faulknerwn

I have sent it back under warrenty twice now (this would be the 3rd time.) I'm using a stock Canon lens with it. Last time it was back they replaced the entire shutter assembly. Worked for a few hundred photos and now its dead as a doornail again. Tried a friend's lens last time, swapped batteries and CF cards with no luck.

I did extensive searches - only thing that actually talked about anything similar was whether the Canon one was any good :-) Couldn't find much useful about any other brands..

Have you tried firefox? I'm using firefox on the Mac, and it actually seems FASTER to me.. Most of the folks complaining about slowness seem to be using IE so maybe its an IE bug?

I'm looking to replace my Canon 300d (I hate error 99!!!!) I'm looking at 400d's on ebay, and many of them have various choices of lenses. I'm probably just going to go with cheap lenses for a while, but they offer lots of choices... Some of them have Tamron 28-80 as the default, others the Canon 18-55 and others the Sigma 28-70. Any ideas which would be best for skydiving? (Tandem pics mainly)

Also remember that with the price of the dollar versus the Euro - AADs manufactured in Europe cost considerably more to Americans than it did just a few years ago even if the manufacturer didn't change the European price at all.

Damn - I was all ready to do it and I don't know your number!

I've had a bad history with emergency exits. Everything from engines quitting to pilots running out of gas. I've always exited on my main, from as low as 1300 feet out of the Otter with 1 engine running to considerably higher in all sorts of planes. My 2 most interesting engine out stories were ones I had to land with the plane. One was when I was a tandem passenger for a friend getting his rating when the right engine on the Queen Air quit at a thousand feet. Nothing like not wearing a parachute in that situation to make ya nervous! Another was when both left engines and all hydraulics went out on a Brazilian C130. And then the left brakes caught fire as we skidded down the runway because he had no left reverse thruster. Yahoo. We had at least 50 feet left of runway when we stopped! The biggest thing I've seen on emergency exits is that people who haven't done CRW are doing diving exits and unstable exits and all sorts of crazy things causing issues. A quick, simple head high exit works best. Anyone who isn't practiced at doing those should practice doing that! You never know when you'll need it.

I remember back in 1995 buying a Jonathan 105 (deciding to stay bigger and not buy the Jonathan 92 that was available.) I know Stilletto 107's were available then as well because PD wouldn't sell me one because I didn't have 500 jumps :-) (Even tho I only weighed 110 at the time!)

I'd have to disagree. My 2 oldest cats are 12 years old now. The first 10 years of their life they lived in 3rd floor apartments where outside was only the patio. 2 years ago I moved to the dz, and they managed to escape a few times. They LOVE being outdoors. Now I just let them out whenever they want. I have to almost trick them to get them to come inside at bedtime. They're both skinnier, more energetic, and seem healthier than they ever were before. I certainly wouldn't let them out if I lived where I used to live, but I'm amazed - they've gone from acting like they were 12 and sleeping all the time to playing like young cats again.

Don't downsize just to make packing easier. That's never a good plan! If you do want to jump different canopies - Aerodyne's RV has been parked out at Temple all week and they'll be here through the weekend with demos and such. There are also canopies out there like Triathlon 160's which are in between in size..

Shiner Bock is excellent beer. Celis (at least when it was locally brewed before it was bought out) seemed to only produce "girly" beers. Everything was raspberry or strawberry or some other bizarre flavor. They didn't have any sort of good darker ale. And I definitely agree about their specialty brews - that stuff is really good.

I experimented with not stowing the brakes for a while, but while the openings were quite soft, I got line twists about 50% of the time. What works for me is just burying the nose to the tail like I do on my freefall canopies. I rarely have a hard opening on my Lightning and it stays on heading this way too.

I had wanted to do it since I was a little kid (it was on a list I wrote at age 12 of things I wanted to do before I turned 30). I was in graduate school, just before exam week, and I felt like jumping off something. Called up a dz on Friday, drove 3 hours, took a static line course on Saturday, did 2 jumps that day and never looked back!

Yeha yeah ;-) I was doing it from memory since I forgot to hit the url button before I entered the links so did it by hand!

Course the studies show that earpieces are just as bad as holding the phone. That's because when you're talking to a passenger in your car, they're in the same environment and stop talking when stuff happens. People on the phone don't. Read some of the links I posted - people just don't believe they're being that dangerous.

Just remember - while you shouldn't drink and drive, you also shouldn't use a cell phone and drive. Its every bit as dangerous as drinking and driving - and probably more so because most people on cell phones don't consider themselves impaired. I see a lot of scary drivers every day on phones. http://www.hfes.org/Web/PubPages/celldrunk.pdf http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392815 http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,130210,00.html http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/mb2/content/view/42/27/

I used to fly a Cobalt 75 loaded between 2.1 and 2.2 (depending on how much weights I was wearing.) Flew and landed nice.

This needs to go to the Çlassifieds section. Thanks

Squares are definitely less likely to spin up than ellipticals for sure (the whole reason I stopped jumping ellipticals actually.) But I had a friend pack me a mal a couple of months back where my Triathlon 99 spun up every bit as violently as any elliptical spinner I've ever had. It impressed me because I didn't think a 7-cell square would do that!

I PM'ed you my info. I have 7 complete rigs with a handful of extra canopies. I just seem to accumulate rigs - find such great deals I can't turn em down! And I jump weird small stuff that has no resale value so they keep accumulating!

Actually the ad you forwarded me was a Sabre 2 170 with less than a hundred jumps. BIG difference in price between the original Sabre and the Sabre 2. But still overpriced in my opinion :-) W

I dunno - I quit my computer geek job to become a full time skydiver two years ago. I went from earning a nice amount of cash to not earning so much, and from living in a nice apartment to living in a trailer on the dz. Since then I haven't had even the slightest bit of a sniffle or illness, feel way more relaxed, sleep way better, and feel all-around happier and more mellow.. I don't want to go back to the computer industry :-) W

I've taught friend's kids as young as 8 to pack for me (hey free pack jobs till they figure out they can make money at it!) When I was a student, the dzo's kid was 12 and packed a bunch of my student mains. He had actually started packing around age 8 or so. In fact, I remember a funny story from back then where they had some Middle Eastern guy out there who had a problem with the female (master rigger) packing his main! So they said ok, and sent the 8 year old male out there :-) Heck, he's all grown up now and posting himself on these forums! Hi Mikey! W

37 - definitely can hear it!

I'm at something like 17-18 cutaways now (lots of CRW.) A few weeks ago I had my pre-second reserve ride with a pillow reserve handle. I immediately went and ordered a metal handle. It was considerably harder to find and felt just like everything else on my rig. The metal ones are way easier to work with.