howardwhite

Pretty picture, a Spotter cover. So who, where, when? HW

For a lot of users who appreciated the features and relative simplicity of the "original" iMovie, the new version is a downgrade, dumbed-down. A lot of reviewers slammed it with comments along the line of "what was Apple thinking...." I kept the old one, not that I use it much, and trashed the new one. HW

You can take off either door -- or both. Yes, at SF, exits were on the left. When we jumped this one at Moosehead Lake, ME, we took off both doors and had jumpers outside on both floats for exit. I was on the right side, forward of the strut. HW

Saipan. Here's another of my father's 1945 slides (no airplanes, but lots of ships). He was a medical officer on a ship which ferried troops from Pearl Harbor to Saipan and Leyte Gulf in preparation for the Okinawa invasion. The original picture is from a trip my parents made there in the early 80s. HW

Not Phillipines, right ocean. The first picture was taken in the early 80s. This one, from the same island, was taken much earlier. Check out the planes. HW

Care to guess when and where the picture was taken? HW

Several for you to identify in this sad picture, taken by my father. HW

As a matter of fact, yes. I knew he was in Northern California. Google helps. HW

Maybe here. Scroll down. HW

Bigger is better HW

The 1960 Academy Awards were presented April 17, 1961 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. "A Sport is Born" was among the nominees. It is listed as a 1960 film in IMDB, the internet movie database, where there is the following comment: "This rare documentary film short is about the birth of Sky Diving, i.e. Non-emergency Parachuting, now practiced as a sport in the United States of America, circa 1960. The film was produced by Leslie Winik and directed by Lew Sanborn, Parachute Club of America license D-1 who, along with Jacques Istel, license D-2, was also an actor, without stunt men, in the film. The film featured the first live air-to-air movie sequence of a sky diver during free fall ever captured on film, and was an Oscar-nominee in 1961. Among the sequences featured was a heart-stopping view as seen from inside the jump plane's cockpit from which the exit door had been removed. At jump altitude, approximately 12,000 ft. ASL, the camera first pans inside the aircraft cockpit, catching a view of the pilot, his controls and instruments. Then the camera follows Sanborn as he directs the pilot on final approach to Sanborn's intended exit from the plane. The camera then follows Sanborn as he motions the pilot to cut the aircraft's power. Clad in white coveralls and helmet, black boots and gloves, goggles, two parachutes, altimeter and stopwatch, Sanborn begins his exit from the cockpit. He moves through the open doorway onto the precariously-placed man step outside the open doorway. With the wind blast tearing at his face and clothing, the camera follows his exit. Sanborn carefully positions his gloved hands along the wing strut, then moves his feet, first one, then the other, onto the narrow step below. With the slipstream viciously tearing at his body, he calmly gestures 'Goodbye' and thrusts himself gracefully spread-eagle out and away into the bottomless blue. The camera pans slowly downward as Sanborn's white figure slowly disappears into a bank of cumulus clouds below. This never-before filmed sequence was the first of it's kind ever witnessed by US movie-goers. "This precedent-setting, history-making film (now rare) should be made accessible, in HD DVD format, to the public, to high schools, universities, museums, libraries as well as other institutions." I suppose if it had been released early in 1960 it could have fit your time frame. But I still think you're wrong. HW

The exact dates I cite come from a "trailer" of sorts which precedes the video copy. It concludes with crediting "The American Museum of Sport Parachuting" for the "rescue" of the otherwise-lost footage. I infer that means it came from Bill Ottley, who used that term for his dream of a museum and who is likely to have gotten those facts correct. That aside, the Orange Sport Parachute Center opened for business May 2, 1959, and I think it's highly unlikely that a film which includes exensive shots of student training, jumps into The Inn at Orange, etc., would have been shot, completed, and distributed in theaters in the time frame you remember it. Also the Oscar nomination was in 1961 -- it's not likely it would been for a film distributed in 1959, If I saw it at that time (and I don't really remember) it would probably have been in the Post theater at the Presidio of Monterey, just a couple of miles from the Bear Flag Inn on Cannery Row -- where PCA headquarters was located. A guy in my barracks kept his rig in his locker, and I saw my first skydives ever at the Laguna Seca race track at Fort Ord, but didn't make my first jump 'til 1965 But I'll ask Lew next time we talk. HW

I've been to three CompUSAs in the past two days (two in New Hampshire and one in Connecticut), and the 1tb drives are all close to $300. Wonder why your store had them so low. They do have piles of cheap Canon and Epson inkjet printers; just not any one I would really want. HW

Correct. Here is a a picture posted on Flickr by Lee Guilfoyle, D-50, of Lew with the camera he used to shoot A Sport is Born. It was nominated for (did not win) an Oscar in 1961 for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects. The camera was a wind-up model; the thing on side of the helmet opposite the camera is (I think) a counterweight; it's not a battery. Produced by Paramount and Sports Illustrated, A Sport is Born was filmed between July 12 and 20, 1960 at Orange, MA; the jumpers were Dusty Smith and Steve Boyle. It was widely shown as a short subject in movie theaters and provided most Americans with their first exposure to the thought of jumping out of airplanes for fun. For years, it was shown to every first jump course at the Parachutes, Inc. centers. Just before the first freefall sequence, Chris Schenkel, the narrator, says "You won't believe what you are about to see, but there is no fake or trick photography here." And at the end of the first freefall sequence, he says "Four baton passes in 30 seconds of freeefall -- a new record." It was shot in Cinerama or some other early variant of wide-screen technology, and required an anamorphic lens on the projector. Lew Sanborn has donated a large amount of really interesting old stuff to the National Skydiving Museum; most is currently in storage. I was talking with him last week about some of it, and he told me the movie camera was owned by Parachutes Incorporated. He has no idea where it is now. The original freefall footage seems also to have disappeared sometime after Parachutes Inc. closed in the early 80s. I have searched far and wide for a copy of the 16mm film, with no luck. There is a video tape version floating around; the copy of the film from which it derives is in tough shape but it's still fun to watch. As it is, the video makes people and airplanes look horizontally squished because of the anamorphic lens, but I have put it into Final Cut Pro and fixed the aspect ratio so it looks about right. Maybe some day I'll figure out whether/how it can be shared. Meanwhile, here are a few screen grabs. HW

Weird that the Nature Photographer site tells you to make the text in Word, instead of directly in Photoshop. HW

A Google search for "Photoshop watermark" will produce a huge number of results, showing various techniques and even including tutorials on how to automate the process. Then there are "Digimarc" watermarks, which are a different animal: http://www.digimarc.com/tech/dwm.asp HW

Geez, I keep looking for actual skydivers in these pictures. Mine have them (well, with a couple of exceptions.) HE

From the book, I would guess that your friend was Carol Gordon. "Carol Gordon had made more than three hundred jumps. She was blonde, and always wore huge, dangling earrings, usually pink. She had a great sense of humor, and everybody liked her." HW

Yes. On Memorial Day weekend of 1985, there wasn't anything special going on at New England DZs, so a bunch of people drove or flew to the Ranch, where there was to be this never-before-jumped plane, a Cessna Caravan. By the time we landed there, the first load had already taken off and the second one was full, so we did paperwork and manifested for a later load. Then we stood around watching the second load board and taxi. As it took off, I think we sensed something was not right. Though we'd never seen one, it didn't sound as though it was developing full power, it did not appear to be using flaps, and it certainly wasn't climbing well. Then we we heard a loud noise and saw the Caravan go through the tops of the trees along the road at the end of the runway. It disappeared from sight, and we could hear no sounds, but at least there was no crash sound and no sign of smoke from a crash. A few minutes later, everyone cheered as the plane flew over the airport very low -- about two grand -- and everyone got out. The plane disappeared again. We learned a few minutes later that it had landed at Kobelt Airport, a couple of miles away. A couple of us got into our 182 and went there for a look. There were pine branches around the cowling. In my slightly hazy memory, I also see a branch wedged between the horizontal stabilizer and elevator. I could be wrong about that, but there was certainly major elevator damage; the bottom line was that pitch control was obviously very limited. There was pine tar on the prop, but the prop was Kevlar, and intact. For us, the boogie was over; we all flew home and jumped out of Cessnas for the rest of the weekend. The rest of this is from the Robert Williams book. The Caravan had been delivered to "Cowboy" just a few days earlier, on May 21, at Peachtree-DeKalb and he made the first jump out of it during that week. He flew the first load at the Ranch, then turned it over to Jerry Hannah, who flew the next load. "According to observers, Jerry either did not set the flaps properly, or didn't give the engine enough throttle, because he took off and the plane barely missed hitting some wires and clipped the top of some trees at the end of the runway." The plane was ferried to Cessna in Wichita for repairs. A few weeks and $9,000 later, Cowboy picked it up there. It subsequently flew at East Troy, Bardstown, Xenia, Quincy, West Point, Palatka, Covington, LA. and Freeport. The book reports a couple of other "incidents," both involving Jerry Hannah as pilot. In one, at Quincy, he "got too close to a DC-8, and the turbulence put the Caravan into a four thousand foot spin." In another, Aug. 10 at Freeport he lost oil pressure at 300 feet and made a dead stick landing. He had not secured the oil cap. He is quoted as saying "Oh, shit, I did it again." Others have already noted details of the fatal crash. A further note: "Drew" Thornton, who is a prominent character in the Williams book, is also a prominent character in "The Bluegrass Conspiracy," by Sally Denton. You can read several passages about him at Google Books. I haven't read it, but I guess I'll go looking for it. Attached is a lift ticket for Cowboy's Caravan. He apparently had a lot printed: white for 12,500 and blue for 15,000. This one was included in the book as a "complimentary souvenir" for use as a bookmark. HW

This is a reference to one source for a book, "Cowboy's Caravan," written by the father of David "Cowboy" Williams, who owned it and died in the crash. I have the book and will post more about it later. Briefly, after the crash there were widespread stories that the plane was sabotaged in revenge for some sort of involvement in a drug deal or deals. The book is an elaborate effort to counter those stories. "Drew" Thornton, mentioned in another thread recently, is a prominent figure in the book; he was the skydiver who died Sept. 11,1985, landing in a street in Knoxville, TN with ~75 lbs of cocaine on his body. I witnessed the first "crash" of Cowboy's Caravan several months before the final one. Anyone remember where and when that was? (If you have read the book, no fair. You had to be there.) HW

o.k., duh, it's a Caravan. But what Caravan? Ever see it? Ever jump it? Any good stories? HW

Doc I suspect a lot of people won't be able to deal with a .pdd file; in an age of Javelins and Mirages, it's sort of the Wonderhog of photo formats. Those who can open it will perhaps wonder what kind of plane a "Cessna 181" is. (I know, of course, having made many jumps out of the same one.) HW

Not surprising, considering the link was posted nearly four years ago. Interesting to see the number of old threads being dredged up here in the past few days. Old skydivers must have gotten new computers for Christmas. HW

J If you have a small child available and want to try it, you're welcome to borrow mine; you know where to find me. HW

Mine's prettier. HW