ficus

Tommy, Hope you enjoyed the GREAT BIG HUGE FUCKING FIRE we made in your honor last night. It was worth getting Burked over. Blue skies buddy, I'm glad we got to become friends. Ficus

I use a FTP with both video (HC96) and still (XTi) mounted on top. I do not have the wide plate. It works pretty well but would probably be a little nicer if I had the wide plate. Still, it is very doable and at least 3 people at my DZ are using this configuration (one even has a HC5 -- in a box -- for his video camera).

I bought my first rig for $3500. I bought a Cypres with 4 years left on it for $450. ~250 jumps later I sold it on dropzone.com for $3700. The other cost you are not factoring in is this: how many jumps did you do on rental gear while you were waiting for your Infinity to be built? Buying a new rig as an experienced jumper is not as big of a deal because you generally have a rig you can use while you are waiting for your custom-made one. As with any purchase, only you can decide whether the extra $1000 was worth it to you. The problem I have is that the average new jumper is not even capable of making that decision rationally, and they are already being financially pounded from all sides by the cost of AFF, all kinds of new gear, "first" beer, etc.

Encouraging a new jumper to buy all new gear ranges from unethical to foolish depending on who's making the recommendation. I've barely just started skydiving, and already I can't count the number of times I've seen someone scrub in on their 30th jump and get their beautiful brand new container all scuffed up. Now it's a year later and the 210 that originally went in the container is a 170. The closing loop is pretty short, the rig looks funny from the small main that's in it, and your $2300 container is now worth maybe $1300 on the dz.com classifieds. Whether you can afford it or not, this is just throwing money away. Buy a used rig, put a couple hundred jumps on it, sell it for a little less than you paid for it, and then decide what you want. You will have a lot more experience at your disposal with which to decide what to do next.

If it's an "unapproved parachute system", then the FAR is pretty clear that the Canadian rules apply, and as he says, the rig is legal to jump in Canada. If it's not "unapproved", then what's the problem?

You can jump it (for the next 20 days). SEC. 105.49 FOREIGN PARACHUTISTS AND EQUIPMENT (a) No person may conduct a parachute operation, and no pilot in command of an aircraft may allow a parachute operation to be conducted from that aircraft with an unapproved foreign parachute system unless— (1) The parachute system is worn by a foreign para- chutist who is the owner of that system. (2) The parachute system is of a single-harness dual parachute type. (3) The parachute system meets the civil aviation authority requirements of the foreign parachutist’s country. (4) All foreign non-approved parachutes deployed by a foreign parachutist during a parachute opera- tion conducted under this section shall be packed as follows— (i) The main parachute must be packed by the for- eign parachutist making the next parachute jump with that parachute, a certificated para- chute rigger, or any other person acceptable to the Administrator. (ii) The reserve parachute must be packed in accor- dance with the foreign parachutist’s civil aviation authority requirements, by a certificated para- chute rigger, or any other person acceptable to the Administrator.

Grand Marnier is pretty good in whipped cream. Just use it in place of the vanilla extract you might otherwise add.

Dude, no. Without commenting at all on anything else in this post, come on. You know this is wrong.

Wow, those are some sweet pics! What's the elevation at the launch point?

5.6 http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40204628.html

JP, Most of your argument so far in this thread has been an appeal to authority. I'd say Bill Cole has the trump card in that suit, as far as this discussion is concerned. I am curious to read your comments on his post.

Well wishes to the gimp twins!

I met Michelle last Christmas in Eloy. We emailed back and forth a bit while she was still living in Idaho, talking about plans for Lost Prairie. She would send me sweet and funny messages from time to time. I could go on and on. Rest in peace Mitchy, and to everyone else we lost this weekend.

http://www.uspa.org/publications/manuals.pdf/SIM2007.pdf Read the section on high altitude jumps. The Cliffs Notes version: terminal velocity is higher in thinner air.

I think minimum recommendations should apply to absolutely everyone. That said, I find jump numbers to vary from serviceable to useless as minimum recommendations. In a perfect world, all minimum recommendations would come in the form of something like billvon's indispensable downsizing checklist. The genius in Bill's checklist is that it not only provides a tool with which one can measure one's current skill (and comfort) level, but also a path to learning the skills necessary to progress. Back here in the non-perfect world, I don't know if I could come up with an equivalent list for beginning camera flying. But I think we (and by we I mean someone far more experienced and gifted in instruction than me) could do better than the current state of the art, which appears to be "throw yourself out of an airplane 200 times". How do you even measure awareness in the sky in a "You should be able to..." way? I think it could only be good to try to figure that out.

There were a couple such jumps quite a while before Greg did it, like the ones by Bill Cole, who posts here as chuteless.

I bought an old velcro BASE rig for ground launching. Make a replacement shrivel flap that is much wider than the original one and you even have a nice little stash bag.

You don't use a quick release? I could imagine bolting the right video camera on without too much trouble, but I don't know of any still camera that you can change the batteries on without unscrewing it from the helmet. Seems like at best you are going to wear on the threads of the camera's tripod mount, and at worst you have to re-sight the thing every time you want to change the battery.

Nice one Leah!

All of my cutaways were intentional, just for the record.... The time of intent will be a key factor when your case goes to trial.

The wind has, for the most part, still not let up so far this year. I did a couple on Saturday in a nice 28-33mph. We got a little respite on Sunday, though, and the surf was briefly up. On Saturday night, though, we few who remained dragged a couch out into the landing area and watched the meteor shower, and that was worth the abbreviated jump schedule. I've got some Davis tickets to burn through, so you may see me over there sometime soon.

Intentional cutaway, obviously.

Have a good one, you crazy bastard.

The main thing is to strike the right balance in the width of the rolled up canopy before you S-fold it. Too wide and you end up shoving everything all over the place to get the second side in; too narrow and you have bulk distribution problems in the bag, likely causing the canopy to swim around side to side when you close up. If you can get this right, it's not too hard to swing the bag around after filling the first corner and slide everything right in neatly. I like to see the center seam dead in the middle of the bag. I also know some people who put the top S-fold in the bag first and then fold the bottom half of the canopy into the bag and get very symmetrical distribution. Ficus

I recently moved from a Sabre2 190 to a 150. I was experiencing many of the same problems, more often than not opening in a full 360 during the first 10-15 jumps. I decided to reevaluate my packing technique, thinking that maybe I had developed some lazy habits that I could get away with on the bigger canopy, but not with the new one. I asked someone to pack my rig while I watched. (It didn't hurt my confidence in his technique that John LeBlanc was the one who showed him how to pack a Sabre2.) Long story short, I concluded that the main problem was that I was doing a poor job of putting the thing in the bag symmetrically. I was putting one side of the canopy in the bag first and controlling the other side poorly, causing it to not go in as cleanly as the first side. Ever since then, I have become lazier in the first half of the pack job (clear the D lines, quarter the slider, wrap it up), and more meticulous in S-folding and placing the canopy in the bag. My pack jobs are faster than ever, and my openings are better than ever: the best of both worlds. I have since done roughly another 80 jumps on this canopy, and while I have had a couple of off-heading openings, I'd say 95% of them have been less than 90 degrees, with the majority being less than 20 degrees. Hope this helps. Ficus