AndyMan

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Everything posted by AndyMan

  1. I tried them and found most didn't survive the weekend. Your milleage may vary. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  2. The GM HUD systems came out in 1988 and have traditionally shown your speedometer and turn signals. The latest HUD system is more customizable, you can choose what goes up - speedometer, tach, speedometer AND tach, shift light, plus one more guage, like oil preasure, battery charge, fuel, etc. HUD has never REALLY taken off, many of the people that I've talked to have really disliked the systems and turned them off. The older systems I saw were annoying because even though it was projected onto the windshield, they were focussed at 12 inches from your nose. If you're looking at the road the HUD is out of focus. If you're looking at the HUD the road is out of focus. Unless they can fix that, I suspect it won't ever be really popular. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  3. It's in a different league, of course.... but I'm waiting for the Pontiac G-Force to come out... http://www.pontiac.com/pontiacjsp/grandprix/gforce/main.html?source=gpmaincont _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  4. Can anyone recomend a good website for tapes and electronic storage? I'm not interested in buying HUGE quantities, but don't want to pay $10/tape either... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  5. Here's mine: __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  6. Cool. I was worried you'd run out of velcro. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  7. Phreezone is correct on the flash. Just hit the flash button a few times to turn it off. The .5 is smaller then anything you can get from Sony, whose widest wide-angle is a .6. The .5 literally doubles the size of the frame, so I wouldn't say that its worthless. In terms of skydiving, yeah - the .5 definately is at the less-wide range of whats used in skydiving, and I think we told you that pretty clearly when you were looking for advice. I bought the .5 because I WANTED something at the narrow end of the wide-angle range, because I plan on getting a .3 later. In the thread were you were asking for recomendations, you specified that you didn't want any distortion. The .5 is one of the very few lenses out there that won't give ANY distortion. Look at the examples on this webpage. http://generationfreefly.com/diamond.3/ Even the .45 has a visible distortion of the roofline. The .5 won't give you any of that, which makes it a very nice lense. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  8. AndyMan

    Occupations

    Software Engineer (aka Java geek) for a small software company in Chicago. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  9. Yeah, and when you park your car it says on the back of the ticket that they're not responsible if your car is broken into. That doesn't make it the case. In the case of gross negligence, the waiver is not worth the paper its printed on. (I am not a lawyer, but I play on one TV) _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  10. Waivers are generally good things, I'm sure they cut down the number of lawsuits by huge numbers.... that said, in a case of gross negligence, or even criminal negligence they will NOT hold up. If an otter crashes killing everyone on board and the pilot turns out to have a cronic cocaine problem, the waiver will not stand. If a tandem goes in and the TM has a .89 blood/alcohol count, the waiver will not stand. The waiver will stand for most "standard" jumping accidents. Anybody sueing will have to show gross negligence to get around the waiver. In this case, I would imagine they'll argue it was entirely the pilots fault, that he was being reckless, that flying like that close to the ground is just plain irresponsible. Hopefuly all the evidence shows that wasn't the case. Every story has two sides, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with somebody presenting the other side. Impartial juries and judges will decide where in the middle the truth lies. That's how justice systems work, and the process itself is not a bad thing. It would only be a bad thing if innocent people get hung out to dry, which despite what the media tells us, usually doesn't happen. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  11. Christina, I really hope that works out well for you. It's a big decision, one that I don't think I'd ever recomend to anyone, but you seem to have come to it through honest retrospection... If you make it to Chicago make sure to look me up! _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  12. I learned that in one weeks time I can go from having nailed my head down, back to being a flailing idiot. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  13. When I was doing my first few jumps after my ankle injury, I'd intentionally pop up my stileto at the end of the flare, so that I'd be sure to have no forward movement when I finally landed. I'd keep the toggles all the way down, and the stileto set me down gently each time. What should you do? whatever works for you... _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  14. Voodoo, cause they just look so damn cool. They're pretty cumfy, too. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  15. Michele, that doesn't sound like the person I know... Nobody is saying you should buy a bunch of different canopies. None of us certainly did that, when we were looking for our first rig. You're lucky enough to have Square 1 right on your DZ who happens to have one of the best demo programs around. If you really feel it's important to jump a bunch of different canopies, then you can sign up for their demo program. I think that's overkill, though. Landing a big ole' conservative canopy is easy, and even if ya biff in it doesn't hurt that much. If you can't afford to take the canopy course, don't. Most skydivers get by just fine without it. This thread tells me that you're making the classic student mistake of thinking WAY too much about things... and I'm sure people's overly technical answers aren't helping. Billvon and Paul and even myself sometimes forget what the original question in the first place is... and I think that happened this time. Exactly which windmeter Paul buys so he can document exactly how each canopy flies doesn't help answer your question. The fact is that there are no simple rules when flying a canopy - it's the same as driving a car. We don't come up with rules that say "if you're driving a chevy cavalier, and are doing 45 mph, you need to begin braking 100 feet before the stop sign". When to start braking in your car is just something that you figure out when you start driving. If you start late and have to brake harder, or start early and have to ease up, it don't amount to a hill o' beans. Flying your canopy is the same thing - exactly when you enter the pattern and at exactly what point you make your turns is something that you'll figure out pretty quickly once you start flying a new canopy, but it certainly isn't worth losing any sleep over. Michele, go jump, don't downsize until you're perfectly comfortable with the one you're flying now, and when you do downsize, just go one size at a time so that the difference between canopies is small. If your DZ doesn't have these sizes of canopies available, I know that Square 1 does and trying them out doesn't cost much money at all. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  16. I bought a PC-120, and mounted it on a Skydance Velocity helmet. The helmet was one of the less expensive freefly/camera helmets, and the pc-120 is the high end of the pc series. I don't regret paying extra for the 120. The digital stills it takes are great, the clarity of the video looks great on my HDTV system at home. The bluetooth on the pc120 is still not practicle due to the lack of compatible devices, but the quality of the still and moving pictures is fantastic. The alternate to the PC120 is the PC101. You can get the PC120 for $1400, and the PC101 for $900. The price difference is significant. For the extra $500 you get a bigger lense, which means more light getting into the camera. You also get a larger CCD. The CCD is the digital equivalent of "film". It's the photo-receptive chip that transforms light into bits. Have a bigger CCD is the same as having a larger format of film, it'll capture more light giving a higher quality of picture. You also get the bluetooth, which is pretty much a non-feature for now. There have been reports that the bluetooth is incompatible with many other bluetooth devices. My thoughts on the Skydance Velocity is that it does the job. The standard PC series sidemount is actually a swivel base, which makes it easy to change the set up for freeflying or RW. There's a top mount platform available for a still camera, as well. Skydance has a full suite of accesories for the helmet. www.pia.com/skydance/velocityaccessories.htm _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  17. So he lost his USPA and CSPA membership for life because he jumped through clouds over an airport with traffic in the pattern? Sounds odd to me... I wonder what role the FAA had in having him suspended. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  18. What's with the wing mounted video camera? Looks cool. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  19. Geeze April, ya shoulda said something when I was down there! _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  20. Good vibes from me, too. I hope it's not too serious... Tell her I said 'get well...' _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  21. Do you think this is good advice, considering that when you're under your reserve, you're usually low, usually about to do an off-dz landing, and usually under a LOT of stress? Secondly, given that reserve f-111 fabric seems to age with packing rather then jumps, is it wise to heavily load f-111 fabric that will deteriorate even without "use"? _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  22. Absolutely nothing. I have two virgin jumpsuits. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  23. Yup, and that's why people fly jetliners into your office towers. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  24. There's so many cool things about skydiving. It's almost every time I jump that find something else to get excited about. Saturday, myself Val and Wildblue had planned a 3 way freefly jump out of the porter. We hadn't planned any specific exit, just follow Val out. I'd been sitting in the back seat of the Porter. Val left, Seth followed her, and I tried - finding out the hard way that I still had my seat belt on. D'oh! I took my seat belt off, then left - remembering that I'd forgotten to turn on my camera. While holding a head down, I even managed to turn on my camera. Despite having left at least 10 seconds after Seth and Val, I was on level, about 50 feet horizontal long before breakoff. THAT, was a rush. Everything came togeather, even thought the dive was hosed. Later that day, hitting a 4 point 16 way belly jump left me with my biggest smile of the day. If I had to upsize by a hundred feet what would I do? The same thing I did at Rantoul when I was jumping a spectre 210. Have a boatload of fun. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.
  25. Here's some pics of the line twists I had on my Stiletto (loaded at 1.6) today. 1) You can see clearly see the twists long before the canopy finishes inflating. 2) As the canopy opens, it starts to wind up. 3) Horizontal, on my back. 4) First view of connector links, both even. Canopy is straight and level. 5) Almost untwisted... After a big-way RW jump, I'd set my ditter to 2500, then had to track a bit farther to get clearence. I probably started deployment at about 2300. Elapsed time between frame 1 and 5, seven seconds. Pro-track shows a deployment altitude of 1500 feet, the same as my flat-line. I did not hear the flat-line. _Am __ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.