riggerrob

I do a variation on a “Windsor” pack. I lay the canopy on the floor and use my knees to secure the slider while gently squeezing air out .... with my belly. Then I fold the canopy in half (top to bottom) and stuff the middle into the d-bag. I keep my knees on the bottom of the canopy, firmly clamping it to the d-bag and to the floor. Once the top corners of the d-bag are full, I stuff the top quarter of the canopy into the bag. Finally, I stand the d-bag on it’s top end. I slide my fingers up the lines to confirm that the slider is all the way up, then stuff the slider and bottom of the canopy into the middle of the d-bag. I keep my weight on the d-bag until the first line-stow is fastened.

The “roll” is the most important innovation introduced by the psycho-pack. Rolling from the top squeezes out air while helping control the packed canopy. I never mastered S-folding ZP fabric. I learned rolling many years before hearing about psycho-packing.

Slider is the first part to catch air, making it the most important. Keeping the slider hard up against the stops is very important! Since the top skin is the last part to catch air, it is the least important.

“Packing those roles-and-rings Strato-Clouds .... my hands bled after every pack job, but we were damned glad we had those new-tangled pull-up cords.”

I cannot remember being tested for colour-vision to simply drive a car. However I still have to pass colour-vision tests to retain my class 2 commercial driver’s licence (city bus). My pilot medical also requires colour-vision testing.

Our skybrother Reginald C. Hurlbut died 2018 June 15 at Skydive Chicago in Illinois. He was 68 years old. Better-known as Veggie Reggie, he was a long-time member of the Kamloops Skydivers’ Club. An early-adopter of wing-suits, Veggie’ taught dozens of Sky divers how to fly them. If Reggie’s infectious enthusiasm for skydiving was not enough, he also enjoyed even more adventures on the ground. One time Reggie was recounting his earlier career felling trees in British Columbia. He concluded his lumberjack story with “Now that was an adrenaline sport!”

I used to work at a (sea level) DZ that offered 9,000’ standard edit altitude, plus “bonus” altitude for $20 or $40 more. That made sense when they flew piston-pounding Cessna 182s. It made less sense when they flew a (turboprop) Cessna Caravan during the busy summer months because the most profitable way to fly a turbine is a single pass at 12,000 feet. Another possible scam is offering “Canada’s highest skydives.” If you take off from Calgary, you are already almost 3,500 feet above sea level. If they take you up to 14,000 feet above ground level, that might equal 17,500 feet ASL. That gives students almost the same air time as sea level DZs, but I have done enough jumps from 14,000 to 19,000 feet ASL to know that it is a healthy practice because few skydivers - and non of the general public - recognize when they suffer hypoxia (shortage of oxygen). When I jumped from 19,000, we had no supplemental oxygen. My student was “woozy” by the time we reached 19,000’ so I had to carry the well-nourished lad the entire length of a Dornier 228. I was puffing like a locomotive by the time we reached the door. My vision was going grey and I was losing peripheral vision. Mind you, that was back in the days when I thought a 20 kilometre fun was a pleasant way to cure a hangover! Hah! Hah!

“....... Rush Limbaugh explained ....... yesterday ..... these are people attempting to get into the country illegally. ..... ” ————————————————————————————— It is against the law to be poor in most jurisdictions.

How wide is the hard red cap on the pilot-chute for 300 series Vector 3/Micron? Are red-cap pilotchutes compatible with Sigmas?

Scoop-and-toss deployment - of chest reserves - was dictated by the wimpy pilot-chutes used before MA-1 was introduced. Ground training (e.g. suspended harness) practice reserves were usually old reserves sewn or wired together. Sewing the canopy kept them in the “flaked” stage of packing. Cords or wires bound suspension lines together. Often a few gores and lines were removed to reduce volume and speed re-closing. Discarding pack-opening bands also speeded re-closing. With all those modifications, many schools sewed large red ribbons on the outside of (ground only) chest containers and wrote “ground training only” around the outside.

Look in the Eclipse Tandem manual for Precision tandem reserve packing details. Eventually container manuals dominate, meaning that most tandem reserves are PRO-packed with rolled noses.

——————————————————————————————— Completing your profile would help reduce confusion. Brits use “bungee” to describe bare rubber bands. OTOH the rest of us say “bungee” to describe rubber strands wrapped in a braided sheath (cotton or nylon). We call bare rubber bands “rubber bands” or “elastics.” Military specification rubber bands often fail after one use - especially with tight d-bags.

I do not worry about being shot in Canada, not to even when I drove a bus through Vancouver’s notorious downtown east side. Statistically, 75 percent of gang murders involve guns, but only 21 percent of civilian murders involve guns. Most gang murder victims are already “known to police.”

Mental health is a valid reason for restricting access to guns. Since my father was diagnosed with altzheimer’s - a few years back - police took away his driver’s license. My brothers have been quietly selling off his guns. A few years back I was diagnosed with PTSD and severely depressed during an 8-year-long court battle, workplace bullying, 15 months unemployment, repeated retraumatization, intimidation inside court, intimidation outside court, delayed knee surgery, infection, swollen leg, deep vein thrombosis, inability to buy prescription medication, too poor to buy food, impending eviction, etc. I was too poor to buy a bullet! I contemplated suicide, but concluded suicide would be an admission that bullies in silk robes had gotten the better of me. I am too stubborn to allow lawyers to win!

——————————————————————————————— Yes, I follow FARS and CARS when flying airplanes because I know that those regulations are written in blood! I reached that conclusion after reading hundreds of aircraft accident reports. Back in the early days of aviation, they wrote a new regulation every time they saw a trend in accidents. Nowadays there is little incentive to write new FARS because current pilots merely repeat old mistakes. Accident reports in PARACHUTIST Magazine teach us similar lessons. BSRs are written in the blood of skydivers whom died 60 or 70 years ago!

Those 3/4” wide tandem rubber bands are exclusive to Vector Tandems with thick, Dacron suspension lines. They solve a problem created by heavy Dacron lines dumping prematurely. In the worst scenario, the drogue jerks the d-bag out of the container, but leaves all the lines in the container, creating a “spaghetti mess!” In the evening worst scenario, the slider remains in the container as the canopy fabric inflates! All the different tandem manufacturers have suffered line dump and they have all developed a variety of solutions. Strong added an Anti Line Slump Flap to their d-bags. Parachutes de France and Eclipse added extra locking stows while Racer developed their Speed-Bag where every line stow is a locking stow. RWS/UPT developed double-wide rubber bands for civilian tandems and triple-wide rubber bands for military tandems. Hint: military tandems like to start with barrels containing 500 pounds of cargo! Line weight seems to be the deciding factor because when you pack Icarus mains - with slender lines (HMA or Vectran) they open just fine with MIL SPEC standard-sized rubber bands.

FAA Master Riggers are allowed to “substitute similar TSOed Components” but questions about compatibility can get complicated. On the simple end of the scale, the Eclipse TSO-holder (Bill Dause) tells me to substitute Vector II Tandem components after eclipse components wear out. Similarly, last year I installed a Vector II reserve freebag in a Next Tandem. Substituting Vector II reserve components is easy because Eclipse and Next are close copies of Vector Tandems. OTOH, Sometimes components from the same manufacturer do not fit in different generations of tandems from the same manufacturer. Last year I learned that Vector freebags are not compatible with Sigmas because Sigma reserve containers are much deeper. And forget about packing a Dual Hawk Resrve Pilot chute into a newer TNT tandem made by Strong Enterprises! Hah! Hah!

........ what if he's one of the growing number who kills himself because of the abuse? Or cuts or huffs or starves or any of the other ways a kid deals with more than he can handle.......... The worry isn't that he kill people ...... I honestly don't know how more of them haven't snapped. ....... Is there any way to help them? —————————————————————————————— Violence is depression turned outwards, while suicide is depression turned inwards. Mass shootings are often suicides that drag in a dozen innocent victims. Many mass shooters save their last bullet for themselves and commit suicide before police arrive. Others try to commit “suicide by police.” Others are disappointed when we’ll-disciplined police arrest them instead. “Why didn’t you kill me?” Radical Islam understands these depressed teenagers too well and are skilled at turning their depression against a visible enemy: Jews, Christians, communists, another Muslim sect, etc.

Dear Bob Church, Please do not misinterpret my experience as healthy survival. Bullies gouged deep emotional scares into my psyche, scars that will never heal! Bullies frequently drove me to tears. To this day, I cannot distinguish any emotional difference between lawyers and elementary school bullies. I remain deeply skeptical of authority figures. Part of the problem with bullying is no clear definition of bullies. Here is my definition of bullies: Bullies tend to be low-achievers who attempt to elevate their own status by putting down others. Put-downs include: name-calling, verbal insults, reminders of negative incidents, harassing phone calls, theft, physical violence, etc. It is easy to dismiss a single bully incident or joke as normal adolescence behaviour or an off-colour joke. But the string of bullying eventually wears down victims. Even if they know the bully is teasing them about a fictional embarrassing moment, repeated teasing still erodes the victim’s confidence, self-esteem, academic performance, athletic performance, etc.

Hey! I resemble that remark! I was the tall, skinny, bespectacled, borderline autistic boy who was bullied every day through elementary school and high school. The bullying started with verbal teasing in kindergarten, then progressed to shouted insults, but soon escalated to gang beatings. I lost count of the number of beatings before grade 3. I only contemplated carrying a pistol to school a couple of times. My mind was clear on repeatedly warning a gang of bullies to “Leave me alone!”, before shooting the first bully who tried to punch me. But I was bright enough to realize that shooting a bully would only increase my number of problems. Other school kids would tease me worse. Bullies would double-down beatings. Authority figures would continue to ignore bullies. Authority figures would blame me for exclusively for the problem. Parents would spank me. Police would interrogate me repeatedly. Courts would ....... before sending me to a prison full of bullies, etc. After that I contemplated suicide, but never figured out how to kill myself without devestating my mother. Suicide is just anger turned inwards. Much later in life, I quit a career rather than face escalating work-place bullying

........ By adding security that you want you're treating a symptom, not the root cause. ———————————————————————————————- A typical government response to a symptom .... Give more power to middle-class, white men. Pay them a reasonable wage (with lots of civil service benefits and a pension) and they will re-elect incumbent politicians. Funny how zero dollars are spent towards helping troubled kids learn less violent ways to solve their sociological problems. ????? V

—————————————————————————————— This reminds me of a Saturday breakfast conversation with a elder from my church. We were discussing letters attributed to the Apostle Paul and concluded that he wrote those letters on two different levels, symultaneously. The first level was for scholars, rulers and priests who had the time - and background knowledge - to debate the finer points of theology for weeks on end. The second level was written for illiterate peasants - with busy lives - who only had time to absorb one simple answer. Sadly, the current era - of 15 second news bites - is dumbing down the masses. Curious people really struggle to learn the whole truth. That is why I read 3 or more sources - about the same headline - before reaching my own opinion. While living in Southern California, I often drove 90 minutes - to an obscure - magazine shop that sold: The New York Times, Paris Match, der Spiegle, Toronto Globe and Mail, Manchester Guardian, etc. because I knew that American media would only tell me one - narrowly focussed - facet of any story. p.s. The church elder is a Unitarian while I was born into a long line of Universalists.

You are starting well. I do a variation on your technique but I concentrate on keeping D and steering lines centre rear. Once the canopy is flaked, I bundle all the steering lines, D lines and a few C lines centre rear. I pull the tail to teeth level and briefly hold the centre tail between my teeth. Then I reach around the outside - with my other hand - and clamp that bundle from the outside. My first hand rolls the canopy. Both hands maintain grips until the canopy is laying on the floor and I lay on top of it to squeeze air out. This extra step keeps the bundle of steering lines, D lines and C lines centre rear.

Funny! Back during the mid-1990s, Rigging Innovations, Jump Shack, etc. are sewing specialized CReW containers for Canopy Formation competeitors with extra-wide riser covers, etc. Sloppy pack jobs are ........ well ........ sloppy! As for sloppy reserve pack jobs ..... most start with customers ordering the smallest possible container, but insisting on buying a medium-sized reserve canopy.

Yes. “Pilot chute controlled slider” one of the many steps to a among openings. Just like ropes-and-rings, that long bridle had to slide through the middle of the canopy. Even with big grommets and thick cotton panels, sloppy packing caused canopy burns. A few Para-Foils and military HALO canopies got double-length PCCS. One end of the long bridle was tied to the Centre cell bottom skin. It was routed through a pulley on the X-slider, back up through the middle of the canopy and finally tied to the pilot chute. Theoretically, the longer bridle doubled the “pulley effect” but they were only briefly fashionable.