hackish
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Everything posted by hackish
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A Cautionary Note about Velcro alignment
hackish replied to peter.draper's topic in Gear and Rigging
When the technology in the rig is so old that the wooden reserve toggles have a few wraps of safety thread holding them the riser? When you have a good rigger who takes care to stow them properly? Kidding aside can you post a photo please? Since I don't pack racers I only saw the innards once and that was years ago. -Michael -
I'm not a fan whatsoever of those loops pictured above. I've attached a photo of a loop I made the other day. To be honest I was just practising making bartacks on my 20U but nevertheless some photos of good and bad closing loops could be educational to the OP. Maybe others can add to the visuals. -Michael
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I have seen the vigils serial numbers go up almost exponentially each year I assemble new equipment so I believe as a company they are mature and doing well. Locally most of the jumpers purchased a vigil when their cypres wore out. While I only packed 60 rigs last year there was only a single Cypress. Some dropzones are the exact opposite so check with your riggers. I don't really think you'll have a statistically significant difference between the safety of any of the products. An approach more likely to affect you is the size/stability of the company and the supply chain. If you need a new cutter (broken wire???) in the middle of the season it's nice to know that your local rigger probably has one in stock. -Michael
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We can laugh about pulling his reserve and all that. What do you do if this person gets pissed off and decides to damage the rig and walk? Now you get an unairworthy rig without some part like the AAD that he feels accounts for the portions he paid for and the expensive prospect of travel and lawsuit still remains your problem. -Michael
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I think if it's over the 12 year time limit then it's not airworthy. A number of guys buy expired cypres units to jump in unregulated countries. I think there is the discount program to get these units out of circulation. -Michael
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I built a pito one using a MEMS pressure sensor but I was never able to calibrate it. I think it had a sample rate of 10hz. In the time since with all these drone projects you can now buy a unit for an RC model airplane and they're pretty cheap. -Michael
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Ha, that's exactly why I asked that question. On 1 side a narrow one is guaranteed to catch the line but on the other too narrow is probably not quite as string as a proper dimensioned bartack. -Michael
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I've enjoyed following this not so little project from the beginning. Just wondering what you and the other riggers think about the actual width of your bartacks? -Michael
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I use the 20U for everything except binding. I have not yet worked out a way to pick up a Juki 1900 and sneak it in under the watchful eyes of my wife. -Michael
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Brings up an important point for when I need to spool thread on to the new bobbins. I wouldn't have thought about that one... I think I should probably pull it directly off rather than off the top like the machine does. -Michael
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Thanks, I like cheap. I've always been afraid of getting some substandard quality thread, but atlas does have some recognizable brand names for less than 1/2 the price of paragear. I did some searching to try and find a source for blank spools so I could just pick up a few 1/2lb spools and spool a few hundred feet on each as needed. While I may end up making my own, does anyone have a source for these? -Michael
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I've been making a few little goods for friends with my machines. Trouble is they frequently ask for different colour stitching. A local shop has #69 nylon thread for $10 for 1/2oz... ouch. 8oz are $30 from paragear. It's expensive to purchase 3 spools of each type of thread for every project. Does anyone have a suggestion? Even a source for empty spools I could wind off a bigger spool? The objective is to run my double needle and 20U without having to move the thread around for each operation. -Michael
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I have the light blue 20U. The only complaint i have is that it won't do a zig-zag on the widest setting but I don't use that anyway. I tried a CN2053R and it seemed to be just a clunkier version of the 20U. It was new but there was more play than my used machine and it had the identical problem with wide zigzags. -Michael
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I don't really think this is a huge issue. A few people and a few riggers do pencil pack rigs. This is far from the norm. I think a better area to focus on is getting riggers to follow instructions instead of inventing their own ways to pack rigs. -Michael
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A consideration is also that the gear will probably have a much higher level of wear so the legstraps will need to be inspected more frequently. Just one small part of it... -Michael
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I sort of feel like the term "prop blast penetration" was made up or mis-typed. Even if you search the term this is the only reference you can find to it. I don't think it's a good term to use anyway since it is confusingly similar to "Prop Blast" and I think the effect of the prop has little to do with exit order.
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I was thinking about this idea this weekend past. There could be ways to sign an entry and prove there were no modifications but these schemes usually cost money to have an independent org to sign the timestamped signatures. I don't have time to build a web app for this, especially considering the challenge of working with a bunch of cantankerous old riggers for a few pennies... -Michael
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Funny that I just found this thread. Today I got a sewquiet 5000. Cheap chinese under $200 servo motor. Stuck it on my 20U without any real drama. It really is nice to sew now. I do find on minimum speed you can feel the individual pulses from the servo motor but it has no impact on the sewing. I might spend some time hacking the controller for some more digital control - single stitch, or stopping in the down position every time... -Michael
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I had a conversation with a TC inspector about electronic aircraft logs and his take on it was that you can electronically change anything but going back and adding fake entries in a physical book would take some work. I can understand his point. For me a book and pen is reliable enough. Having said that I see a lot of value in your idea, such as being able to send a client a reminder that their cypres service needs to be done over the winter. Or what about an SB coming out on a rig. Jumpers don't always know about them. -Michael
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I do think the future will be gopro type cams with GPS and gyro for this type of processing. By cutting out all the processing to figure out where the camera is in 3d space it would definitely cut processing time down significantly. -Michael
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Rumours are interesting and fun but technology does have its limits. You need a fair amount of expensive silicon to encode full 4k video. You need lots of bandwidth on your card. You need lots of power to run it all. All these things cost money. Are you willing to drop a grand on one? -Michael
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I think with GPU acceleration and not using a camera with a high degree of barrel distortion the processing could be made much faster. We aim to turn around a video in under 10 minutes from the cards being dropped by the video guy to the USB key being given to the client. For us it's not going to be there for a while yet. I did send a message to one of their researchers to see what their thoughts were on adapting it for skydiving. I'll see if I can get them to process some footage. -Michael
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It is pretty cool technology but I think you're going to find that the processing time is huge. I looked at some research going on using opencv along these lines and you were looking at processing a 1 minute video in about 2h of processing. I'm sure these guys have managed to optimize it but I think it has to be in the 1:1 range to be feasible. -Michael
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I think there are now a number of tandem video editing packages available. The only other experience I have is with a different package. I watched the intro video on how this works and although it looks to be a big improvement over the old school method, there are much more effective ways to streamline the editing process. The good news is this one looks to be inexpensive assuming the $242 is a fixed fee and you do not pay per video produced. Maybe sometime we could coax a real professional like DSE to review some of the offerings for everyone? -Michael
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I have the same problem here. I called around to see about parts and service for her but everyone laughs and says the only solution is to get rid of it and get another machine but they all have defects, some worse than others so it's better to stick with a model that you know the quirks. -Michael