bofh

Really, um, why? I have no dead air experience but what I will say is that a solo ws exit from a plane is pretty damn easy, but in BASE vids you often see experienced ws pilots go very headlow (or worse) when they first introduce ws to dead air exits. I have no experience of WS as I've said already, but I have not had any problem going unstable nor headlow when jumping in still air without a WS. I believe, but perhaps I'm all wrong here, that going headlow from a balloon wouldn't be a big deal. In BASE that's a different thing of course. But it is of course just idle speculation.

So? Does it matter for you? You seems to be on your own. As is pretty obvious, English is not my first language, but either I write so poorly that people don't understand me at all or I don't understand what the other posters have written if I am on my own as you put it. Perhaps you could please read the whole thread instead of just a single message and then explain to me in what way I am on my own.

If that extra zero (or even just a 1) was in the more detailed profile where it sayd wingsuit jumps...maybe...yea... Everybody in this forum WANTS the entire world hooked on wingsuits....they just want it to happen in a safe way.. And there are safer ways to make your first wingsuit jump then a still-air exit from not too much altitude... so yea... You make the quote above look like it was I who had written it...

If you had read the rest of the thread, you would know already.

I was more thinking along the line of, here are a lot of people with a lot more experience than me that says "don't". They have nothing to gain by it, so I would be truely stupid if I didn't listen to them. Even if it turns out that they are ignorant about the prodigy and thinking it is much harder to fly than it really is, I really don't loose anything (except a good story perhaps), since there will be another balloon at another time and I'll be in it at that time. By the looks of the current weather, I'm starting to believe that there will not be a jump at all.

Perhaps.

Yes, the slow speed of them really bugged me on a jump where I took out a cheap point and shoot camera and took (what I thought at the time) a few ego photos. It turned out that I only got a single shot, the camera had been storing the first photo while I was thinking I took picture two and three. It had a rather wide angle though...

It's so strange, people with lots of jumps (and experience) are always more conservative than people with less experience, I wonder how that can be? I do believe I have a slightly higher chance of making a stable exit from a balloon than from a plane, but at the same time, as mentioned by someone above, there is much less time to do practice pulls before the actual pull. If I do the first practice pull at 1700m, become unstable, I can not try again until at perhaps 1500m and then if I become unstable again I might not become stable and try the final pull until below my intended deployment altitude which obviously is a failure. At ground it seems that I can fly in box fine with the suit, but without knowing for sure I should not count on it. The reason I was considering this was that this would be the last jump for this season and it would have been fun to try the WS once before spring (the new toys are always the most fun). I guess I'll take some pretty pictures with the new belly mount instead.

Isn't that a feature available in almost all editing programs, to rotate the image 180 degrees?

I thought I'd take my new Prodigy along on a balloon jump. It will be my first WS jump... I've done three balloon jumps before and been perfectly stable (well, recovered exactly as planned on one of them where I didn't intend to have a stable exit). I've read the manual, other articles, about techniques for BASE exits etc. I have practiced pulls and emergency procedures on the ground and will do more of that before the jump. I find the suit "safe", it seems easy to reach the toggles, run etc without disconnecting wings or opening the legs and I can't seem to get fabric above the hackey nor emergency handles (perhaps if flying on the back, but then I guess I can get around that by pulling with the left hand on the right side and vice versa). I believe I can even fly in box if I need to without disconnecting the wings. The jump will be from 2000m so I feel I have a bit of time to become stable even if I do a really bad exit and still be able to pull high. I am of course worried about the pull, but I would be that even if I jumped from a plane. My plan is to stand on the edge, take a small jump backwards with the leg wing collapsed, arm wings spread and slowly open the leg wing as I get some speed up, do two practice pulls and then pull at 1400m, to give myself some time to recover from an unstable pull, linetwists etc. Anything else to think of or is this just a stupid idea that should be avoided at all costs?

Most cameras can be opened up and you can solder a new trigger to it. Make take a few cameras to get it right though...

I payed for the Prodigy at the 23:rd of August and I got it today. Just in time for the balloon-jump this weekend...

Well, you have some trade offs: A long exposure gives you motion blur, an open aperture gives you a short focus depth and high sensitivity (high ISO setting) gives you noise in the picture. Getting more light from a flash makes the background darker. A better lens can let through more light, but it will also shorten the focus depth. If you want the ground and the passenger in focus, you're best off with a flash if increasing the ISO setting isn't enough or you want to avoid the noise it brings. But up to ISO-400 on the 350D isn't that noisy in my opinion.

There is a cheaper version of the Neptune (Wave?) that is just an audible as well. Don't know how much less it costs though.

I have not noticed any increase in near collisions, but the people involved usually just talk about it among themselves so it isn't so visible. But I doubt it. On most days it is six seconds between the groups and most groups take about that much time to get ready. The first group has 30 seconds of yellow (= door open at our DZ and the plane is most often on a straight approach, though still climbing) and then 10 seconds of green before they should jump. So if they don't manage to prepare in those 40 seconds, there is sometimes some GO yelling. But I don't think there's more than before.

Doesn't the Neptune just have fixed heights that it beeps at while the Optima has its "unique sequence of beeps to assist entering optimum swoop corridor" to quote L&B's website?

The protrack doesn't log a long wingsuite flight. L&B's idea is that you use a VISO or Alti-Track for logbook and altimeter together with an SOLO or Optima for an audible. Even with a neptune, one would still want two units, one in the helmet and one on the hand/chest. I'm not allowed to do hook-turns yet, but from what I've heard of the people that do, the optima has allowed them to stop looking at the altimeter when landing, thus having more concentration on the rest of their environment.

At our club DZ, we have some simple rules: The first group exits 10 seconds after green light (first sanity checking the spot and looking for planes of course), the last groups go down with the plane if they don't want to jump off. Since we started this, our economy has improved, people landing out has decreased and we get to do an extra load per day. The ground crew constantly adjust the spot and the pilot gets new coordinates. In total a big win and safety has improved. So far I don't know of anyone going down with the plane because they thought they would land out. Of course we do make exceptions if the sanity check of the spot doesn't work out (really rare) or a load full of students where we don't want them at the extremes of the jumprun.

That happened to me once too when calling an asshole about borrowed stuff... I called one minute later with blocked caller ID and he answered and sounded really bothered when he heard it was me... You don't have the ability to block caller ID in USA? That's incredible. If I break a thing I'm a bit sorry and move on, but if I break someone else's it bugs me for weeks even after having compensated them... Things can break of course, but taking things apart? I had thought of doing something similar to you, but this made me change my mind.

We had back flips between the first and second point in the mystery formation which made it a bit more fun and interesting. That combined with me writing left instead of right and vice versa in one of the cards made it rather hard even for the experienced people.

The problem isn't so much bumping into each other (after all you can't get so high speed if you are that close), but flying in the line of flight and opening up above/below others. With three being relative new, there is of course also the risk of loosing someone near break time and then someone corks into someone else... Let the base fly head up and the risk of the group flying the in the line of flight is much lower.

I thought that Relative Workshop was one of the strongest brand names in the industry. Why give that up for such a boring name as United Parachute Technologies? Consolidating companies and changing business models can be done without changing business names. I don't know USA's business laws, but can't different tradenames be used in different markets?

Hi there! I'm about to arrange a local club competition. It has scrambled four member teams (including A license holders) and the goal is to have different events that are more fun than serious. Last year we had: Best team name, mystery formation, target flour bombing, creepers race, fun trick in the bar, fun trick in the air, bribing the judges... Does anyone have suggestions for other competition forms? It should be safe, fun and everyone should be able to compete. Speed packing, blind packing, lowest pull and other such suggestions are not welcome...

Isn't that half the fun of a new canopy? The "rolling" part of psycho-packing isn't so much rolling as folding. Keep an arm/hand where you intend to fold, do the fold while switching to the other arm/hand at the next fold. By always having an arm/hand on the canopy, it shouldn't move around for you. That said, I never managed to get my old canopy in the bag when psychopacking it. A regular pro pack got smaller and since the bag was too small for the canopy, I needed it to be as small as it could be. The new canopy has only been pro-packed once or twice. It was much easier to psychopack it and I do not have to lie on it, transfering sweat (my old canopy got yellow in the middle cell because of it). If you try a regular pro-pack, have you tried to just do the last S-fold, put that in the bag and then do the first S-fold into the partly bagged canopy? Also try to put less preassure on the canopy. The more you press on it, the more it wants to move around. Using the legs around it and lightly hold it in place with the hands tends to control it better. Try to find a different place to pack on too. I tend to find a dry, clean lawn to be the easiest. Good luck!

What's the deal with these women-only records? To me that says "okay guys, we are not as good as you, so we have to have our own records" and that is, as far as I know, simply not true in our sport. It feels like you are selling yourself short. Most of the best freeflyers I've jumped with are female. In total there are perhaps fewer exceptionally good female skydivers, but there are fewer female skydivers in total so that's quite natural and not something inherent to one sex's ability to perform.