winsor

Okay, so you're on to us old farts. We are stuck in the mindset where you need to have 200 jumps on a round before you can jump a ParaCommander. Skydive Chicago has been training students on semi-elliptical zero-P canopies for quite some time, and has turned out some world-class canopy pilots. It's a different world, and you obviously have the skills to make the most of it. Hey, if you can handle a motorcycle with triple the horsepower of my Harley, I think it's absurd to expect you to dawdle along with the less able people in the crowd. When I started skydiving, someone with 100 jumps could be a jumpmaster. You have 160? And you're sticking with a dog loaded at 1.333? I can't believe you're wasting your talent on that skyslug. Look, the only way you are ever going to be competitive is to jump a canopy with some actual performance. I have two cross-braced 99s, and could sell you one at a pretty good price. They are not as aggressive as anything Luigi Cani jumps, but it's a start. Be real, I'm 54 years old and I'm sure your reflexes are far better than mine. What could possibly go wrong? BTW, I would like to be the beneficiary on a small policy if you decide to go for it. Blue skies, Winsor

People who do not spend much time outdoors tend to discount how bad the elements can be. These people include both posters here and those who would jump blindly into the elements while wearing traveling clothes. This guy: clicky was in better shape than Cooper - at least as far as knowing where he was and proximity to help was concerned - but it did not do him much good. If Cooper survived, it was not due to careful planning or a clear picture of what he faced. Blue skies, Winsor

Hey, a round will get you down, but a square will get you there. Blue skies, Winsor

People whose concept of law enforcement and parachute operations comes from Hollywood are guaranteed to have a skewed concept of both fields of endeavor. Put them together, and you have nothing that resembles reality either way. Bill Kurtis did a show on Lee Harvey Oswald some time back, and he addressed the conspiracy theorists in his assessment. One point that he made is that any of the conspiracy theories relied on the assumption that organizations with a solid track record of bungling operations and having their cover blown at every turn managed to orchestrate - and keep secret - the most complex and high-profile operation imaginable. It just doesn't wash. Similarly, the husband of the OP is someone who could and did screw up everything he touched. The idea that he organized and pulled off an operation such as Cooper's, and never got turned by a confederate, is so unlikely as to be unworthy of consideration. It's like Herbie the Love Bug winning the 24 hours of LeMans - good for Walt Disney, but not much else. There is the miniscule chance that whatever clueless individual exited a jet, at night, in lousy weather, with an arbitrary spot over heavily forested mountains (and the odd river), without appropriate navigation/survival gear and so forth, managed to land uninjured and get to civilization before succumbing to exposure. I have seen stranger things happen, but I sure as hell would not bank on it. It has something to do with drunks, fools and small children. The problem is that this is the kind of action that only a consummate loser would claim as the basis for bragging rights. Enter the spouse of the OP. The idea that this guy was recruited "Dirty Dozen" style to be a Smoke Jumper is laughable. There is good reason why records of such a program are so elusive. For all the people who think it no big deal to parachute in the dark into an unknown location, I recommend trying a jump or two at night into a KNOWN location. Then have someone drop you off (with proper survival gear, of course) in some wilderness without maps or compass some time. Been there, done that. I suspect that, if you have undergone even the most controlled versions of these experiences, you will consider the various options with a significant degree of newfound skepticism. In any event, the claims that have been made so far may not be bullshit, but they sound suspiciously similar. Blue skies, Winsor

When I was at Alcatraz a while back, I was given a rundown on why the powers that be concluded that Morris et al. did not survive their escape attempt, though the movie "Escape from Alcatraz" had it that they did. Morris was an institutionalized criminal, with no connection to any kind of infrastructure on the outside. Had he made it to the mainland and made good his escape, he would have had to obtain food and clothing by any means possible, having zero funds with which to work. There were no reports of missing laundry, pilfered foodstuffs or other indications of the criminals presence to indicate that they had done anything but succumb to the frigid waters they were ill prepared to traverse. In the Dan Cooper case, you have someone exiting an aircraft at night at a location that was completely unplanned. Though the location has not been positively established, the only options that seem at all likely are rugged as all get out. Assuming he survived all the way to the ground (a big if), he is now in conditions for which he is entirely unprepared - cold, wet and lost in the boonies. Even if he had a compass, flashlight, boots, a waterproof parka, food and water, he still would be in pretty tough shape. There were no cell phones in that day and age, so calling for backup (assuming he had any) was pretty much out of the question. Someone coming out of the woods wearing the clothes he reportedly had on when he was last seen, even if he managed to keep his shoes (loafers out of a jet? right), would have drawn quite a bit of attention - but there were no reports of such an oddity. I have spent enough time tromping around in, flying through and parachuting into mountainous terrain that my conclusion is that the perpetrator of this crime grossly underestimated what he was up against. McCoy had a much more clearly worked out game plan, but he was still caught in short order. If someone was to jump a round into that terrain at night, there is a well better than average chance that they would be badly injured or killed in the process. An injury that would be quite survivable at a DZ could well be fatal under those circumstances (tib/fib, femur, gored during a tree landing, cut away from a tree landing, etc.). The point of all this is that, given the particulars of the case there is a high likelihood that Dan Cooper never made it out of those woods. There will always be people enamored of the story that Morris and his pals made it, or that Dan Cooper outwitted everyone and lived high on the hog on his ill-gotten gains - but the odds are against it. If someone has something compelling that supports the suggestion that Cooper pulled it off, I'd be interested to hear about it. So far, however, every time I do the math it says he didn't. Blue skies, Winsor

Mine aren't. Regardless of what I have in the main container, I put the biggest thing I can get my hands on in the reserve pack tray. In the rigs that I routinely jump, the reserves gravitate to wingloadings appropriate for BASE. The mains vary from Sport to Unlimited wingloadings. I don't give a lot of thought to two-out scenarios, since I make a point of staying out of the basement. Even with a gunslinger cutaway, it does not take a lot of effort to time the reserve pull with the ka-ching of the cutaway. When a main loaded over 2:1 misbehaves to the extent that I go to Plan B, I have had enough excitement for one jump. It is time for something that is so predictable that it is close to boring. If you have a reserve sized so that you can do personal CRW with your Xaos 92, that is your choice. I'd rather get something over 200 sq. ft. overhead, having jettisoned the offending main. Among other things, I would like to size my reserve so I can survive (without much injury) a landing if someone, say, kicked and broke my collarbone on exit. Even if I could steer one of my Class VI canopies to a flat, open area, if I can't flare, I had better have my Blue Cross card clenched in my teeth upon arrival. An ICU is the best I can then hope for - if I manage to survive. As Bill noted, I have never looked up at my reserve after a mal and said "ah, I could have gone a size smaller." Blue skies, Winsor

I just cannot talk about it right now - until ALL of the information is in. If we can back up the information - believe me it will go public. I am not playing a game With all due respect, I have to call bullshit on this one. If nothing else, the nonsense references to mice put you squarely into the game-playing category. You could hardly be more coy, and I sincerely doubt that you have anything significant with which to go public. The likelihood that Duane was Dan is effectively zero. The supposition that Duane had anything to do with the hijacking requires suspension of disbelief on too many counts, and is a possibility in theory only. If you think that Duane and Dan are one and the same, you could as well collect on one of the Nigerian email lotteries and retire. Blue skies, Winsor

I have been following this for some time, and have wondered idly what is the point? The statute of limitations had expired, so why would the author of this act not have gone public in his lifetime (assuming it is someone who survived the jump and is no longer alive)? I would guess that the liability regarding the $200k might be a problem. The statute of limitations for civil actions differs from criminal, and may well not apply here. In any event, it would be rather ironic if the OP was successful in demonstrating that her departed husband was, in fact, the hijacker from 1971, and thus incurred the liability that her spouse was so carerul to avoid. All the effort spent claiming ownership of the deed by proxy could be used against her. If his estate were proven to include responsibility for the $200,000 - treated as a loan at Prime Rate - as well as all the costs incurred by Law Enforcement and the airline flight, etc., it could add up to a pretty hefty tab. Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Just a thought. Blue skies, Winsor

No problem. The deceptive part of the "Exit Separation" issue is that it is a stochastic process - which is to say that the whole thing revolves around probability. An analogy is the likelihood of a head-on collision. If you drift into the oncoming lane on a two-lane road, your odds of having a head-on collision go up, but if you stay in your lane the odds of having a head-on collision are still nonzero. If you go back and forth between your lane and the oncoming lane on a desert road with virtually no traffic, you stand a pretty good chance of getting away with it. Cross the center line at rush hour in a major city, and your odds of a crash are about 100%. Conversely, staying in your lane on a vacant desert road nearly guarantees that you will not have a head-on collision. Being on a heavily traveled road in the wee hours of New Year's Day, there is a significant chance that a drunk will cross the centerline. Back to skydiving. If you have any kind of separation, whether due to delay in climbout, counting the fleas on your dog or screwing with a protractor, there is a decent chance that everyone will open in their own airspace. If you have "optimum separation" between groups, there is still a nonzero chance that some numbnuts will track away early or otherwise be in the wrong part of the sky during opening so that a collision ensues. Having said all of that, you are in a hell of a lot better shape by understanding what is, and going for, the minimum acceptable separation between groups. Life is a crapshoot. It behooves you to load the dice in your favor. Blue skies, Winsor

Remember "Mr. Mom" ? Are you talking about white-haired Mike Spurgeon? What is that dude up to these days? Mr. MOM (DJ Mike) is Mike O'Mara . Mike Spurgeon is alive and well and jumping at Lodi. Blue skies, Winsor

Can anyone add anything to this discussion? Sure. Take care not to spend your time picking flyshit out of pepper. The point to get out of this is that a bag lock is as bad of a high-speed malfunction as you could hope for. If you think the numbers make a hell of a lot of difference one way or another, you don't get it. BSBD, Winsor

I think this is one for Snopes. It shows up occasionally, but I have yet to see it referenced to an existing law. I suspect it was something someone either made up or it was misheard or something. There are plenty of very real and massively stupid laws out there, but I don't think this is one of them. Blue skies, Winsor

Thanks for the picture. Once I saw it, it took me all of 32 seconds to locate the stows and flap at the base of the sleeve. I had picked the rig up one evening after work in Serbia, and we did a fast pack job. The guy from whom I got it had never jumped one, and he was the one who pulled the sleeve over the canopy. The part with the stows had folded back on itself, and was thus not apparent. I asked if the elastic was all that kept the sleeve on the canopy, he said that he guessed so. Given the peculiarities of Russian rigging (mechanically delayed deployment for military jumps and so forth), it seemed almost plausible. Needless to say, I haven't played with it since or I would likely have stumbled across the flap & stows. The one thing that still puzzles me is the purpose of the flaps and stows in the pack tray. It is obviously intentional, but my guess as to what purpose it might serve is surely wrong. In any event, with the discovery of the stows and retaining flap I expect I will set it up to jump shortly. It's in great shape, and looks to be fun. FWIW, Russian is fine. I can read Cyrillic, and translating is no great chore. Blue skies, Winsor

I picked up a complete UT-15 setup on a trip through former Iron Curtain lands, and can not quite figure out how to pack the damned thing. DeWolf said they used to remove the canopies from the commie rigs and put them in US containers, so he didn't know how the Bolsheviks did it. The thing has a nylon sleeve, but does not have the usual flap closure with locking stows. Instead, it has a kind of elastic sphincter. There are no obvious line stows, except for a couple of elastic stows that go through grommets on flaps that cover the back of the container. These flaps are attached to the left, right and bottom of the container, and split up the middle. I could see it as some variant of the tail-pocket for free-stowed lines. Near as I can tell, the lines are to be s-folded against the back of the container and held in place by the flaps, which are secured by the locking stows. It would then seem that somehow the sleeved canopy gets enough momentum going for it when coming off the pack tray to undo the locking stows without pulling the sleeve off the canopy - a neat trick, if that's how it works. Somehow, at full line extension the sleeve's sphincter clears the canopy, which then inflates. Since I have never seen one packed by someone who knows what they are doing, I am not all that confident that my guesses are spot on. I only have a 24" bellywart out here so I'm a bit leery about testing my hypothesis; I might be willing to try it if I had brought the 28'. I have my share of American ParaCommanders around, and the links are solid, so I can't see taking apart the Soviet rig and putting the canopy in something I understand better (yet, at least). It also has some kind of nifty touches, like twin pilot chutes standard, so I think it would be cool to make a jump or two in its original configuration. I gather it worked pretty well. In any event, if there is someone out there who can clue me in to the proper way to pack the thing, I would greatly appreciate it. Blue skies, Winsor

I use a basic Radio Shack model with some kind of solid-state sensor (I never checked out the specifics of the innards). Hanging it out of the car when driving showed it to be accurate enough for my needs. I don't tend to bring it along to the DZ, since I have a pretty good idea what the wind sock looks like when I stand down. I have looked at the wind sock on the way to the aircraft and decided not to board so they would have a better climb rate without me. In all fairness I do have pretty good hospitalization insurance, and only one person on the load got an ambulance ride, so it was kind of wimpy on my part. Nevertheless, even the people that landed without getting hurt said "good call" when they got back. I've been slammed by rotors a couple of times over the years, and I say to hell with it. Not everyone survives showing how cool they are, so I am comfortable with being a live geek. Blue skies, Winsor

You simply go the nearest Skyride DZ. It's a 20 minute drive from wherever you are.

Well it might if you had a collapsible slider pulled behind your head... without that, it ain't doing a bloody thing for the flight characteristics of your canopy, as the slider will prevent the parachute from spreading out. The only time I might loosen my chest strap is if I am shooting accuracy and using a split slider. When I am using a collapsible slider pulled down the risers, I am usually under a canopy where I really do not need to milk the last vestige of performance out of it, since it has so much performance to begin with. YMMV. Blue skies, Winsor

Do you know what's really hard to estimate at 2000ft? Descent rate. By the time you figure out that your canopy is descending inadvisably fast, it may be too late to get something else over your head. That's why I'd err of the side of getting off it. The chances of a reserve malfunction are an awful lot lower than the chances of me mis-estimating the survivability of landing my damaged parachute. Where we differ is that you are guessing what WOULD you do, and I am telling you what DID I do. As far as being able to tell how rapid is your descent, it is not as big a deal as you imagine. With a broken steering line, your full-flight characteristics are the same as with the line intact, so your initial rate of descent is the same. The point of a test flare at altitude is to evaluate your control authority on rear risers. Since rear risers require less input to produce the same flare on most canopies, the problem with waiting until short final before checking flare characteristics is that yanking down vigorously can stall the canopy. If you have the feel dialed in, landing is no big deal. If you take the time to learn rear-riser control when you have both steering lines attached, it will not be an emergency if a steering line breaks. In conclusion, pretty much any canopy out there can be landed in full control with rear risers, so a broken steering line is something of a non-event. To summarily cut away a controllable, landable canopy is typically a bad idea. If you don't know how to fly your canopy with rear risers, learn. Blue skies, Winsor

First off, learn to fly with the rears. I learned to fly an elliptical on rear risers after breaking a steering line. A couple of practice flares can give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. It can be better to fly a parachute that is open and stable than to bet the ranch on a parachute that is not yet open. As far as quite how many lines are broken goes, the primary issue is whether or not it is landable. I have had suspension lines break and landed the parachute, and I have had them break and cut away from the resulting spin. If you have any broken lines, put it through a controllability check, to include a practice flare. If it does evil things at altitude, change parachutes. If it basically behaves in a predictable manner, put it down somewhere safe. With a round, the magic number is 6. A four-line release is a standard mod, and you can land a flat-circular with any 5 lines broken. If it gets to 6, get rid of it. I do not have a hard and fast policy with regard to number of broken lines on a square, however, so I did not fill out your survey. Blue skies, Winsor

Aaron Britten (sp) was screwing around with his canopy - a Jedi IIRC - stalling and recovering as he approached the DZ. At maybe 100 feet, he managed to wind up encased in his canopy, where he remained until impact. This was at Laurel, DE maybe 8 years ago. About 15 years ago I just missed falling into a NOVA when it reinflated and surged below me after the nose folded under. This was not a stall per se, but was close enough for my liking. In the '80s we would lose altitude by bow-tying our Furys, CruiseLites and what have you, though I never compared the rate of descent with someone doing a spiraling descent. The advantages to stalling were the lack of Gs and the fact that the factors that made a midair more likely were not as pronounced. I think I intentionally stalled my first Blue Track once in the process of familiarization. I have not done it again, and the idea still scares the hell out of me (its recovery was VIOLENT). In summary, reports of Aaron's demise indicate that a one-man wrap is quite possible, and one should be circumspect regarding how and with what canopy one should play with intentional stalls. Losing altitude rapidly in the pattern, either by stalls or spiraling, is generally a bad idea as well. Blue skies, Winsor

In general, after formation and calcification of the callus at the break a long bone is at least as strong as it was before breaking. Prior to full calcification, the site of the break is significantly weaker. With the addition of a permanent fixation device (a rod or plate) the issue becomes somewhat murky. On the one hand, the fixation device can function in lieu of bone healing. On the other hand, the fixation device is subject to bending instead of breaking, and can be no fun at all for either the patient or the orthopedic surgeon. I was the first on the scene some years back when a jumper landed near me after having his femur broken by a hard opening. As it turns out, he had broken it four months earlier during a swoop landing that almost worked as planned. He wanted to have a plate installed so he could come back out and continue jumping.... Another guy I know had a broken femur from a slightly misjudged landing, and it never healed properly. He had a fixation device installed to keep the two parts of the bone proximal, and jumped the softest-opening easiest-landing canopies he could find. His swoop career was over, as well. My suggestion is that you ensure that the x-rays show the bone is nicely healed before you test how hard of an opening it takes to compromise the break. If your orthopedic surgeon says it's too soon to jump, it likely is. Blue skies, Winsor

Wilga, and I think they were marketed in the US as the "Storch" (stork). What amazed me was how slowly the thing climbed. Given its power, the size of its prop and its ungainly STOL appearance, I expected it to climb like a scared cat. No such luck. It was on a par with an AN-2, so getting to 1,000 metres was quite the achievement. Blue skies, Winsor

The NOVA consisted of a pilot chute with a collapsible main. I am one of the lucky ones who folded one up and survived. Jumping a 170 below the minimum 1.35 loading, I tried the front risers at about 500 feet to see how much extra performance it gave. The canopy promptly ate its nose and I was swung forward with my heels pointed skyward. The canopy then reinflated and dove past me. After falling past slack lines (thank God I did not snag one), the canopy snapped back into place above me at slightly over 100 feet. I did not touch the risers again, and landed a bit farther from the peas than I had originally intended. As I walked back in, one observer said "Wow! That was cool! Could you do that again?" You gotta love it. I then jumped my Blue Track BT-50, which I had let Butch jump and he had repacked. I was on my second or third rotation when I concluded that it was not a mal, just a funky opening, and got it straightened out. I was taught to pack it perfectly symmetrically, so I had never experienced the results of failing to do so. I repacked it my way, and it opened right on heading. That day was not boring. Blue skies, Winsor

I buried the toggles, trying to flare a 7-TU. Except for breaking a cute little bone in my foot, it worked okay. Okay, so I forgot that RISERS are the hot tip if you have to yank down on something before landing a round. Toggles put you into a sink.... Blue skies, Winsor

Okay, I keep forgetting that Math is a foreign language for a lot of people. What we have here is, however, "kindergarten algebra," the mathematical equivalent of "See Spot run! Run, Spot, Run!" Anyone who can balance their checkbook should be able to guesstimate the appropriate values in their head. Come on, this is not Rocket Surgery. How accurate do you think the count typically is between two groups? Do you think " gimme ten seconds" is likely to result in anything like 10.00 seconds? How exactly do you think the typical skydiver tracks to his/her quadrant? In practice, from an airplane going into the wind, using ground speed will put people out with sufficient separation most of the time. If you conclude from this that ground speed is the critical parameter, I refer you to my tethered and free balloon models. The tethered balloon has zero ground speed but gives separation, the free balloon has ground speed and no separation. John Kallend's PowerPoint presentation (referenced in this thread and on this site) does a great job of making clear the whys and wherefores of exit separation. He also says to go ahead and use ground speed in your calculations - so long as you understand the limitations of the method. I have landed off, I have had canopy collisions and near-misses, and I have lost friends to midair collisions. When all is said and done, I am more concerned with achieving adequate separation than the method by which it is achieved. As H. L. Mencken said, "For every complex problem, there exists a solution that is simple, elegant - and wrong." Einstein said something to the effect that "Every problem should be made as simple as possible - but no simpler." Beware of dumbed-down theory. It is typically wrong - sometimes dangerously so. Blue skies, Winsor