BobWright

Just got my 2021 USPA Calendar (great version with historical photos). I noticed that tonight (January 13) it says there's a full moon. I thought that was odd as I was pretty sure there was a full moon a couple of weeks ago. I checked out the 2021 dates and it looks like someone made a booboo. Every month the calendar lists a Full Moon on the night of the New Moon. So, if you're planning Night Jumps in 2021 remember the Full Moon is actually about two weeks after the date on the USPA Calendar

Check with Dennis at Ragecams.com He's retrofitted 3 of our GoPros (an HD Hero2 and two HD Hero) with lenses. I think they are 3.6, 4.0 and 4.3 mm. I like the non-fisheye appearance - everything looks "normal". Here's a POV from the Eloy 222-ways in April shot with either the 3.6 or 4.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13oCv6f1FZ4

I forgot to mention that you can download the latest firmware upgrade from the GoPro site and get a new "P1" stills mode which takes a still about every 1.3 seconds instead of the old 2 second interval. The P1 isn't necessarily documented but it's there.

You can contact Dennis at Ragecams in Michigan. One of his e-mail addresses is [email protected]. Ragecams may or may not be stuntcams but they're both in the Grand Rapids area. I sent them my GoPro and had them fix a problem I'd caused. They also replaced the lens with a 6 mm lens as described in the stuntcams site which seems to be from the Ragecams site. Anyway, I haven't tried it yet but it's definitely not nearly as wide as the original GoPro. They are planning on coming out with other lenses too

I've been using Cyberlink Power Director. No problems handling H.264. It also supports GPU acceleration if you have the right video card, which speeds things up quite a bit.

Mine sometimes does that- if you plug it into a USB port the red charging indicator comes on but I can't get it into USB transfer mode. However, in the past when that has happened, I just left it in the charging mode until it was done charging (red light off). When I reconnected it after that, the USB connection worked again. I just assumed it meant that the battery was low enough that the USB transfer couldn't work.

Back in the 1980's when our students were still doing S/L, we mounted a video camera on the upper inside of the front door-post of our 182. It wasn't in the way of anything and of course it was easy to turn on and off. It got some memorable shots!

I'm sure of the date and Jack says he was in Cal'a doing an AFF course. I don't know when I wrote the names on the back of the picture or how I came up with them. I think you could be right about JoeyP as that does sound familiar now.

Hey Wim- That's me on the tail of your diamond, with the bad grip on Larry?'s leg. I just looked at the back of that picture (on my wall); I did have some of the names on it. One name that you didn't mention was Jack Gregory. I know the date - January 28,1983. I think I had something to do with collecting the ringers so I could have a successful night jump on my birthday. According to my logbook, we tried a second point (16 way diamond) but one 4-way diamond didn't make it in. Bob Wright

My wife Mary has been using the earlier model SDR-S100 for about a year here in Grand Bend Ontario Canada. She videos primarily AFF students. Colours are great (3 CCD), no problems with image stabilzation, downloading from SD card to computer is quick, editing to DVD is easy (we use Womble MPEG). It's very lightweight and compact- and no tape! It's not HD but we definitely like it.

We used to be dealers for Zute Sute; we were very satisfied with them. However, the owner (Jenny Martin) had some personal difficulties. I was under the impression that she closed the business completely a couple of years ago. I've heard that she is now working as a flight attendant; don't know if she's still jumping. It's unlikely you'll be charged - or that you'll see your suit. Just order from another manufacturer.

This reminded me of something that happened in about 1983. Someone called me up wanting to sell his late 70's Wonderhog (2-pin predecessor of the Vector). He had been jumping but decided to give it up. He came out and we popped open the reserve to inspect it. Neatly hidden under the pilot chute were two temporary pins with very short flags on them! I did decide to buy the rig from him and never saw him again. He did say he'd be speaking to the rigger who'd packed it...

Around 10pm tonight Survivor9 host Jeff Probst takes the urn with the final votes to a Twin Otter, pulls closed the airstair door and they take off across the Pacific. When they get over the California coast, he appears to pack the urn into one of his containers, gears up, opens the now rollup lexan jumpdoor and does a lovely poised exit. After a solo freefall, he lands a student sized canopy, takes off all his gear and heads off to the studio to announce the results (I won't spoil it for anyone on the West coast that hasn't seen it yet). My question is- did Jeff Probst actually do this jump or was it done by a standin? If Jeff did jump, when and where did he learn?