pilotdave

Hehe I just did that. I wasn't really looking to upgrade... I thought about it a little and figured I might if the right deal came along. Well, I ended up giving someone a pretty good deal on my XT and upgraded to the XTi. Haven't gotten any visible dust yet, which either means the sensor cleaning works or I haven't needed it yet. I knew it wasn't really worth upgrading. If you want to, read a lot of reviews of the XTi. It does have some differences, but picture quality really isn't one of them. The pictures are bigger, which means you can fit less of them on your memory card. The LCD screen is bigger (and has a much better viewing angle). That's actually a big improvement in my opinion... but it also uses more power, so you get fewer shots on a battery charge. So it takes fewer pictures, which have bigger, less convenient file sizes (longer downloads from the camera, longer uploads to the web), with no appreciable difference in image quality. Don't expect to be able to crop images farther... you see softness long before you see pixels, if you know what I mean. Oh and it's also a few grams (about a hundreth of a pound, if I remember) heavier.

Here are some test results, comparing the different cameras that offer that feature. http://pixinfo.com/en/articles/ccd-dust-removal/ Their test shows that it works poorly on the XTi and does nothing on the Sony Alpha, but works pretty well on an Olympus camera. Edited to add: They think it worked poorly on the XTi due to the CMOS being charged, and it might work better if it was discharged... but there's no way to do that on command. Dave

What DVD software? If you can play it in windows media player, go to Tools -> options, performance tab, advanced, and shut off "use overlays." Then you can do a screen capture. Dave

Firewire won't be any fast for transfering to your camera. Still has to record at "live" speed. I have a tivo which is connected to my network so I can transfer recordings straight to my computer, but it's still very slow... only a little faster than real time. Dave

You'll get all the advice you need in your first AFF jump course. No need to go into it with any tips from anybody other than your instructors. Doing anything that your instructors didn't tell you is probably the best way to get hurt. Dave

I think putting the night jump requirement on the D-license ensures that most jumpers that stick with the sport a long time will, at some point, make a couple night jumps under controlled conditions. You could ensure that more people had done that by putting night jumps under the C license requirements... That would actually have kept things the same when they bumped the C and D license jump requirements. Getting the D, a goal I bet most skydivers have (or had), shows that they've gone through all the education that the USPA recommends for all jumpers, including jumping at night. I totally agree that more should be required, like canopy training... but I'd say that there should be a set of canopy training requirements associated with each license. USPA would have to come up with a curriculum and rating system for that though. You go under the assumption that the word license has a particular definition. I doubt the USPA or whatever they were called when they handed out the first license, consulted websters dictionary to make sure they were giving it a correct name. The FAA gives our certificates. If the USPA started calling them that, would it be ok to leave in a night jump requirement? I don't think night jumps are useless. I think we learn a lot from them... And I like knowing that anybody with a D-license has definitely been through that. In a way, it proves a person's ability to cope with less than optimal conditions just like the accuracy requirements for the previous licenses prove a person's ability to land their parachute accurately. Complete proof? Nope, they might have totally freaked out and pulled every wrong handle and survived by a miracle. But just like survivng to 500 jumps proves SOMETHING, so does making two night jumps. Dave

Our DZ has no charge for any of that. Thank goodness... I lost my altimeter in freefall last weekend! Doh... Gear rental is cheap too, although we only have one rental rig other than the student rigs. Dave

I guess I'd agree with that. I've done night jumps, camera jumps, wingsuit jumps, etc. Night jumps are, in my opinion, the most complex and difficult jumps I've done. If night jumps were just invented, I guarantee the USPA would require more than just a B-license to do them. I think the only way we "get away" with night jumps successfully so often is that we do them so seldom and under very supervised conditions. I guess even though they're not directly relevant, I'd like to know that every tandem instructor has been able to deal with the complexity of a couple night jumps. Then again, everybody with 50 jumps and a B-license SHOULD be able to safely conduct a night jump, right? Huge disconnect between what's required to do a night jump and what capabilities it might be used to prove a person has. Dave

http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=5571 Dave

Yeah, as I researched my lens flare problem, I read a lot of photographers' opinions on the UV filter decision. Many said they're just not necessary for lens protection because the lenses are so tough... but most photographers aren't exposing their lenses to 120 mph wind and most don't bump their cameras into steel bars all the time.

I must be missing something... why would it require that much force to disconnect the skyhook? Shouldn't it disconnect the moment the reserve PC is fired (as the bridle stretches out)? Dave

So what do you think are appropriate requirements for each license? I assume there's more you'd change than remove the night jumps from the requirements. Dave

What kind of video file? Windows movie maker will do it easily... Open the timeline and drag your video file into the audio/music track. Then hit file -> save movie file. It'll give you audio file options. Dave

I found that out... I had a canon UV filter ($13 from B&H), and found that I got ugly yellow lens flares when the sun was at the wrong angle, like this. Recently switched to this one. Only done a few jumps with it so far, but it looks good. Only saw lens flares when the sun was actually in a picture. This one weighs about 3 times as much as the canon (still only a few grams, not enough to matter). Just a big difference in quality. I picked that one based on reading a lot on photography forums. B+W is supposed to be a top brand for filters, from what I read. Dave

To do night jumps, you need a B-license and nothing else. Why would you need to get a night endorsement on a D-license? Lets say you could get a D-license without a night jump endorsement. How would you go about getting the endorsement? Jump at night? Doesn't make much sense to me... Dave

I sort of agree with you, but I also enjoy night jumps and do think that we learn a lot about skydiving by doing them. I don't think they're an unreasonable requirement for the highest skydiving license there is. But at the same time, anyone with a B license is qualified to do them. You don't have to prove anything beyond passing the B license written test that you're able to safely conduct a night jump. You can be an instructor without doing night jumps. Can you conduct a night jump briefing without ever having made a night jump? So I'm not sure what is proved by actually making the jump... as you said, there's no accuracy requirement or no-injury requirement, so you don't prove that you really learned anything just by having made 2 night jumps. But shit, they're fun as hell. Maybe you should just suck it up... Dave

I just think it's funny that people are getting so bent out of shape about this. They're trying to boost their search engine results. That's it. They're not pretending to be other companies, they're not fooling anyone, they're just trying to be easier to find. Many experts here say what they're doing doesn't even work and might hurt their search engine results. So they shot themselves in the foot. Laugh at em! Why does this make people so angry? Pretty much every website tries to use tactics to improve their search engine results. Good ones use tactics that work. Should we complain about them? Hell, didn't USPA suggest designing DZ websites to improve search engine results as a way to fight back against skyride? Who is getting hurt by this one little DZ's website? Jeez, not enough action in the skyride thread I guess... Dave

That'd make it way easier in photoshop, but impossible to do automatically in something like photostitch. For that, you need the pics to overlap by a little, but not too much or it won't work. Hmmm, maybe I should just do it in photoshop...photostitch sucks.

Yeah, you can get much better results in photoshop if you want to spend the time... photostitch is soooo easy and quick though, if your pictures will work for it. Dave

The only thing to realize about photostitch is that it was never "meant" for taking action shots where part of the image is "moving." It is really meant for panoramic landscape shots and things like that, where nothing changes from one frame to the next. The problem comes when you have too small a gap between frames. It doesn't detect that part of the picture has changed... So in other words if the swooper is too close to the edge of a frame, he'll just get cut off. So it's just really hard to get the pictures spaced correctly. I usually have to remove some of them, or find that the entire series just won't work. Oh and photostitch can't deal with any rotation in the pictures... you may have to fix them in photoshop or whatever to get them all level before you can start. Dave

Finally? We've had a packing machine for years... The packers hate it though... takes all their business. And this one is made in America. Dave

Oh come on... it's just an attempt to beat skyride at their own game. I think its ridiculous to connect this to aircraft and equipment maintenance. What a joke... Dave

I made these in Canon's photostich software (comes with the rebel xt/xti): http://www.skydivingstills.com/keyword/photostitch. I attached the one that I think came out the best. Dave

In your example, the one with the faster fall rate has a flatter track. Even though he's falling faster, he is falling at a shallower angle. He's just moving faster down the slope. Look at it this way: faster faller covers the same vertical distance in half the time, so he has double the fallrate. At the same time, he has 4 times the horizontal speed. He is the more efficient tracker. In this case, he would win both for distance covered over a certain time (aka speed) AND also distance covered over a certain vertical distance. But there are cases where a person could have greater horizontal speed and still lose a contest for tracking the farthest over a vertical distance. If we changed the numbers in your example to horizontal speeds of 10 and 5, they would be falling on the same path and would get equally far by pull altitude. Maybe you'd use horizontal speed as the tie breaker. The tracking skill that matters is maximizing horizontal distance over a fixed vertical distance. Doesn't matter how fast you can track... at least not directly. What matters is how far you can track after breaking off. Realistically, you'll need fast speed to go far... but fast is no good if it also means steep. Edit: I'm sure somebody will point out there are cases where speed does matter, like a multi-wave breakoff. You don't want the second wave passing the first wave. So speed is important for maximizing separation in a case like that. But you'd get the same separation if everybody had the same slow speed and same glide ratio and you would if everybody had the same fast speed and same glide ratio. Speed only matters when slow people are in front.

Yeah, it does. If you fall faster (vertically), you can still win by moving faster horizontally. But regardless of your speed, the flatter tracker will always win... unless maybe you're tracking into the wind and judging it from the ground. It's not about speed, it's about glide ratio. As I said in a previous post, that's true unless you judge it based on horizontal distance covered over a certain time. A steeper track might go farther over a 30 second period, but will not go farther over a 5000 foot descent. Dave