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.

That looks like a good solution. Is that a 37mm filter? Over the weekend I did some more jumps with the AZ1 with and without the hard lens cover side by side with my AS30 in various configuration. It happened to be a humid / damp weekend and I noticed both cameras produced the traditional centre point condensation problem with curved lenses, but the curvature of the hard lens protector and the waterproof case is not enough to cause it when they are used. So, my current train of thought is to keep the AZ1 in the waterproof case, but put a bit of ND filter material on the inside.

The AZ1 comes with a really simple bottom mount that you can screw to any flat surface. A side mount could be as simple as a small piece of right-angle aluminium.

During the week I purchased a new micro SDXC card for my AZ1. I spoke to the guy at the shop and, as he explained, SDXC cards are not faster than SDHC cards, just more capacity. The 'HC' stands for 'High Capacity' (16-32Gb) and the 'XC' stands for 'eXtended Capacity' (32+Gb) The class of the card is what matters when recording video at higher rates The HC range goes up to Class10. Then, within the XC range, they are classed as UHC class, either 1 or 3. This article explains it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#Speed_class_rating

What brand is the ND filter material? Where did you purchase it from? During the week I purchased a Hoya 38mm ND8 filter (http://www.hoyafilter.com/hoya/products/ndfilters/ndx8/), but even when mounted right against the AZ1 lens, the edge of the filter is visible in frame when in 120 degree mode. To avoid seeing the filter edge, you'd need a 49mm or larger filter, which defeats the purpose of the small size of the AZ1.

I have just done some comparison of the footage I took on the weekend between an AZ1 and AS30. The HQ mode (1080p at 30fps) video from the AZ1 has mild jello effect in the background, as did the HQ mode video from the AS30. However, the PS mode (1080p 60fps) video from the AS30 doesn't show any jello effect. This was with the anti-shake feature turned on for all modes on both cameras. Since both cameras are hard mounted to the helmet in a similar way, it would seem the wind induced vibration must be closer to 30hz than 60hz, so filming at 60fps makes it less obvious. I didn't get a chance to run the AZ1 in PS mode, but will do so when filming the same team in a fortnight, just to confirm this. I've read other articles on using a neutral density filter to trick the camera into using a slower shutter speed. I guess the theory is the same in that you are trying to get the rolling shutter away from refreshing at a frequency close to any vibration the camera is subject to (as people mouting GoPros to drones have noticed). I'll purchase an ND filter this weekend and find a way to mount it on the AZ1 to see if that has an effect, as I would prefer to capture the RW footage in 30fps to keep the file size down and make playback a bit less taxing on my laptop. Not sure yet if the RW judges will accept 60fps footage, so will have to ask about that before comp in a few months.

I have just been comparing my footage of the weekend's jumping and have noticed that the footage between a naked AS30 and an AZ1 with the hard lens protector fitted were slightly different. I've run some basic testing and have found that fitting the hard lens protector adds a small amount of extra zoom to the video and photos (see attached screen grabs). The hard lens protector doesn't seem to have an effect on focus or colour balance. I also put the hard lens protector on the AS30 and got the same result in video and picture mode.

This Wikipedia article will provide you with an introduction to electronic symbols: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_symbol

If you'd like to have an LED on your ringsight to know if your GoPro, ActionCam or similar is recording, here is a simple LED repeater you can make. The completed unit is about 4x5cm, so fits nicely in the space for a Dytter or similar. Depending on how bright the rec light is on the camera, you may need to turn up the sensitivity using the variable resistor and mate / cover the LDR well to prevent external light leaking in. I've used this on a GoPro 2 and GoPro 3, ActionCam AS30 and AZ1.

I took the AZ1 jumping over the weekend. I put the review in the thread about the camera http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4668822;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread There's a link there to some sample footage, if the original poster of this thread wants to see how close you can get with a camera with a 120 pov angle. This is about equivalent to a GoPro in 'medium' mode.

I took my new HDR-AZ1 jumping over weekend to film 4 way RW. I used it concurrently with my AS30 for comparison. Video The video generated from the AZ1 seems to be identical to the AS30 in all modes. No difference in image stability, colour balance, sharpness etc. I mounted the AZ1 to the supplied bracket, which I then hard mounted on top of my helmet. Instead of using the AS30 in the case as before, I made a little bracket for it and also hard mounted it on top of the helmet. Even with solid mounting, footage from both cameras showed a mild 'jello' effect towards the edges of the background, but the team looked fine. Here's some sample footage, if you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zznricqeyxjfz07/AABH2djfB3lIJA1e8d6a_DSUa?dl=0. This is from the AZ1, 1080p @ 30fps, neutral colour balance with the anti-shake turned on (120 degree angle) and the Sony Hard Lens Protector fitted. Battery The team did 14 jumps over the weekend. I turned both cameras on at the 1 minute light, then stopped recording after canopy opening to let the 60 second automatic power-off occur. When on the ground, I turned them both on only for doing the download of the MP4 files to a laptop, then turned them both off. I kept the WiFi of both cameras turned off. At the end of the weekend, both cameras showed they had used 25% of their battery charge. Operation Using a mobile phone to configure the camera is a slight pain, but I normally just set my cameras once for the mode I need for the whole day, so it's not a big loss to have no ability to do it directly on the camera. Being able to access the USB port at the back without having to unmount the camera or take it out of the case was really great. Using my finger to find the record stop / start button on the top of the camera was a bit vague. I will add a little 'nipple' to the button to make it easier to distinguish by feel compared to the camera body. My little 3v powered LED relay circuit was excellent. It was great to have a bright LED near the ringsight to know if the main camera was on or off. I can supply a picture and the circuit diagram for anyone who'd like to make one. General Very happy with the camera and it's a step in the right direction for my intended use. Maybe Sony will update the AS100 with the ports at the back too? I will try make a polarising or neutral density filter to see if that helps negate the jello effect. It might not be an issue when filming AFF and Tandems, when the camera is not in the direct air stream?