dragon2

Got plenty of pics of a Grand Caravan + tandem, our pilots have a sort of informal competition about who can get the plane the most vertical in a picture A few shots of this year: click click click click click ciel bleu, Saskia

What lind of links are on your canopy? If they are softlinks/slinks you want the fabric "hats" or have your rigger sew small "square" fabric bumpers and tack those to the softlinks. If you have small or large french links, either tubing or fabric bumpers will work, have your rigger tack them to the links. If you have french links do NOT jump without bumpers as you will damage your slider grommets which in turn will damage your lines, brass grommets are very soft, stainless a bit tougher but still. Check your grommets for sharp burrs if you jumped metal links without bumpers. However most jumps WANT the slider to come down over their head, if so, get mini risers (duh) and either get softlinks or mini french links with very small bumpers so the slider can come down easily. ciel bleu, Saskia

Sorry, don't have any pics. The ones i've seen are mostly Z1 helmets, with custom made quite small L bracket (for PC106/107/109, the smallest PC series made), very neat they allow the visor to open like normal, with metal fillers between helmet and bracket, a screw and bungee holding the camera in place. Very neat, very small, and still an I managed to lose his camera last season ciel bleu, Saskia

It's possible to put a topmount or sidemount on various fullface helmets, however one big downside to this is the fact you cannot cutaway the helmet. Making it a potential dangerous camerahelmet and one you're not allowed to jump on various DZs and in various countries. So, I'd only advise a camera helmet like that for people who absolutely need the fullface but still need cameras, like an AFF instructor or skysurf cameraflyer. IMO it's not good for beginner cameraflyers at all and for other purposes than AFF, there are much better and much safer choices. If you're set on a fullface there are a few manufacturers who have models like that ready-made, even so, there are much safer options out there. ciel bleu, Saskia

Might get more answers if you fill out your profile ciel bleu, Saskia

I read that one, loved it. ciel bleu, Saskia

Where does the drogue go? It depends with various TMs if you can exit right with them or not. With a few that would be unadvisable as they throw the drogue right away and leaving at exactly the same time you'll get a faceful of drogue. Leaving earlier is always safer when backfloating. If you miss the count and the TM leaves and you're late, STAY PUT and jump off after them, the drogue'll go the other way and you can still get a nice visual. Al least this vidiot knew he screwed up, seen a vid of a newbie tandem cameraflyer (with 1000 jumps...) ending up above the TM and blaming the TM for sliding under him Luckily that TM held onto the drogue until cameraflyer was out of the way, and cameraflyer found other things to film later on. ciel bleu, Saskia

I think usually the video flyer gets paid (a free slot) to do VIDEO, not stills, stills are usually a perk. Usually I'll take my stills camera along anyway and usually I won't ask anything for them to the people who paid my slot, if I happen to shoot other pics like exit pics, under canopy, I'll usually ask/get a pack job or a drink from those jumpers. I started asking for that as at some point i was spending 2 evenings at home emailing pics around after every weekend, for free If I'm not taking my stills camera on a jump when I'm not getting paid to do so, my prerogative. Can be due to weather conditions, my neck, or other reasons. Don't see why I should use close to EUR 3000 of extra equipment for free if I don't feel like it. Why would just paying a slot make up for that amount of money and extra potential risk to me? I'm not stingy with pictures, never have been, but also don't see why they should be 100% free as they are not 100% free for me either and cost me a lot of time to process and email around, which I usually do anyway but I feel that is above and beyond the call of duty Basically, if you cover someone's slot, it's best to talk about exactly WHAT that slot covers, beforehand. ciel bleu, Saskia

Right-o, in that case, good settings to jump with (if saturated pics is your goal), confusing name though, landscape setting, could mean 3 diferent things ciel bleu, Saskia

Then you've got very bad eyes Red eyes and other single element lenses are the worst, even on SD cameras there's a quality difference with better lenses but with HC5, CX105 or similar it's really a shame to use a lens like that, only reason I would if if I really needed to, like on a low profile sidemount CX105, but I'd prefer to topmount it and use a raynox. Best part is, the red-eye can be sold 2nd hand for the same money you'll pay for the raynox new, or even more

Beat me to it Not just regular skydivers can flip over, wingsuiters can also manage that, esp newbies or when you cutaway your armwings in freefall for some reason. I've been told my previous safire 135 flew just fine with a flipthrough ciel bleu, Saskia

Probably because pulling with your head low is going to hurt you sooner rather than later. ciel bleu, Saskia

That's why I liked having jumped my own packjob so soon, i was nervous as hell anyway for my first day of jumping so adding packing didn't make all that much of a difference stress-wise ciel bleu, Saskia

All the more reason to pack yourself ASAP and prevent that happening again ciel bleu, Saskia

Jumping isn't going to help you learn to pack, packing is Attend another packing class, ask a packer or upjumper to stay with you and help/supervise you packing on a not-so-busy day, or just start packing after you jump and ask someone(s) to check your every step a few times, it's not rocket science, you'll get it ciel bleu, Saskia

The only reason my 2nd jump wasn't my own packjob was because I was so chockful of adrenaline I had trouble packing after my first jump, after that, mostly packed my own, until I bought a new spectre in a smallish rig @ 75 jumps and had so many trouble packing that thing I ended up using packers a lot. So, my 3rd jump ever was my first jumped packjob. My 4rd and 5th jumps were tandems but after that I packed my own student canopies again after my jumps. Why not jump your own packjobs now? Why wait at all? A few smaller clubs i know even make you pack your first canopy, a good idea in my book (although it takes a lot of time, something not every DZ may want to spend at that time). ciel bleu, Saskia

a bit OT. but I have some exelent videos on this subject on my harddrive if anyone is interested... No thanx Hey this is actually a thread that HAS been OT for quite a long time, and that in the wingsuit forum, must be a ciel bleu, Saskia

Yeah, calling names comes off very mature and now I think completely different about your attitude. Listen, about 10.000 jumps here in this thread alone say you need 200 jumps MINIMUM, including a wingsuit manufacturer, various wingsuit instructors and factoryteamjumpers, and STILL you have to ask, but if you can find one jumper who says "yeah sure, 100 jumps is fine" then go ahead, you got your validation right. We're all just trying to keep you, the plane and other jumpers in one piece, pussyfooting around ain't gonna do that with an attitude like yours, but we've had plenty of lowtimer wingsuit accidents lately and if we can prevent you becoming a statistic I don't care what you call me (what's a female douchbag anyway? LOL). ciel bleu, Saskia

He's asking advice, nothing dumb about that. He SAYS he's asking for advice but also says he's gonna jump it anyway, basically, then asks for opinions of wingsuiters, well he's got mine. I'm not reading this as an honest question or asking for advice, had I done so my reply would've been different. However all I'm seeing is the "I've got mad skillz" that's been so popular lately, and he tops all I've seen so far with having just 35 jumps and having bought a Blade already (who sold him the suit anyway). Seriously, am I the only one who thinks "troll" here Also since he's not seen replying to any of this although granted that may have other reasons. ciel bleu, Saskia

You know, it's either "Wow." or "Troll.". THAT is how dumb this post of yours is coming across. Yeah sure. So you'd buy a Velocity too right now, if it's in your colors and you really really really like it and it was such a sweet deal 200 jumps done in a short time (= 1.5 years) is the absolute minimum, better is to have a few hundred jumps more. Then the blade is an advanced suit so a 100 jumps in a beginner/intermediate wingsuit would help you learn to fly instead of the suit flying you. Tunnel time means nothing for wingsuiting, you do not learn to exit, awareness of others, closing speed do's and don'ts, flying a circuit, not hindering/endagering anyone else while doing so, opening stable and on heading, dealing with (and preventing) linetwists in a wingsuit, and so on. 200 jumps is NOTHING, you'll see later on when you have more jumps, and 200 jumps can be done in a short time, which they should if you want to wingsuit. So, my advice to you is to shut up and jump. ciel bleu, Saskia

BTW it seems to be a typical American thing to want the photos so vibrant they seem (to me) over the top. Personally I like the saturation lower, and I never let the camera do any sharpening itself. It's both a taste thing and a workflow thing. For tandems you generally want the jpegs ready to go, meaning they are not as good for post-processing as a more "dull" jpg, but for yourself or for other jumps, shooting in RAW gives you the freedom te create those vibrant colors or not whatever you want and even just the non bumped-up jpegs offer some room to fiddle with them, more than the bumped-up jpegs do anyway. You'll see cameras that out-of-the-box take very saturated and sharpened pics, those are generally the cheaper models (Canon 300D-450D etc, Sony's DSLRs, Nikon D40-D60 etc). The more pro bodies you get the more "dull" the pics seem at factory settings and the more work there is for the photographer to make them look good, but they can be made to look better than the cheaper models can, providing you know what you're doing. The same goes for the shooting mode you choose: the picture modes can deliver decent pics but the "manual" modes can deliver better pics and do so more consistantly, provided you set the camera right. ciel bleu, Saskia

Forget landscape; it sets (among other hings) the aperture quite low so everything is sharp but this can mean you end up with a very long shutter speed. Stick to using TV mode and figure out the white balance, aperture, color mode, contrast, saturation etc you want, that way you get consistant results and not have the camera change settings around on you. Read your manual, it may state what specific settings the landscape mode uses. ciel bleu, Saskia

I did something like that a while ago to make some coloring drawings for kids: tandem exit wingsuit (guess who LOL) tandem our plane (Cars) FS3 exit This one was the most fun to do ciel bleu, Saskia

That totally depends on which exact lens it is and also on what your goal is for any particular jump. If it's a fixed focal lens, usually you can jump autofocus just fine and do not have to tape anything. For a zoom, tape/rubber band the zoom ring (if you use tape be sure to use the real gaffer tape, do not use ducktape or similar), most zooms used for skydiving (kitlenses) are slow to autofocus so you may want to use manual focus and tape the focusring up too, however if you have a better lens autofocus may work fine. ciel bleu, Saskia

Not sure what the precentage of creditcards is here in the Netherlands but most of the people I know do NOT have one. ciel bleu, Saskia