RiggerLee

Fuck new. Old all steal machines are better. You don't need or probable want a walking foot. Consew dose make one with nice beg bobbins but I prefer a needle feed for binding. It's a simpler foot and you can grind it down to get the binder closer to the needles. It works better. If you want to build a canopy you want a needle feed with a puller like a 112w116 singer. It could be used for both but generally the spacing used for 3/4 inch binding is 3/16. Most canopy sewing is a 1/4 inch gauge. You could still use it for most things but It might be nice to have the slightly wider gauge for sewing on 1/2 inch tape and to give you a slightly wider bottom seam unless you want to do the bottom seam of your loaded rib with two passes of single. If you buy a good machine you want regret it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The "easy" way, if you're willing to sacrifice bulk, is to stick them on. You can get insignia tape in full width sheets. You can cut out the stars and then stick them on. And the line them up and stick another layer on the other side. Then you can sew around the edge to make it more permanent. It's the cheating way to do it. It has to be a fairly heavy opaic material. F-111 for instance will not show as very "white" It's really more clear. To show well you'll still need to take pictures from the sun side. Light wont shine through. Another choice. This works better with a more stabilized cloth like a spinnaker cloth. Is to temporarily stick it down with a spray adhesive and then sew it down with some kind of zigzag a double or triple throw is nice. Then cut out the blue inside. With the more stabilized cloth you can get by with out folding and seaming. And it's easier to cut out with the spinnaker. See old wind blades though I recommend a slightly wider seam and don't go over board with how tight the zigzag is. I hope you didn't bid low on this. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

His student gear? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I will say this. I also saw one tear like tissue paper. Not saying that you shouldn't jump it, but you should test the fabric. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

How about the Kleenex box style pouch on the hip of the... was it racers? Where you pulled it out of a slot. I always thought that one was cute. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Leg strap BOC have never existed? Are you just arguing the semantics? You are aware that leg strap "throw outs" were the norm for years right? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Who did do the first tuck tabs? As I recall Javelin as an example was already using then on their riser covers when Talon still had Velcro riser covers. So I don't think Sandy can lay claim to that. But what was the first tuck tab. The Vector 1 was all Velcro. Who did the first reserve tuck tabs and the first main. By the vector 2 booth had tabs on both I'm not sure when Javelins lost their Velcro in favor of tabs. And when did they do the first tuck tab on the talon main? Good thread. I've seen a lot of old shit but I'm not clear on the history of the time line. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

When were the first AAD's made? Surely some of the Military AAD's pre dated the sentinel. What was it? F1-b and Cap 3? When did Ejection seats come in to vogue? AAD's had to come along at about that time. Early jet's, late 40's? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Greg Yarbenet. Had to look it up. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

And how about Yarbanay, for the slider. He always clamed that it was his idea and has been kicking him self for decades for not filing a patent on it. He always figured that he deserved to be rich for that. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The crossbow container from security is the first production piggy back that I can think of but I'm not sure it was the first. I'm not sure about some of the things you're attributing to Booth. I've seen a number of various early throw out deployment systems. There were a lot of hybrid sort of ideas where you had a throw out pilot chute but also a lanyard going back to a pin that you were pulling manually by hand as you extracted the PC. And like I said, it's a bit of a gray area but I think Sherman deserves more credit for the Pull Out PC. Struggle, struggle, thump. Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Line tolerance is a very relative term. Remember higher performance canopies then this are flown with line shrinkage up to three inches on the outer lines. Openings may be harder and turns may be twitchier but they still fly fine. Errors front to back are more critical. But even there you still see differential shrinkage, example: the A line on a tandem shrinking more then the B by enough to suck it through the grommet. Larger canopy I grant you but that's a critical position. And keep in mind that Dacron is not that dimensionally stable. It's a little stretchy. Rules of thumb- .25 inches +/- is considered acceptable on most canopies at least at production. Some high performance canopies are more critical and have slightly higher standards but more importantly for them is maintaining dimensional stability over the life of the line set. That was part of the push for lines like vectran and hma. It's great if you can build your line sets to with in .125 of an inch which is a pretty high standard for what is involved but it all goes out the window when they shrink by more then an inch. Honestly I doubt you would even notice if your lines were off by .5 of an inch even front to back and depending on which ones you could probable get away with more then an inch on a canopy like this one. Go jump the fucking thing. And if you don't want to jump it send it here and I'll pull a rig out of the closet pack it up and put some jumps on the thing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Looking pretty awesome there. Can't wait to here how it flies. How wide is your double needle? It looks a little skinny or it may just be the pics. In most cases I doubt that it would be an issue but it makes the bottom seams look a little tight in tolerance. Have to catch the tape, and seam with the attachment point all under the top row of stitching. If you catch bottom skin in your bartack you can get a little tear but it generally just stress releaves and then it's fine. I wonder about the strength of an attachment point like that. It seems that the tape might be a bit less effective at spreading the load if it was mostly above the seam. I'm just rambling. Go jump the thing. Are you keeping any kind of track of the labor you have invested in the sewing of this build? Keeping in mind that you don't have machines and stations set up for the different processes. The price of some of the new canopies, even just straight up I beams, has just gotten out of hand. Once a design is established it's not that hard to build. I wonder if we will see a resurgence of do it your self projects. Order a design from a company, say Wayper Enterprises, And get a tube in the mail with four patterns, top, bottom, rib, and stab rolled up in side. For a little more send them a materials set with a roll of fabric, a spool of line, and some tape. Don't laugh. They sell airplane kits that way. And people build home built ultra lights and full on air planes from nothing more then that. Companies are founded on such premise. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Neon green? WTF is the world coming to? Black, dumb ass. Base rigs are made from BLACK. There are other things I could address here, but I just can't get past the neon. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

As I said, I actually don't know the original story. I would be very curious to hear it if one of the old timers recalls. It's such an old rule that it's got to be a very old story. I've never heard of some one falling out from this particular problem. But I have seen webbing slip all the way to the stop. If it had not been rolled and sewn they would have been dead. As to harness failures... Let's see. How about the Racer that blew a chest strap. That was a fatality wasn't it? Didn't he tumble out of the harness. And then there was the upper junction on that Russian rig that blew to hell. Major structural failure. I don't recall, was that a fatality? And just recently there was that base rig with integral risers that blew the upper junction. Still relevant since it was for all intents and purposes the same as your reserve risers. And I've personally seen total failures of the lower junction where it sheared the entire lower half of the stitch pattern. I've seen several of those actually but by luck all of the total failures were on rigs with wrap around harnesses with redundant stitching. By luck we caught all the plug ins before the failures were catastrophic. But I always heard about a European fatality on ether a vector or a talon but I was never able to nail the story down. But that was about the time that Booth changed his harness design in the middle of the Vector 2 to make it wrap around the inner layer of type 8 ... So yah, shit does break from time to time. Not a lot but it's worth acknowledging. And every one should know about the danger of leg straps. I've caught rigs where some rigger want to be decides to get smart and shorten his leg straps and resew them with E thread. Or how about the Pilot that decides to just cut the ends off so the excess wont flap around. Seen that too. I'm all in favor of learning, but I'm serious about a D license requirement to hang in the loft after the beer light. And students should just flat out be banned. It's important for student retention. If something needs to be fixed the instructor should take it in there. No students any where near the loft! Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Actually it's not a trivial question. We have been plagued with problems with friction adapters for years. There have been problems both with slippage and damage to the webbing from the adapters. A lot of the problems come down to compatibility. The standard 22040 is a very old design that actually predates modern nylon webbing. They had to build special weaves of the nylon webbing to try to make the adapter hold and avoid slipping. And we don't even use that. It was never mint to hold on type 8 or even 7 webbing. But never the less we continue to insist on using these light weight materials. Then people decide that every thing has to be made from stainless and there are problems with slipping because the coefficient of friction is different or there is damage to the webbing from the radiuses or sharpness of the hardware. Or the hardware is just flat wrong with pieces assembled up side down. Then we try to reinvent the wheel with brand new designs. Some times the slip and some times they cut into the webbing damaging it on opening. Slippage is a real problem and a danger. It can come from ether the reasons above or just from the geometry of how it fits you and how it loads. It's enough of a danger that there are rules about how the leg straps are sewn. Note the heavy stitching in the roll in the end. What that basically means is that at some point it killed the hell out of some body. The rules requiring that all leg straps must ether be rolled and sewn with 5 cord or split and sewn is so old that I don't know the story behind it but you can bet it was written on some ones tomb stone. And if you're a nervous nelly than stay the hell out of the Rigging forum. The people here will actually answer your questions rather then blow smoke up your ass. It will not do any thing good for your confidence. It's like I always tell people, if you want to feel safe, stay the hell out of the loft. Do not hang out with the riggers. Especially when they are drinking beer. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Interesting design. What your missing is that it's not applicable to a hand deployed skydiving pilot chute. First PG reserves tend to be relatively soft pillows in comparison to skydiving mains. It need that bit of security and it only gains a few pounds of force because the you actually have to pull up slack in the loop to release it. I don't think you'll find it that easy on some skydiving rigs. Right now you are just fighting friction and the rigs are tight enough that there is a lot of friction. So the pull force is determined by the tightness of the look. Contrast that with the pull force being dependent on the ability of the loop to move. It's also a hand deploy. You can pull on the damn thing. You've got your hand on the handle and can keep pulling till it opens. And if they are smart they built the container so that the direction that you are pulling on it creates slack in the loop. In other words as you pull it runs through the last flap like a pulley making the loop loosen rather the the other way allowing the tightness of the container to push the flap up against the pin locking it regardless of how hard you pull. Tossing a PC out in to the wind is different. You toss it to the side and it blows back and inflates in the free stream and you get a sharp jerk but then it swings back into the burble and the force drops off. And it can't pull any harder if it get's scaird. I like playing with weird shit but I'm not wild about this idea. Practice reaching back and grabbing the bridle to pull the pin manually. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think you have that wrong. Chafen at APS and... there was a forerunner company before they went to jail, made the laser, bogy, and rascal. Your looking for something different. Lone Star... something or other I think. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Much better video. Still need to get one in so I can see the relative lengths and play with it. I did have to turn the sound off towards the end. Just have to have the music don't they. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The cost is not that different. There are some advantages to a static line progression. The first is that it's better suited to your plane. A 172 with the door removed and three jumpers, two AFF jumpmasters and a student will be struggling to get you above ten grand. It's really minimal for an AFF jump. It could however fly static line students and it would only have to struggle on the highest jumps. At that point you could put one out low and take only two people high. It's also much easier to support a growing static line program. It's much easier to create your own instructors. The requirements are much lower in terms of experience as a jumper. You don't have to have the same air skills that you are depending on in AFF and Tandem. If you can get a tandem instructor there are ways to use it as an instructional method that basically lets you bypass the two jumpmaster AFF levels. Again easier on the plane. It's an older idea and you don't see it much any more but it's how I was trained out of a 182. It's sort of a cross between tandem/SL/AFF. Another advantage of static line is that it creates a different sort of student then tandems or AFF. All though they are not as advanced in free fall skills they have more canopy time, are more self reliant, and in some ways have better survival skills. AFF is ACCELERATED FREE FALL It is a very minimal program that gives bare survival skills with minimal instruction time which is why there was a big push towards coaching programs and extended A licenses training. It also gave instructors and want to be instructor coaches a chance to mike more money out of students to support the ever growing cost of an expensive sport. But that's a different subject. Gear. If you don't listen to the stuck gear fags on this forum then you can find some older equipment that would be perfect for a young static line program. Rigs don't have to be "Free Fly Friendly" to do static line or even AFF. Vector 2's are great rigs. And you can get shit from that era cheap. Old fucking Mantas make great student canopies if you can find a rig that will hold them. Your also going to have to find a rigger. Maintenance will kill you if you don't keep up with it. You're going to need a rigger and a small loft. In the end you will need to grow one of your own and that can be done if you have some one willing to put in the work and study to do it. He'll probable have to travel over seas for a while to really learn. You can do this if you want to. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Looks like a BA-22 but I'm curious why you would call it the predecessor of modern rigs? Was it the first to use cloth loops or some thing? I can't think of any thing else. It's kind of an odd design with the double ended through loops with the retract spring. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Could be a little bit wider but the real danger is in it being too wide, ala swift+. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Do you mean some thing like on the Military Javelin? Where they use two safety stows? http://cpsworld.com/technical/technical-manuals/ Look under Mill Javelin check page 59. I think I'd rather see 4 side by side. I've actually seen rigs where the canopy was lose and could dump out around the narrow safety stow on ether side. Leaving the center cell in the bag. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Just for the record, I have had good luck with speed bag style designs under some rather harsh operating conditions. It's not a bad concept. Some times even a blind squirrel finds a nut. There are bigger problems in bag design then the closing system. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I could speculate but it wouldn't be any more then that. We're not really going to know any thing till they decide to actually publish some information. Like any of them I think we're going to have to wait till we have one in our little hands to finger fuck. And honestly it will probably take years in the field till we really know the answer as to the reliability of the system. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com