dragon2

There is, but apparently common sense seems to fail a lot where canopy choice is concerned. Or wingsuiting. Or camera jumping. Or using large amounts of lead with swooping. Or pulling as low as you want. \ And suddenly common sense and instructor intervention return when someone has X00 jumps? Seems so. We don't see as many landing-related incidents in the 1000+ jumps range as we do (way) below that, do we? Aside from swooping, which is an extra risk a jumper can choose to take. Who kept count? Where are the data? I hear that claim every time this comes up, but no-one ever seems to have the data to confirm it. I think we (KNVvL) actually have that data, as we KNVvL jumpers are supposed to send in a small report about any skydiving incident involving a reserve ride and/or damage to man or goods. I'm not sure I can get my hands on that data though, and in a format that's useful, but I'll give it a go. ciel bleu, Saskia

I learned a lot by hanging out at the DZ every time I could, asking alot about stuff I want to understand, hanging out at the bar for the more "colorful" stories. ciel bleu, Saskia

There is, but apparently common sense seems to fail a lot where canopy choice is concerned. Or wingsuiting. Or camera jumping. Or using large amounts of lead with swooping. Or pulling as low as you want. \ And suddenly common sense and instructor intervention return when someone has X00 jumps? Seems so. We don't see as many landing-related incidents in the 1000+ jumps range as we do (way) below that, do we? Aside from swooping, which is an extra risk a jumper can choose to take. I think if you stay in the sport for 1000+ jumps you did something right, you have probably seen more "stuff" than you wanted to and you have the experience to decide what you want to jump, yourself. You've passed the most dangerous phase in skydiving, IMO. I'm not a big fan of a large number of rules myself, but our canopy rules are just about the path I took (I was 25 jumps faster or so) so they didn't bother me that much, aside from the reserve thing: nothing is mentioned about reserve wingloadings, and I was allowed to jump a PD113 as a reserve just fine @150lbs, but not as a demo-main Oh well, no rule is perfect ciel bleu, Saskia

Sunny day: beach setting. Cloudy day: auto WB. Shooting swoopers/canopy controll: W/A off. ciel bleu, Saskia

There is, but apparently common sense seems to fail a lot where canopy choice is concerned. Or wingsuiting. Or camera jumping. Or using large amounts of lead with swooping. Or pulling as low as you want. ciel bleu, Saskia

Very professional ciel bleu, Saskia

No. No such thing as "best settings" for every occasion and every lens-camera combination. YOUR best settings: 1 - read your camera manual 2 - try out some stuff on the ground 3 - try out some stuff in the air 4 - see what settings work for YOU in various lighting conditions and with your helmet setup and with your editing setup. ciel bleu, Saskia

No. Absolute limits based on jump numbers, like those in the Netherlands. So you didn't really mean "skill", did you? A complete klutz could be approved provided she had made enough jumps. Yes, we still have klutzes (almost, Lutzes). And we have occasionally had klutzes end up on life support with an "approved canopy", after multiple talkings-to. This will still happen when an instructor will not GROUND a complete klutz. When the canopy rules were first introduced we also had a few people going from a spectre/sabre 1 150 straight to a vengeance/katana 120, because the jump number (500) said they could. The rules are not a substitude for common sense After adding a new category for 400-700 jumps, a 135 sqft max on stiletto-type canopies, this problem mostly went away. Our canopy rules give you the max canopy you CAN jump, not the max canopy you HAVE to jump... And instructors should still be good for something ciel bleu, Saskia

I must say, ever since we have our canopy rules (since 2003), incidents involving non-students and non-swoopers have seem to gone down markedly. Complaints are still there, from girls "stuck" on 150/135 sqft canopies for a while (which is a GOOD thing IMO, and a lot of the complaints seem to be from BFs and the like...), and the inevitable mad skillz guys. Some mad skillz guys try to jump a non-approved canopy anyway (i.e. 50 jumps 200+ lbs bodyweight jumper got himself a stiletto 170, 3 jumps until he got caught out) and they have the option to go jump in Belgium if they want where they can get away with their canopy choice more often, or they conform and jump a sabre2 150 until 400 jumps, big deal... Also the canopy market seems stabilised again now, that took a while. Some stuff is still very hard to sell here... Anyway, while of course you can still get hurt jumping a "sensible" canopy, incidents seem to have gone down here in the "intermediate" range, and I think also in the more advanced >700 jump range but don't have the statistics to prove that. ciel bleu, Saskia

Yup. Even older Atoms than that are freefly friendly. Just make sure you take a good look at the walrus teeth or the single "tuckflap" that closes the main container, if it still fits good enough/is straight and stiff enough to properly stay closed. Cheap fix if it needs replacing though. ciel bleu, Saskia

yup, with wingsuit, sitfly, tandem, airplane. Still cool everytime it happens

Mostly, creditcard Now I usually get all my jumps paid for (coach jumps, video for teams), and get paid for a lot of them (tandem video). Doing tandemvideo pays for my gear and stuff, so while I don't do many funjumps anymore (although all jumps are fun ), I do jump frequently and "free". But I racked up a good debt to get here... I did staticline though as that was by far the cheapest way to learn to skydive (3 tandems? why?). Also I learned to pack real quick (actually before I got to jump, due to too much wind for 2 weeks) so that saved me money on packjobs and every now and then I packed for others too. ciel bleu, Saskia

Exercise if you're bored: In our latest DZ vid, there is footage from a bunch of CX105 cameras with HD lenses, one HC5 with a decent SD lens, one PC series camera with decent SD lens, one PC series camera with a crappy SD lens (single element lens), one contour HD, one go-pro hd and one other type small format camera. Basically, everything that's in use these days for tandem/team videos. The footage from the PC series cameras had to be re-sized 135% to fit the widescreen vid, so not a totally fair comparison there. But tell me you can't see the difference between HD camera with decent lenses and the small format cameras... click ciel bleu, Saskia

C-if/when the you start jumping camera, you'll likely still want a non-camera helmet around anyway, for tunnel use and non-camera jumps. ciel bleu, Saskia

Why do you even put a crappy SD lens on a nice HD camera? One that's topmounted even? I'd get rid of the cookies and get a opteka .3 instead. ciel bleu, Saskia

Like this? @4:01 This gentleman is our oldest jumper (76? may be older), he still jumps frequently, and still has that same rig. It has a belly "sausage" shaped thing to pull, with ripcord. ciel bleu, Saskia

Oh yeah, I still haven't seen a couch at Bottrop (I think) ciel bleu, Saskia

I've seen various 'semi-geeky' things attached, use to be a guy with the head of a rubber chicken attached...looked funny as hell sticking out of the BOC spandex. I've seen an older guy (American?) with a skulls theme om his rig, including a hard-plastic skull as a hackey ciel bleu, Saskia

Try a search for Parasport Italia customer service. Hint: it's non-existant. If you're really set on buying a digital alti as a newbie, better get a L&B or Alti2 one. Really. Other course of action might be to buy a analog alti of choice as these are generally more reliable, are much cheaper and will generally last you forever, and buy a audible alti with logbook function later or now. You'll want a beeper later on anyway. And if you buy a Neptune or N3 you can use it as either. If you do buy an audible at a low number of jumps, be sure to set it at 500ft LOWER than your planned break-off and opening altitudes, so as not to screw up your altitude awareness (if you hear it go off and you weren't already done or doing what you should have been doing, give yourself a mental whack on the head and pay more attention next jump). ciel bleu, Saskia

From what I've done and seen, we definitely flake the student canopies cell by cell and the sport mains down to 135/120 sqft or so, but the smaller ones especially the crossbraced ones are hard to flake so these get shaken. I tend to just shake my 120 and 124 and they fall into place by themselves except for the steering lines, I also make sure the lines are on the inside and fabric on the outside for every line group. But have to flake my vengeance 135 a bit more. If I pack a student canopy it gets flaked cell by cell because you can tell it is necessary as the bigger canopies do not fall into place well. So, for the forseeable future at least, stick to flaking ciel bleu, Saskia

I've had some good-to-decent experiences with various knock-off M-series batteries, decent with F, very very bad with S and N and I've given up with H because sony made the connection quite difficult to emulate, at first requiring a firewire connection as well I do have a cheap charger though, very important to have a separate charger if you have multiple batteries. Yes sony is expensive, but at least they usually work... For my nikon DSLRs, knock-offs are fine, for my older Canon DSLRs they were fine, but for my sony videocams I stick to original. YMMV. ciel bleu, Saskia

We still got a few around in these parts, should be a manual on paper at least here somewhere, I can ask around if you really can't find it elsewhere/digitally. I won a bet a few years back about a rig for sale that had a predator reserve in it: me: It's got 9 cells... very very experienced jumper: No it doesn't why would anyone make a 9cell sports reserve? No such thing. me: It's got 9 cells... jumper starts counting: Hum. I actually think that rig is still for sale... Anyone want a 9cell reserve? ciel bleu, Saskia

Make sure though you get it at a ~ 2.0 wingloading, otherwise it'll be too hard to hold your frontrisers down for long. ciel bleu, Saskia

Ask ToraTora, specifically Martijn van Dam often coaches at Bottrop. ciel bleu, Saskia

Freefly or belly? ciel bleu, Saskia