the drogue

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Was pondering this on the way into work today (daydreams of skydiving are becoming more often as the spring approaches here in the midwest).

What is the history of the drogue? I always hear the upjumpers talk about making tandems in the days before drogue fall, but then I remember that Kittlinger (sp?) made his jump with one.

When did the drogue first surface? When did it start being used on tandems, and did all the rigs start using it at the same time? What were the reasons it was introduced into the sport (I'm sure I know a few of them, but wonder what was said back then). Were there many mal's that could have been prevented with a drogue?

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[Deuce 1]

I think it was invented to clear the camera flier off the step.

I'm interested in this too, and I suspect it was because some passengers are just too freaked and would prevent the TM to get into a stable configuration before deployment.

[Kris 0]

Quote

I'm interested in this too, and I suspect it was because some passengers are just too freaked and would prevent the TM to get into a stable configuration before deployment.

Where tandems are concerned, the drogue isn't designed to add stability (it's only a small by-product), simply to slow the pair to a lower freefall speed instead of the "tandem terminal" speed you would have without a drogue.

As for the not designed for stability part, I believe I read about that from RiggerRob or Bill Booth on here before.

Kris

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

[skybytch 273]

For tandems, the drogue is NOT supposed to be used for stability. Period.

The reason I heard that drogues were added to tandems was mainly because openings at tandem terminal were a bit too hard on the equipment.

[murrays 0]

As one of the early adopters of tandem technology, I remember very well doing tandems without the drogue.....I usually did an 8 second delay and then pulled. The openings were often HARD if you took them to tandem terminal. There were a few instances of canopy damage that I recall. I didn't think that passengers liked tandem terminal very much..it was just too windy and fast.
Bill Booth was up in Canada at the Canadian Nationals demo-ing it in 1984 and I think that he and Ted Strong both started working on tandem rigs in 1983. We were very impressed. In fact, my logbook entry for the first tandem jump I did as a passenger reads..."After thinking about this, I think this is the way of the future."
I bought a tandem rig in 1985 with a buddy of mine. I think that the drogue was added the next year..1986.
The only thing I liked about drogueless tandem compared to tandem with a drogue was that the rig and emergency procedures were exactly the same as on a regular rig...Throw-out, cutaway and reserve...only three things to pull.

--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

[murrays 0]

Here's some video of my buddy doing a drogueless tandem in about 1985.

--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

[riggerrob 643]

Drogues were developed by the Russian Air Force long before there were any tandems. Initially the Russians used drogues to stabilize and decelerate ejection seats.
Then the Russian Army modified drogues for airborne troops. They had a ridiculously complicated system that involved static-lining the drogue then waiting for the KAP 3 to fire.
Russian smoke jumpers used drogues for a while before introducing them to Alaska smokejumpers during an exchange program.
Ted Strong and Bill Booth did all their early tandem test drops without drogues, but soon tired of tearing up main canopies.
Then Ted Strong remembered the drogues he had built for the Alaska smokejumpers. Strong was the first to install drogues on tandems and Both followed a few years later.
When I earned my tandem instructor rating in 1986, Skydive Kangaroo still had one or two Vector Tandems without drogues. I did just enough jumps on the drogue-less Vectors to understand why they were added: freefall that was way too fast for comfort and brutally hard openings.
Drogues finally made it practical to plan tandem freefalls of more than 10 seconds. This fueled the demand for long first freefalls and resulted in tandem students paying for all the turbine engines currently hauling skydivers.
Drogues also made possible another huge source of revenue: video.

[murrays 0]

Rob,
Thanks for the history of drogues. You say that Booth followed a few years after Strong...really? I'm surprised to learn that.
I just reviewed my logbooks and we had a drogue in 1986, a year after buying the tandem rig in 1985 which was a year after Bill Booth demo-ed his tandem at the Canadian Nationals at Gan in 1984. Did Strong add the drogue that much earlier, like in 1984? If he did I wish we'd bought a Strong tandem as the openings were not much fun without the drogue. In my logbook, all my drogueless tandem jumps have delays of 5 or 10 seconds noted.

--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey