beowulf

Sounds like your second possibility might be correct. I just bought a Hypeye and set mine so that when I turn on my camera it zooms to full wide angle. The light patterns sound close to what I had to do to set the zoom. Having that many options isn't always a good thing. If that happened at Nationals you would be forced to either figure it out before exiting or ride the plane down so as not to risk getting a zero and that would really suck.

It's not so much as easy as what is most likely to work across all dropzones not just the large mega dropzones.

I COMPLETELY agree with your philosophy that you test skills (demonstrated) rather than arbitrarily assigning 'easy' criteria. I do worry that USPA would then start acting like PADI and start charging for a 'license' to do every single thing in the sport. Wait, they are already beginning to walk down that path...... I suggest an instructor endorsement rather than a license. The problem witht that is it's too subjective. On paper that sounds like a good idea, but in reality you will get many different opinions from a group of instructors as to whether or not the a specific student has demonstrated the necessary skills to fly X canopy. Jump numbers while not being perfect and can "hold back" a very few people is easier to deal with and in reality doesn't hold anyone back but simply delays there movement higher performance canopies. What is the big deal with just waiting? It doesn't hurt to hold off on buying that Katana or Velocity. Back to "easy", like the drunk looking for the lost keys under the streetlight. Jump numbers are very poor indicators of what is important - judgment, awareness, skill, ability. I still don't understand why there is a need to allow new student's to rush forward and ignore jump number minimums.. Because jump numbers are very poor indicators of what is important, so their use as such is inappropriate when better indicators are available. Better indicators are not necessarily available everywhere and that is the point.

I COMPLETELY agree with your philosophy that you test skills (demonstrated) rather than arbitrarily assigning 'easy' criteria. I do worry that USPA would then start acting like PADI and start charging for a 'license' to do every single thing in the sport. Wait, they are already beginning to walk down that path...... I suggest an instructor endorsement rather than a license. The problem witht that is it's too subjective. On paper that sounds like a good idea, but in reality you will get many different opinions from a group of instructors as to whether or not the a specific student has demonstrated the necessary skills to fly X canopy. Jump numbers while not being perfect and can "hold back" a very few people is easier to deal with and in reality doesn't hold anyone back but simply delays there movement higher performance canopies. What is the big deal with just waiting? It doesn't hurt to hold off on buying that Katana or Velocity. Back to "easy", like the drunk looking for the lost keys under the streetlight. Jump numbers are very poor indicators of what is important - judgment, awareness, skill, ability. I still don't understand why there is a need to allow new student's to rush forward and ignore jump number minimums. Even if they are being "held back" it's really not that big of a deal. This does't compare to your examples of a race care driver or a young genius. There are no time outs in skydiving. You can't just pull over and gather your thoughts. On every jump you only have one chance to get the landing right. If you haven't built up the muscle memory and sight picture it makes landing more diffucult. Just trying to identify those extreme minority of people who catch on quick can be very dangerous. One mistake is all it takes to end up in a wheel chair for the rest of their life and your skydiving prodigy's skydiving is over. Is it worth it to just wait and do a few more jumps to reach a base minimum before adding more complexity to a skydive? I think so. Getting in a hurry can be very a painful and deadly experience in skydiving with very little reward to simply pacing yourself.

That is an extremely small minority to base off of. People like "Wendy" are extremely rare and would have a huge amount of tunnel time that they could point to as reference. No one has ever and will ever be in competitive VFS at less then 200 jumps with out lots and lots of tunnel time. It isn't natural for anyone.

I COMPLETELY agree with your philosophy that you test skills (demonstrated) rather than arbitrarily assigning 'easy' criteria. I do worry that USPA would then start acting like PADI and start charging for a 'license' to do every single thing in the sport. Wait, they are already beginning to walk down that path...... I suggest an instructor endorsement rather than a license. The problem witht that is it's too subjective. On paper that sounds like a good idea, but in reality you will get many different opinions from a group of instructors as to whether or not the a specific student has demonstrated the necessary skills to fly X canopy. Jump numbers while not being perfect and can "hold back" a very few people is easier to deal with and in reality doesn't hold anyone back but simply delays there movement higher performance canopies. What is the big deal with just waiting? It doesn't hurt to hold off on buying that Katana or Velocity.

Generally it's been the low jump number people that disagree with the recommendations of people like Brian Germain. It absolutely can be drastically wrong. There are a number of examples where someone has been under a high performance wing with low jump numbers at a pretty high wing loading and have injured themselves. You can rely on being lucky rather then building up skill under a less aggressive canopy and wing loading, but it's a bad idea. Good luck.

Not really sure of the fit between all of them. I did meet a few people that had the Gasket and the Player and there isn't a lot of difference between the two. The Gasket is a taller then the Player and the TFlex is just the Gasket with hinged arms. I thought the Player would fit my face better, but now having the Player and having seen the Gasket I think either one would work fine.

I was worried about that myself. There is only one size and you bend the frames to fit. Look on their website they have a video demonstrating how to fit them. I took a chance and just went ahead and spent the money. They turned out great and the fit is perfect.

Just received a pair of Liquid Eyewear Player sunglasses with prescription and they are awesome!! Haven't jumped with them yet, but I really love the fit and look of them. I usually can't buy the cool wrap around prescription sunglasses due to the strength of my prescription. In talking with the Liquid Eyewear rep they can pretty much cover most prescriptions. I can't wait to try these out skydiving!!

I always find it interesting when a low jump number person on here starts out by saying how safety conscious they are because they talked to x number of instructors/DZO/S&TA's and have decided that they are ready jump a camera/wingsuit/HP Canopy, because they are more "heads up"/skilled then average. If they were actually safety conscious they would back off and work on freefall skills before adding more complexity to their skydives. There are plenty of things to work on with out adding wingsuit/camera/HP Canopy.

Never saw either of the AVP movies. I wouldn't have gone out of my way to see Predators. I saw this movie yesterday just to kill time while waiting to fly home from Denver.

I think the whole waking up in freefall was a really good idea, just poorly executed in this movie. It would have made more sense if they weren't all so close together and they used real parachutes. The guy banging on his chest to deploy didn't make sense, but he didn't know what he was doing and was just doing anything to make himself feel better. I didn't get the impression that anything he did actually deployed the parachute. It seemed like it was deployed via AAD. ? any way it was an entertaining movie, not great but not too bad of way to kill a couple of hours.

I don't think there are that many dry counties and there are different types of dry counties. Type 1, the most common is where they don't allow beer stores or liquor stores, but they can server beer and liquor in restaurants and you usually don't have to drive very far to find an area that isn't dry. These are usually towns and not actual counties. Type 2, true dry counties. They are pretty few and far between. The only ones I know of are in Mississippi. They don't allow any alcohol at all and put up road blocks to search cars for any offending alcohol. People still smuggle beer into those areas for personal consumption. I think 10% is way too high of a number. It might be 2 or even 3%.

So I don't really understand your comparison? It's not a firearm so how does that make it more liberal?

That isn't considered a firearm here in the US and it doesn't require a background check. As far as I know it just requires that you be 18 to purchase? I am not even sure about that.

There are examples of people who said the exact same thing as you. I said the same thing when I started jumping with a camera. Cameras are a distraction. You can get away with it without causing yourself any problems. But there are many examples where it did cause a problem. Having less then 200 jumps makes it more difficult to deal with any issues that might arise.

I would say yes. At 120 jumps you don't know what you don't know. You say it won't change how you fly, but from personal experience it does change how you fly. I started flying camera at about 430 jumps and it did change my skydiving. You are better off doing more jumps and concentrating on your flying then adding a camera. If will take you 8 to 12 months to reach 200 then I think you really don't have the currency to be dealing with a camera.

I have always thought traditional rock climbing was much scarier then skydiving. Especially lead climbing. If I weren't skydiving I would be rock climbing.

Don't ever use USPS again.

I have only been stopped by the TSA once and I thought I was prepared for any question he had. He pointed at the pillow handle for the cut away and asked what was in it? umm stuffing?! I explained it's just a handle that pulls these cables and he seemed to be ok with that. Weird!

If the founding fathers wanted to exclude them, wouldn't they have said so? Do you think they armed their prisoners?

EVERYONE? No, they explicitly left in place restrictions on felons and loonies. I don't remember anyone ever asking for felons and loonies to be allowed to legally own guns.

When I first started jumping with a camera I bought a knockoff extra battery. I will never do that again. It didn't last near as long as the Sony batteries. It was pretty much worthless after the first couple of months.

There is no substitute for experience.