kevin922

Ian, I just read the post - i'm next to positive that is the climb rate issue which has now been fixed. Which ver are you running? I had a similar problem in TX, we climbed to 1000 feet in the casa had to wait for fighter jets to clear the area before climbing more and it reset to 0 while we were flying @ 1,000. I ended up sticking it in manual mode to deal with that.

I posted this video in the ballunar liftoff thread, but in case some of you guys missed it here is the link to a video i made during the ballunar liftoff in texas. 12 way crew, swooped about 5 - 10 feet above the canopies. Link here Quicktime required

Man..i remember her telling me about taking that stuff to the dz...

That and if it is like the fair i used to go to in MS there is a lot of duct tape all over those rides.. makes you wonder :)

Check it wonder how much tickets would be...

i enjoyed amazing accuracy with my 23, but did not have magextenders so i was really uncomfy gripping with 2 fingers. a little tiring too. you have that kind of problem? id like to see dave grab onto a 23. finny thought. and i have to agree with dave on the ruger. mine was a p89. didnt jam much but was just real 'loose' and noisy. know what i mean. traded mine for a standup bass. Actually my 23 is a perfect fit for my hand..

I like my glock 23.. a 40 cal and mid sized fire arm.. not hard to conceal but still has enough stopping power.

I found a bug in the neptune last night while doing wingsuit night jumps, if you have a neptune please read this! I had my neptune replaced recently because my old one had hardware issues with the back light, this is the replacement with software version 1.16. The first night jump worked great, unit worked as it was supposed to. Second night jump at 13K we had a lot of cloud cover so I had the pilot go to 9K, he went to 9k quick enough to make the neptune switch to freefall mode, which was no big deal. When I got out of the plane and actually started to freefall the neptune switched to some other mode and the backlight turned off. I went in and pushed a key to see what altitude I was at (the 3 second backlight when a button is pushed) and it said my altitude was NEGATIVE something... when I deployed it didn't switch to canopy mode, when i pressed akey again it said I was gaining altitude slowly. used my protrack to know when to deploy. Already sent an email to alti, but wanted to make sure everyone who had one didn't get stuck in a bad situation. Kevin

Kind of risky? How in the world would the TM reach the cutaway/reserve handles with a wingsuit on? When the passenger is the only person with a wingsuit it isn't a problem. The risk that I saw was in spin recovery.

uh, define great.

okay now someone has got to have a scanner..

i have hotel reservations if anyone wants to join in PM me.. coming in the 25th, not sure when i'm leaving.. before new years I believe. -K

I was going to do it at my dz.. it's been done, vladi did it at deland a while back (which is where I got the idea) i wanted to do it, and had a TM who said okay but had seconds thoughts... jari and vladi both said it really wasn't worth repeating, they didn't get hardly any drive and it is kinda risky. But they did exactly what you're saying, think they threw the drouge out around 6 or 8k.

IR is much smaller, this unit is the same size as a protrak (very small) if you were to put a USB port on it I think it would add considerable bulk to it, plus make waterproofing hard as you have an open hole you have to deal with. Suggest it, you're not the the first person who has mentioned that.. wouldn't be too hard to put in. If enough people ask for it they'll probably put it in. Around 50 bucks I hear, and from the rumors i hear it is very comparable to jumptrack.. supposed to be very similar. didn't read the post by luna, but if you mean MANUAL mode then yes it doesn't switch modes in manual mode, it stays on the altitude indicator. It may do this on the latest revision i'm not positive, but a 20 minute ride to altitude will KILL Your battery if it is on backlite the whole time. Backlite I believe takes about 500 times as much energy as not using backlite. They estimate a casual jumper will be able to use their neptune for a year on one battery.. you use the backlite for just a few of those jumps and that number is greatly decreased. If you need to see something on the way to altitude you can hit any key and it will stay on for 3 seconds. It will be adjustable in future versions.

Yep I use William Linne, VRS he is in falls church and does an awesome job. Kevin

Yeah. Let's encourage more of this. Maybe the guys will start doing it too! That'd be HOT! I do believe I saw the cast from queer eye for the straight guy in the audience :)

Damn that's shannon? i didn't recognize her with her clothes on.. er i mean her normal clothes not a jumpsuit.. people look so different when they aren't jumping :) sorry shannon ;)

No that isn't her, he's talking about shannon the rat, rat23 i believe. i'll see if I have any pics of her .. i guess i was just so much in awe i never got a pic with her :(

She woulda liked it worse if I posted the video of her ;) I still have some others (i think she's in some) that i haven't posted yet.. i know rebecca's boobies are in one i haven't posted..

eh? is that me?

btw the video is quicktime format so you need quicktime I believe 4.0 or greater.

I’ve uploaded the crew swoop video here And pictures here The 11th Annual Ballunar Liftoff held at NASA space center in Houston, Texas was held August 22 – 24th, providing spectators with a plethora of sights from numerous hot air balloons to countless skydiving demonstrations, and I had the honor of being one of only two birdman pilots at the event. The wingsuits were a new addition this year, and were brought in with great excitement. Al Saylor, the coordinator for the Ballunar Liftoff festival had us come in a day early to do a media jump to help with the promotion. And so the adventure begins…. I flew in from Washington, DC and Tamer flew in from Deland Florida, we had flights that arrived at approximately the same time and determined a meeting point, Al was sending a balloonist to pick us up. I was in the baggage claim area and called Tamer asking where he was, he told me he was outside my security gate waiting for me – I evidentially walked by him and didn’t see him, so I told him to come down to baggage claim. I waited about 10 minutes and he called me, “where are you??” he asks, I tell him I’m in baggage claim “where?” standing in front of hertz rental car I say. “Well I don’t see you, I’m standing in front of hertz” I finally asked him “Tamer, what airport are you at?” his response was “the Houston airport” well unbeknown to Tamer, there are multiple Houston airports and while in distance they are not far from each other in time they are. So I’m standing in Hobby and he’s standing in international about an hour apart. I walk outside and up pulls the “Up or Down” chase crew van, a lady rolls down the window and asks if I’m a skydiver and tells me to hop in. Turns out this is no ordinary chase crew van driver, it’s Sandy Graff – a championship balloonist. I inform her of the “small” problem that we had, only to realize it was around 5:00 PM and we’d be going straight towards downtown Houston in order to get to international. So as we’re driving I find out through our conversation that she travels around to various DZs and lets jumpers jump her balloon, mainly around Texas. I was thinking heck yeah! I’m at a balloon festival, where else would I have a good chance to get a balloon jump in?? Of course this idea was quickly put to rest when she informed me of the flight restrictions the balloons were under due to the proximity to major airports. Only to rub salt into the wound, Sandy told me she would have offered to take me up had it not been for those restrictions. Drat. So about an hour later we roll up and Tamer is outside with rig in hand. We start the trip back towards Al Saylor’s house, I look out and see an actual column of rain approaching. We get in it and it is coming down like cats and dogs, a rather discouraging start to the weekend but nonetheless it was soon gone and we were looking at blue skies once again. We get to Al’s house, which is situated in a neighborhood that contains an asphalt runway with numerous houses backing up to it. Al’s house was no exception to this trend, in fact he had a fairly new hangar in his back yard housing numerous planes, one of which was astronaut Dave Brown’s from the space shuttle Columbia – turns out they were neighbors. Al was not there when we arrived, and I later found out this was because at least during this weekend Al is busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. When Al arrived we exchanged quick hellos and were soon off to the “safety meeting.” The safety meeting The “safety” meeting consisted of pre-registration and a Mexican dinner at a local bar. Our own DZ.comer Rebecca was on her way and a few hours after we arrive she begins calling asking Tamer and I for directions. She ended up going up and down the street a few times until she found us, but she eventually did. I didn’t recognize her, but after meeting her and talking to her for a while I definitely recognized her eye J it is the same one that is in her avatar. I met a lovely crew dawg named Jen, she and I formed a team to challenge Rebecca and Tamer in pool. We then proceeded to get our butts kicked 3 or 4 times before giving up. So we decide to call it a night, and head back to Al’s knowing that in less than 8 hours we’d be doing the media jump, the butterflies were starting. So we roll out of bed and jump into NASA So the next morning we get up super early in order to jump into NASA, I roll out of bed and hop in the shower when I get out Tamer informs me that Al moved the jump up 30 minutes for the media, so we had to hurry. I repacked my main for sanity sake, put on my suit, walked out the back door of Al’s house and hopped in the Cessna 206. Tamer informed me he was a little worried, why? Well he’s never, ever, jumped out of a Cessna. We went over the exit, hopped in the plane and taxied down the runway. We turned around ready to takeoff only to see a giant hot air balloon directly in the path of the runway about 1000 feet off the ground. We waited a bit for it to clear and off we went. As we climbed and headed towards NASA we passed balloon after balloon, it was quite a site. Some of them had landed, one of which in a 4 lane highway stopping a line of traffic. We started flying around the DZ, Saturn 5 clearly visible as was a Remax hot air ballon. We planned out the exit point and where we were going to go, I was wearing smoke and the 206 had smoke as well. The pilot told us when we were on jump run, Tamer (who had just learned how to OPEN a Cessna door only 20 minutes earlier) turned the latch and the door flew open. I can only imagine what he was thinking, wearing a suit with huge wings between his arms and legs, crawling out onto a small step with 60 mph wind hitting him. He got out, I got out popped the smoke and gave the count and we were off! We flew around, deployed and started to come in for the landing. I came in, had a perfect landing right in front of the news cameras. Everyone was ecstatic; they said you could see everything from the ground and that it was amazing. The Bird Dawgs are Formed I was worried that because I didn’t have enough smoke for every jump that the people on the ground wouldn’t be able to see us when we jump. Tamer and I both routinely “buzz” or flyby tandems that are under canopy at our home dropzone, so I approached the crew dawgs about doing it with them. Bill Runyon (sp?) was heading up the crew dawgs, and was all for it. He even (jokingly, but it wasn’t so apparent he was joking) suggested that they build a box with a hole in it and we fly through it, I was all for it but then he said he was joking J But they did build some killer formations and we did some killer swooping. I only wore my camera on a few of the jumps but the video from those jumps was awesome! Flying over a 13 way 5 – 8 feet from the top of a layer was just crazy. I wore smoke, and evidentially my glide ratio was similar to theirs because they were in my smoke for a while after I flew past them. They even felt my burble as I went by, it was just too cool. I’ve uploaded the crew swoop video here And pictures here I met a lot of very awesome people, many of them were dz.comers - to all of you I met, it was good meeting you and can't wait to jump with you guys again!

Yup got my rat #, birdrat numero dos (2) :-) Kevin

I've already been called gullable so i'll answer. Smoke? yep it's smoke.. military grade smoke, same stuff the golden knights use and a lot of demo teams use.

Hey, I am finalizing the details on a GPS company sponsoring me for doing wingsuit research with their products, once it's all done and i have hardware in hand i'll post what my setup is.. it's super cool stuff..