goobersnuftda

Yes that may be true most of the time but in this particular instance, the current Intel flag ship chip (i7-908x) was released back in March 2010. The recently released "Sandy Bridge" chip took less than two weeks to be taken down.

News story just out, all of the Sandy Bridge CPU's are being recalled. The flaw is that eventually they will stop communication with hard drives and DVD's. Nice. News Story Another good reason why you don't buy the latest stuff.... give it some time for the bugs to be worked out and a track record to be set. So currently the flagship still is the i7-980 Extreme Edition processor (6 CPU cores).

My local computer supplier received his first batch of Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2600K) processors a few days ago and the wholesaler was near immediately sold out of his 600 units. Can not get any more for another 3 weeks. The initial advantage to them is the new way they manufacture them and how they are built. Very big price break as compared to their current top end flagship chip (Core i7-980X) around $800 less. Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2600K)- 4 core processor 980 Extreme (Core i7-980X) - 6 core processor currently there are no premium Sand Bridge boards yet that have 9 SATA connectors for all my crazy hard drives. The problem with being so very new is that it takes a while for everyone else to catch up with the hardware to support your new chip. Attached is a benchmark chart someone sent me. As is always the case, when you get to the extreme end of performance, the price to acquire the technology goes up exponentially as well. Going from a 80% efficient furnace to a 92% isn't that much more but going from 92% to 95% is hugly more (just as an example).

Oh hey, with the new plane you will have to do up a new Maintenance Control Manual (MCM) and get it approved through T/C as well. In my research though everything Cessna, I got approval to change the scheduled interval inspection on our 182 from every 50 hours to 100 hrs (with a 200 annual). Now that I said that, you would have to be mental to actually go 100 hrs on an oil change, pretty much mandatory to do it every 50 hours unless you like to pay mega $$$ in extra repair bills. So why go the limit? I am sick an tired of paying $80 for a AME/AMO to scribble a single line in a book and "allow" me to run on an extension of 10 more hours. $80 pretty much pays for the oil so if we run up close to 50 hours just before the weekend, let her go up to the normal extension times and it costs you nothing more. Dig through the manuals and find the proof to back up your claim and you can not be refused :)

Hey there. I've been away on holiday and didn't think of popping into this forum until now :) Anyways, here are a bunch of LSTC (limited STC) for a skydiving jump door for Cessna 182’s some are a G model as well (Canadian Transport Canada no less). That means it is for that specific plane only, not an open STC to everyone. It lists the certificate holder and contact information. That will help you a lot. Sorry, I can not find a regular STC for a Cessna 182. I got our Cessna 206 completely jumpship ready last winter and that was all through a LSTC. There are no STC's that exist for a 206 for jump ship mods. I found another DZ that had a LSTC on their plane and when I contacted them, I made a deal with them to use the same engineering company and drawings they used for their LSTC and got T/C approval for our plane as well. Saved a ton of time and even more $$$. I was able to get the door mod, instillation of jump step and extra seat belt (the 206 can handle the weight of an extra jumper). I initially contacted a Winnipeg company to start the whole process from scratch in doing up the engineering and after all their required flight tests and approvals, I was quoted a price somewhere around the $10,000 mark. Crazy stupid price so I found plan B and traveled the path someone else had already forged, life is easier that way instead of trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch :) Pay the LSTC holder a little and get permission to use the same engineering company he used for his approval. Good Luck.

Here is the basic lowdown on PC computers. They are an anomaly. If you want to buy a car/plane/tractor, you buy the whole thing assembled because it is much cheaper than buying every part at the parts counter and putting it together yourself. When you buy a PC, if you are knowledge enough to order the parts in separately, you get a much, much better computer. Cheaper than a high end company build if you can find someone to put it together for you. Much in the same way as a home builder builds a home for you and puts in $4 door handles (charges $20) or a $8 contractors special white plastic door chime (charges $48), if you were to buy the items yourself, you get better quality for a dissent price. There is no magic to PC computer parts. The beauty of PC’s is that there are so many vendors and suppliers, the competition keeps the prices down where they should be. There are only two suppliers of CPU’s (Intel – AMD), hard drives (basically Seagate and Western Digital), video cards (ATI – Nvidia) motherboards (well only one is my opinion, Asus). From time to time one edges the other out but for now the current top end ones are Intel and ATI. All these fancy on line companies do is try to package up the same parts available to everyone and slide in some cheapo parts to make their profit by while charging you full price. Some are fancy like Alienware who have special cases to make them look neat but all the guts are exactly the same. To source out cases, I like to go here Here They are a top end computer geek company that does high end crazy things like water cooling, special die in the fluid that luminance with special light kits etc. Right off their home page to the left choose the 2nd option down CASES. They have lots of them but then you get a look at what some are like. Once you have the model and case #, price them out anywhere. The Balance: building a computer is not pumping as much $$$ into a CPU then bottle neck it down to a 4 Gig system or some chepo mother board. Why buy a sports car if you are only allowed to drive it on gravel roads? The balance must be between the CPU, RAM and Hard drives. If you have a top end CPU but only 4 gig of an extremely small sand box to drive in, you wasted your $$$. If you have too much CPU and RAM but a dog slow working hard drive (because it was cheap) then your bottle neck will slow you down doing video. Figure out a budget and talk to someone you now or trust (not necessarily the computer salesman) about what proportion you need to spend. A video editing machine will have different emphasis than someone who plays top end video games. As an example, the top end Intel CPU may be $1,000 but if you went to the next model down at $600 it may only be 10% slower but with the extra money you saved you beef up the RAM and HD’s. Where to buy: I’m not a big fan on the on line super computer building companies. I’m sure they are doing a great job but there is always the low end crud they sneak in to make their profit on and that is what slows you down. All they are doing is nailing together the same parts anyone else has access to but are wearing a bright knitted sweater and selling it to you infomercial style :) Find a local computer company in your area that has been in a business for a while and has a good reputation. Not only can they help you when things blow up but for a couple hundred more you will get a smoking system better than the on line wonders. BTW, try to stay away from the 16 year old in your neighbourhood that puts computers together in his mom’s garage. He may be good but he lacks the ability to buy computer parts at a true wholesale price. Buying parts off the shelf at Staples does not count as wholesale. Only computer dealers or businesses have accounts with Supercomp etc. Have fun but what you are asking is “what is the perfect car for me?”. Everyone is unique and it is only the $$$ that limits you.

Over the past year or so, I've been keeping tabs on render times as I upgraded computer parts. Keep in mind this is only a reference using After Effects on a specific 90 second special effects clip I did up. Massively complex but then that is why I did it :) Always striving to learn, I may not have been perfect in tweaking the RAM/CPU usage that CS4 allowed you to do. It is kind of like tuning a carburetor, get it right and it works good. CS5 does most of the tuning automatically because they figured out people don't know what they are doing (like me :) The last line of the chart does not detail that it is a completely new PC build. That means SSD drives and MB. That doesn't matter because I'm so glad I have a PC because upgrading is possible :)

Video files take up tons and tons of room in their original state. Some are stored for the entire year until winter when the year end project will be completed. Premiere Pro needs tons of room as well when you start slammin everything together. After Effects is rather small but the work space it needs is also huge. The external swap bay is for the wife. She is the family archivist and takes pictures of the wee ones like a tourist on steroids. DVD are too small to back up her HD and once the price of blank Blu Ray disks comes down ($10 ea.) that will be an option. Backup rule is 3-2-1. Make at least 3 copies of the data you absolutely need and can not replace. Make sure that at least 2 different types of media are used (HD, Flash, DVD, Gmail) and have 1 of the copies off site (the fire department puts out the fire for you all right but as an added bonus, they fill up your basment with water). Having that hot swappable HD bay is awesome for plugging in and transferring TB of data then carrying it away to store somewhere else. Got a massive movie and MP3 collection as well. Raid0 for the speed and Raid1 for the backup protection which essentially doubles the required HD space. If something looses its mind and packs it in, a simple HD swap and a COPY command is all it takes to get it up and running again. Archive HD are cheap (not the solid state drives-SSD or the Velociraptors) so why not backup all your stuff for around $100/HD? Is all that horse power needed? Of course not but then why do real men build V12 engines in a car than can go 300 mph? BECAUSE THEY CAN :)

I just put the final pieces together for the build on my new "Black Box of Joy". i7-980 Extreme Edition processor (6 CPU cores) 24 Gig RAM Asus Matrix Radeon 5870 video card (2 GB VRAM on board) Asus Rampage III MB (BlueTooth even for tweaking hardware wirelessly) (x2) OCZ Solid State Drives (120 GB + 120 GB) striped to Raid0 -OS & Programs drive (x2) 10,000 rpm Velociraptor- Raid0 striped (500 GB) for working/fast access scrubbing 2GB archive storage drive 1GB archive storage drive 1GB archive storage drive (used as hot swap externally for massive backup) DVD burner Blu Ray burner Now to spend the next few weeks getting everything installed and tweaked to perfect order exactly the way I like it.

For those lucky enough to go to the Boogie in Belize VII, here is a way to keep up on the current weather with a live web cam shot. Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Cam-1 Cam-2 Please add more web cams if you can find them. That last one looks like some guys back yard from his condo :)

What awesome news. Jump Run has been a standard for us for the past 8 years but we have to have a dedicated ancient stand alone computer to run it :) Please, please for the love of gawd, please abandon the SQL database server. What a POS. That has been our biggest issue with JR. Would be nice to be able to run it on windoze-7 64 bit but would love to see that SQL database gone. It is so nice to run a stand alone program (JR or even an accounting program) that is self sufficient and able to run on its own merits. It is really a lazy approach to hand off such an important part of your program (the database management) to another 3rd party in hopes it doesn't blow up (and when it does it is not YOUR problem, it is the SQL manager). Build it good and people will buy it. Enough said.

Yes, oh yes they could. That case in Florida where the infant was strapped to daddy for the tandem, the county prosecutor's office was given a copy of SKYDIVING magazine. With everything in print and the photos to boot, it got peoples attention. It also made for the burden of proof a hard thing to deny. You always hear the initial part of the news because the story is "newsworthy" but you never hear what the outcome was a month or two later. It doesn't surprise me though. People do dumb things all the time and have no mind about them at all that they proudly post their accomplishments on youtube. Had a case where I live last year where teens were illegally shooting ducks in the spring from their trucks and just leaving them scattered across the pond when they were done. Good old youtube video caught them.

The #1 reason why major rules change is that there are always people who take them to the extreme and abuse them. I'm going off memory here so please correct me if I am wrong. There was a Drop Zone in Florida called something like Cross Keys. The mother of the 3 year old child was the pilot, the father was the tandem master and their 3 year old was the tandem student in a make shift student harness. Skydiving Magazine did up an article with pictures about this and I was quite disturbed. What kind of person would risk a 3 year old that understands nothing about the risks involved just so mommy & daddy can be in the record books? Not to be outdone buy common Darwinism, some equally deficient person in Europe took out their 18 month old baby as a tandem and took the record for youngest skydiver. That got all the tandem manufacturers attention and this stupidness started to come to and end. So much easer to just say age of majority. It is always those people who take it too far that ph*ck it up for the rest of us.

If you are truly starting from scratch, you might want to consider starting on another path. The Adobe line of products are the basic standard and they all talk to one another beautifully while working on the same project at the same time. Editing a photo in Photoshop while using it as a still in Premiere is completely seamless. Take a video chunk and do some funky special effects in After Effects and that too is seamless. If you have the horse power you can run all of those programs at the same time and pop into one and the other and it automatically updates between them all. Not to mention that there are thousands and thousands of plug ins available for all their programs. Vegas may be good but if you are learning from scratch, might be a good idea to choose your path wisely before you being your journey. This is no different than starting out with Canon. If you happen to buy Nikon and get a few lenses, you are basically screwed to try and start over again unless you got mega $$$ to duplicate. Do your research and choose the right path for you because once you travel down the path, you get to a point that it is too far to turn back and do it properly instead of just continuing on. Remember Harold and Kumar? They left their cell phone in the apartment and they were too far to turn back and get it. It's kinda like that :)

It all comes down to money. Dream machines are nice but there is a balance between performance and your budget. Hard drives are relatively cheap. Ideally you would have your boot drive where your programs are installed. Having a 7200 RPM hard drive is fine but where you are working and rendering, the big $$$ gets into a pair of Velocoraptors spinning at 10,000 RPM. The reason why I say pair is that they would be set up as a RAID-0 config which means they are striped. Even data on one, odd data on the other basically doing half the workload at 10,000 rpm while the other drive is doing the same. Lightining fast but with a compromoise. If one drive fails, you have lost everything on both. Ying and Yang. And since you can get some rather big storage for less than $100, slap in some additional archive drives. Uncompressed video files take up tons of room. The very best thing to do is buy as much horse power as you can afford right now. That means processor, MB and the precious, precious RAM. You can always add hard drives later (wether Raid-0 or Raid-1 for backup) and as many TB drives as you need for storage. Once you commit to the CPU and MB, you are basically done as your core system. Next years new processors do not like old MB let alone RAM. Swap out your video card if you want more later, plug in more RAM, more HD etc. but I would put as much $$$ in to the ponies that make it run first. Next years budget is for storage. Windo$e 7 64 bit of course. They finally got a stable rocking OS going. Was running CS4 to render a very complex after effects project and it took about 2 days to render the final project (could have tweeked the settings for faster render time but couldn't find the sweet spot). Upgraded to 64 bit CS5 under windo$e 7 and the performance upgrade on that reduced render time to about 14 hours. Both situations were running an Intel Quad core, 8 GB ram. Have fun. Computers are awesome and the center of my business and personal life. It is absolutely amazing at what they can do in order to make your life fuller. (Skype for free from Thailand back home, video edit for $$$, invoice directly to customer etc.)

I found this here High End CPU Chart as of Nov 2nd Nothing like pictures to tell the story. Sorry AMD, check out how far down the list they are.

I have found the perfect STB for what I was looking for and after using it for a number of weeks, man it is awesome. LG590 THE GOOD - plays basically everything you can throw at it. Blu Ray, DVD, CD, DivX, DivX-HD, AVI's MKV's (HD computer format) and a ton more. Has a USB port for memory sticks or external Hard drives. THE AWESOME - Has built in 250 GIG hard drive. I can now take this little box to the lake, cabin, camping... anywhere and with 250 Gig of preloaded material (especially for the kids programs), I'm ready to go. Oh, it is also Wi-Fi ready. Do the install stuff and you can stream any video from your home network through this player. Internet services available through it are Netflix, Vudu, YouTube, Roxio CinemaNow, Pandora, Picasa and AccuWeather THE BAD- Player is locked as they usually are to the North American setting for playing disks. If you buy a European DVD while on vacation, it will not play in the player .... yet. They alwasys hack them given time. Same player is sold in Europe as here so there is just a secret code usually to unlock them. That is just for disks though, if you have a AVI, MKV or whatever, no issues at all with that. Found a good deal at $175 for it. There is a lot of techno-crap out there just for the sake of buying electronic "stuff" but this is something that makes life a bit easier.

I read an article recently from a computer mfg. selling agent for custom built systems. In a nut shell, don't get suckered in the "more processors are better" marketing scheme. Seems that the Intel quad processors are still kicking the butt of the AMD "many more processors but less powerful" theory. ============================== I was reading an article this morning that said that AMD's new pricing structure on desktop CPUs was putting pressure on Intel to lower prices. Apparently, they are counting on the computer buying public to be gullible enough to believe that six cores is inherently better than four core processors. Even the writer of the article discerns nothing about actual performance, only number of cores vs. price. The fact is, until a CPU is benchmarked, it should make no difference to the client what its internal architecture is. In other words, actual performance matters more than marketing, or at least it should.

I went to the island about 4-5 years ago for a family vacation. The guy that was running the "DZ" actually had it listed as a Canadian CSPA affiliated DZ. It was listed there for many years in the Canadian Canpara magazine. I sent dozens of emails to the two accounts I could find asking for information about skydiving before I left but never, ever received a reply. I made other plans for activities while there and didn't plan on skydiving at all because of that. I happen to be near the airport one day so I popped in during the middle of the afternoon to check it out. The only guy there was the janitor sweeping the floor. I asked him whats up with the skydiving listing and he told me that the guy that does it is basically a bum. He lives in an apartment down the road and he owns a tandem rig. When ever he is stressed for money he rents the local cargo plane and takes a few tandems up for cash when the cruise ship people are wandering around downtown. When I got back from the trip I tuned in CSPA to what their DZ was up to and by the next issue, the listing was removed. Like I said, that was about 5 years ago and someone new might have taken over the business but unless you can contact these guys BEFORE you leave and get a response, I would err on the side of caution and think that nothing has changed. Remember that they are their own country with no CSPA affiliation. Are they a current rated Tandem Master? Has the tandem rig ever, ever been back to the manufacturer for its re-certification? Check the rules because St. Maartin is it's own island and has its own skydiving rules (if they even exist). Good luck. Man I love the internet, it is so awesome.

Um yes and that is kinda the point for my needs. Lets say you want a supped up King Air with monster engines completely stripped inside for maximum lift capacity. It may have been designed to smuggle drugs but as a skydiver, you would buy it for a jump ship. The same analogy goes for my media player. I want Divx, Divx Plus, MKV, Region free, BluRay etc but oh my God, I freaking hate the mandatory controls they have in the movies. I have tons of Bob the Builder, Disney, Mighty Machines DVD's all over the place and I abhor trying to put in a move and FORCED to watch the 15 second FBI warning followed by the 10 minutes in movie trailers for the other crap to buy. No menu bypass, no top menu options allowed, locked out. As a computer geek, off to the ripper you go then. Even though you own the all the original kids DVD’s, they rip down to a small 600 meg AVI with no other crap other than the video the kids actually want to watch. Put 8 of them on a disk and away you go. When we go to the parents cabin or go camping in the travel trailer, a simple CD carry case with DVD-R’s and a slim DVD Divx player and I can keep all the screaming monsters entertained for days :) Anyways ….. I think I have settled on one of these LG BD570 $175 LG BD590 (same as above but with a 250 GB hard drive for storage) $280 Both of these models have built in Wi-Fi so I can stream in 801.11b/g/n directly from the computer. They play all the formats but they do have regions (North America). There are bypasses and that will come in time because these same players are for either side of the pond, same hardware, different programming. The hard drive model is awesome because all you would have to do is grab the player and it can go to the travel trailer or the cabin already pre loaded with all the movies/TV shows. 500 movies or TV shows is a lot to watch. The only thing missing in life now is an inline HDMI volume limiter. I used to use one with the RCA connections and that was awesome. Watching a movie late at night then the action scene comes on with guns a blazing and car chases and if I’m not quick enough to the volume control, the house rattles and everyone is awake. The old RCA in line volume limiter sets the max volume and it never got louder than that setting. HDMI has control key issues that interrupting that code causes it to have a fit :)

I am upgrading pieces of AV equipment and my next purchase is a STB player. Eventually my skydiving gear will be upgraded but the whole family watches the big TV and uses the player. Much easier to upgrade “my stuff” if I have given them some candy and they have “their stuff” :) What is the best current “plays everything” set top box out there now? I am looking for: -Blu-ray -Divx -Divx Plus HD (otherwise known as MKV) -Region free (0-8) and Blu-ray regions A-B-C -1080p full HD -must have USB port (for memory stick/HD) -HDMI obviously The built in Wi-Fi is not a must but it would be nice to stream video from my computer directly to the player. The USB port means no more burning disks to watch when it can be on a memory stick but to simply stream directly to the STB would be kewl. LOVE watching MKV files of TV shows instead of the standard crap version that comes in over the line (no commercials either). I’ve done a lot of internet searching but there are so many companies playing the game to market their wares that they intentionally leave things out, not mention other specs and you never really know what they do unless they specifically mention every last spec. What would you recommend?

OK guys, I have something for you. I’ve always loved the complete meshing together of skydiving and computer geek stuff. I love the web page stuff (keep is simple for your customers) and the video editing. Done many a year end video and got better at the effects as the years went by. A while back I finally bit the bullet and dove into After Effects. In the land of Canada, winter is a great time to get some edu-ma-cation when there is no jumping. There are 5 videos used as “teasers” for our web page (#4 is used for the leader at the start of our tandem videos). Start viewing the videos from #1. I got lucky on my first one because everything seemed to come together nicely. All video shot at our DZ. By the time I did up the last one #5, whoa mama, things didn’t go to well. The templates I was using didn’t mesh with the videos, the fonts were all over the place and errors a plenty. That damn last video took 2.5 days to render (yes I said two point five days). The clip is only 90 seconds long but on a quad core, 8 GB, Raid-0 (two Velociraptors 250 Gig each) system, I did the best I could for setting everything up and just had to let my little black box of joy go to work un interrupted. I wasn’t until it was done that I could view the 90 second video and pick out all the errors and start the rendering process over again. I hated it at times but lets get real here, I LOVED IT :) To be honest, just as I was finishing up on video #5, Windoze 7 (64 bit) and CS5 (again, 64 bit After Effects) came into play and that lone allowed complete access to the full 8 Gig (instead of just 4) and that render time went from 2.5 days down to 14 hours. Go to our home page here Skydive South Sask Have fun. PS: Videos #1-#5 average 5-8 meg each. I have true HD 1920x1080 versions on another server of videos #4 and #5. If you have a true HD monitor, #5 is stunningly awesome. It is 126 Meg in size for that 90 seconds though.

There are only so many types of shots to take ..... then you have to get a bit creative :)

Our club purchased a P206 from the US and imported it into Canada last winter. There are basically no skydiving STC's for that plane. The 182 is another story, STC's all over the place. A 182 is like a FORD half ton truck. Everyone has one and there are tons and tons of add ons for it. A 206 is the next step up but near nothing for it for any type of jump ship mod. We had to get a LSTC (limited just for that aircraft only). Our LSTC is for the extra seat belt, co-pilot door that opens up instead of sideways and the jumpstep. If you too want to try in vane, here is a link. Search to your hearts content :) FAA STC Search

Thank you everyone for your information on this topic. It is helpful but I think I should give more of an explanation. Here in Canada, our commercial inspection periods for our Cessna is every 50 hours. After buying this plane from the US last year and having a crash course of how VASTLY different the FAA is as compared to Transport Canada, I can tell you for a certainty that it is much more expensive to maintain aircraft up here for commercial purposes. Inspection times and maintenance schedules are not even comparable as to the US. We operate under the same rules as if we were Air Canada or West Jet. Commercial aviation is commercial aviation where people/passengers are involved. Example. The prop had 451 hours on it since new. It flew from California to Canada and once it crossed the border and landed for its very first time at our AME/AMO, the plane was done flying for a long while. Regardless of the hours since new, Transport Canada commercial rules are a 10 year limit on the prop regardless of how few hours may actually be on it. This one had 12 years and hence, the prop was done. Keep things like this in mind when you continue to read as COST/OPERATING HOUR is the #1 factor. We have a 182 (x-wing, stol, bigger prop, larger engine) for the high loads and tandems. The 206 is our IAD student semi hauler. Lots of capacity but lower loads. It will not fly all day but it sure as heck empties the students by noon where the 182 took all day. Schedule: 50 hours –oil change 100 hours – oil change and inspection 150 hours – oil change 200 hours – oil change and huge, major 200 hour inspection. Inspection like take things apart and inspect everything. These inspections are always major bills on labour let alone what needs to be replaced. That being said, I do take as a valid point the suggestion that savings 5 minutes on a load and having the plane sit for 20 minutes parked during the day may not be a big savings as the clock ticks on the wall, it sure is a HUGE thing for us. It absolutely comes down to COST PER OPERATING HOUR. We want to make as much $$$ per hour as possible before the next mandated inspection. Our fixed costs such as our insurance for the year doesn’t matter how many hours it flies. Every hour we fly we factor in the engine replacement fund ( $$$ saved for 8 years from now ) and inspection invoices. If we can save 5 minutes off each load and over the next 20 loads regardless of whether it is all in the same day or done over the next 3 days, that is a whole extra hour of saved flight time for us. One extra flight hour means roughly 2.5 loads of IAD dispatches. 13 extra dispatches (LSTC for 6 seatbelts and the pilot) @ $230 ea. means we got an extra $2,990 in revenue because the plane flew more first jump students in the same amount of time. Wow, what a lot of yapping hey :) So it looks like on the standard stock IO-520 engine (850hrs on it only) would do much better with the 2 blade 88" seaplane prop. We operate at a completely paved airport but there is always the possibility of giving hair cuts to gophers with the extra blade length :) The next thing would be the extra 3 feet of wing for lift. If skydiving wasn’t so much fun, I wouldn’t do all this other stuff. The best way to kill something you love…. make it your business :)