obadz

The four dropzones surrounding New York City (1h30-2h drive) are: - The Ranch - Sky's the Limit - Skydive Long Island - Crosskeys My personal preference is on the first two. We organize rides from the city to the DZs on this mailing list: http://skyflyers.org/wws/subscribe/nyc By the way, there's a big skydiver dinner coming up this Saturday in lower Manhattan @ Nelson Blue (Jan 19th 2008; details at http://nelsonblue.com/index.php/2008/01/15/this-sat-the-19th-skydivers-take-over-nelson-blue/; Nelson Blue is located at http://tinyurl.com/2gp2nq). All the (cool) NYC skydivers will be there David-

I disagree with that. In my experience, CK is about 30 minutes farther from manhattan.

I meant Friday 21 Dec 07. Thanks

Is anyone flying into Tampa around 7pm on Friday, 21 Dec 07 ? I'll be renting a car, so if you want to tag along & share the cost, I can give you a ride to Z-hills PM me your cell # or E-mail address if you're interested.

Allowed by who? Z-hills is offering jumps from Alhouettes during their boogie.. (http://www.skydivecity.com/html/calendar/)

I'm thinking about jumping in Sebastian on Sunday Dec 23. Will there be a crowd there, or will everyone be home for x-mas?

Check out http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2890112

Hey I know a lot of you already are on "the list" for carpooling in&out of NYC but if you aren't, check out http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2890112

We've set up a mailing list to coordinate rides from New York City to the surrounding DZs (The ranch, Cross Keys, Sky's the limit, SDLI, ..) To subscribe, send an empty E-mail with "subscribe nyc" in the subject to sympa@skyflyers.org If you have a car, you can help out fellow jumpers by offering rides and get your gas & tolls paid in the process. We also often rent cars and split the costs. If you're having problems subscribing, feel free to PM me for help. Cheers, David-

Well given that there will be 2 belly record attempts, I would expect to see a bunch of belly flyers there And to get a sense of how many freeflyers would show up, it's easy: I would just ask on DZ.com

I hope at least that freeflyers are tolerated on the packing mats Back to seriousness though, are many freeflyers expected to show up?

what's the policy regarding freeflyers at the dz?

Hey will there be some rental gear available in case I want to bring my gearless friends?

Is there a DZ in Myrtle Beach?

Come to the Ranch

Can't open that link White shorts, white t-shirt.. (no jumpsuit)

If anyone got pics of me on Sunday I'd love to see them I was jumping a black+green canopy/container mostly with McDuck & Trevor.

Depressing I want a high def wide angle bullet cam with the recording unit in a specially designed pocket in my rig! Wait a minute.. it doesn't exist

My reserve is out of date for the weekend after that

I think the pressure is noticeable. Your spine is MUCH stronger than your neck therefore in case of a hard opening or mal you would want your spine supporting the extra pressure. Hence the reason to mount both on top. Wait... I would have thought that since top mounted cameras are further away from the neck, the leverage effect would make them worse, not better.. ??

Great point. Thx. Thanks for the insights. I will do some more reading on AVCHD (and the differences with HDV?) and will come back with some more questions. In the mean time, is there some models that you recommend? Should I restrict myself to Sony stuff? I assume the hard drive based cams are not a good idea for jumping? And of course DVD is out of the question so that leaves me with only flash memory, right? I'll definitly do that, I'm not in such a rush.. I did notice this drawback of the FFX. It seems like the AVCHD cameras aren't vertical like the PCs and HCs. That pretty much means top-mounting, no? Are there reasons for not freeflying with a top mounted cam? What about my questions regarding snagging and leverage on the neck during opening? Thanks a lot for the insights! David-

Hi all, So I'm yet another jumper that would like to start jumping a camera. I know hundreds have posted about "what's the best equipment to jump", but I have certain questions for which I have not found any answers. First let me describe the constraints that I would like to satisfy: - Only one, light, device (I care about my neck more than about my art) - Limited snag risk - Ability to take stills of reasonable quality (>2megapixels) - Of course ability to take good digital video I realize some purists are already itching to tell me that the stills a video camera takes, or the videos a still camera takes are never as good as the real thing. I do not care. This is not for professional use.. I've done a little bit of research and so far in terms of camera I'm converging towards the Sony DCR-HC96. I know people have jumped it successfully and taken nice videos. What about stills? Is it possible to hook a tongue/bite switch to the device? Can it take stills as it's recording video? For the helmet, I'm leaning towards the 2k FFX since it seems virtually snag free. A couple of questions about video helmets: - Is the leverage effect from mounting on the top vs. on the side noticeable in terms of neck pressure on opening or is it practically the same thing? - If I were to use something that's top mounted, it would probably not be snag free. Are there certain types of attachments that can be used that would rip the camera before it would rip my head ? - If such attachments exist, of often do jumpers using those encounter snagging problems? For instance, assuming that I top-mount something small, in a 1000 jumps, what would be the rough probability of losing my cam 0.1%, 1%,10% or 50%? Unfortunately, it's difficult to try this equipment before you buy and it's expensive, so any input that can help me would be appreciated: comments regarding the HC96, the FFX and/or any other related equipment. Would also love to be pointed to other threads were similar issues are discussed. Blue skies, David-

I bought my aviator used (with my rig) and it's a fabulous helmet. It fits nicely; the soft chin straps works well; I can hear my audible perfectly in the internal pocket; Plus I think it looks great! The lack of hard-shell on the forehead is both good and bad: It's bad because obviously you have no frontal protection. But it's great because you can lift goggles and put them on your forehead without taking off the helmet in the plane and under canopy. (It might also be why I have to wear my goggles a bit tighter when I go headdown: no shell to deflect the air)

Thank you so much. I promise I won't be shy

Cool! What will you be doing in Raleigh (assuming you're not just coming to Raleigh to hang out with us)?