RiggerLee

I find it easier to exsplane to people why they are fucking idiots and leave it to them to come to that conclusion then to simply say it out right. When I do that they seem to become defensive for some reason. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think you'll find the change in the type of canopy far greater then in the size. You would notice only a small difference if you went to a 150 specter. The Crossfire is just a significantly different type of canopy. It's a great canopy it just doesn't fly the same. You'll love it once you get to know it. LaBlonk gave a talk one on kind of the history of their design development. They have a whole spectrum of canopies. It was interesting because he addressed the different niches that they were meant to fill. He grouped them into flat and steep trimmed canopies. He didn't really understand the obsession that people had with rectangular vs tapered vs simi elliptical, vs fully elliptical. It confused him and he's the designer. He showed the plane forms of a couple of them on top of each other and it was like... really? That's it? These canopies are radically different but you wouldn't know it from look at there plane form. There is clearly other magic in it so forget the whole fully elliptical thing. Make no mistake you are moving from a sedan to a sports car. Think ford torsue to a corvet. It's not a Lamborghini and defenantly not an F1 but it is a sports car and you are going to have to make adjustments in how you fly it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

If you approach this intelligently you can of course do this safely with complete success. The thing is you're post to some degree shows a certain lack of understanding. Yes all canopies can be flown conservatively but that word has different meanings for different canopies. Some canopies like to go fast. The depend on that speed for there inflation. Some canopies behave differently at different angles of attack. And the behave differently in there pitching behavior to regain that angle of attack. So when you go through turbulence the old school answer was to pull a little breaks. Now with smaller canopies some manufactures actually recommend keeping your air speed up, staying in full flight. Saw a guy fuck him self up trying to fly a small canopy conservatively. He was coming in over a plowed field, probable warm producing a little turbulence, no big deal. He was making small corrections with his toggles. "Flying conservatively". But every time he pulled on a break line the canopy would rock back and then surge forward when he let up. All canopies do this but this was a high performance highly efficient wing. These were not but turns, he was just keeping it on heading. When ever a canopy rocks forwards like that it unloads the front of the airfoil. The nose gets soft. Well it rolled under on him, careflight. Point of the story. It's important to understand an fly your canopy in a way appropriate to that canopy. Being conservative can have a very different meaning from one canopy to another. The canopy is not ridiculously unreasonable for you. That is not the problem. And it can be flown conservatively. But if you try to fly it like a student canopy you can get your self into trouble. Some times flying conservatively means keeping up your speed not slowing it down. It's a different mind set. If you can make that adjustment you will be fine but you'd better set down and drink a beer with some one while the explane to you how this new canopy works, cause it's just fundamentally different in some respects. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That velcro wear is worse then you would think. Old racers got that all the time. You would see them where it would shrink that edge. We didn't think that much about it till I saw were they were actually doing some pull test of a harness. I don't recall the exact story. There was a bad spot or some extreme sun fading or some thing. They wanted to see how much load it would still carry. Put it on a hydrolic pull tester. It broke at the velcro damage. Not the spot they were trying to test. It was kind of an eye opener. The idea that relatively minor damage over a larger area could be so detrimental. If you think about it the braid goes in and out and if you damage the surface over a certain length you can damage a lot of the fibers. It sort of changed my preseption of what damage is an issue. Like I said. It failed there not at the weak spot they were trying to test. There are actually some killer deals out there on racers. Some times you can buy a rig just for the canopies. The canopies them selves seem to lose value just from being packed in a racer. There are very good deals out there on much better racers then the one you are describing. But you'll have to bid against Falkner. She has a search engine set up that looks for deals on racer containers and she buys them all up. She has a whole wall of the dropzone decorated with racer containers. I'm surprised it doesn't implode forming a black hole sucking us all in to some alternate hell world ruled by John Sherman where he is worshiped as a god. If all possible realities exist then there must be a world like that some where. Some day that dropzone will reach a critical mass and the whole world will be doomed. BURN A RACER SAVE THE WORLD! Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Be advised the DOM and serial number may be the same thing. It's like a code in there. They did that for a while. And technically you're supposed to be able to read that label. The real question is why? Are you really this desperate? Can any one take pity on this poor guy and help him out with a new rig? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

x=tot/(a+by+cz) Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Of course it can be done. Even be done safely. Eloy is relatively dark with fewer visual clues to altitude but I've been places where there was so much ambeant light that it might as well have been day. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

A lot of the seams you will see are a compromise. Raw edges are in no way a problem now that we hot cut every thing. Like on old canopies you will see where they sewed 1 inch back from the edge on two layers and 2.5 back on the third. Then wrapped the third around the others to hide the fraying edge and sewed the lines through the stack. The 1 inch gave them enough to just sew to the edge with out folding. If you look at how things have changed with time the real push has been towards two things. First, simplicity and easy of construction. Second, smaller external seams out in the airflow. What you see there with PD and I think the newer PD canopies are simplified even further is a compromise. It lets them build in I beams and then put those sections together. Para gliders for example often have no external seams. They basically start at one end and build the canopy from one end to the other. It's necessitated by their all internal seams. So you'll see a lot of them with all individual panels and all ribs loaded. No I-beams. Even the ones with sections, if they have no external seams I think are still built end to end. Things like that mean that it all happens at one station. You can't have a two people doing multibil operations at the same time. One or more sewing I-beams and another putting them together at another station. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

By top seams do you mean the unloaded rib of the I-beam like you show there? You know there has been a movement towards not doing that little under fold. Basically if you just leave the equivalent amount of fabric beyond the seam you can just scab it on. Seems to work. I think the original construction might be left over from very early canopies where they stack cut, not hot cut, the fabric. Then there seemed to be a transition where the hot cut some of the peaces, like ribs. Now I think every one hot cuts every thing. Point is they have gone to simpler seams. As an example. Is that how you are planing to sew the top of your load bearing rib? A full french fell lap seam? I don't think even PD did that. Are you sure they didn't use a rolled under english fell seam? It's a lot easier to get straight, at least the first important stitch line. Again the second stitch line done sepperatly is more to capture the edge of the fabric. I think that was another example of a hold over from a time when some manufactures stack cut their panels. I think if you look at some newer canopies you'll find that they are just sewn with a double needle, stacked like in that first pass and just left raw. It seems to work fine and significantly simplifies construction. I've seen canopies out of newzeland with just a single stitch line on the non load bearing ribs. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It's been a long time but I don't recall it being that big or having a moving seat. I seem to recall that it was more the size of the bino's but he had some kind of adapter for a video camera. It's been a long time. Honestly I think utter joke made more of an impression on me then the tripod set up. He did get awsome silky smooth full frame video from 12,000 ft. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm probable using the wrong term. What I recall from Eloy is the guy had a tripod with an eye peace at an angle. Good telephoto lens. Crank handles to follow the jumpers smoothly. And a video camera adapter. I don't think the big lens was part of the camera. This was like 20 years ago I don't think vhs cameras were that good back then. I seem to recall that Slictomier had some thing for judging stile but it was always packed away in a crate. I have no clue what exactly it was. I'm not sure I ever saw it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

We were looking at that. It is a little out of our price range. We were talking to some one at nasa about trying to buy one of theirs. They retired some recently but they can't find them. No one can figure out what happened to them. I remember when a guy had one out at Eloy durring the big Christmas boggie. He had a video adapter for it and was vedioing loads. he made a tape that year called The Utter Video with a blown up rubber glove as the mascot, you had to be there. If we could get one of those... Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Does any one know where I can find an old Cinetheodolite like they used to judge style or early RW. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Even better. Is there a pay phone at the hospital or clinic? Nice is he called back and got some one in the waiting room of the local equivalent of planned parenthood. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

To some degree the manufacturers make determinations as to what they consider to be minor and major repairs on their equipment and who the authorize to perform them. So in a since they are determining the privileges of the certificate. Just saying it's in some of their manuals and SB. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Where is my "What aad?" option? Some day I'll probable buy one. But I've gotten by with out one for what? the last 25 years. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

What I don't understand is why you would start this all over again. What did you have to gain? Other then just starting shit which is likely to create a problem, get beat up, car keyed, tires slashed, raped, murdered. Lot's of options of how this confrontation cold end and a good percentage of them are bad. I don't know what was up before. Maybe there was a legitement hard no issue for him. Example: maybe he did not realize that you are, for instance, a filthy disgusting sub human smoker. Yes, I'm allergic. That would be an example of valid deal killer and at least he was straight up about it. Second option is that he's a predator. It was a test to see if you would get up and chase after him and beg him to reconsider. This would mark you as week and vulnerable and easily controlled. A perfect victim that he could abuse. Ether way, Why go there? Steer clear and count your self lucky. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Sorry, I meant to say easier to use THEN the gun type. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You can use a smaller soldering iron. One of the pencil always on ones works fine. You can get a special cutting head or just get a largish one and hammer and file the point flat. some thing equivalent to this... http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7583C/HOT-KNIFE-HANDLE-ONLY http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7580A/HOT-KNIFE-ELEMENT-AND-CUTTING-TIP http://www.paragear.com/skydiving/10000170/S7601T/REPLACEMENT-TIP-FOR-HOT-KNIFE-ELEMENT It doesn't show much info like wattage but it's one of the beefy ones with decent power and the tip gives you thermal mass. It's easier to use the the gun type. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Or you could just tell people that you'r into S&M, which is not completely untrue, considering the slightly masochistic nature of the sport. Just start waving your arms around, gushing about harnesses and how you were suspended last weekend. Take a picture of your self in the drop zones hanging harness. By the time you get to how you met these guys and did these awesome four ways all weekend and would you like to see the video? They will be running away. The subject will never come up again. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

With out seeing the rig on you it's hard to say what is happening. Generally the rigs are too wide for small girls. Try making sure that the chest strap is tight. If you pull the yoke, the part that comes over your shoulders, inwards a bit with the chest strap it may help to keep the pull of the yoke on opening on your shoulder rather then on your arms. Even under canopy you'll find your arms banging into the yoke as you reach for your toggles and fly the canopy. Saw this a lot in CRW, Canopy relative work. So if you can have your instructor shorten your main lift web so that it fits you better, helps to keep it from rising off your shoulders, and make sure your chest strap is pulled in as far as you can get it, it may be easier on your arms on opening and under canopy. But the truth is it really wont go away till you get some thing that fits you a little better. You may have to get over being so girlly. Think of it as a badge of honor. A cool conversation starter as you invite people out to the drop zone. Your attitude will change. Before you know it you'll be showing off your first good scare, braging about your ripping hook turn and growssing about the stupid barbed wire fence the farmer put up and how it ruined your swoop. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

5. McElfish. 6. Sentinel. ????? I suppose 12 out of 14 isn't bad. I do find it a little disturbing that I might have to classify my self as an old guy. I don't think of my self as that old. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I have a 7TU. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This is not the most high tech way to do this but It's how I build line sets. Keep in mind that I'm not really set up properly any more I'm just improvising on the floor of the rocket hanger. I set up two cam pull cargo straps across the floor using some old line to reach the wall and a heavy bench. I tie the line to one hook. Mark the points on one end for the insert. Clamp the long tape to it with hemostats. Pull the line around the other hook with a little extra length. And I just loop it back and forth laying out that set of lines, A's, B's, C's... G's what ever. Tie it back off to the first hook. I have a set of matching Bungees, fairly stiff. I take the loops of line off the hook and holding them tightly pull one bungee at a time and hook a loop. So now they are all under tension. Go and mark all of the lines at the first end. By then the lines are fairly set. Go and mark the second end based on the tape clipped to the lines. Unhook the bungees and cut. Chain link and label. I can hammer out a set for one of our big canopies including finger trapping in under a day and that's 1,300 yards of line to cut. This shit isn't magical. With just a little care you can do it your self. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You don't think those skydivers and packers are actually reporting taxes do you? Cash and carry! Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com