Skydive #227 & 229 - November 10, 1999

Perris Valley, California
www.skydiveperris.com

Gotta helmet -- gotta camera -- gotta jump!
First jumps with Bonehead BatRak and Sony TRV10.

I don't play hooky from work too often,
but a new helmet and a new camera seemed like a good reason to,
uh, call in sick.

All of these are "Memory Stick" frame grabs from the video tape.

Jump #227 - Camera Jump #1
Jump #227 - Pull time.
Jump #227 and exit for camera jump #1.

Here I'm just working on the exit, checking the basic set up and doing a solo so I don't embarrass myself too bad.

After I was so low I couldn't really keep the plane in frame, I did a bunch of rolls and flips to see how having the camera on my head would affect my flying. Then I decided to simply watch the ground and try to keep the word "Perris" on the runway centered in the cross hairs to see how the alignment was. Seems a little high compared to what I remember.

Jump #227 - Landing
Jump #229 - Ride
Another thing I noticed was that with the sight in front of my eye and camera on top of the helmet, it's a little difficult swiveling my head and watching out for traffic. The pull high and land last strategy seems like a pretty good idea for now. Ride to altitude on jump #229 and camera jump #3. Inside the plane on the way up I decided to grab a couple of shots just for the heck of it to see how it would handle backlight streaming in through the windows.

Jump #229 - Susan
Jump #229 - Exit
Susan is visiting from Germany. Without the wide angle lens, she looks a little bit like Tracy Ulman. All of the practice exits I'd done in the couple of weeks before pay off on the first real attempt to exit with a group. Pat McGowan is in black and that's Susan again in yellow. Check out the main flap cover on the front floater. Of course, this is the best the framing of this jump ever gets. Shortly after this I find out just how difficult it is to -keep- stuff in frame -- especially since I don't have my wingsuit yet. I get pretty far away toward the end.

Ok, I have to admit this one. I didn't have the tally lights hooked up yet and double punched the record button on jump #228. It was a spectacular solo with much more aggressive moves in all three axes to check out the helmet, but unfortunately, because of the double punch, I didn't record anything.

I gotta get a tally light set up!

Onward to Skydive #236
Back to my Skydive Page
Back to my Gestalt Page
Back to my Main Page