RiggerLee

So was that a tandem into a demo? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I actually was setting down writing a very coherent response to his first post. It was all about pressure suits vs pressure breathing and an old U2 pilot that I used to know. I got interrupted yesterday and didn't get to finish it. By the time I checked on it again last night it was in full swing and I just went and got some popcorn. Things I will say for his plan. 60,000 ft is at least way more doable then the exponentially larger problem of trying to set a new record at 130,000+ A 60,000 foot balloon is at least doable for decent size loads. There are certainly places where they launch balloons like that commercially for weather and other things. In fact they do it at all latitudes. On one of my trips to Canada I was talking to a guy about a launch site... I don't recall if it was actually on Baffin or a near by island. Site wasn't even a town. It was just an out post where they went to launch balloons using hydrogen. Way too dangerous to be near any town. So commercial stuff is out there but it's generally in the middle of no where with flight paths away from every thing, like over oceans. Obviously you can get permits to launch from any where you like. Look at the balloon racers for the around the world. But I can't even conceive of trying to reuse or recover an envelope from some thing like that. Never even heard of it being done. Every thing I've ever seen they just cut away the payload and recovered it. About air craft. I think it would be very... interesting to try to jump out of an air craft at that altitude. Look up "Coffin Corner" in the history of high flying aircraft. Basically you can get into this situation where as you fly higher your stall speed of course goes up and you get into a corner of the graph where lines for critical mach number and stall speed start to converge. It's a scary place to fly but a lot of high flying aircraft have wound up there, the U2 as a prime example. What's relevant here is that the air plane just can't slow down. No Cut! So we're talking about a jumping out of a jet aircraft with no cut. Density is low but the indicated air speed is still pretty high. I think we're talking ejection seat, and ejection seats are no fun. Normally it's a question of how badly you're injured. Any body know what the highest jump made from an air plane is? What kind of plane could you jump from at 60,000+ feet where you wouldn't lose the aircraft? I think there are ways you could build one. There was once a design, old supersonic fighter bomber idea, where they were looking at deploying ordinance out the tail of the aircraft between the engines rather then through a bomb bay or under wing. They wanted to drop a bomb or fire a missile supper sonic and were worried about the bomb taking out the plane. I just can't think of a lot of planes that could fly at that altitude with a door open. If you want to do this I'll tell you how to do it. It won't be cheep but the next record will be set with a rocket. There are people talking about this right now. If you want to set a new record, I'm talking 200,000 feet, give us a call: Exos Aerospace http://exosaero.com/ But don't even waist our time till you have secured... lets say $3,000,000, that's just a guess off the top of my head, to build you a custom air frame. It's not exactly what you're looking for, some thing cheep enough to be a new business that the ordinary skydiver is going to want to jump. But once built, normal operating cost are about $250,000 per flight. Let's talk wet lease. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Haven't talked to Phil. He's busy dealing with a problem with the post processor on the DMU he needs to fix it before we can do the blocks for the ACS. They are a cool small design but complicated to build. In any case the the load cell and every thing is down there but I kind of need him to run it. I think I could mount part of the length sensor of the bottom plate so we wouldn't have the lower clamp hanging on the line, they're heavy. But I don't see getting any thing done soon. CSR sent me some thing but it's not a strain curve. It's just a list of elongations at breakage for a set of test. Here are the elongation results from our CSR Style #9512-725 that was manufactured in March 2017: SPECIFICATIONS TEST RESULTS AVERAGE ELONGATION @ BREAK (%)

I'll ask Phil about it. We were set up to do some weld test for the new friction stir used on the new tanks a while ago. The recorder should be all set up but life is pretty busy pushing through the next hold down test. I don't know if we can measure that light of a load. We normally use a 20k load cell and I question how good the data will be at such a low range. Maybe I can talk him into doing some test towards cascading the lines on the canopy. I've been pushing for it. Now that we seem to have the opening whipped maybe we'll get around to that. I might be able to justify it in that regard but right now every one is pretty strapped for time. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Now We're just playing semantics. What you are calling creep is what I called set in the elongation of the weave. The true definition above is a real term in material science. And you will see it in the polymers of line. I refereed to if as you seemed to be talking about leaving line under load on a cutting table for a prolonged period of time. That would be called creep under the above definition. Regardless of what you call it it's really irrelevant to openings which are much shorter events. So the fact that a peace of specter will "stretch", what you really mean is creep, over a prolonged time period doesn't matter. And HMA being less prone to creep is just a product of the molecule and is again irrelevant to opening. There's no way around the fact that you really can't get above a fraction of a percent of the total kinetic energy of the opening. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Don't tease us. Let's see a couple of strain curves for 825 and equiv HMA. Show us from the elongation from 0 to 100 lb for a line for say a 12 inch section. Integrate from say 0 to 80 lb's X by the line length X by 12 and let's see exactly how many foot pounds energy is absorbed by the line set. Don't make me go down stares and bust out the load cell. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I talked to a girl at CSR and she said that they would send me the strain curve for some of their line. I'll probable get a call back from one of the techs asking, "What the f@%k?" In the mean time I'll present my arguments for other factors affecting the opening of canopies. All of the hard opening incidents and accidents that I can recall have been on specter lines. I don't think the difference in elongation of the weave or the modulus of elasticity plays a significant part one way or the other. I'll list some things that I think do affect the statistics. Over our history there are just far more canopies lined with specter than other lines. There have simply been more jumps on made on specter line. Specter was the favored line when ZP arrived on the market. There were a lot of incidents in this time period as the first generation of ZP canopies came on the market, several of which had less then forgiving opening characteristics. At this same time when we made the transition from dacron to specter people were still coming to terms with the importance of tight line stows and staging. People were still using large rubber bands and do you remember when they used to say, "Don't double wrap your stows, you'll get bag lock!" "It will make your bag spin and you'll have line twist!" "Don't make your stows longer then an inch, they could get over each other if the loop is too big and cause a bag lock and you'll die!" Even with the same tightness, bands just don't hold specter lines near as well as dacron. So we had hard opening canopies and line dump issues. in this time period when almost every thing was being lined with specter. The Triathlon got a bad rep. It's a seven cell and they started out trying to put 500 lb specter on most of their canopies. They flew great but they had very little line bulk. I think this made them more prone to line dump when people did not stow their lines tight enough. Even double wrapping the stows still tended to be lose with so little line in the stows. A lot of larger canopies got a bad rap as hard openers. There were some real reasons. Limited number of slider sizes putting the larger canopies at the small end. The fact that big boys bought these canopies. Tight jump suits were becoming popular even for big boys. Used to be the fat guy bought a balloon, or at least a loose cotton, jump suit. No more. Falling fast was all the thing. Heavier weight, higher PC snatch force, With higher snatch more prone to line dump. Higher weight and higher speeds meant higher energy in the system to begin with. And the higher speeds directly affected the openings of the canopy it self even if the staging was good. Big boys bought triathlons and large sabers and later specters because they wanted a nice canopy, mellow but with performance. People in the highest risk categories generally didn't buy the smallest high performance canopies. Fat guys with a paunch generally don't want to try to run out the landings of a small velocity or VX. So the canopies highest on your list are simply the kinds of canopies that the people at the highest risk of line dump or just hard openings jumped. They are also some of the most popular canopies with some of the highest jump numbers on them. Way more sabers, triathlons, and spectors have been sold then the supper hot... fill in the name of the top dog swooping canopy right now. Got to go. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Places where it makes more deference. Sorry had to go shoot some Tannerite. If you think about the canopy as it is accelerated to line stretch. Let's start with the old rounds. Booth used to say that a canopy took, or should take, about .7 sec to reach line stretch. I seem to recall that he was quoting a military study of malfunction rates. The sweet spot was around .7 sec. I'm guessing they were using C-9 or some thing like that. Call the lines 28 ft. Let's say it weighs 12 lb.s? I'm just fudging numbers. Let's assume the acceleration is constant. 28 in .7 would be 40 ft/sec but it's doing it from a dead start so let's say 80 ft/sec when it hits line stretch. Kinetic energy is 1,192 ft*lb energy. The lines on a C-9 are way stretchier then any modern line. It really is measured in ft. and It's a better spring it doesn't hit a wall in it's elongation like specter. Let's make up some more numbers. Say it takes a 30 lb to max out the line with 24 inches of travel. Let's assume it's linear. so 30*24/2*28 28 lines. I get 10,080 ft/lb of energy that could be absorbed in the line set of a C-9 which is more then enough to smooth out the sharp spike of the snatch force when the canopy hits line stretch and even to ease some of the opening. But it's still only like 11% of the total kinetic energy of the opening. But please note that with 28 ft of acceleration the spike in the load as the canopy hit's line stretch on a C-9 can be the highest peak in the load curve. Especially when the deployment is high speed with high extraction forces. A sky diving canopy isn't as bad in the since that it doesn't have as far to accelerate before it hit's line stretch. Most PC's don't have as much drag as an old MA-1 so there is less force over that distance. It doesn't build up as much energy. It also weighs a bit less on average. Still there is a bit of a sharp pop when the bag hits line stretch and the canopy comes to a stop. Watch in a video as the jumper is jerked up right past a sit as the canopy hits line stretch. Our lines just don't have near as much stretch to absorb that sharp yank as the type 3 line on an old round. Still looking for the modulus. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Creep: In materials science, creep (sometimes called cold flow) is the tendency of a solid material to move slowly or deform permanently under the influence of mechanical stresses. It can occur as a result of long-term exposure to high levels of stress that are still below the yield strength of the material. Creep is more severe in materials that are subjected to heat for long periods, and generally increases as they near their melting point. The rate of deformation is a function of the material properties, exposure time, exposure temperature and the applied structural load. Depending on the magnitude of the applied stress and its duration, the deformation may become so large that a component can no longer perform its function — for example creep of a turbine blade will cause the blade to contact the casing, resulting in the failure of the blade. Creep is usually of concern to engineers and metallurgists when evaluating components that operate under high stresses or high temperatures. Creep is a deformation mechanism that may or may not constitute a failure mode. For example, moderate creep in concrete is sometimes welcomed because it relieves tensile stresses that might otherwise lead to cracking. Unlike brittle fracture, creep deformation does not occur suddenly upon the application of stress. Instead, strain accumulates as a result of long-term stress. Therefore, creep is a "time-dependent" deformation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(deformation) Speaking of polyethylene: Mechanical properties[edit] Polyethylene is of low strength, hardness and rigidity, but has a high ductility and impact strength as well as low friction. It shows strong creep under persistent force, which can be reduced by addition of short fibers. It feels waxy when touched. More specifically this is what we are talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene They have yield strengths as high as 2.4 GPa (350,000 psi) So there is the yield but still looking for the elastic modulus. I may just have to call up CSR and get the curve. Sorry, got to go shoot guns. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Sorry, I got distracted but I want to get back to this because I think it's important. You argue that canopies lined with specter will open softer then the same canopy lined with vectran or HMA because spectra has slightly more stretch in it's weave. Then you state that the hardest opening canopies, the ones that have caused the most injuries, are the ones lined with specter. Post: Quote: I don't buy your argument that vectran would open harder then specter do to specter having greater elasticity. Obviously you have never jumped a canopy with Spectra, lined that same canopy with Vectran and then jumped it. I have and the difference is what I have previously explained. Quote: Specter doesn't have a lot of give to it. It sets and has very little give, Spectra is easily shown that is has more elasticity to it than Vectran by simply putting a piece of Spectra on a line table, put it under load, make a mark that matches the same spot on the table, and then watch the two mark separate slowly. It will do it every time.. Vectran will not do this... So my statement stands. Quote: I think that whole business is a bit of a myth. You need to look into it more. Dacron lined Mantas open just fine. Put Spectra on one and you will soon see the difference, enough to have to install a nose mod on them. Quote: Of all the issues with hard openings I just don't think line elongation is a significant factor. And your own evidence points to specter being even less forgiving. Elongation (or lack of..) is an issue if you have a hard opening would you not agree?? Most people would think so. First, I want to talk about the energy absorbed in the elongation. The kinetic energy stored in the jumper is 1/2MV^2, Half the Mass times the velocity squared. 190 lb jumper(convert mass to slugs), 176 ft/sec, gives you 91,389 ft*lb of energy. To absorb that energy you have to do Work on the system over and above the force of gravity. Work is Force times Distance lbf*dis. In theory over a 700 ft opening it would only take 130.5 lb of force over and above the force of gravity, that would assume a constant load. The reality is not that nice with a higher peak and a bell curve dependent on all the vagueries of drag and the characteristics of the opening. Now let's talk about what happens when some thing stretches. The lines are a good example but there are other parts of the system with as much or more stretch, compression, or absorption in them. The mass is moving 176 ft/sec. A load is applied by the canopy. When the lines or some thing else stretch they limit the force applied to the mass. The force seen by the mass is dependent on their elongation curve. The mass will see only that force as the elongation occurs and then once the "spring", that's what we're really talking about, saturates, reaches the limit of it's elongation, then all the force will be transferred to the system. So the mass is moving. It has a certain kinetic energy. While the lines stretch it experiences a limited load restricting the peak force. Over this distance a certain amount of kinetic energy is absorbed out of the system based on the capacity of the spring, force over distance to the saturation of the spring. Then the rest of the opening proceeds normally. Let's say the peak force of the opening of the canopy is reduced in relation to the remaining kinetic energy or you could think about it in terms of the opening occurring at the new lower velocity based on the energy absorbed by the spring, the lines. But from that point on the lines can do nothing to mitigate the peak load of the opening. They are as stretched as they can go, the spring is totally saturated, there is no more "give" in the system. Sounds, great. Stretchy lines. This is what we've been saying for years. But let's put this in perspective. Energy absorbed by the lines. The weave of the lines has some spring to it. once the weave elongates and the line is set there is not much change. The fiber it self has a much higher modulus, spring to it. So the curve goes way up with very little elongation. So when you build a line set you have to stretch the line to get that spring out of the weave and get a good consistent measurement on length. Let's say you put 20 lb on it and got 1 inch of stretch out of the line. Honestly I never really paid attention to the stretch. I never started measuring things till I had them loaded. 20 lbf over 1 inch is 1.667 ft*lb of kinetic energy per line times 12, 19.92 ft@lbs absorbed out of the 91,389 ft*lbs of energy in the system. That's assuming that it takes 20 lbf to stretch the line all the way along that distance. Not the case. If it were linear more like a spring then it would be half that. In reality it's probable some thing in between with a bump at the front and then a curve going up. Let's say it's a 9 cell with 12 main lines. Ten cascaded supention lines and two break lines. But even in the most generous scenario it's only absorbing 0.0219% of the energy of the system. Beyond the elongation of the weave you could talk about the modulus of elasticity of the polyethylene. I haven't bothered to look it up and you would have to talk about area and how the load is distributed. The loads are much higher but the length of elongation is much shorter. There just isn't enough change in length to absorb a lot of energy and you'll quickly reach beyond the peak loads of the opening trying to stretch it by inches much less feet. Let's say the peak is 5 G's For 190 exit weight the peak load is 950 lb. Once all the set is taken out of the weave how much more stretch do you think you will get out of 12 fully set lines with only 950 lbf on them. Take that line with 20 lb load on it, fully set, and add another 80. Let's say you got another inch out of it. over the whole line set you're talking another 79 ft*lbf out of the system that's another 0.0864% So in the best scenario I can come up with for specter lines it looks like they would absorb just over 0.1% of the energy of the opening before they saturated. Some body check my math. It's been a while. Now if you leave a polyethylene line under load for a while it will stretch. Like leave a twenty pound weight hanging from a peace of it for a week. That's actually creep that happens slowly over time, think days. It's a product of the molecule. You may not see that in HMA or vectran. That has nothing to do with what happen in the opening. It isn't even applicable over the life span of the canopy. Note that that line shrink from the heat more then they stretch in creep. Tired of typing. I'll try and get in to the other factors later. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't buy your argument that vectran would open harder then specter do to specter having greater elasticity. Specter doesn't have a lot of give to it. It sets and has very little give, same with vectran and hma. Even Dacron has a limited amount of energy absorption. I think that whole business is a bit of a myth. I think it dates back to rounds with long lines. If you look at an opening curve you will see a sharp spike where it hit's line stretch then the opening. With a long lined canopy like an old round there is a long distance over which it can accelerate and build up kinetic energy the spike can be pretty big and the peak higher then the opening. The supper stretchy rubber bands lines can help with a momentary spike like that. Keeping in mind that the old type 3 lines had ten times the elongation of dacron. But even that can't help with the actual opening. After that 12 inches of stretch the lines are saturated and all the load goes right through the system. There is a limit to the amount of kinetic energy some thing like that can absorb. Force over distance. Integrate it. Once it stops stretching... that's it. It's done. How much force does it take to stretch the lines on a round that twelve inches? Pulling harder does not count if it only stretches a 1/4 inch. It's force times distance. And then you are not absorbing energy or lowering the peak load. With some thing like dacron how far does a line stretch? 2 inches? And under what load? You're still seeing that load. Doing the math, it's not much help at all. In fact the round canopies I've been test jumping have been lined with specter. Where does this come from? I think it's secondary issues related to line material. How well the rubber bands hold the lines. The quality of the staging. Friction on the slider and how fast it's pushed down. Shrinkage of the outer lines pushing the slider lower on the canopy reducing it's effectiveness. I think the size thing is real. A canopy that large can put even more hurt on you if the canopy becomes dominant over the slider to early in the opining or if there is a problem with the staging. It's also a product of the higher loads under them. If the guy weighs twice as much there is twice as much energy to be absorbed. If he's falling faster, as big guys do, it's even worse as energy goes up with the square. And with a higher speed you can have more snatch force compromising the staging. Of all the issues with hard openings I just don't think line elongation is a significant factor. And your own evidence points to specter being even less forgiving. Still I've seen problems with going from specter to vectran or other materials. Example. Guy got a canopy lined with specter relined with vectran. This is back when it was first becoming popular, I think it was a vengeance. Suddenly his openings went to shit. They were not hard but they became radical. Basically the slider was coming down slower and sticking or at least hesitating part way down. This meant that the canopy was more inflated at this point and trying to fly. It would surge forward and radically dive turning hard to one side or the other. The slider being part way down made the canopy less stable in roll and it became super twitchy during the opening. Eventually he had it relined in specter again and it all went away. So there are some weird interplay's that can occur in the dynamics of the opening. If you take an older canopy and put one of these newer line sets on it you should consider your self a test jumper. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I feel the need to point out that this is an inherently scued poll. People do react differently to stressful situations. But by definition, if they responded poorly, then they are not answering this post. It will be very hard to get a response from any of them so you are going to get a scued result consisting of positive reactions. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Embarrassment. It was a CRW jump with another young jumper. More then any thing else I was thinking how much shit people were going to give me and how far I was going to have to drive to the nearest beer store. CRW cut aways are a little diffrent. More mellow, more time, less adrenelin. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You might talk to your DZO about what canopy he might like to own a year from now when you might be thinking about down sizing. Schools need new gear from time to time and it will be your best bet when you turn around to sell it. It's a bit big for most peoples main. Have you thought about renting a main by the day from the DZ. Most will rent a full system by the day. If you have your own container, TSO'd for your weight, they might let you put their canopy into your container for the dayly rate. You could put some jumps on it till you are ready to buy your own canopy. After a while you might find that your in the market for say a 230 or 210 rather then a 270 which is the range you probable need to be on right now. People generally don't do this because over their first fifty jumps as they go through training they generally transition from almost ridiculasly large canopies through several sizes in the student and rental gear to some thing more reasonable. It's a alittle differnt for you being a bigger boy. Still you will find that you will be looking to down size, perticularly depending on the type of canopy you buy. And don't get too hung up on the exact wing loading. Yes you need a big canopy right now. You're a big boy, but what you will find is that large canopies fly really really well. There is more to it then wing loading. The actual size of the canopy and length of the lines also play into it. That's why even a little tiny girl may find her self over her head on a smaller canopy. "You'll be fine, it's only 1.2 ...". I've heard that shit more then once and I cringe. On the other end of the scale, large canopies fly fundomentally better then smaller canopies at the same wing loading. I work with a 1,200 sq ft canopy that flies wonderfully and it's a clunky old school design that you wouldn't think would do well at all. But it's big and will carry emence loads. Point is that with the size canopies that you will be jumping I think you'll find that you will be able to down size to a smaller canopy and you might not be stuck on this first canopy years. What I'm saying is that in these larger sizes there is more wiggle room on the wing loading then on smaller canopies do to their higher performance. Far less diffrence in change between a 260 and a 230 then between a 170 and 150 even if the 230 is at a higher wing loading then the 150. So see if they will let you rent there rig for the day and jump their canopy in your container till you make up your mind what canopy you are eventually going to want to buy. If you find that you are comfertable a little smaller then it will open up all kinds of posibilities in terms of buying off the shelf or used gear. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Girl, we were discussing another woman's weight weight problem, "My ass is kind of big right now." Me, "Well ya, but..." I was going to say that it was just at that point in it's cycle, she had once explained to me how it oscillated 90 deg. out of phase with her Oreo consumption, I was not able to finish my sentence. Her, "I SAID THAT... AND YOU JUST... AGREED WITH ME! YOU ARE NEVER GETTING LAID!" I was fueling my 150. Girl, "Is that your airplane?". Me, inflating with pride, it was my first airplane, "Yes, this is my Airplane." Girl, "But, it's so small." Me, pop, think deflating balloon. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Some companies have been much more open with the... logic of their algorithms then others. It's frustrating to be asked to trust your life to some thing they are not willing to fully exsplane. I wish I had the capability to cut one open and pear inside to divine all it's mysteries. I don't have the requisite knowledge. They try to be secret about all of it but it seems to me that if any one was truly intent on stealing these secrets they would have the ability to do exactly what your doing. I concluded that their real intent was always to keep the general public in the dark, or more specifically the lawyers. I'm giving them the benefit of a doubt and assuming that they suppress this knowledge to keep it out of the court room. So as much as I'd love to hear about any thing you glean it's probable best if you keep it to your self. Lawyers read this site. It's the number one place to be trolled for information when ever there is a law suit. And I disagree with your assessment. Yes, there have been glitches. All brands have had them. What actually surprises me is how few there are. These units, all of them, have proved to be remarkably reliable. That's not to say that they have not been involved in fatalities. That's not even to say that they have not caused fatalities. As odd as it may seem but many of those incidents and even accidents do not constitute malfunctions on the part of the units. Very often they were doing exactly what they were designed to do. Which, contrary to popular opinion is not to save your life. It's simply to fire it's cutter under a certain set of circumstances. And I do not begrudge it for doing it's job, even when it results in some ones death. There really are not that many failures that you can harp on. What does bug me is not the units but there makers. Who for a long time were less then clear about the limitations of there units. They would prase it's capabilities but were less forthcoming about how it could fail. To some degree it was not there fault. As therough as they were with their testing they were blindsided as much as the rest of us as people kept finding new ways to kill them selves in spite of all the effort that they had put into their units. Lately they have decided to be more open in hopes of better educating their customers. Even Cypres. Surprisingly they gave a very good lecture about one of their units this year at PIA. I know, I was shocked. I had to go out side afterwards to make sure that the sun still moved in the sky. I just think it's important to distinguish between the problem of trying to write algorithms that will save some one and not kill him, and actual failures. I think the former is a far greater hurdle then the almost trivial technical issues of the devise. I mean, What do you really want the thing to do? When you set down and try to work it out it actually gets really complex. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't think that's the kind of testing they are doing. Their first concern is that the AAD not interfere with the normal deployment mode, ie. when they pull the rip cord manually. There was a project back when we first started to understand that the cutter firing the loop caused the container to behave differently. What they were really looking at was container design and cutter placement. It was the cutter under the PC vs. cutter above the PC argument, and beyond that how the container it self behaved. In the past Airtec and others did their own testing on containers and they decided things like cutter location. We started to realize that we needed a broader metric of testing over the full spread of containers that a manufacturer builds, not just a single example that had been sent to Airtec years before. Over that time fundamental things had been changed in some of the designs. For example there were several iterations in the Javelin container since the early 90's when airtec tested it. So PIA and the manufacturers kind of came up with their own "testing/certification" program. It's a good size metric of test in a number of conditions looking at sensitivity to a number of factors. But it's all about the container design. And I think it's all table top. Don't remember the details. Point is it was focused on the container not the AAD or the cutter. I think they were looking a using a little hook knife style devise in place of the cutter. It was potentially a lot of test. As far as AAD "certification testing" goes that's the only program I recall. The argus was more a "Holy shit, it wont cut a limp loop!" thing. And based on the location of some of the cutters, people spazed. And rightly so. If it interferes with the normal mode... Then it violates the TSO. That's been the argument all along. The airworthiness is based on normal testing. Not the AAD. Argument for letting them put it in is that it can't hurt any thing and does not interfere with the "normal mode". Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Good example. And that's interesting because a lot of people have resisted doing some thing like this. I think it dates to when Strong made AAD's mandatory on their tandems. I don't think they wanted people going out and putting old poorly maintained FXC's and things in them just to for fill the requirement. The trade off is that it adds one more form of liability that they might face in court one day. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

First let me say that I think your little project is really cool. There are several of us on here that are basically mad scientist. The guy above is a good example. His company Freefall Accessories... https://freefallaccessories.com/ builds every thing from a very nice line of altimeters to the old pin pullers we used on our suborbital rockets and every thing in between. They are leading the charge in a whole new generation of AAD's with far more processing power and sensors. But they are just the first. Eventually we will see new generation AAD's from all the old companies. Personally I love to tinker with stuff. Things become really dangerous when I become board and have spare time on my hands. So I totally get you wanting to tinker with an AAD project. To really do some thing interesting though I think you'll have to start from scratch. And in a very technical since I don't see any thing stopping you from building your own AAD and even jumping it. That is if you can convince some one to pack it for you. To the best of my knowledge no manufacturer even approves an AAD for their rig. There is no list of what they say is OK, because they don't want to touch the liability. And to the best of my knowledge the Argus is the only AAD that any manufacturer has disapproved. I'm speeking of the US. So technically there is to the best of my knowledge nothing stopping you from building your own and even selling it to others. What I don't think you grasp is the enormity of the project. Beyond the liability the reason that no one has ever felt the need for an approval or testing program or any type of certification is that, at this point, every one who has undertaken this has been a large well funded enterprise with a good testing program. They've all had glitches but that's normal. What's amazing is how few and how small they have been. Today we are getting into the age were any body can tinker with this stuff. There has been discussion of the idea of an open source AAD project. In theory between off the shelf components and 3D printers some one with a little basic skills could make there own AAD. The problem is that these are not toys. You don't just laugh with your friends when they break, blow up, catch fire, or have a melt down. Your life may depend on it. It could save you, but it could also kill you. An AAD can KILL YOU. Further more an AAD can KILL THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. You may not be old enough in the sport to remember when you could not get on a load if you had an AAD on your rig, but I do. People would not jump with you. The reliability of the second generation of electronic AAD's ie. Cypres, changed all that. But the original selling point of the cypres was that it was hidden. No one would know that you had it in your rig. I really don't want to go back to that. To really do this right is a pretty big endeavor. There are all kinds of failure modes that you probable have not thought of. I say that having recently listened to a lecture on failure modes of an AAD at PIA from one manufacturer. And another two years earlier from another. And these are people that have been building them for decades. If you wanted to start a company and do this. I'd say go for it. The market is wide open. The changes that are coming will make all the existing manufacturers obsolete. All you need is ten million dollars in funding. But I don't see any way for you to develop and test an AAD as a hobby project. And I don't think I would want to gamble my life jumping around you with it out side of the controlled conditions of a testing program. And I don't think any one would want to gamble a million dollar air craft on your project. And an AAD can take down an aircraft. Canopy deployed on climb out can take that tail right off. My concern is that if these open source projects go forward it will erode the trust that has built up in this industry over the years. It would force the industry to start approving or disapproving installations. That would change the liability and not in a good way. Home made AAD's would quickly be outlawed, and by default others approved. It's a can of worms that no one really wants to open. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Found him. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Any one know how to get a hold of that lazy, malcontent, slacker, Jay Schrimsher? My boss wants to talk to him. If you could have him contact me... 512 772 4293 512 773 5665 leadingedgebase@hotmail.com Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Jump suits are not really designed to be worked on. Depending on what you are trying to do it can be a pain. There are a few spots where you can expand them. The crotch/thighs is one of them. Tom decided to helpfully die his girl friends jump suit black as a surprise. It had fit her perfectly. Better then any custom suit she will ever own. It shank. She was pissed. The only way we could come up with to fix it is what we came to call the Cuttie Patch. One of the last seams in the jump suit to be closed is the crotch running up one leg, across the groin, and down the other. You can open that seam and put in a long diamond patch running from one knee to the other. It will expand the thighs and give a little more room through the... between your balls/cuttie and the shoulder. Thread. I would use at least E thread size 69 bonded 8 lb tensile. Try apolstery shops. Some times you can get nylon appolstery thread in shit stores like Hancocks or Joe Anns in the 10 lb range. If you go to a real shop ask if they have prewound bobbins. Real thread is sold in one pound spools. A few bobbins will take care of this project for you for a lot less. Big ball point needle, at least size 18. Fabric is up to you. Suplex a blend of nylon and cotton is common. Go heavy rather then light. There is a lot of strain on jump suits. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

No hatred. I think it's awesome. I just see what's coming. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

How many broken windows do you think they will tolerate? In a country like that, tolerance can change on a whim. Sooner or later they will fuck this up. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

They didn't hand out a DVD or zip drivein the goody bag this year. Some one told me they were going to have a link on the symposium or PIA web site were you could down load some of the power points or hand outs. Does any one know where it is on the site? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com