arai

I noticed a few times while browseing the forums that there are a few other people in visual effects or employed in some form of 3d production here, so I thought I'd put up some of my images. feel free to do the same. WWII aircraft are a bit of a hobby of mine now... wouldnt it be cool to jump out of a Lancaster?!

great city if you like the outdoors. granted it does rain a lot in the winter, but when the weather gets better it really is great. when the conditions are right I can snowboard, mountainbike, kayak, kiteboard, mountain climb, skydive, surf, etc etc all in the same week. It isnt cheap though, I dont really know the surrounding area prices so I cant really comment on that, but downtown appartments I think are around the 250ish for a 1 bedroom and over 300-350ish for a two bedroom.

you're right, that is scary

nice.. .heres mine. or at least bikes that I've owned, I dont still have them all

I find I do better with activities. Im not much of a go for a jog runner, as the time seems to trickle by. But I'll play soccer for 2 hours running hard the whole time and its over just like that and I want to keep playing. different activities for different people i guess. I keep in shape, through the gym, and soccer, basketball, mountainbiking, snowboarding etc etc that kind of stuff.

ouch.. I'm guessing you first saw the fence when we can hear that first "ahhh". those little buggers blend in pretty good when in the video anyway.

thanks, I was thinking it might be early for a place like rantoul but thought I'd ask for advice from more experienced jumpers. Like I said I'll have about 60 dives by then but I know thats still infant numbers when it comes to skydiving.

I'm thinking of funding it with a nice tax return, and I dont know if it will be here my march. Is there any reason for march? just the weather?

I hadnt seen that one yet (thanks). I'm currently going through the calender, sometimes with the amount of stuff listed its hard to sort out the bigger boogies as its the first I've heard of them all, and If I do my trip through a boogie I'd like it to be a decent sized one where I can get in a lot of days of jumping. their website seems to be down but I'll try again later. cheers

any suggestions for a weeklong skydiving trip? I'm trying to put together a trip for june or july for a week and just forget about work and crap and jump out of planes. so far I've been thinking two ways which are pretty different 1: something like rantoul where I can go for a week and experience differnt aircraft, good parties and a lot of fun/getting to meet a lot of dz members or 2. something more layed back. I like the idea of just going to elsinore and staying in the bunkhouse and jumping/hanging out on the dz. I'm in the pacific northwest so I think option two is slightly cheaper, as I can get flights to LA more reasonable. I'm a new jumper and should have about 60 jumps by the time rantoul comes around

haha and in addition to the 1 million dollar asking price, he qualifies it by saying that only attrative females under 35 may apply. I think he'll quicky find that its him who is going to need to pay for the company of an attractive girl under 35.

but if thinner air allowed you to fall faster, wouldnt it also provide less "grab" for your canopy to provide a hard opening? I would have thought the thicker the air the more likely a hard opening would occur.

haha you must be close. we had a 27 day stretch with rain everyday, almost broke the record, it stopped one day short of it, then promptly started again.

I'd love to take a look at it. it sounds like torrent copies are okay'd, is there any plans to get a torrent or something going? When the new prints come out I'll either buy one or if the torrent is good enough I'll just donate some money to show support.

I dont know a full and complete version of wingsuit history but I imagine it started out with just a membrane between the arm and torso, which then moved into a cell system which turned the whole body into a wing platform. the latest suits seem to use that concept further by including stiffners in the suits to better hold a wing shape and keep it more consistant. the leap from fabric span to turning that into a wingsuit (cell enclosure) was a pretty solid leap in performance gains (I imagine), and the ability to better retain an airfoil shape in flight I'm is further optimizeing that. so whats next? what kind of things do you think will be incorperated into the next gen suits? will different airfoils start to be designed for different applications? (fall rate vs glide distance) etc. are we approaching the end of a curve which see's performace gains come at smaller and smaller increments, or can suit designers still manage to come up with ways to optimize that quite limited wing surface area that comes with putting a suit on a person? -arai-

I never saw any booing of the american team, I saw cheering for their opposition and booing for jack johnson. but i did miss a game or two

canuck what happened? (the classless comment) I tried to watch as many games as I could and I know that canada was chearing any team playing against the US. I've seen some articles mentioning why canada was booing the us team and it totally left out what was my understanding of the whole reason the us started getting boed. At the end of the canada/us game where canada was sliding a puck into an empty net for the win, Jack Johnson threw an super cheap elbow and ( I think) should have been suspended for a game.) after that canada cheared hard for any US opponant, and boed any time jack johnson touched the puck. what your talking about sounds harsher though so I'm curious as to what happened.

I dont even have an ipod but after looking at them the past little bit I dont get where this "3 times the price" comes from. I mean, yeah I guess its possible that they are 3 times the price, but they usually have 10 times the storage. right now I can get a 4gig nano for 299 cdn, looking at the stores it was something like 129-179 for a 256 or 512mb in something comparable. I found 1 or two that was close in storage without being too far off in price but nothing drastic. it helps that apple also has a fairly well developed computer to ipod interface. I dont think ipods are fashion as much as those stupid boots are. sure they are trendy but they serve the purpose of a portable music player that is comprarable in price to the others in the market, and quite often have more storage.

haha ..hey, dont blame me for your addiction I found it funny everytime he dives or pops up I was thinking about arching or dearching hips or straightening legs for maximum drive as he tried for that far 50 nut. Is a squirrel considered a mono-wing or a tri?

if your bored at work http://www.swooptonuts.com/ might do better in the bonfire but I thought awingsuiter might find it funnier.

well I had mentioned wingsuit flying to my mom and showed her some of the stuff I was looking at and she managed to get a copy of "skyflying wingsuits in motion" for me for christmas. Looks like a lot of great info so thanks to Scott for pointing me in that direction. maybe next christmas I'll be ready for the actual suit ;) -arai-

wingsuit base is so nice to watch, because you really get a sense of how fast those bastards are moving. great vids -arai-

oh I'm just wondering at order time. lets say I email them with a credit card and a go ahead on a v-1 order, with an attached picture that mentions "any chance of getting a wingtip color variation like this attached pic?"

I'm curious as to how much a customer can request customizations on the suit color wise? I know everyone wants to have their own personalized suits so I'm just wondering if anyone has had experiences with asking for small changes? I'm guessing there is a balance between providing a favor for a client and just being too much work to incorperate without added costs to the suit. It seems like all the companies have representatives on this forum and that its still a small enough industry that you see really good customer service and feedback and a real sense of those companies happy to do fellow divers a favor. I enjoy messing around with photoshop and was just curious if the types of changes I've included in the pics here are easy things to be added? Anyway, just messing around on a friday morning. I guess the top of my black suits is actually just a combination that is possible, I just like the wingtip stripes in the other two. I could play around for days trying to decide on a scheme I liked. note: I'm not anywhere near ready for a purchase or flight of a wingsuit, but its still fun to do this kind of stuff. And even though it will be awhile until purchase, I can definatly say that this is a great place to establish a relationship with the suit makers. I've found it really good to both see the reviews and customer appreciation and feedback when users here are buying suits. -arai- if anyone wants to see what their colors would look like on the pic just let me know, its hard sometimes to look at the coloring program as it lacks the detail the suit has

I'm curious how all you tunnel rats afford tunnel time, I'm seeing posts throughout this forum with quotes of 20hr... even 45 hours of tunnel time. just based on looking at most tunnel sites it seems to be about 10 bucks a minute, or 600 an hour. if you were paying block rates for 45 hours thats over 26000 dollars. Is it like snowboarders where they will work at a resort to get free lift tickets and therefore dont really need 1600$ for a seasons pass because it is free? I'd have to imagine most tunnel rats with those types of hours have to be trading a case of beer or two for some favors from tunnel owners, or work at a tunnel. Does anyone actually afford 45 hours of tunnel time by just spending all their money from a regular job at the tunnel? just curious