box. The natural tendency of the cables to move due to wind buffet, and the inherit sharpness of cut carbon fiber can make a very slow cable cutter. You may make 100 jumps with no issue, but then suddenly one day you'll have a sheared at worst, shorted at best cable. Once again, I can't see really closely at the cable and whether or not it's touching the cut out edge, but if it is, you may want to cushion the edge of the box. Just a thought, and if it isn't an issue, then please disregard, I've had the issue before and it's not a big deal, but nothing worse than suddenly losing a cable.

That is correct, Epoxy will stick to both poly and epoxy substrate, and poly will stick to itself, but not so well to epoxy. This is why I told OP to do some investigation to decide which would work best for him. Most of the larger helmet manufacturers are passing off that they have these great carbon fiber helmets, but then use polyester resin to provide the bond. This is sort of going out the back door to try and cut production costs, but to be honest, if they used epoxy then the helmets would be even more costly, but would stand up to abuse better. It's really not important in the grand scheme of things though. Also have to add that the repair looks good.

Hi guys, I seem to have a corrupted MTS file. Are there any programs that are useful in looking at / repairing a corrupted image. Any help appreciated. Thanks, E

So here's the deal with repairing your helmet. Wherever you see the delamination (white cloudy area on the helmet, looks like yours goes from the very back edge of the flat mount on top, to around the sides, I'd say right up to the edge of your freefly man sticker, and around and equal distance to the other side and then about to mid level of the helmet at the back.) You're going to need to completely cut that out, but VERY carefully. You need to cut it out and then find a way to brace the piece you've removed. You're going to use it to as a temporary mold to pour plaster or two part pourable foam into. Once you've made the mold of the damaged part, you then need to use it to recreate a new piece to put back in. Now the fun part, you have to go around the entire perimeter of both the NEW part and the EXISTING helmet edges. Very carefully sand a 16:1 feathered edge on both, but make sure it's opposing from helmet to new piece. What you want is a very nice gradual feather that will allow the most surface area of the composite layers to meet. Once you have this edge you can then begin to bond the two together. You'll want to run two layer of CF in the inside, and feather to match existing structure, and then run two layer of CF outside, also blending into existing structure. The best way to build the patch though is to keep it two layers less than the helmets layer count, this way you can apply two wet layup patches directly butting into the helmet, and then carry on with two more inside and out as described above. This will give you the most strength. If you need some really detailed pics, let me know and I'll send some from the last aircraft repair I did. It was on a Slingsby firefly wing, and it took a week but it is as strong as factory. It's not a helmet, but the exact same rules apply for any type of composite repair. The most important thing is to get a good feather edge for bonding to. You'll also need to decide if you're going to use an epoxy based resin, or a polyester. I prefer epoxy as it's easier to use and provides greater strength, but some like polyester because it still provides enough strength for a helmet and is cheaper, but it does not resist UV very well. Do some research and decide what you'd like to use if you want to do the repair.

It's a nice piece of kit, but the one thing I do like about my Go Pro is that when I was Spain, I spent one day filming myself playing around at Empurabravia at 13,500 ft. , then two days later at 85 feet down in the Mediterranean while scuba diving. From what I understand, this unit is only water resistant down to .5 meters. Since I like to use my camera for both hobbies, the Go Pro is still the most adaptable. But if you're into jumping only, then this could be a good way to go. Would like to see how it does with more people using it and giving their impressions. It definitely has a more streamlined design than the "box".

Just to muddy the water and reply to something I don't even have I use an Olympus E-510 and E-620. No issues so far. Great results with skydiving photos simply because the 4/3 sensor does excellent in brighter light conditions. Just don't ask me to shoot hand held low light conditions. Easy to wire in your switch, and both bodies are extremely lightweight. Just make sure you turn off the stabilization for the sensor.

Just a quick update with some pics. I know I shouldn't have used the CF, but I couldn't resist. So the initial lay-up consists of two layer CF, two layer glass. When I do the next lay-up (crown), I'll do three layers glass and the last CF for cosmetic (light satin weave CF). The mounting plate will be 4 layers CF.

Hey SJF, Yeah, I use partall wax with miller stepenson A122 spray on PTFE mold release. Winning combination to be sure. I've been able to literally untape my molds and they just fall off the parts that I've laid up. I don't really have to buy any of my glass/carbon supplies since we have so many cut offs from work that I can get 2x2 or 2x4 pieces without much trouble. I just have to go down to the floor and ask the guys not to throw out the larger pieces.

Hey Matt, Yeah, I liked your idea of keeping the front flat. It just seems a lot easier to wrap the glass when you don't have to worry about following the countour of a nose, lips and eye sockets.