tdog

Good advice. Don't think you're 100% but want to skydive anyway? No worries, just turn on your Cypres and you'll be fine. I think he was being sarcastic....

I am just guessing that you will be so pumped in freefall you will be able to pull even if your arm was broken (it has happened before), let alone soreness. I am not advocating jumping with less than 100% readiness, so perhaps you should do a practice throw or eight of your PC on the ground (does not take much to put your PC back in)... If you can do it on the ground, add a few ounces of adreniline in the sky, and you will be a superhero when you throw it... But then again, what do I know????

If I was not as speachless as I am, I would say something more profound and deep... Otherwise, all I can say is the world lost someone special.

I've always wondered about something about the term "on your back" with regards to spinning line twists. If you are spinning (spiralling) so hard that you are laid out horizontal, couldn't you be on your belly too? Not really on your belly, but belly to earth. Or if you were "on" your back but decided to start kicking out, wouldn't you be alternating from belly to back every half twist? Or is there some physical phenomenon that causes the jumper/harness to always orient back to earth during a hard linetwist spiral? Ok, so I was "on my back" this weekend for the first time... Should have been a chop, but luck allowed me to fix it by my decision altitude... And the fact I have a docile canopy... People saw me kick out of it and thought it was pretty intense that I was able to do it, and asked me how bad it hurt... It did not hurt until the next day, but the missing chunk on my helmet shows the deployment sucked, but I did not remember that as I was pretty busy saving my ass. So, I can say, yes, I was back to earth when I stopped spinning up, and belly to earth a few times as I kicked out... But the G forces were straight out thru my toes, to the horizon, with the canopy diving to mother earth... I burned thru 1000 feet in 5-8 seconds, and I know I was ready to chop in time... In fact I was going for my handles as I said, "try kicking once, you have time." Actually, I was surprised how easy it was to kick out... The few times I spun up some but was flying straight, I found it slow to kick out... This one, I think there was so much tension on the lines, with the G forces, that they wanted to unspin, I just had to start the momentum with my feet.

My first 3 months were real hard... Lack of sleep, inattention at work, etc... It will wear off... But you still will cherish your friends and time at the DZ.

Well, today was the day... My one year anniversary in the sport will be a day I never forget. I hoped to never see it... Here is an e-mail chain that went back and forth (most recent at the top) last Thursday. I now must ask myself after I have seen it first hand, will I ever view the sport the same again, and how now has my attitude changed since I sent these e-mails last week??? 10/16 is not a good day for Colorado... Two years in a row. But Steve said it well, and now it is worth repeating.

One thing to keep in mind about Mr. Hertz and all other acts of negligence/accidents in the "real world". Insurance/renter pays the fair market value of the item damaged... Take a $25,000 car new off the lot. Drive it 15,000 miles in a rental situation. Renter totals it... Renter pays not $25,000, but pays maybe $18,000... So, even if a DZO made a renter pay for the lost main, they should never charge full price... The average rental canopy has seen some jumps... What is it worth, 25% of the new price??? And, if I was a DZO and an experienced jumper lost a main, and they tried real hard to look for it... Well, I would give them a get out of jail for free card, as, shit happens and I would want that customer for life... Students - no question... Never pay...

Let me know how that goes... The last time I crossed the border, I was driving an over weight, over length, super ugly semi-truck with a trailer that with the push of a few levers and 4 people working 4 hours, you could turn into a 40' X 40' concert stage with 100,000 of overhead rigging for speakers and lighting... The company just purchased it and was driving it "home". I am not a truck driver, but a Lighting Designer for concerts, but I had a CDL and was the backup to the backup for the company when trucks needed to, well, move.... So here I am, driving a million dollar beast thru the customs checkpoint. The Canadian guy says, "anything to declare, aye?" I try to keep a straight and serious face and say, "aye, the trailer." Well, that caused 8 hours of work... Seems my boss purchased a $20,000 trailer with a $980,000 option package, but customs saw it as a $1 million trailer with no option packages... They never do when driving cross country with anything bigger than a car... There was that time I came home from Vegas in a Freightliner with a leaky engine... There was that time those bastards (sorry utah) at the Green River checkpoint shut the truck down for a crack in the windshield that was new that day... There was that time the Isuzu truck blew up, on I-70 just before the Eisenhower tunnel, and the Nextel cellphone only worked in if I stood in the middle lane, causing short conversations between cars... I now prefer United, Frontier, or even Jet Blue So, Steve, if you end up in Canada in once piece, I will be proud for ya.

Remember that clean home page of the search engine we know and love... Why in the hell would they want AOL???

Exactly! And I am looking forward to whatever comes my way.

Well, video editing software, from Vegas to Final Cut, works off a concept of a time line where you can drag and drop various audio and video tracks. You can have many tracks, depending on the software. Each track is like a layer, where the one on top covers all the ones below. If you tell the software the top layer is 50% translucent, you can still see the layer below. Or the top layer might just be some text that is overlaid over the layers below. Each layer can have an effect or many effects. I have screenshot the timeline from the go fast video I put together and attached it, so you can see how multiple clips can be on one track/layer, but how some clips need to be on their own. The basics are super simple... It is becoming a power user that takes some time. For an example, Vegas calls the speed of a clip "velocity". You can change the velocity as the clip progresses... Well, you can go negative, which is backwards. The first time I did that I was confused as hell because I did not realize I was in negative land.... Just little things like that. When you look at the screen shot, you will see 7 tracks on the time line starting from the top working down. Track one is all the text effects, because those need to be on top of everything. Track two, in red, is the audio, left and right channels. I actually did splice the song up a bit to make it longer, which is not shown on the timeline because it is at 1.5 minutes in. Track three thru seven are the video clips. You can see on track 4, between each clip where they overlap, Vegas automatically did the cross fade for me based upon my default settings. This is represented by a box between the clips you can see with blue lines. Of course, just by right clicking the cross fade I can change the effects and how it fades. You will see some blue lines over the clips. That is the level or brightness. That is how you fade in and out clips. The green lines are velocity. On track 3 you can see I slowed down those clips. On the bottom of the screen there is the preview window on the right, and the media window on the left. The media window is where you have all your clips already on your hard drive. There are multiple tabs, one that just browses your entire hard drive, another for stock effects, and another for clips you have already used so you can regrab them quickly. There is also a cool feature, called the trimmer, down there. You can drag and drop a clip to the trimmer, like you see in the screen shot, and watch it. You can choose what you want to put into your video down there, then drag and drop just what you selected or trimmed, to your time line. The trimmer can be configured for just audio, just video, or both tracks linked as a group. Does any of this make sense??? Pretty much all the software out there looks like this on the basic side... Once you and the bells and whistles, it gets more complicated and different, depending on the software. In skydiving, they say what is in the wingsuit is what matters, not the wingsuit itself... Well the same is true for software for video... The best stuff can be made on the worst software, and the other way around...

Refresh my memory.... Final Cut for PC based computers... I still don't think Apple has done that yet... So for those of us with PCs - We are stuck with Avid/Vegas Premiere/ etc... I don't discredit Final Cut as being one awesome peice of software, but when I first used Vegas I was shocked how much bells and whistles they threw in for the price...

Ya, but the price issue at hand, I will take Vegas and spend the money jumpn.... $400 ish for vegas - $900 ish for final cut pro... Or am I missing something???? Personally, I use vegas because it was given to me by someone else (who gave me his licence and cds too), so it was even more cost effective.

Oh, and you asked about still pictures.... Well, there is only one, and it is called Photoshop. Is there a community college near by that has some classes??? If you are not computer friendly to start with, that will reduce the learning curve a lot....

I have been using Sony Vegas... It seems to do a lot of what I want... Here is my last video I put together on my laptop: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2722 I am actually in the professional concert and corporate event lighting business as a side job, so I have seen everything from monster Avid non linear editing systems to Adobe Premiere on a laptop... The first non-linear system I used was on a Mac with many external hard drives... Now you can do 10X as much on a PC laptop... For the price, you can't go wrong with Premiere or Vegas... Do you understand timelines, layers, and things like that??? I wish you were closer, because I could show you how to do all the tricks real quick that I had to dig for...

I am seriously looking for an intermediate team for next year... Either starting a new one or being adopted onto an existing. Something somewhat serious... Either player coach or coached... Home base either Perris, Eloy, or Colorado (tunnels)... If it is a travel team, perhaps 5 days a month training or something... Initial budget I brainstormed = 10 hours of tunnel (shared) and 150-200+ jumps... Maybe more, maybe less... The team motto should be something like, it is not the final destination that matters, but the journey along the way. I am going in with 4-5 hours of tunnel and 100 coached 4 way jumps.... I have a lot of learning to do, and am looking for others... PM me if you are interested or know someone else that is.

I have never been to Skydive the rockies... I see in another thread they have a skyvan this weekend??? edit.... OOPS... caravan, not skyvan... OOPPS... Either way... What is the scoop with that... If you guys promise to let me jump once or twice with ya, and there is a skyvan, I just might jump in the car and drive downthere...

Well, I am not a AFA student, but I sure hang out a lot with them... I am so bad with names... Dustin... Hmm... Well I am sure I would recognize ya if I see ya... I am that silly looking guy some call Travis...

Which DZ???

Yeah, what dan said. He wants a FT. CARSON 4-way team and thats what were going to give him! See you on the Van Saturday

After seeing your photo.... I have limited suitcase room so I think I am going to leave my tight fitting RW suit at home, but going to bring some clothes I use for freeflying (somewhat baggy)... I will also try those baggy suits too, just to learn what it feels like... I never have jumped with anything more baggy than a sweatshirt, so I will learn a lot. That photo proves there is plenty of air.... I am going to have to see if Keith can hook me up with some tips and tricks... All my tunnel coaching so far has been designed to translate directly to skydiving and 4way... I bet Keith has fun games and tricks that are tunnel specific... I now have that "shit I can't go to work and concentrate" problem... Thanks peps...

I think I am going to have a great time in the tunnel....

Thank you for saying that...

Dude, my team is disolved, the season is over.... I am just looking for some people to jump with now... You are invited to jump with us, or maybe it is the other way around, can I jump with you guys...

Well, since I have a handful of hours of coached time in Skyventure Perris, I guess I will just use this time to play... All the skyventure stuff was 100% focused on the task at hand, with a 4way coach and more than one player in the tunnel at the same time... No time just to dick around... If I moved without Simon saying move, I would get a nasty look across the tunnel from my coach... Maybe this will be some great entertainment where I can stick my tongue out at say, "this is fun." I just am afraid with those balloon suits, when I try to fly mantis, the fabric will knock me out... I hope they have an AAD on those suits for when the fabric slaps me silly....