riggerrob

................................................................................. Traditionally, the reserve packing data card goes with the reserve canopy. That is because containers wear out long before reserve canopies. Most reserves get retired because they have fallen out of fashion (e.g. a 1980s vintage design). OTOH most containers get retired because they wear out.

.................................................................................. Agreed! While he may be able to pick up that Beech 18 Turboliner for cheap, the maintenance cost will kill his profit margin. ... and if he does to keep up with the maintenance, he had best hire "god's gift to pilots" ... because he will need that much skill to keep the passengers alive when he crashes. Forget about any Beech with a tail-wheel, because insurance companies will refuse to insure any pilot less than a million hours of Twin-Beech tail-dragger time. Bottom line: the original poster would be wiser to buy a single-engine Airvan, Beaver, Cessna, Kodiak, Porter, etc.

***Have a person who just purchased a glider from Germany. Two Spekon RE-5L ser. 5 pilot emergency parachutes. Lives here and needs inspection and repack. He says the German req. is 360 days. .................................................................................. That 360 day requirement is quite common for parachutes in wintery countries where they only fun-fly 6 months out of the year. In practice, this means that all parachutes get re-packed in a mad rush the week before the flying season starts. Hah! Hah! Hah! Since SPEKON has TSO approval, they can be re-packed by any FAA-licensed rigger. SPEKON parachutes should be maintained in accordance with German regulations (even the German-language manual has plenty of photographs) except where German regulations are repugnant to local laws, then local laws apply. For example, if the FAA says that emergency parachutes must be re-packed every 180 days, then Spekon PEPs should be re-packed every 180 days when used in the USA or flown in American-registered airplanes. Just to mess with you ... Hah! Hah! I don't know how most North American riggers can get around SPEKON's instructions about "re-certification by a German prufur every 2 years." I have never met a German prufur working in North America. When I started re-packing SPEKONs, they named me their "North American Technical Representative" giving me honorary "prufur" status. ? ? ?

First of all, ask the seller who his last rigger was. Then ask the last rigger to write a duplicate card with as many re-packs as he can remember. All good riggers keep "riggers' logbooks," while best can also refer to an old stack of invoices. If the seller cannot remember who last repacked that reserve, then ask your most experienced local rigger to do a full inspection before any money changes. A grumpy, old, grey-bearded Master Rigger might remember a Service Bulletin that is too old to be still available on the internet. Always a good idea for any buyer to research any Service Bulletins before any gear purchase, then ask your local rigger to translate the SBs into "skydiver speak." Hah! Hah!

Pin check for free-fall students include: 1 - "pre-flight" before you put the gear on 2 - "ramp check" after the last rehearsal and just before you board the plane 3 - "last chance check" after everyone is on their knees (helmets and goggles on) and ready to open the door. It is common practice to ask another jumper to check your pins a couple of minutes before the door opens. Don't touch other people's gear unless they ask. If they ask you to check gear you are not familiar with, politely decline.

..................................................................................... Weak zipper pulls are a common problem. The problem is that people load them sideways, when trying to close tight luggage. The trick is to tie a piece of cord or tape onto them BEFORE they break. Then, only pull on the cord. If you only pull on the cord, the metal zipper pulls will last twice as long.

Yes! When you ask your local rigger, be sure to have the Javelin's TSO label open and ready. Hint: the TSO label is in the reserve top flap. The TSO label includes: date of manufacture Container size (e.g. TJNRFS, etc.) Main Lift Web length (e.g. 17)

"... Thankfully, they let me use my "more up to date" rig. My main was a 220 ft^2 Spirit (a Comet knock off) ..." ................................................................................. Both canopies were designed by Bill Gargano.

Hint: sew together a jig. Start with 2 pieces of webbing (about the same thickness as your suspension line) 6 or 8 inches long. The webbing will give the feed dogs something to grip. Squeeze a piece of suspension line between them and sew "bridges across the ends. "Bridges" can be made of any scrap webbing. If you pay close attention to the length of the presser foot and distance between bridges. you can use that distance to set the length of your stitch pattern.

Be polite to the pilots and take your trash away at the end of the day.

................................................................................. UPS is a customs brokerage house mascarading as a courier company. One time they charged me a $45 "brokerage fee" after they concluded that the goods were manufactured in North America and no customs duties were due. Hah! Hah!

Do they have continuous 3G coverage, so that you can: ... compare competitors' prices with the girl at the front desk. ... compare what the instructor says in the classroom with USPA's on-line SIM ... confirm that you checked all the stuff on the gear check list ... confirm that surface winds match the forecast ... confirm that the upper winds match numbers published by TC, FAA, etc. ... confirm (on the way up) that you still have access to the SIM in case you have a malfunction ... check list for free fall tasks, on the way down ... cross-check your GPS altitude with the altitudes displayed by your visual altimeter, two or more audible altimeters, all to confirm that the instructors are not cheating you out of expensive free-fall time ... confirm that the spot matches your on-line spot calculator. ... confirm that you are flying the correct landing pattern, compatible with ADS of other canopies, local surface wind forecasts, etc. ... down load video footage of your awesome free-fall smile before you touch down ... fill in your logbook

Aha! What if they actually land on a runway or taxiway? Think carefully about your answer.

................................................................................... Agreed! Unless you are lucky enough to find - un-jumped - "closet queens" most Eclipse Tandem rigs are worn out by now. Same as "if you have to send a SET 400 back to the factory for an 8-year inspection, you are in the wrong business." IOW if you have not made 1,000 jumps and worn-out 3 line sets, (over the last 8 years) you are not recouping your investment in a tandem main canopy.

Good book about early USMS Recon jupers. Just be sceptical of that reviewer because he is the only person who refers to M113 armoured personnel carriers as "Gavins." Nobody else (in uniform) refers the those aluminum boxes, battle taxis, etc. as anything other than "aux pieds calise!" Hint: if you need a translation, ask a VanDoo. Hint: the first vehicle that I ever drove was an M113 and a half "Lynx."

Aha! What if they actually land on a runway or taxiway? Think carefully about your answer. .................................................................................. We teach "aim for an open, grassy field" during the first jup course. 99 percent of (Pitt Meadows) skydivers land on the grass. The last time I saw anyone land on a runway, they heard an "embarrassing" (heels together, etc.) lecture from the chief pilot and spent half of the next day re-doing the canopy-control part of the first jump course. It did not help that the day before, I had to extract them from the top of a tree: the only tree landing I had to deal with in 15 years worth of jumping in Pitt Meadows. Bottom line: if you land on asphalt on Pitt Meadows Airport, you are not welcome back.

What weight is written on the TSO label?

To clarify: I think that the orientation of the pin ("smiley face" versus "frowny face") is minor compared with all the other mistakes that might cause a premature deployment (e.g. slamming your rig around in the airplane.) After most aviation mishaps, the corpse is found at the bottom of a smoldering crater, at the end of a chain of mistakes. If you stopped any one of those mistakes, you stop the accident. In conclusion, orienting your pin as a "smiley face" slightly reduces the chance of a pre-mature deployment.

Pitt Meadows is a "towered" airport and people have been skydiving onto it for the last 15-ish years. Since Pitt Meadows (CYPK) is near Vancouver International Airport (CYVR), it is a "releiver" airport for air traffic destined for CYVR or Abbotsford. Because the airspace is so busy, CYPK is Class D or E airspace. When the tower is manned (dawn til midnight) it becomes Class D airspace and all air traffic must get permission from CYPK's tower. The Pitt VOR beacon is part of the standard landing approach to CYVR ... traffic avoidance requires any aircraft to talk with air traffic control (ATC) above 5,000 feet (same height as the Golden Ears Mountains). The pea gravel bowl is in a field off the approach end to runway 26 right. Since that field is swampy and abuts the end of the runway, it is useless for anything except growing hay. When we jump, the Pitt tower shifts all local traffic away from runway 26 right. That is easy because runway 26 left is parallel and longer and aligned with the prevailing winds. Since the standard pattern for runway 26 left is on the south side of the airport, that puts small airplanes a more than a mile from skydivers. If the ground winds shift to north or south, Pitt's tower might shift all landing and departing airplanes to runway 18/36. That puts traffic off the western edge of the DZ. If skydivers miss the DZ, the most common error is westwards, which pits them in the middle of Pitt Airport. They have to stand where they land until we can send out a radio-equipped van to pick them up. That van must ask permission from the tower before they can drive onto taxiways or runways. They also need the tower's permission before crossing any runway or taxiway. Walking across runways or taxiways is forbidden.

Jumping from small jets is dangerous. The biggest risk is hitting the wing or engines or tail, etc. A decade or so ago, a pair of French Air Forces para-rescue jumpers tried jumping from a Falcon executive jet. They were testing the feasibility of using executive jets to quickly transport them to the middle of an ocean, where they could jump in to save people in distress. The Falcon's main door is forward of the wing. Contact with the left wing's leading edge made a massive bruise on the leg of one test-jumper and the other guy barely missed the wing. That was the end of the test program! The only safe way would be to fall out a Raisbeck (after-market Supplementary Type Certificate) ski/luggage pannier under the aft fuselage. Keep in mind that the luggage pannier is not pressurized, so that altitude and endurance at (oxygen-breathing) altitudes would be severely limited if you wanted the rescue jumpers to be capable of jumping by the time they arrived over the target. Forget about cruising at 10,000 feet until over the target (ship in distress) because jet engine, fuel efficiency drops dramatically below 20,000 feet.

Another possible coincidence is that Italian Air Force jets were practicing flying "nap of the earth" in the same valley that some wing-suiters were "contour flying."

***If I said "like a racer" ... ............................................................................... Hah! Hah! Hah! That is almost as funny as "... close in the normal manner ..." Hah! Hah! Hah!

The 206 P co-pilot's door and exit are the same as: Cessna 172, 175, 182, 205, 207 and early 210.

Sorry for my ignorance.. But why are sad smiley face pins more likely to get pulled in the airplane? .............................................................................. Some people believe that "frowny face" curved pins are more likely to get knocked loose in the plane. Those same people believe that "smiley face" pins are less likely to be knocked loose. I believe that the difference is measured in nano-seconds. Anyone who slams their rig around in the airplane is a .... insert politically-incorrect slur ... and should not be in the same airplane as me.

I feel your pain. After 37 years of jumping, I am forced to sit out this summer. I am waiting for knee surgery related to a plane crash 6 years ago.