riggerrob

My second suggestion would be to call STRONG ENTERPRISES since their SET 400 tandem copy is a copy of BT80.

Damn, I missed your reference to the mythological Icarus I thought you were just bashing Icarus canopies. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Hah! Hah! Got me too! I missed the reference to Greek mythology. My alibi is reading it before my first cup of coffee sank in! Hah! Hah! OTOH the "Daedalus" corporate name inspires confidence. For the uninitiated: Daedalus ground-launching canopies are made by a spin-off from Icarus/NZ Aerosports.

Do you happen to know who may hold such an approval? ---------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Flanagan (Beiseker, Alberta). has the paperwork for a wide variety of skydiving STCs for Beech 18, King Air 90 and many single-engined Cessnas. If he offers you the STC for the throttle guard (red steel tube) installed in his wide-bodied 182) ...... politely decline. TIs hate that throttle guard because it limits leg room. Getting back to back boards (pun grooooooan) Bobby MaGee suggested starting with a stock Cessna co-pilot's seat. Strip off all the upholstery. Shorten the legs and install it on stock set rail FACING THE TAIL. The top of the seat back should rest against the bottom edge of the instrument panel. Trim plywood to fit inside frame. Cover with vinyl and submit the paperwork. The biggest challenge is shortening the legs enough to minimize the new lump in the floor. The TI sitting in the co-pilot's position will enjoy a small, slightly raised lump, but try to keep it low enough to prevent late divers from tripping over it. Surrounding seat cushions (the same height as the seat rails will help camouflage raised edges. Most of the adjustments will be bolted in one position. TC might like Bobby's suggest because it is mostly made of stock Cessna parts and only a few were shortened. Boby's suggestion reminds of the plastic milk crate that S/L JMs sat on in Snohomish: a quick, simple, cheap redneck-engineer solution to a fatigue problem.

Dear obelixtim,[/:P] It is difficult to understand what thoughts pass through the minds of airport administrators. Sometimes we apply Occum's Razor: simplest explanation. Sometimes we apply Murphy's Law: what can go wrong will go wrong. Lately I have applying Hanlon's Law: don't attribute to malice anything that can also be explained by stupidity! Ha! Ha!

Yes, there are a few TSOed control guards for Cessna 182s. The best are small and unobtrusive. The smallest barely protect engine control know from accidental adjustment. The simplest and most effective backboards are made of plywood and covered with indoor/outdoor carpet. The top edge bolted to the underside of the instrument panel. The bottom edge bolted to the floor directly below the IP or a few inches aft of the upper attachment. Tilt angle is similar to the pilot's seat, only facing aft. With enough Velcro, you could forget about the bolts. If the backboard is not bolted to the airframe, it could count as "cargo". Most fede don't notice (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more) at similar straddle benches made from blocks of foam, covered with vinyl and flopping loose in the cabin. I would start with 4 inch wide strips of Velcro reinforced with webbing or nylon Cordura. I doubt if vinyl is strong enough. OTOH the largest metal throttle guards force TIs to struggle during every exit. The worst control guard I have worked with was installed in the wide-body Super 182 that operated at Beiseker. That steel tube was bolted to the floor so far aft that seated TIs struggled to get students' feet out the door. I lost count of how many hundred times I assisted another TI's student's feet out the door. If TC gives you a hard time, mention "positional asphyxia" and wander off. The term "positional asphyxia" is in TC's textbooks. Ha! Ha!

***if you look at chutingstar, you'll see that most rigs (mirage and RI seem to be the exceptions), most manufacturers have one size safety stow for all containers. ....... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Except RWS/UPT who have one size Safety Stow for solo Vector3 containers and a larger SS for tandems. For a more productive thread, let's compile a list/chart of Safety Stow lengths for various rigs. To keep this list/chart serious, only measure new Safety Stows, recently arrived from the factory. Lengths published in manuals are another reliable source of SS lengths.

On a practical note: Who do I contact to buy a line kit for my Icarus Pilot 168? The orange warning label has faded to uselessness.

Are you sure? I've never heard of lithium battery doing that. Just older chemistry ones. ------------------------------------------------------------------- I have seen one Cypres 1 battery short-circuit and over-heat. I detected the unusual temperature when I touched the bottom wall. I quickly removed the Cypres, removed the battery and sent the AAD back to SSK. Fortunately, I reacted quick enough to prevent long-term damage to AAD, canopy or container.

Dear Kallend, You missed the point. Laws discourage criminals on the edge of society from committing crimes. Laws also discourage the middle class from committing criminal acts. When economies slow down, honest workers get idled and some turn to crime to make a living. The bottom edge is vaguely defined, chaw going as often as the weather. Meanwhile, the top edge of society includes people so ambitious that they will do ANYTHING to turn a profit. Fear of sharing a prison cell with a common criminal is the only thing that keeps the overly-ambitious on the legal side of regulations. Odd how 3 hots and a cot and all the sex they could ever want is not enough to satisfy overly-aminitious billionares?????????? Written regulations will never discourage all criminals, but if a law reduces crime rates, then the law has served its purpose.

First time I have heard that rumour. But I have only been jumping for 40 years and rigging for 33 years. Do you remember the biblical story about Jesus Christ encountered a crowd stoning an adulteress? Jesus stepped into the fray and said:"Let he who is without sin throw the first stone." "A boulder the-size-of-a-watermelon sailed over the crowd, crushing the accused's skull." Jesus looked to the back of the crowd. "Mom! Some days you can be a real bitch!" Hah! Hah! Responding seriously to the OP's question: when Airtec was testing Cypres 1 prototypes, they subjected them to thousands of hot and old cycles. Eventually they determined that soldered joints might fail after 12 years of hard use. These tests are standard for a wide variety of aerospace components. Engineers try to imagine the most rugged service life ..... Try to picture a flying school with student pilots landing hard dozens of times per day. Then engineers simulate that abuse in a lab. Once they have determined how long a component with last in rough service, they delete the last 30% and set that as the maximum service life. MSL might be defined by years ..... number of landings ..... hot-cold cycles ..... corrosion ..... etc. MSL is at best an educated guess by knowledgeable engineers.

Agreeing with councilman ...... If you mailed a Cypres 1 (or most Cypres 2 production) back to the factory after its 12th birthday, Airtec staff would have a good laugh and offer you a discount on a new Cypres. In 2032, if you mail a 2017-made Cypres to Airtec or SSK, they will have a good laugh and offer you a discount on a new Cypres. Bottom line, no factory will: inspect, assemble, repair, modify, alter, update or pack any parachute component after its planned retirement. Retirement schedule is written in the manual.

Glad to hear that the vote was postponed. As a Canadian pilot and skydiver, I was ambivilant about ATC privatization until a couple of years ago. Over the last two years an-overly-ambitious airport manager and under-ambitious air traffic controllers (Nav Canada) limited skydiving at Pitt Meadows Airport (CYPK) so many times that they could not pay their bills. Many sunny Sundays (over the last two summers) saw zero parachutes over Pitt Meadows! That DZO closed forever on Sunday, 2017, September 23. Skydivers had been jumping at Pitt Meadows on-and-off for the last half century. Pilot Donn Richardson has shared some his experiences flying jumpers back during the 1960s. Yes, I was honoured to be invited on the last load at Pitt Meadows ........ but it was one of those honours that stirs up sad thoughts ..... like being invited on an ash dive! In conclusion: Americans are wise to resist privatized ATC because privatized ATC will routinely deny clearance to jump-planes, forcing DZs out of business.

----------------------------------------------------------------------- Holy thread diversion our dear skytribe!!!!!!! You are the first person to mention "warranty"during a debate on AADs! Warranty only relates to repairing manufacturing defects during the first few months after it left the factory. NO parachute component is warrantied to save your sorry ass! Even with the best manufactured, assembled and packed parachutes will not keep you alive if you make too many mistakes. All the early Cypres retire after 12.5 years. Only Cypres 2 - made this year - will be factory-maintained by Airtec and only before their 15.5 year retirement date.

........ Could he not have just bought one of the other existing millions of rifles that have been in the US since what vietnam era? ................................................................................ Prohibited guns (e.g. fully-automatic machine guns will always be available to criminals. OTOH prohibited weapons are ridiculously expensive and difficult (for honest citizens. May I suggest another way to limit the number of guns in circulation? Just allow insurance companies to set gun standards. Municipalities could enact rules requiring steel safes, trigger locks, liability insurance, etc. Insurance fees would be tiny for law-abiding citizens. However, if police ever catch you with insufficient insurance, they would forcee you to pay all the back insurance premiums, seize your (improperly stored) guns, etc. At the end of the day, insurance companies would make it ridiculously expensive to improperly store weapons or own prohibited weapons. As for "bump stocks": they look like light machineguns, they feel like LMG, they sound like LMG, they smell like LMG, they taste like LMG, they kill like LMG ......... that puts them in the prohibited category along with purpose-built LMGs. Bump stocks have always been prohibited in Canada.

Standard BULLY behaviour: punishing the weakest.

How does this differ from "guest workers" in Arabia? How does this differ from "dancers" who were recruited Russia or the Ukraine? How does this differ from some of Boko Haram's shenanigans? Old Native American proverb: before you criticize your enemy, walk a mile in his moccasins. Then you are a mile away and you have his shoes!

His mistake was not shooting the moose again to make sure it was dead. He won't make that mistake again. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah Moose! Get some revenge! The hunter's girlfriend is a DNB. Riddle: why do moose kill so many motorists in Atlantic Canada?

Did you enjoy the first Blade Runner film? Did you enjoy Blade Runner 2049? I enjoyed both Blade Runner films and several of Phillip K. Dick's novels. Like most of PKD's stories, BR 2049 has plenty of plot twists, surprises and quirks. IOW PKD holds my attention because he challenges me to become a better reader/viewer. BR 2049 is one of the few films that left me exhausted, disoriented and mildly confused. IOW it is one of the few films worth watching a second time. Only "Das Boat" evinced similar emotions. BR 2049's art director and set designer did an Oscar-worthy job of creating a post-apocalypse world inhabited by humans and robots. Several characters cannot distinguish between the two species. BR 2049 picks up the original story line after the original. Original Blade Runner Harrison Ford helps move the second half of the plot along. Ryan Gosling portrays a newer BR well. At almost 3 hours long, the film challenges the audience to stay awake and keep track of obscure clues Ryan G digs up (as in got his hands dirty) from the first scene, but he struggles for most of the rest of the movie to understand those clues. The audience struggles too. I solved the mystery an hour before RG, but the audience needed to follow RG along his path to understand the clues. The final scene still surprised me! A literary critic could find several parallels with modern dilemmas: pollution, Chernobl, Fukashima, global warning, North Korea launching EMPs, the nature of body implants, slavery, the broadening gap between rich and poor, big data, Big Brother, 24/7 surveillance, separation of work and leisure time, dependence on electronic gadgets, medical technology advancing faster than theology, etc. In conclusion: Blade Runner 2049 is the best movie of the year. Go see it.

Congratulations! You made a mistake. You responded correctly You did not tear up your parachute You did not injure yourself You learned a lesson You shared your learning experience with other skydivers That makes you a better skydiver than most Convratulate yourself!

That "only a single jump-run" policy may have been imposed by lazy air traffic controllers. Bad attitude because it increases everyones' stress levels and malfunction rates. Professional DZOs don't whine about the few extra dollars worth of gasoline because they understand the alternative.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- What do you get when you combine "country" music with "rap" music?

Tomorrow CNN will blame Fox News for some huge sin. Please pass the popcorn. Hah! Hah!

Ask Steve Noonan about his exit altitude MSL when he tandem jumped near Mount Everest. I suspect that some military tandems have jumped from higher, but they are not the sort to brag .....

....... Dozens of tandems: Is it the stress that deployment puts on the body with all that weight? Or steering the toggles? I've noticed on tandems that the toggles seem "heavier" when I try to steer than when I'm flying my own canopy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- All of the above ..... plus carrying a 50 pound rig, plus carrying 200 pound students out of the airplane, plus all of the psychology of couxing first-timers out of the airplane, maintaining professional decorum even when you are exhausted, plus ..........

------------------------------------------------------- No! America had tremendous turmoil during the 1960s and 1970s.