pilotdave

The USB can only tranfer from the memory card (for stills), not the MiniDV tape. Firewire is the only direct way to do it... or with the AV cables and a capture device. Dave

From CPI's email list: August 11th 2007 Jim Bates Memorial Jump and Ash Release After last load we will be having a cook out...Come eat, drink and tell great skydiving stories about our friend and life time member Jim Bates. Cookout tickets $20.00 (tickets available at Manifest)... proceeds to be donated to Jim's favorite charity, The Children's Hospital. Memorial jump to be organized by Bob Smith and Billy Beaudreau. Anyone that would like to be part of the jump please contact Bob or Billy. Dave

Canopy size and type is something you should discuss with your instructors. They'll know what's best for you. Container doesn't make a whole lot of difference, as long as it's reasonably new. See what's available, and talk to your instructors, riggers, or other jumpers you trust about them. A good analog (mechanical) altimeter can last you your entire jumping career. Can't go wrong with one. And they're one of the cheaper items you'll buy. Alti-2 altimeters are top of the line... Dave

Not sure what he meant about the club, but the AN-2 isn't FAA certified. That's why it's got an experimental registration. Experimentals cannot take passengers for hire. So I'm guessing operators in the US either need some kind of special permission for events, or some way around the FARs. Some will make the passengers buy membership into a club, which comes with a free ride. Dave

Hard to say if that's a good price or not... depends on what it includes. How many jumps? 7-8 level AFF program, or the full ISP (categories A-H)? How much do repeat jumps cost? Also, you're aware that there's another DZ in CT? Connecticut Parachutists is open year round... though we usually stop doing AFF and tandems when it gets pretty cold. If you get off student status (through category F) before about November or December, you can keep jumping all winter really. Don't know what we charge for AFF, but we don't require tunnel time. We don't offer a complete package for a fixed price... you just pay per jump. I don't know how our prices compare, but I know our normal jump prices are a bit cheaper for more altitude out of a bigger plane. Dave

You'll get a lot less noise in your pictures at ISO 400 or less. 1600 on a bright day is overkill. That's for indoor in poor light with no flash. You'd be fine at 100-400. The lower, the better... but as you lower it, you'll need to lower your shutter speed or increase your aperture (smaller f-number). I play with Tv mode sometimes, but usually get good results in sport mode. That way the camera can adjust to changing lighting conditions. Downside is that it sticks the camera at ISO 400, which I'd rather lower on a bright sunny day, and I can't use a lot of the other features on the camera. Dave

I put a filter on mine (B+W, bout $30ish?). I clean my lens all the time... don't really want to be rubbing the real lens so much. $30 is less than $100, or whatever it would cost to replace that lens. Started with a cheap canon filter. That was a mistake... LOTS of lens flares when the sun was at the wrong angle. The B+W made a big difference. Dave

Skyride makes the news again: http://www.wcpo.com/content/news/localshows/dontwasteyourmoney/story.aspx?content_id=45db79b4-9182-467b-b3ab-e75105340d3a Dave

My openings are almost always off heading. It's gotten a little better after a reline, but still turns at the end of just about every opening. Had a PD rep pack it (before the reline), and it still did a 270 on opening. Only had a few hard openings, all just before getting it relined. Actually one since the reline, but that's what I get for having a student pack for me. Pretty sure he flipped the dbag before putting it in the container. I've tried every tip to get it to open on heading. Nothing's worked for me. Opens the same no matter who packs it. Could be body position, but you'd think I would get it right more than maybe 30 times over my last 900 jumps, even if by accident.

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=224&string=g.asf And the making of it: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=232 Dave

I'd say sunpath is in dire need of a new website. I think only jumpshack has an uglier site, but they're hopeless anyway... Dave

That knife is better suited for belly slitting or urchin processing: http://www.seattlemarine.net/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=0&idproduct=8837 Dave

I measured my FF2 to see if a flatlock would fit... it won't. I went with a Schumacker QuickShoe, which fits perfectly. Bought it through Miami on dz.com for a ton less than other gear stores are selling them for. Just ordered a 3rd QuickShoe from him, for a friend. Dave

I promise that when I slap a $50K lens on my Rebel XTi, I'll use a clown balloon to hold my zoom where I want it. Do I have to go to clown college to learn the proper knot to tie? Dave

I use the highest grade of permacel tape. Really! I did my research before buying!

How does gaffer's tape attract dirt? I understand that it's sticky and dirt will stick to it if the sticky side is exposed, but how does it attract more dirt than would make it to the lens without the tape? Seems to me that it seals a little bit of the gap where the lens rotates for zoom, so less dirt would make it in. And rubber bands are often covered in powder to keep them from sticking to each other. Isn't that a much more effective way to get crap inside the lens? Gaffer's tape has been working great for me. I bend a corner over so i can peel it off easily to change the zoom. After a few months, I can "break" the seal and rotate the lens by hand when i want to zoom in (for tandem landing shots), and it's still tacky enough that i can zoom back out, press the tape on real good, and it holds just fine till I need to zoom in again. Normally I just peel it off the rotating part of the lens when I want to zoom in. Dave

It's an area where a few swoopers like to land, but it's not a designated swoop lane. Here's a good example of why you don't want a tuffet in a swoop lane: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=5940

Here ya go: http://www.skydivingstills.com/gallery/3092175#168974401-L-LB.

Ok, let me give an example. An imaginary DZ follows every BSR. They follow the new "option 3" landing area BSR as well. A jumper pulls at 1800 feet and swoops through traffic in the main landing area. He only violated the pull altitude BSR. A jumper CAN'T violate the proposed BSR. Only a DZO can. What happens to the guy that violates the DZ's rule against swooping in the main landing area? Whatever the DZO wants. Maybe make him buy beer. That's the point of education. Get people pissed off and thinking about this issue BEFORE their friend gets killed. Like someone joked in another thread... maybe USPA should send big wooden baseball bats to every dropzone with "traffic pattern education tool" written on them. Maybe S&TAs need to carry tasers. I don't know... but I don't think this proposed BSR will help. Will it hurt? I don't know. But I do think it's a knee jerk reaction. Dropzones need guidance to make rules and procedures that make sense. I think this BSR would force dropzones to make rules that might not increase safety, and could possibly decrease safety. Dave

We discuss it on dropzone.com now, after the accident, ad nauseam. We used to talk about wingloading. Back when I started skydiving, the discussions on rec.skydiving were about skyballs. People talk about the last accident, not the next. We need education at an entirely different level. The BSR alone won't prevent accidents. In the end, it has to come down to education. Dave

The pull altitude BSR is written for jumpers. We're told that we have to pull by certain altitudes. This landing area BSR is for DZOs. It's not "thou shalt not swoop through traffic," it's "your DZO must do SOMETHING... anything will do as long as it's something." So the DZO makes a policy that no turns over 269 degrees are allowed over the west 12 feet of the landing area. BSR complied with. Another DZ might come up with a great plan to separate traffic. But nobody follows the rule. BSR complied with. What it will take to fix this problem is to get all those people at real live DZs PISSED OFF about people doing dangerous stuff under canopy. A BSR that tells dropzones to do anything they want to fix the problem just isn't the answer, in my opinion. Education is the answer. Don't know how that should be done, but we all know that femur is not a verb, right? Maybe we just need a slogan... I understand that the BSR is the first step, not the answer, but I just don't think it's necessary. Dave

It'd still have been the swooper's fault. He failed to see and avoid traffic below him. The other jumper obviously would have contributed to the accident, but the low guy still has the right of way for obvious reasons. What if a swooper landing in a high performance landing area has to abort his swoop and suddenly becomes a low, slow canopy? The jumpers above him still have to see and avoid him. Dave

Actually he does that regularly at my DZ. Well, pretty much all skill levels anyway. Been rained out both times he was supposed to come so far this year. I went to a boogie that had a big way event a few years ago. The bigway was invite-only, but they had another big name organizer just for newbies. At one point I did a really fun 3-way drill dive with him. I think the name of the organizer starts to matter a lot more after you've met a few of em. Every organizer has a different style, and some people are going to have more fun with certain organizers and not others. If you don't know who they are, their names don't matter. They also tend to do different styles of jumps. Some will have a lot of flying with a partner for example, others are going to have more solo flying. I've found that I really enjoy some organizing styles more than others. Dave

They still make those? I have a couple TI-82s around somewhere. One was for school, the other was in my flight bag with all kinds of flight computer functions that I wrote. Used to have electronic checklists on it too. Dave

If one jumper cuts off another jumper, there is a good chance that both will die. One may be at fault, one may not, or both may be at fault. Who cares? They're both dead. A high performance landing area is a dangerous place to be doing anything. Even swoopers start their turns from a wide variety of altitudes and from all different directions. But clearly, doing anything there other than swooping is a really bad idea. I totally agree with you there. But if you're approaching the high performance landing area or the single landing area expecting to make a high performance landing, and you see traffic below you that may be in your way, it is your obligation to do what is required to avoid the collision. That guy might be wrong. Maybe he shouldn't be there. Maybe it's a student that can't find the DZ 500 feet below him. Maybe it's a reserve canopy. Who cares? He's there, in your way, so you can't swoop. End of story. Well... you can go yell at him and punch him and tell him he has to buy you a jump or whatever you want to do afterward. But you do not have the right to create a hazard by swooping through traffic. Lower canopy has the right of way. Even if he's wrong. This thread scares me.... seriously. Dave