mdrejhon

Good accelerometers are gyroscopes. They've become increasingly tiny. A good 3-axis accelerometer would compensate for tumbling. Just give technology time and perhaps someday a simple chip with simple data output for a simple computer program, can much more easily cross-reference this data with the pressure data, for improved AAD use. Right now, KISS is probably violated as is suggested (although I'd leave it to the AAD makers to decide that), but it may not be in the future, theoretically.

I'd love it if this thread goes on forever (without degenerating negatively). It's good marketing. Keep it up. Over 2,000 pageviews in less than 48 hours, that's unusually good for a Speaker Corner thread. If this keeps up, we could easily become one of the most popular Speaker Corner threads before boogie time. Ooops! I just killed this thread. (At least until someone replies.)

Attention JetBlue ticket holders! (mimic intercom speaker) I have a carpool vounteer who said he is willing to pick up through Vermont and New Hampshire. (up to car capacity, of course) on his way to Rainbow Boogie 2006. This includes the Burlington airport that JetBlue serves! If you plan to fly JetBlue, please let me know. I will confirm a specific preferred arrival date, and I will hook you up to him (contact information), so that your 65 mile ride from Vermont to the dropzone can be accomodated. Contact me through the website or at mark@rainbowskydive.com if you need me to co-ordinate your carpooling. He might ask to reimburse maybe one jump ticket for the gas costs, but that's a good deal if you save a lot of money flying JetBlue from the west coast! For people in UK, I found prices are cheaper through Air Canada and Zoom Airlines than with British Airways. You can get prices as low as ~£250 or thereabouts, and maybe if you catch a fare sale, just maybe as low as £199 (not including taxes) from UK for a nonstop flight from London to Montreal. Taxes are expensive though, no matter who you fly with though, but every little bit helps! Hopefully people from UK can catch a good price between now and boogie time.

This website is very interesting reading: www.irvinaerospace.com Apparently, they're still around. (You oldtimers know this, but newbies like me and you don't know this). In the business for 85 years, wow! They also make the shuttle landing parachute too. Still a fair bit of resemblance in the logo. 1927 Logo and 2006 Logo.

I don't normally pay attention to Speaker Corner threads, but I should note that we are planning various disciplines, contests and prizes -- we are already in negotiations with several sponsors right now. (The logos of all our sponsors will show up within weeks on our website) We have a load organizer (employee from Skydive Spaceland -- listed in the news section of our website now as tentative), that will help the boogie do various disciplines, such as SCR's and 20-ways, as well as we are looking for someone to get a few Lightning rigs (4 of them, preferably 143's and 173's) loaned to us for the CRWdogs among the visitors. There are 3 already and I may be going to CRW school beforehand as well (obviously, I'd fly only in 2-formations). And we haven't forgotten you freeflyers, either. We'll definitely do our best to accomodate everyone involved - we are keeping track of what disciplines the attendees have, and will optimize the event for it. There are also a lot of straight people (friends of gays) who expressed interest in coming. Sure, there will be some flaunt, but other aspects will be pretty plain. A Calendar of events will be published as time passes. We have to be part of the same atmosphere that Montreal will be, since the gay olympics, the OutGames (www.montreal2006.org, opening ceremonies July 29) as well as Pride celebrations (www.diverscite.org) including the Pride Parade is occuring after sunset on Sunday evening July 30th, and Nouvel-Air will have a shuttle between the dropzone and the Montreal events. So the schedule of events will accomodate people who wants to stay behind at the dropzone, as well as people who want to go to Montreal downtown. However, I am pretty sure for many others, they will just stay on the dropzone and just have a plain old standard skydiving Bonfire celebration. (Free campsite onsite) Straight guys who fly from out of town (there are already a few booking), will probably sightsee other things than the gays, although they do know how gays love to party and part of the reason why they are coming. I know not everyone likes the "pride" aspect of things -- but that isn't deterring the attendance. We've had some amazing response so far, and many of them say "Finally. About time!" ....As you can see in the other thread in Bonfire. (Not just dropzone.com but also tons of emails, as well as other correspondence, as well as word-of-mouth) I guess there are many sides to this! I know that by being one of the Boogie organizers, I've outed myself in the skydiving community -- but when I go back to jump at my home dropzone, I won't be flaunting it. I'll just be just like any skydiver doing everything else. Most people wont' recognize me as an organizer, unless they recognize me or ask. I'll respect my home dropzone and just be like any other straight-acting guy there, to respect everyone there. Personally, I am very straight acting (people say my gaydar don't really go "beep") and I don't really show up in much of the pride stuff, but I can occasionally bask in the pride stuff -- and enjoy doing that. Others are more way "faggy" than I am. Others are even more straight acting. But for this boogie, we are catering to a wide audience of gay/lesbian/bisexuals and their straight friends. It's possible that not everyone may be satisfied (i.e. upset about rainbows!) but the overwhelming majority of the target market skydivers don't have a problem with it. There's all kinds of boogies, like women's boogies, anvil brothers type gettogethers, whatnot -- having a gay boogie is no different. We aren't calling it the "Pride Boogie", it's just a "Rainbow Boogie", since it is the best name we have come up with, for this. It has been many months in the making and now we have enough confirmed attendees to fill an entire Twin Otter -- even before we have started our paid advertising (keep tuned!). The name "Rainbow Boogie" is better than "Gay Boogie" because the latter excludes too many (straights, lesbians, bisexuals), and "Queer Boogie" might be somewhat politically incorrect. Rainbows have already been around long enough that it is no longer always yells "PRIDE" at least in that part of Canada, it's simplly merely a plain gay symbol much like the color pink represents women, that's all, and the rainbow symbol is used on the website. Yes, it yells pride at other times, especially during celebrations and flag waving. If gays want to have a part in the "pride" aspects -- they are welcome to do so and I do enjoy that aspect -- Montreal will be a HOOT during this time period, as I've mentioned... I know a lot of us will be having lots of fun during this time period! (I'm not talking about bedroom stuff either... but a good time partying downtown!) It's not like the dropzone will be as decorated as a pride parade after all. FWIW, I agree with "I don't think skydiving should be divided along lines of who's gay, or of what gender, or ethnicity, etc", yet I also simultaneously agree with "partake in occasional pride activities, such as annual events". That option is missing so I had to vote for the neareset option. However, I also suckered into saying "Gay Day" too, because that is a whuffo-friendly term. There are Gay Day's in skiing, Gay Day at Disneyland, etc. Whuffos sometimes think "Rainbow Boogie" is something that comes out of a nose after an all-night rave. So that is why we also additionally registered www.SkydiveGayDay.com for whuffo-friendly advertising. Obviously, Nouvel-Air will want to profit from increased tandem traffic from the OutGames and the pride festivities, as they will run a recruitment booth and shuttle there. For anyone here who asks, the Rainbow Boogie is at www.RainbowBoogie.com. As always, the website quotes Everyone is invited - all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered skydivers, and their straight friends!

That's a valid question -- but that's for the AAD manufacturers to decide, no?

huh? nature has given us adrenaline, a chemical that dumbs us down and gives us tunnel vision. rational thinking is the first to go, and why we drill EPs for muscle memory. Both of you are correct. The keyword is "instinct". Both of you ultimately refer to the same thing. We simply train our instinct to do the right thing. I haven't had a mal yet, but with simulated EP pratice even at home roughly every week during the Canadian week (sometimes I imagine the mals all the way to landing an unfamiliar Raven Micro 150 with a careful pre-tested flare if there is time, and PLF), it's already essentially an instinct.

PS -- It is a good idea to come one or two days early if you'd like, when it is a little less busy, to get to know people before things get crowded and people come-and-go for the OutGames/Pride celebrations (Montreal Pride parade is at sunset on Sunday July 30th!). I'll be there all day July 27th, probably arriving late the 26th to setup camp. I know some of you are already coming 1 or 2 days early. It will be much more quiet on Thursday June 27th, and this gives you more time to get to know people better (including the organizers, etc)

Everybody who's "interested" or "not sure" should register anyway. Rainbow Boogie 2006 Registration. The spandex spiderman suit would be more fun than a barrel of skymonkeys, and would make excellent photos. I've seen a spiderman skydiving suit at Florida Skydiving Center (a videographer there wears a spiderman suit, and he filmed us during Deaf World Record attempts, which I participated in). For Rainbow Boogie 2006, there are all kinds of people attending, straights, gays, bisexuals, lesbians, including supporters. You'd fit right in, no problem. I'd expect there will be subgroups of various interests, just like how a mixed party may split into or a mixed bar setting. CRWdogs, freefly freaks, RW bellyfloppers and bellyflyers, young and old, self-confessed "fag hags" (in a nice way), and a Plane Load Organizer that's "one of us". No doubt, after the Beer Light turns on, some will joke around crazily, but others would hang out with people who joke around less. Others will leave the dropzone to take part of Pride festivities. There are also Nouvel-Air regulars who will just have to blend right in. So we are certainly expecting enough people to fill multiple simultaneous planeloads. If one person scares you with queer jokes, just scurry a few feet away to another cool more laid-back person to hang out with. It looks like we have all flavours attending. At the worst, full Twin Otter planeloads is no problem for Rainbow Boogie 2006 and I expect some of the extra planes will have to fly too. If Nouvel-Air does a good job marketing very well for tandems, the dropzone could be packed with both experienceds and tandems and regulars and there would be back-to-back loads like at a real busy boogie. At the most hectic, it is possible Nouvel-Air will be scrambling all their pilots on all 4 jump planes for back-to-back loads with no propeller cut. We've had amazing interest for Rainbow Boogie 2006. Before the Internet, people like us in other cities couldn't easily network. There are many of us widely dispersed all over the world, sometimes being the only "queer" one at our dropzones or not willing to come out because skydiving has had a "macho" rereputation in the past and wasn't conductive to such a boogie until today. The Internet as well as Canada's hospitality, now make it possible to easily co-ordinate such a first-of-a-kind official DZ-sanctioned boogie that's big enough to saturate their jump planes. There's even one in Moscow (who might come), there's two from New Zealand (of one who is already booking a ticket), and multiple from UK (of which one is definitely booking, and two others are considering booking). Dozens have expressed interest (with answers ranging from "interested" to "yes") from either USA or Canada, or expressed interest in attending. And other countries that slips my mind at this time.

I will be one by then (I am going to "CRW class" before then), and Martin will be. We are attempting to negotiate a loan of some Lightning CRW rigs (or at least the canopies themselves). Keep tuned. We are keeping you CRWdogs in mind! Also, I just got word that a gear store just offered gift certificates for use as prizes during our boogie. We'll add them to the Sponsors on the website. More details once things are finallized. And keep tuned, we have other sponsors interested and negotiating with us for other things like freebies (free branded caps or T-shirts), and advertising, etc. P.S.: To everyone: Don't forget to Register for Rainbow Boogie 2006 even if you are only interested and not sure you can make it. Your information will be kept confidential since we realize not everyone is out. Also mention in Comments section what kind of skydiving you are into (freefly, CRW, RW, etc). You don't have to register and you can just show up, but we would appreciate knowing how many burgers we need to buy for a free BBQ, and how many pilots we need for the day

Thanks! I've noted this -- Anybody who needs a carpool ride from Ohio or Vermont (or along the route between those states and Montreal), please contact me or through the website. I'm also keeping a carpool roster, so enter your carpool offer or need in the Comments section of the Rainbow Boogie 2006 Registration Form.

LOL ... That's why I use the terminology "jump plane Load Organizer" on the website to announce Kirstens' tentative involvement (she gave me permission to do so). She has experience with Twin Otter-sized loads, and that is exactly what we need. Okay, okay, please -- No jokes about Otter-sized loads of another kind. Back onto topic, I just got word that a gear store just offered gift certificates for use as prizes during our boogie. We'll add them to the Sponsors on the website. More details once things are finallized. P.S.: To everyone: Don't forget to Register for Rainbow Boogie 2006 even if you are only interested and not sure you can make it. Your information will be kept confidential since we realize not everyone is out. You don't have to register and you can just show up, but we would appreciate knowing how many burgers we need to buy for a free BBQ, and how many pilots we need for the day

Welcome, Martin! Glad to see you aboard!

That's an excellent suggestion. I'll add it to the Flight Info section of the website. Some people from the West Coast are complaining about high airfares to Montreal, so shopping around like that helps them. At least, until an airline sponsors our event. (If that happens)

This is the Bonfire Thread on this topic (popular thread with many posts): http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2087291

The OutGames being there and the DZ'z welcoming attitude combined to make this the choice. Don't forget Montreal Pride Week and Montreal Pride Parade! That's about million attending the city combined for all events combined in such a short time period, and we can easily find a few skydivers out of that bunch. The dropzone is looking into a shuttle back and fourth between the dropzone and Montreal, so we can all enjoy Montreal nightlife as needed, and partake in OutGames.

We are attempting to get 50 experienced skydivers to show up. We even already have almost that many "interested" (almost 50), but currently only 15 are able to clear their schedule and book airfare. Almost enough to fill a Twin Otter, but this number is rapidly increasing. Several people are not members of dropzone.com. And we will have advertisements in magazines within the next two months. Keep tuned. I've got a great friends with good contacts in the industry. Plus well over a hundred tandems (mostly locals). Nouvel-Air will recruit a lot of tandems by having a booth at the OutGames (a gay olympics event in Montreal - www.montreal2006.org). The Montreal pride parade (one of the world's biggest pride parade; bigger than San Francisco) is on the weekend after the boogie, so it's a good idea to make it an extended vacation.

True, I agree, but foreigners don't know where the hell Farnham is. Montreal is the nearest familiar city and the nearest international airport , airport code YUL. Sometimes there are great airfare deals to that city, if you wait for the right time. Flying into Boston or Toronto is also a possibility if you save enough money to be able to rent a car, if you don't mind a 5 hour drive from either city. There are a couple of people looking for carpool buddies - people who can't afford to fly, may be able to drive. I know someone in Ohio is looking for a roadtrip buddy to come to the event. Montreal is near the U.S. border: 5 hour drive from Boston 5.5 hour drive from Toronto 7 hour drive from New York City 6 hour drive from Rochester 16 hour drive from Chicago

We are going to make this an annual event. Rainbow Boogie 2007 maybe. For 2006, we talked about the host city for many months. For the Rainbow Boogie 2006, we chose between Chicago, San Francisco, and Montreal. Montreal won by default because Nouvel-Air was the only dropzone we contacted that said they would be happy to host the event. We are getting posters printed in about a month. If you want posters for your dropzone, contact me through the RainbowSkydive.com website.

Without further ado, as one of the organizers, I've now finally publicly announced the event. This Bonfire thread is for any other discussion that might not belong in the other thread in the "Events & Places to Jump" thread. Please, no "Speaker Corner" material, I obtained permission from a greenie to announce the boogie -- and they did say they will watch for any posts that might get out of hand. Summary: There's a Twin Otter an 3 Beench 18's. People are already booking tickets to fly in (including a New Zealander), and I already have a Load Organizer tentatively attending from Skydive Spaceland, as well as more than one sponsor have expressed an interest in the event! We already have almost enough attendees to fill a Twin Otter already, and that's without having started advertising yet (ie magazines etc)! My Announcement in Events & Places to Jump:

Rainbow Boogie 2006 -- Montreal, July 28-31 -- World's First Gay Day at a Skydiving Dropzone! WHO: Everyone is invited - all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered skydivers, and their straight friends! WHEN: July 28-31st, 2006 WHERE: Nouvel-Air (30 mins from Montréal). Yes! This is a dropzone sanctioned event! OFFICIAL SITE: www.RainbowBoogie.com I am one of the event organizers (and also the web designer) and we are currently in active talks with sponsors to help with things like loaning equipment and paying for ads. I have very good friends in the non-skydiving industry who is helping me market this event, but we can always use help/volunteers/media coverage. Contact me and the other organizers at info@rainbowskydive.com or through the website. The website is now up and running! We have the Twin Otter confirmed (coming to Nouvel-Air, yay!) and three Beech-18 airplanes, so we have enough room to make this a big boogie. We already have enough tentative attendees to nearly fill a Twin Otter already, and we haven't even started advertising yet (adding ourselves to boogie listings, etc). We have a few people booking airplane tickets already -- including a New Zealander, so this is already attracting attention. If this boogie interests you, don't miss it. There is DZ capacity to make this a fairly large boogie and we already have sponsors! I have recruited a plane Load Organizer! Kirsten Johnson of www.skydivespaceland.com has tentatively agreed (schedule to be confirmed) to organize special jumps for attending experienced jumpers such as the World's Biggest Queer Formation Skydive, as well as the World's First Queer-SCR! Kirsten Johnson is a USPA AFF Instructor with accomplishments including Texas Skydiving League Medal Winner, National 8-Way Silver Metal, 4-Way Americas Cup Bronze Metal, Neches River Gold Cup, "Pink Mafia Sisters" member, and has lots of Wind Tunnel Time! For your skydiver friends: www.RainbowBoogie.com For giving to your whuffo friends: www.SkydiveGayDay.com (Both point to the same website) [Note: This message was posted with moderator permission. They agreed to watch this thread for any negative posts. If people wish to criticize or bash the "gay" aspect -- please go to the Speaker Corner or just leave us alone.]

Yep.

You bring up good and excellent points, but you are mistaken at one thing: TomTom DOES definitely use accelerometers. The news reporting at www.gpspassion.com brought this up a couple years ago, and I distinctly remember accelerometers. (It may take some hunting in the Archives to find this though). This was reported on a couple of mainstream news websites back around 2004 or thereabouts, and it did not use any additional radio references, so it worked in any tunnel in any world, for a certain amount of time until the accelerometer 'drifted' out of precision. You are correct that this is a finite amount of time, but sufficently enough precision to keep pretty good precision through a whole typical automobile tunnel. Accelerometers make a massive difference in urban canyons where GPS reception is intermittent and the accelerometer in the TomTom unit allows it to smooth the gaps in GPS reception much better. TomTom does use accelerometers for tunnel location tracking and for urban canyons. They just give it a marketing name called "Assisted Satellite Navigation" -- fancy marketing speak for accelerometer-assisted GPS. It is different from AGPS, which is a different technology. Also, Google Search says TomTom uses accelerometers - CLICKY. If you read online and magazine reviews about TomTom Go, there are good reviews about TomTom being one of the better third party add-on GPS navigation systems for a car, because of its excellent GPS position hold in urban canyons and tunnels that was clearly superior to competing automobile GPS units that did not have this accelerometer assistance. They did note that inside longer tunnels locks were automatically lost -- after having successfully held a reasonably accurate location fix for a remarkably much longer period than non-accelerometer-assisted GPS units. I saw a magazine review sometime in 2004, that also covered this as well. I know that position fixes updated by accelerometers "decay" in accuracy when not corrected with a source of reference (updated satellite position fix) since errors are cumulative, and position fix gets worse and worse. So TomTom knows this, they give a finite amount of time after the actual real-satellite GPS fix, in trusting the accelerometer before automatically losing the accelerometer-assisted GPS fix (the threshold where it can no longer trust the accumulated error updating the last satellite GPS position only from accelerometer data). Typically, this buys you a certain amount of time after the last GPS fix, say, 60 seconds (maybe less, maybe more) of reasonably accurate position fixes (good enough for a map graphics subsystem) while driving through a tunnel or down a road through an urban canyon, for example. Essentially used as a GPS reception "gap-filler". I am just merely saying accelerometers have successfully found an application in civilian GPS units already, today. Good information though about barometric stuff. Just wanted to be clear that I am familiar GPS vs AGPS vs accelerometer-assisted GPS. and that I am definitely not mistaken about confusing AGPS versus accelerometer-assisted GPS. You likely do know more than I do about whether accelerometers are good or bad for AAD's. You may be right that a good barometric algorithm is good enough, but this begs a question: Are accelerometers useful in any possible way, in an AAD, without sacrificing safety? I think it's a valid question whether it's of any benefit in the future, don't you think?

I watched someone going in -- stunt airplane crash at an airshow. Actually, I was over 2 kilometers away and he dissappeared behind some buildings and I saw the puff of smoke from the crash. It was only the next day, I saw it in the news that he was killed instantly It didn't occur to me to turn my head, since I wasn't expecting someone to get killed.

FrogNog, As I am not a swooping nor a wingsuit expert, you have many good points, and it is possible that accelerometer plus air pressure is not enough data to distinguish swooping vs winsuiting vs emergency situations vs canopy opening shock, etc. But, we owe it to the AAD manufacturers to eventually answer these questions through their research, no? True, a 3-axis accelerometer can only determine relative changes in the velocity vector (direction, speed) so a constant 100mph looks identical to a constant 170mph to an accelerometer. BUT, if you cross-reference the accelerometer readings (i.e. no changes in velocity, so you haven't accelerated) with a sudden change in the rate of pressure change (i.e. aircraft pressurization suggests you fallrate suddenly accelerated), this is a very clear an unmistakable inconsistency in acceleration comparisions. World Team 2006 has highlighted the problem of AAD problems in pressurized jump aircraft (not one, but TWO separate incidents on separate days causing AAD problems), and how Cypres 2 seemed to have behaved properly in these situations. So an accelerometer may not even be necessary if it's very rare for aircraft pressure issues mimic the right activation thresholds (78mph between ~120 and 1000 feet). I'm pretty sure that at least one of the AAD manufacturers have thought of using accelerometers yet, but have not done so mainly because of cost/accuracy/size/power concerns. What if all these limiting factors were solved, and available in a cheap 1-dollar 3-axis accelerometer chip that is accurate enough? The question is, will it now be massively useful and not counterproductive in an AAD? And another question, what specific things can such a 3-axis accelerometer do to benefit AAD's? Will an accurate accelerometer cause more or fewer misfires and no-fires? Would the accelerometer still be useful even in situations such as tumbling and centrifugal G-forces that can confuse accelerometer readings? This should be researched, or is currently being researched. Simpler accelerometers are already being used in automobile airbags. They're already well trusted in those emergencies. So there is at least some precedent of accelerometers being used in emergency situations. Understandably, skydiving is a lot more complicated, and a lot of data logging would need to be done... I agree there are limits on the usefulness of accelerometer readings, but I think it is a good idea to have the AAD companies research this if it really genuinely makes an AAD better or not. It's their job to research, after all. After all, tomorrow's cheap accelerometers may become as accurate as today's expensive stuff eventually, knowing how technology drops in price.