brettski74

Perhaps this is a little clearer. If you want to put a url in, the simplest way is to just put url tags around it like this: [url]http://youtube.com/watch?v=eI0pN9-ETBk[/url] which produces something like this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eI0pN9-ETBk If you want to get trickier, you can control the text that is displayed for your link to make it something a little more pretty, like this: Hey everyone, check out this [url http://youtube.com/watch?v=eI0pN9-ETBk]cool wind tunnel video[/url]! Which will produce something like this: Hey everyone, check out this cool wind tunnel video! If you want more help on how to do different stuff in your posts, click on the Get Markup Help link just above where you enter the text for your posts. Edit: Made prettier. [Wink]

The $10K comment was based on if you had to acquire a special rig for someone bigger and heavier, which I wasn't sure was going to be the case. Based on the above responses, there seem like plenty of people around your height and weight that have made it into the sport, so you're not going to need $10K. Just call some dropzones and talk to some people.

I stayed in one of the team rooms at Eloy last January. I don't know how bright you expect the light to be, but it was fine to read by. There was a fridge, microwave and heater as well.

Hypothetically speaking, why aren't you having this discussion with your instructors who know you, your dropzone, your skill level and your goals? If you are, why would you consider the opinions of some anonymous person you've never met over what your instructors are telling you? I'm not an AFFI and probably won't be one for a long time if ever, but you might want to consider why you're asking for advice here that you should be getting much closer to home.

Ask around a few dropzones, first, if you haven't already. Talk to the instructors, not just the manifest staff. It's not clear whether you've actually done this or just read their websites. Maybe you'll find some alternatives. There's not only tandem. There's also AFF, IAD and static line options. They may be more accessible to people outside the normal size and weight limits. Off-hand, I'm not sure of the weight and opening shock limits of all sport rigs out there, but if you're going to be outside of those limits, also, then maybe someone could adapt a tandem harness with a larger sport container on it, although I'm not sure how that would affect the TSO. Being one-off gear, I'd expect the costs to be exceedingly high. How sure are you that you want to do this? Are you $10K sure? More likely a normal sport rig will handle it, but you may have a hard time finding something that will fit someone your height. Like I said, start by talking to instructors at a few dropzones - preferably larger ones. If travel anywhere is not a problem, the first idea that comes to my mind is Florida. There are a number of large, well-respected dropzones down there like Deland, Z-Hills, Lake Wales, etc. as well as several gear manufacturers including United Parachute Technologies, Mirage Systems and Performance Designs. One final option that you might like to consider is a wind tunnel. That won't give you the exit, the deployment, the canopy ride or the landing, but it is quite close to the sensation of freefall. There are several tunnels down the east coast. See bodyflight.net for more details on where to find these and what the costs and other requirements may be.

I'm not an instructor, but you appear to be a student, so I'm not going to tell you what you should do. Please go and talk to your instructors about this. In particular, ask them whether you should cut away if there's nothing out of the main container.

If its mid january, it may be going on everyday due to the canadian invasion going on during that time. Call manifest and ask. It'll go up mornings and evenings if the weather conditions are good and there's enough people. This year's invasion goes from January 4 to January 20, 2008. If you're at the DZ, there should be a sign-up sheet outside manifest. At least there was last year. Come and visit us over at Little Canada if you need to find some more people to get a load going up. Like Remster said, there will probably be a bunch of crazy Canucks hurling themselves off the balloon during those two weeks. Jumps are at first and last light and generally require virtually no wind or cloud. A light breeze may ground the balloon, so you may be lucky and get up on your first go, or you could get breezed out a couple of times before you get to go. I don't recall seeing any evening loads go up last year - it was all morning loads that I remember. At the very least, morning loads were much more common.

This is an interesting point. Again, it will depend on the terms of your employment contract as to how this applies, but most employment contracts for full-time employees that I've seen in the last ten years seem to expect that the employer owns everything you ever do, anytime, anywhere, so taht point may be moot. I even had one client since I've been independent try to assert a similar position. That was an interesting negotiation! If the IP clauses are unsatisfactory, again, negotiate better ones or walk away. I'd still suggest purchasing a separate machine for work and factoring the cost into my salary demands, so if your work contract does allow for independent thought outside of work, you can still do it on your personal, non-work machine.

When I was a full-time employee, there were still employment contracts that applied and I somehow doubt if that's changed in two years. If anything, they seemed to be getting more draconian over the years rather than disappearing, so I don't see how the contract negotiation points that BIGUN raised do not apply. Maybe you would want to tone down a little, since it less common to negotiate the finer points of full-time employment contracts, however, you're not stuck with the standard employment contract if you don't like it. How much bargaining power you have to change it will depend on how desirable you are for them as an employee and what competition you have for the position/s. I've been independent for the past couple of years, but still, I've yet to find a client who hasn't provided a computer for me to work on. Maybe it's because I typically only contract to large companies, but generally they're not usually comfortable with too many, if any uncontrolled machines on their network. Everyone's already noted the security concerns, software concerns, etc My current client has provided me with a laptop on which I work from home more than half the time. I'll also note that without knowing exactly what you do, it's difficult to give a definitive answer on what I'd think . Being in "IT" is about as broad a statement as being in "employment". [Wink] You *could* buy a new separate machine only for work use. In fact, if it was me, I'd probably suggest that this is the only way to go. You could probably claim this as a tax deduction, but people always seem to talk about tax deductions like free money. They're not. You only get the tax back. I've no idea what the tax rates are in your part of the world, but if the tax rate is 40%, you still have to come up with 60% of the cost out of the same money you would have had anyway. By having you provide your own laptop and software, the company is saving themselves a bunch of money. You need to factor this into the salary you demand. I'd factor in the cost of a new laptop every two years, cost of all of the likely software that you'll likely need including the cost of upgrades every 2 years. There's also the maintenance cost. They're probably going to expect a similar level of productivity to any other consultancies despite the fact that you're going to be installing all of your own software, troubleshooting all of your networking problems, etc. I'd factor in at least a few thousand dollars for that work/risk. Bottom line, I'd be expecting the salary to be perhaps 5000-10000 per year higher than I'm being offered for a similar job elsewhere where my employer provided the hardware and software. You described the remuneration and bonuses as "OK", so I'm guessing that they're not hitting this benchmark. Other points to make sure are covered in your employment contract. If you own the computer, you are free to install whatever software you deem fit and to refuse installation of any software you deem unfit. Get that in writing. Failing that, at least agree in writing on a list of software that shall be installed on your machine and include a clause to say that any amendments to this list will be agreed in writing by both parties and that you are not under any obligation to accept such changes if you do not agree. Bottom line, I don't think you're being inflexible. It sounds like you're uncomfortable with this and I'd want to make sure I had a strong, written understanding between myself and my employer before proceeding in such a manner. If you're prospective employer can't understand that, then I'd be concerned that they're possibly a bunch of backyard cowboys who will shaft you at every opportunity. Do you really need this job?

Looking around for something else and came across this crazy personal flight device question on Yahoo! answers. I was tempted to answer... hell! Who am I kidding? I just went ahead and answered anyway. Sounds like a school kid, but gave me a laugh anyway.

How much does a marketing job like this pay? [Crazy]

I don't think you'll go wrong with either Cookie or Bonehead. I have a Bonehead Mindwarp. The build quality and comfort is excellent. I personally haven't worn a Cookie in the air, but I've seen a lot of them, tried one on once or twice and never heard anything but good words about them. I personally like the Cookie camera boxes better than the bonehead boxes, but I believe that you can probably fit a cookie box onto a BH helmet if you really want. Another helmet that you might consider is a Rawa. I've ordered one to use as a camera helmet, but haven't received it yet. You'll probably get faster turnaround on ordering a Cookie or BH helmet. I selected the Rawa over the Cookie I was also considering based on solid reputation for quality and comfort and lower prices than an equivalent Cookie setup - and I'm not in a rush. Keep in mind, however, that this is second-hand information based on talking to other people and not first hand experience of my own.

I'm surprised it took this many posts to come to that realization. [Crazy]

Yes - but statistics there are currently very much in your favour. I'm not saying there aren't cool skydiver girls out there - there definitely are, but the average mal skydiver has at least as good a chance of finding a "ready-made" skydiver girlfriend as he has of making one by turning a whuffo.

I like the way you're thinking, but could you perhaps direct the rest of us to these dropzones that feature hot naked women?

Unless of course you are Trevor Immelman and just won $1.4 million at Sun City (South Africa) with your putter.[Cool] Whoah! That's a lot of jump tickets!

Disclaimer: I am a rank beginner in the skydiving videography arena, but having recently gone through the same research both here and elsewhere, here's my $0.142 worth... The HC48 is similar to the HC42, it's just a couple of year models later. One thing to be aware of is that beginning with the HC46, these models dropped the LANC port, so neither the HC46 or HC48 have them, so if you're wanting to use CamEye or Hypeye or similar, you are out of luck. The HC42 has the LANC port, so you can use CamEye/Hypeye, but they moved several of the ports, including the DV in/out port onto a dock which gives you something else to cart around and lose/break. In my entirely non-expert opinion, if you're considering a Sony HC4x handycam, your best bet is the even earlier model - the HC40. This has the LANC port and all the ports are on the camera. Nothing else to lose or break. Of course, you'll have to search around on places like eBay, Craigslist, etc to find one, but it'll also be cheaper than new so you can maybe spend the dollars you save on better helmet/hardware or jumps. Similar comments apply to the HC3x line. The main differences I'm aware of are slightly lower cost, a lower resolution CCD and lack of still picture capability, but you probably don't care about that. Realistically, if I want to take stills, I'll use a proper still camera. I can't comment on durability as compared to the PC series. There certainly are people who question their durability, however, there seem to be about as many who say they're fine and I've met a few people who've been flying them for years. In any case, they certainly look less sturdy than the PC series, so a fully enclosed camera box may not be a bad idea if you're not already considering it.

Toogs rocks! It was my home away from home DZ during 4.5 months in Oz earlier this year. Good plane. Great people. Great skills. Organized freefly loads. Bigway weekends. CRW Dawgs, including a few from the recent Australian and World CRW records. Learning curve camps. And don't forget Maureen's food, the bar and the foosball table. To get there from the Gold Coast, you'll want to head north towards Brisbane, then west through Ipswich onto the Warrego highway and turn off on the road to Wivenhoe Dam and Esk. Toogoolawah is about 20 minutes past Esk. The DZ is about 2 minutes past the town of Toogoolawah. It's probably somewhere between 2 and 3 hours drive, depending on where you are on the coast. That said, Squeak's right that there are closer dropzones to the Gold Coast. Pimpama is the closest one. Byron Bay is probably the closest turbine DZ. Willowbank is in the same general direction from you to Ramblers, but probably about 45 minutes closer. You will probably find a lot more of the Australian skydiver crowd at SkySurfer.

So does being a horse trainer or a mechanic or a doctor or someone who's really good at darts. You're special... just like everyone else. [Crazy] And you get this from where? Sure there are some women out there who will be intrigued if they find out you're a skydiver. There are others who couldn't give a shit. If you wander around talking to people about like you think it makes you special or different or better, you'll just come off like you're up yourself, and nobody likes that. That's about the most accurate thing you said in that post. Skydiving makes for a useful conversation starter on the odd occasion, but it's not like you can just walk up to people (male or female) and tell them you're a skydiver and have them instantly think you're the coolest thing since sliced cheese. Read this thread and see what the average skydiver experience is in talking about skydiving to their non-skydiver friends, family and colleagues. Realistically, if you were a ladies man before you started skydiving, then you'll still be a ladies man after becoming a skydiver. If you had trouble with the ladies before you became a skydiver, simply becoming a skydiver won't help you. You'll still need to learn how to meet women and that's a whole separate skill.

I'd hate to see you learning the wrong thing... You're out first because you're the only belly flyer, NOT because you're a solo. Typically, most dropzones put belly flyers out before freeflyers, but within those, larger groups go before smaller groups. You were actually the last of the belly flyers. It just happened that you were also the only one and therefore first.

Why would they be in sit? Your original drawing showed the two lower flyers in a horizontal attitude, so that would be back-flying. Sit-flying is vertical, so wouldn't match your drawing. I have been in a 3-way hybrid with the hanger where we rolled the whole formation. I have video, too! As far as building this, I'm no head-down expert as I currently only fly head-up, but I was wondering if you could build it by taking three head-downers, the outside flyers face in, the centre guy takes their chest straps, the outside guys take grips on each other hands/arms and then the outside guys do a quick transition to backflying. I imagine it would be difficult and the centre guy would have to take a reasonable amount of weight during the transition which would make keeping the whole thing balanced rather difficult, but would be kinda cool to see.

It's not a lens. It's a filter. Yes, the science is sound. Think of infra-red light as just another colour, albeit one that the human eye cannot see. Some fabrics while effective at blocking visible light may transmit some infra-red light. The filter just helps your camera in night-shot mode to pick this stuff up by filtering out all the "noise" from the visible light so you can concentrate on just the infra-red image that you want to see. Generally speaking, natural fibres are just as impervious to infra-red light as they are to visible light, so things like cotton, wool, etc won't help. Some synthetic fibres will transmit some infra-red light, but the dyes in the fabric may not. I suspect that you'll find it works best with thin, light-coloured synthetic materials, in which case, you'll probably see almost as much through the fabric with the naked eye - the intra-red filter will just allow your camera to produce a clearer b+w image of what you already see through the fabric. There are several manufacturers and/or dealers out there that make these, but I mostly agree with mccordia. The number of people walking around with appropriate clothes to take advantage of this is going to be small, except in summer, and the ones that are dressed "appropriately"... well, you may not need a video camera and fancy filter, anyway. Aside from a few minutes of party trick fun, I don't see the point. If you really want to see what's under someone's clothes, you'd probably do better by just asking them. [Wink]

I was told by a Wings dealer a few months ago that they are working on the skyhook and doing drop tests and such, but there's no official announcement nor any indication of if/when skyhook equipped Wings containers may become available, so for the moment, the answer is still no. That same Wings dealer told me that if I really wanted a skyhook equippped container, my best bet at that time was to buy a Vector 3 from another dealer. Since then, Javelin has become a second option. If you want more, you probably just have to wait.

It does. The largest DZ in Europe generally uses it as their guide for exit seperation... I don't know that I can do any more.[Unimpressed] Maybe this will help. The assertion is that pschologically, having a discussion entitled The "45 degree rule" for exit separation DOES NOT WORK may in the long term reinforce the existence of this rule in the minds of some people. It may be more effective to stop talking about the incorrectness of the 45 degree rule and concentrate on just talking about valid methods.

I assume that you're talking about bodyflight.net. What gaps do you see? What additional things are you looking for in a tunnel locator? Ratings perhaps?