RiggerLee

"Even homemade Safety Stows are not authorized and riggers should already know that also. " ???? Did I miss a memo? Please straighten me out on this. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Sewing several vertical tapes on the back of the banner was exactly what we tryed next. We'd made like five of them. These were big banners. I want to say that they were 12' by 12' with four people on the bottom of them. I think I put 7 vertical tapes on the back. It didn't do any good. If just ate away at them from the top down. It was like they disolved. all that was left was the tape and a few shreads of fabric. The olny really good shot we got was a guy flying it like a flag under canopy. The whole thing was a very embarising failure. I still blush thinking about it. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I got a gig once makeing some large freefall banners. we used sections of pvc in the bottom and then had several jumpers holding the bottom edge. I was so proud of those things. I mean they were masterpeaces and we busted our asses to get them done on time. I was so proud of my self right up to the point where they disentergrated shortly after exit. Here are some things I learned. A large banned is not a tube. It expereances more buffeting and flutter. Balloon cloth is not strong enough. It looked like it was being nibbled away at the trailing edge and disentergrated in about ten sec. Try Parapack or flag material. Make the image big and simple. The top part will be the most blury so leave some negative space there. Shoot it with a high speed camera. Best bet for captering a useable image. Slow shutter speeds will blure. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

You're makeing me laugh. Some body gave McCullum a block of wax once to keep in his riggers kit/tackle box. It was in the upper tray. He left the kit in his trunk in the sun on a nice warm, 103 F, summers day here in Texas. It melted and filled the tray like water. Got on every thing includeing a nice long soft bodkin, the kind made from 550 lb type III line. Totally soaked it. It was stiff. He could move it around and bend it like a wire. He used to use it to push down through pilot chute to pull pull up cords through instead of a gun rod. He lover that thing. If it got too soft with use... just warm it up and let it cool again. I think he's still useing it. Help me out with history. Didn't SE have a problem with some line they tryed to use on 26' lopo's. They tryed to go to a coated line but it was a water solubole coating an if it got wet would soffen and then glue the lines togather when it dried. Wasn't there also a simular problem with some of the early kevlar lines they tryed to use on squares? Am I remembering this right? What year was that? That should kind of bracket the early use of condition R line. Early original 26' lopo, shortly after the first squares were tso'd with Kevlar? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I recall one canopy that I think this was done to. It was a bat wing with light weight vectran lines. He got an enordanent number of jumps out of that line set. I want to say close to a thousand. I think we changed break lines once. Part of it may have been the fact that that it was a slow opening canopy that the slider came down very slow on. He always pulled the slider down. Will the wax actualy lubracate the slider and the break lines? Waxes are used to lubracate drilling into metals like alumanum. Will it protect the fibers from abrasion or atract dust and grit to them? We tryed spraying sillacone and shit on lines but I think it picked so much grit up off the cement floor that it did more harm then good. The lines wore out faster. Does it actually slow the damage or does it just hide it and make it look pretty? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Probably not a typo. Ive seen that a number of times. I'm not saying you're guilty of this but we've had a number of people leave there fucking rig in the loft for over a year. Some times several years. I think the record was five years. And then they call and want to know if their rig is ready because they want to come out and jump the next morning. Thats if they call. I've had them show up wanting to know if they can make the next load? And what do you mean it's out of date? Why do I have to pay for two pack jobs? Again I'm not saying you're one of these people I'm just ranting but for all those jumpers out there, this is an excelent way to piss off a rigger. I am not your fucking closset. Tom is dealling with one of those now. Left his rig a year or two ago, Never responded when they tryed to contact him, calls up wanting his rig but doesn't remember what type it is. Tom had moved 300 miles away but was still dutify guarding the rig. The guy wanted to know if tom could drive the rig up to dallas for him, six houres each way, because he wanted to make the early load the next morning. Doesn't want to pay shipping. Last I heard the whole thing was still unresolved. Fucking skydivers. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've been trough this too and frankly I was being a lot more suttle then you are. I'm happy for you. I want to see you do well but your post reads blatently like an ad. I was honestly looking for design suggestions and idea on shirts and they yanked my post. Some mods are harder about this then others. Some of them don't even want you to alude to the fact that you sell stuff or are in any way in bussiness. But let's be honest you are blatently breaking the rules. Don't be surprised if this gets pulled shortly. take your spanking like a man in other words whine and cry and throw a tempertantrum if you like but accept that they are little despots with total power over you. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

a smaller canopy, square, has the same number of attachment points, lines, tapes, etc but if the canopy expereances the same shock loading, same weight decelerated over the same time with the same force curve then the force is distributed over a smaller area. The loading on the fabric per square foot is higher. The size of the nose opening change in relation to the square of the coard. The volume changes with the cube of the coard. So internal volume goes up faster then opening size. This implies that larger canopies opening in the same way will open slower. There are however flip sides to the coin. A larger canopy for the same suspended weight will have a larger inital deceleration leading to a faster opening sequence in a square. You reach critical speed where the canopy becomes dominant over the slider sooner leading to a faster opening. The first half of the curve happens at a higher decceleration. A smaller canopy will have a lower Cd with the slider up and the inital curve and deceleration to critical speed will hapen slower. I said earlier if the canopies open in the same way. If the opening happens out of sequence, line dump or some other event that causes the slider to lose stageing i.e. come down before the normal critical speed, then you have a very sudden spike in acceleration as the Cd jumps at a higher speed as the slider comes down earlier and faster then normal. Some canopies have a lot more margion for error on this. The slider is stronger then the canopy. Other designs are less frogiving because there is less domanance of the slider over the canopy eg. saber 1 190. The critical speed where the canopy orer rides the slider is a major component of how snivaly and soft the opening are. The slower you're going as the canopy start to spread and the slower the slider comes down, the canopy only slightly over powering it at that speed, the softer the opening. There are a lot of things that go into this, AR, length of stabalizers (how low the slider is below the bottom skin also affected by shinkage of the out side lines), width of center cell relative to slider, width of risers relative to slider, area and design of slider, break setting includeing shrinkage and that's just off the top of my head. That's just stuff that can be quantified there's also the relm of vodoo. Some times no one really know why a design opens hard. It just does. Now that I've compleatly confused the discusion the point I was trying to make is that it's a lot more complicated then just size. I hate when people over simplify things. Haveing said that I am fermly on the side of bigger reserves. I think the cool trend in stupid small rigs and canopies has hurt and killed more people then any thing else in the sport. a couple of comments on the actual subject: There's a bigger diffrence in the testing then the numbers seem to imply. The speed is a big deal. It changes by the square where weight is liner. Also as the the real strength of the canopy, what year was it made? That company has gone through a couple of generations and if I remember corectly they changed construction methods at some point. They changed how the flares were attached and I think the tape. Check with Red or some one with a better memory then me but I think they went from the flares being sewn on to the tapes being continues all the way up the rib. I want to say that they also went from type 3 to type 1 hering bone on the attachments and I think I heard them talking about going to a spector but I don't remember if that ever happened. Any one else have a clearer memory? By the way. I still jump a firefly reserve, the Crickets big cussen. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I've got over a thousand. Sorry to hear you don't keep proper curancy on your equipment. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Just a couple of thoughts on what might be wrong. Handle problems can show up from other reasons then just the velcro. If it's a new rig then the velcro can't really be worn out. He may have pulled the handle out looked at the velcro and seen the it was in good shape. Some of the other isues that can be a problem are the geometry. If the horizontal is too short you may be getting a bend in the MLW pushing the handle out of the pocket and this might not show up unless you were there wearing it. Even then you might have to bend in the right way. If the MLW is short relative to the handle putting the top of the pocket just above a junction it can exagerate this problem. Ths is going to sound strange but if the pocket is too tight it can make it diffacult to get full contact on the velcro. Some rigs use a sepperat peace of tape to help with this. If the pocket has a little outward taper to it tightness might not be as big a help as you would think. Guess what. I've seen rigs that the handle just didn't want to stay in and some times I just flat out could not figure out why. I'll tell you one thing you can try that almost always works. Get a pud. You can argue the merrits back and forth but matching velcro to velcro is pretty damn secure. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Find a Paradactol. I'd jump one of those any day of the week. Much better. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm interested in what you mean be excessive horizontal movement? For the record my rig does not have chestrings. I've borrowed rigs from other people over the years and I've jumped rigs to test them for people. I've jumped rigs that fit me and ones that didn't even come close. Honestly I don't even notice the rings. I don't think they make it more comferterble. I think it's all about the geometry and whether or not it fits. God it can be tortureous when they don't fit. Structeraly although there seems to be more failure points the loading on the junctions is much better. And I wouldn't discount the value of being able to resize or repair the harness easily. People trade out gear. I'd rather see someone buy a big rig now and trade to a small rig in a few years then tosee them pushed into that container that they will one day want even though it's too small for the canopies they need now. That's why I encurage them to buy used on their first rig. And if they get eather a continues or multi ring harness it can be resized if the MLW does not fit them. I guess it's two ways to view the same problem. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

First, speaking personaly I am my own packer. Second, get it right. The phrase is Your Packer Secretly Hates You. Lastly, just for the record, we Print that T-Shirt. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It's been a long time sence I've seen a bent rings. They never actually failed and with the new hardware used there I think that problem is gone. In theory I think that hardware is the weakest point in the system. But you don't see main rings breaking and they've been in use for what? 35 years? under the exact same loading. In theory a continues harness is stronger but the truth is that the hip junction gets torked on and point loads at the front corner above the lower junction. This tends to fail the lower half of the junction. You do see damage there. Broken structural stitches. That's bad. I have seen the whole lower half fail. No he didn't die. The reason, the only reason, he didn't die is that it was a Javelin with a wraparound harness. The webbing wraps around the MLW and has a box of harness stitching with harness cord providing redundency in the system. It just cinched down around his leg and he blessed sunpath for the bruses later. There are other harnesses that just "plug in" between the layers of the MLW. It's a strong design but you do see the same damage and there is no redundency in the design. I have not seen a cattistophic failure of a hip like that but I've heard rumors...late 80's early 90's? maybe in Europe? Maybe an older rigger can recall. I'm not trying to scare you and I'm not trying to shit on any of the manufactores. But what you're asking is a good question. It's not a triveal question. People today are fat. And the sport is getting more demanding. Freeflying was not around when a lot of these containers and reserves were tested. Kinetic energy goes up with the square of the velocity. 180 mph is more then twice 120 mph. a lot of people are blatantly over loading and worse over speeding their reserves and harnesses. They act like it's no big deal and that's bullshit. There are failures. There is damage. I've seen it. And even if it doesn't blow up it could turn a small survivable problem into an unsurvivable one. Had this conversation with Tamera Corn following one of her old freefly lectures at Quincy. How first we'd see failures in the reserves, happened, and eventualy in the harnesses, remember the Russion rig and didn't a racer blow a chest junction? Enough of a soap box for today. Here's the short answer. get a multi ring harness that FITS you. I recamend chest rings as well for the simple reason that it makes resizing the rig easier if you ever wont to sell it or it gets damaged. And if your a big boy get something big. And don't try to shove ten pounds of silicone greased shit into a five pound deployment bag. You'll damage the rig. you'll hate packing it and your rigger and your packer will hate you. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

It's actually a very interesting idea but I not sure skydiving is the place to use it. I think this would be a lot more appropreat for paragliding and speed flying. There are two very different positions in a paragliding harness and no need for a cutaway. I'll try to describe what I'm imagioning. Say you had a strap passing through the main clip where the canopy attached. Where it would be slack leaning forwards but pull taunt when you reclined. a short strap on the D riser could be pulled down a set distance to trim the canopy out into a flatter glide. even a speed bar type system pulling full on the D's and half on the C's. When you leaned forward it would trim down for approach. Now the truth is most paragliders don't need to front riser there landing. Their huge. but a speed glider might apprecate a little more flare athority and the ability to lean back for a flatter trim in flight. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Tom picked up a compleat MC-1 a few years back. And Story got a whole containor of... I think it was BA-22 a while ago. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm trying to recall ever seing spanwise on a tempo and I must have been blind. I'd hope i'd have noticed. When exactly did this ocure? Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

One of my problems is the deeply ambigues nature of some of these statements and the small changes they try to sneek into the revisions of their instructions. Things they do not draw people attention to. It' like they want there rigs to be illeagule because it removes the liability from them. I mean if they truly wanted to take a hard stand and stand on a hill top proclameing it to the world I'd respect that even if I didn't agree with it. But what the hell does that paragraph from national mean? Pilot calls up to buy a rig and they say there is not a service life but then som one brings you an old rig and expects you to pack it with that in the manual. come on. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

By unairworthey I'm not saying that it should be thrown away. It implies that it is in a nonjumpable condition. A rig with an expired repack is "unairworthy" I'll use the RSL thing once again as an example as it is esentaly a paper work issue. Yes there could be wear issues but that's just part of basic inspection. The Master riggers signiture and endorsement makes leagal the alteration of removeing the RSL. A senior rigger repacking the container every 120 or now 180 days does not have to perform or file repeatedly for the alteration. it's beyond the priblidges of his certificat any way. It's a one time endorsment of the alteration by a Master rigger that makes the alteration airworthy, read that leagal. Now the card is lost. I say that rig is not airworthy with out that paperwork and could not be repacked till it is once again signed off somthing which the regular sen rigger would not be empowered to do. There are other one time checks that are noted on the card or hopefully permanantly marked on the gear. I'm not saying that the rigger is not responcable for makeing sure that the rig is airworthy or that these SB have been met. But posettion of the proper documentation showing compliance means that they do not have to be repeated endlessly by every rigger at every repack. Otherwise only a Master rigger could pack a Jav with the RSL removed. Loseing paper is a bitch, eg. Some where along the line someone lost the paperwork on the prop on my plane. It was a great prop just a paper work thing. Had to take it in to the shop. $500 later I had a yellow tag that makes it airworthy, nice new paint job too. Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm not sure your following me. If a rig is signed off for an AD or SB. Useing the RSl as an example. And the card is lost. Where does that leave the airworthiness of the rig. With no documentation of compliance then I say the rig is unairworthy till reinspected, resigned, retested, etc. There are a number of these old AD/SB that madde a big splash at the time but have now been kind of frogoten and if a card is lost the rig is once again unairworthy with all the liability and every thing else that that implies. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Corect me if I'm wrong on this. Tecnicaly an old card could be discarded as long as it does not show compliance with a SB or AD. All you need is the current pack job but that signiture is not leagul with out documentation of compliance with all SB, AD, or alterations. Eather preveous sign offs or it must be signed off again. example, Javalin sign off for removal of the RSL or the capwell pin check. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Keep in mind there is a max weight an deployment speed for the harness as well. Use the lesser of the two numbers for both weight and speed. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm a big fan of slider reefed rounds. The millatary were I think the last people to adopt the tecnology. The earliest one I can recall is the Starlite. I think BRS really pushed that tecnology with there ring sliders. And then Buttler and his Sombrarow, less of a fan of that one. It seems like the millatary stuck with there proven systems useing large porrus canopies and balistic cutters. Prior to this latest revamp I don't recall them useing any type of slider reefing system. Any one else know of other early ring slider reefing systems? As to round openings... Yes all that is perfectly true but none of that adversly affects the useability of round systems for base. By closeing off the apex with rubberbands or tailgates or even sewing a patch across it you can speed the filling time of the canopy. By short lineing it you can reduce time to line streach. You can further reduce the volume by pulling down the apex on some models, did that to my k22. And the NRG bridge is high. Like so high even a stock 26'lopo would be like no problem what so ever. In comparison to most of the objects we jump with rounds where these issues are more critical bridge day is almost a skydive. For lower stuff we generally jump more specalized rounds with smaller volume and faster oppening times. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

I didn't follow him at first eather. I think he was refering to the old two stow diapers as half stow. There's also the posability of some one makeing the error of stowing those first two or three stows with both line groups and then stowing the rest of the lines in the bottom of the container. On extraction the diaper opens as it lifts before it reaches line streach eliminating any bennefit to the stageing. Don't forget the other classic error of closeing a full stow diper from bottom to top rather then running the lines up under the diaper and stowing them from the top down. With out the lines ripping the slider open the diaper can be locked closed by the twisted bands. Black Death. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com

Fuck that! If you don't want it any more give it to me. Lee Lee lee@velocitysportswear.com www.velocitysportswear.com