This weekend I volunteered for the Paragliding World Cup in Chelan WA. It was insanely cool. I think for this post, I’ll just leave the talking to the pictures and videos mostly (I’m a little short on time but want to get this stuff out there). This first video is a short clip I took with my point and shoot Kodak. I took it in-between helping pilots set up their wings, and as you can tell, it was nuts. There were probably at least 4 pilots launching at any given time, and I was nearly kicked in the face by pilots flying over me a couple of times.  There were OVER 100 PILOTS IN THE AIR!!!

There were so many big names there, it was crazy. There were people from major paragliding classic films, company owners (Gin himself was flying a new design), past champions, video crews….list goes on.   I also can’t even begin to list how many countries were represented there as well…many of them couldn’t speak a bit of English.

I think one of the really cool things about this sport is that unlike some of those crowd pleasing ones like baseball, football etc…paragliders seem to be a small, very approachable group. I met a few of the people listed above, and they had no attitude, they were down to earth, and just…well…normal like you and I.

One fellow I met was the video man for PWC TV (video below). I wanted to show this first video because at the beginning, they show the school (Aerial Paragliding) that I am learning to paraglide from.

World Cup Chelan arrival & first flight from broers philippe on Vimeo.

This next video is shows the first part of the competition (the first video was just a practice day). My main claim to fame is that at 5.26min you can see my back watching to see if the dust devil is going to whip anyone up….happens all the time.

I think it’s entertaining that this guy thinks there are still “Indians” in the “wild west”…I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard this region referred to as the “wild west” before…..heh!

World cup Chelan task 1 part1 from broers philippe on Vimeo.

Well, as promised…I could go on for hours (still on a high from the awesome weekend) but I’m going to break away for now, and leave you with a picture gallery of some of the photos I (and my Dad) took of the competition.

Enjoy!

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CLICK HERE FOR GALLERY

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This last weekend, I got to fly off of the Chelan Butte in my paraglider for the first time….and it was AWESOME!!! I only flew once on Sat, and once again on Sun, but the flights lasted about 20min, and took a drop of about 3000ft (around 3900′ to 800′ from launch to LZ).

My first flight, I was a little nervous, but mostly excited. Both flights were from the “Ants” East launch, then landing at the Chelan Falls park. I took a tandem last year with one of my instructors Doug, and it was awesome (he gave me a little taste of “vitamin G” with his spirals) but I’ve never liked being a passenger. I was pleased to see how well I handled it, and wasn’t scared hardly at all while in the air. I handled pitch control well—site note: one of the people with us (name escapes me now) took a 60% asymmetric deflation because of poor pitch control—. The roll the glider kept taking in the bumpy (or Boody sp?) air wasn’t to much fun, but I got used to it quickly.

The next day, I wasn’t nervous at all, and enjoyed it more I think because of that. The conditions became more thermic than the previous day, and made for an exciting ride! At the Ranch (Aerial Paragliding) we have been flying in smooth adiabatic air, but this was my first taste of thermic conditions (although we did not use them for lift at our skill level yet). My other instructor, Denise, said I shot up way past anyone else when I hit what she guessed was a 800ft/min thermal off of one of the ridges I passed. It was pretty nuts, because I felt hammered into the harness, and then like an elevator I got used to it, but apparently I just kept on going (that’s why it’s nice to have a variometer to tell you these things).

I have a Suunto X6-HR, and meant to record the altimeter off of it’s barometer for my flights, but didn’t remember until over half way into my second flight. I started recording a little after I got shot into the air on that last thermal, but the graph below (taken from my watch) should be pretty close to my max altitude (I went down quite aways from the launch before I was shot back up to 3000ft).
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I was so high, I got to try some new things. At first I took about 5+ 360′s to try and loose altitude. Then the next descent technique: big ears. Big ears are used to decrease your glide ratio by folding in the wing tips with the leading risers. It was really fun! Because you can’t do that, and control your break toggles, you need to rely on weight shifting to turn. Doug had me weight shift back and fourth, and it made me rock a little which was super fun.

My Dad came the first day and took some pictures and a video (thanks Dad). You can see them in the album, and video links below.
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CLICK HERE FOR THE GALLERY

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What an incredible sport!

This weekend I went to the coast, and tried kiting my paraglider on the beach.  The smooth laminar winds were IDEAL for kiting, and was a real blast to play with in the setting sun.  At this point, I’m still a newbie to the sport (I think anyway) but found I had very good control of the wing…could have kept it up for an hour if I had to.  My sister took some pictures, and a video with my point and shoot Kodak, and you can see them below.  Super fun…can’t wait to complete my kit and training so I can actually fly with it!

CLICK HERE FOR THE PICTURE ALBUM

If you watched my first test with the GoPro HD Hero, I placed it in my fishtank.  You might have noticed however, that the quality was fair before going into the tank, but terrible once underwater (the quality of the whole thing was a little sub-par because of the low lighting).  After surfing the internet a little, I found that everyone was having this issue.  The common assumption was that it was the domed glass lens on the waterproof housing that was messing with the light entering the GoPro itself.  The idea was to make a barrier of air between the domed lens, and the water to prevent this diffraction of light.

I did this very very (did I stress it enough?) quickly, and just wanted to get an idea of whether or not the theory would hold true…If you compare the two below, I think you might agree with me that it did make a pretty significant difference.

GoPro HD Hero test #1 in fishtank

GoPro HD Hero test #2 in fishtank w/modification

Here are some quick low-res pictures of what I did.

Again, it was a really thrown-together design, but it was only meant to be a test to see if the idea would work.  Basically I just found the thickest see-through plastic I could…that ended up being one of those clear CD’s they put at the top when you buy a stack of CD-R/RW’s for protection.  I just cut out a rectangle a little larger than the waterproof lens, and melted the corners up a little so I could wrap the rubber bands around it.  I then put some spacers underneath that (which you can see from the video, I didn’t cut big enough…I actually cut the corners off of my yoga mat for this…again…thrown together fast) and strapped the whole thing down with rubber bands. The fishing line was just what I used to drop it in the tank with.

Obviously it goes without saying, this would NOT hold up well for long underwater, especially at any great depths, but it’s a concept I hope to build from, and improve.  It will probably be a while before I go further with this project, but if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to leave comments.  I should mention, I owe the GoPro forums for a good amount of the information I got to do this.

cheers,

Justin

Edit: I wanted to mention, that all of the tests I have done were shot in the r3 mode which is 720p at 60fps

About a year ago I put a post here about building a HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer). What I didn’t put in that post is the homemade wooden computer case I built for it. I didn’t post it because I couldn’t find the cable for my camera to post the pictures…but I just found them today, and now have them to put online. I did such a sloppy job with it that I ended up throwing it out, but it gave me ideas to build upon for a new case, if I end up going for it again. I think next time I will find a shop to do it in though…I must have pissed my neighbors below something awful, trying to saw, and drill the case together

Here they are…click on the pictures to get a larger view…