brettski74

Cool. Thanks for that. There's actually a page with links to the various cloud jumping rules and resources. Getting back to the topic of the thread, I did find it interesting that CASA (Australian equivalent of the FAA, not the spanish-built plane) rules state that: Seriously, anyone who thinks it's safe to deploy a parachute inside a cloud is kidding themselves, IMHO.

Hey mate! Good to see you on here. I was meaning to point this thread out to you a while ago, but kept forgetting. Blues...

I wondered about the name for a while, too, but then one day I took the scenic route along the lake shore, and there's one of those blue township signs you go past which says Burnaby, so I guess the name does make some sense.

Ask your instructors. Aside from their experience, they also know your abilities, your size and weight and will be in the best position to assist you. There's more to buying a rig then just the size of the main canopy.

Any ideas why the multiple fans instead of a larger single fan? Is it perhaps more efficient or something? I would imagine that multiple fans would complicate the control systems, so there must be some other pay-off if it's not improving the quality of the flow.

That would be head of government. The head of state of Canada is HM Queen Elizabeth II, represented by the Governor-General.

Is that like a dog pondering the origins of the universe while it paces around you car in the driveway?

It would depend on how the sensors are set up. When they were introduced in Australia many years ago, the information from the department of transport was that you would have to enter the intersection on red. If you were already in the intersection before the light turns red, it wouldn't trigger the camera. On a lot of intersections, you can see where the sensors are from the cuts they made into the pavement for the sensor coils. I'm not sure how close you need to be to them to register a reading, but I'd wager that you'd need to be pretty much over top of them to do so, so as long as you're not over top of that sensor when the light turns red, you're probably good, but don't quote me on that. Note also that they typically take 2 photos, about 2 seconds apart - just to prove that you did actually run the red light, as opposed to a misfire or something.

Actually, they would move left to overtake the cars coming on the on-ramp.

It implies nothing of the sort. If there is enough traffic on the road that more than one lane will allow the traffic to flow more efficiently, that will naturally happen because people will start overtaking slower vehicles. There is already a rule that requires you to yield to faster cars - it's called keep right unless overtaking. If you do that, you'll be yielding the lane to faster drivers whenever it is possible to do so. No weaving is required if everyone does this. Weaving is only required when inconsiderate people sit in the overtaking lane and you're forced to pass on their right.

In the spirit of cliche-sounding lines... a true leader would stand up and take the lead, not wait for someone to give it to them. Everyone knows. You can't shut me up about it - not that I made a big point of bringing it up in the first place. It first came up discussing weekend plans, but now it seems to come up fairly often if I do lunch with them. So far I don't mind, although the wuffo questions are starting to get a little tiresome.

Aerodium in Latvia is a blower. Check out Bodyflight.net for details of lots of tunnels all around the world. In general, the SkyVenture tunnels all suck whereas most of the others blow... air that is. :) (I just couldn't resist ). The Skyventure design is probably the most modern. My understanding is that they place the fans above the tunnel in order to avoid putting turbulent air into the tunnel. Basically, when an object moves through the air, it leaves turbulent air in it's wake. This includes the blades of a fan, but since the air being drawn into the tunnel by a SkyVenture design has not yet encountered the fan blades, they do not contribute any turbulence to the air stream. Instead, the turbulent air is travelling out the top, above the fans and the working area. From their website and photos, it also appears that they use multiple fans in order to help avoid dead spots either in the centre or near the walls. The design is supposedly better, but I haven't tried one, yet, so you'll have to wait until January when I can compare my experiences. You can read more about the design at SkyVenture's website. Blowers usually have some system of fixed vanes in front of the fan in order to try to smooth out the air flow and fill in the dead spot in the middle where the shaft of the fan is. Check Aero Interactive's web page, although the last time I looked, some of the more useful information that used to be there seems to have been removed. Note that although the name is similar, this is not the same mob that runs the Aerodium tunnel in Latvia, although I believe that they may have been involved in the initial construction.

I am racking my brain trying to work out how you came up with that out of what I wrote. I would disagree with that statement, too. It's ludicrous. If there are two cars - my car and the one in front of me, both overtaking a third car. If the front car happens to be travelling slower than me and doesn't pull over as soon as it is safe to do so, I have to wait additional time for there to be additional clearance for me to move right and go around the slower car. If the front car pulled over as soon as it was finished overtaking, I would not have to wait that additional time, thereby allowing better traffic flow. Sometimes, the gaps that appear in the right lane are not large enough for me to wait for clearance, move right, accelerate and be in front with enough clearance to move back into the overtaking lane, but such a gap may be plenty big enough for the slower car in front of me to move right and yield since we don't need the additional space for clearance at either end of the maneauvre. I've done this countless times to yield the overtaking lane to faster vehicles behind me without needing to slow down myself at all. This also contributes to better traffic flow. Both of these are examples of moving to the right lane when you have no need to be in the overtaking lane. Whatever you choose to believe about rear-view mirrors, it has happened countless times that I have been waiting behind a car for minutes, and when we finally do get clear, they don't move over. I'm fairly sure that you're not as aware of what's going on behind you on the highway as you think you are. You're human like the rest of us. Strongly disagree. If you're not overtaking somebody, get out of the lane. The drivers guide in both countries in which I have taken driving tests agree with me on that. I don't. That is why I check my mirrors. When I initiate an overtaking maneauvre on a moderately busy highway, there may be a group of 6 or more cars in front of me. There may be cars behind me. There may be other cars in the overtaking lane in front of me travelling slower than me. They are overtaking, and therefore have every right to be there, but I will have to wait behind them because they are slower than me. The faster car behind me may not be in the overtaking lane yet - maybe he/she has slipped up the right hand lane to get around other inconsiderate drivers who couldn't figure out when they had completed their overtaking maneauvre. Do I need to go on? You won't always be able to see this person coming when you pull out to overtake, and if you think you will, then you're kidding yourself. If you keep right unless overtaking, then you will be out of the way of faster traffic coming from behind whenever possible and when it's not possible, you'll be yielding the lane to them as soon as it does become possible.

Traffic flows better if the car isn't in the overtaking lane in the first place. People don't drive down the road staring into their mirrors. It often happens that by the time someone realizes that I'm there and going faster than them, I've already had ample time to move right, and overtake them there. Basically, if you're not overtaking, get out of the lane. I believe that everyone has as much right to use the road as anyone else. If I'm doing 130 and I come upon a group of cars doing 120, I am quite within my rights to check my mirrors and blind spot before moving left and overtaking them. If while I am in the middle of overtaking them, someone who wants to do 150 happens to come along, what would you have me do? I drive my own drive. I'm not going to speed up because someone is tailgating me. I'm also not going to attempt to move right until I have adequate space to do so, but as soon as such an opportunity is there, I do move left. I get stuck behind slower traffic at times, too, but when I do, I don't tailgate. It's a dangerous and unnecessary practice. The only time that it bugs me is when they're not using the lane to overtake.

My pet peeve is people who think there is such a thing as the fast lane. There's no such fucking thing! It's the over-fucking-taking lane, goddamnit! I don't give a fuck how fast you think you're going, if you're not overtaking someone, you don't belong there. Stop telling yourself it's the fast lane, and maybe you'll start driving like someone who has to share the road. You can be the idiot doing 150km/h and think you're really cool, but to the even bigger idiot doing 160, you're just a pain in the arse! And no, that car waaaaaaay up ahead there is not a good excuse to stay in the overtaking lane and chill. My second biggest peeve is the idiot who wants to do 150 who tailgates like fuck because he/she can't wait until I finish overtaking. Get over it. I'll move over once this car next to me is no longer next to me. You're doing 20-50km/h more than almost everyone else here, Fangio, you've got to expect to hit some back-markers, so just chill, ok. There'll be a passing opportunity at the next hairpin.

You're right about the flying aspect if you're trying to shoot video of someone, although, at my level, that wasn't why I was asked my instructors about the camera. In most other sports, you don't need the camera guy participating in the actual sport, so helmet cams are primarily used to give a first-person view of the sport. I know I can't fly well enough to be camera guy for a tandem or a team or anything. I just thought it would be cool to strap a camera to my head to show my wuffo friends what I see when I jump out of planes. It'll just have to wait a little, and by then, I probably will be good enough to shoot video for someone.

What about commercial air travel? I know ThinkGeek sells sets of iron-neodymium-boron rare-earth magnets, and one of the warnings that they give is that they are safe for air travel as packaged, but in general they should not be taken on planes. Has anyone looked into whether this could have any effect on whether this might affect carriage of a rig on normal commercial flights? A quick google search turned up a page on the QANTAS website about dangerous materials that had a reference to "magnetised materials" as being one class of dangerous goods.

Clicky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's not hard. See those buttons on the post reply form. Go nuts with them and then click Preview Post to see what they do. Have fun!

Similar rules in Canada - you need a C licence to jump a camera. I believe it's the same south of the border, but don't quote me on that. I once asked one of the instructors at my DZ about flying a camera. You see, I have this tiny little bullet-cam that I could attach to my helmet - about the size of a stick of lipstick. I figured that this might be fine, since it's so small and round that the chance of line entanglements and such would be barely any different than with the helmet alone. His first response, without skipping a beat was, "Are you willing to smash that against the wall right now?" Think of this... You're still learning and very new to the sport - as am I - and if the shit does hit the proverbial fan, you're in an unfamiliar environment and probably trying to calm down and think through your training. If you have lines tangled on your helmet, you may need to ditch the helmet in order to survive. Do you want to be the guy plummetting to your death and hesitating to do so because you're worried about several hundred dollars worth of electronics that's attached to it? FWIW, I think that bonehead make good stuff and will give you options for the future, but if you're buying that camera primarily for skydiving, you may want to hold off a while. A C licence is still a little way away for you, and by that time, there will likely be better cameras or better deals going than there are now.

Not a stupid question... Do you have your CYPRES 2 manual? It should have a card in it with a picture of a complete CYPRES equipped X-ray on it. I think the concern is that with all those wires and cables going between a few boxes, it might look a little suspicious to security personnel if they've never seen an X-ray of a rig, before. You should be fine, though. I've been on 7 flights with my CYPRES-equipped rig, and never had a problem.

Hmmm... Aerodium do have a mobile unit. I wonder how much it costs to rent.

You still haven't told us much about what happened. So far it seems that you perhaps initiated a 90 degree (toggle?) turn at 150' and you somehow hurt yourself. Someone mentioned getting a wrist looked at. How badly were you hurt? Did you break a wrist? Did you PLF? Anything else?

Hmmm... You seem to have listed Skydive Burnaby under British Columbia. Last time I looked, it was still in Ontario down by Lake Erie.

I fly in Aerodium near Sigulda, Latvia. I thought about this very thing the first time I went there, but the only conclusions I came to was that it would be a very bad thing. I doubt you would get enough elevation for a normal elevation in the surrounding air, and I'm fairly that the canopy would not lift you straight up, but probably forwards backwards or to the side, depending on your position, so you'd very probably fall off the airstream before you had anything close to normal inflation but plenty of elevation to die or be seriously injured in a fall. There's also a helluva lot of trees surrounding the tunnel here, and a highway about 50m away, so no real good landing area, either. I really wouldn't recommend it, and I doubt you'll find an operator anywhere that will let you go anywhere near their tunnel with a canopy.