riggerrob

May I suggest that you do 100 jumps - on your current canopy - before visiting France? If you are smart, you will get some canopy coaching and devote your next 100 jumps to learn all the corners of the performance envelope of your current canopy. As for French standards being overly-restrictive .... they are just trying to keep you alive. As for me, I am considering up-sizing my Stiletto 135 to a docile 170, because I have not done enough jumps on my Stiletto to stay current.

Like wow man! This thread reminds me of the first time I drove through downtown Vancouver during a 420 celebration. I was scheduled to pick up a bus at Burrard Skytrain Station. I arrived an hour early, so wandered around downtown. A huge crowd milled about the old art gallery. They were mostly in their 20s and 30s wearing colourful, baggy clothing. Many had not visited barbers in recent memory and a few sported dread-locks. Some of the older hippies had pony-tails hanging half-way down their backs. Blue smoke and a distinctive door filled the air. Friendly vendors were selling brownies and cupcakes on the sidewalk. Some of those chocolate brownies looked mighty tasty. Then I slapped myself and said "You are on duty. Stay sober." What a mistake! By the time I drove my bus away from Burrard Station, the festivities had let out. Stoners jay-walked back forth and back and forth and back and forth across Burrard Street. It took me 20 minutes to reach the Burrard Street Bridge. I was starting to get impatient ... Then I remembered those delicious-looking brownies ... What were we talking about man?

Ignoring all the legal paperwork ..... 30-years worth of pull-testing canopy fabric weakens fabric. On the subject of chemical testing ...... Garry Dourese (sp?) said: "Don't pour any of those nasty chemicals on my canopies." Preserve round canopies were one of the few round canopies consistently made with MIL SPEC mesh: Free Flight Enterprises.

Shake the sand out of your mangina. Hah! Hah! After 3 years service, warranties are void. After 3 years, high-wear parts start wearing out and need replacement. If you compare your ripcord with your car. Most modern automobiles will run for 3 years with zero maintenance (beyond refilling the fuel tank). After 3 years you need to start replacing tires, mufflers, spark plugs, etc.

Judging by the latest photo, someone has tampered with that ripcord. I have never seen loose ends half that bad in normal service. Most harness/container manufacturers (Butler, Para-Phernalia, Rigging Innovations, etc.) have their own tools to swags special-sized ripcords, but find it quicker and neater to sub-contract ripcord mass-production to Parachute Labs.

Ambitious Aboriginal academics who fail algebra - and cannot stand the sight of blood - study law. Then they base their careers in class action law suits, or treaty negotiations or inquiries into missing aboriginal women, or poor drunken Indians living on Vancouver's downtown east side, etc. For example, Britsh Columbia Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown recently ruled that one law firm (Crawford Class Action Service) owed Ottawa "more than $800,000 in unnecessary and unreasonable legal fees." Crawford's investigation lasted 2 years. The class-action lawsuit was about aboriginal children suffering physical, sexual and psychological abuse in residential schools. Even more ridiculous was that the Judge also ruled that the law firm assigned to investigate the excess (Bronstein) had over-charged the federal gov't $1.25 for excess fees! Lawyers grow fat off class-action lawsuits while the poorest of Indians starve. How does that make lawyers any different than the slum landlords, drug-pushers and poverty-pimps who prey on drunken Indians living in DTES?

................................................................... Side zip = "tanker boots."

OP Killing family members of terrorists ...... mmmm ...... this might explain why so many South Americans mysteriously disappeared during the "dirty wars" in Argentina, Chile, etc. We have to wonder if Rusdian tactics differ significantly from the Taliban practice of bombing weddings of their political rivals .... the USAF practice of bombing Taliban weddings ...... etc.?????? Associate with terrorists and die like terrorists .....

Part of the problem is stratification within native society. Most of my rant is based on visits to the Musqueum Reservation (on the edge of Vancouver) and insights from my (white) aunt who lives on land leased from the Musquem Band. The chief and his/her family will always live in the best house and drive the best car. So if a young guy makes beaucoup bucks in the oil patch and drives a fancy, jacked up Cadillac pick-up truck, the band chief needs a fancier car and buys it with band funds. Native society is highly stratified. The best and brightest study at university to become doctors and engineers. The best and brightest pursue careers and integrate with mainstream society. The second brightest natives become lawyers. The third brightest group get administrative jobs with the band council. The majority become welders and plumbers and accountants and school teachers and integrate with the mainstream economy. The least bright stay on reservation and live off money doled out by the federal government. So only the band chief's family and the poorest natives remain on reservations. Sly band members prey upon weak band members.

........................................................................... Long walks up steep hills are also a great way to curb my instinct to throttle the @&$)(?! out of lawyers! WRONG!!! Without sidetracking this thread too much. Once you have a real experience in the courts you realize that lawyers are actors. That the courts are a Kabuki theater where stories or pantomimes are presented in the hopes that their story is accepted by the judge or jury. Years from now you will still be thinking about how to deal with lawyers and your skepticism with any court decisions. ............................................................................... Agreed! The more I experience the legal process, the less I respect the court system. You are correct that court trials are an exotic form of acting. Just last week, I watched a lawyer try to discredit a witness by asking the witness about bureaucratic decisions that were made 15 years ago. Some of those decisions were made above the witness' pay grade. Then the lawyer tried to discredit the witness by asking him if he knew why inflight doors were installed in jump-planes .... Mumbled answer from the whuffo bureaucrat. The lawyer tried to explain why in-flight doors were installed, but the judge warned him about phrasing .... Then the entertainment began as the lawyer asked the whuffo witness "What would you say if I told you that the door installed in the [crashed] King Air was the same roll-up door as was installed in a Beech 18?" Mumbled response .... The question was confusing to anyone who had not flown in that specific Beech 18. I made maybe a hundred jumps from said Beech 18 (summer 1999) and never saw a roll-up door or rails for a roll-up door. I do remember a simple # feet by 5 feet) sheet of clear plastic (Plexiglas?) that up-jumpers man-handled forward just before exit. Hah! Hah! Questions became sillier after that .... I do not know how the judge kept a straight face ... I also do not know how the judge plans to stay awake for the entire 5 weeks of the trial?????????

................................................................................... After reading that study, I concluded that couch-potatoes are at greatest risk of weak bones. Even a little weight-bearing exercise (e.g. walking) improves bone density. After a basic walking program, additional exercises contribute little to bone density.

.............:................................................... Challenge DanG to share that study with the rest of us.

Yeah! Whatever Phil11111 said ... Exercise increases bone density. Lately my rehab has included long walks up steep hills. Last night Introtted down the 500 stairs. Next month I will add water bottles to increase the load on my leg bones ... on the way up. Long walks up steep hills are also a great way to curb my instinct to throttle the @&$)(?! out of lawyers!

........ Should tandem gear be held to a higher standard than personal gear because it is being used comercially? Sorry for the thread drift. ......................................................... Yes. Most of the tandem manufacturers tell us to inspect the main and exterior of H/C every 25 jumps. Timely maintenance reduces malfunctions. When I maintained a fleet of Strong Dual Hawk tandems the malfunction rate approached 1 in 1200 jumps.

We are talking tolerances .... Too little slack increases the risk of accidental deployment. A little slack is good. 1" slack is normal on a Sidewinder reserve ripcord. Other manufacturers want the ball to hang in between the middle and the bottom of the oval ripcord handle. OTOH too much slack (e.g. ball hanging below the bottom edge of the handle) is bad because it increases the risk of accidentally snagging on the airplane.

Consider that Corcoran jump boots were designed during World War 2, when paratroopers jumped into battle, then walked for the other 99 percent of the battle. High-top leather boots replaced canvas leggings and putters for keeping lower pant legs dry. OTOH No one seriously expected high-top jump boots to prevent sprained ankles, because boots that are too tight cause tendinitis in the Achilles' tendon. Guess how I learned to spell "tendinitis?" During the 1960s, the French introduced huge, stiff, leather boots with thick rubber soles, specifically to protect ankles during precision landing competition. The high stiff leather sides helped reduce the number of sprained ankles. Back then, PA was done with round canopies (Para-Commander, Papillon, etc.) down-wind into a pea gravel bowl. Ouch! During the 1970s, the US Army recognized that Corcoran boots did not provide enough ankle protection, so soldiers with a history of ankle injuries were issued extra ankle braces. The primary function of ankle braces is preventing an ankle from turning-under when side-loaded. Come the 1980s more and more sport jumpers converted to square canopies and injuries shifted to wrists as jumpers slid across the ground and stuck their hands out for balance. For ankle protection the fashion shifted to high-top basketball shoes that clamped the tibia and fibula so closely together that they "splinted" each other. Nowadays hard-core competitors wear smooth-soled sneakers because they canopies move far faster forward than downwards. Much faster forward speeds have changed the focus of injuries. Fear of sprained ankles has been replaced by fear of fractured femurs, ruptured aortas and closed brain injuries. You can avoid the latest fashion in skydiving injuries by avoiding heavily-loaded canopies and getting a canopy overhead before impact. IOW quit doing low turns.

Maybe if Christians gracefully adapt to small changes, they won't have to abruptly adapt to major changes. How many more years before we see "Mosques dedicated to "Allah (the major prophet) and JESUS CHRIST THE MINOR PROPHET" .......? All the Abrahimic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, etc. are all based on the same holy book.

From what you have posted in the past, I don't think it will apply to you. The world will continue, just with a reduced population. It is going to be a tough go however. But, to answer your question, no, I do not have a date for the rapture. ........................:.................................. Go ask ISIS, ISIL, Daesch, or whatever they call themselves today ..... because those Moslem extremists have been putting far more effort into preparing for an apocalyptic rapture than any of those Christian apocalyptic doom-sayers. Hah! Hah!

A long time ago, Performance Designs told us to quit shoving the other cells into the centre-cell. I used to shove stuff, but concluded that slider placement is more important. The most important part of slider placement is sliding it all the way up the lines so that it firmly rests on the stabilizers/slider stops.

Not very long. Shorter than your arm.

If you want to see the future, come visit Vancouver. Whites are barely in the majority, while immigrants from Asia now dominate several suburbs. Chinese labourers built the railroad that connects Vancouver to the rest of Canada. Now Chinese-language signs dominate shopping malls in Richmond. Despite prejudiced immigration laws, Sikhs have built dozens of temples. Yellow flags (flying above Sikh gurdwaras) are more common than (Christian) church steeples in many neighbourhoods. Sikhs do about 20 percent of the work at my company. The most recent change was in my section - traditionally white - half the new hires are immigrants from the Indian sub-continent India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, etc.) North Vancouver and Port Moody are dominated by Persians. Canada differs from the USA in having fewer blacks and Hispanics. A group of Mexican-Canadian construction workers recently hung a Mexican flag from - from the newly-built Trump Tower in downtown Vancouver - to tease its racist name-sake! Hah! Hah! As for blacks ..... you are more likely to meet a recent immigrant from Africa than an "Afro-American" born in North America. As for the label "Afro-American" ....... most of those quadroons and I grooms are stretching the term so far that it becomes irrelevant. Hah! Hah! If we just continue inter-marrying at the current rate, everyone will be some shade of "brown" in a few more generations.

"Approaching social breakdown"???? Breakdown as Christians know it. But a minor improvement as Muslims know it. The book "The Upside of Down" suggests that society has two ways to handle change: A; Adapt to small changes B; get how helmed by big changes. IOW we can slowly adapt to the gradual demographic trends or we an be resists, then be overwhelmed by a tsunami of change. Me, I am quietly stocking up on canned beans.

Yes to what pchapman said. I have seen that problem a few times before, but yours is yours is the worst. How long are the loose strands protruding? The question is whether wire strands slid within the cable ????? Sometimes your local rigger can grind (wheel) the loose strands until they are flush. The key is not grinding too deep into the cylinder of the pin. Then apply a drop of nail polish to prevent the loose ends from lifting again. In the long run, you are still going to need to replace that ripcord, but keep the old (frayed) ripcord as a spare.

***Yep, last jumped in '87. I had a conical 26' Lo Po in my Vector. .................. ............................................... Who made your round reserve? AFAIK Strong and Free Flight Enterprises are the only manufacturers not affected by the acid-mesh recalls. Several other companies (GQ Security, Pioneer, etc.) quit making sport gear when the acid-mesh recalls were announced during the late 1980s. As an aside, round reserves disappeared because round mains disappeared. Previous to 1989, most schools equipped static-line students with military surplus round mains and reserves. Circa 1980, the US military started cutting the suspension lines off when they sold surplus canopies. As military-surplus canopies wore out, they were replaced by large docile square canopies (e.g. 288 square foot, 9-cell Manta), so that by 1989, USPA and CSPA forbid dropping students under round mains. During the 1980s we saw a dramatic reduction in the numbers of malfunctions and far fewer broken legs. By the turn of the century, most schools had updated the reserves to squares, because schools tired of teaching two separate methods of landing, knowing that students were ignoring everything they said about landing round reserves. IOW young instructors had never jumped rounds. Now it is difficult to find an instructor or rigger who has ever seen a round canopy in the air. Young riggers do not want to waste time learning how to pack round reserves because they don't expect t make any money off the skill. As for my person experience: I jumped rounds during the 1970s and 1980s, but my last round jump was in 1986. Like John Mitchell, I doubt if my old knees would survive landing rounds.

Their "rule" might only be a loft policy. I have packed plenty of Ravens that were more than 20 years old. What year was your Raven made? How big is it? How much do you weigh? Which Dash-letter is it? There have only been a couple of Service Bulletins issued on Raven reserves. The first SB "recommended" installing a bikini slider on the first batch of Ravens, converting them to Raven Bs. The new slider should be written on the orange label. Circa 2000, Precision issued a second SB affecting some Raven Dash-m all sizes. Any Raven Dash-M with single bar-tacks through the Type 3 tape line attachment tapes, needs to be re-sewn or returned to the factory of new line attachment tapes (Type 1 webbing). Today I packed a Raven Dash Mb-150-....... that had the later pattern line attachment tapes. I would not jump an original Raven Dash-M.