RiggerLee

A lot of it depends on what perspective you look at it from. Who says it's not broken? Who says it's not limiting? I'll give you some examples. Base. We still strugle with opening performance. Yes we're geting pretty good at it but some times we all still have those unexspected off headings. For a while we were playing with trapizodal sliders. The idea being to let the canopy spread more stabalizing it more with the slider up. The out wards pull of the breaklines is one of the driving forces controling the speed of the opening at low speeds. I'm talking short slider up delays. As an example there have been a couple of fatalities from people neglecting to route there break lines through the slider gromits. It was hoped that the narrow spaceing at the back would help the break lines to force the slider down. There were mixed resultes. BR had some stability problems resulting in vilont off headings on some of their oppings. I had fairly goo luck with it on a couple of my canopies. So I'd say it's a bit more complicated. Another example is big canopies. We're playing with some pretty big canopys in this project. We're looking at some things in the 1200 foot range. Many of these canopies use six or more gromits. The width of the center cell is just not wide enough to permit the slider to be large enough. It allows the slider to be larger then normal and also depending on which lines you put through which gromits it allows some of the other cells to spread more with the slider all the way up. If you have even more gromits it can allow the slider to be longer front to back rather then being constrained by the length of the stableizer between the b and c slider stops. Keep an mind that some of these canopies have a,b,c,d,e,f,g lines. And various forms of cascadeing. So if you only want to look at it from the very limited perspective of your saber 2 135 then yah it's pretty well figured out. But even there, What if you were to extend an extra grommet for the break lines outward on a peace of tape. Maybe you could reduce the out wards pull from the breaks makeing the slider more dominant and causing longer more consistant snivels? Maybe placeing a gromet inbound on the slider for the breakline would pull the tail in protecting it from the wind and giveing you slower opening and more protaction from line overs on highly eliptical canopies. Perhaps a six gromet canopy would allow a more even inflasion of a higher aspect ratio canopy with smaller inlets in the nose? I'm just tossing out random shit now. Point is that you should never close your mind to the possability of evelution. If we had done that before no one would have ever come up with the PC(para comander) much less the ram air. Although I could tell this whole story with pilot chutes rather then canopies. So go out and do some thing really weird with your canopy. Come back and write about it here. Or at least leave the detailes with your friends for the fatality report. Who know what you'll come up with. I remember the first time some one came to me and asked if I could build a slider that he could remove from his canopy in flight. I thought he was nuts. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

What exactly are you interested in doing? There are all kinds of rigging. I was sort of like you. Where I started you were expected to do most things for your self. I started packing on the second canopy I ever jumped. By 25 jumps I was assimbleing rigs. At a hundred jumps I was working in a loft building containers. Later I built some base gear all kinds of accesseries. Now I'm doing more recovery systems. And I got to tell you every bit of it has been fun. There are always new things to learn about at every turn. Tell us a little more about what your interested in and we'll try to dirrect you. Don't sweat cluttering up your head. The greater your knowlage about your gear the better skydiver you will be. Start with pointers, the new parachute manual, and knacke. There are also some web sites out there with articals. Peek has one. There is quite a bit on the jump shack site and some others. Buy a sewing machine. A real one, in other words INDUSTREAL. Don't fuck around. If it doesn't have a knee or foot lift and a moter that weighs 30 lb's on it's own don't bother with it. Don't let any one make fun of you. Sewing is cool. When you can build some thing that flys, that's cool. I don't care what your woofo friends say. When you build some thing that has never exested before and test it by climbing a mountian that no human being has ever stood on top of before and test it by jumping off, that's double cool. Shit that goes super sonic is tripple cool. Learn to sew. If nothing else the sex toys alone that you can build are worth it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't have any 1.5 here. I wonder how f-111 would hold up? Other canopies are made from 40# tensal strength material. And the PDA spreads the load out nicely. F-111 has higher tensal strength then ZP. It fails a little diffrently, tears rather then straines at the seams. I think 0-3 is more then tight enough. I don't think the diffrence of zp would do any thing for you. It's not a cross brace. With f-111 I think you could bump up the diamiter just a bit and build it more like a RW pc with fewer turn slots, I don't see people sinking them in hard on purpouse shooting accercy. I've got PC's. I've got an early american Pap. Real early one. It's got a... band along the nose. It's like it blows inwards but in sink it pops out like the slat on a wing. That's my faverat canopy. I'd rather not try to take measurements off an exesting canopy. There's just too much shrinkage. I'd rather not take one of my classic canopies apart. It wold be much nicer if some one would be kind enough to contribute a pattern set? The measurements? Any body here from Pionear? Who built the Sparrow? How about a Thunder bow? That was one of my faves. Any body from Security out there? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've got 375 yards of red f-111 setting in the corner, tape, and a lapseamer. If you send me a copy of the patern set I'll crank one out between ballutes. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Over the years there have been a number of incidents and accedents, more word play, in which people have learned the very signifigant diffrence between a device which opens your reserve and one which cuts the loop holding it. It's not a trivial destinction. It's the diffrence between makeing a guy buy a case of beer and going to his funeral. You may not be aware of it but all the manufacorers have been strugelling to make these devices work reliably in there containers. Even relatively small changes in flap construction or scaleing in the container can lead to hesitations or even the locking of the container. It's not your fault. They have done a very good job of concealling these issues from you. For the most part it's not something that most skydivers need to worry about but it explaines why many of the people on here are focased on that issue. As to AAD's I've never gotten around to getting one. I did a lot of crw. On the occasions when I was doing something really weird, and yes I've done some weird things on occasion, I borrowed a rig with one installed. So I can't say that I'm opposed to them But they are what they are. A fact that has been frogoten in the several generations of propaganda/hype surrounding them. That's why I have to call bullshit on the airbag anallagy. Air bags are not a bad thing but they are not magic as you describe. And there are plenty of flaws in AAD's. They may or may not work and under some cercumstances they can kill your ass. And as to the cost of the system... I could argue that my life and frankly the lives of most people are worth less then $10,000. Unless they are a DA, public figure, or protected witness you can have them killed for less. It probbable varyes across the country but here in Texas perticuerly down closser to the border the going rate for a adverage person is a lot lower. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I never could get my hands on a RW PC. What exactly was it built from? Was it 1.5 ripstop or was it a 1.1 ounce f-111? Wasn't the piglet ripstop? I want to say that it was almost as heavy as ballon cloth like 1.9 ounce. What was the Strong starlight made from? Wasn't it f-111. That's another one I could never seem to get my hands on. I heard the opening were wicked. Were they the first to put a slider on a round? A lot of the shit I've been doing lately is a lot of hurry up and wait. I'm going up to Dallas next week to look at a couple of canopies they are thinking about for the next system but basically I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to build another air frame. You know I just happen to have a 1/4 in double neadle sitting here with a french fell and a 1/2 inch tape foot.... There just happens to be a big roll of red f-111 over in the corner... I think it's got about 375 yards on it. I just looked on the shelf and noticed that I've got a big spool of 550. I've been tripping over a spool of 1 inch tube webbing for years now. It gets really dangerous around here when I get board. I wonder if f-111 0-3 would hold up on opening? How hard would the opening be? Might need a little more venting around the crown. A little hi po around the apex like a russion pc or that early american pap that I have might help with that. Any thoughts about updating to lighter weight tighter fabric? Didn't some one say they had the patterns? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Uh.... Help me out here. What units are you useing? How exactly are you calculating the Re number, What refrence length are you useing? I get... At 5,000 ft for convenience den 20.48 10-4 slugs/ft3 vel 176 ft/sec length 3 ft vis 3.637 10-7 lb*sec/ft2 I wind up with... 2,973,175 I mean, is my math just totaly fucked here or are we talking apples and oranges? I'm thinking you should at least be on the order of a million. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

$150 for a used copy? What a fucking ripoff. Amazon is a bunch of crooks. You know you can down load that whole thing for free. It's a bitch, the down load thingy doesn't seem to work very well. I had to get Bob, IT friend to down load it for me. But he was able to do it. Print it off for 35 bucks at kinkos. You seem to have put some thought in to all this so I'll bounce some of the questions off you. Drag coeficents and how they change relitive to renalds numbers. Normally I would think of the CD as some thing determined expearamentally or now a days in a computer. But the point being that it's normally only good for a certin range of Re numbers. Is there any way to exstapelate that data to other Re? Is there a trend as the Re change. Ideas of how great the errer is? Honstly I'd be happy if I could just bound the problem. Thoughts any one? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

That sounds about right. 70 *200 is only 14,000. Our slinks were breaking at 4,000 lb. So in theory 16,000 but remember the load will not be evenly destributed across the risers. And the break lines transfer directly down to the riser. We've had oppenings where we broke all the lines off a riser... so we broke 9? 1000 lb lines with out breaking the slink. Go figure. Then again on the last flight we broke 3 PD reserve slinks and snapped all the lines on the fourth. Confuses the fuck out of me. I've simpley resolved to not open at mach 2. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I have seen rapid links fail on at least two ocasions. Eather left open of the barrels cracked. On both ocasions the lines stayed "hooked" on the end of the link till the guy landed then fell off onto the ground. Freaked them out. Should have seen Popes face. I have also seen a slink fail. For the record it was an old daccron sewn slink and from the remaining three I think I can say that they were not built right. Outer sheath lose. He apparently did not make a habbit of colapsing his slider or pulling it bellow the links. But the point it it let go at 800 ft. As I recall that was the guy who's break lines had never been bartacked at the cascade. Main break lines pulled right out with my fingers. It was his second reserve ride of the boogie when I found it. I think he got really drunk that night. By the way. We've been doing some destructive testing on some of our components. My home made slinks, 1500 vectran with a ring, two wraps, have been breaking around 4000 lb. These are old slinks that have seen wear and abuse. It's dependent on how you load then and how... neatly they are arranged. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I would also be curious. I might just get a wild hair up my ass and build my self a new one. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Some body help me out my memory is going. Didn't the LOR system or some thing like that use a Booth style RSL pin. One from each side. I want to say that it was an Atom container. Did they ever use a single sided RSL like that? What about some of the other vector clones? A lot of people were ripping off booths designs back then. What about the Xerox how did it work it's RSL? I also have seen Javelin style RSL's on Vector 2's I remember one at quency. Guy showed up with it and he actually had the paper work for the mod. There is a guy out there that has been approved by a FSDO to retrofit them. I talked it over with Wag at the time and even called home to Stanford and we decided to go ahead and sign it off. I don't recall what the rig looked like though. I wonder if that was the one? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

RSL bellow the ring??? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Just an up date. Flew the same airframe last weekend. There were a few modifacations. The nosal was extended to 10 inches in diamiter. and the section with the roll vaines was turned 90 deg. The engion burned to compleation. I think it was a 51 sec burn. The nosal showed signs of being slightly over expanded at sea level. The heat band was about a inch short of the edge after the burn test at Caddo. Ground elevation at space port america in NM is about 4500 ft. So I doubt there was much loss. Hoever at higher altitudes it really shined. Much higher speeds. They melted all of their stickers off. The paint blistered off the nose cone. The very tip of the cone looks poorus like the end of a bone. Looks to me like they vaporized a little of there ressen at the very tip. might have to go some kind of higher temp resin? They lost telimitry part way up. They have a pretty good drag model that fit the gps data from the last flight very well. Putting the telimitry from sat into it, I think they lost it some time after burn out around 100,000 ft, it looks like they topped out at around 311,000 ft. So I don't think they can quite call it a space craft yet but they seem to be getting close. This shot wasn't expected to excead 250 so they are very pleased with the progress on the engion. Now the bad news. I made another crater. We did recover one camera. It looks like that's the only chip that survived. It was an upwards faceing video mounted in the side. It's field of veiw went from almost vertical down to the horison. You can see the nose deploy. The ballute looks very good. You can see it in several places in the video. No sign of flutter. I think that problem is solved. but there was an uncomanded release of the ballute and early deployment of the main. The relese for the ballute broke 92 sec after the nose was deployed. That's at about 180,000 ft if you beleave my reentry model. That's also right about when the force is supposed to be peaking, best guess 1900 lbs. In the video it apears that the kevlar rope between the ballute and the swival is not fully extended. It was rubberbanded togather in three large stows. It was a 100 ft 12,000 lb kevlar line. Before you even start they used a 100 ft line in there testing and insisted on useing the same length on the flight. It looks like the line became intangled. YOu can see it in a bundle at the base of the ballute. Right before it failed the ballute seemed to extend further out like that friction knot let go and suddently you had a big snatch when it came taunt. Main tryed to deploy at about mach 2.5. snapped three PD reserve slinks and broke all the lines off the fourth riser. Rocket hit nose down like a lawn dart about 1000 ft from the trailor. compressed 28 feet worth of rocket into about seven feet. They haven't released and video or stills. I'll try to a least get the picture of the fuel tank. It is so cool. Looks like an acordion. You got to see it. In any case we are now looking for release designs for the drogue. I'm back to looking at cutters. Waiting on some info from airborn sys. If any of you have heavy drop background I'd love to hear any thoughts about macanical or soft releases that we could actovate electronicaly or with a pin puller. We're looking at about 5 g's, Next airframe around 800 lbs. So we're predicting a load of about 4,000 lb. That's assuming all goes well. Note that we had a big spike on this last flight thanks to that line. I'll try to get back to you with more detailes. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've seen both ends of the spectrom. Example one: Quincy. I worked in the rigging trailor for jeff Wagner for... I think it was nine years. I guess we bounced about one jumper a year on adverage. I'm not talking straight up landing accedents or silly shit like the floater in the kiddy pool. On adverage we had one "interesting" fatality a year. It was a unique inviroment in that the staff police, FAA and all the manufactorers were there, knew each other, and were used to working with each other. Wag is the one that was normally called out to deal with them. I would generally make my self scarce in the sewing room. Don't really like looking at bodies, don't drink dont do drugs and have way to good a memory. Scott Chue was also an old friend of Wags, He was the doctor on sight for a number of years and we would all hang out in the trailor in the evenings as they drank beer. Needless o say we got full unedited reports on all the accedents and incedents of the day. fastest most therogh investigations ou could ever have. Cops to control the scene. FAA to take charge. Under them all the experts you could ask for on site. Done in a day. Evrey thing was examined in place. No access issues. Total trasparency. I loved having the FAA there on site. It made every thing so much easier. And a lot of those guys are a lot cooler then you would think. Now lets take the opposit end of spectrom. Or all most. I used to hang out at Dallas. There they took the exact opposit attude. There was kind of this atmosphere of fear and paranoia. The first thught in every ones mind was littigation. The first thing the staff would do is to try to keep every one away from the scene. Not a bad thing on the whole. The para medics would generaly cut through any thing they could wether it was nessasary or not. The local police would take over the scene gathering up ad seazing every thing in sight destroying any evedence that might have exested on site. A coulpe of the staff would go around takeing statements for there "private files" We had a couple of really pompus ones that got a huge power trip out of this. But it was all about controling infomation. The FAA would be notified. Now as it happions we ad a guy around there named Giene Bland. Old sky diver, rigger, dropzone owner from way back. He could be a real pain in the ass turning mole hills into mountians. But there were times that I think we were lucky to have him. This is one of them. He was actually interested. He would actually show up. It was a cance for him to get out of the office he hated and force his boss to pay for him to fly his POS 182 up there. So we would get the gear back in a pile wrapped in a white sheet. It would go up in the loft under the table And Bland would fly up in his plane. I was usually working in the loft. Bland would come in and we'd all unwrap the bundle and start going through it. Or depending on where the gear wound up they might do it down in dallas. In which case he might call a coulple of riggers down like Stanford for there oppions. Bland had been out of the loop for a long time and wasn't real current. The bottom line is that if it wasn't for him there probbable wouldn't have been any tecnical investigation at all. If t hadbeen up to the drop zone manager it probable never would have happioned. He once tryed to keep me from answerng Blands questions. He didn't quite cross the line and tell me to lie to the FAA but he basicaly said that he wanted to be in control of every thing that bland learned. The point is that it was the exact opposit of how it was run at Quincy. And as for the USPA. To the best of my knowlage they do not do any form of investigation at all. If an interested party, An S&TA for example should take it upon them selves to make some observations, take notes on gear, etc they will publish a write up of it in what ever detale is reported in parachutest. At least this has been my impression. If they have a more formal proceadure then that please correct me. I have never met a picked team of investigators flown in from around the country by the USPA at the sceen of a fatallity. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

The compitition AR-7 were bought by and sold to only the most hard core rotation teams. They were brutal. Not only were they sensitive to opening speed but altitude. I've seen people refuse to leave the plane because the jump run was too high. The openings could be ungodly and the landing were not much better. You would tippically flare it with the front risers. I'm surprised you made it down alive. No one would have ever jumped them if they haddent bee the abolute shit for rotation. I don't know how any one could mistake one for a triatholon. Not even vagely the same canopy. Construction was totaly diffrent. No lip. Three inch wide tape around the nose. Span wise retract. Short lines. A lot of them did use spector lines though. He thought it burned less in wraps then dracron, less friction. I don't share that view but still no resemballence. I don't know how this might have fallen into the unsuspecting hands of some one like you. You thought you were buying a nice little king snake when in fact the pet store sold you a venimus coral snake. Bad analogy, more like a black momba. Unless you're headed to nationals: Do not jump. Do not sell. Return to seller. Kick sellers ass. Keep in box, tape closed, Mark with warning lables, curses, and protective seals. Treat it as a loaded gun. One with bad habbits of missfireing. I hope you did not suffer permanent injuries. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I may dissagre with a lot of their pollicies. They certinly make a habbit of missrepresenting or at least coloring some of their statistics to place them in the best light. Number of "saves" etc. But what I can say is that I've never seen any sign of them hideing or faultsifing data in a fatality. I say this haveing been involved at least perrifrealy in a number of fatalitiy investigations. Yes, the whole thing does seem a little strange. There is a little conflict of interest there but as far as I can tell it has never been abused. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I have no idea if this is true or just an urbin ledgion. But in any case the story goes some thing like this. Booth was working on the three ring. He got a call at the dropzone from some body. As they were talking on the pay phone he happioned to mention that he was haveing trouble finding a suteable flexable houseing for a smaller cable. He wanted some thing like a ripcord housing. As he spoke to the guy he started to finger the cable to the hand set of the phone. He interrupted the other person on the line and asked if he could call him back later on another phone? Later he returned the call from home and told the guy that he'd found the perfect thing. acording to the story with in a month you couldn't find a pay phone in Florida with a hand set on it. Truth or ledgend? Statute of limitations should have expired by now. Booth? Care to deny or conferm? Eather way it still makes a good story. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

We have in fact talked about another intermedeat stage but no one wants to add that kind of complexity. I was board and started playing around with reentery models. To be honest I'm rather sceptical about it's acceracy. Let me refrase that. I know it's wrong. I'm just not sure by how much. It's a diffrent world at those renalds numbers. I use that term losely. It starts out in what for all intents and purpouses is vacume. It falls building up speed and then whacks into the atmosphear like a wall. The density increases faster then it can slow down and it sees ablout 5 G's. There's another spike at the trans sonic. The odd thing that I see in my model, keep in mind that this is in the area where I'm pretty sure it's breaking down, is that there seems to be two humps in that first big load. It's like a slap when it first hits the outer atmosphear and then another as the density rises faster then it decelerates. Keep in mind that this spreadsheet came straight out of my ass. But there seems to be a sweet spot in the diamiter of the drouge where this kind of evens out and the load is distributed over a longer time. Too big and the inital spike becomes domminant. To small and you don't really slow down early enough. If we went to a little smaller drouge we could cut down the peak G loading by about 27%. This is again based on the "shaky" end of my model. It says we're a little bigger the optimal. But we would like to keep it simple for now. We're trying had to go straight from drouge to direct bagged main. The curent 8 ft diamiter should give us about a 105 mph deployment at 15,000 msl. The snatch force is rather high but we're working that problem. It seems to be in hand. Should be more drag test tomarrow then I want to mod one of our old drouges and see if we can do a heavy torture test to try to simulate full 5 g loading. It wont really be the same, no good way to reproduice the same mach numbers or true air speeds. But seeing those seams hold togather under load would give me a warm and fuzzy. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Acually the GPS recovery system is an off the shelf proven tecnology that is in use under contract by the military today. Waymor has performed flawlessly every time the system has flown in drop test for us. That has not been where our problems have layed. The whole round square debate is ongoing. When they first asked me about this my responce was a big round. It raises questions about bulk and weight. As I said the problem started out really easy and we started out with a dyper deployed round. We talked about going to a more robust round with a cutter, a very proven tecnology, but there were other future issues that they were looking towards. Contracts for MOD style rockets that would require them to land withen certin distances on take off. Remember these guys started out focased on powered flight and powered landing. Most of the work deals with guidence and control systems. The high speed high altitude thing is a new direction for them. and what you're seeing is not really a final design but more an engion test platform. As an example one path they are looking at is decent under canopy followed by relighting and landing under power. To make that mile stone the have to be able to land withen a certin distance. They need a square for that. They can't carry enough fuel for that kind of cross wind range. That's just one example but the point is you're only seeing half the story behind the design decisions. As to a square for this project. Well it's still under debate. It's a direction that they want to go for other reasons and I'm not sure it's a bad decision for this. The thing will fall over. It will do that with a round as well. It could have a lower vertical decent rate during the flare then you could acheave with a resonable sized round and we're thinking the horizontal landing will kick the base back under neath it laying it down softer on it's side then a round dropping it on it's tail and just letting it fall over like a tree. Then again it could be a hell of a pole vault. We will see, hopefully in about a month. Now I really am done typing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Starting at the begenning: There is some infomation in Recovery Systems but this is kind of a weird thing that's out side the norm. I did find a few papers that were relevent. the best one was a report of a drogue deployment test behind a fighter from 1.6-.75 starting at 50,000 ft. It had the best real world no shit numbers I could find. I found a coulpe of designs with good dementions for the design of the ballute it self. It's a 42 deg cone or 84 deg if you prefer. at the base. It gave ratios for distance to equator. It's a simple spine curve bringing the side up from the base to vertical at the equator. The section above is an elips. It also gave locations and diamiters for the burble fence which is a torus. It gave distance below the equator for the vents to be located and an angle for the inlet. All of the designs that I could find dementions for used a snorkal like inlet. With a metal ring in the mouth and a network of lines to suport it. It looked like just the kind of thing an engineer who had never seen a parachute would design. The guy obveously wanted to put a metal scoop on there, think super charger like on Mad Max's car, and tryed to make the same thing out of fabric. It's as fucked up as it sounds. I did find pictures of ones that had actually gone into production and were used on bombs and retarded submunitions that used a strong tandom style vent. So that's how I built it. Small ones worked great. Then we built a 5 foot for the first stig rocket. We didn't have good video on board and as far as we could see from the ground it seemed stable. As it happions we had an of nominal flight. Early burn out. The original spec on the job called for a 300-350 pound load deployed at 110 mph at 8,000. One of the harder things they asked for was a low decent rate. We were looking around for larger round canopies that would meet there needs when we talked to strong. They were playing with a replacement for the T-10. Basically a 35 ft canopy with a much lower decent rate. It was about the only thing we could find off the shelf between a personel parachute and a g-12 cargo chute. And Ted was by the way the only guy we could find that seemed interested in playing ball with us. The numbers on it looked very promessing. It should have given them about a 14 ft per sec decent rate. As it turns out by the time it flew the empty weight was up to about 550 lbs. And with an early burn out it wound up around 900 lbs on opening. And the opening happend a bit high. The housing came lose on there pin puller and the cable wiggled out under vibration. Deployment wound up being at about 200 mph at... about 16 0r 17 thousand feet MSL I don't recall the numbers. Ouch. Tore out a section of there bulkhead that they were attached to and broke the riser assimbally at the release. We'd talked about this. That they were getting too heavy, basically that they had out grown there shit before they had even flew, and that a high speed over weight abbort was not survivable. I still felt like a tool when I watched the mushroom cloud rise into the air. The second vehical was kind of a side project. It was one of their short fat MOD rockets. We built a bigger nilon ballute for it. Eight foot. We did a drop test with it but unfortinatly the relese wasn't quite ready. and Phil wound up basically dirrect bagging it. So the opening was almost instentanious. Didn't really get to see how the ballute really behaved. It was washing around and didn't seem fully inflated but we put that down to it just not having time. This was our first use of the Set 500. We wanted to move towards a square and we were going to land the MOD on it's side. They eventually want to fly passengers and a soft landing under a big square looks a lot more attractive for there capsule. I'll make the story short. It was another early burn out with an early low speed deployment. Bad news was the thing was tumbling hard. The ballute deployed but the vehical was still tumbling and wound the bridle around itself. If it had been given time to unwind it might have stabalized the vehical before the main was deployed. Unfortinently after the last flight they jumped the gun and fired the release manually. There were some issues with the door that covered the canopy compartment but the biggest problem was that the canopy was pulled out and wrapped around the fuselage. The airframe had been partially torn appart when it tumbled. There was jagged alluminum every where. Several lines were cut on the airframe before it unwound durring the opening shock. Spiral in crunch. The airframe was already toast it didn't hit supper hard but they lost part of their computer which was a bummer. The INS unit was however recerted and flew again. Another big L on my head. Stig A The one in the wright up. You bassically have the story there. Oddly this was actually the softest of our landings. No deal killer dammage. Same vehical scedguled to fly late Jan. We were able to do a heavy drop test with the final system right before we flew. The was some flutter in the drouge. We knew we had a problem but not how bad it was going to be. We didn't have a lot of options at that point and decided to fly the system as it was. The Ballute it self has quite the gridwork of kevlar tape on it. I was actually very confedent that it would hold togather. I expected the main load to be in the skin of the ballute. I did not expect to find the burble fence to be the failure point. And I certinly did not expect to have it fail at the top edge of the fence. That was a surprise to me. Right now we're playing with vent designs to try and make them more stable. With stable inlets I think we'll have a solid system. Back to questions. The nose cone is held on with nylon sqews. There is a heliom tank in the nose cone. It blows off the nose cone by shearing the screws. Bang. The nose cone is attached to the bridal by a Screemer. That tears in elongation under load ripping multiple rows of zigzag. The screws were cold and we blew off a little harder then expected ripping the screamer to full extension. It absorbed a lot of KE but it still rebounded a little hitting the fusolage. Not bad. The computer has GPS and INS. It fires the nose cone at appogy. The nose cone was attached high on the bridle below a swivel. The decision was made to go with a reletively short bridal to keep the ballute from reaching the tail fins. The nose cone was placed high on th bridal to keep it away from the fusolage. It was expected that it would hang down. As it turns out we were not makeing as much drag as we had expected with the ballute and it tended to float up. There was a lot of ossolation. The nose cone would touch the canopy and get bounced out to the side. Once it was sideways it would swing up and hit the ballute. It also stored energy pulling on the base of the ballute. We've been doing some drag test and we are seing a corilation between the flutter of the heavy bridal and a rippalling collaps mode in the canopy. Weight and natural frequency of the bridal are playing a part in the instability. We have vid of the collaps running in a circle around and around the ballute. Fasinating. Next time I think we're going with a much longer bridal. Swival down low with the nose none attached much lower. and a thin kevlar rope going up to the ballute. The ballute dosn't have lines as such. There are a few small holes from where the nose cone touched it. The nose cone did not tear the ballute by "hitting" it. More the ballute was fluttering so fast that it wore holes in it self where the nose cone brushed against it. We have talked about larg rounds, with reefing lines. We've even talked about useing a timed cutter to hold the slider up in case of another high speed opening. If we fix the ballute problem we should be looking at a 110 mph deployment which is well withen the canopys envolope and I hate to complicate the universe. Tired of writeing. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Armadillo has put up a little video from the last launch. It loaded really slow for me. I had to just leave it for a while and let it down load. What you're seeing is a composet of three cameras. The cool one from my perspective is the nose which is actually in side the tube. The side and GPS mast are in the way but It's still the best view of my shit shreading. I'll see if I can get better vid od it and stills or something of the seam failures along the burble fence on the ballute. http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=377 Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

He's talking about a slightly diffrent issue. I don't think icon risers reduice pull forces on a cutaway that much. That's sales bull shit. What they do is reduice internal forces in the riser. He is right in that hard cutaways can be caused by tension in the white loop pulling the cable into the grommet on the houseing. It acually doesn't take that much to kink it through but even before then you can have a very hard pull. The real issue here is the houseing comeing under tension. That should not happion and you'd be surprised how many rigs have a problem with it. There are ways to deal with it. Longer houseings. Building the houseings so they can float a bit. One solution is a longer white loop. Assuming that it's not so long that compromises the third ring it is one way to put a little more slop in the system and give a rig a chance to cut away when for what ever reason, streatching of the harness, torn stitching, etc the houseing tryes to come under load. One other thought. Just putting icon risers on a rig actually lengthends that distance slightly. So in theory if the rig was margional to beguin with you might actually create this problem and cause a hard cutaway. Just one more thing to think about in terms of compatability. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Video is on a private FTP server. We've been through it frame by frame but it's kind of propriatary. There are contracts between various companies and all that lawyer shit. Not up to me. I'm hopeing they will make it public cause it's really cool. With luck we'll get a fully successfull flight here soon and they'll be crowing about it from the roof tops. The pilot chutes we blew up were mesh pilot chutes with no "spring support". We started out with some old main pilotchutes left over from some old Talon student rigs. Cilindrical black springs. Used but in good shape. Then went to Tallon Stelth pilot chutes. Soon we moved to the final tube size which happioned to be perfect for the mini racer spring. I was surprised when we blew all of them up. I didn't have numbers on exactly how fast they had been dropped in heavy/high speed phase of the TSO but I thought they would be able to come through with flying colors. In the end I concluded that they had survived because the canopies that they had been certified with had been squares. That it had just stripped the free bad off and was gone. My assumption. We had it fixed to the top of this 16 ft slider reefed round, small burble. We were dragging it through the air hard. Tore out the mesh, broke the tapes, blew out the fabric, streatched and mangaled the springs. If the end I built some mini MA-1 style pilot chutes. They were smaller by design. Four gores. Made from some heavy nylon tafita that we had left over from a windblade project. I think it was a heave flag matearial, don't know I didn't buy it. I think I used 1/2 inch type 4 tape for the edges of the vaines/ radial seam tapes. It might have been 3/4. It did have a center conical section that suported/contained the spring. It really was a mini MA-1. I'm good at stealling tecnology. I don't recall ever seeing signs of load on the spring and I don't recall damage to the tacking. But I basically just built the systems and tested them. Fairly quickly others took over the droptest them selves. I came out from time to time but they did most of the packing and matonance them selves. I'm not understanding how you were breaking your tacking? Did your "meshless" PC have a central cone like a MA-1? Do you think it was just an inerta thing where the weight of the spring tore it lose? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

There is no substitute for increasing the length of the lever arm. Ordinary mini risers really are not a good design. The tollerances are too tight. The mecanical advantage just isn't there. Booth actually had it right in the begining with the big rings. The aerodine riser is the smartest thing to come along in a long time. And frankly I don't know why it hasn't caught on. Pattent? If I was them I'd be selling rings to every manufatorer out there. If I was building rigs I'd be paying an extra $5.00 a rig to use them just like people used to do to Booth before his pattent ran out. And by the way, no, I don't work for them. Not a dealer. No motive here. But I am a good enough engineer/rigger to actually know how the math on this works. And I'm not just talking theoretical shit out of my ass. I've actually seen risers break there in the real world. Eather snapping the tape on the small ring or tearing it lose. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com