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Peej

Tell me about your worst day of camera flying

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Yeah that is a great one. I read it long before i started doing paid camera and remember asking what the procedure is for when you don't get the vid for some reason.

Thanks for your replies guys, it's been great reading your experiences! :)

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Excellent thread! Reminds me a bit of the "all the little things about camera flying" one. I must have had at least 2/3 of those happen to me.
But the day I should have stayed on the ground, everything went wrong on one jump-..
Upon gearing up in the plane notices that have no goggles. So I end up with the "emergency" goggles from the plane, which were giant big overgoggles for people who want to jump with their glasses. Of course no sight on these goggles, and brand new helmet, which I was unsure of jumping w/o a sight.
Oh well, after having given my alti to a tandem master on the plane who had forgotten his own, we commence business as usual. So I climbed out, filmed the first tandem go, look into the plane to go with the second one, and by the horrible look on the TM's face realize that I were to go with the first. So I dive after them, catch up halfway down, and shoot pictures like crazy. The TM ended up going a little bit lower than usual, so I could get some decent video. When he released, i flip over on my back, as usual, and with both hands point up to them. That's when I nudged the aligator clip on my chincup and released the entire helmet.
Damn. I managed to hold the thing on my head with my left hand for deployment. All that was going through my head was "please no mal, please no mal, ....." I didn't have a mal, no thanks to Murphy.
And how was the video you ask? Absolute fucking shite. Completely wrongly sighted, and of the photoes, only about 3 were sellable.
If there had been more tandems that day, I would have walked into Manifest and skulled a beer, to make sure I didn't have to do more jumps that day. As luck would have it, we didn't have more work, and we all went to the pool!!!

It's never too late for a low turn!

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I can go one better still...
The only reason I had a new camera-helmet that day was that my old one (lovingly crafted on long nights, fibreglass flying everywhere, fingers glyed together with epoxy) was being painted by a friend. I had about 500 jumps in this helmet and could have flown it in my sleep. On this particular day, my friend had put the first coat on and decided to put it out in the sun to dry...
On top of the rubbish bin...
On rubbish collecting day...
Sigh...
...

Ant THAT, my friends, is a true story...

It's never too late for a low turn!

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>Keep the stories coming people!

Just yesterday, trying to make a pics of my buddy skysurfing. Firs time had a perfect position with surfer and my Canon RebelD failed after 3-rd shot (and they could not find the malfunction yet). It should be very good photo-session: weather, position, smiles etc. and damn camera screwed it up completely.

Last automn, had a midair collision with another vidiot while filming a freefly bigway. Got my rib broken, guy broke his camera's LCD screen. Not a good feeling, really, when you just can't inhale for a 30 seconds or something - he just kicked all air out of my lungs :)

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How ironic you should ask that. This weekend was my worst/most eventful to date.

Friday - a commercial was being filmed at the DZ, and they wanted some of my footage to use, so I hand over my camera, and told them to firewire away; I had other things to do, and walked off. I get my camera back and start interviewing the tandem. The camera condom was flipped up and covering half the lens... :( After the jump, I put the video up on the TV, and I'm thinking, 'man, everything looks so bleached out'. I look at the camera - someone accidentally hit the 'backlight' button while firewiring footage.... :(

Saturday - good day. Caught a tandem baglock on video. :o

Sunday - tandem master exits with no count. His altimeter catches me in the mouth on exit and busts my lip open. Blood's streaming up my face, as I try to smile at the student in freefall - doubt she even noticed. :D The tandem master did though, giving me a funny look and signalling to his face.

Jeff

ps- if anybody has any tips for correcting the backlight screwup, please share! I'm going to start a new thread asking about this...
Shhh... you hear that sound? That's the sound of nobody caring!

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