parachutist

You can swoop at end of a CRW jump, So that argument doesn't make any sense. Bill Mershon has done a Dead Man approach while rear risering under his Lightning a few times. hmmm... that sounds just like swooping. Or have you missed the Incidents section here on Dropzone.com?

Best way to proceed would be to attend the next available CRW camp. I expect that will be the "Freeze Your Buns Off" boogie in Z-hills, usually held in mid January if I remember right. There will soon be notices about upcoming CRW camps in the CRW mailing list. You should join that list so you can be involved: Just send an e-mail to crwdogs @ boxofclue.com requesting that your e-mail address is added to the list. In the mean time, before one of these camps, you could try some PD Lightnings loaded somewhere between 1.3 - 1.375. Now that the 100-way CRW formation is completed, PD should have some Lightning loaners available. You could purchase Lightnings new or used (now that the 100-way is complete there will likely be some used Lightnings available to purchase in the classifieds soon). The benefit of upgrading to Lightnings will be compatibility with a majority of other CRW dogs in the world... so that you can dock on 9-ways, 16-ways, etc. Chris

Some great photos are available online already: http://www.brunobrokken.com/ Main Menu --> 00 New Stuff --> 00 21 NOV 2007

Thanks, Don. I appreciate your comments. My slot in the formation (#16) was actually pretty easy compared to some of the bottom slots. When that formation got to about 81 the outside layers were washing in & out, up & down. On video it looked like a moving target that would be difficult to approach. Somehow everyone made it into the diamond though! Chris

Except for the guy that died. Edited to add link. There are a lot of emotions for me in Lake Wales this evening: Rejoicing over our accomplishment of the elusive 100-way goal, wishing that all 130+ CRW dogs who attended this event could've been included in the record dive, and realizing the loss of such a well-known and experienced CRW dog who's been a familiar face at so many CRW boogies. After we landed from our final 100-way attempt this evening, the pilots of the 5 aircraft (2 casas & 3 twin otters) brought a formation flyby directly over us. One plane peeled away from the formation, symbolizing the loss of Joe Lambright, Paul Quandt, Scott Cowan, Taz, Scott Fiore, Joel Zane, and other close skydivers that we as a group have lost over the last few years. In addition to all of those emotions, I'm reading here on DZ.com about a local Atlanta jumper/friend who was attacked by another jumper. Woody is a talented freefaller from whom I've learned a great deal. Woody, I wish you full recovery ASAP. I'd like to get my AFF rating this winter and be doing AFF jumps with you this spring.

I'll have to check that next week (when I have a replacement for that mic adapter). I dismantled the original adapter & found there's a little card inside... I tried using an active interface cable that I have & soldering its wires to the tiny traces on the VMCK100 to make it a lower mount and to relocate the 1/8" plug. Those traces are way too close together & very thin. I got a couple leads soldered & destroyed a couple others. An easier way to relocate the mic port is to desolder that from the card and add some wires to where it used to attach. The 1/8" port has big easy solder globs, so I think that should be a breeze. I'll update next week. I'm surprised you're ok with the band-aid because I know you're particular about video quality. You must've had better success with that idea than I did. Maybe I'm using a cheap thin one. Chris

The band-aid helped, but the noise factor was still present to enough of a degree that I really wanted an external mic. So I ordered one of Sony's own mic adapters, the VMCK100, which is made for the active interface shoe: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/479976-REG/Sony_VMCK100_VMC_K100_Microphone_Adapter_Cable.html I figured for $20 it was worth it to get some good sound. The VMCK100 arrived today and I plugged it into the hot shoe. Sony must be doing whatever they can to foil my intentions... the 1/8" plug in this adapter points directly left... directly at the plastic hot shoe cover. (see attached image). I can't decide whether to remove the hot shoe cover permanently, or to hack into this adapter and point the 1/8" plug a different direction.

Can you remove the memory stick from camera without removing camera from this box? Chris

I'm glad you mentioned that part. Brakes unstowed means you could end up travelling full speed toward another canopy if you deploy near others. Not good for group dives

Ok... My HC42 has been sitting in closet for a few weeks now. Everything had a green/red tint during a skydive... it was intermittent green at first, jiggle the camera and it would go away. Then all was green/red and it wouldn't go away. So I upgraded camera. Tonight I read this thread and figured why not try it. 1 good smack to the HC42 and the colors are right again. No telling how long it'll last tho

Ain't no such thing as a "fast" render from AVCHD to SD DVD....but there will be. Put a bandaid on the back half of the microphone. Seriously. Agreed about AVCHD... it takes my AMD X2 6000 17 mins for a 6 minute AVCHD video to render to SD MPEG. I'm starting out with High Quality SD mode on the camera, which is just plain MPEG, then rendering that to another MPEG, so it's pretty fast... 3-4 minutes render time and I don't lose any noticeable quality when rendering from MPEG to MPEG. I'll try the band-aid idea this weekend Chris

Thanks for the explanation. That helped with the volume for my voice track. When I'm recording indoors (interviewing a student) I can get some good audio from this CX7. Anywhere else, however, (such as outdoors when there's 10mph winds) I pick up all sorts of noise that drowns out the student's voice. Or the noise will cause pops and clicks in the recording. I can use filters to squash the peaks in these tracks, but it takes too much tweaking time for my liking. The cheap HC42 I had would record audio at consistent levels without much distortion. I'm probably going to be putting my CX7 up on ebay for this reason & go back to miniDV until a more suitable flash-memory camcorder proves itself. It seems that Sony is aware of the audio problem and made an attempt to compensate for it: In the menus there's a selection for Sound "Normal" or "Low". Normal is supposed to record sound within fixed level, and Low is supposed to record all sounds at actual level. I can't tell much of a difference using eiether mode when recording inside a King Air though... it all sounds like crackles, pops, and muffled speech to me. This past weekend I tried foam zip-tied over the mic, double gaffer's tape over the mic. Neither worked well. The cx7 could improve my workflow if the microphone processing were up to par. The good thing about shooting in high quality SD mode: each time I hit 'record' on the camera, a new MPEG file is created. When I get to the ground I can copy those MPEGs to the hard drive, then drag them into Vegas for auto overlap, then put in some slow-mo, some music with fades, and render fast for standard DVD. If there were a skydiving-friendly hot shoe mic that would solve this mic problem, I'd get one and keep the cx7. All the ones I've seen look like they'd get broken off though Chris

DSE, Could you explain the attenuation you're describing? When I drag a CX7 .MTS video clip into the timeline, the audio track looks like a flatline with occasional really small bumps indicating sound. Is there a way to adjust the sensitivity in VegasMS so the flatline becomes sound level indications like I see with other audio tracks? If I use the "Vol" slider to turn the volume up for that track, then I can hear it, but it's still fainter than it should be. I'm having to turn down my music track to -5db and CX7 audio track to +12 to equalize them. The sound quality appears to be pretty clear (indoors), but I just can't seem to make it loud enough to match what seems like standard sound level. Chris

I feel as though I received top quality instruction from you this weekend. Thanks, Scott! It was fun flying with you today. I haven't been that nervous on a plane since night jump #1. But after exiting and spreading those wings I was just smiling and feeling exhilarated. What a great experience. Chris

Dave, I wear it til seat belt is removed, as you've seen me do on the plane. I prefer being able to look around and see others wearing their helmets on takeoff because we've had enough locals recently who see themselves as being exempt to the rule of "Secure your helmet". If I bring it up that it needs to be secured they'll act as though they just forgot, but really they're longing for that takeoff shot so badly that they'll hold the camera up against the door, with the helmet attached to nothing. Personally I get tired of their crap, so if the pilot decided everyone needs to wear their helmets I'm all for it. It's easy verification. Honestly, I think you're such an incredible freeflyer that the takeoff shot really shouldn't matter to you. Exit shots like yours out of the king air are what I'm hoping to achieve one of these days. Why do you think the takeoff really matters when you have so much other good footage to include in your videos? Was this dispute also part of the weight/balance argument? Chris

More pictures from the weekend at Z-hills can be found here: http://parachutist.fotki.com/2007-09-21-through-/ DVDs of all jumps from the weekend are also available. Chris

The weather predictions were dismal, but thankfully we had good conditions and we all got in 5 jumps today at Zephyrhills. Attached is a photo of Dean (yellow/blue) working with Steve (black/white) to salvage a dock gone bad. They did manage to work through it and Steve stayed in his slot. It was a nice recovery. Chris

About $200. That HC40 is sounding even better since it doesn't use a docking station and it's same price

I have an HC42 that I purchased used on eBay a couple moths ago, I've put about 60 jumps on it so far. My opinion of it: Pros- 1) Dirt cheap (for this reason I feel no need to put it in a box... so it's even cheaper. just mount it to an L-bracket and shoot) 2) small and lightweight 3) Video quality is pretty good for a SD camera 4) Has a LANC port for wired remote 5) Very good mic setup compared to my PC101... no tape motor noise Cons- 1) There's no firewire port on the camera. In order to plug in a firewire cable you have to dismantle it from any mount brackets and plug it into a docking station (that station comes with the camera) 2) The rocking power switch in the back is really annoying, not easy to tell what it's doing when you have gloves on. This may just be a personal peeve 3) Feels flimsy. While it's nice to have a lightweight vid camera, this one feels like it's constructed of mostly thin plastic and I think if it got a hard hit it might be over. 4) The threaded hole for mounting is on the left edge of the chassis. In order to have a stable mounting setup it really needs a strap going over the top, pressing it down and to the right. Otherwise it can be wobbly. Chris

That exercise worked well. I think pushing the forearms down and out helped keep me from sliding back. Last weekend I'd been holding them up at ear level. This time I was able to stay where I wanted all weekend, getting the angle I was looking for. Here's a photo I took using that position with the wings.

Have you tried loosening the tension on the bobbin thread instead of increasing tension on the top thread? I have a straight stitch pfaff and it took me quite a bit of trial and error to realize what the correct amount of tension was for each, and that both needed adjustment.

That works great when I'm above or on level with subject, but when I'm a little below I'm thinking a position like the mantis (shoulders up, hips low) would make it easy to lift the camera up for a good shot from underneath. If I put legs out it'll rotate my head down so I can't really get the shot I'm looking for. With mantis type position using wings I 'm always getting pushed back away from the target. I haven't found how to counteract that while keeping head up and hips low. Some local guys use sit-flying for this angle, but I'd like to be able to use belly down position if possible. Chris

Up until this weekend I'd been jumping with a Firefly freefly suit to shoot tandem/aff videos. It worked great, except for those cases where the student and instructor were very light. I'd struggle to stay up with them, and plead for them to arch harder. So I added some wings to my freefly suit Friday night (I copied wings from my roommate's Merlin suit, with some minor changes). I jumped this suit all weekend and I got the drag I wanted, but the suit flies completely different now. Everything seems natural when filming AFF or tandems: It seems easy to fly when I'm slightly above the subject. For tandem videos however, I like to be directly in front and slightly lower, so I can look up at them. I find it really difficult to get in that position now, as the wings seem to push me back away from subject when my head is up & hips are low. Any advice on body position to corect this while using wings? Chris

My D2 holds a Firelite 175 with room to spare (microline, no AAD). I think the 210 Raven would be fine in a D3 if you had all the right conditions: microline, no AAD, and a main in the 170-ish ZP size. What size main are you planning to use? You don't want to go oversize on both the reserve and the main in the same rig. But that's all just my guesstimation. I suggest calling Altico. Friendly manufacturer and he's very open about what'll work, what won't. Chris

Which operating system? Windows XP SP2 and Vista have a movie capture application available that'll work with your camera. You can use Movie Maker to capture the clip to an AVI, then try editing in Premiere http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx Just plug the camera in to a firewire port, turn it on and it should be recognized by the OS Chris