psw097

I think these are very talented drunk people.

She photoshop-ed big black nipples in from the New Year's pictures that were posted - photoshop them back out.

I've tracked the line trim change of my 2 Vipers (same airfoil, line trim and planform as the Cobalt) - My 94 opened very hard regardless of packing, PC, container used, etc. My 105 Viper was similar, but not as severe. I tracked line trim changes as the openings improved. My observations were that the lines shrank into trim, not out of trim. - the brake lines and C-1 line appeared to make the biggest difference. I do not have my spreadsheets with me for the exact numbers but the brake lines on my 105 are something like 8 inches short. My 94 Viper has ~200 jumps on it now and opens very nice. My 105 has around 550 and opens like butter. The 105 is now starting to have the feel of going back out of trim - near stall on openings, slight tendancy to line trist, very abrupt stall point. Overall I think the Atair canopy is sensitive to line trim and manufactured "long" to lengthen the life of the line set and lessen the chance of an opening-stall/line-twist/chop problem. Hard openings are better than constant chops for spinning line twist? Throw in copy variation and some open hard and some open great. This is theory of course and I would have thought that Atair would use Vectran line sets if the theory was true. After 700 or so jumps on Vipers and demo Cobalts I love the canopy but they are interesting to tame. But, I also paid 500 for one and 600 for the other - brand new. For that price I'm willing to ride out a couple wild openings. For 1400, I'd buy something more consistant.

Hm. Loaded 1911 sitting next to loaded Hi-Po across the room from loaded Mini-14. Glad the puppy doesn't have opposable thumbs or I'd be a bad parent.

Yes, you are an old lady.

Your suffering makes me laugh. I think I will celebrate your poor service by purchasing a standard zoom from B&H this week.

This is the perfect reply. Peter Pan emailed several local people asking where he should buy from. I think my email response to him sums up his buying experience: "I think this was the point of my email and one of the many reason I buy 90% of my photo crap from B&H. Thank you for reinforcing that fact, not to mention the fact that you......." Personal attack editted out.

My dogs are a couple knuckleheads.

I recommend: http://www.afn.org/skydive/sta/highperf.pdf or http://www.skydiveaz.com/resource.htm or http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/how/ Generally, ground effect can be felt within 1 span length of the ground. For a given surface area a wing with a higher aspect ratio will produce more lift - this is FM and I cannot remember all the details, has to do with form drag vs. parasitic drag. AOA is the relationship to the relative wind, it will be positive in relation to the relative wind only, its the deflection portion (Newton's contribution) of lift. Editted for messed up hyperlink.

All summer while doing 4-way I was using a 22" PC without issue. After nationals I went back to video/freefly about the same time the weather started getting cooler. The slower deployment speeds without the super slick RW suit and higher pack volume was making for some sweet PC in-tow fun. Got some nice video of fighting with a PC in-tow while someone, that decided not to track, dumped under me on a video jump. Well, I rotated all my PCs after that putting the 24" on the 94 and 27" on the 105. Much better.

"Angle of attack is a constanst, think of it as a slope, the higher the wingloading, the faster you go down the slope, but the angle is the same." You have AOA and AOI reversed. Greatly simplified: Angle of attack is the wing to the relative wind and is positive. Angle of incidence is the angle to the pilot, or ground in stable flight, and without an engine better be negative. Both can be changed to a certain extent by yank'n on handles/risers.

I found that a couple of the screws were loose when I got mine - new. Check the screws that stand the top plate off from the release. After tightening them down most of the play is gone - there is still some play but nothing that concerns me. I still use elastic over the fiberglass 1/2 box but that is more for the box than the camera.

Its been a great camera, I have had no problems with it. The tongue switch thing was only for those of us that had mono-plugs already. Frame rate has not been a problem, it shoots plenty fast for my needs. Because I have mine top mounted and it has a plastic body over magnesium sub-frame I did build a fiberglass cover for extra protection on mine - it covers all the doors, buttons and LCD. The kit lens has worked out allright. It is very light and the image quality good - adding a hood helped. It requires a lot of pre-flight gaff since it has a front focus ring and zoom. The only issues I have is the the focus is touchy and its not wide enough for me. I also have a 12mm Diagonol fish-eye and a Sigma 12-24mm for jumping. I plan on the 12-24 being my main lens once my neck gets numb to that monster chunk of glass.

There would be enough room in that Quasar II for a third canopy. When Peter Pan lands that arangement I'll be sure to video it for the enjoyment of all.

I have the new Sigma 12-24. The first test shots I saw from the pre-production sucked - then they started getting better, so I bought one. I have not got to jump it yet, there is snow on the ground here in Virginia. It matches my KUW-042M at 13mm and my SGW-05PRO at 17mm - I like that flexibility and there is no other lens on the market that can do that. Its not a bad lens, just not a great lens. Its extremely hard to make a full frame 12mm lens that's flat. I did not expect a miracle at 650 bucks and with the 1.6 crop it does well. Wide open at 12mm the corners start getting pretty bad distortion - but nothing compared to a fish-eye. Above F11 its pretty nice. For skydiving the aperture won't be wide open and most shots have nothing but blue/green at the edges, and they'll be center cropped anyway.

Peter Pan, TRV big - PC small - still toying with the idea of a camera? As much as that scares me.....try Sony.com or ask me or others Saturday night over copious amounts of alcohol.

It should work the same in Tv as it does in sports as long as continuous mode is set - in sports it defaults to continuous shooting in Tv you need to select it. As far as rewiring the switch I didn't make a wiring diagram and the colors can change depending on what you use for the stereo plug. I lopped off the tongue switch and a stereo plug and used my multi-meter to find the correct wires.

I've had one around 1.5/1 and another 1.7/1. My Micro Raven 120 does not have much glide and a very fast/abrupt stall.

I use Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0 - I think that is the version. It came with my Sony 500ax DVD burner. Work well, no complaints. But, in Premier you will need to interlace the audio or the player software will only show video - Default is not interlaced since you don't want the audio imbedded for DVDit or other DVD authoring software.

No, Premier will not do the chapters/titles etc. you can use it or something like TMPGenc to convert your DV AVI or other types of video to VCD (MPEG 1) or SVCD (MPEG II) format. VCD will give you about 1 hour of video per CD-R at not so good quality and SVCD will give you about 20 minutes at medium DVD quality. Almost all DVD players will play VCD but SVCD is spotty for support. Once the files are converted you can use Nero to make chapters and title pages. You do not have to have a menu page if it is all in one file you can just burn it.

Premier 6.5 has it built into the MPEG encoder or there are dozens of conversion tools free or shareware on the internet to convert AVI to VCD, SVCD or DVD. CD burning software like Nero can also do this. I have a bunch of free/shareware that I used before I upgrade to 6.5. Google: convert avi to vcd I realized I have a lot of redundant info with the above post - I don't type very fast - TMPGenc you do have to be careful if you are using DV AVI type I or II and they charge money for DVD output, unless they have upgraded it recently

I just got my freefly pants back from Firefly - being repaired. It did take a long time but in the end they did an amazing job - were very shredded and now look new again - and Sherri did not charge me for the repair work. I think their workmanship is excellent.

"Paul has lots of pics of his projects.. except for the flying Barn that was his first still camera box that the dog ate. ha!" Nice avitar Jonathan - heard you got poster size made of one from that jump. I think I shot those at ISO 400, how grainy was the big print? I tend to document everything, its the engineer thinking I'm surprised I don't have ACAD drawings. Actually, the puppy ate the 2nd still box I made. I still have the barn - it turned out to be overkill, but very protective. Rev. 3 - the one I'm jumping now came out the best anyway. Next, is a fill flash mount after I find out if the new cutaway system I made holds together - I'm running out of realestate on that helmet.

Yes, the cost is a very good point. Fiberglass is very cheap - $25 per project or less is fair. I've used the cameras for the mold - a layer of gaff, layer of plastic wrap, layer of tinfoil and layer of wax paper keeps the electronics safe. Make sure to protect well - I messed up my protrack screen on one job. A bondo repair kit from an autoparts store is enough to do a couple projects and is around $15 (cannot remember exactly). Knives, scissors, drill motor, dremmel and sandpaper round out most of the tools needed. Wet fiberglass and the fiberglass dust smell like crap and is hard to clean up so I use my basement.

I've made various fiberglass contraptions for my camera helmet. Never a box in the shape of a "D" - But have made: wide angle protection, audible port protection, Cam-eye protection, 3 different still boxes (dog ate one). Working with fiberglass is not that bad - carbon-fiber or more exotic materials is different.