riggerrob

Agreed! Maybe I am old and burnt out, but I gave up on arguing with tandem students a decade ago. I figure the most professional thing I can do is tell they "great skydive!" then grab the next student. Tandem students do stupid stuff. Get used to it! On the slim chance that they return to learn how to skydive solo, manifest will have to deal with them because I will suddenly going to find myself waaaaaaay too busy "lubricating all the widgets on the tandem drogue swivels." ... you know, according to that Emergency Panic Before the Next Jump Service Bulletin that Strong Enterprises is going to issue tomorrow.

................................................................. What forces you to flat pack? Remember that the CONTAINER manufacturer has the final say in how you flake and fold the reserve canopy. When the canopy manual and the container manual disagree, pack it according to the container manual. Most modern container manuals say to PRO pack reserves. PRO packing became the preferred method back when electronic AADs (e.g. Cypres) came into fashion 20 years ago, because PRO packing leaves more room for the AAD's battery box..

"...The non-loaded seams are sort of semi rolled, I've no idea how it could have been done on a double needle. ..." ..................................................................................... They were probably sewn with two separate passes on a single-needle machine. The first row of stitches aligns all the raw edges of the rib, bottom skins, etc. Then you fold them over twice (to hide the raw edge) and sew it a second time. Most parachute seams are sewn with 2 rows of stitching for redundancy. In case one thread gets damaged, the canopy will still hold together long enough for a soft landing.

Kind of like the F4U Corsair pilot who bailed on at an insanely low altitude (less than 500 feet on final approach for a runway). He replied that the flames hurt his feet so much that he did not care if he was wearing a parachute, he was bailing out! Fortunately, his PEP rigger did a good job and the pilot walked away from that accident.

................................................................................. Divorces can be expensive and ex-wives can suck the will to live out of you ... after they have sucked your wallet dry. The world is lesser after the passing of a great comedian. I hope Robin Williams finds peace in heaven.

When I did my first jump course, we spent most of Sunday morning rolling around in the grass. Mind you, that was back in 1977 and the planet was much harder back in those days. Hah! Hah!

Am I allowed to answer my own question? Yesterday evening a customer dropped off a Squirrel Stronglite harness/container. It passed the inspection, with no popped stitches, but I still sewed on the update. I only had to remove one row of stitching on each shoulder, sew on the inlaid piece of webbing and re-close those shoulder joints. The entire job took less than an hour ... well it took an hour if you include reading the Special Inspection and Service Bulletin three times! Hah! Hah!

............................................................................ .... an emergency injunction against a tree? Hah! I'll bet you that tree sprouted before injunctions were invented by mere humans!

For durability, call a company that makes tunnel suits (e.g. Vertical). Also consider just dressing students in free fly pants. Pants will keep 80 percent off and if they are large enough in diameter with elastic cuffs will eliminate the need for students to untie shoes. Mere pants also reduce the risk of students sweating to death on hot summer days.

Next question: is an AK-47 powerful enough to stop a polar bear?

Our hypothetical hero is a Canadian native just going about his daily business, clubbing baby seals on ice floes. An Antonov 2 lands on his ice-flow, mangling it's lower left wing in the process. A pair of Russians leap from the wreckage, one of them brandishing an AK-47. Our hero only has one round in his Lee-as field rifle. A polar bear arrives to investigate. What does our hero do next?

Hypothetical skydiver lands in redwood tree. He is more than 200 feet (70 metres) above rough, steeply-sloped ground. Half of his canopy is suspended from the branches of one tree while his other end cell is snagged on another tree. Ergo he is beyond reach of either trunk and beyond reach of any branch strong enough to support his weight. How does he return to civilization?

Service Bulletin about Squirrel BASE harnesses. A mandatory inspection before the next jump. Inspect the stitching at the shoulder joint, where the MLW and diagonal back straps meet. Apparently some-one suffered an unstable opening and broke some stitching. http://squirrel.ws/public/SB-14-8-1.pdf

He waits 15 minutes for the next jump plane to take off from the drop zone, and he walks towards the take-off point underneath it. ............................................................................................. Remember that his vision was seriously degraded when his fancy glasses were confiscated.

If you had landed in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Southern California/Florida/etc. you would realize that you had landed in the Third World! I have been in gas station toilets that were NASTIER than any public toilet in Cuba or Portugal or Puerto Rico ... the sort of toilet that you want to piss on your hands as you leave!!! Hah! Hah!

5 years in the future .... MIT grads have sold astigmatism-correcting screen-overlays to every iPhone owner on the planet. All the old folks have myopia-correcting heads-up displays on their car wind-shields. Furthermore, they are so senile, they have forgotten where they left their reading-glasses. All the yuppy teenagers have been brought up with instantaneous vision-correction built into their Google glasses. Optometrists have almost gone out of business. You cannot buy contact lenses for love or money. Laser eye surgeons have gone bankrupt. A young skydiver outflies his buddies and opens over a rough neighborhood. He swoops past laundry lines and trash cans to land in a back alley. He is confronted by a gang of (pick the visible minority that scares you the most) who relieve him of his parachute, wing-suit and helmet. The helmet contains a half-dozen, prosumer electronic gadgets. The rig cost more than any of their cars and helmet cost more than any of their houses. Our hero wakes up in a back alley with no shoes, no skydiving gear and little more than shorts and the t-shirt on his back. The gang of (insert the visible minority that scares you the most) stripped him of all his ID, all his papers, all his electronic gadgets and his ability to see clearly. How does he navigate back to civilization?

How old school of you.... how many of those will be standing forward for TO? at arthur they painted a black line inside the fuselage - to indicate that if your ass was behind the line during a problem takeoff - you have to throw yourself out the door to save the rest of the load.... .......................................................................... Similar to the red line now painted on the floors of most Skyvans.

Harness padding - on student rigs - is often compressed to the density of unobtainium.

..................................................................................... Yes, back during the 1980s, CSPA used to publish "Howard's Museum of Rigging Horrors." Howard Sommerfeld was a long-serving member of CSPA's Technical Committee.

............................................................................. Kind of like a Frenchman trying to order a "glisseur" or slider the same way he might order a pair of "elevateurs" or "risers."

Most student harnesses are sized "fits nobody comfortably." Hah! Hah! The other issue is that any new harness will be stiff for the first 50 jumps or so. The only solution is to "jump the stiffness" out of it as quickly as possible.

...................................................................... "Extracteur" or "extractor" is the formal, French term for what Americans call a "pilot-chute." The French term is more logical to my ears.

Hard deck is 5 seconds after exit. If you don't see a fully-inflated main overhead, pull the ripcord (on your chest-mounted) reserve IMMEDIATELY!

The newest AT-11 canopy is a cross-type canopy that behaves like a round canopy. Looking straight down, it is sort of rectangular, but all the lines are the same length and it has drive slots on all 4 sides so it goes straight down.

Booth's early semi-handles contained a piece of 1 inch diameter steel tubing. The tubing had a narrow slot Dow one side. The slot was wider than a ripcord cable, but narrower than a ball swags, so the ripcord cable just floated in the slot. All the metal bits just floated inside the fabric. Even if all the fabric burned off, the remaking metal lump was still large enough and strong enough to serve as a ripcord handle. Similarly, some Javelin semi-hard ripcord handles contain a tiny oval loop of regular steel tubing. Try to visualize the world's smallest ripcord handle, too small to insert your thumb. Finally, Reflex soft ripcord handles were built similar to cutaway handles, but included a small steel ring (RW-4) swayed into the loop at the bottom (handle) end of the cable. Can any of you clever fellows tell me why they needed that extra metal lump?