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Everything posted by spezticle

  1. spezticle

    Video and telemetry

    Hey guys, Trying to get useable telemetric data out of a skydive and onto video. The Gopro hero 7 black and their quik software kinda does the trick but i've found the data to be grossly inaccurate. I 'did' power the camera on not long before exit so i probably didn't get a good gps signal lock on. I'm going to try ensuring a better gps lock and compare results. Does anyone have experience with this or other hardware for this purpose? I know of the flysight, but unsure how to turn that into useable data to overlay onto a video. I found a software set, http://racerender.com/ that does a neat job for things like drones and cars with ODBII sensors. If anyone's got experience or thoughts, would love to chat about it, Thanks!
  2. spezticle

    Dekunu One altimeter... Any reviews on this??

    Has anyone bought, used, reviewed this since the release? I'm still pretty excited to find out about it.
  3. spezticle

    Damaged Falgayras altimeter

    So, I knocked the plastic cover off the face of my altimeter, then bent the pin trying to put it back on. I'm in America. Falgayras is in France. Does anyone have experience or advice with repairs and sending gear out? Are there good places that aren't the manufacturer for repairs?
  4. Well, another thing to consider is wind direction, but this is a great reason that this kind of conversation is better had at a DZ face to face with an AFF instructor. When in full flight, no brakes applied, the nose of your canopy (the front) is pointed slightly towards the ground. That is to say that the nose is lower than the tail (the back) As you apply the brakes, your canopy flattens out. As you complete your flare, the nose should be raising up and higher than the tail. I'm a bad artist but this image may help you understand. a fully applied flare, that is the picture all the way to the right, will bring the nose up and counteract your speed. if you were going too fast forward you may have started your flare too late and not fully flared all the way down. This will keep you flying forward faster. Also, remember before we mentioned that braking too soon will decrease your ability to flare. If you flare all the way down after having already been at half brakes, you wouldn't slow down as much as you would have if you had your arms ALL the way up until the last 10' I encourage, again, go over this again and again with an instructor, in person. This time you broke your ankle. A friend broke their back (and fully recovered) as a consequence of bad flaring decisions.
  5. I'm at 119 jumps so I'm not an expert by any means, but I do have some experience. It's my understanding that not flaring until ~10 feet is good practice. It was explained to me like this: Your flare is your brakes. What gives you power to flare is forward speed. If you come in a 2 or 3 stage flare, or half brakes until you finish your flare, you're giving up some of that forward speed early and your flare will be less effective. I've seen a handful of jumps where AFF instructor says FLARE and there's a 1 or 2 second delay while the student brain registers and then flares. Then they get on the ground and said "I flared when you said to". Maybe this happened with you? I've repeatedly seen students swear up and down that they flared all the way down, but then when we watch the video it's quite clear that their 'full flare' was actually half or 3/4 brakes. Last piece of advice I can give is go to your local DZ, review the video with multiple AFF instructors. really pay attention to when you started your flare, what position your legs were in, and how completely you flared.
  6. spezticle

    AFF exit

  7. spezticle

    Ungraceful exit

  8. spezticle

    Check in dive for A license

  9. spezticle

    Anybody else annoyed

    K does mean 1000. 1024 is indicated with an 'i' 1 kB = 1000 bytes 1 KiB = 1024 bytes But nobody except nerds, (like myself), know or use it so it almost doesn't matter anyway
  10. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/08/01/foods-for-gas-naturally-_n_1723264.html I found this link and it points out a few interesting things. Before every jump, I've been eating a light meal. This consists of a yogurt and a bagel. This article suggests that I avoid dairy and processed carbs, providing examples of yogurt and bagels.... so, there you have it. It also tells me something I already knew: I need to drink more water.
  11. yes, indeed. I hadn't thought about the idea of a balloon or bag of chips and air pressure. Now that you mention it, it sounds so simply obvious. I'm going to do some research on dietary habits that may be affecting me. I had never been in any sort of airplane before this hobby so it's all uncharted territory for my body.
  12. I've completed 10 jumps now, and I'm getting ready for my first AFF level 5 jump. One thing that I've noticed as a continual 'problem' (or distraction is a better word to describe it), is that as we're getting to 11,000 - 12,000' AGL (I'm jumping from a land area that is about 900' above sea level, give or take 50' ), I find that I feel gas buildup in my stomach that is uncomfortable and distracting. It's not painful, but it's just not something that I want to have to deal with in that moment, you know? So, I swallow a small mouthful of air and then burp it up. This eases the gas out of my stomach. Sometimes though, the little I swallow doesn't want to come back up and i'm just filling up my stomach like a balloon. I get nervous and anxious about it, i try harder to get it out. I'll lean back, try to focus on relaxing and as I get to the door for jump time it's all mostly resolved itself. But I have jumped a couple times now with an uncomfortable amount of stomach pressure. Once I'm in freefall and then in the canopy ride down it is no longer an issue. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Is there something I can do to ease this distraction? I'm not happy with the first 2 or 3 seconds of my exit from the plane and I'm starting to wonder if it's in part because i'm having trouble keeping my head in the game while I'm stressing over stomach gas pressure.
  13. spezticle

    Motorcycle + Rig?

    Slightly off topic: You know, I've wondered about people attempting this as a stunt. Ride a bike up a ramp, off of a big jump and deploy. Or even better: using a motorcycle that has built in gyroscopic control to prevent the bike from falling over after you launch.
  14. spezticle

    Finally got AFF L1 in the books!

    haha yes! It was a great learning experience and I really look forward to being able to use it as a real world example. Even though I didn't do some critical things correct, I left the day still feeling accomplished because I made the best of a bad situation, I quickly dealt with a chute issue, and I recognized that I was in a bad situation but didn't let that cause me to make more bad decisions.
  15. spezticle

    Finally got AFF L1 in the books!

    Weekend after weekend I kept getting rained, clouded, and winded out. Today, the weather was right, I left work early. I seized the moment and it amazing. I didn't pass the first jump, my altitude awareness was a little rusty. I was going to pull the ripcord but my mind was about 5 seconds too slow, they pulled for me. The canopy ride down was great. Size and shape were great, turnability was great. I flew and I loved it. Daylight permitted one more attempt at the L1. I reviewed my errors and got my head back in the game. Free fall was pretty perfect. I was spot on with altitude awareness, pulled the ripcord... (It ended well, but i'm going to relive this moment for you) One one thousand. two one thousand. three one thousand. four one thousand... Lines are tangled. oh shit. you got this you got this. grab, stretch/pull, kick. five one thousand. shit. still stuck six one thousand shit shit still stuck. pull harder. kick with everything i've got it's coming out seven one thousand pull/kick. one more time eight one thousand FREEDOM Oh man, did I yell. OH YEAH. YEAH! Canopy ride down was pretty great, I navigated right to where I wanted to be, I played with the turns, and then I focused on my heading forward to prepare for landing, still up at like 2000ft. I rode the wrong direction based on the wind condition so I was floating off course. They were radioing me to help get me back but the damage was already done. I was about to learn my next critical lesson. I'm about 800 feet up and right on top of the interstate. I am going to land on the other side, ultimately about a half mile off course. Instructors are helping me steer but at this point line of site isn't so great so I have to rely on my class time training. Big patch of trees in front of me with a house in the middle, corn field open behind me, interstate to my right, i'm about 350 feet up. I wanted to land in the open field but I'm afraid of the low altitude and the hard left turn that it will require to turn me around so I ditch that idea. I'm braking to slow my forward trajectory down, aiming for the middle of the trees. They're about 100 feet in front of me. Brake a little harder to slow down a little more, I get up at the beginning of the tree line and turn soft to the right, aiming for the right side of the tree line. I don't want to go too hard to the right because I don't want to put myself into oncomming freeway traffic. I'd rather deal with trees than cars. I'm on top of the trees now, had to lift my legs hard and my feet kicked the very top leaves of a tree. I turn a little more right, right along the tree line, let off the brakes a bit and ride the final decent down into the tall grass that is between the freeway and the trees. It was scary but it ended quite well all things considered. Staff at the dropzone were quick to come get me. I'm sure I probably scared the crap out of them too. But boy oh boy did I ever learn that lesson. Your flight plan is critical. I thought I had it right in my head but I got turned around and put myself off in the wrong direction. I attached a screenshot with some markings. The arrows are a rough estimate of my actual flight path. My mistake was putting myself too far in the wrong direction, then trying to come back home but getting push farther out as I was over that lake where the arrow line begins.
  16. spezticle

    Hello all!

    So far only tandem. I have AFF scheduled for this coming Saturday. It was the soonest I could schedule but there was also no way that I was going to wait from 9/11 to 9/24 to jump again. Plus I think to start training with 4 jumps in already will give me a nice head start. It's taken the edge, (slightly), off of forcing myself to get out of the plane. I had never been in an airplane before my first jump so I've been wearing out this joke: I've taken off in an airplane 4 times now... but i've never landed in one
  17. spezticle

    Hello all!

    Hello everyone. I'm new to this sport, fell in love instantly. Sunday 9/11/2016 was my first tandem at Seven Hills Skydivers of Madison, WI The following weekend, I jumped 3 more times. Once at Skydive the Rock in Beloit, WI and twice more at Skydive Millwaukee. I'm going to train to get licensed. I'm very excited. Thanks everyone for being a part of this amazing activity!