The111

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

The sad thing is I that on the SD DVD version of Planet Earth (I only watch upconverted DVD's right now), they BUTCHERED the quality. Many people will assume it is because it's SD, but that's not even it. They shoved SIX HOURS of footage onto each SD disc. That requires so much compression it's ridiculous. Even for a 3 hour movie like the Godfather they will usually make it span two discs. Watching upconverted stuff usually looks pretty damn good if the bitrate of the SD DVD is reasonable... but the Planet Earth DVD's are not even worth watching unless you get the HD versions. A very stupid (or gimmicky AND stupid) move on their part. Gimmicky if they are trying to exaggerate the difference between SD and HD. We watched 3 episodes of it in broadcast HD right after getting our TV and loved it, but then they stopped airing it. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

It is indeed a very long camera geek sequence. We hope to see you guys next year.

I've seen videos of flat spins, but they do NOT show: 1) Fallrate during the spin 2) How long the spin is maintained for without tumbling And most importantly, the person is conscious. When an AFF person is on their belly spinning, it's in part due to their own consciousness. They are getting half of their stability correct: they are arching hard at the hips and preventing themselves from rolling or pitching over... but they have not yet figured out how to control the yaw, so all that's left is to spin about that axis. Unconscious, they'd have 2 more axes without stability (no more hip arch since that takes muscle). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Why do the ground and sky keep switching places then, the horizon inversion? Either she has a more flexible neck than any human I've ever met, or she is tumbling in addition to spinning. A person under canopy and tandem pair under drogue both have center of pressure far above center of mass. This is something which contributes a very very large stabilizing force in one direction. Neither of these are really comparable to a single person in freefall, without a canopy above his head. In neither of these examples is it even possible to "tumble"... spinning about a vertical axis is the only kind of dynamic instability physically possible when you are suspended in a harness. I do agree that it is possible that an unconscious non-wingsuited person could end up in a back to earth orientation with a somewhat stable "spin". A non-wingsuited person, however, is much much more inherently stable than a wingsuited person. A person in a wingsuit is much less dynamically stable. Regardless of whether or not the wings/limbs are pinned outward by centrifugal force, an unconscious person in a wingsuit is still very dynamically unstable. Even MORESO, with all the wings fully extended. With no conscious stabilizing force to keep the wingsuit in a certain orientation, it will almost certainly experience "tumbles" mixed in with the spins (and during a tumble, the changes in air pressure direction will likely collapse wings). It may "spin" for certain observable time periods (just as the falling cars in Good Stuff were in a "stable oscillation" for periods of time), but these spins are not sustainable indefinitely (just as the falling cars eventually changed to a new mode of instability). The only way to truly solve this debate would be to build a dummy with the exact same weight distribution and stiffness (impossible) as an unconscious person, put it in a wingsuit, dump it, and observe. Besides being a ridiculous thing to try to do, the results would vary from: a) body type b) wingsuit c) test to test, even with all other variables held constant, simply due to nature of dynamic instability Also, the speeds would be very tough to measure, although average fallrate over a given altitude would be easy to obtain (and would be relatively constant between tests, averaged over a large sample set). Bottom line is if I had to guess, I would easily exceed 78mph fallrate if I were unconscious in my wingsuit, regardless of whether or not I started in a spin. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Not sure if that is the video you wanted... it is first person POV and is hard to tell exactly what's happening but it definitely looks like a tumble-spin to me. The thing is, I've seen video of AFF students in a "flat spin"... it's something that can happen to anybody in any apparel if they make the wrong mental and physical inputs and get stuck in a certain rut. It's kind of like when you're learning to sitfly and you do a 2-way and end up orbiting each other. User input is actually adding to the "downward spiral" (literally). It's a self-perpetuating condition. I have no proof (and don't intend to try to get it), but I really doubt an unconscious person would be in any sort of recognizable "spin", wingsuit or not. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Good memory, but the word is egomaniacal... though I guess evil has a ring to it too. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Laci, you have heard about the problems people have with HC7 in freefall, right? My new HC5 works great though.

You may be right about statistical insignificance, but I could also tell you that double mals are statistically insignificant, and I am pretty sure I remember you writing about living through at least one of those. In my short time in the sport, I have never pulled significantly lower than planned due to loss of awareness (outside of AFF)... however I have on three different occasions been less than 18 inches away from a collision with closing speeds that would have knocked me out if they didn't kill me (and unfortunately 1 of those 3 was my fault). No, those "near misses" should not be occuring, but they have. Bigway wingsuit events are still a relatively new thing and the closing speeds we have in wingsuits can be silly as you know. More than once I've been hanging out 100 feet above a formation shooting pictures only to have somebody dive bomb just past my head trying to put on their brakes before they plow into me or the formation they're arriving at late. Whether it's a significant risk or not, and whether anybody else deems it silly or not, the primary reason I jump an AAD is for when I can't pull, not for when I don't. And for this purpose I am fairly confident my AAD will work with or without a wingsuit. To whomever asked if we know for sure that unconscious wingsuit freefall is greater than 78mph... I guess we don't know, for sure. I have found however that the "flat spin" is a bit of a myth as I have never observed or experienced one (not counting the intentional) truly "flat" spin. Most out of control maneuvers are tumbles... and if you are in a flock descending at 75mph, and somebody gets burbled and tumbles out, watch how FAST they drop away from the flock, and that is a person who is still conscious and trying to recover. Even if he does recover 2 seconds later, he'll be 500 feet low. I've seen it dozens of times. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

To add to what everyone else has said, the prices at Sony Store are significantly higher than say, Amazon or B&H. HC5, for example, $800 on B&H vs $1100 on Sony. So, assuming you wanted to trade old camera in for HC5, unless Sony's trade-in values were $300 HIGHER than what you could get on the open market (eBay), you'd be silly to do this. And they're not $300 higher, since they don't even total $300. No offense, Spot... just doing some math. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Only been hanging out with Z-Flock for one day and he already doesn't know where he is. Welcome to the jungle. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

An anonymous poster accuses somebody else of having a facade. Oh, the irony. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Pizza Man? Paul Meagher? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Too many to list, though I've always said my top 4 are: Shawshank Redemption Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Magnolia Dark City Those are probably just the ones that stick in my mind though. Anything else written by Charlie Kaufman or directed by Paul Thomas Anderson is great. I see so many great movies that only stick in my memory for a while, as my brain can only retain so much. Last weekend I watched Cool Hand Luke, Days of Heaven, and Black Book, which were all great. Also gotta give a nod to those who mentioned LA Confidential, Usual Suspects, and Raising Arizona (all the Coen Bros stuff is great, can't wait for the new one). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

The Prodigy will not have wing blowouts if rigged properly (and the rigging is simple). I just think a Classic is easier to fly. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

As somebody else has said, if you are unconscious in a wingsuit, you will most likely be falling very fast. To me, the ONLY reason I have an AAD is for when I am unconscious. If you need an AAD in case you "forget" to pull, you should not be jumping. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Also, having flown both, I think a Firebird is easier for a newbie to fly than a Prodigy (and this is not a brand/manufacturer issue). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Not many full quality DVD images on bit torrent. Hell, even the ones compressed for a DVD-5 (4.5GB) are rare, and 99% of retail discs need quite a bit of compression to fit DVD-5. On my new TV I can notice the difference with ANY compression technique you can offer. Hence I don't watch compressed or ripped movies... only straight 1:1 quality versions. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I would love for you to correct me if I'm wrong, but there is nowhere I know to D/L full 8GB movies, and certainly not with the selection I want. (I've been watching a lot of movies from 70's and 80's recently... no particular reason, just random chance). www.WingsuitPhotos.com

When a tracert showed that the first 4 hops past my gateway (all roadrunner routers) were introducing the latency, to the point of unplayable gaming and near unbrowsable browsing (300ms+ to Google)... I switched to "lower-bandwidth" DSL and achieved much better results across the board. That was at my old location, where I am now the cable connection is better. Besides, as cool as D/Ling movies is... it's better to get them from Netflix and "watch" them in full quality. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

There are two important sides to internet "speed" (a misnomer): latency and bandwidth. Both are equally important, and service providers never measure anything but bandwidth. Most people do not know what latency is. If I had to choose from: 1) connection with 5MBps downstream bandwidth and a poor latency (for example, >100ms to a popular search engine) 2) connection with 3Mbps downstream bandwidth and a great latency (for example, 30ms to a popular search engine) I would choose #2 every time. For one, a giant bandwidth is useless because you will never ever take advantage of it. It's like having a car with a top speed of 400mph vs 300mph. You will never reach either of those speeds on any road in USA with traffic. Now what if the 400mph car took a minute to get from 0 to 60, but the 300mph car did it in 5 seconds? The choice is a no brainer. The 300mph car (the "slower one") would get you to your destination much much faster, every time. It's worth noting that DSL does have more consistent (and usually lower) latencies than cable, which is why your "1/3 lower" connection can be faster in practice. I had a Bright House connection once that had the worst latencies I'd ever experienced in my life... I was into FPS gaming at the time and couldn't get lower than a 300ms ping to any server in the US. That makes gaming literally impossible. My 33.6k modem in high school was better. The Bright House internet I've had lately is great, but their digital HD cable does suck, and their customer service sucks much much much worse. I am not one to complain about customer service in general, but this is without exaggeration the worst I've ever experience anywhere. Ditto the comment about tons of free credits on my account because they have missed EVERY SINGLE SERVICE APPOINTMENT I've ever scheduled with them. Those $20 credits do not make up for the days I spent waiting in my apartment for 10 hours, killing valuable time, only to have the tech finally show up and say it wasn't necessary for me to be there. Maybe I will try out the DirecTV recommendation in this thread... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Not very exclusive once you post them on the World Wide Web. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I agree with feet and knees together, and knees bent even... but not so far that the feet are on the ass. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

When ants look like people, pull! www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Guess it matters how wide your lens is and how much padding you leave around your subject. For my shots, being a few inches off center doesn't kill me. www.WingsuitPhotos.com