jalisco

dos...

I would have thought that folks returning from FJC's would still be seeking out and relying on local mentors. Is this not the case?

Generally, BASE jumping isn't banned at sites (e.g. nps) because of actual dangers. It's banned because the people in charge of such things look at the exit point(s) and feel their insides rebel -- "how could anybody jump from there?!?" -- and assume, therefore, that there must be something "wrong" with doing so. It's an emotional response: "I'm scared" gets confused with "that's immoral". This is a particular problem for BASE because fear of falling is deep-seated, visceral and immediate, unmediated by logic. Floating on a boat isn't particularly scary in and of itself, so, to be afraid of kayaking, most people have to think through to the potential consequences. Similarly, standing on a pair of skis as they move across the ground isn't by itself scary. Even climbing is less scary because the essence of it is hanging on (i.e. not falling). But to choose to fall from the exit point -- whoa!! I had a nightmare about that once!! Thus decisions about what is and is not "allowed" aren't predicated on any consideration of the actual relative risks involved. At a bridge recently, I watched as tour buses pulled into the parking lot, 20% of the occupants got off and took a few pictures of the canyon and bridge, bought a refrigerator magnet, and got back on the bus 15 minutes later. Remembering that as I stood outside the rail on the bridge, I realized that I got to experience the canyon so much more fully by jumping into it. I was reaching out to take in the whole canyon, not just looking at it like it was on tv or something. Ultimately, it's got nothing to do with balls. Just not sure how to get this across to those who would ban things just because they can't imagine doing them. be the canyon

ha! i see nothing in s.fl. is safe from omar anymore..

Sure they do... You just have to really want it Especially in the winter! 570 And get my brand new BJ wet, right?

I think you mean Dept of Field. Why would you want it? Photos like this, of course. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=24728; Dept of Field is yet another tool in the photogrophers utility belt. Rarely used in skydiving, but can be stunning when used properly. _Am Plus -- given you work out any focusing issues and decide you're alright with any weight and cost differences -- you get two stops more light to work with. That's the difference between a possibly acceptible sunset-load shot at 1/125 sec shutter speed and a likely unacceptably motion blurred one at 1/30 sec shutter speed.

They offer jump tickets at the WFFC? This is good information! I know of many who probably wondered why there was so much air traffic...

My current canopy is gray. In my own very limited experience, I've spent what seems like a little more time with my canopy exposed on the ground than in the air -- especially given the fact that people don't typically look up particularly when they're, say, driving -- so I'm feeling like something that melts into the shadows well is a good plan. Oh, and groundwork of course. My own very limited experience is that by doing your groundwork you can be marginally confident of stealth during your 10 sec canopy ride, but maybe while you're stuffing your canopy in the bag some car comes around the corner and you have to duck... Maybe this is just a condition of my minimal experience level and the couple of places I happen to have jumped so far.

What is the rational for the proposed fly-over rules changes? I could understand if they're trying to reduce the impact of noise and polution on my experience of the park. For example, a fly-by while you were snowmobiling through Yellowstone would just, like, ruin it, wouldn't it?

how visible is the blue at night?

Probably helps... Sure, the subtler among us can mark our personal acheivements for ourselves. Still, having "levels" of competition gives people concrete goals and real motivation each season, which doesn't really sound false or hollow to me. I don't think anyone equates lower level medals with those won by folks in rarefied echelons of competition. But they still offer concrete tokens of real acheivements. What if we give really nice medals to the teams in the top category, and work our way down to cheap plastic ones for entry levels?

no, never...

3M's got a pretty readable, brief discussion here: "Types of Polarizing Filters" (it shows the circular polarizer being used for a different (anti-glare) application)

Some lens manufacturers offer separate "macro" adapters or extensions that allow a given lens to focus closer than it normally could, although I'd be suprised if you received your lens with such a thing already attached to it (might come in the same package but not already screwed together or whatever). Are you saying that you received a separate, "macro" attachment along with your lens? Or are you looking at the lens itself?

Great... now I need a rig with no metal parts on it

I learn something new every day. Might be nice if I'd learn it prior to posting, huh? Oh well. So, I guess using a polarizer on a skydive might be a hit-or-miss thing. On a still camera, sometimes it would help, and sometimes it wouldn't. I know with a linear polarizer, changing the orientation generally changes the sky color, so a lot a moving around (or relative wind causing the filter to spin ) might lead to some rather weird looking skies on video. Anyway, apologies all...

Well...maybe not exactly. I think the actuaries try to assess monetary risk, rather than danger levels. Part of that assessment includes a consideration of uncertainty. The less infomation is available, the higher the risk is considered to be, particularly when the actuary is looking at an activity that seems to them, prima facie, to entail some danger. It could be that there's just lots more data on motorcycle racing -- more people doing it, more people telling their insurance companies they're doing it, more insurance policy applications asking about it, more people asking to be covered for it, etc. Compounding the uncertainty problem is the actuary's familiarity with the activity. Some insurance companies figure it out better than others. This is not suprising, since wer'e talking about a fairly small community. How many active skydivers are there? It may be that some companies have bigger fish to fry -- i.e. the cost of the research and implementation isn't judged to be worth the potential gains, given the size of the market. I started skydiving after procuring my current life insurance policy. At some point, I decided to tell them I was skydiving, and that I wanted my policy to cover me for that. They asked some suprisingly pertinent questions (e.g. what license level I had, how many jumps I had, how often I jumped) and then said, "fine, you're covered" -- no premium increase or anything. Somebody there had done their homework.

Ouch. Is this your usual DZ? How long have you been jumping there? How many jumps there? Have you recently returned there after a long absence?

A polarizer can indeed intensify the blues in skies in your images. If it's a circular polarizer, there's no need to adjust its orientation. However, circular polarizers don't have as noticable an effect. Linear polarizers can have a much more marked effect on sky color. However, as others have indicated, this depends on both the orientation of the filter (normally, the filter mount allows you to spin the filter) and the portion of the sky (relative to the sun) you're aiming at. I agree that this sounds like a lot of trouble in a skydiving environment. ALso, note that linear polarizers often confuse auto-focus mechanisms. If you've still got the polarizer and it's a circular polarizer, you might try shooting some with and without it to see if it does anything for you. If you decide it helps and to keep it, you'll probably want to leave it off on late sunset loads, as it will reduce the amount of light getting through your lens some. If do you decide to try it out, I'd love to hear your experiences.

Hmmm... I can't help wondering if the disposition of the center line might be worth considering. Certainly in Gardner's method, it winds up in the topskin part of the mushroom. It seems to me that In Johnny's method, too, gravity will tend to put most of it in the same area, assuming you don't happen to scoop it up at some point. Is this a good place to put it? When I, with my hand holding the gathered-up perimeter, flip the thing over, what's to prevent loops of the center line settling into, say, a clove hitch around the nug?

Sony claims the PC120 zoomed out gives the equivalent field of view of 48mm focal length on 35mm. Sony claims the PC330 zoomed out gives the equivalent field of view of 45mm focal length on 35mm. Comparing 4.2mm on 1/4" CCD (PC120) vs. 5.1mm on 1/3" CCD (PC330) agrees, roughly, with this. You'd think the .6 would have the same multiplier effect on the focal length on either camera. So the PC330 should be just a tiny bit wider, but maybe not enough to really notice.

You guys know way more than I do, and I no doubt suffer from my own perspective as a skydiver, but I am so glad to have had the opportunity to jump my BASE canopy several times over a large, flat grassy area (the DZ) before trying to stand up a landing in a small, sloped, rocky clearing between tall trees, or at all at night, for that matter. For non-skydivers around here (a long way from legal spans), a few SL jumps (maybe with that newly acquired BASE canopy in the container) might at least give a little flavor of how a canopy generally works first. Not saying you "should", just can't see the disavantage. $.02

You'll notice the look Mike prefers illustrated by his avatar...

An ancient Opel Kadet B Coupe (see pic, attached -- mine was cream colored) that I got in high school. Cost me (my parents, actually) $50. The girls named it the "Pregnant Duck" due, as best I could tell, to it's distinctive shape. The front-seat passenger's floorboard had rusted out along one edge, so that if I hit a puddle at normal (35-40mph) speed, a stream of water would arc up over the right sholder of the front-seat passenger into the back-seat, getting suprisingly little water on the passenger. The startled cries are still fresh in my memory. I hit an oil slick and ran it into the back of a Caddy - no effect on the Caddy, but the Duck was totalled.

Blair Not sure how much you can get for the 330 on ebay (it sells for as little as $1200 and small change elsewhere -- about what I got mine for). The 330 has replaced the 120 in Sony's line up, and it's probably better quality video - it has a bigger, supposedly more sensitive sensor (1/3" to the PC120's 1/4"). I figure that might give it an edge when shooting tandem video at sunset or on overcast days. The 330 has a couple of other interesting features. Its 3Mpx (!) ccd should give you really decent quality digital stills. The "Progressive Scan" mode might be useful in rare cases -- it's kind of like shooting 30 1Mpx pictures per second, useful for analyzing your jumps in slowmo or for capturing higher quality stills from your video. Also, it has an enhanced (color) low-light mode that might be useful on some jumps... Stuart