RiggerLee

Twist, no problem. I know what you mean by a little wrap around tab. All I can say is that we've gotten along happily with out them for the last twenty years. Don't buy you're self headaches you don't have to have. Build it. Jump it. If it breaks look for the EASIEST way to fix it. Do not design some thing that is any more difficult to build then necessary. Don't worry your little head about problems that don't exist. Has it blown up yet? Then you don't need tabs. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

We got seven out of seven. Just couldn't find any one for the eighth rig. Belly warts and a couple of crossbow piggy backs. We did let one person jump a vector 1 with a single keel. But those were the only three rings on the load. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

We packed up a bunch of old gear once. We were trying to get an eight way. I remember I was standing there with Bobby Potter when one of the younger jumpers came up and asked how many jumps he had to have before he could jump a round? I didn't think Potter would ever stop laughing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Just to clarify. The A line attachments were built with the tape spread out and sewn like a wedge to distribute the load. It acted like a tapered wedge and if pulled through the grommet of the slider would lock in place. So the malls occurred when the outer A shrank more then the outer B. The lines were long enough and the cascade low enough that you could actually get differential shrinkage between the outer A line and the outer B that had the slider stop on it. If the stabilizer had ben deeper or if the A line had had a slider stop on it to prevent it from pulling through the grommet we would have had a lot less malls. The shade tree rigger solution for those working at drop zones too fucking cheap to pay for the line sets to reline their canopies was to take a old RW2 ring and whip stitch it to the out side A line. In a since It became the new slider stop now that the A line had shrunk below the B line slider stop. This falls under the heading of techniques generally referred to as "nigger rigging". Note, this is not a racial epithet but a slightly derogatory term for a field expedient repair. Although it should not be a replacement for proper maintenance it will eliminate that particular failure mode. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This could be fun, but as usual you're a bit off. First you really need to be looking at this once it's reached terminal velocity. It's not fair to use that formula when it's still accelerating. Say I took your PC and Booths. I hold them out five feet off the ground and drop them. They are still accelerating and do not build up enough speed for their individual drag to become a factor. Waa la. I have just proven by your formula that both you're pilot chute and Bills have the same effective square area. This is an extreme example but it holds true. You can not simple divide the distance fallen by time. It will give you the average speed over that distance but it will not tell you what is happening as the speed builds up and they begin to perform differently. Higher would be better. You could drop them from the plane or from under canopy. With more height the acceleration period is less important over all. But an even better method would be to measure and record the rate of decent. Some body help me out. Where do all the new high tech gizmoey wrist mount altimeters stand on this. Which would you recommend for recording the decent rate? Which ones would interface with a laptop and give pretty graphs for people to ooow and aaagh at? A little padding and it should be fine. The old school way would be to hand a weighted flag underneath it on a 100 ft. line. Video it and time from when the flag hits to touch down. Also, the weight thing. I don't buy the weight them up evenly thing. The PC has to lift it self along with the free bag. A heavy PC has to work that much harder. It's the price you pay for a heavy spring or a heavy metal cap. Basically what I'm saying is that you are unjustly harming the measurement of the lighter PC's such as your own. All drops should be made with the same "cargo weight" and mass of the PC is just their own burden. A reserve canopy weighs X amount. The container requires X amount of force to pull the free bag free. None of this has any sympathy towards a heavier PC. I think 20 lb. would be a good number. How fast does it have to go to support a 20 lb. weight at terminal velocity. In other words how fast will you have to be falling in order to create 20 lb. worth of drag in order to even begin the opening process. And yes I'm just pulling that number out of my ass. It would get way too scary if we tried to apply a realistic number for some of the containers today. But that's a whole nother story. So let's do the drops from a plane or take the bundle out the door with you if you like and drop it under canopy. Let's make the weight suspended under the PC 20 lb. Let the PC weigh what ever it wants, don't worry about that. And let's see the real speeds that these pilot chutes will need to perform their job. Who's doing book on this? I say RI will do well. Shermans are ok. And some of the strong PC should do well. Mirage is a bit heavy but it's got the drag. Who's giving odds? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

A lot of the edge tearing I've seen around old rip stop patches on canopies has been on ones with UV damage. So think about this. The rip stop patch is very stable. The material is stiff. No stretch, no give, no bias stretch. It can't move stretch or give along with the rest of the fabric. You see this in engineering with dissimilar materials with different modulus of elasticity. It concentrates the stress along the edge. And over time as the canopy gets more UV damage and just general wear it becomes the natural fail point. So in the examples I've seen, I suspect that the canopy over all had deteriorated and the strength of the rip stop simple centered the strain and caused the tear in what was just over all weak material. I know that really isn't a glowing recommendation but at the same time I don't think it deserves the pariah status that some people assign to it. In a since the patch out lived the canopy and the canopy failed around it. I don't use a lot of rip stop because I know how to sew. But I don't see any thing wrong with it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

And the thread thing. Make sure you haven't just popped out of your tension plate. If it keeps popping out check how you are running the thread through the guides before the plate. It needs a bit of tension there to keep it from popping out of the plate. May be loop around then through the hole rather then going in a zigzag through the three holes as an example. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You really want a good roll rim spur tooth grommet. A good grommet will have a washer with two rows of aggressive teeth on both the inner and outer edge that lock into the fabric. It's not just a ring in the hole of fabric. You are not pulling on the out side of the hole. You are pulling on the inside of the hole. The grommet should be one with the fabric, locked in all the way around. What you're setting it in needs to be heavy enough to permit this and to transfer the load to the structure. So you need some sewing around it. Enough to insure that all of the layers that the grommet is set in then distribute that load outwards to the tape of the slider. I know that's kind of long winded but it can be important. I've seen a lot of grommets miss used because people don't seem to understand this. The proper way for the seams to meet is how ever you choose to sew them together. If it was me I would split the difference on the load bearing stitch line. In other words I would center the panel tape in the middle of the wider diagonal tape on the rib. You're bar tack is going to be as wide as the panel tape. You might as well arrange it so that that is centered on the tape from the rib. And it gives you as much leeway as possible in case you're sewing is... imperfect. Wait until you get a slave working for you. You'll need a little leeway in your construction. Speaking of which, once you get a good sewing machine or two you need to start thinking about where you can acquire slaves. I don't know much about the cultural issues in England. Manufacturers here have gone in a number of ways. Asians are always a good bet. But they have to be old school, preferable immigrants. If they are too... integrated? into the country then they aren't really Asians any more. If they are fluid in you're English then you probable don't want them. You need some one fresher. Another possibility is LOL's. It stands for Little Old Ladies. Oddly enough they are some of the best sewers and workers. They do have their own issues. Bathroom facilities can be an issue. Let's just say they have different standards. In any case I recommend that you look around for groups or individuals that you can exploit. The real key that you should be looking for is desperation. Older is always better then younger. Single mothers with limited job prospects are usually a good bet. You may not be there yet. And you never ever hire some one until you absolutely have to. And only if they will make you money. But you should start to keep your eye out. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It's hard to see the stitching on the slider. It may not be pretty but I'm sure it's fine. Worst case, you might break the thread on one side when it tries to stretch. Remember you may wind up changing the size any way. Odds are this wont be the final slider that you wind up with. So just go jump it and see where you are at before you rebuild it. On a separate note it looks like the tape is a little short. Like it doesn't go all the way to edge where it over laps at the corner. Personally I leave it long and fold it under a good ways at the end so that the grommet is going through at least 4 layers of that tape. Furthermore you'll often see a peace of type four webbing included at the corner. It's really just to give the grommet some thing good and solid to bight into. Then sew all that shit together to give you a good solid corner for the grommet. There's a decent bit of load there but the main thing is the grommet needs something that it can really grab to transfer that load into. It's not that the tape isn't strong enough you just need to transfer the load into it. And yes I have seen those corners tear out but it was like a brutally hard line dump. Or at least that's my theory. It could have been a brutal opening caused by the failure but I favor the former. Lines look good. 800 is a bit heavy for most of the suspension lines but if it was cheep then go with what you got. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That was awesome. Not only did it land right there in front of you but it didn't even fall over. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. You're gonna have to spill more details. Did the rocket have any kind of guidance system? Was 600 lb. the empty weight? If so what was the initial weight? What kind on nozzle? What size canopies were you using there? Altitude? Did it carry any thing? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It was an autonomous guidance system built by Waymore. Its the same AGU and software used by the military for their precision drops. It can be flown manually from the ground. or left on automatic. We never had to take over manually. The soft ware always brought it back right to the landing area even when the canopy was damaged on opening. Even if you break a control line it will reconise that and bring you home in a left or right hand pattern. Assume. It doesn't really give you a since of the scale. That rocket is 34 ft. long and 20 in. in diameter. I'm not sure I understand your other question. There are a number of techniques with rounds that can allow you to control the openings even at high speeds. Like multiple loops holding the throat of the canopy to a certain diameter. They are cut by timers allowing the canopy to open progressively over say nine sec. Even then the stresses at the top of the canopy can be harsh. It can be better to use a drogue or smaller canopy to slow it down to a more reasonable speed before trying to open a large light weight, that's relative, canopy. The fundamental design fo the first canopy, the drogue, is fundamentally different from the final main canopy. Think ribbon canopy vs. G12. Look them up. Ram airs are fundamentally not as for giving. Or lets say the technology has never been developed in that way. If you want to open a ram air your best bet is to get the speed down to some thing reasonable. Say 150 or less. The slider is the standard method of reefing and those numbers kind of represent the limits of it. People have tried to cheat by using cutters to hold up the slider and other things of that nature but it really interferes with the natural progression of the opening. It just doesn't translate to a ram air that well. Airborn systems has a patent on a technique for using multiple cutters to open a large ram air canopy in stages with out the use of a slider. They actually made this work on some very large canopies. It might be your best chance to push the speed limitation of a ram air. But even then it's going to be hard on the canopy. Ram airs are also more finicky about being stable during opening. I think you would need a two stage system in ether case. The easiest and most certain way to do this would be to mortar deploy a fairly large conical ribbon canopy to reduce the airspeed and stabilize the plane. And then use it to deploy a cluster of one or more G12 round canopies or something similar depending on the weight. This is off the shelf technology. There is prior art on this. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. There is data available for this technology. All the answers to your questions are there for the taking. There is a lot of interest in ram airs for cargo but this is still in development. If you want to try to push that into the kinds of weights and speeds that you're talking about then you are blazing a brand new trail out over the horizon into unknown lands. Now I like that shit. I think it's fun. But you're not going to sell that to a aircraft manufacturer. If you want to learn all about big ram air cargo call waymore in Phoenix Az. See if you can get a hold of Mark if he's in country. He's a really nice guy and is in the center of all of this. Tell him hi. Sorry it's Wamore. these guys. http://www.wamore.com/News--Events/Wamore-s-JPADS-2K-AGU-Featured-at-Smithsonian.aspx Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think there are too many variables to predict the level of damage that you might see on landing. Was there one person on board or four? Was it full of fuel or empty? Was there wind. Was it over hard rocky ground, 50 ft. trees, or a deeply plowed muddy field in north TX? Then comes the legal issue of whether they would ever let it fly again. I have no doubt that they state that any airframe saved is grounded forever. The liability to do other wise is just too high. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think what he means is that there have been a couple of saves. I recall the first one which was on the north side of Dallas. It was a control failure, I think an aileron. It was unlandable. The chute let him down softly in a field. No injuries and virtually no damage to the plane. There have been a few since then but I don't recall how many. In short it's proven it self to be a workable system. Which is a good thing. The Cirrus in not a plane that you can land off field. It's like a lot of the smaller experimentals. It's a fast little thing with a smaller economical engine. They're able to get that speed by reducing the drag. Like a lot of the experimentals they do it by cutting off any thing that sticks out into the wind... like the wing. It was not able too meet the stall speed requirements for certification. The only way they could get it certified was to argue that they had an "alternate means of compliance" in the event of a off field landing. Hence the BRS. Not saying it isn't a nice plane. Not saying I wouldn't like to have one. But it is what it is. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

BRS is undoubtedly the leader in this. Mainly because there are not many people in the game. I've talked to them. I've tried to deal with them on some fairly big dollar projects. I got to tell you it was a little weird. I made a really concerted effort to work with them and in the end the conclusion that I came to is that they are not too bright. I was kind of shocked because they really do have a good product. There's no doubt about that. But the people there are... stupid. Don't know how else to describe it. I can tell you this they're not riggers. I've got no clue how this came about. I think, and this is just conjecture, what happened is that a guy came up with an idea. He wasn't a rigger he just had this idea for a recovery system. He wrote a business plan, a good one, and went forwards with it as a business venture. He must have contracted the design work. He must have found some one that could run the production shop. And he could sell it. It's so totally backwards form the skydiving industry that I can't even relate to it but it's been successful. What I can tell you is that the people there know almost nothing about parachutes. And I didn't just talk to a salesman I tried hard to find some one there to answer my questions. They came at this from the airplane end and the business end. And oddly, though their business is all about parachutes no one there knows any thing about them. Even their own. And I am not exaggerating, And I am qualified to judge. In short don't hold your breath getting any meaningful information out of them. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Yah!! factory. Now that's what I'm talking about. And actually all the things I just listed to that guy could be done on one double needle sewing machine. Then go and barrow time on some bodies bar tack to finish up. But once you use a bar tack it will be your next perches. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

One thing that people keep bringing up is steerage. That's actually the one thing which is not a problem. That's the least challenging issue in all of this. Waymore builds systems every day for remote autonomous steering of ram airs for cargo operations. All those precision air drops with ram airs in the sand box. That's Waymore they have all the contracts. They build the control units for all of that. As an example they built the autonomous guidance unit for all of our air frames. On a return from 300,000 ft. they averaged 50 meters accuracy on all of their landing. When ever I gave them an open canopy they landed right in font of the crowd. Better then most jumpers. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Two passes with a single needle? Dude you got to get a double. Not just because it's a singe pass but sewing it twice like that will tend to increase your shrinkage. Not to mention the esthetic issue of spacing. Do you have any pullers? That would also cut down on your shrinkage. It would make your sewing more consistent. And it frees up your hands to focas on the fabric in front of the machine. You'll sew better and much faster. What about your loaded bottom seam? Are you doing it like a PD seam. I honestly don't know exactly how they do it in shop but I would set up a double up turn and single down turn folder. And what about all the little prep steps. Got to have a tape foot with a puller. If your doing that by hand you'll go insane. Use a tape foot once and you'll never, ever go back. How about a upturn on the bottom plate for all the edge tapes you're going to do. Just run it through along with your tape foot and puller and you'll have all your prep done in less then 1/4 of the time it would take you by hand. Tail, how you building it? A full roll for the tail could make that a whole lot easier to sew. And a bar tack goes with out saying. Automatic machines are a god send. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Have you looked at the "recovery systems design guide"? Knacky is one of the authors. I think Sherman might have it on his Jump Shack web site. Here... http://www.jumpshack.com/default.asp?CategoryID=DOWNLOAD It's listed about 3/4 of the way down. I'm not sure if the link works. I started to check but it's a long document, think book. It's very old school. It will give all the information you would ever like to know about how to do heavy loads with rounds. It's got data on designs that would be workable for intermediate canopies, think ribbon style drogue chute designs. but even that would have to be pretty large. If you are going to open a large ram air you're going to want to get the speed down to some thing reasonable. There is a lot of interest in large ram airs for precision cargo. 30,000 lb is very much at the limit of what has been done. The landing can actually be relatively soft, lower decent rate then a equivalent weight round and the ability to fly and steer them is off the shelf technology. What it might be less forgiving of is off nominal deployments. The drogue would have to be big enough to stabilize the situation before I would try to deploy a ram air. As far as structural issues go... Think about the air frame it self. All the loads are already supported by the section at the wing root. It's not inconceivable that you could attach structurally to the plane there. As an example, a twin otter, all the load is carried by this one big frame at the wing root. I know cause I've helped to replace one that was cracked. That's an example of a slightly lighter air craft, 13,000 lb or so that you might be able to develop a workable system for. Between the weights and the speeds it's a way easier problem. And it's used in applications, bush flying in Canada, where an emergency landing might not be an option. Just for fun here's a 1200 sq. foot ram are landing a rocket of a little over 1000 lbs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV7zL07Tof8 That actually wasn't our softest landing. The canopy was still in the process of flaring. It was like a 2 g landing and that was straight onto the air frame No landing gear. That canopy could actually carry twice that weight, about 2,000 lb. For the record that canopy weighs about 64 lb. Ram airs actually get more efficient as they get bigger where as rounds actually lose efficiency. So the idea of doing a larger BRS for a mid range aircraft, Otter, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Rounds would be the simpler and more reliable choice particularly with people on board. But I say again who wants to ha But who really wants to carry that weight around with them every where they fly? I don't know a pilot that wouldn't rather have 300 lb. of fuel on board then a recovery system. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Hmmm. I guess I think a little differently. How many employs have you had? There are a couple of things that can really get you into the mind set of automation. The first is building big batches of things by your self. It really teaches you to break production down into stages where all the task are done together at one station or one configuration. The second is employees. It teaches you how to make things stupid. Stupid as in unskilled, thoughtless, automated. Folders are a part of that. If you can train them to use the folder, that's a big if, it's your best bet to get the consistence you need from an employ. And even doing it your self it can speed your own work once you become proficient with their use. As an example I love my lap seamer. And it's not a big deal to set some of these up. As an example the lap seamer is just on a front plate. The plane one slides out and the folder slides in, done. A tape foot in not in the way most of the time and I often just leave it on the 1/4 gauge. Same thing with the roll holder, doesn't bug me. The puller on the 116 is a bit of an annoyance some times but I can still do 90% of the things I would do with that machine. If it's annoying then I'll drop a straight head into one of the other tables. What I'm basically saying is that they are tools. You can do a job with out the right tool but it's so much easier if you're set up right. If you're doing enough of one thing, and main seaming a canopy falls in that category, then I think a good folder can be worth it's weight in gold. And they cost about that much. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Man, I'm not even sure how to start to respond. How bout this, I'll start here.... 747? Would some one please insert one of those smilely faces rolling on his back laughing. I don't know how to do that. place it here... \/ /\ A lear jet? Ok, that's at least theoretically doable. It's a little over 30,000 lb's and things in that size range have actually been done with ram air canopies so it's not completely idiotic. But to get some thing that you can actually land under... We're getting big. And heavy. And did I say big? although it's been done we're talking more in the range of stunt/proof of concept. No one regularly uses things of that size in operation. Speaking as some one with a back ground in aerospace engineering. I'm too lazy to type them but I'm sure I can list at least a thousand things that I'd rather do on a plane if I had that kind of weight and space available. Systems with rounds have been installed in LIGHT planes. And they have actually worked. but honestly they were installed because they were fundamentally flawed designs, generally experimentals that they were trying to certify, which could not pass one or more of the requirements, like stall speed... And speed. You'd have to get really creative to open one of those things behind an out of control lear jet. I hate to say this but my advice is to ditch the parachute and spend that weight building a better plane that wont crash. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've seen that stiffener on vectors cause wear over time. It's a stiff peace of plastic that can't bend and shift with every thing else. It can cause a point load at the corners wearing on the fabric of the container over time. Look at any old ass beat up Vector 2. What's the point really? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

This guys at the point where he needs to make those kinds of seam decisions. He's getting ready to buy his first sewing machines soon and he needs to have his construction sorted out so that he can start looking at folders for the various seams. I've given him my two cents, for what little it's worth. How do you build you're seams? What kind of folders do you use? Where did you get them? Where any of them off the shelf or are they all custom jobs. Could he perhaps reference your orders to help get them set up right. My experience is that custom folders are expensive and some times take more then one try to get them right. He's kind of hitting a wall. He's not a sewing machine guy and it's intimidating for him. He could really use a bit of help here to get him over this next hump. A double needle is a pretty big commitment for him. He needs to get it set up right so that it will really work for him. I'd give the guy a hand but he's on the wrong side of the ocean. I don't suppose there is any one local that could hold his hand through this? Come on you remember what it was like trying to buy your first industrial machine. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You're sewing's looking pretty good. I can't see exactly how you're doing your bottom seam. I see you're running you're stabilizer all the way to the tail. I'm honestly not sure how much you gain by that. I'm not sure how much you gain in flight and when you flare the tail will bend down quite a bit loosening it. Some people bring the stabilizer up a little sharper so the edge meets the bottom seam a little farther forwards on the cord. That way when the tail pulls down the back edge tape on the stabilizer is still relatively taunt. On the other hand the larger stabilizer kind of blooms out wards giving you a bit more surface. I guess the only way to look at it would be in a wind tunnel or maybe by kiting. I wonder if it would be noticeable in how the lift and drag change at those higher angles of attack across the control stroke. I wonder if it would even be noticeable. But this is just me rambling. It's time for you to ignore all of us and just go build a canopy. Sewing machine. It's time for a sewing machine. Start hunting for a 112-w-116 singer or some equivalent. Worst case a 212-w-140 Singer It's actually a fine machine lighter then the 112 but it doesn't have a puller. neither of these have a reverse. If you really want something nice get like a Juki with a reverse. It's an oiler but you're going to run the hell out of it so that's a good thing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That depends on whether or not you plan to be in the rocket. I'm still hoping to one day talk them in to letting us jump it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'd try to center the tape a little more to get a better bight with that bartac. I'm not sure you need to fold it back under like that. It's esthetically attractive but I don't think it's structurally necessary. Some manufactures have stopped doing it. If you think about it the only way to sew a seam like that will be with a down turn folder actually on the foot it self. That can probable be done but it would have to be custom. So why buy your self that pain in the ass. It's not uncommon to have the v tapes meet that top skin tape some times they even reinforce the top skin panels on ether side. They do that on some base canopies where use large pilot chutes with out bags. But the top skin is actually a bit looser then the bottom most of the load should go down the rib to the bottom skin then out to the load bearing seam. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com