Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: DSTAR PARACHUTE MOBILE Sat Sept 5, 2009
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Brian Mury wrote: > As I said, I don't have a DSTAR handheld :-(. I could try to borrow one > if I can find someone nearby who has one. Maybe I shouldn't tell them > what I plan on doing with it! ;-) Just make sure you have it nicely secured... On my third freefall, I tucked my IC-24 AT into the upper arm of my jumpsuit. It was a really tight fit getting it in there, and I figured it would be good there. I ran the mic cable down my arm, and out the cuff. The mic was clipped onto the cuff. Well, after 6500 feet of freefall, and a nice deployment, I looked for the mic... uh-oh, it's dangling out my sleeve. A quick pat of my shoulder looking for the radio brought a moment of panic. Where's the radio? Uh-oh, did the radio jump out, and make a mad dash for the ground? Nope, after a frantic pat-down, I found it in the small of my back. A little rearranging and it was back where it should be. I spent almost a minute chatting with some friends back in town, about 50 miles away on a local repeater. At about 1000 ft AGL, I signed off, telling them I needed to prepare for final approach and touchdown. I flew the whole time in free flight, after pulling the toggles down, and getting headed in the right direction. No serious complaints of wind noise or anything. That would have been the summer of 1990... I always wanted to try a hop and pop with the radio, but never did. You could hit a lot of repeaters from 10,000 feet up. We get great coverage from our balloon borne crossband repeaters at that altitude, and it gets better as you go up. James VE6SRV
Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: DSTAR PARACHUTE MOBILE Sat Sept 5, 2009
Nate, On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 09:39 -0600, Nate Duehr wrote: > > We (AF6IM and KF6WRW) have been keeping our toggles stowed until we > > get to about 3000 ft. > > If you pulled at 3000' MSL here, well... you'd be dead/underground! 1. Unlike pilots, skydivers always use AGL, not MSL. When we are headed straight at the ground at 120 mph (or possibly a lot more depending on body position), we really want to know how far away the ground is without having to remember and subtract the ground elevation. Since we almost always land at the same location we took off from, and are not in the air long enough to worry about significant barometric pressure changes, it makes sense to use AGL. 2. When Mark says "keeping our toggles stowed", he is not talking about deploying the parachute. The toggles are the steering controls. Parachutes are packed with them locked partway down in order to improve the deployment. Once the canopy is open, the jumper releases the toggles to allow the canopy to go to full flight. Leaving them stowed will result in slower flight and a lower descent rate, useful to give Mark more time to play with the radio, as well as reducing wind noise that the mic will pick up. Brian
Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: DSTAR PARACHUTE MOBILE Sat Sept 5, 2009
On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 03:11 -0700, boeing...@gmail.com wrote: > Wouldn't that be something if we could arrange a jumper-plane-jumper > DSTAR > QSO? I am up for trying it some weekend soon. As I said, I don't have a DSTAR handheld :-(. I could try to borrow one if I can find someone nearby who has one. Maybe I shouldn't tell them what I plan on doing with it! ;-) I think the tricky part would be timing our jumps so we are in the air at the same time. Hard to make a jump plane wait around (on the ground or in the air) to get the timing right... Brian
