Kite Strings

Excellent stop frame of the 'landing'.
Other than the fact that the crash and the landing are at the same lz, what does one have to do with the other?
Even a jaded CNN editor would say of the juxtaposition:

Excellent stop frame of the 'landing'.

Thank you. Pulling stills from these videos is an UNGODLY amount of work for several reasons:
- I'm extremely anal (big surprise) about selecting the best frames.
- Frequently gotta crop out huge black borders and/or skinny but ugly black bleed edges.
- Gotta catalog, upload, organize, images and capture their addresses.

Often blind for several hours around the end of a big project.

But:

- It's real nice having the results available.

- One often discovers some stunningly relevant issues and details one would NEVER have caught just watching the video.

- The vast majority of the time it's a lot more interesting, educational, fun to look at stills than to click on and watch video. (Ken Burns' "The Civil War" was such a smash 'cause he ran all those Matthew Bradys and gave the audience lotsa time to REALLY look at them. (Beats the crap out of all those Attention Deficit Disorder streaming three second clips like the Arizona blowing up for the billionth time.) I've watched "Civil War" a million times and never get tired of it.)

Nothing really to learn on those stills from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuMxK9PadzA


That one was just plain fun.

...what does one have to do with the other?

The point was supposed to be that we do all this dangerous landing practice on billiard table putting greens so we can safely land in dangerous terrain and then when we actually land in dangerous terrain we can't.

Turns out the guy on the stretcher was a PG:

http://www.flytandem.com/accident/index.htm

7-30-14 5:15PM Local intermediate PG pilot is flying downwind close to terrain downwind (NE of) the 750 and impacts terrain. No details yet as to why the pilot was continuing to fly this direction so low. Factors may include recency of flight experience as the pilot had not flown a PG in about a year. Impact was fairly hard with pilot complaining of back pain. Pilot airlifted by helicopter then transfered to ground ambulance in the LZ.

(thanks Steve and super reporting Richard Brooks) and probably not even trying to land but, what the hell, the point's still valid.

Sorry, don't recognize that one.

miguel wrote:Excellent stop frame of the 'landing'.

Tad Eareckson wrote:Thank you. Pulling stills from these videos is an UNGODLY amount of work for several reasons:
- I'm extremely anal (big surprise) about selecting the best frames.
- Frequently gotta crop out huge black borders and/or skinny but ugly black bleed edges.
- Gotta catalog, upload, organize, images and capture their addresses.

What programs are you using to accomplish the whole process?
Again, it is impressive but a bit tedious to read and process.
Maybe a few less frames?

Tad Eareckson wrote:

Sorry, don't recognize that one.

The pic was to imply yuck!! to the everything including the kitchen sink layout.

What programs are you using to accomplish the whole process?

Any video that's posted by anyone on Kite Strings gets downloaded/archived using Wondershare's AllMyTube.

To pull stills I use Final Cut Pro. That's a bit like using a forklift to stow a box of lightbulbs on a closet shelf but it was the only thing I found which would allow me to save frames at full lossless resolution. I use PNG. Had a very rough frustrating time learning how to do just that much but I can now work pretty efficiently.

Harvested frames get pulled up in Photoshop. At that stage I crop if necessary and rarely will brush out a cluster of corrupted pixels. Then I resave the image in PNG using max compression. Doing that reduces the megs requirement to a fraction of no compression yet retains every last pixel of resolution and color depth. Don't ask me how that's accomplished - I'm totally baffled - but it works.

Then I upload to Flickr which stores the original PNG and creates a wide range of lower resolution JPEGs.

Then I pull up the uploaded images and grab their full and 800 width addresses - 800 'cause that's the widest available I can use on Kite Strings and view on my 1280x800 display without chopping stuff off on the right.

I post using the following convention:

17-4117
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3682/14088396670_62d49cbf36_o.png


You're seeing the 800 width JPEG but the URL gives you access to the full resolution lossless original. (Open it in a new window or download it as you please.)

Again, it is impressive but a bit tedious to read and process.

Totally agree. You have no freakin' idea how tedious it is to get to the posting stage with this. But if you don't care to read and process stuff like this you do have the option of not doing so. And I can highly recommend several other more popular glider sites at which tedious reading and processing has never been nor ever will be...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?

Jim Rooney - 2011/08/26 02:44:10 UTC

The "purpose" of a weaklink is to increase the safety of the towing operation. PERIOD.

...the least of issues.

The pic was to imply yuck!! to the everything including the kitchen sink layout.

See above.

I post these frames because *I* find them of some value and if one other individual sometime in the next decade or so feels similarly there's a chance that the effort and bandwidth will have been worth it.

The guy on that T2C or whatever it was probably lay there for a minute, got up and dusted himself off, and hauled his glider to the breakdown area. But that was a MAJOR pooch screw / loss of control. If a passenger jet pilot had done something comparable there'd have probably been a fireball. And there are a lot of hang glider jockeys who've ended their careers with much milder exchanges of energy than occurred on that one.

I think it's worth 23 frames of bandwidth to really look closely at what's going on and question the way things are being done - even if he didn't get paralyzed from the neck down that time. And if this guy - or even one of his clones - DOES get quaded at AJX later this or next season guess who's got another really great toldyaso ready to launch.

Thanks for the 411.

I eventually got fed up with all the bullshit velcro problems and stitched the zipper directly to the harness. I've landed zipped up a bunch of times after (waiting too long and) having zipper problems AND being unable to blow the velcro.

I too have used a few stitches to keep a tight harness from opening. I always open the harness way early just in case there's a problem. I was told if the zipper jammed to knee my way out, which can be difficult - especially when it's stitched. I just found out all the cool folk just reach down and pull the harness open from the top. I might be the last to learn that but it'll be the first thing I try if mine ever gets stuck while on approach in a narrow riverbed strewn with boulders.

What make of harness are you using, Brian?

My second CG-1000, I got it used many years ago. My first I ordered new when they came out. It was a little tight - my fault - and a bit of a pain to put on. I like them though and have never had a zipper jam yet. I did have an issue with the velcro that secures the side zipper on the latest one. It got weak and would allow the zipper to open. Not cool flying around with your parachute container flopping around. I sewed a little plastic snap lock to it.

The only issues I've had with the harness zipper was getting my pant leg caught in it. So I got some velcro straps, and would put those around my legs just below my knees. Later I figured out that all I needed to do was straighten my legs, and bend my body at the hips thus pulling my pant legs further up into the harness while at the same time forcing the zipper down and away. Also I found that once I've got the zipper pull in hand that it's a no brainer to look down, and watch the zipper close while carefully pulling the lanyard rather than just blindly yanking on the thing.

I use the same method to unload the zipper while zipping up. I've added a line that attaches from the top of the back frame - up through a ring on the carabiner - to the stirrup. It keeps the boot from drooping. Not sure if it's common knowledge, but it's easier to do the zipping up before fully prone.