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Velo 103 @ ~2.0 Second rig has a XFire2-139 - which I have to admit is one of the nicest opening canopies I have ever jumped. Maybe it is just this specific one, but man, it opens nice. It's the smallest canopy that will fit in my old container. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Guy Wright will be at our dropzone this weekend organizing low pressure RW jumps. Everyone who has jumped with him at our DZ has had a great time. There is no additional cost to jump with Guy (Just the normal $23 slot) or attend this weekend (no "boogie" fee) It is highly likely that we will be grilling up some food on Saturday night (for a small additional cost, like we often do) I expect that it will be a great weekend so come on out and have some fun! Thanks! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I don't see how the mounting plate can dramatically affect how the forces are applied inside the camera. To me, most of that has to do with how the attachments inside the camera are made to the piece of metal that the screw goes into. If you are suggesting that its because the plate covers a good portion of the bottom of the camera and keeps it from bending (like it could if the screw was just a big long rod with threads) then I don't see how most mounts are different. All the mounts I have seen are pretty adequate in that regards. At least in comparison to how the insides of most cameras are constructed. I would hazard a guess that, most of the people you have seen with cameras completely broken off still have the metal part from the bottom of the camera attached. I would also hazard a guess that they are the people who are jumping the lower end cameras. Not 5Ds and the like. I think most of it has to do with how the camera is constructed, not the mount. The mount does play a role for sure, so long as they are tight up against one another though, I don't see there being that much of a difference. It still all comes back to how that little metal piece in the bottom of the camera is designed to distribute load throughout the plastic body of the camera. Which, my point being, the PRO cameras most likely do a better job of. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Fuel prices at our airport went up 20 cents this week for Jet A which was already up 30 cents from last year. 100LL is almost over $5 a gallon as well. If gas prices go up, so will lift ticket costs. Both of the bigger DZs outside chicago are up to $25 a ticket. They were already up to $24 a slot at the start of this year. The dz I jump at is smaller and has been doing well this year in the tandem department and we are trying to resist raising our prices for a second time this year. We are still at $23 a slot, but if Jet A goes up much more, that's gonna have to change. It is what it is, ya know? If you are doing the math on how much a slot should cost, often forgotten things are sales tax, pilot pay and credit card fees. Also, there is an hourly cost even if the DZ owns the plane. It is the cost of maintenance / hours flown before you have to do it. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Ok, so after reading this thread on x-brace canopies and seeing the word (efficient) used more than once once to describe them, I was wondering up to what size do they make a x-braced canopy? I have a Saber 2 190 wing load about 1.3 it flies great and I love it. I'm not looking to down size any time soon as I still have a lot to learn on my current canopy. I'm just curious if they make a 190 x-braced canopy (pros & cons) because I'm all about efficiency They don't. Largest I know of that is manufactured on a regular basis is a 120. The whole deal with the small canopies is that they are fast and you can do a lot with them. Swooping comes down to extending the exciting fun flying part down close to the ground where you can realize what is happening. Everything just happens really fast and it is pretty exciting. It forces you to stay on your toes and you have to know a lot about how canopies work and how to make judgments about what is about to happen next. They aren't for the faint of heart or those who need time to make a decision. Most of the replies on this thread are pointing out that it's really easy to get hurt on small canopies and that is certainly true. You need to have a solid base of canopy flight experience before you even think of jumping a canopy that is small like that. If you don't, you end up getting hurt and it just costs you time that you could have been having fun. People jump them for the thrill of it all. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

It would sure be nice for the rest of us to have some kind of answer on what exactly people are doing that allows these cameras to work sit flying. The quality of video that I was seeing from our tests this weekend was just NOT something that I would want to jump. What the hell are we supposed to do as skydivers if everything is going to OIS. It clearly has significant issues for skydiving. Is it coming to the point where the only answer is that when we buy a brand new camera we have to superglue the OIS stuff? Who knows what that is gonna do to the operating system of the camera. (Throw errors?) Can't they build an OIS system that actually holds the lens in place when it is shut off? This whole situation is really frustrating for me. I want to be shooting HD and people keep asking me what camera to buy. I don't have a good answer for them. If watching shaky ass video from a CX7, etc is the way of the future, that makes me really depressed! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

In the situation I posted above, I was jumping with both my PC1000 and a friends new CX7 on my camera helmet. The video from the PC1000 looked perfect, the CX7 was a mess. I since heard last night that the camera was returned to the store. We need to just start writing letters to Sony in droves asking for a camera that is HD, uses only memory cards, is about the size of a PC1000/330/350 and has electronic stabilization. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I agree that it's all about supply and demand. In my experience though, the demand curve in the skydiving market is relatively inelastic. So, if you increase or decrease the price (within a certain range limit, of course), whether it's for tandem jumps, video or stills, you won't see much change in demand (unless, of course, you drastically drop the price of video; then everyone will want one). So why making it a commodity, if you can make it a premium service, and thus, maintain the volume and achieve extra revenue? That just isn't true in todays market. If you change the price of a skydive a little bit the customer may flee to your closest competition. Consumers are price minded in todays economy. If the prices you offer aren't competitive, you wont be making skydives. Things work quite a bit different if you are the only operation in town, but there are so few places where that is true that it is hard to take a stance like that. There are 4 turbine DZs within 1.5 hours of where I live, the wuffo customer has quite a few options as to where they go jump. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Made jumps with it on and jumps with it off. It has OIS which is seeming to be why it's so damn hard to get it to look nice. It works ok doing belly jumps, but sit flying it starts to not look good. Headdown isn't quite as bad as sitflying, but still doesn't look as nice as it does on the ground / belly flying. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

The experience that I had with this camera over the weekend was that, for the most part, the video shook quite a bit when it was just bolted on the top of a helmet. We didn't have a proper box for it so made one up out of a lot of cardboard and gaffers tape, the camera wouldn't move at all on top of the helmet. The vibration durring sitflying was still enough to cause some issues with the video quality. What are people doing to this camera to get it to work w/o freaking out. We were playing the video side by side on a 70inch TV and the PC1000 that was mounted on the same helmet for the jumps (my helmet) was producing MUCH smoother video. Thoughts? ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I agree about the micron. I have two vectors. The newer one has spacer foam and is pretty comfortable. I have jumped other rigs that I have felt were slightly more comfortable, but I won't put comfort above function. I think the vector3 is the best designed rig on the market and in my opinion at least has the best customer support and quality control coming out of the factory. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Never a truer word spoken Because the price and size of cameras have fallen every twat and his dog has one and because they jump for free every dz uses them even though their product is normally crap or greatly inferior. My dropzone only sells a package with both. I don't think that the pay we get is unreasonable either. The customer is paying $89 for both video and stills and that to me seems like a reasonable price. Much like Dave said, we just force stills on everyone. If we were doing a video only thing, it would be cheaper. Also, as the person in charge of video for my dz, for the most part, I don't want my video guys trying to "sell" the customer. The tandem masters are already doing that at our dz trying to get the person enthused to go towards the student program. That to me is more important than the videographers trying to sell the pictures. So it just makes sense to just offer it all as one package and charge accordingly. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I agree that the internet on the iPhone is slow... stupid lack of 3G. Other than that I like it quite a bit more than the blackberrys that I have used. I really dislike no touchscreen. The only other phone I would consider would be an HTC Touch, my GF has one of those and I like it. Most of the other windows mobile phones suck. There is a lot of stuff on my iPhone (jailbroken) that I just couldn't have with a blackberry. Maybe if the iPhone 2 comes out with 3g I will upgrade to that. Though, so many of the places that I go to have WiFi that it almost doesn't matter. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

The jumper in this video steers just fine without using any of those inputs: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=3673 Pulling an outer A/B line does the trick nicely (for our "don't try this at home" file).

Someone else owns the DZ now. I would suggest Sky Knights, but that is because it is my home dz and I am also one of the people running it. One thing I can promise you is that Sky Knights does not support Skyride and we jump a well maintained PAC750. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

The 8 inputs that you can use on your canopy are: Left Front Riser Right Front Riser Left Rear Riser Right Rear Riser Left Toggle Right Toggle Left Harness Right Harness The number of things you can do at once is a combination of the above inputs. There are a lot of weird combinations that do some interesting stuff. CRW dogs use some of them! You can also pull on individual lines, but there isn't a whole lot of use for that in 99% of situations. Anyways, the fastest means of avoiding a collision on opening is to not unstow the brakes and to use one of the other 6 inputs available. For what it's worth, leaning in your harness doesn't work really well with a larger canopy. Feel free to try it though and see what happens. I have gone from jumping my velocity103 to jumping a Manta288 while working on one of my instructor ratings. It's kinda a weird feeling when you are used to being able to just lean a little bit and start doing spirals. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I MUST SEE YOUR PAPERS... You can't make statements like that without the right papers!!!!! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I have cut the strap off every camera I owned and never regretted it. There is no real need for it and it is just a convenience item. No wuffo is going to want to buy your camera after you put a few hundred jumps on it anyways and any skydiver you sell it to will probably just cut the strap off. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I have hopes of getting to some of the other meets this year. Was doing job interviews for office people for our dz saturday. Congrats to Karl!

You couldn't pay me to get into the DZ thing right now with any of my personal money. I am currently sitting on the board of a pretty large skydiving club. It's a lot of work. You have no idea..... ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I really like bidding on cars with them. You can get some really cheap rates! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

There are a lot of places that are already requiring some form of this so I am to understand. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Sky Knights will once again be hosting an R44 Helicopter for jumping this Saturday May 10th, 2008. The cost of the jumps will be $40 each.

Going elliptical? Slower openings, funky openings, a bit lower point of flare, more bottom end flare. One size down? More speed, longer recovery, more sensitive for harness turns. I wouldn't charcaterize the crossfire as having funky openings, at least not the Crossfire2. By a long shot, it is the nicest opening canopy I have ever jumped, at least the one that I own (and still have despite mostly jumping a velo now) ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Good luck! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka