shveddy

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Posts posted by shveddy

  2. I fucked up and had a pretty bad skydiving injury once. The medical expenses ruined me, and it didn't cover any ongoing care. I had insurance. It was in the USA.

    I left the country as soon as I could kinda/sorta walk again, and I doubt I'll ever go back except for short visits. Now I pay 110 dollars a month for a plan that covers everything, including numerous necessary procedures and benefits that were specifically excluded from my US based plan, and all I have to pay is a 200 dollar annual deductible.

    This guy gets a donation out of solidarity.

    But the USA needs to fix its bullshit system.

  6. I'm trying to get my sewing machine to stitch ripstop consistently. It seems like the feed dogs aren't gripping the material well, so the stitch length can vary quite a bit. Two questions:

    1. I have my foot set to maximum pressure on the fabric and that could be totally wrong. Is it?

    2. Short of replacing the feed dogs (not worth it on a cheap machine), is there any way I can get them to grip better? Sharpen them with a file? Put some sort of material on it?

    3. Anything else I'm missing?

  8. They replaced my L2 after a swooping accident, and my first jump back was less than a year later. Lots of surgeons will look at you like you're crazy if you ask when you can jump again because they don't understand the forces involved in an uneventful skydive.

    You might have to ask when you can start running again and just start jumping when you can do that level of activity.

    Either get rid of the Saber, get a pocket slider, or learn how to pack for soft openings. Your back will be fine for normal use, even surprisingly durable, but if you fuck it up again it's ten times worse because you have little chisels pre-installed. Don't get into swooping.

  9. I just got the Ogio 9800.

    It's built like it'll last a decade, the wheels are smooth as butter, it has good compartmentalization options, and I was able to cram a full sized paraglider and harness along with two helmets and a skydiving rig with relative ease.

    The only downside is the fact that it weighs around 14 pounds, and doesn't play well luggage weight allowances. You could comfortably lug around 100+ pounds of gear in it, but then you'd have to spend approximately the cost of the bag just to get the thing on an airplane.

  10. trunk

    When I spoke to the sony rep sounded like it was piezo based vs the boss systems. I left the meeting feeling like we would have an issue but I've been wrong before. Basically someone just needs to man up and jump it.

    Buy more Turned On's so I can afford to buy cameras again :-)



    What's the difference between piezo and boss, and why does it make you feel like it would be an issue?

  11. I'm going to get one of the FE mount Sony cameras - probably just the regular A7 because it's so darn cheap.

    However, I could be convinced to splurge. Has anyone used the in body stabilization on the A7II with video? How does it handle freefall?

  12. zsombi

    2 of the jumps were high pulls.
    My coach said I have to push my shoulder towards the 3ring, other swoopers say, just stay relaxed, and keep my feet together symmetrically.
    I'm curious about your opinions.

    PS.: Thanks the GIFs, and thanks Brenan for putting me on SoFPiDaRF Facebook.
    I jumping with my coach since my 1st jump (same as my instructor) the 80% of my jumps were canopy piloting, in 225 jumps I haven't even touched the front risers under 1000ft , and I won't downsize for a while, I just wanted to start swooping on a "safer" canopy for this. (I mean Katana has longer recovery, if you make the turn in a safe altitude you have more time to recover or accurate the flight.)
    Don't eat me because of this non-conservative way of downsizing.



    Yo. Canopies with longer recovery arcs eat up more altitude when you're trying to stab out of a dive.

    Therefore you will have to recognize that you have fucked up at a higher altitude or else you will have a much smaller window of time to fix things WHEN you make a mistake and find yourself low after a turn.

    Recognizing that you're in a bad situation early on is something that only comes with experience, and you don't have that experience. End of story.

    The longer recovery arc only gives you time to perfect a swoop that is already pretty good. It'll just kick your ass with a lot more vigor when you make mistakes.

    And since your ass is connected to your spine, which protects your spinal cord I'd suggest you pay attention. Trust me on this - I'm an incomplete paraplegic and I'm lucky to be that.

    On the plus side, I'd wager that there is a 95% chance that you're gonna get away with it and you'll look back on this thread thinking you were right.

    But that's not the point. The point is that if you take advantage of all the lessons that other people learned then you can probably learn this stuff with a 99.9% chance that you'll walk away unscathed.

    Swooping is remarkably simple and easy, but unfortunately the negative consequences are very sudden and very destructive. You're an idiot if you don't take advantage of every resource available to better your odds.

  15. cpoxon

    ***Someone better start selling these things to the general public.



    To the actual general public? Or the skydiving public? At least all the YouTubers will give up on wanting to "do that flying squirrel thing off mountains" now and want to be Jetman instead :P

    I think realistically it would cost about as much as a luxury car and you'd have to jump it out of a helicopter/skyvan and buy an additional rig with big canopies and spring loaded pilot chutes and it looks like you need a decent amount of ground crew involved, so I don't think people will just be trying this stuff out and it wouldn't be difficult to implement whatever training standards make sense (I imagine a few thousand jumps and a lot of head down in the tunnel would be enough).

    I'd wager that I'm like two or three percent of the way towards being qualified to do this safely and it's within the realm of possibility that I could save up enough cash.

    That isn't saying much, but it's a whole lot better than the zero percent chance that I'll ever have the money or be qualified enough to fly a fighter jet, so I'll take what I can get :)

  16. Just listen to your instructors for your first jumps. The following advice is more for when you start having some freedom to make your own choices:

    1. Don't try to free-fly all the time. Make sure you take the time to build a solid foundation and master flying on your belly first.

    2. Don't buy new gear for a while - buy used. Your first couple of setups won't last you that long, and the money is better spent on jumps anyway.

    3. You have an ego and your ego wants to kill you. Don't let it.

  18. Go make a jump when there are little puffy clouds at around 4000 feet, choose a particular point along the edge of one and try to hit it. You'll probably get pretty close, and even hit it reliably with practice.

    He's technically more maneuverable than a wingsuit, and wingsuits have been giving high fives, smashing small styrofoam flags and zooming into caves for a while now.

    He can travel equally far in any direction he pleases. It's just as easy for him to go north as south or east or west. Wingsuits on the other hand can go down, left and right but they have much less maneuverability when they're trying to go up.

  19. Not to detract from Mr. Aikins' skydiving skills, but the difficulty stunt is almost entirely technical. Most of us could hit a target that big, but only if the spot were right.

    (Whether any of us are that confident in our skydiving skills and ability to coordinate the technical details of a perfect spot is a whole other issue)

    So I imagine that a lot of careful preparation, practice and engineering is going to go into being 110% sure that he gets a perfect spot and that he has the ability to make accurate adjustments in real time to compensate for the inevitable discrepancies between calculations and the reality of falling through 25000 feet of air.

    Ditto for lots of engineering going into the net contraption.

    Luke, since you've joined this thread can you explain why you guys decided to add the variables that come with a HALO jump into the mix? Why not just 13000 feet?

  25. At least take a look at the a6000 from Sony. Exit equipment makes a great tongue switch and if you're looking to focus on photography, the higher end zeiss primes that are available for E-mount bring the sharpness and color rendition to a whole different level (for a price) that I don't think canon offers for mirror less ecosystem.

    I have the 24mm zeiss and I can't wait to get in the air with it this spring if it's performance on land is any indication. Also, the FPS and autofocus are too fast, if anything. 11fps overwhelms the memory card at full rez, so I bump it down to 7fps to keep the quality at max.