dragon2

If you don't watch your body position at pulltime, yeah they can spin up. I'm thinking this is a leftover from when the stiletto was one of the first hp canopies and people didn't know how to handle opening, and/or people jumping stilettos too soon in their jumping career with ditto problem. I only have a few jumps on stiletto's myself, the first was a h&p with a pilotchute in tow for a bit, result loads of linetwists but a straight and still on heading flying stiletto

Didn't PD quit using the light purple color for a reason like that? ciel bleu, Saskia

Guessing here: quite often brake lines are set too short (esp on older PD canopies it seems) or have shrunk ciel bleu, Saskia

Try a search for CX6/CX7... Plenty of posts about this camera. ciel bleu, Saskia

I know a TM who let his gf with 50 jumps jump with a tandem. She was a pretty good flyer for 50 jumps. Gf jumped out with tandem, gf got low, gf lost sight of tandem, gf DUMPED CANOPY. Luckily the canopy went right by the tandem. Could've killed 3 people there. ciel bleu, Saskia

For the main yeah, for a reserve I'd look for 220sqft or bigger if you can, as esp. older models do not land well when loaded over 1.0. ciel bleu, Saskia

You'll be looking for a wingload of about 1.0 use that to calculate the size of main you should be looking for, also that's the absolute minimum size of reserve you want. To calculate wingload, take your weigt in lbs + about 25-30 lbs for the rig, helmet, clothes, lead if any to calculate your exit weight (or go stand on a scale fully kitted up) and divide that by the square footage, so 200 lbs exit weight on a 170 would be a wingload of 1.2 which is not recommenden until 200 jumps or so. Also, only go smaller than your current 200 sqft if you're totally comfortable on it, can do zero wind landings on it etc, look up BillVon's list to see if you're ready to downsize. Freefly proof, all currently manufactured rigs are, some older ones are not, notable vector 2, but your best bet is to either ask a rigger or your instructor, failing that ask here about a specific model. ciel bleu, Saskia

Amen! I really don't mind getting swooped by people I know, but even so, I usually have a medium or more tele lens not a wide angle/macro lens ciel bleu, Saskia

Almost all notebooks and pcs I've installed lately have been full of "ad"ware, regardless of brand (Dell is pretty good about this though), it's not hard to either manually de-install all this cr*p and keep whatever you do want, or just reinstall the supplied OS but choose the option "just OS". HP is good with price/quality, Sony at least here is way overpriced for what you get. I had multiple driver problems with mine, wlan refused to work at all and the harddrive quit after a year too... I mostly stick with HP these days, only had problems twice over the years and these were fixed pronto. Acer is ok sometimes (not Aspire notebooks), Packerd Bell is generally cr*p notebook-built-quality-wise (luckily for you they stopped selling in the US), Dell is ok, and those are all the brands I've had personal experience with ciel bleu, Saskia

I give the passengers their video dvd + stills cd within 30 minutes after getting back to the hangar, only if I need to grab a 2nd rig and get on a plane quicker they have to wait one more load for it but that has only happened twice so far. I am definitely slower than the guys using linear editing but then again the rendering and burning give me time to pack. Mailing videos at our DZ is unacceptable really. I mostly edit on HP laptops, although now the Acer pc at the DZ is a bit quicker (quadcore, 4 gb ram) so I prefer that one. Edit: our videos include music and slo-mos, I made templates for the music and intro otherwise I'd be way longer than 30 mins. ciel bleu, Saskia

Check out this video at 0:30 the jumper in white up top has approached the formation too low and he ends up below the jumper in black on the right, see what happens to the jumper in black? ciel bleu, Saskia

You wouldn't have felt it, unless you were flying directly above another jumper or were flying very close behind and slightly up from another canopy. Take a look at a boat going fast in the water, you can see the trail it makes, think about that in the air when you can't see. The burble is the reverse of the direction of flight/fall, so for most freefallers the burble is directly above a jumper so that's a very good reason to make damn sure you're never there; there's "no air" there, you'd fall straight down onto the lower jumper. With a canopy, if you pass closely behind and above another canopy you can feel the bump, if this happens low (ie you get taken over by a smaller faster canopy on final) this may scare you a bit as it feels turbulent and can drop you a few feet. The burble is one reason why formation skydive camerapeople have big wings, to prevent them falling into the team. Also if you go low under a formation you can drop one or more jumpers on top of you if you fly directly beneath them. With canopy relative work the cameraflyer can fly his canopy into the burble of the team and the canopy will more or less stop flying and just bump around a bit in the burble, making it easier to stay in place to film. With wingsuiters, because they fly as much horizontal as vertical, the burble is also to the back and up, so you can fly straight above a wingsuiter and not drop down on them. ciel bleu, Saskia

No you're not. That was downright dangerous advice to give you. There is really only one answer to your problem, that is get someone good to watch your landings, preferably video them, and have that person debrief you. ciel bleu, Saskia

Netherlands Decision Altitude 2K. Learn something new every day. U.S. Decision Altitude 2.5K (2008 SIM Section 4 Cat A G(3) Another freaky fact: our lowest exit altitude for squares is 2.5 k, for everyone (ahem) ciel bleu, Saskia

? So? You really should use your own or same brand risers anyway since they match your rig. Other than that, I do think 400 jumps is a good limit for jumping a jedei... ciel bleu, Saskia

HP is fine, celeron is not. You want a pentium dual core or core2duo processor, 2 gb ram, a nvidia or ati graphics, a bigger screen is better for editing (if you don't mind lugging a 17" laptop around) , firewire port, bigger harddrives are better (80 md is budget, look for 160 mb), faster harddrives are better, or get a usb or firewire external drive. Bottom line, a budget notebook like you mentioned is really no good for editing, get a medium to high-end one. HP offers some nice ones at a good price range, which is why my latest 3 notebooks are all HP. Dell is also ok but usually works out more expensive than an off-the-shelf HP with good specs. ciel bleu, Saskia

This has been covered a couple times before but hey.... 1) trash the usb cable 2) buy a firewire cable 3) capture high-res video using capture software of choice and the firewire cable 4) burn to dvd in dvd quality, not vcd or svcd or similar. 5) watch on tv and be happy ciel bleu, Saskia

I'm pretty sure that some of the higher end cameras offer a setting that will accomplish this. I remember seeing an exposure setting that gives you +/- in each direction on my 5D. I'll have to pull the manual out as I know there is an easy way to do this even in skydiving. That's called exposure bracketing, this means your camera takes 3 or 5 pics in whatever it's fps rate is while varying the exposure by 1/3 or 1/2 stop each. Very workable on a tripod, no good in freefall... ciel bleu, Saskia

Well, we got the team photo, did 2 training jumps and we seem to have the obligatory team name Team Teuge, so..... ciel bleu, Saskia

If you want high-def, new you can buy the hc5, forget the hc7, word is not out on the brand-new hc9 yet, may have the same problem as the hc7. 2nd hand you can go for a hc1, hc3 or a1. For non-tape-based cameras you can buy the cx6/cx7 but this requires a state of the art computer (not a laptop, not a mac) to edit in high-def format, also there are only a few software solutions for editing this format. For tandem video using the vhs connection it's a great camera, however no firewire so no copying footage to/from another camera and also no lanc (although alternative solutions are in the works). ciel bleu, Saskia

did you chech the incident forum? http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3122462;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread ciel bleu, Saskia

The exact regulations vary which country you're in, but for AFF it's usually 500 jumps plus a few other requirements like accumulated freefall time, coach rating, and you have to pass the course, for tandem it's usually either 500 or 1000 jumps minimum, some other requirements like a reserve procedure performed and of course the course. Jumpmaster is the easiest rating to get, at least over here it means you're responsible for anyone not yet A-licensed and not with an instructor (AFF, tandem), you make sure they get out of the airplane at the correct location, sign off A-license requirements like specific exits, etc, this rating can be obtained at 50 jumps or so in some countries. In some cases/countries/military, jumpmaster means a greater responsibility with probably higher requirements to get the rating. Riggers, you take a course for that, in some countries you don't even have to be a jumper at all. ciel bleu, Saskia

Freefall time = 10 secs for the first 1000ft, 6 after that, so relax! ciel bleu, Saskia

Would the drop sensor affect the camcorder when in freefall! That doesn't matter any if the harddrive is kaput does it. ciel bleu, Saskia

Mine went pretty good, I did the SL route but only had to do the c&p after a few jumps from 12k. Funny how the first one went ok, I sure f*cked up a lot of c&p exits after that I got a reputation for being a freeflyer, when I was doing CF!!!! ciel bleu, Saskia