sunnyape

I just encountered this at my local iFly tunnel. Basically, I now must be an IBA member to use the tunnel and IBA will charge me an annual fee for that membership. Kinda sucky that I have to now have to pay an annual fee for the privilege of being an iFly customer.

I've been jumping a JFX2 119 for about 1 year now. Previously I'd done about 1,200 jumps on a Xaos21 120, prior to that about 1,400 jumps on a Velocity 111. My wing loading is about 2.1 The openings are very smooth, positive and almost always on heading. If it does go off heading, it's usually just after coming out of the D-bag and is easily managed. Once open, it's quite responsive and lots of fun to fly. It has a great glide angle and a bit of rear risers has gotten me back from some very deep spots. I've also been impressed with its ability to cut through turbulence. The landings are great with a predictable recovery arc, irrespective of whether doing toggle or riser turn final approaches. You have to lean heavily to do harness turns, but that's to be expected of a canopy like this. The flares have plenty of power and I can get excellent, semi-swoop landings in most conditions. Very stable and predictable to land in gusty winds too. My only gripe is that the lower brake lines supplied were waaayyy too long and had to be shortened by about 30cm. In summary, a predictable, well behaved canopy for an experienced pilot who wants a more power and spice than a Crossfire but doesn't need the aggravation of a swoop canopy.

It's easy enough to make them yourself, as they're basically just a piece of wood with castors underneath and some padded, comfortable surface on top ( Choosing good castors with sealed bearings and firm wheels is the key to smooth, fast rolling. The top surface can be a sheet of thick rubber or urethane etc, or you can go upmarket with high density foam and then a cloth cover. With more wind tunnels around and more teams training in them, using creeepers for 4 way RW training has sort of died out (mine's been under my bed for a decade). At my DZ, creepers are now mostly just used for training students or sometimes engineering 8+ ways.

Just been contacted by Beverly at Precision. Seems the person I was trying to get in contact with via email no longer works there. The Xaos is on its way back to me today. Whew!

R.I.P Jyro

Cheap, skateboarding style shoes with a stiff, flat sole. - The stiffness helps keep your booties taught. - The flatness makes turf surfing easier. - The cheapness makes them disposable DZ only shoes.

Thank Jerry and RiggerLee. My mistake, they're in Tennessee not Texas.

Has anyone else been having issues dealing with Precision recently? I'm currently very nervous about a Xaos that I sent to Precision Aerodynamics to have re-lined and a new slider installed. Precision received it more than a month ago, but I still don't have it back. When I didn't hear anything from them for weeks, I sent an email asking how it was progressing.... most of the *@precision.net email addresses bounced. Instead, a generic "We'll do it next week" response came from someone called Lisa using someone else's Gmail account and then silence again. Since then, no responses to emails. I called yesterday and left a message, which hasn't been responded to either. Given that I sent my canopy from the other side of the planet to them, I can't exactly drive over to their offices and give them a blast and take the canopy back to have a local rigger re-line it. Anyone here live near Dunlap, Texas and willing to drive past their office and see if they're still in business?

I'm currently very nervous about my Xaos that I sent to Precision to have it re-lined and a new slider installed. Precision received it more than a month ago, but I still don't have it back. When I didn't hear anything from them for weeks, I sent an email asking how it was progressing, most of the email addresses bounced. Instead, a generic "We'll do it next week" response from someone using a gmail account and then silence again. Since then, no responses to my emails. I called yesterday and left a message, which hasn't been responded to either. Given that I sent my canopy from the other side of the planet to them, I can't exactly drive over to their offices and give them a blast, but I'm starting to get nervous that Precision might have financial problems and my Xaos is never going to be seen again.

ahem. Camera PERSON. It's 2015 now. Anyhew, as a RW camera person, when I film a team I don't expect to pay for my slot or packing for training or competition. If the pace is casual, I do my own packing to save the team a few bucks, but they usually buy me beer in compensation. I pay my own travel and accomodation costs, but the team pays my entry fees for any competition. I don't ask for any additional money as 'payment', but then again I don't jump for a living, so doing camera for the team doesn't take me away from other income generating activities. All lollies or jokes I distribute in the plane are free of charge or copyright.

That SkySystems C6 Air has been vapourware for close to two and half years. As a person who has owned a Factory Diver and an Oxygen A3, it's sad to hear of the problems at SkySystems.

With my most recent helmet setup, I took a sort of opposite approach. I mounted my sight so that it matched my eye level when I held my head at a natural angle, then mounted and adjusted the cameras so that they matched that view. So, I brought the mounts to my head (BWHAHAHAH. I crack me up!) The sight is little piece of smoke coloured perspex with a hole in the middle. What I see is a small white blob floating in my field of vision to let me know the center point and, if I close my left eye, I can see the edge of the sight to know the rough boundary of the image frame when filming at med (120 deg) mode. Here is a picture of the setup .http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=144879;. (I recently changed the GoPro 3 case to the new 4+ skeleton case with the lower profile and bigger control buttons) For the Sony ActionCams, I just used their wifi viewing mode to send a live view to my mobile phone to set the aligment. With the GoPro, I did the same via the HDMI cable to a nearby TV. With regards to slightly tilting a camera, I suppose it comes down to what you film most. If you film tandooms / AFF all day, then a slightly up tilted camera will make your life easier when filming right in their face and below them. The issue of looking down or across a bit when flying very close to the subject is unavoidable with top or side mounts, unless you want to angle them slightly to converge their focus at a set point at a set distance. I found this solved just as many problems as it created, so now just go for level cameras and let the wide angle lens make up the tiny difference.

Yeah, the inside left leg bruise sort of comes with the territory, even for the tall. Does the Otter have a camera step for you stand on your right foot after climb-out? If so, and the reach to the handle is just the final obstacle, maybe ask the DZ owner if they could raise the camera step a bit. Apart from that, maybe get permission to attach a short strap (no pun intended) to the handle that you can reach.

Oooh that new FDR-X1000V looks nice! If you have good look at the pictures in this article: http://www.cnet.com/au/products/sony-action-cam-fdr-x1000v/, you can see the rear door has a flap too, so you can open that flap to access the ports without having to expose the battery. You could remove this flap and cut a hole in back of the waterproof case to allow constant access to the ports without needing to take the camera in and out of the case or open / close flaps. I did this for my HDR-AZ1 and it's great!

That looks like a fairly nice setup. I assume you normally use a fairly long lens on the stills camera. Here's my current setup. I've decided to keep the AZ1 in the case so that I can put a little bit of ND filter film on the lens cover without having to make a mount and use a real, glass filter. I cut a hole in the rear of the case to get to the USB port. I've yet to drill into the top of the case to mount the LED relay LDR. I'm using the AS30 as my backup camera and run it in 170 degree mode. It is mounted to the aluminium using some of that very strong 3M Dual Lock, but I'll add a retainer strap, just to be safe.