YISkyDive

Why would you call PD as a monopoly? I'm going to go out on a limb and say he’s got a point. I would love to see canopy market share figures but since we don’t have that observation is all I got. For every Safire there are many more Sabre2s, for every XF2 that are at least an equal amount or more Katans, for every JVX / VX / Xaos there must be way more Velos. I don't know if monopoly is the right word but I think there is no contest to whom has the largest market share and not by a small percentage. PD makes a good product and people like the service associated with it but at the same time has the cost of a canopy increased as much as the pricing they have passed onto the customer over the last 5 years? I don't know the answer to that but its food for thought. Edited to add: BTW to the OT: I like my Velo a lot. It's a personal choice as I flew Xf2s for awhile as well. The VX / JVX just had a different recovery characteristic that I personally did not like.

Those look like some really nice projects. Well done guys. Glad the last clip ended well; AggieDave said it spot on. I'm Really Jealous - thats got to be awesome flocking with so many canopies. Was everyone in radio contact?

I did not read the entire thread - and I think you noted that you started bailing out to late - That would be the mistake that led to your downwind landing. I personally am of the opinion that downwind landings should be avoided as much as safely possible when performing off field landings, however not to be avoided by the use of a low turn, swoop, hook turn or canopy collision. The reason I say this is you don't know the ground as well, usually taller than average grass and everything from Rocks to holes lay there. (I speak of the Northeast US at the moment.) The key is to set up early enough and run the entire approach through your head ahead of time. If you can see the airport use it to confirm your pattern with what you would do at the airport - then note your landing hazards and revise your approach accordingly. In the case of the trees – when I am faced with tall trees going into a tight landing area I use half breaks to lessen my glide while above the tree(s) and then once clear I go into full flight and drop the canopy in. Keep in mind you may not have all your flare power (depending on the high of the tree) so be ready to PLF. That’s how I handle it. Its worked a number of times for me. I land off chasing Tandem mains all the time with my Velo111 loaded at 2.4 : 1 and I'm not bothered by landing off so long as I set up my pattern 1.5K or higher. Also: seriously, nice attitude about taking the time to figure out what happened and why.

You want to jump this canopy ehy? Look at my opening first. Screwing around after a practice AFF jump I dump at ~2K and the rest is on film. This is a nitro 120 at about 2.0 : 1 but I guess you get the point. With 61 jumps? Not a bright idea. Just my $00.02. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azADtrO0nz8

25 – 70: straight in Triathlon 210 1.1:1 70 – 110: double fronts Triathlon 210 1.1: 1 110 – 190: Riser 90s and various aggressive flat and toggle turns down low to learn ground avoidance and emergency situation bail. Triathlon 210 1.1:1 200 – 330: 90s and 180s Diablo 170 1.35 :1 332 – 880: 90, 180s, 270s xf2 149 1.5 :1 600 – 880: 90, 180, 270 360 xf2 139 1.7 :1 880 - 2000 180, 270, 360, 450, 540, 720, 900 Velo111 2.35 :1 My progression is model no one should emulate. I knew about swooping 10 years before I could skydive and I started skydiving with the lone intent of swooping. I had a close friend die because of swooping before I started jumping and I watched friends get hurt. Also, I was 18 and stupid so that did not help either. Never got hurt, I don’t feel I was in any real danger because I learned ground avoidance VERY early on and used it commonly. I almost snapped a leg on the triathlon during a 90, but that’s sort of were the tune changed from swooping to low turns. New folks, new jumpers, to be swoopers: you do not learn swooping by swooping. Until about 550 jumps all I was doing was turning a canopy low to the ground. Understanding AoA, wind, flaring on toggles to one side or another or even just correcting a mistake is what learning to swoop is about. Plain and simple, if someone asks me for advice on a turn I want to see them fly the degree of turn to the deck and not for just one jump. It took me 100s of jumps of merely doing just the rotation without focusing on speed building to be able to turn how I do today. It also kept me alive in my progression, I believe. The moment you focus on getting steep and building speed and distance to soon is the moment you’ll get kicked regardless of some progression. I did not go for rears or steep accelerating turns till about 500 and 750 jumps respectively. I started hitting gates at about 600 jumps and I really started learning my velocity at about 1300 jumps. My most accurate turn of choice is a 450. I suck at building speed out of a 270 and I am not as accurate with that turn… a byproduct of rushing the progression. I hit the gates 9/10 times (5ft wide 5 ft high) and I average 275 – 300 feet (I jump in stupid baggy clothes and camera wings) and have my PR of 360 – 370ish ft with jeans and a tee (into wind). No RDS. I am happy with my progression and just wish I could focus more on swooping and less on work! Those considering swooping, learn to fly your canopy at a shallow angle of attack to your target. Go wide of your target, always, and resist the temptation to increase your angle of attack to fast. Understand how to flare turn your canopy + 90s without induced speed – what is going to keep you alive is not a glamorous swoop but the skills that you use when the glamorous swoop goes to shit for whatever reason.

Try spreading your rear risers apart from the inside out. Keeps the slider up on my Velo longer. I did that on my Xf2s as well, always helped. Just don't get into the habit of pulling on the rear risers because I have seen too many people spin themseleves up that way. David

That’s what makes me a little bummed about this forum. There is a lot of talent that reads these pages but when advice gets asked for its not responded too. "Coaching" is Great... if you can get it. If you’re self taught swooper at a DZ where everyone is at or below your level you don't progress without outside help. I've just moved to watching YouTube videos to learn how to do things. It does help. No secrets are hidden in footage. Edited to add: And obviously I'm talking about "qualified" pilots asking for advice. I know thats were it gets compliacted about giving advice.

Christian how many jumps do you have? What canopy are you currently flying and how proficient are you at swooping? Can you hit solid power ever jump comfortably – this is a MUST! Big things you must be able to do before you do Blindman: - CLEAR landing area (including runway lights and other small but hard things that shatter bone on impact. People included) - Swoop well without focusing on it: If you’re still focusing on landing on rears, gates, or hitting the power save the BM for later. Mixing the BM with learning to land on rears will only lead to a lot of pain when you try to dig out on rears and miss. - Can you carve? You may (probably will) start turning and need to recover the turn on your early attempts - Can you do a solid tweaked out method (+90) – this is good for getting used to flying somewhat blind to your direction of travel - Do you have the discipline to not try it in dangerous conditions when “your going for it?” – we all can try to do a trick because we are set that this is the time to go for it but in reality you may not have the outs you need if it goes bad. Make sure you have those skills down patt before even thinking about a BM or your going to hurt. I have footage of a friend blowing off his camera helmet and shoes due to an impact of a blindman gone wrong; so just a heads up. He was wings level when he started too.. he caught his hip and the velo went over top of him and whipped him back into the ground. Fuuuun. My Experience: I learned my Blindmans over land in “soft” grass. Our landing area has a tendency to have a softer surface than other areas… so I never learned over water. That said I did wash my rig this past winter. Our landing area is soft enough that I have gone for wingovers and boomerangs and not thought twice about hitting the earth if I slid out…so there is some perspective from my experience and learning. On my roll out from the turn I spread my legs shoulder width or so and angle both feet perpendicular to my direction of travel with my knees bent a little (remember accurate turn with consistent power band). I also may twist a touch in the harness to set up for the direction I will be turning. No more then 20 or so degrees. Once on the deck I use my feet as rudders and generate rotational power by brining the side of my feet around to my heels – I am done the BM when the canopy wants to switch to toggles and at that point I let go of the rears pop a little harder than normal to toggles and spin back around as my feet leave the earth. Use info at your own risk . Big points are to stay square in the harness. Use the sides of your feet to generate the turn, if you try to induce the line twist from the rears it could cause a stall or significant turn. Dropping a rear will screw you. Dropping a toggle will screw you. Think ahead of time what you will do if one of those situations happen. Finally watch some YouTube Videos or the like to see experienced people doing it. Go for water if you can, for sure. Also, try twisting up high in your harness and getting used to the canopy turning and then recovering to toggles to level flight quickly. Do this + 3K in the event you spin up. Again, if you don’t meet the bare minimum qualifications stated by me and others just don’t f’in try it. That simple.

Thanks for the helpful comment. Really. Anyway. I did two 270s Friday night and they both worked out great. The photos failed miserably but such is life. The second 270 was pretty much balls out with a 300ft swoop after making the gates; the first one was as suggested, a little higher to get used to turning at night. The moon was so bright that natural light and some distant hanger lights was all we used to light the swoop course. The opening on the other hand was probably the worst experience of my life. On my second jump I dumped at 10K and had my velo spin up into +5 line twists at the last second of inflation. I was kicking till 4500ft to get out and had to pop both toggles to get the momentum going my way. I thought I was cutting away at night... not cool considering I cut away my other rig earlier in the day! That's what I got for saying out loud no high performance cutaways for the last 1,000 jumps lol. Thanks for the helpful comments. I Did use a lot of advice I got here and it was nice to hear from experienced pilots about what to expect.

If you shoot in SD WMM 2.0 has given me exceptionally better output results than Premier CS4. WMM is also wonderfully fast to edit in, there are times I miss certain effects or transitions but since I have started using WMM 2.0 instead of Premier I am happier, faster, and have a better product quality for my students. Now this only goes for editing tandems, of course. For your YE video or the like you gotta think about something else - and - Premier CS4 has vastly stronger conversion options for FLVs or other formats. But I've found for mass tandem video editing I am very happy with WMM considering the "price."

That's the side of the argument I respect. It is / could be another layer of safety and it could save two lives. I just personally do not know if I believe, statistically speaking, if the ods of a student doing something correctly out weigh the odds of an automatic activation.

Because some TI's might think that the BSR’s logic is flawed. On a complex tandem system a "student" or "client" or whatever else they are called has no business attempting to deploy a main / reserve or any combination thereof. So why should they have access to an alti? It took me over 3 years, over 500 jumps, a cutaway and some pretty lengthy course work to be given privilege to operate a TI rig. If a TI is unable to deploy a main or reserve its best that an AAD take care of it - if a student in a complex situation deploys the wrong canopy at an even more wrong time then another double fatality could happen. It’s not unrealistic to think by the time (if) a student reads and comprehends their Altimeter that the two-out case that recently occurred may happen again. Its one thing if a student plans to continue skydiving; in which case they get like AFF treat meant at all parts possible. It’s another if they are there for the thrill. This is just a personal opinion - I completely understand the logic the other way as well but my mentality has been the further removed a student is from the known the capabilities or operations of the complex parts of tandem system the safer I and the Student are on the skydive. People do weird shit when they panic – we’ve all seen it or felt it in the air. The last thing I need is for them to start panicing and grab for stuff while I am incapacitated.

To anyone that may have done this: I might plan on photographing a night landing using a DSLR with an 8mm lens. I'd like to get the stars in the sky (and the moon if possible) and then use a flash to "flash" the pilot as they fly over the camera and land. Given a clear sky and full moon does anyone know how long the shutter needs to be open to achieve the effect - and would the 8MM lens not even catch the stars because if its insane effect lol? Finally but most importantly: Safety. Assuming the canopy pilot is wings level and on target (which of course is a big if at night and they may or may not be) is this even a remotely good idea? I know the shot could look sick but I don’t want any one getting hurt because of night blindness. Would 2 flashes set at angles be better than a single bottom to top firing flash? I have never shot landings at night, and if I do this, I would like to be educated so I could talk it over with the experienced candidates. There are only two pilots that I am considering this for each with 2500 + skydives. Thanks David

For those with experience - Any comments about doing a swoop approach at night? I have 2000+ jumps with 1000+ on my velo and am thinking about doing a night jump this Friday. Any advice? I believe there will be no light beyond natural light. I have 8 night jumps my last two have been 90s but on a 139 canopy. I have 250 jumps this season. Please PM and considerations I should take. Much appreciated David

This may not help you but my process takes me ~4 - 6 minutes + burn time. I shot very clean footage including audio so there is not cutting, seeking or repairing when editing. Also I shoot only SD as I believe only 1 or 2 out of 300 customers a year would currently benefit from Bluray and be willing to pay what I need to make it worth it. I use windows movie maker which very surprisingly has given me the best render quality and burn time results. PCS4 gave out lower quality footage then MM2.0. I have not used Vegas – I’m not ready to drop money on the plugins at the moment – a lot has been spent just getting a pc and camera together. 1. Download footage and organize (I wish I could do this on the camera) 2. Open “Skydive Project Template” 3. Edit students name (Double click Second Title in project) 4. Delete any previous clips that are stored in the Import bin (personal choice) 5. Important clips from sub root: Skydive Videos/date/StudentName 6. Drag and drop videos 7. drop sound to 0 on 6 clips. 8. Drop sound and Cut freefall to be as needed (I slow mo the exit, slow mo a nice section in freefall, and slow mo the opening) (if you forget to drop the sound on the freefall clip before you edit now you have a bunch of clips to kill the sound on) 9. Move songs as needed. 10. Fade out the final video clip 12. Save project as to sub root: Skydive Videos/date/StudentName/StudentName.proj 11. Export to DVD 12. Burn Stills. Both of my Drives are DVD+-RW drives so when the stills finish I put a new DVD into that drive so windows loads the disc and I am ready to burn as I’m done editing the next project. I use a Q6600 over clocked to 3.2 with 4GB XMS2 DDR6400 Memory. My other desktop, a 4.2 8400 Core 2 Duo cannot keep up, especially any time I have shot HD. Using keyboard shortcuts I can do 10 - 13 edits an hour and burn stills on a separate burner.

Can you switch the still and video? If you mount the still on the other side the Dbox mounting area will extend beneath your stills and help prevent snaggage.

I would d.load the user manual from sony's website and read up on it... I dont know the answer to be honest. those pictures were taken with the auto smile picture taking feature: you can read about it on Best Buys website. I just quickly went through some downloaded footage and found those pics for the thread. I normally delete the DCIM folder without looking at it. Hope that helps Dave

Its a .42 Bower Titanium Digital Super Wide - a cheap SD lens I had on my PC 101 but im more than happy with it and am not upgrading. If I used this as a stills only camera I would upgrade the lens. The pictures were taken on the "Auto" mode - but if you look into the hype eye you can sort out the bite switch. I can take a photo I every 2.5 seconds or so it seems. The same speed as one of the little D elphs. I only record to internal right now I have not tried using the mem stick you though I know I should. Let me know if you need anything else.

CX100 is great for Tandem Video; all I use now. You COULD get away with the stills using the hype eye and bitwswitch but they are not great. Depends on your DZ and how they operate. I still fly my DSLR w. an 8mm lens . A few tandem freefall grabs below. Forget grabbing the footage from the frames - just shot the 2mp shots while video is recording.

Thanks for the clarification Ian. Quite commonly at the airport I jump at we have a lower mass of air @ ~ 200 - 300 feet that moves slower then whatever is above it when the upper winds are in excess of 15 knots. If I know my uppers are higher then I do plan my turn higher. (And for the most part I don’t change my turn rate but I do adjust it based on what I see as I am turning) To your point: The slower mass of air is caused by a significant ridge 3/4 of a mile to our north. The dive of the canopy when these conditions occur can become very aggressive as it is recovering airspeed and it also makes digging out a chore and even next to impossible. I watched a good friend do a 180 from a "safe" height but once he entered the slower airmass he was done and got very lucky with only a bummed knee. The canopy never ever had a chance to recover even though he started the turn at an acceptable altitude. Thanks for helping me connect the dots… now I know why wind shear is common at my airport. Never registered the ridge a mile out was causing the common condition.

Wind ? May I ask you how exactly do you adjust your initiation altitude according to wind conditions ? Wind can and will absolutely mess with your turn height. Wind layers are not uniform and when starting turns in the 1000+ mark as you regularly can flow through different moving masses of air. If there is wind shear, or a strong change in wind speed between certain altitudes (especially during the recovery phase) you better be well aware of it before you turn canopy because your canopy needs to recover the lost airspeed when entering a slower layer of wind thus costing altitude. Finally, I also turn according to the wind direction (as the DZ I jump at has a specific high performance landing area and we can turn left or right in that area) so I can get a “downwind push” coming out of the turn.

Sounds like a real kick ass event! Will something like this happen to be running on the east coast this year?

I had the PC 101 Box... I hacked it off. No chance in it working. It is so close BUT the lip that protects the top zoom button prevents it from being worth cutting (especially if you have a 101 that works.) The PC - 9 Box or whatever the previous generation of camera to the 101 was called (slightly bigger controls on the outside not touch screen) is a perfect fit. I have done 2 freefly and 20 td videos with the camera mounted in that box with nothing but great results. The box is a touch bigger than the 101 box and it also allows the camera to sit lower in the box which removes the zoom button issue. See pictures in the link below. I am more than happy with my setup and will not be purchasing a new box as with the PC9 box I can quickly change padding and put my 101 back in service if I need a back up camera. Hope this helps, David http://picasaweb.google.com/Kramar.D/RawaCameraHelmet#

The bottom support is high density foam taped to the point that it adds enough bottom pressure that the top left and right corners of the camera make contact with the box. It does not move even the slightest bit. The top left, top right and bottom left (when looking at the LCD screen so to speak) corners all make contact with the box. You could even jump it without the bottom support – the only problem I found was that the camera would have a tendency to shift 2 or 3 degrees from being square and angle the footage a little bit. The box is also the perfect width - just by chance. The only concern I have with my set up is if someone would like to use a higher quality low profile wide angle lens the camera sits deep in the box and the lens guard would have to be cut accordingly. I will probably mount the Hype eye inside that box and make a hole to access it. With the extra room I will create slots for an extra bite switch, 2 closing screws SD and Sony mem cards… no more refunding stills! Haha

Here is my CX-100 side mounted on a RAWA with a PC9 box. Not cutting or modifying at all. Works like a charm. I believe its a PC9 box anyway.. the model before the PC101. Yesterday, I did 5 tandem videos on SD quality with no shake problems at all. SD HQ is better then the video out of my PC 101. http://picasaweb.google.com/Kramar.D/RawaCameraHelmet#