dragon2

Well the reason for our weight limit is that it's over a lake, untill 60m out the water's only 1 m deep. But if you get further out it's (much) deeper. We got (or at least I did) an eye-opener in Duisburg at the World Games... We just don't have many swoopponds out here, in fact ours just got canceled so it's either natural bodies of water or over land. And those natural lakes don't always co-operate... As far as the weight goes, we have members of PD and Icarus competing, with lots of lead. Bruno and Henny wear a lot of lead. Don't know about the French and Spanish guys. The Belgian guys are mostly starting out and don't wear huge amounts of lead, and our other Dutch guys keep below 10 kg I think. I think the german swoopers I saw and also the Norwegian ones weren't wearing all that much lead either. but the trend is to jump a bigger canopy and put on more lead so as people prorass I think we'll see more and more lead. That is, untill you can't get on an airplane anymore! We need cars to drive between the various euro comps to transport all that lead.... Maybe someone can start a new business: Rent-a-lead ciel bleu, Saskia

There already is, but you have to come over to Europe to compete What's standard class? Sorta like intermediate? I guess some restrictions on weights will be unavoidable, but no weights at all sucks and is not logical. We have an added rule for our next competition at Lake Bussloo (Teuge): everything over a certain weight must be releaseable. I think the limit for non-releasable weights is 10 kg (22 lbs) but really not sure on that figure. Since some people have weights in their rig that won't be releaseable, but for the rest it's the smart thing to do, over water. As far as I'm concerned this new "rule" of ours makes sense, but I think yours doesn't ciel bleu, Saskia

You can only aim the remote from the front of the camera. Not very useful IMO, so I've seen people put up a little mirror on the lens

And you didn't complain on a public forum did you? Well, NOW you did, but you know what I mean If people can write about bad experiences with a given company, why can't people also talk about good ones? ciel bleu, Saskia

What's wrong with a Safire2??? ciel bleu, Saskia

I've jumped 2 different vengeance 135. The first opened absolutely fine, the other one usually started turning or even diving when opening. It just doesn't inflate evenly. I'm looking for a new birdman canopy, and would jump the first with a bm suit but definately not the second vengeance... Unfortunately the one I might buy is yet ANOTHER vengeance 135 so no clue how that one opens... Maybe I should ask for a discount from my rigger? 10 repacks, 11th one free? ciel bleu, Saskia

Ferry you going by car? ciel bleu, Saskia

It does, but so far I haven't yet seen one of those remotes, not in stock anywhere in this country ciel bleu, Saskia

How do you burn a dvd then? Moviemaker will only burn to cd? ciel bleu, Saskia

Close: not an older Lotus, but an older Samurai. http://www.bigairsportz.com/parachutes.php ciel bleu, Saskia

Doesn't plane out? I remember it planing out all right but not getting rid of the forward speed, putting my feet on the ground to soon and having to run for it. The ground speed was pretty fast indeed. It took me 10 jumps or so to be able to land it tippy-toe. Try toget someone to video a couple of landings for you, and look at them with an instructor, maybe you're flaring too soon, too abrupt (vicious flare? why? maybe try a more gradual flare), or putting your feet down too soon or something. ciel bleu, Saskia

Personally I've never had problems with Square1. One time they made a mistake in sending me the wrong Tshirt I got to keep it and they sent me the right one too. Once I spent hours on the phone/fax/email to get my order through VISA which wasn't co-operating, Square1 stayed with me untill it was sorted out. Then when they finally had the money I got a note saying they were now going on a holiday to the Bahama's with it, and thanx Got my canopy just fine

There's no possible way to remote-control the D50, unless Harbotronics can do a mod for you. Check out the D70s or D70 (older so cheaper if you can find one, but only way for remote is infra-red or Harbotronics mod) instead. ciel bleu, Saskia

It's a high performance canopy. If I were you I'd stick to the Lotus (if that) and get rid of the Jedei. I'm no instructor though, I suggest you ask the instructors at whatever of the 2 Texel dz's you're jumping at. Over here you need at least 500 jumps and be current before you'd be allowed a canopy like that. There's a reason for that! Being current on an appropriate canopy before a HP canopy, although not strictly in the rules, would be very smart (ie the Lotus and not a Drakkar or whatever). ciel bleu, Saskia

Your profile says you're jumping a Lotus 150? That's a canopy with airlocks... If you want to keep jumping in The Netherlands you'll not be allowed that Lotus untill you have 100 jumps (it's smaller than a 170). If you get a USPA license you'll probably be alright even here though, it's not that small and you're loading it lightly (you sure about that? You figured in the weight for the rig etc as well? Otherwise you're pretty lightweight). A Jedei on the other hand is a really really fast way to get hurt with 24 jumps. Don't jump it. ciel bleu, Saskia

For a Dutch A you need: a SL or AFF license, at least 25 freefall (not SL) jumps, with a minimum of 15 mins total freefall time. Stuff you need to get signed off for: spotting, packing, 10 jumps landing at

Got a Packerd Hell Easynote now (don't buy this one), with a maxtor one touch 160 gb 7200 rpm drive and a seperate case and IDE HD (250 gb 7200 rpm). the Maxtor's heavy and expensive, the separate solution is way cheaper and you can chose any brand you want. There's even a way now to get SATA HD's for external use, for a pc, but that's only any good if you're not sharing that hd with another pc let alone laptop because hardly anyone has external SATA... ciel bleu, Saskia

I have great result editing on my laptop with the camera routed through the same firewire HD I'm editing from. This works better (ie no dropped frames) then working with the pcmcia card for the HD and the internal firewire port for the camera! Surprised me actually, but it works fine, at least on this laptop and on my previous one. I use premiere, maybe avid is more demanding. ciel bleu, Saskia

Do NOT jump with earplugs if you have trouble with equalizing pressure! It'll make things much worse. On the plus side, I'm always having slightly congested sinuses (bijholteontsteking) and I wasn't sure at all if i could jump. So I started out with staticline. My 2nd or 3rd jump from 12k I ended up with a ruptured eardrum as well. Hurt like %^&. A few days later I had a bad infection in my sinuses so my ears knew before i did... However my doctor said not to worry too much, besides taking care to not get your ears wet (shower/swimming) when it's ruptured, and there's always the chance of a middle ear infection. Anyway after 2 weeks i was jumping again, and only had a problem with an ear hurting one time later on, when i knew i was congested, so I quit jumping that weekend. No problems since, I just don't jump when I'm really congested to avoid problems. But I also have the problem of being allergic to SOMEthing or whatever and I can still jump most of the time

Totally personal post coming up First, don't load it too high. These are half ZP half F111, and old. If yours has plenty of jumps on it, maybe look for another canopy... I never jumped a Merit smaller than 190 and I don't want to! Mainly the hard openings that I don't like, and also the fact that straight after student canopies this was one hot canopy for me I did manage to learn how to land on my feet, eventually, even with an older Merit 190. The French main canopies have a real short control range, very different from other brands. I didn't like it, but that's personal. Took some time to get used to it. If yours isn't ragged out and you're not loading it much, you probably will too. However I wouldn't willingly jump a Merit 150 myself, ragged out or not, and that's with 725 jumps and a 1:1 WL. Can't remember if I flared any higher or lower than on other canopies, and don't want to jump one again to find out! One other thing why I don't like 'em, don't have any proof of this really, but it seems to me Merit's are the first canopies we have here that start to show problems in turbulence. Maybe because they're trimmed so flat, they're also very flat top-to-bottom, usually are lightly-loaded and most of them have a lot of jumps on them. But I've seen a couple drop down when other canopies weren't having nearly as much problems... BTW it's successor the Electra seems to be a much better canopy all around, as far as I've heard... ciel bleu, Saskia

I have 2 HD's that have both USB2 and firewire, but they both won't pass on firewire connections while connected to the pc through USB. ciel bleu, Saskia

The footage you can import through USB is compressed a great deal. Garbage really, for editing. The only thing USB is useful for is for downloading photo's. ciel bleu, Saskia

Yes. You can buy a firewire pci card though. ciel bleu, Saskia

Yeah unfortunately after EVERYTHING was arranged (all permission, the funding etc) they retracted their permission. edited for cat-jumping-on-keyboard ciel bleu, Saskia

Windtunnel no, swooppond yes. There WILL be a tunnel in The Netherlands (probably ), but that's more to the south. ciel bleu, Saskia