RiggerLee

This is a good thread but you seem to be focused on tools and toys when that's probably the least important thing you could bring with you to a rigging course. The most valuable thing you could be doing over the next few months before you leave is spending every moment with your local rigger. Try very hard to knock out some pack jobs with him on as wide a variety of rigs as you can find. Pilot rigs, rounds, old and new. Spend some time learning to sew patches on scrap fabric. Read. It would be really helpful if you could get twenty or thirty repacks in your log book before you left. Get some seat packs. While you're there test for both. It's not that great of an addition to the test and it's a good rating to have. I'm going to rant a little. This is not really how you should be doing this. These courses are not how you are supposed to become a rigger. You can not expect to show up some place for one or two weeks and learn to be a rigger. I think it takes a minimum of six months to attain minimal proficiency. It's supposed to be an apprenticeship. Dewolf ran a course for years. But it was always seen as a last resort for some one that didn't have access to a local active rigger that they could work under. A course like this where they try to cram a years worth of knowledge into a week and then take a big rubber stamp and go cachunga on you forehead does not really make you a rigger. It barely gives you the qualifications to take the test. You'll find that there is a lot left to learn after it's over. Hopefully there will be other riggers that can continue your education once you return. It really bugs me that these kind of courses have caught on and become the standard means of training which I think is a... bad thing. It's not that the people are not competent or good teachers it's just that you're asking too much of them. If you're serious about doing this, don't sweet the tools. Focus on the learning. Get some pack jobs in before you leave. Read. Sew. Do not show up there behind the power curve. Make the best use of the time you have there. It's perreshes. End of rant. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You've basically got it. The donut is a good analogy but I'm not doing a very good job of explaining what happens at the corners. With the "donut" you can see that all the ribs are parallel to the free stream. By that I mean that the free stream is hitting them head on at their angle of attack. If the bottom panels are rectangular then the outer ribs are not parallel to the free stream. They are actually being hit by it at an angle. A cross wind. It's actually trying to push in on and collapse the end cell. Take it to the extreme. Imagine that the bottom skin is a trapezoid with the FRONT narrower then the back by quite a bit. See how the ribs would be at an angle and the wind would be hitting the out side of the end cell. I think you want each cell to be facing head on into the wind. You want your canopy to be a section of that "donut". Now that's the angle relative to the free stream. The actual truth is that the local AOA at each point on the wing is different from that. That's what induced drag is. The local AOA tilting the lift vector backwards creating induced drag. That's where the lifting line/vortex lattice stuff comes in. But don't worry about that. That's just a question of the efficiency. If you want to make it fly better change the plane form to some thing more elliptical. Don't try to twist the wing. Every thing I've been talking about here is for a steady state. When you then look at how the canopy behaves when it pitches forward or back you'll find that the AOA at the center of the canopy changes more then the end cells. That's why I say that you could look at a... perturbed angle of attack as a twisted wing. As you examine that over a range of AOA you could then start to look at things like pitch stiffness of the canopy and some of the dynamics. I've never sat down and tried to do a model like that but it might be fun to try. But honestly the real answer is just to build something and jump the son of a bitch. The spread sheet should start to make more since now. It's been a while but as I recall you can set the AOA and line length just like in your last drawing and that creates the panel shapes for you. You can enter an expected glide but that's really just about trying to generate numbers for a line set. Or best of my memory. It's kind of screwy but If you think you know your AOA that's all it really needs to draw the pattern. And when you're ready it will do this for an elliptical plane form. It kind of unrolls all the little triangles of the panel of the wing out on to a flat pattern. It's sort of a fractal integration. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm just curious what the pilot thought about all that weight hanging out on that skid. It just seems like a large cg change to have both people out on one side like that. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The lines are certainly not evenly tensioned. The lines are supporting the load on the canopy. The load cord wise on the canopy is dependent on the air flow. The java foil program is a classic two dimensional model where they break it down into a bunch of little panels along the surface with 0 flow across that boundary. You can look at a lot of things with this but what is most relivent here is that it can give you a pressure disrtobution in the flow around the wing at the surface. And it should be fairly accerat in that regard. So the the summation of this pressure around the top and bottom of the wing gives you lift, drag, and moment numbers for the airfoil but remember these are numbers for two dimentional flow around the airfoil. Lift should be pretty good, drag will probable be a bit lower then reality, and the moment or location of the center of pressure should be about right. So for that local AoA the canopy will try to center it self so that you hang beneath the center of pressure. With a positive camber I'll take a guess that it will probable be some where around .3 cord or a bit higher. Often they will talk about forces around the AC or the .25 cord point. But this also includes a moment function around the AC in relation to the angle of attack. This is a way of looking at the movement of the CP as the AOA changes. You might find it easier to just plot the CP relative to AOA. As to the tension on each line. If you were really interested you could intergrate the pressure along each section of the wing top and bottom and look at the forces on each line. In theory it will affect the movement of the cascades as the AoA changes. but it's probable not worth worrying about at this point. I'd just think of it as being geometricly riged and fixed and look at the pitching as a whole and not worry about what are basically aeroelastic issues. There are actually a lot of interesting questions there about how each section would like to try to shift to it's own AoA and how the inflation of the wing would like to bow the plane form but I would ignore all of that now. Any increase in AR will improve your performance. I'm not sure where you are getting a change of 2.5 to 3.5 from. There are some basic rule of thumbs for the fudge factor used in the inducided drag equations. a rectangular untwisted wing is a standard example that they will give numbers for if only to show it's inefficentcy. They may even show graphs and data all the way down into the AR you are at. But most people don't build things that low and you may find that it's not that accerate and is just an extension of the graph to give students an idea of why you should never build a wing that short. The next step up would be to look at some form of lifting line theory. You might be able to find some code for a program that will do that for you. As I recall the restaned case of a tapered twisted wing was not too bad. But at these low AR's I wouldn't put too much trust into it till I kited it or flew it. There is a long tradition of steeling other peoples designs as a starting point. A PD 9 cell is a good place to start. It wasn't all that steep of a trim so I wouldn't flatten it too much right off the bat. I also like flat trimmed canopies. The suspention point will probable be farther back. I would guess .3 or more depending on the local AOA. Remember positive camber. Java should give you a good guess at the location of the CP at various AoA. 11 deg? Relitive to the zero lift line predicted by java foil? That seems a bit high to me but ok. If that's the case, given that AOA I'd use that in the rotation to create the panel set to try to set the canopy up for a constant angle of attack spanwise relative to the free stream. This means it will be a bit more like a section of a cone. The bottom skin panels will be a trapezoid, wider at the front. The top will have even more shape. I think this will let your canopy inflate more fully. If you're at that high of an AOA right now then your canopy is actually distorted slightly. It might be why you are seeing issues at diffent break settings at your end cells. A constant AOA on a rectangular wing is not the most efficient thing in the world. The lift distribution span wise is far from a elliptical. But I would incurage you to try to keep a positive AOA all the way out to the end cells. When the canopy pitches you don't want the out side to lose lift. As I see it incorrect panel shape distorts the plane form. It kind of bends the canopy as it tryes to form it self to the surface/angle it wants to fly at. The airflow is hitting the end cell at an angle wanting to colaps it and roll the top skin under. The most extreame example would be your old "White Thing" with all rectangular panels. Remember how it just wouldn't let the top skin of the canopy open up and catch air at the end cells? When I go back and read this these things always seem really confusing but I just don't know how to explane it any better. Or maybe I'm just full of it. Go sew some thing an see if it fucking flys. Honestly I think that's what every one else did although they will never admit to it. Spellings going to suck on this one. If I hit preview post before I try to use their spell checker the little red underlines disappear. Ever notice that? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That's going to take a little more explanation. Where exactly are you getting that drawing from? Where are you getting the glide angle from? Measurement on the last canopy? Trim the same as the last canopy? Are you assuming the suspention point from your java foil and what aoa are you assuming? And then what? you're going to the aoa of the wing as a whole at center point? I'm just not sure I understand your design path. And what aoa are you predicting? It looks pretty high from that drawing. Looks rather flat trimmed. If that is the aoa that you are expecting relative to the center cell of the wing I'd incurage you to try doing a rotation around a line parallel to your glide slope through the y of the riser. If you think you've got a grasp of the aoa and glide of the canopy then that's what the spread sheet I sent you should give you. Right now looking at your panels It looks like you are rotating it parallel to your bottom skin and I think you'll find that that is equivalent to putting a twist in the wing. It wants to twist the corners nose down and you might see some end cell closure or roll under of the top skin from that. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I have never understood this. I've heard his lectures, I've seen his video, I still don't get it. It's a burble. the body is shedding vortices. Depending on the renalds numbers this can happen in one of several modes. I don't recall the break down on them off the top of my head but it's a rolling vortices characterized by the air actually flowing down wards towards the back of the jumper. The air is flowing down wards towards you. How does making the pilot chute draggier on it's side help other then to have it sucked harder towards your back? Yes I've seen his video. We even changed out the spring loaded pilot chutes on our student rigs to vector II pilot chutes. They still just flopped around there just like all the others. If they were so great why did the instructors still have to reach in and grab them in the burble to hand deploy them as a courtesy to the students. I will say this. They did pack up nicely and had fewer tares then the mesh ones. But I wouldn't hold my breath on it launching till the student ether looked over his shoulder or set up in which case the pilot chute didn't "fly it's way" out of the burble it just got blown out of it when the burble went away. I hate to set here and call him a fucking liar but I can not comprehend ether in theory or in practice what he thought he was doing. Further more I am apparently not smart enough to see any other advantage or motivation for the change in design. If it's easier or cheaper to manufacturer I don't see it. And the losses in terms of drag are significant. Some times I wish I could see what is going on inside peoples heads. Other times I'm glad I can't. Just for fun, can we brain storm and try to come up with an explanation for this change. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It hasn't been totally ignored. I had a chance to glance at a report that was done by some university for sunpath on the javelin reserve PC. It was the exact same testing that racer has done. It attracted my attention because the numbers seemed a bit screwy. They were measuring their area differently. They were actually looking at the inflated area in the wind tunnel. They didn't have access to quite as nice of a wind tunnel but in essence they were able to generate the same data as Sherman. I don't think they have waved it around like he has. Sunpath has been through a couple of nasty lawsuits and they've hired some fucking lawyer and I think he's been telling them to keep all the shit like this hidden. I don't see why. Numbers looked good to me but it seems to be a legal tactic to suppress all public information to deny it the opposition. Keep the world stupid so no one can deny what you say in court. I'm not wild about the philosophy. If it's going to be like that then you will never be able to get any real information about a system beyond the color options. But my point is that it is out there. He let me hold the report in my hands and read some of the data. So just because a manufacturer doesn't wave his arms around like a crazy man screaming about these things it doesn't mean that it hasn't been addressed. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

As I recall he bases that on air speeds following a cutaway and the average drag of a well designed reserve pilot chute. Basically he's saying that if it takes more force then that then you will not build up enough force on the pilot chute, enough airspeed, to extract the canopy in time to meet the TSO requirements on a cutaway. I can make fun of him and poke holes in some of his math but it's actually a pretty good argument. Air speed from a cutaway only builds up so fast. Short of having some monster pilot chute, and even then you hit a point of diminishing returns, you just can't exceed a certain number on the force for extraction. Any more then that and there is simply no way that you can generate enough force to extract it on a cutaway with out eating up too much altitude and time. You could try to argue a pound or two ether way on the limit but the basic primmes of what he is saying is sound. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Give John Storrie a call http://class3store.com/ He has the largest loft around. It's extreamly active with a wide range of equipment that runs the whole spectrum from drag chutes to ejection seats, PEP, to a good portion of the skydiving business. It's about a 2000 sq ft loft with full capeability. He bought The Adventure Loft from John Stanford and althoue he no longer holds the TSO's he still does the majority of the major repars in the area. And he's always swamped. I'll bet he'd be interested in a slave that he could shamelessly take advantage of as you learn the trade. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Racers and reflexes and teardrops are a little odd because, assuming it cuts cleanly and there are no hang ups of the loops in the cutter, they are the only rigs on the market that actually function properly, read that "as designed", when activated by a loop cutting aad like a cypress or vigil. In fact they might even function better then normal. I'll explane. There's a story about a racer. Duran a number of years back had a couple of racers. Short story was that on a bad repack the rigger seems to have gotten some fabris caught in the top loop. In all fairness this really shouldn't happen if you're competent but the possibility has always been out there. As I recall they were recommending in England for a while that you close the rig, pop it, and hand sew the loop togather so that it's not a big open loop that can catch things. In any case duran had to hand deploy his stuck pilot chute and wound up with a very short reserve ride. The interesting thing is that by cutting the loop you actually eliminate this danger. So Oddly enough it's the only rig in the world that actually opens better from an aad firing then a manual deployment. Admitedly this is an odd ball scenario but I've had it happen on a recovery system where I was trying to use a similar quick loop system so the shit does happen. Now contrast that with an external rip cord where the loop is actually trying to lock the container closed when cut by the aad. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

My favorite part is how he's still figeting with the hest strap even after he lands. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I lost my reply so I'll try again. I'll toss out a few thoughts of what you might learn from a peace of soft ware like that. The first is a warning to try and keep in mind exactly what it is and to try and anticipate it's limitations. All models have a point at which they fail. They are all bullshit straight out of some bodies ass. At best you can hope that they have a passing resemblance to reality over some small range. As an example, the nose cut. I'm guessing that it's seeing it as a flat plate with no flow across the surface. Well that's not true. Even if it were I'd still be a little suspicious of the sharp corners. That's not to say that it's not interesting. It shows very well a preasure gradient across the nose opening. A fairly significant one. You can see how air will flow in through the bottom half of the nose and out through the top. That in it self would fundamentally change the flow around the model so you know there are errors there. But it does give you an idea of how you might be able to change the nose cut or add a lip to the canopy. Ideally the opening would be right at that purple spot near the bottom. But that is just one AOA. If you look at how that changes as the AOA changes you can get an idea of how much lip you could get away with on a canopy. At a shallower angle you don't want the higher pressure to shift too far above the lip or onto the edge of the top skin. That's where you start to get a dimple and in the most extreme cases a leading edge collapse. Remember that the model is breaking down there and that this feeds back into it self. I'm not saying that it can't tell you things just that you have to keep in mind that it's at best a rough cut. The tail is another place that I'd expect some error. Remember it wants to inflate and become rounded over most of the span. If I was to take a guess I'd expect a higher drag from this then you see in the model. Same thing at the nose. It will be draggier then this model. Having said all that I would expect the lift and CP to be about on. Drag should be at least workably close. What it give you is something you could maybe use as a starting point for a finite wing. What you have there is two dimensional. It's actually no where close to the performance of the canopies wing. With the AR as low as it is the drag of the canopy will be dominated by the induced drag of the wing. Our glide angles suck and it's mostly because of the aspect ratio being under three. To really get any idea of the performance or behavior of the canopy you'll have to look at it as a finite wing. Bad news is that the problem is an order of magnitude harder then that little 2D app. I don't know if you can find any free software out there that can really do it. There might be some hope. There are a few old school approximations out there that might give you something. You could try looking at it with some form of "lifting line theory". Basically it looks at the wing as a sheet of vortexes shed by each section of the span of the wing. It's a way of looking at how each of the sections affects the local AOA of all the other sections. You wind up with this big pile of interlocking equations that go into a big matrix... it's not real pretty. But at least under certain circumstances a computer can muddle it's way through it. I want to say that we did program for... I think it was a tapered twisted wing. It's a standard assignment for undergrads but it's been many a year. You might be able to find some thing out there for free that would give you some thing you could work with. Some thing like a vortex lattice would give you an idea of the induced drag but I'm not sure about the aspect ratio. Normally people look at longer wings then this. It's more reasonable to model some thing like that as a line through the ac. A model like that might tend to break down with such a low aspect ratio wing. If you're going to run in to any problem with something like this it would probable be there. Another issue is the anhedal angle of the wing. If your lines are long enough you might just be able to ignore it. Let's say that at your trim angle at your normal glide that the angle of attack to the free stream is constant along the span of the wing. I think you could dismiss the curvature for an analysis like this and then look at it separately in terms of the loss of lift due to the curve. In other words bend the wing after you analyze it. At this point you should be able to do a stedy state for that AOA. For that AOA it would give you a lift, drag, L/D and CP. That should let you do a very good guess at a trim for a line set that would give you that AOA and glide. Once you work that out as your steady state trim angle I think you could look at pitching the canopy from that by looking at the local AOA at each section of the wing as the curved wing pitches. You could then treat it as a twisted wing for the analysis at that perturbed angle of attack. In that way I think you could start looking at things like the pitch stiffness of the canopy and maybe some of it's dynamic characteristic's. What I'm describing is awfully rough and crude and at times a slight missuse of some of these models but I think you could get away with it and that it would at least yield something interesting. It might give you a starting place for the trim of a new canopy. Just keep in mind that it would be a rough first cut. And what does that logo panel say on the side of your canopy? I can't read it. We need to see that. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Ok, you're going to have to clarify that for me. What exactly is the FAA annulling and what exactly does that leave as the standard in TS-135? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Wasn't it a racer that that blew out a chest strap. Asymetric hard opening and totally tore out all the stitching on one side. I don't recall if they fell out or just got really scared. There was a Russian rig that came apart at the upper junction of the harness at the three ring. It also tore all the stitching. I've seen several nonfatal incidents with either partial or total failure of stitching in the lower junction do to the downwards torking of the webbing. Javelins use wrap around harnesses there and have at least some back up stitching which saved his life. I don't know the details but I always heard stories about a full failure there, late eighties early nineties? They changed the harness in the middle of the vector two around in there. It now wraps around the inner layer of type 8 webbing. And the javelins did break but that was wear a long time coming. We got complacent about the amount of wear till it finally bit us in the ass. I'm going to edit this to add that regardless of how that sounds there really have not been a significant number of harness failures. Harnesses are tough. We over build them and even with a number of fatalities from deceleration we are not breaking harnesses. Your feamers will break, your liver will tear lose with in your abdomen, your aorta will tear in half and your neck will break before you blow up a sound harness. I say that because I've seen or know of every one of those incidents. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

If you're female their patience with you will be endless. Some times I'm tempted to open a false account. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Yes. But in my oppionen, for what little it's worth, there are actually many factors at play. That's part of the problem. No one can point to a particular design, size, combination and say, "That will fail." There are too many variables that can add up to a problem on a rig. The easiest way to describe it is that it's a product of an over all trend in industry that has been developing and building up over years until we've reached a critical mass where we are seeing enough of these incedents that they are attracting peoples attention. Several threads on this subject. Ultimantly I think the only way out will be the same way we got into it. We're going to have to build our way out with both small and fundamental changes to our designs. And over time the problem will go away just like it appeared. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Read some of the other threads. But, yes all of the above. Any one have a link to the wings video. I'm not smart enough to find it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Yes, geometric porosity. The projected area is too small and the fabric area is too large. But if I subtract the vents I get almost exactly 425. Does the Perserve V have toggles? I seem to recall the FFE canopies having them, but it surprises me that you could get good stearing out of something with that much shape. I would think that you would need more billow around the skirt to really close off the vents. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I think I might have it. I was playing with my calculater and I think it's a 30 deg conical with a 13' radial seam. I think it's the actual sewn fabric area minus the porosity, original definition, so minus the apex vent and drive slots. I'm guessing the hight of the vents from memory but I come out at right around 425. Also I wasn't aware that the preserve V was a parabolic hemisphere. I didn't realize that it had quite that much shape to it. We but heads quite a bit but you're actually really interesting to talk to. Always feel free to correct or educate me. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That's actually very true. I guess my sarcasm didn't show. The vast majority of saves are not from unconsciousness. And it has done an admirable job of saving people from their inattention on numerous occasions. There are an even larger number of two outs, but that's a seperet subject. My point was that I can count on my fingers more "true" saves then I can count people that have admitted to me that they have a cypress because they do not trust that they can keep track of their altitude. They all say that it's to save them if they are knocked unconscious. Numbers... You know I never really knew where the nomenclature of the nationals came from. I think it's a 30 deg conical in which case the skirt diameter would be 22 .5 and an area of 398. Inflated, less so I'm really not clear on where the hell the name came from. Enlighten me, I've found yet another hole in my knowlage. Tandems. I'm guessing that you're talking about how you could sink in the older high lift strongs even with a fairly high load. I'm not sure that's a good analogy. It was a very high lift canopy and you were very deep when you finished the flare and sank it like that. Nothing resembling and opening config. And you were into the wind. And using all the toggles not just the outer set. And big canopies are just way more eficent. I mean the aviator was a unique design built around that concept. But a canopy like that would be just as alien as the idea of some one jumping a round today. I still say that modern canopies that we fly are dependent on the idea of being able to dynamicly flare them into the wind. I think that was the FAA's point. That there has developed an expectation of this capability and that there should be a total speed limitation. The problem being that virtually no reserve can achive a survivable number at the loadings that we jump them. And by the way a few years ago I knew a guy that traded in his square for a round. He was a CRW dog on a record attempt. He hunted every where but he found him self a sweet K-26. He was worried about nasty wraps and having to fire his reserve in to them. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Now that's not true. A decent size round, 26 and up, will give you very good odds of survival but I wouldn't lay odds on the odd ankle. And this begs the question of what is up with all these cypresses in rigs with 126 reserves being jumped by 170 lb guys? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

A couple of thoughts. a twenty ft diameter reserve is SMALL. I mean it's really fucking small. Only a small or very brave guy will want to land a 20 ft reserve canopy and he'd better know how to PLF. That's over 300 sq ft. The smallest reserve that was actually popular was 26 ft in diameter. any decent sized person can land it but no fatties. that's like 530 sq feet. Ok, you say that's cheating. Let's talk inflated area. I'm too lazy to look up the numbers but let's just call it a himispere. that's like 235 sq ft for a 26. And that's some thing that's coming down with your legs under you not something crussing along in only half breaks or less creaming you in to the ground ass over tea kettle breaking your kneck. Break setting are normally designed around opening caricteristics not min decent rate or min forward speed. The only canopy I can think of that even addressed that was the Aveator specally built for a pilot rig. One of the big topics of disusion at PIA one year was the issue of over all flight speed for reserves with the breaks set. The FAA seems to want a standard and the manufacturers do not. It would be the kiss of death for small rigs. There is no reasonable expectation of survival with out injury or even just survival under the average reserve with breaks set and no imput. Another thought. This one always gives me a chuckle. People buy super small, super tight rigs that are uncumfertable because they just can't fly with a heavier rig on there back. Then they come to me and buy a weight belt because they can't fly fast enough. They get a rig with so much stager, so high on there back that they have totals because they can't reach there PC. They say the weight of the rig has to be that high so they can fly correctly. Then they buy one of my weight belts and wear it low around there waist. I know people that will not jump with out there belt. They wear it on Every jump. So riddle me this. If you're wearing extra weight why not carry it as a larger reserve? If you're wearing a belt around your waist why not have a longer rig with a larger reserve that comes all the way down to the bottom of your back? With a longer reserve tray and more space around the pilot chute cap it might actually be able to clear the rig with out hesitating. Do you think they did there testing with the smallest tightest container in there line. It was a mid size to large container that passed the TSO. Any thing smaller then that... you a test jumper. I'm a CRW dog and a base jumper. When the shit goes bad there is absolutely no replacement for enough wing above your head. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've always thought that the 103 analogy is interesting. With out a doubt a main canopy meets all the criteria of a part 103 unpowered ultra light vehicle. I think the idea of a TSO for reserves and harnesses and reserve containers comes from their origin as pilot emergency rigs. An emergency rig is something that any person should be able to put on and have a reasonable expectation of it working as advertised within the expected parameters. It's the protecting the uninformed public concept that the FAA itself seems to have been based upon. Now lets look at part 103. As a single seat vehical, not aircraft there are absolutely no, I repeat no standards for airworthiness of any kind. Even the "reserves" are not TSO'ed. The FAA has absolutely no interest in them. The only standard that exist are internal to the industry or there equiv of the USPA. There are absolutely no restrictions on the work performed on them. If it were all to start today with no history of conversion from or use of existing emergency rigs I think the FAA would just call the whole system a part 103 ultralight. The only systems they would concern them selves with would be Tandoms. Maybe comercal rigs, ie student/rental rigs. There would be strong precedents for this. You know it makes me wonder if you could build your self an "Air Launched Ultra Light Vehical" and forgo the whole TSO thing. I mean honestly, How is that illegal? An ultra light does not have to be capable of ground launching. It can be towed up of "air launched" of the edge of a cliff. So how is a single harness rig any different? It doesn't even have to have a reserve. Many ultra lights don't. It could be a base rig. It can be sold or purchased fully assembled. The only things it could not do are be used commercially, no demos or students, or be jumped over a "congested area", definition a bit sketchy. I'm not saying that it's this way. I'm just saying, look it. I'm not eaven making the argument that we'd be better off. But the main canopy and main tray have a lot more heritage from the part 103 ultra light then from any "Certificated Aircraft" An "Aircraft" by definition has an airworthiness certificate. It is awarded based upon it's compliance with set standards depending on category. Nothing like that exist for mains and you should thank your stars that it doesn't exist. Even part 21 "Experamentals", you probable mean 51% rule, have some form of standard. 40 hours of flight on the engion/prop combination. And even with them, if you build it you can perform all your own matinance and annuals. Why can't a guy build his own Main? And if he does he is the manufacture. Are you saying he has to be a rigger? Let's muddy the water even more. What about subcontracting work as the manufacture? I'll give you some precedents. Subcontracting cutting of fabric, hell how about the weaving of fabric. Subcontracting the sewing then attaching lines to canopies. Hell whole canopies, even reserves, have been subcontracted. How about the kits to turn your 7 cell into a nine cell. Remember those? Did they require a rigger? You want something more recent? How about when PD built canopies for a base manufacturer which were then "finished" by the base company. The "finishing" consisted of sewing a tail pocket on and sewing on Logos on the side panels. My point is that there are ample presedents for how we have always treated main canopies like part 103 ultralights. How is taking the fabric of the canopy and adding a line set any different. I argue that you have just "built" a canopy from subassibleies and that you are the "manufacture". Did you have to have a contract with your suppliers? Did the 7 to 9 cell guy have any sort of agreement with the original builder? I flatly do not like the way things are going. I feel that it will be restrictive to some of us. It means that a crew dog can no longer modify his risers. It means a CRW team can not change the trim of their canopies. Not to mention the patches. It means a wingsuiter can not open the corners of his tray. Forget changing out bags to a aftermarket simi stowless or a speed bag. You can't even change out to an after market pilot chute. That's an alteration to the system and could deffenently affect air worthiness. It may have been a miss print but we were better off before their "correction" It actually made for a better standard. You're the next one jumping it, it's on you. It's a much better idea then some totally unenforceable rule. Unless you want to go the Euro route and have a full logbook for all work done on the main or main tray. And what the hell is "Airworthiness" any way. I'll make it easy. Show me a "standard" that includes EVERY canopy that has been sold on the market. I'll make it even easier, show me a standard that includes every canopy currently being jumped today. Try doing that with out grounding half the mains out there. So I guess what I'm asking is do we really want to go this way? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't know if it's a typo or if I'm miss reading it but if you jump one every day how about you tell us about it. I'm trying to think of the guys name that ran aerodyne at the time. Old crw dog, Wags friend. I want to say it started with an H. In any case if you contact him he can probable get you trim specs or what ever you need. But unless it's a clossit queen I'm having a hard time imagioning it being worth the trouble of a reline. Lee Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

What you really need to sew repairs/struckural patches or logo patches on a jump suit is... http://salestores.com/yafyonenepol.html?gclid=COqOurXY5LkCFUVp7AodiU8A5g#.UkHdimEo59A It's way, and I mean WAY better then a "free arm" sewing machine. I do have both and my industrial "free arm" just gathers dust. The key is that you can sew length wise down the sleeve as easily as you can sew around. Not the case with "free arms" This gets a bit ramblely but Skip to the end to hear about the wonders of the post bed. Example: Niki. Tom, my old business partner at the shop had this trophy girl friend at the drop zone. Oh my god what a pain in the ass. High matinance doesn't even come close. But let's face it Tom wasn't exactly A list if you know what I mean. It was his one chance in life at some thing that hot. So the projects start. I never realized how much work a girl friend could be. This was way worse then any sports car, hell my airplane need a hell of a lot less matanance. The Tiger suit. She got this jump suit used from the internet. It's not what you think. It was perfect. I mean it fit her like a glove. She can order custom suits for the rest of her life and she will never, ever have one that fit as well as this $100 gem that she lucked into. It was black which she liked but it had Purple grippers... which she didn't like. Any one else would just thank there lucky stars and learn to love it. No. So Tom is pressured to "fix" it. He's a new rigger he can fix any thing right? So he get's the idea in his head to Dye it. Yah, no shit he tried to die it black. Don't laugh. It worked. It was a perfect black jump suit all that she could hope for, except...it shrunk. There was a lot of spandex so it wasn't too bad but there are some demensions that just don't have any give. Guess who got to rebuild it. So All was good then comes the next chapter. She decides that she is a tiger. A 98 lb tiger but she decides that that is her... inner being. She want's a tiger suit. She decides that her jump suit must have furry tiger stripe fabric for all of her grippers. Comp stile suit with long grippers every where. Did I mention her weight. She was so skinny that she made the old model, Twiggy, look fat. The jump suit was just as bad. Skinny arms, skinny legs, etc. So Tom had been giving me shit about buying more sewing machines including my brand new post bed. So I decided this was the perfect time to introduce tom to it. We actually replaced the grippers, arms, legs, every thing with out taking the suit apart. I cheated and just pulled what stiches I could and cut the grippers off at the seam. But the point is that we were able to sew completely new grippers, indistinguishable from the original Body Suit design onto the existing jump suit on the legs and arms that were only about a three inch diameter tube. Tom was a convert after that and I had cart blanch to buy any sewing machines I wanted. In retrospect it was worth the investment in time. And for the record Tom did do at least some of the work on that one but I wound up doing the arms in the end. Did I mention that it had a tail and a helmet with tiger ears? The point is that with a post bed you can reach inside any thing and sew in any direction. Patch on an elbow? No problem. Knees are nothing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com