soulbabel

You need to check settings in your video editing program for the problem, because YouTube isn't capable of muting out just a part of your audio track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbg3uz8GDig&feature=player_profilepage#t=88s Try watching the source file you uploaded for this video, and see if the music is missing there as well.

I have the cx150 and I get similar vibrations, especially during headdown flying. I'm starting to think that the weak point is not my helmet or camera settings, but the lens. Perhaps the lens housing is not sturdy enough to prevent the front element from vibrating at fast wind speeds. Another possibility, is the front mounting area of the cx150 is not rigid enough and begins to flex from the large amount of drag the Opteka lens catches during fast speeds. I'm starting to suspect this possibility more and more, while I play with the camera in my hands. I may try some tests, like jumping with no lens to verify that my helmet and camera are not being the source of the vibrations. Then I'll move onto seeing how to test my lens mount theory. I'm not too smart so hopefully I'll come up with something.

Do you have the metal protective hood mounted on the lens, or did you take it off?

I'm looking to shave off some of my diving time so I can get to my slot quickly and increase the time available for turning points. So I was wondering what exiting techniques you use when chasing a headdown formation and you are the 2nd diver or further back? When I leave the plane with my head towards the prop and feet towards the tail, it is a very stable exit but it feels like I'm fairly slow to build up speed. Sometimes I dive out and try to stay headdown right out the door. It works sometimes and I can gain speed quickly, but most times it gets really unstable until I build up enough speed. I'm not sure how to hold the posture reliably so that it's effective. I've also seen some jumpers flip out the door and ball up to gain speed when doing belly speed stars. How suitable and effective is that technique for chasing down a freefly formation?

I don't have first hand experience with it, but you can try this mod: http://sceneblock.com/2010/07/14/5d-mark-ii-wind-muff-with-video-results/

Freefly organizer is no longer Selwyn. Paraclete XP's James Flaherty (The Punisher) will be taking Selwyn's place as freefly organizer.

We don't really have a dress-up theme, but you're free to costume up if you want. Usually we just hang out and relax at the end of the day.

Jumping starts at noon on Friday during our boogies (it's normally 3pm on regular business fridays). If there's enough people around though, they might be able to get the plane up sooner.

Those of us over here at Suffolk look forward to meeting and jumping with you guys. Should be a great time for freefly and belly fliers alike. Now we just need to pray and provide proper sacrificial offerings to the weather gods for some good wind and sunshine.

I don't think you can have a cutaway with a Z1. However, my Z1 slides off my head with minimal effort, even when I have the chin strap buckled. However, it fits well enough that it's never fallen off my head after at least 400 jumps, and 30 hours of freeflying in the tunnel. I can only speak for myself about my Z1's fit, though, as I know a few people who've had theirs slip off in freefall. I wasn't planning on jumping that unicorn mount anyhow. Also, I'm thinking the footage would be rather shakey with my helmet not being tight on my head, despite the really wide angle lens.

Here's the picture of the GoPro mounted on the Phantom X. I prefer the Z1 visor over goggles during freefall, and I like being able to lift the visor up when under the canopy, so I was never interested in mounting my GoPro on top of my helmet and losing these abilities. But after seeing the new visor mount, I tried the same positioning with the basic mounts that came with my GoPro. The only mount that allowed me to angle the camera correctly was rather long (see attached pictures.) It's only gaffer taped on, because I wasn't too thrilled about it and doubt I'll jump it like this anyhow. So I'm wondering how well the Square1 mount will work on a Z1 visor. Anyone have thoughts about the Square1 mount?

I saw a picture of a GoPro mounted onto the lens of a Phantom X helmet in this month's Parachutist. I think this is the bracket that was featured in the picture: http://www.square1.com/manufacturers/square1/p522.asp#GoProMounts Does anyone have any experience using it? I was thinking about trying it out on the top part of my Z1 visor. I'm guessing there would be a bit of an overhang, but they didn't have any measurements listed for me to determine how much.

I have an Argus, so I guess I'll be dying peacefully in my sleep.

My friend flies flys looks like this when he films tandems. Here's a picture I took of him recently on a T2i with the kit lens.

Both of these cameras are coming out next month, and I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on how well they could be used for skydiving. It seems they both support wired remotes that can be adapted to a tongue/blow/bite switch. I'm still relatively new to cameras, but I've been trying to get up to speed. I know most skydivers jump Canons, but these cameras look worth considering. The Sony Alphas seem very appealing to me, because of the fast phase detection auto-focus and the very small and lightweight size compare to other cameras. There's a lot of other features that I find interesting on these, but they are mostly ground photography related. Battery life isn't too good, but overall, the Alpha has a very good price point for what you are getting out of these cameras. The Nikon seems like a really spectacular camera as well. I'm wondering if the weather sealing aspect of this camera really adds to it's durability in skydiving. Also, would it's "39 area (9 cross type) TTL phase detection with AF fine tuning" be beneficial for our purposes? I'm sure I left out a ton of pros and cons about these cameras, so please feel free to talk about other aspects.

I posted some split screen freefly footage of a skydive over the weekend that was filmed while headdown. Initially, I posted the footage as is, so everything appears to be traveling upwards. I started thinking this might look really odd to viewers who hadn't become accustomed to that sort of perspective change, so I posted another video where the clips are rotated 180 degrees to show the actual movement and orientation. I was hoping people would be willing to look at the two clips and tell me which orientation would yield the best overall viewing experience. Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oQDwkSRKsg Flipped: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIgXG6kUQ0w Also, the flipped version looks odd at the start, so I'm wondering if I should keep it right side up until we leave the plane. I wasn't sure what kind of video transition would work best: some sort of zoom and rotate, or just having the video flip instantly, etc. I'm open to any suggestions. I use AviSynth to put my footage together, so my video editor is actually just a text editor (Notepad), but I can probably figure something out.

About the first 8 hours of my freefly progression were coached. The first hour was backfly, then about three hours of sit, and four hours of headdown. At the end of each of those progressions, I was only stable enough to fly alone without spotting. I think you'll progress faster than me as long as you don't make the same mistake I did early on, which was not allowing yourself ample time to recuperate and evaluate your progress between training sessions. While learning sitfly, my friend and I flew alternating 2 minute rotations in one hour blocks. We didn't have alot of time to rest, and our coach was only able to point things out on video after our session. Do yourself a favor, and try and fly a max of about 7 1/2 to 10 minutes out of a 30 minute block, and have some breaks inbetween to watch your video so you know what to fix during your next session. Also, throw in a few rotations where you just play around in the tunnel practicing the things you have learned. Sometimes your brain needs a break from following someone else's direction, and you need to relax and just fly whatever feels natural at your own pace. I'm not sure how condensed your 20 hours of flying will be, but over the summer I saw a guy from New Zealand getting coached at Paraclete everyday for like three weeks. He flew roughly about an hour a day, and when I saw him fly during the last few days he was there, he was about as good as I was. The coaching and facility are going to be top notch in Arizona, just make sure you allow your body enough time to recover. Sitflying will destroy your arms, and headdown can tire out your legs considerably. If you schedule your time based on knowing what your body can take, you'll probably leave that tunnel a better flyer than me. Have fun and maybe we'll meet in the sky someday.

Sometimes I like to hang out in brakes and enjoy the view, or fly around the clouds if they are high enough. Then when I get bored, I'll use the altitude to learn the flight characteristics of my canopy (or a demo/unfamiliar canopy). Finding the stall point of your canopy, learning how it behaves during flat turns, etc are all valuable things to learn if you ever find yourself in a tight spot close to the ground. At my DZ, full altitude jumps and hop & pops are $23 either way, so I get the most out of my money. Just make sure you dress appropriately, it gets cold up there.

Go do solo high pulls. Nothing more lonesome than hanging out 2 miles up by yourself. Make sure you factor in the wind speeds of the uppers, so you don't land off. Or, if you prefer something freefall-related, belly tracking and back tracking are alot of fun. Aim for a cloud perpendicular to jump run (or a landmark on the ground to maintain your heading) and just fly to it. Likewise, pay attention to the winds before you go up, to make sure you can make it back to the DZ. Alot of my 500 jumps are solos, but those solos had a purpose when I went up. I wanted to improve a skill without feeling like I was wasting someone else's skydive with me flailing around. And now I can look back and remember how bad I sucked two years ago, and get a fine feeling of accomplishment when I compare it to how less sucky I am today.

I should be getting mine within the next three weeks, so I don't have any actual experience with the final product. I know one other Paraclete member has been flying the Uno already, and I've heard it seems to be holding up pretty well. One piece of advice I can offer, is to contact them through email, because Giovanni is awesome at customer support. Over the course of two weeks, he answered all my questions as I slowly figured out how I wanted to design my suit. He sent me all the premade logos they have available for embroidery and a PDF of thread colors you can select from. And since I placed my order through email, I had way more flexibility than the online order form allowed. I actually took a screenshot of their suit coloring flash app, and superimposed which logos and the thread coloring on the suit to give him a solid blueprint for how I wanted the suit. I left the exact sizing and placement in his judgement though. I couldn't pick a spandex other than black or red, though, even though the image on the site has a suit with gold spandex. I found some pictures on their facebook page, "Tonfly Corner", that really showed some nice color schemes that can be done regardless. Their flash coloring program doesn't really represent the actual fabric colors very well, so I used the pictures to better gauge the colors. I've attached the ones I thought were really nice. For payment, I used paypal as the bank transfer was actually going to be more expensive for me, because of my bank's additional fees. Using Paypal added an extra 4.5% to the total cost. We don't have to pay VAT, but shipping was 26 euros. Without any custom embroidery, the cheapest the total cost will be is around $580. The custom logos really add personality to the suit, so I added 4 of them. What's nice is he doesn't charge for some of the Tonfly logos. You'd need to get some clarification on that from him, though. I'll let you now how my suit does after I fly it. Right now, I have a really positive impression of the Tonfly company. The only downside would be having to send back the suit from US to Slovakia for any size adjustment.

I just came across this short documentary about skydiving that I thought was pretty artistic. I did a forum search and it didn't look like anyone else had posted it yet, so I thought I'd pass it along. http://vimeo.com/13434589

Both good DZs. I would just go to which ever one is closer. If you want to fly belly, though, Skydive Westpoint definitely has a ton of belly jumpers. If planes make a difference, Suffolk has a PAC, and Westpoint has a King Air (I think).

They'll probably post video eventually, but here's some video that Team4speed posted a few weeks ago showing off their skills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID2wh6GFkx0#t=3m1s Those guys are definitely nasty flyers, I saw them fly for a few weeks while they trained at Paraclete during the winter.

On your first AFF jump, you will have two AFF instructors on both sides of you keeping you stable. You won't really be flying your body to a great extent, so you wouldn't really see the benefit of any tunnel time you would have done prior. My advice is to go ahead and do your first jump, and if you decide you want to pursue more jumping you can decide at that point if you need some tunnel time. Who knows, you might be a natural and not need the tunnel to get through AFF, and then you could use the money for more jumping instead. Or, if along the way you discover you have spinning issues like I did, then the tunnel becomes the best tool to help you remedy any freefall issues. I live in Virginia Beach, so I usually jump at Suffolk since its much closer than West Point. If you have any more questions, you could always pass by the DZ and pick our brains for advice.

A few months ago, after I had my backflip hd transition worked out, I started flying with 2 or 3 more people during our member hour to practice taking docks, etc. After that though, I started working on carving instead of VFS, so I've been flying solo in the tunnel for the most part. Sometimes I'll practice turning points on an instructor, and my transitions are generally level and on heading, but nowhere near as good as the other Paraclete members who do VFS and fly together. When I first started, we used to pile like 6 people in the tunnel and sitfly. While it was fun, it felt like I didn't really progress, because I was always flying as safe as I possibly could. When I'm flying solo, though, I am more relaxed when I try new techniques. Since I don't have to avoid crashing into other people, I find it easier to discover my flying limitations and push them further, while developing a better self-awareness of my own flying abilities. I think eventually I will participate more in VFS, but right now I'd rather play games of "follow the leader" and carve around the tunnel with multiple people. Also, I find that all that carving experience is a blast to take into the sky and makes it especially easier to catch less experienced freeflyers.