IvanPeters

I've managed to forget my alti on two jumps that I can recall (both camera jumps) - despite getting a filghtline check. A good lesson for people jumping in the UK where a flightline check is required - don't rely on it. Ivan

Most cutaway systems involve completely removing the chin cup or rear latch resulting in a great big opening for your head to come out. A normal full face will fit quite snugly and does not come off easily even when not tightened. You might be able to loosen the tightening system on the sidewinder but you are not going to make the hole bigger. There is a valid argument for not needing a cutaway if there are no snag points. But I would say that you have to be pretty sure there are none. If there is the slightest gap anywhere then Murphy's Law says that a line will find it. Ivan

Not necessarily. Just different. A PG canopy is designed to do a different job. It's designed to stay in the air for as long as possible. A skydiving canopy is designed to open safely at terminal velocity and to get you back to the ground in one piece. There will be many similarities in the way they work and perform. There will also be many differences. At this point, you do not want to be worrying about the details of what happened to that paraglider. You will have enough to learn on your FJC about how to use your student canopy. Details of how to prevent a paraglider spin will only confuse things. There is, however, one useful lesson you can take away from it - pay attention to what you are doing at all times. Ivan

Well, this year the BPA are planning to introduce a canopy handling training and rating system. I haven't seen any details yet so I don't know if any wing loading limits will be enforced based on rating but it wouldn't surprise me. There will certainly be rating requirements for entry into swoop competitions. So, once the details are out, you'll have some specific proposals to have a properly structured debate around. And, maybe in a few years, there'll be some useful numbers to base some conclusions on. Ivan

Or read all about it on their web site. Just about everything you could possible want to know is there. Ivan

The two higher end models come with a SuperDrive which is a DVD writer. There seems to be some confusion out there about what formats it supports. It seems that Apple have used a bunch of different drives over the years and the call them all a SuperDrive. There web site makes a fuss about the SuperDrive in the G4 PowerBook supporting every format under the sun. They are very quiet on the subject on the iMac G5. All the documentation says "DVD-R". Part of that may be to do with iDVD 4 only supporting -R. I have heard reports that the SuperDrive in the iMac supports +R and possibly even the RW formats. And I just got my iDVD 5 upgrade which claims to support more media formats. But I haven't yet gone out and bought any DVD's to try. Ivan

Yes. But then I wear weight with everything. I have found that I can film 4 way with little or no weight but then the wings spend the whole jump not being used. Seems a bit of a waste. More seriously, I like to keep my weight the same for any type of jump I do (even solo's) just to keep canopy performance consistent (20lbs makes quite a difference). Do you normally have to wear weight when jumping with others? Ivan

No, I don't see it. I don't think balancing on your back is anything like freefall. Having gravity pull your arms and legs back is not going to help develop the muscle memory needed to push your hips forward. To do that you need to actually push your hips forward. Ivan

Check your mag Dave. They changed the rules this year. The BPA Junior category is now the same as ESL/NSL Rookie. That means all the randoms are in and there is no longer a jump number limit. Ivan

OK, I've updated the Online Draw Generator with the 2005 dive pool. I've also added USPA and ESL/NSL draws and updated the BPA draws for the 2005 rules. The british armed forces draws are still using 2002 rules. If someone can give me the latest info on the armed forces competitions I'll update it. Note that some of the images are hard to see on screen - especially the 8 way ones. That's because they are designed to be printed. Let me know if you spot any errors. Ivan

Here is that circuit diagram. Note that it is from memory so you should test carefully that it works for you before soldering anything. It's pretty simple really. The focus wire connects all the way to the tongue switch for "off" and connects to "common" for "on". The shielding on your existing remote cable is usually the "common." You'll have to do some testing to work out which of the other two wires is which.

I don't know what the plug is on a 20D. The two cameras I have both have custom plugs. So I had to get hold of a remote switch for each, chop the switch off and put a jack plug on instead. Both switches had 3 wires. I suspect the 20D does as well. On the inside of the helmet I got a conceptus tongue switch, chopped the plug off and wired it to the socket and switch. In retrospect, I think I should have put a second socket inside for the switch because I suspect it will wear out and need replacing one day. Getting the wiring right is a real pain. You don't want to solder everything up and then find you got it wrong. There's little or no documentation out there so you have to experiment a lot by touching wires togther to work out what is needed. Then test frequently to make sure you didn't get it wrong. I'll try to draw you a wiring diagram of what I did later today. Up until two weeks ago, I didn't have a camera with autofocus capability. So I didn't have the switch. I added the switch because all the experienced camera people I have spoken to since starting have different opinions on the use of autofocus. So, it seems the best option to give myself the choice to try everything. Note that my autofocus label is slightly misleading. It should really say "continuous focus." The switch does the same thing as holding the button halfway down on the camera. If your camera/lens has a continuous focus mode then this causes it to continuously focus on whatever is in front of it. The idea is that, when you shoot, it is quicker because it has already focused. A camera in autofocus mode with my switch set to off will still autofocus before shooting. And turning my switch on with a camera in single-shot autofocus mode will give very bad results. I got all my plugs and sockets from Maplin which, I think, is the UK version of Radio Shack. Some sort of electronic component shop is what you want - I doubt if a caera shop would stock that stuff (certainly not here in the UK). Ivan

A lot of people use an RCA connector like these. They don't stick out from the helmet too much, L shaped plugs are easy to find and they make a good, solid connection that is not going to come apart easily. The downside is that you have only two connections. You have to decide what you want to do with the focus wire and hard-wire it into the cable. I went for a 3.5mm stereo jack socket. It's about as low profile as you can get, with and without a plug connected, and it has 3 connections, allowing me to decide what I want to do with the focus later. You can go even smaller and use a 2.5mm socket like that used for the Sony LANC port. But, as many people can report, they can tend to break with a lot of use. The 3.5 is a bit stronger and the mechanism seems to lock in place more firmly. Ivan

1GB SanDisc Ultra II (66 x). Hopefully, next weekend I'll get to try the Extreme III (130x). But it's not a high end camera so I'm not hopefull of it making a significant difference. Ivan

Due to bad weather I have only done one jump with it so far. A tandem from 10 grand. Only took about 8 shots but I wasn't going for speed. I tried it with everything on auto. I have done some testing on the ground. I fired off one shot a second for 60 seconds. At first it kept up pretty well. At about 8 seconds it missed one. Then another one after maybe 4 seconds. Then the gaps started getting longer. After pressing the button 60 times I ended up with 49 shots. That was at maximum image size, Standard quality (focus, shutter, aperture all set to manual). The same test with quality set to Fine came out with 32 shots and Extra Fine produced 18 shots. Then my battery ran out so more testing will have to wait. I did discover that the remote release connector is not very secure. Unfortunately, I discovered that on jump run - which provided some entertainment as I frantically try to plug it back in wearing winter gloves. I have since put together a locking system with some gaffer tap and some velcro. I guess it wasn't a proper skydiving camera until it got some gaffer tape on it somewhere. Ivan

From a photography point of view, the position of the attachment point is not going to make much difference unless you are doing close up stuff. In which case, the fact that the lens is 4 inches above your eyeline will be more of an issue than it being half an inch to the side. With practice you will learn to look slightly off centre to compensate when things get close (or get a wider angle lens). From a balance point of view, keeping the weight centered is good. But not critical. People put whole video cameras on one side of their head. Wherever you put the camera, there will be all sorts of extra forces on your head and neck on opening. You will get used to it with practice. Just don't try and do too much at once. If you are going to try to modify an existing helmet, plan carefully and make sure some experienced camera flyers look it over before you try to jump it. Ivan

Check the small print on those mail-in rebates in the USA. They tend to be open to US citizens only and require a US address to send the rebate to. Sometimes they have limits on number of rebates per address.

http://www.ivanpeters.com/skydive/drawgenerator/index.htm (Not yet updated with 2005 changes - but will be soon) Ivan

I just bought a second hand Konica Minolta DiMage A2. 8 Megapixel, wired remote support, 28-200mm (35mm equivalent) with option of a 0.8 converter if you want to go wider and, from what I can tell, a pretty fast AF and cycle time for it's class. D20 it isn't - but I can't afford one of them just yet. Hopefully I'll get to jump it this weekend. Ivan

Or not getting a go around and having to fix it while the team gets in the door and leaves without you. Ivan

Don't get into that situation in the first place. And by that I don't mean "don't go low". I mean that you shouln't be "hanging around" below everyone else all the way until pull time. There should be an agreed break off which allows time for the highest puller to do a proper track. There should not be a party still going on at anyone's pull time. At the agreed break-off altitude you should track away. If it is clear that you are not going to make it in in time (say 1000 feet before break off) then track off and get out of the way (preferably not along jump-run). Swooping takes some practice. And even people with 1000's of jumps get it wrong occasionally. You can expect to do it a few more times. So, talk to the people organising your jumps and make sure there is a plan for when things go wrong. Ivan

Your diagram gives no idea of scale but it sounds like the landing area you picked was not particularly huge and was surrounded by hazards on all sides. Possibly not the best choice. You might be able to consistently land in the pit but it's amazing how quickly your accuracy can go down the pan when you add unfamiliar territory and the pressure of not having any outs. I can't give an opinion on whether you should have taken the out. It is an opinion I could only form when placed in that situation and seeing what you saw. But I would suggest that "land safe, not close" applies to any jump - not just ones at the DZ. Ivan

The resolution of 3 CCD systems hasn't changed much because it hasn't needed to. Single CCD systems are improving their resolution all the time. So they are getting ever closer in quality. I've not seen a 3 CCD camera to make a comparison but, to justify the price difference I would assume it still creates a superior image in a wider range of conditions. The 3 CCD system still has 3 times the light capturing area which I would expect to be particularly useful in low light conditions. Lighting conditions at 12,000 ft are generally pretty good. So you might question the value of that extra capability for the type of conditions you will generally be filming in. EricTheRed noted that some 3 CCD cameras have problems with vibration. The VX2100 uses a physical image stabilization system instead of the digital system used in the 1 CCD cameras. I believe this is supposed to be better but I have no experience.

A standard digital NTSC picture is 720 x 486 pixels. That's roughly 340K pixels. That doesn't change no matter how many pixels your CCD has. The reason for having more pixels in the CCD is to better calculate the colour of the video pixels. A video pixel has to try to represent the average colour of the area it covers. This is hard for a single CCD pixel to do. Having the information from 6 actual pixels to calculate the video pixel from makes the result better. The PC330 and PC350 are both single CCD cameras. They are both 3 Megapixel CCD's - although only 2 million of those pixels are used for video. The rest are only used when taking stills. A 3 CCD camera calculates the colour differently. The lens splits the incoming light into it's red, green and blue components and directs each colour to it's own CCD. The CCD now has a less complicated job to do. It just needs to determine the brightness As a result, you don't need so many pixels. The VX2100 has only 380K pixels per CCD. The 3 CCD method has always produced superior results (allegedly - I've never seen them). As the number of pixels on single CCD's gets bigger the quality gap is reducing. The other factor that comes into play is the CCD size. The general idea is that the bigger the CCD, the more light it can capture and the better the image. The VX2100 has 3 0.33 inch CCD's. The PC350 has one. So the VX2100 has 3 times the light capturing ability which also contributes to better images. That, at least, is my understanding of how things work. Ivan

Photo by Craig O'Brien over Perris. It's the only picture I have of me with a camera on my head. Ivan