lewmonst

I am scheduled to work Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. But I am often there every day. Sometimes I might be there but not as an instructor if my team is training. I'll be there team training the 14th-19th this month and 28th-april1st, and working normally other weeks. Either way, if I am there and have time I will help you. If I am too busy during the day, which I usually am with team training, I will help you as soon as the sun goes down. But talking to Moley and Stuey will also help, they can cover a lot on the card with you and help you progress. Let them know how you feel and what your concerns are. Also, if you see Ed, he's very helpful and loves to spend time with students. He would be more than happy to take all the time needed with you. Ed's in the photo... Really any of the instructors will, some just take asking very directly. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

That's unfortunate and a definite miscommunication on the staff's part. It sounds like that happened because the instructor was on a back-to-back. We rarely have to do back-to-back's requiring someone else to train our students. It does happen though on (mostly weekend) days where we are busy and there are weather delays. The office staff and managers at Perris do an excellent job of scheduling as far as not booking too many students in a day and being sure to book enough staff. The only time it becomes an issue is with weather. We cannot control the weather, and some mornings in Perris are foggy until 11am. Those students who were schedule at 8am, 9am and 10am all go first, and the rest of the day is backed up because of it sometimes resulting in instructors doing back-to-backs to finish the day. That is no excuse for you not getting sufficient ground training, it's just an explanation of why you may have had one instructor train you with someone else jumping with you. We appreciate that perspective as well. Don't count out rainy days though. In fact, rainy days are the best days to get a good portion of the A card filled out. Anything on there dealing with gear, aircraft procedures, cloud clearances, etc, can all be taken care of then. And we would be more than happy to do so. The A license proficiency card is not intended to be completed when you complete AFF levels 1-8. Many of the skills covered on the card are done with RW (coach) jumps. In the graduation packet, there is an outline of 10 RW jumps you do after completing AFF. The A card should be able to be completed when you reach 25 jumps. (You should be no where near completing it at 10 total jumps anyway.) The retraining for safety during AFF is given in the harness room and applies to every skydive. You only need to go through the harness room once a day, although you can pass through several AFF levels in one day. And in the harness room, those 30 or so questions you are put through along with emergency procedures are how you are tested. The jump specific training goes over the skills learned for each jump and the diveflow, which you have to perform back in a dirt dive, at the mock up and talk through the skydive on the way to altitude. Please do. Talking to the cheif instructors is the best thing you could right now. Stuey and Moley will make sure you are taken care of and address the issue with the instructors. And if you see me around, I'd be happy to answer any of your questions and go over whatever I can on your A card. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

You should all learn to snowboard together. That way the kids are doing what they want and you and right there with them. It's true that once you start snowboarding you don't go back to skiis. Like everyone has said, you'll fall a lot the first 2 days, but once it clicks you'll love it. Someone mentioned wristguards... They are a MUST_HAVE. Get wristguards for you and your kids. Some gloves have wristguards built in now too, I personally like mittens over gloves with fingers. You can get into and out of the bindings with mittens and they keep your fingers warmer. Also, kneepads. I use rollerblading kneepads and while i rarely fall on my knees, every once in a while when I do I'm glad they're there, and you can't see them under my pants either. And no one has mentioned yet waterproof pants. You're happiness in the snow is contingient on the pants. If you have good pants that keep you warm and dry, you can fall all day long and still have fun. Get the private lessons and don't give up. You will fall a lot the first day or two, but as long as you have good gear you won't get hurt, cold or wet, you'll get through it and you'll love it. it's so much fun. You also might consider helmets, especially if the slopes you are learning on are icy. If you catch your heal edge and frap backwards like a fly swatter you're going to hit your head pretty hard. Maybe get them for the kids. See if the place you are going will rent you helmets. The only other thing I've seen people use also are buttpads. That's a little over the top, but I definitely have hurt my tailbone so I could see why. The balalnce board will definitely help. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

I just walked into this kiteboarding shop in Coronado yesterday to check it out. I'm going to try it and take a lesson when I get some spare cash and time... Check them out at http://www.calikites.com/. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Second...yeah it's nice to have a nice visable count. However, we all know that the top teams pride themselves on giving a 'stealth count', thus not letting the judges pre-start their exit time.

New titles flow just fine. It looks best if the leader fades out to black and the tandem specific part fades in from black. We use +rw's which work on most dvd players. +rw's do not need to be finalized, so the linear edit time is realtime footage length and that's it. (just like vhs). We have a list in the office of dvd players that will not play +rw's and the customer is asked what kind of dvd player they have. If their's is on the list, we'll make a -r and finalize it, but seriously we rarely have to do that. If they can't play the dvd when they get home, they send it back and we convert it, and that rarely happens. We can do 50+ edit's on a typical Saturday with one set-up and one editor. If we used all -r's and had to finalize, this would not be possible. Right. So don't use -r's unless you have to. A tandem video that is 6 minutes long is all you need. Cut out the fluff and you'll be much more efficient. Most people only watch the fluff once, and then fast forward to the jump anyway. You will have to get both +rw's and -r's with the leader preloaded. We have an outside source prepare the dvd's with a silkscreen label. It looks very professional. The intro has a title, and the tandem's title is just the time clock from the jump. We don't bother renaming it, there is no need to. Don't do that. vhs bad. get the dvd's preloaded with the leader. If you have to sit at the dz every monday and make a couple hundred yourself, that's better than trying to do the leader and the jump each time. That tedious work is better outsourced though. Companies that can do it right and do it in bulk are much more cost effective than you making 5 leader dvd's per hour... Our dvd recorder is a Sony like this one. Our a/v mixing board is a panasonic. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Dom you really need stills of that peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Aw thanks for the referral Jake. You rock. My site is kinda new... A couple of my good freefly shots are hidden in the photoreflect site in the Rantoul folder... My favorites are this one and this one. I have more, I need to get around to putting them up... btw, Jake, my 4way team is named FURY also. I didn't choose the name, they came up with it back in December... :) peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Agreed. Thank you. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

The Laurie, the one and only. The one we love! Happy Birthday! (Psss, the party is over, Laurie, get back to work, i know you're reading this at work!) jk. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Oh cool, thanks! peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Life is good. Yes, you can set it to not power down, but that drains the battery. I leave it at auto power down for either 2 or 4 minutes. Without the remote plug in there, just pressing the shutter release will wake it up. But for some strange reason, at least on mine, just pressing the shutter release button does not wake it up. So I open/close the compact flash door to wake it up just before climb out, fire off a test shot. works fine and i can feel it without looking at it. Or you could keep it awake by firing off test shots every minute or so. But I don't like dealing with 10 shots of the door if I don't have to. Sliding the battery out and back in will also work, but the CF door is easier. I'm using a Sigma 15. Let me know how you like the 10-22. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Scotty, I jump one. The burst rate of 5fps for 23 is if you shoot in RAW+JPEG. I shoot in JPEG only, Large Fine, and I let go of the shutter around 45 frames or so cause I'm tired of holding it down. Put it this way, my 4 way team can debrief from the back of my 20D if they want to. (Ultra II 1gig card - and i need a bigger card ) But I don't hold the button down the whole time unless I'm going for that effect. Letting up and repressing does enable autofocus to work quite well as well so I'm more selective with shots. But I'm not held back by the camera's capabilities at all. I rarely max it out. And I have not run into any issues yet, which I did with the 10D and I know others did with some of the DigiRebels. The only thing is with the remote plugged in, if it auto-powers off after the set time, 2 minutes or whatever, just pressing the shutter release button does not turn it back on. Opening and closing the CF card door does though. So sometimes on a go around, I reach up and slide the door open and closed just to make sure it's not sleeping. It's been good to me. But Scotty, you might as well wait till May back there in Ohio when the jumping really gets back into it. The price of the 20D will probably drop some by then. Or if the 30D comes out, I'll sell ya my 20 Say hi to Jim for me. Whoever's in Perris, ask to see my new creation, thanks to my 20D... peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Get a Tandem rating and see if you feel the same way. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

You just said it all. So don't sell it. Especially since it involves a tandem. Dropzones don't advertise much, but if you show something bad involving a tandem on television!, dropzones will lose potential tandem customers. If you're that desperate for money, find something else. Just my opinion. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Most of the highly experienced pilots in Perris do 270's. Swoopers don't fly a conventional downwind, base, and final. They usually fly to a set up point and initiate the 270 onto final. Like someone said, the direction they will land is the same as if they were to just do a 90. A couple years ago I didn't get this either, and I would find myself confused on the pattern. I started paying close attention to traffic, the pilots and the types of canopies and it became easier to predict. Good pilots will set up with some consistency and accuracy. And on a 270 approach, unless there's a lot of headwind, there set up will be off to one end or the other of the desired landing area. And if there is a lot of wind, they should obviously being turning to land into the wind. (If they're showboating it downwind, they should be kicked out of the main landing and told to land at the pond.) So if you can figure out where they want to land, ie, closest walk back to the packing area, then see where the set up point is, you should be able to figure it out. Either way, if you are on a fairly docile canopy, try hanging in brakes up high and off to the side in a holding area until you can see what the pattern is. I sometimes hang in brakes from the time I'm open at 3000ft all the way till 800 ft when I fly to my set up. It's not the most fun way to fly, but it allows me to negotiate traffic and sort out landing direction. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

I'm 5'13" and 190 out the door without a weight belt. My weight belt can hold up to 18 lbs, and sometimes I wear all 18. So with it all on, I can be 208 out the door... Good Times!!! For my 4-way team right now, I don't wear any weight. I fly my wings on exit and rarely use them for the rest of the skydive unless I'm burble hopping. My 4-way team doesn't have a fast fall-rate though, and I have worn 6 or 8 lbs filming other 4way teams. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Thanks. It took me about 4 hours of photoshopping it... I basically copied and pasted each photo one at a time, starting with the right-most shot. The next shot I would copy and past in a transparent mode and match up the backgrounds and clean up edges as best I could. I had a hard time with the suspension lines, and in some places they just aren't there. The sky and the grass also progressively got darker because of the varying light as I panned. So I played with adjusting the light balance, levels and other things until it looked acceptable. I also basically magic stamped most of the sky in. Those clouds are mostly copied off of one smalle cloud, but it was the best I could do to blend the sky, maintaining some texture to it without smudging it to death. It's not perfect, but unless you're looking for the detail of the photoshopping, it's not obvious either. So that's good enough for me. There's also a tool in Photoshop under File-Automate-Photomerge that sort of does the same thing. It will take several panned shots and lace them together. What it doesn't deal with well in the moving subject, or a subject in front of the background in one shot and not in the other. It's more for taking landscapes and making it a panoramic. But you can play with that too and see what you get. There's a good tutorial with cars that I did to learn how to use it. It's pretty intuitive anyway. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

And I have a slow 3 piece freefly suit with a camera top... I'm a lot of surface area without a lot of weight, so I don't have the range JP has in his slick suit. So I do wear weights with wings mostly to belly-film tandems. I also don't arch that great, so I like weights. With some super heavy tandems, I'll go without wings and with weights. But I like to have the wings there because I can get steeper underneath with the wings vs. without. And besides, it's more fun to land my canopy with more weight on. In other words, be aware of your higher wingloading when adding weights. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Can you choose a photographer? Annie Leibovitz is awesome. A google search on her brings up tons. She's a portait photographer, and you can argue her artistry is in the design and layouts of the subject and sets, and the preparation that goes on before she takes a single photo. She took the shot of Bruce Springsteins butt... peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Terminology varies from school to school. Similarly, we call line twists, slider-up and closed end cells a "Problem". Problems can be solved or fixed. A "Malfunction" is something that cannot be fixed, and should call for emergency procedures. We don't classify malfunctions in the FJC as high speed vs. low speed, total vs. partial, as the terminology is not as important as how they are dealt with. The students only need to decide whether it is a "Problem" or "Malfunction". If it's a problem, try to fix it or determine if it cannot be fixed before the decision altitude. If it's a malfuntion, decide to go to emergency procedures. Beyond that, my understanding of a "Total Malfunction" is when nothing is out, like a hard/no pull. A "Partial Malfunction" is where anything is out of the container. A "Total" is obviously a "high-speed" mal. A "Partial" can be high-speed or low-speed depending on what it is. PC in tow, bag lock, ball-o-crap are high-speed mals. A line-over (depending on the canopy and how bad it is), or toggle malfuntion, or tension knot, are usually low-speed mals. Again, that's just how I understand it, and terminology can vary, what's important is that we have a safe, landable parachute or decide how to deal with it otherwise. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Oh yeah, this has been a problem recently in Perris. The thing is, the rules at every dz are different, and when visiting a dropzone other that your own home dz, please make sure you know and understand the rules. The grass in Perris is long and narrow, so the rules are very clear. First person sets the direction, either South to North or North to South and should land into the wind. In light and variable wind conditions, that pattern should be set South to North, ei, towards the big hangar. Look at the flags in the landing area. The tet is only accurate in moderate or high winds, and in light or no winds, is off balance and likes to sit point South-SouthEast. In no wind, I've turned the tet to point North, but it won't stay there. So, in Perris, don't just go by the tet. Please. We had a question with this just last week with an Eloy regular where the Tet in Eloy rules. But that's not the case in Perris. However, one rule that is the same in Eloy and Perris, if someone sets the landing direction and you don't like it, LAND OUT, off the grass. Also, setting up landing direction and landing pattern start as soon as you're under canopy. You should be aware of all the other canopies in the air, and know where they are going. Even if someone hooks from 500 feet, you can tell what direction they are setting up to land in if you pay attention. If they are setting up at the South end of the grass, they are going to hook and land towards the North, and vice-versa. What cause much of the problems last week was jumpers racing to be the first one down. Please, please, please, don't race to be the first one to land. We had several jumpers in the second and third group out, under 150's and 170's, spiraling down and trying to beat the jumper from the first group out under an 83 who was clearly going towards one end of the grass. Landing is not a race. Racing to be the first one down is not only dangerous in that you are spiraling over the landing area, but you also cannot look out for other canopies and figure out what they are doing. If I could, I would hang on brakes all day and let everyone else land first, but being first group out on my canopy, this doesn't work. So I have to negotiate into the landing pattern with everyone else. Be predictable. Spiraling and S-turning all over the place is not predictable. If you want to play with your canopy, open high, do so and land out, but don't try to do all that playing while racing to be the first one down and negotiating 20 other canopies setting up landing patterns. I recently landed out because I was following someone towards the south end of the grass to do a 180 and land to the north when at around 500 feet they did a 180 to the north and then another 180 to land towards the South. Which, under a stiletto at 1.3, you can do, but doing 2 180's under 500 feet on my canopy would kill me. So I landed out in the student circle, as I certainly couldn't have continued my pattern and landed in the opposite direction as he did. He apologized afterwards for hosing me, not that he did anything so wrong, but he was aware afterwards that he hosed me. Which is why I emphasize, be predictable, and all that playing and spiraling should be done high, and not near the landing pattern. We had another incident where, in Perris, the first one down intentionally set a significant (>5mph) downwind pattern. Everyone followed him and one girl ate dirt because she overshot the grass and couldn't run out the speed of the landing. Who's at fault? well, both... The rules in the grass are that the pattern should be set into the wind, if there is significant wind. So the first guy down, hot-shotting it, hosed everyone else. But, everyone else does not have to land in the grass. The following jumpers should be observant and notice he is setting a downwind pattern, and if they don't like it, land out in the dirt or student area. In Perris, I don't even look at the tet, I look at the flags and windsocks. If you are not sure, hang out on your brakes and try to figure out what everyone else is doing. Being the first one down is more of a burden than a privilege, and if you don't understand the landing pattern rules and are fully aware of the other canopies around you, you can hose them or create an unsafe situation. In the situation you described, I would ask, how did you get to be almost the first one down? As for who was right? Well, neither, as you both should have been aware of eachother, and had you been soon enough, you wouldn't have gotten into that situation. And even when you did realize it, the opposite directions, you both should have aborted the grass area and gone out in the dirt. Besides, as fast as Tim drives, you'll get back to the packing area if you land out sooner than if you land in the grass and walk anyway. I love landing on the dirt road in the north field and skiiing in. Peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

Cold weather will drain your battery much more rapidly. Other than that, it should be ok. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com

I definitely agree with letting people know you will be out in the landing area before they jump. And since you are immobile, I'd suggest parking yourself by a windsock or tree like you said and using a longer lens. You can get great shots with whatever lens you choose, but the shorter the lens the close you need to be. And since you're immobile, I would no suggest trying to be close right now. It's very hard to do both video and stills at the same time. The only time I do it is with my camera helmet with them both mounted, and even then, if I'm focusing on the video, the still suffer. When you talk to the jumpers before they go up to let them know you are there, ask them if they would be more interested in seeing video of themselves or stills. You might be able to sell some, cheap, as most ground stuff is cheap. Or if you are doing this more to learn, then I would suggest just working with the stills. Since you don't know much about photography yet, you should literally play with the camera as much as possible and see what happens. P or Sports mode will give you generally good frozen image shots, providing there is enough light. But you won't learn much by using any of the Auto functions. Play with Tv (Shutter priority). I've managed to shoot some good panning (motion blur) shots (by luck i think) of landings, but it's easy to screw up. It was my only option with very little light at sunset. I'll see if I can find that one and scan it. But with digital, who cares, keep trying. If you have a tri-pod, it will be easier to play with stuff like that. Anything 1/60th or slower will blur something, and if you are just holding the camera in your hands, you will most likely get camera-shake, blur from your hands shaking. So you'll want a tripod. You can also play with Av (Aperture priority). The wider the aperture (that is the smaller the number, like 4 or 2.8 (even 1.8 on a really good lens)), the shorter the depth of field (focal range) will be. This is good for portrait effects and the background will be out of focus. This effect is even nicer when you are further away using a longer lens. It makes the background appear closer. Light from behind you is the safest. Light from the side can create some shadows, which can be artistic or annoying however you perceive them. Whats the burst of the D100? I didn't think it was very high, correct me if I'm wrong... With my old 10D I could burst 3fps for up to 9, and I can't find it right now, but I'd posted a piece of Fiala carving by stitching 9 shots together... It's cool and also a good photoshop exercise. Take the manual with you to your 100D, and read it and play with the options in it. good luck lew edit to attach photostitch http://www.exitshot.com

Yeah, we've known this about other 3-chips for a while. I was hoping someone would jump the newer line and see if it had improved. I don't foresee any reason for Sony to improve upon it though, because it's very rare that those cameras are taken in our environment anyway... So I don't have my hopes up for the PC1000 either. But it will take someone to jump it and let us know for sure... Who wants to anti-up? Hey Lori, We got six and a half loads up today. peace lew http://www.exitshot.com