RiggerLee

And for the most part this has not shown it self to be a problem. However just recently we blew up an upper junction on a base rig. It had "integral risers". Think reserve risers. They used a slightly lighter confluence wrap and did not have the advantage of a three ring or any thing surrounding the stack to help prevent catastrophic failing. Still reserve risers are built in the same way some times with no confluence wrap at all. So we just had an almost catastrophic failure of what was in essence a reserve harness from a hard opening. I just wasn't sure if you had followed it or not. Waving arms! FAILURE, FAILURE, FAILURE! Just saying. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

But curves are a pain in the ass. I never could get that to work. High temp Formica does well even with heavy knives and it doesn't drain the heat of the hot knife like aluminum. Although Al is easy to cut with a powered nebular. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I could draw around a pattern and then cut it out. You have to with heavier fabrics were you're going to use a higher powered hot knife. But for light fabrics where I'm going to use my small knife I generally just weight the pattern and cut along the edge. It's a little hard on pattern paper but it will last long enough for a couple of proto types. And it's faster. You've cut it in the time that you would have spent drawing. It's a little trickier pealing the fabric lose. You have to kind of get the knack for it and do it in the right direction along the bias of the cut so you don't fuck up the edge. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I thought that was what the pattern peace's were for? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This idea is too weird to actually go any where, but... If I was going to dump somebody out under a canopy to be delivered like a limp sack of potato's knowing that they were going to be unconscious I think I'd use a modified round but I'd hook it up at ninety deg. so that it would be driving to their left. So realizing that I can't control the wind or direction I'd give them the best chance of having sidewise motion rather then forwards. I'd rather roll out on my side then on my knees and face. I know. It's too weird. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Turn the main tray inside out and look at the corner of the container where it is sewn closed. It's a 90 deg. inside corner that has been sewn together edge to edge to form the bottom corner of the container. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Look at the top edge of the reserve tray on some rigs. On some designs you will see that the top edge of the tray is low on the container and that there is an inside corner that turns upwards to form a "horn" on each side. It allows more shape to the side wall of the container then just a flat tray. Or look at the bottom corner of most main trays. Another inside corner. If you look they are all over. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

.3 Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Why would you start and restart? Inside corners are not that hard but they don't come out as flat and pretty as you might like. You basically make it straight. You put many small wrinkles radiating from the corner like a fan to straighten the edge and then just run it through. It comes out with a bit of a pucker but it's the best solution I know. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Disagree. with proper technique you are not relying on the stiffness of the material. Hence why you can actually bind and turn corners with empty tape. If you can learn to do that you can bind and turn corners on any thing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

One good exercise for learning to turn good corners is to do it with no fabric. Work on doing it with just the binding tape. It will let you see what you are actually doing on the bottom side and all of sudden it will start making since to you. Then cut your self a bunch of small squares and start practicing doing it blind by feel with the fabric in the way. Then start cutting the peace's like diamond's so you can practice acute and obtuse corners. Once you have mastered that we will start teaching you about binding plastic... Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This is like one of the great secrets of riggerdom. It's hard to explain. You need to get some one to show you. But basically you sew up almost to the edge. Rotate the machine through till the needles are about to strike again. This completes the last stitch and insures that the thread is pulled from around the hook so that you will not create a jam. Then rotate the machine back wards to relax the upper thread and allow you to maneuver the peace. Lift the foot and use a dental pick to hold back and form the lower pleat as you rotate the peace in place to change direction on the corner. Then form the pleat on the upper side with the pick. Lower the foot on the work, matching the outer needle into the outer hole to make a nice 90 deg. turn. Continue binding. This will not make any since to you till some one shows you in person and endows you with the secret knowledge of binding. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You pay how much for coffee? And it's not like it's tough to build one. Hell it takes longer to sew it onto the container then it does to build it. $15 dollars for a pre made BOC? Shit your getting ripped. Buy a sewing machine. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

If we could return to the original question. It's bugging me because I can't remember the answer ether. Didn't the military have a four line release mod where you would pull the line of the release, undo the chain-link releasing the four lines, and then that line would become the control line spliced into the next out side line? I seem to recall that it just had a loop on the end of the 550 lb. line not a toggle. It was just tacked down with seal thread. Am I getting this confused with one of the after market systems? What was it on? Seat packs? Memory failure. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm not buying that shit. More Booth BS. The simple truth is that it's hard to build a MARD. The timing on the system is critical in terms of whether it releases or not and which deployment system activates the reserve. With out getting into the plusses or minuses of the different designs, the simple truth is that the skyhook simply isn't very secure. It suffers from uncommand releases even on cutaways. It is NOT a design feature it is a DEFECT and this is just his spin. As to your very unlikely scenario, considering the he uses ordinary rubber bands on his bag and that his drogue is actually designed to deploy the main from a collapsed configuration. Let's go out on a limb and say that it half hitches into a knot and does not inflate at all. And seeing this you make the dubious decision to release your drogue which requires a manual action on your part. It extracts the bag as you say, but do you really think that it can not unstow the tandom rubber bands on the bag. The bag has so much momentum that it's weight alone would unstow the locking bands on the bag. And at those speeds just the drag of the bag it self sould be enough to deploy it. And if the mall has so little drag then it's Cd is even lower then the collapsed drogue that is the normal deployment system. It's not a huge snatch force deploying the reserve. And would you really rather the reserve PC disconnected it self and deployed past the spinning bag lock? wouldn't it be better if the MARD actually functioned properly and was deployed by the main as it got out of the way? Have you been drinking Booths cool aide? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

There are a couple of pattern sets that just do not seem to have enough space below the bottom loop, IMO. But the mystifying part of this question is the idea of investing $1,300 in a 92 Racer. That's what I really can't get my head around. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

When these things came out I got a wild hair up my ass and built one. I built it. I jumped it. And I have to say I didn't like it. It is way easy to build and seam. No bias seams or panels or apex. Good usage of fabric. Easy sewing. Very low decent rate. Oscillates like a bitch. Notice those mesh vents that they added? They didn't have those at first but they added them for a reason. I even tried to make it steerable. Venting like that would normally totally stop the oscillation of a canopy and I had a lot of venting. That kind of asymmetry is usually enough keep any significant swing from ever starting. Not with this. And I could never get it to turn. The venting was a complete failure. It has too much shape to allow you to collapse a standard vent. a round you can pull on an existing line and the excess gore will just roll around and close the vent. With this thing you couldn't riser turn or nothing. Packing a normal round is super easy. All the lines come taunt when you tension it. With this only eight do. It's like packing a cruciform drag chute, which I've done a lot of. It's totally different and I can see an army riggers little head just exploding. If you try to think of it as a round it will just drive you insane. My conclusion was that it was super easy to build but a fundamentally unstable design. It has a low decent rate but few other redeeming qualities. I chopped the thing and it's been in the closet ever since. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This is going to terrify and anger yuppie skydivers from one side of the country to the other, but I feel an attack of honesty coming on and you all know how bad it can get when that happens. Are you people stupid? Do you honestly think that you're packer cares about an thing but the Benjamin's? You demand that he does five min. pack jobs all day long in an un air-conditioned 120 deg. hanger from seven in the morning till past ten o'clock at night with no time for lunch or rest. And you honestly think he has time or energy to care about any thing other then stuffing nylon in bags as fast as he can. He's not doing shit but cram, cram, cram. And you have no right to expect any more from him under the circumstances. Any thing else that he tells you is just a lie to placate you. It's cram, cram, cram, pin it and your done. Hard opening? line twist? is the malfunction rate over 1 in 10... shut up. If you feel the need for any more attention then that then you need to be packing for your self. If you drop your rig off in a huge pile along with twenty others at a boogie and yell over your shoulder that you need it on a twenty then you get what you get. And remember... Your Packer Secretly Hates You! Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

We all know about your fetish for your 308. Do you even own any other sewing machines? Is there any thing that you haven't sewn with it at one time or another? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Ease of construction. Look through a book of airfoils and you'll see a vast array of designs. In the end it's not about whether it's flat, or curved, or hollow. It's about the pressure distribution across the skin. Our shit is just crude. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Things that make you go, Huh. That's really surprising. I wouldn't have thought that they would stack cut that. If you're curious the attachment point is generally on the bottom seam which is much wider. It's normally a peace of type four tape with four or more bar tacks through it and the wide bottom seam. Then they swedge the cable, run it through a gap in the upper seam and turn it inside out with a bit of foam. Bind or fold the edge and sew Velcro on. Come to think of it... I wonder how booth does his hard inserts? Are they still mounted to the lower seam or are they dependent on the upper seam. I suppose it's not that critical since you're actually have that hard inner handle but it would be nice to know that the outer pillow is an intrigal part. Any one ever take one apart? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

As to what sizes would benefit. In regards to toggle induced line twist. You would think that it would be the little ultra high performance hot rods that would be most prone to this but it's not. Your stability under the canopy is a product of the load on the canopy and the angle of the risers. As long as the canopy is loaded the risers are working to keep you stable underneath it. And the wider that angle the more stable you will be. If you unload the canopy, go weightless, then there is nothing keeping the risers from twisting above you. And you can substantially reduce the load on you parachute with toggle input. A lightly loaded high performance canopy has more potential for this then any thing else out there. A light to moderately loaded saber 2 190 would be the perfect example of this. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I always thought that was the smartest thing buttler ever did. I suppose it's really a question of how it gets written up. But the other half would be the approval for a Diaper installation in the old Mil containers. With that part of the equation you could then use the off the shelf Buttler diaper and four line mods. I guess it's a roll of the dice who your dealing with in the local FSDO and what he'll let you do. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Was an approval for installing the diaper on that one canopy or any canopy of that model? Could only you do the installation in your shop or could you send a diaper to another master rigger for installation on a rig there? Was it just an alteration to the canopy or did it include approval for that installation in a Mil Seat pack? Would you need a second approval or set of approvals for the alteration to the packing of the seat? How much testing did the FSDO require of you? Was it all functional, low speed, test or did they make you do any thing fast and heavy? I think I could argue that there would be no need to heavy structural testing but would they feel the need to see the opening time? Particularly if you were altering the packing of the container? You're now lifting a great weight of lines along with the canopy to line stretch. And if you've got it setting on the shelf why aren't you shipping Diapers all over the country? Why is there still a free packed round left in the air? Get to sewing. Get a stamp for your approval and start shipping them. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This is a classic case of early stage A.I.D.S. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com