gus

Most of us, at some point, have done exactly what you've described - I have. The important thing is to have a think about how it happened and what you can do to prevent it from happening again - and you seem to be doing exactly that so don't sweat it too much. Glad you're ok

I did my 500th jump over the weekend, picked up and jumped my new Sabre2 120, hung out with some friends in the sun and generally had a great time. I'm as engrossed in this fantastic sport as much as I've ever been and I hope that never changes. Infact I'm bunking off work tomorrow to go back to the dz and I suggest that everyone else does the same! If skydiving makes you guys even half as happy as it makes me then we're one happy bunch.

You also want to check that they've got an alti, helmet, goggles, a knife, gloves if it's winter. I normally check the little loop for wear that the cutaway cable runs through and keeps the three rings closed. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

I think my old Atom Classic closed like that.. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Hey Ben, New kit is more expensive in the UK than in the States, expect to pay at least £3000 for a new rig with a Cypres. Don't write off buying second-hand stuff though, especially off student status, you can find some really good stuff and save loads of money on a rig you may not keep for all that long. There are loads of gear stores online to give you ideas of costs, the only UK one I know of is Thomas Sports. Good luck with AFF, where are you going to do it? Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

My first canopy off student status was a Spectre 150 (I'm about 180 lbs kitted up), I put about 200 jumps on that and then 250 on a Spectre 135. First off, any canopy can spin up, it's how it behaves with twists that you should be interested in and in my (limited) experience Deuce's mal is less common on Spectres than on other canopies. Don't forget that he's loading his Spectre at 1.5 so any mal is going to be a bit more 'exciting' than one at 1:1. I submitted a review of my Spectres a while back but in summary: great first (and second!) canopy. At 1:1 you shouldn't have any problems. Edit: As for the long snivels.....I don't have much experience on other canopies but my Spectres have never taken longer than 500ft to open. I jumped a Sabre last weekend (ie I was half expecting a slammer) and it snivelled live my Spectres never have! Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Ratings suck, Birdman rules! Buy the suit dude, buy the suit

I had a Spectre 150 in an Atom 0 for a while and it wasn't all that tight, so I would have thought that you could squeeze one into an 00 - just don't expect an easy packjob! Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

That just looks like too much fun. Bring the vid over the weekend? Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

That is just something else. Absolutely incredible. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

There is/was a video of mine here that's 320x240, 7mins 22secs long, Windows Media (346Kbps) format and 19megs. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

DivX has a couple of settings (smoothness and sharpness? something like that) that you can change to use greater or lesser compression and therefore more or less space. Try fiddling with them and see what happens. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Looks pretty sweet dude. My Sabre2 120 was due out the factory yesterday - great minds think alike and all that

Don't forget that all the competition speeds are the average over a vertical kilometre (I think so anyway) so the max speed on your ProTrack isn't necessarily representative. But 226mph in a rw suit is pretty quick!

Has HH ever though of incorporating skydivingmovies.com into dz.com? I have no idea how often people donate to dz.com, or how much, but what if there was a separate option to pay for the space and bandwidth that all the videos need? I'd donate a couple of quid! It seems like a great combination - more traffic for dz.com and a more permenant and stable home for all those videos. What do you think? Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Have you considered teaming up with HH and dz.com? Maybe asking for small donations for having a permenant fast server going? I don't know how much the hosting/bandwidth costs but I'd donate a few quid - skydiving videos help keep me sane(ish)! Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Why not email Airtec and post their reply here? As you can imagine this is a constant worry for me under my Spectre @ 1.3 so I'd be interested to see what they say. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

I tried putting my ProTrack in my sock (on a birdman jump) but didn't really see any improvement in the 'smoothness' of the data. Last weekend I tried mounting it on my hand and the results looked good but I'd like to do it a few more times, maybe with a 2nd unit in my helmet or in my sock, before I can really pass judgement. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

I made 2 jumps with the gps unit over the weekend and have plotted the latitude and longitude ie top down view. The original files are in svg (Adobe plugin here) but I've attached gifs too. The red line is the wingsuit part, the blue line is under canopy. ProTrack data for #476: Exit: 12200 Deploy: 3300 105 secs 55 mph ProTrack data for #477: Exit: 12500 Deploy: 3200 116 secs 52 mph I have 82 seconds of gps data for #466 (vs 105 seconds of freefall) and 111 seconds for #467 (vs 116 seconds of freefall). I was losing signal as soon as I got in the plane but it looks like it's capable of re-aquiring fairly quickly. For #476 I travelled 1891m across the ground in freefall and 1955m under canopy. That's an average groundspeed of 18m/s (65 kph) and 13m/s (49 kph). FOr #477 I travelled 2504m and 1703m, averaging 22m/s (78 kph) and 13m/s (46 kph). I will keep trying to extract the elevation data (or combine with ProTrack data) so I can plot these in 3d. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com 0477.svg 0476.svg

I'd echo what everyone else has said about backing up to dv being a good solution, but if you want to burn a dvd I believe Nero will do it and it's free. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Post a pic with it all rigged up and you in the suit, I'd like to see it. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

What's that on Poxon's arm? Us chasing the first of Craig's students that he hasn't slept with.

Don't forget that the original Cypres design is about 10 years old. So if 10 year old component and battery technologies can give a 2 year battery life, I bet they're not even breaking a sweat to get to 4 years out of modern technologies. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com

Let me remind everyone of the original question: how to render GPS data.

I would have thought that the longer the delay the greater the chance of not maintaining a good body position - I never even thought of first timers doing anything other than short delays. Gus OutpatientsOnline.com