riggerrob

I feel your pain brother. Some work places eat their young. Continue scribbling in your logbook. Start looking for another job. At your new job, refuse to discuss bullying at your previous job, because discussing it will only prolong the agony.

No need for parachute harness manufacturers to get involved, if the new strap is an after-market slip-on. Since parachute harness makers never saw the new strap in their factory, they can plead ignorance. You are correct in stating that the problem is more legal than practical. Yesterday I was quivering with rage over the latest asinine lawyer tactic ..... breath deeply ....... breath deeply ....... So I am trying to focus my frazzled energies on a productive solution, like sewing prototypes for this new strap. A few years ago I invented a solution to a similar problem. One of our local jump-planes suffered a shortage of seat-belts, So I started clipping tandem student side-straps to cargo rings. When I discussed the new practice with a major Florida-based tandem manufacturer, they replied "we can neither confirm nor deny ...." Because they recognized it as more of a legal problem than a technical problem. The biggest obstacle is crossing the legal boundary between FAA Technical Standard Order C-22 (seat-belts) and FAA TSO C-23 (parachutes). The tandem manufacturer could not afford to open that legal can-of-worms.

Good idea! I can picture sewing up a simple circle of webbing with a standard, male seat-belt fitting in one end. The circle could loop around the Main Lift Web. That prototype would have to be stuffed inside your jumpsuit before exit. Perhaps we could loop around the leg strap, then feed it through to hip ring. The hip ring would prevent the seat-belt lanyard from separating when pulled at weird angles during a crash. The production model would be so low-profile that you could just leave it dangling from your harness hip joint. Military pilots have been doing that for decades. They don their harness before walking to the plane. Once seated in the airplane, they only clip in once, because their parachute harness is also their seat harness. Like Mr. Peck said, the hassle is carrying around 3 or four different seat-belt ends to match the dozen or so different seat-belt patterns in popular usage. The good news is that fashions in Cessna seat-belts change very slowly. I used a a variation on your theme for a couple of years. When bureaucrats prevented us from installing enough seat-belts in our Cessnas, I simply clipped tandem student side straps to cargo rings. That reduced their flail arc to less than half the length of the cabin. When cargo rings were too small, or non-existent, I snuck Maillon Rapide connector links onto seat-belt hardware. I volunteer to sew the first few prototypes. Just send me a few dimensions and some male seat-belt fittings that are compatible with your favourite jump-plane.

You are missing "top down" journalism. "Top down" journalism tries to put three facts in the first sentence and the last two facts in the second sentence. The "top down" style was developed by daily newspapers to ease the editing process. If a daily editor had to shorten a news item by a line or two, he could easily delete the last two sentences, confident that none of the facts would disappear. The last few sentences usually repeat what was said yesterday per the day before. This allows regular readers to quickly scan the first few sentences for today's updates. The other purpose of " top down" journalism is to catch the readers' attention. Few of us read an entire news article from top to bottom any more.

April 22, 2015 is the 23 anniversary of the Twin Otter crash in Perris Valley, California. I have jumped with most of the survivors (e.g. Tom Falzone and Dan B.C.) and it left a huge hole in the skydiving community. Sadly, Transport Canada has learned nothing from the bloody lessons of 1992. 23 years late, many Canadian jump-planes still don't have adequete seat-belts and trial related to the 2008 King Air crash has been post-phoned until April 2016!

Yup. Yup! Far more vivid memories of the golden sunrise, deep green trees and the mist in the valley.

I used to make a pot of coffee, drink a cup or two a day out of it and keep reheating each day until the pot was empty. Again, I was a cheap bachelor! ...................................................... Naw! You learned your coffee-making skills in the Navy. Speaking of the Navy, my old ship HMCS Iroquois is paying off the first weekend of May. Who thinks weather is going to be severely drunk in Halifax that weekend? Maybe I will sneak off to visit my old jumping buddies at Atlantic School of Skydiving .... I wonder how much it costs to rent a car in Halifax? What was the question?

Sloppy typing and sloppy editing cause all that miss-spelling . When I attended journalism school, professors were offended if we did not spell like the Canadian Press Style book. Is there no similar style book for Standard American English?

You are going to have to replace the entire zipper. When you replace the zipper, you should also sew on a strap - with a snap. The strap will reduce the load on the end of the zipper. How do I say this without hurting your feelings? You are too well-nourished for that suit.

Mr. psf, I disagree. A decade ago, Perris Valley told all their TIs, "you have two options: you can show your handles check to the outside videographer, or you can look for a new job." So TIs either waited until they faced the videographer -to demonstrate they handles check - or they patted all their handles a second time facing the videographer. With hand-cam, it is even easier to confirm that they patted all their handles.

The OP is the same size as me and it sounds like he is looking to buy the same size rig as I bought 30 years ago. No great stigma to buying new. Try phoning around to the major dealers: Aero Store, Chuting Star, Para-Gear, Square One, Square Two and Square Three. Even if they don't have your exact size, they may have an impending production slot that they desperately want to sell.

Did you look in the www.dropzone.com classified ads?

Sadly, some skydivers are too arrogant to learn from other peoples' mistakes. I was I wounded during that crash and (almost 7 years later) am grounded while waiting for a second knee surgery. I had to hold my tongue until my lawsuit concluded (almost 7 years after the accident). Since a lawsuit for another victim is still in the courts, I will limit my comments to repeating what I told TC in October 2008 and hearings for discovery in 2004. Beechcraft stock seat-belts were installed in the crashed airplane, however they were so short they were incompatible with the straddle bench seats installed. Stock seat-belts were too short to wrap around my waist when I wore a tandem rig. When I suggested (to the chief pilot/ aircraft owner) that he order proper seat-belts from Hooker Harness, he got angry and dismissive. He also declined my offer to sew up skydiver-compatible seat-belts. I wonder if seat-belts will be discussed at USPA Safety Day tomorrow??????

For crash sled tests, look up the FAA report published in 1998. Sandy Reid took a variety of harnesses to the FAA crash test facility in Oklahoma City. The tested dummies with a variety of seat-belts and concluded that Hooker's pattern was the best.

You don't actually deploy at those speeds on a normal hop and pop. Generally you take a short delay during which you begin to lose the forward speed of the aircraft and begin to accelerate toward the planet. A two second delay will give you a total velocity well below 80 mph. ........................................... Agreed Mr. Gowlerk, Most Cessnas are only flying 80 knots on jump run, so you decelerate for the first few seconds. Helicopters often fly jump run at 40 knots. Wing-suites routinely deploy at 80 knots or slower. Remember that wind energy increases with the SQUARE of the velocity, so that at 40 knots, a pilot-chute is pulling 1/4 (25 percent) as hard as it pulls at 80 knots. Also remember that a line stow pocket does not have to open (Velcro, tuck-tabs or magnets) to neatly deploy lines. Lines only have to slip out the small opening in the middle of the mouth of the pocket. Only the large mouth of the deployment bag has to open at a precise pull force (Newtons). That precise pull force varies widely with airspeed and canopy weight.

Simply sliding on plastic tubing would be fine, however heating heat shrink tubing would do far more harm than good. Another option is short, sacrificial extra suspension lines. I have only seen them on the outboard A lines of a handful of PD-360'canopies. They were installed on the highest wear lines on the corners of the canopy. The sacrificial line is a straight copy of the regularc(finger-trapped and bar-tacked) loop found on the bottom end of most suspension lines. The sacrificial line is finger-trapped into the outboard A line just above the regular joint. Basically, the sacrificial Line "partners" the bottom few inches of the outboard A lines, so that you have 6 lines per connector link instead of the usual 5.

Those are the most popular sizes for student rigs. If you want a cheap rig, buy an old student rig.

....... Pullup cord type? .................................................. Spectra pull-up cords definitely increase loop life. Just use a chunk of old suspension line. You do re-line mains every 400-600 jumps?

Career criminals know that if they run from Southern California cops, they will beaten. Rodney King was also a small-time career criminal and he was beaten because he ran from cops. Race is irrelevant, stupid petty criminals come in a wide variety of races, colours, genders, sizes, nationalities, etc. Career criminals are not deterred by threats of fines, probation, jail time or the death penalty.

Him AND his elk! I never saw an elk in the video!? I thought that was a horse!?

............................................................................... Good plan. Before your first jump - at a new DZ - ask a local coach or load organizer to brief you on local manifest, loading, seat-belts, exit order, traffic patterns, weather, etc. Maybe ask a local coach or load organizer to accompany you in the airplane. Once you exit, their training value diminishes rapidly. Don't worry about paying staff load-organizers because they are paid by the airplane owner to keep the airplane turning and keep the injury rate low. If you still want to express your graffitied to coaches and load organizers, a sandwich or cool drink - in the middle of a busy day - is worth ten beers in the evening. Once you understand local traffic patterns, do 2 to 5 solos to get comfortable in the air again. Once you are relaxed in the air, do a series of coach dives to until you complete the free fall tasks for your "A" license. A good coach will also brief you on new canopy tasks and critique your landings. The best landing de-briefs include video shot by a videographer standing on the LZ. Which brings me to another point, a coach does not have to jump with you every time because sometimes video is a more valuable de-brief. Sometimes the student/coached is better at critiquing his own left arm position (on video). My point is that you need a high-low mix of coach dives. Definitely jump with a coach when learning a new skill, but once you have mastered the basics, it may be enough to de-brief the video with your coach. Sometimes, (e.g. landings) the best video is shot by a videographer standing firmly on the ground.

That's one I haven't heard of. What country did it split off from? ............................................................................... Trans-Dniester split off from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. Most of Moldova speaks Rumanian (a Latin language) and most of the country is on the Western bank of the Dniester River. However, a small percentage of Moldovans speak Russian. Most Russian-speaking Moldovans live on the narrow, Eastern bank of the Dniester River. Circa 1990, Trans-Dniester declared itself a separate country. I don't know if any other country ever traded ambassadors with Trans-Dniester ????

Originally, "Europe" defined the continental land mass (and near shore islands) bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the North by the Arctic Ocean, on the East by the Ural Mountains and to the South by the Mediterranean Ocean. Geographically, Europe contains the following countries: Norway, Sweden, Finnland, Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, Trans-Dneister, Ukraine, Azerbyjan (sp?), Kazakstan, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, the western-most part of Turkey, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, , Slovenia, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Andorra, Italy, Vatican City, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the. Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The Mediterranean island of Malta is closer to North Africa than Europe, but is generally considered European. I am not too clear on the eastern borders of Europe. The continent probably includes Georgia and Chechnia, but I am not sure about the smaller Caucasian countries like Ossetia, etc. I am also not sure about Iceland because while it is a long way out in the North Atlantic Ocean, all Icelanders are descended from Scandinavians (mostly Norwegian.) Did I mention them all? Politically, far fewer countries have joined the European Union (old name: European Common Market) and even fewer trade with the "Euro" coin. Given the economic instability of some Eastern European nations (Greece cough! Cough!), Great Britain was not to buy into the "Euro."

Beautiful blue sky! Pretty parachute too!

To reduce snag risk, hand-sew the pillow into the main pack tray.