Fast

That might be the case but you are missing the point really. I know, you just want to have fun and poke around. I am not gonna bitch at you. Just wanted to point out that you missed the point. p.s. You can't link images on dz.com

In theory I have. I don't talk on the phone or do anything else really when I am driving through. I don't even like to talk to the passengers in my car. I like to just turn on some music and drive because I really like driving and push it at times with what would be considered acceptable behavior. So I do my best to pay attention. ~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 been on the recieving end of a system in the tunnel. What I was told is that the majority of the cost goes into the mic. All the other parts are pretty cheap. The wind noise in freefall is pretty hard to overcome. ~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

Hah. Glad your trying to save face. That line wont cut it with me though, I know better. ~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

Yep. The tunnel is a perfect example of what you just said. You _must_ be able to hold heading, hold level, turn with control, move up and down, and side to side on your belly. Next you have to learn how to backfly, hold heading, turn with control, move up and down, and transition from belly to back, back to belly. Then you can start learning how to sitfly (well, they teach you to walk first, but anyways). Before they will let you start learning headdown, you must be able to, in a sit, hold heading, move up and down forward and back, turn in control, do flips w/o losing altitude(level). Then they let you learn headdown on the net only at low airspeed with a spotter. At least that is how it was done the last time I was in the tunnel. The point of stating all of the above is that there is a progression. You have to be able to to basic things from the discipline one step down, before you take on something more advanced. While skydiving, (as opposed to tunnel) you also have to learn to be aware of all the people around you (both in your group, as well as the groups before and after you), learn to track for seperation, and learn to fly a canopy. That is a lot of stuff going on. Most people can't even remember how many points they turned or who did what on the skydive after they land either. (One more skill to master) All of that must go into learning to skydive. When you start skipping steps you are putting yourself and the others that jump around you in a state of elevated risk. I am personally not willing to accept someone with 100 jumps thinking he is hot shit and putting my life at risk. The risks I take, involve only me. (at least that is what I strive for.) The thing is, that even after some skydivers get lots of jumps they don't take the time to sit and think about the risks and who they might affect. As much as most people want it to be, skydiving is not all about you. Skydiving is a team effort, even if you are not on a competative team. We are all in it together. ~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

Oh I forgot. Yep, your right. You know what your talking about. Sorry, I didn't realize you were better than everyone else with 150 jumps. Thats cool though man, I didn't mean to step on your toes. Go ahead and do whatever you want and ignore the advice of the people who have more experience. We are just trying to hold you back. Ya know, wouldn't want to hurt our egos getting shown up by some new guy now would we. Sarcasm aside. There is one guy on my DZ who is good, doesn't have lots of jumps, and is learning pretty fast. His air skills are great, more times than not his awareness level is lacking. I have dodged him before. There is a different guy who thought he knew everything about canopy flying too. Well there is video to prove otherwise. I guess it doesn't matter what you do, if you just accept that your uping your level of risk and might die and/or kill someone else. (who might have kids to feed, a loving s.o., and surely has parents that will miss them) One thing you did get right though, don't bother posting if you are just going to laugh in the face of people who want to give advice and be helpfull. Most people who get to a point of giving advice have gotten there by seeing the mistakes others have made and not making them, making them and paying the price, or by getting lucky. I don't know about you, but I don't like to bet my life on luck. They only post to help you from making the same mistakes. People are also more conservative on here because its the internet and they don't know you at all. That doesn't change the fact that doing head down at 100-200 jumps is probably not the best idea in the world. I don't get why people want to rush. I guess its, wanting to be like the big boys and fancy pros you see out there. Oh well. I guess you can all ignore the fact that they put in thier time working on the basics. You must be better than they are right? ~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 I think on the photoshop call. I created a photo comparing the two. The white Canopy is my XF2-139 taken with a Rebel XT and 15mm sigma. I tried to size my photo to get the risers sizes close. No way thats as big as claimed. Also, the girl very much looks photoshopped in. Not to mention the picture looks in the final stages of a hook turn. ~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

What are you trying to convey with your new name? ~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

Its a shame most smaller dropzones can't afford to pay for billboards. ~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

None of you guys who have stated "we just started doing head down" or something similar in this thread up to this point have enough experience to be flying head down. Thats all there is to it. Stop trying to rush in the sport of skydiving, its only going to get you or someone else hurt Just this weekend we had a collision on a freefly jump of 2 very experience freefliers. One of which has a hard time laughing at the moment because it hurts too much. ~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 very much dislike this name change. Oh well. Still a good product, but I don't think I will be wearing any "United Parachute Technologies" t-shirts or having that crap embroidered on my rig. ~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 know if I agree with the generalization that a ring sight will help just cause. There are lots of added risk to them. When I started doing tandem video I was using one, but it made me uncomfortable wearing my helmet on freefly / non-outside video jumps. The difference though, is that I had already done competatve 4-way for a year before I started camera flying so I was able to be where I wanted 99% of the time. Barnett: If you, like many new skydivers these days, jumped from newly minted A lic. right into freeflying and never learned how to fly on your belly well, you need to take a step back and learn some belly skills before you can expect to "get the money shot" and be safe doing it on tandems. The more and more I think about it in the coming years we are going to run into a shortage of instructors and video guys because people aren't learning to belly fly. As for your other questions. I set my Audible at 5500, 3000, decision altitude for tandem jumps. Most of the instructors where I jump pull right after my audible goes off. Just seems to work out that way. As for camera wings, for me, I can shoot "ok" video without them and "really good" video with them. I like the range and I like to sit low on them and look up. You can't do nearly as easy if you don't wear wings. Take that as you will. ~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

For the most part, the sky will always be there the next day. Heal up and jump once your healed up.

I finished last year with around 350-400 for the year. I am around 450-500 now and will jump through the end of the year. So quite a bit more this year. ~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

Seems that the DZ he jumped at really does charge that much. Pricey place to jump. There must not be many other DZs around. http://www.skydiveorange.com/1stjump.htm ~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 think he re ended the cable to take a standard sony jack. I like that idea A LOT. Will have to look into this. Although I can't seem to find information on the vendor your talking about. edit: nm, found them... Dont see it on thier site but i bet they have it if I email em. (http://www.xtremerecall.com/ ~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

What specific fast motion issues are we talking about? Is is focus related, image stabalization problems? Slow shutter? ~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 people who are so worried about thier gear they would rather get hurt crack me up. I have black leg pads on my current rig and if possible will have them on every other rig I ever own. ~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 difference is this...An AAD that fails to fire when it should, does not increase the risk. It only fails to save someone. Not good, but better than an AAD firing and ripping the tail off a Cessna and causing the death of someone. Agreed. It also is an issue of who it affects. An AAD that mis fires and kills a jumper/pilot not using it is a lot worse in my book than one that doesn't and only the jumper who screwed up dies. The more that comes out about these things the more I dislike even being on a plane with them. ~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

Please, check your ears with a physician. There is a possibility that you could have some sort of ear obstruction that may be dangerous to your hearing in an environment of pressure changes. It would be better if you do it before you jump again. Thanks for pointing that out. Anything to do with your health please ask a doctor, if yours doesn't understand aviation, please find one that does. This is NOT the place to ask for medical advice. ~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

Are you talking about doing something like the photo I have attached? If you are it is really easy. Open the picture in photoshop. Go to layer -> new adjustment layer -> hue/saturation Set your saturation to -100. click ok when you have done that, look in your layer list, there should be a new layer that has to Boxes in it. (See attachment 2) Use the paintbrush and eraser to desired effect. Its pretty easy. Just make sure you are painting on the mask layer. ~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

A torrent would work best for this. Bring a copy to the dz and I will set a torrent up for 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

This is one that I have used recently. Its a photo I took. Since I take a lot of skydiving pictures, I tend to just use them. Image ~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

You've got enough jumps where I'm assuming you know what you're getting into when you exit the airplane at 2k. Sure 99% of the time things will work (building the sense of security and invincibility). But all it takes is that one time to be under a violently spinning main which eats up tons of altitude and the next thing you know (within seconds) you're less than one thousand feet and now what are you going to do? You may still be able to cutaway and deploy your reserve. Or you may have already gone too low. I've exited the airplane at 2k before and back then I had the same attitude you have now. But things change and you won't see me exit the aircraft that low any more. The infamous "Ron" in the incidents thread has already insinuated that I'm chicken for my current attitude and that's okay. Having some fear in this sport is good. It helps keep complacency away and we should all know that complacency kills. So in summary, yes I believe that you have enough experience in this sport to make your own decisions and you still feel that exiting the aircraft at low altitude is okay. But for the others with not enough experience, they really should take a second to think about "what if" before they follow their friends out the door. If people are into the ground rush of pulling low, take up BASE jumping. The gear is designed to open faster and more reliable than skydiving gear. Yeah, your right. My opinion might change when I am jumping something that is loaded higher, crossbraced, and opens like shit. For now though thats not really an issue. Anyways, I was trying to make a couple points and was being too short in it. People taking responsibility for themselves is a comment seperate from my choice to jump from 2k. The comments on the latter were more in regard to the claims that base was safer than jumping at 2k. Which I disagree with. It also goes somewhat to all the people who say that its absolutely nuts to jump from that low. I am sure there are people who would want a BSR to prevent exit altitudes that low. If I couldn't exit stable I sure wouldn't do it, but it's a skill everyone should have. You are right though, you have to think a bit more about it. There is a lot less time to fix problems. ~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

5500 (typical Tandem pull altitude, I shoot a lot of video) 3k (I like to pull) 1.7k ~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