riggerrob

A dozen tandems a day challenges Many muscle groups, endurance, situational awareness, balance, coordination, etc.

Returning to the OP ...... COOLING is the primary reason for opening the door during climb. Comfort ..... This is a " First World" problem .... that pales in comparison with staying alive ..... flying the airplane, etc.

Yes, they are searching for an alternate airstrip, but it will take a couple of years gather all the resources needed to operate a DZ. I overheard some negotiations, but it is way too early to say anything publically.

Sorry if I got you all excited about Pitt Meadows. I only heard the bad news Saturday evening. Pitt Meadows is closed for the season and for the next few years. People have jumped at Pitt Meadows since the 1960s, but the last couple of years have been too slow because of uncooperative ATC and runway upgrades. They simply could not fly enough days to earn a living. Sunday evening, the sunset load included 10 belly-fliers trying to build a formation.

Today I did 5 tandems at Victoria Skydivers. My best day I did 8. My best day at Pitt Meadows included 14 tandems. Sport jumpers can match those numbers if they pack quickly and consistently meet the plane when it lands. For 10 a day, you will need to jump at the bigger "resort" DZs that fly multiple Twin Otters .... none in Canada. Also consider that the jumping season in Canada is half as long as Perris. Pitt Meadows hosted their year-end BBQ today and most Canadian DZs close between Halloween and Easter.

Both major cities each have their own pair of dropzones. Victoria is served by Capital City Skydivers and Victoria Skydivers. Both schools fly their Cessna 182s from Victoria International Airport and land I farm fields to the south. On a clear day you can see the Gulf Islands, Olympic Penninsula and Mount Rainier from 10,000 feet. Then you enjoy a 20 minute van ride back to the airport. Both offer tandem, IAD and gradual freefall training. Good vibes at both DZs 'cus they share many of the same fun jumpers. If Saturday dawns sunny, I will go do tandems for Victoria Skydivers. The big city: Vancouver is also served by a pair of DZs, but they are much farther from the city centre. Pitt Meadows always jumps in controlled airspace to avoid heavy jet traffic headed for Vancouver International Airport. Abby jump-pilots chat with ATC at Abbottsford Municipal Airport. Both DZs routinely climb to 12,000 feet .... maybe more if ATC is in a good mood. Vancouver Skydivers are closest to downtown Vancouver , at Pitt Meadows Airport. You can ride public transit (Skytrain and bus) to within 2 kilometres of Pitt Meadows Airport. Their airlift varies from Cessnas to King Airs. The last couple of seasons they have flown a shiny Navajo. PM's year end BBQ is this Saturday (2017 Sept 23). I may be biased towards Pitt because I worked there full-time for 11 years. The other Vancouver DZ is even farther out at Abbotsford ..... almost to the Mission Bridge! They run a shuttle van from downtown Van' but that is mainly for tandem students. Airlift includes a Porter, a Kodiak and a flock of single-engined Cessnas. Much more partying at Abby. If you are trying to choose between UVic and UBC confided other factors like cost of living. Vancouver housing is frightfully expensive within 2 hours commute from the campus.

If you hang more than 180 pounds under a Raven 1, you are "a stupid, fat white man." That is because Ravens were designed long before any one was building canopies designed for wing-loadings more than 1 pound per square foot. Why anyone would expect a Raven to land softly at more than 1 pound per square foot is ..... um ..... er ...... optimistic ...... clueless ....... over confident .......

She ENJOYS cleaning? She clearly does not have enough to keep her mind occupied. OTOH most dogs think that vacuum cleaners are the spawn of Satan, while cats instinctively flee from those evil, cat-swallowing machines. On a related note: many years ago I was visiting family in Denmark. I phoned the local jump club to see if I could sneak in a jump. Later, I mentioned to my uncle that the club was opening a DZ near Roskilde .... quiet town surrounded by farms. My uncle replied: "They are going to have problems with mopeds." "What?" The he explained Denmark's graduated drivers' licences and how teenagers were only allowed to drive mopeds for the first few years. Teenaged boys being teenaged boys ...... some of them "modified" moped mufflers to go faster.

Maillot Rapide link barrels create an extra wear point that frays your bridle. OTOH soft links eliminate one wear point.

....... I am not Muslim. I was raised catholic but lean more towards a Buddhist approach towards life. I believe in a higher power, but I don't believe it explains everything. ........ Personally I believe there is a lost link to civilization somewhere, or maybe it has been destroyed. ..................................................................................... I believe that the link was destroyed. Every new religion feels compelled to convert everyone else to their beliefs. Some religions convert with love. (Jesus Christ's version of Judaism) Some religions convert with fear (Roman Catholicism) Some religions convert with the sword. (ISIS, ISIL, daesh) Some religions covert with fire. (burning the Library at Alexandria) Some religions destroy all traces of previous religions (Spanish Inquisition). Personally, I never learned how to submit to bullies. Show me the 'advantage' of your religion .....

Refer to hackish's last post. Some planes fly miserably with a door open. Other operating handbooks (single-engine Cessnas) say to unlatch the door and push it slightly open before a forced landing. Both options are best discussed with your jump-pilot long before a forced landing. Maybe this should be a topic during SAFETY DAY in the spring??? As for the risk of being trapped in burning wreckage .... A: Few jump-planes are destroyed by fire (see Annette O'Neil's series of articles from a year ago) .... B: I would rather be awake for the fire, belted into my seat, etc.

Please post photographs.

I deeply distrust people who "invent" explanations after a calamity. Einstein may have invoked God to emphasis his points ....... But even Einstein did not fully understand the "big picture." Even his "Universal Theory" was incomplete when Einstein died. Modern scientists continue struggling to prove Einstein's Universal Theory. Back in the good-old-days religious books contained the best-available scientific explanation of events. Note how many religions included astronomical observatories in their temples (Stone Henge, Maya pyramids, Inca temples, etc.). When they ran out of scientific explanations, ancient scholars inserted "God in the gaps." Consider how busy the average peasant is with their day-to-day lives: raising chickens, raising wheat, raising children, trying to store enough food to survive next winter. Few peasants ever had the intellectual capacity to ponder big questions, so they depended upon parish priests to explain the big picture. IOW the average peasant just wants a quick, simplified explanation and that is what organized religion provides.

To clarify: risks of opening doors in flight varies radically with the type of door. 1. Cessna top-hinged 2. Sliding external side door 3. Slide up internal door 4. Tail ramp 1. Cessna top-hinged door is only available as a Supplementary Type Certificate. STCs include airspeed limits and whether the pilot must wear a pilot emergency parachute (normal). Typically the pilot slows the airplane, yells "DOOR" and twists a handle to unlock the door. Then he/she does the secret dance-on-rudder-pedals to prevent the door from slamming against the underside of the wing. If the Cessna makes multiple passes (e.g. Static-line students) the pilot usually closes the door between passes. The pilot definitely closes the door before descending. The greatest risk is if a pilot huge gets loose when the door is open. The preferred response involves diving after the offending pilot-chute. If the chute inflates before you exit, it will try to drag you THROUGH the door frame ..... around ..... through. Since most Cessnas have control cables and fuel lines hidden in door frames, things can get real messy .... real fast! A few Cessnas have gotten lucky (?) and landed under fully-inflated round canopies ...... not the recommended configuration. The other risk is hitting the horizontal tail during a pre-mature deployment. 2. Sliding external door (Airvan, Porter and many helicopters. Only opened when the pilot tells you to. Sometimes the pilot signals "door open" with pretty coloured lights. The best airplanes have labels beside lights. Second best is briefing every jumper who sits beside the door. Some external sliding doors can be closed by the pilot ..... if not, the pilot needs to limit airspeed during descent. Risks are similar to above. 3. Slide-up internal doors are popular on airplanes with the side cargo door aft of the wing: Cessna U206 & 208 and most light twins. Jumpers still need approval from the pilot before opening the door (see above about signal lights). Since SUID are the easiest to open in flight, some DZs allow jumpers to open doors a bit between 1500' and 5000'. Most insist that all seat-belts be disconnected before opening the door. Smart jumpers pat their handles and glance at their buddies' rigs before opening the door. This allows cool air into the cabin on hot, muggy summer days. Above 5000' all doors should be closed while tandems connect students, pin-checks, etc. Even if jumpers near the door don't hear it, some open doors create nasty air turbulence in the cockpit making it impossible for pilots to hear air traffic controllers. Risks are as above. 4. Tail ramps are the most fun to jump because you can stand upright ... like a Neanderthal .... Er ..... Um ..... you get the joke? Opening ramps too early is scary because it feels like you might slide out of the airplane/helicopter without seatbelts. Tail ramps are normally left closed until the start of jump-run. They are usually only opened by specially-trained staff members. Ramps on large (20+ jumpers) military aircraft are opened and closed - hydraulically - by the crew. Ramps prose T the lowest risk if a parachute deploys pre-maturely. The hapless parachutist disappears out the back!

........ About the only way I know is to comb through the old local newspapers from the time to find if it's mentioned. ........ ------------------------------------------------------------ Fortunately for Canadians, Mr. Molson did all that research and his book includes sources .... like local newspapers. He documents dozens of exhibition jumps - from hot air balloons - during the late 1800s. Most of those jumps were done to entertain crowds at county fairs. He also documents a few exhibition jumps from rickety early biplanes early in the 20th century, but exhibition jumping didn't really take off until after World War 1 when hundreds of military pilots returned to Canada and military-surplus airplanes (e.g. Curtis JN-4 Jenny trainers) were sold at auction for a song. The 1920s were the heyday of barnstormer a working county fairs etc.

Agreeing with pterodactyl!1986 How they challenge their youths is a measure of the maturity of a society. All teenagers want to challenge themselves physically and mentally to prove that they are capable of the greater challenges in life. Back in cave-man days, chasing a pack of wolves off a deer carcass might mean the difference between starvation or survival. Modern society - with steady food supplies - presents fewer live-or-die challenges ..... so societies invent other challenges: cattle rustling, warfare, exploration, mountain climbing, deep sea diving, barroom brawling, marathon running, skydiving, etc. Skydiving offers a rare opportunity to scare your self to death but still have a reasonable chance of survival .... IF ..... you follow the plan. Whenever I hear that old saw: "Why would you want to jump out of a perfectly serviceable airplane?" I rely: "You haven't seen our airplanes!" If they persist in their obnoxious ... I offer them a long, painful, bloody story about my last ride in a particular King Air. If they doubt my story, I point them towards the wreckage laying in the middle of Pitt Meadows Airport. If whuffos switch to asking "Do you have a death wise?" I reply 'Yup! But I must be the clumsiest suicide in history becasue I have failed more than 6,000 attempts."

Hee! Hee! Your comment reminds me of a DZO who offered junior packers $5 to do 25-jump inspections. None of the riggers showed any interest for those wages. .... considering that a 25-jump inspection takes me at least of couple of hours on a Dual Hawk .... and by the time I have re-sew a few popped stitches .... I have been at it for half a day.

The FAA Parachute Riggers' Manual is the best English-language book. Strong's "25 Jump Inspection" Manual (Dual Hawk Tandem) is excellent for teaching inspections. Also tell them to start copying manuals for all the gear that is popular on their DZ. To that end, I usually start a rigging course by asking students to name popular gear on their DZs, then tailor the course to match the gear they are most likely to work on. Following that same logic, I start the lecture on AADs by asking which AADs are most popular at their home DZs. If apprentices only mention modern electronic AADs, then I teach Cypres-centric course with brief mentions about how Vigil differs. More often, I assign a student to research a technical question and report back to the class tomorrow morning. The Australian Parachute Federation's master list of Service Bulletins, Airworthiness Directives, Technical Bulletins, etc. is the best single source for post-production fixes. French-speaking apprentice riggers should start with Eric Fradet's book: "Materiel d'au jour d'iu" (sp?).

By your logic, everything is a copy of everything else on the market because you can always find another rig that shares the given design element. It's a stupid jab useful only when you have no actual arguments. ..... ------------------------------------------------------------------- Plagiarism is rampant in the parachute industry. For example, Charlie Broadwick used soft connector links circa 1910. Does that mean that everyone else copied Broadwick's use of suspension lines to make soft connector links?????

1. Perfectly aligning grommets varies from one container to the next. Some rigs can overlap grommets if: A - they were designed to overlap. B - they contain smaller canopies than original. If grommets don't overlap, they require longer loops with "serpentine" routing. In the worst-case, grommet edges pinch down on the loop, delaying openings. This is only a problem with spring-loaded pilot-chutes. Fortunately main spring-loaded pilot-chutes have disappearred from modern skydiving schools. But loop-pinching can still create problems - in reserves - if reserve containers are over-stuffed. 2. Smily-face curved pins [email]versus frowny-faced .... is superstition. Pin orientation only made a difference back when pin covers depended upon Velcro to hold them closed (1980s).

Door open while taxiing is a tiny risk. Definitely keep it closed from take-off to 1,500 feet. Depending upon the type of door, you might be able to open it a little for half of the climb. Then keep it closed until jump run. If a door opens accidentally, I scan for loose pilot-chutes, then resume breathing and relaxing. Two other factors affect when you can open the door. First, some doors will be damaged if opened when the plane is flying too fast. Secondly, in busy airspace, the pilot needs to wait - until air traffic control approves the jump - before opening the door. The pilot opening the door is the signal that ATC has approved the jump.

Depends ........ upon how much experience I have at that DZ and how much experience I have with that pilot. My first static-line jump was delayed - for a week - by a solid low layer of clouds. To this day I will not tell a sub-A jumper to exit over solid clouds. OTOH I did my 100th jump when a small, lonely, puffy, cumulous cloud prevented us from seeing the airport. Fortunately, we still had plenty of slant vision so that we could see enough landmarks to conform that we were near the airport. For the following 30 years, those "spotting around clouds" skills - learned in Nova Scotia - have proven handy at a dozen other DZs. Now I depend more on "pre-spotting" than looking straight down. For the last 5 minutes before exit, I like to keep my eyes outside the airplane, checking for bridge "A" and bridge "B" and bridge "C" to tell me that we are close to the DZ before I open the door. From a legal perspective ...... rules were written after a disasterous jump during the 1960s that saw a dozen(?) jumpers drown in one of the Great Lakes. That disaster caused a rigid rule about all jumps needing to stay VFR. Fortunately, ADF, VOR, VORTAC, LORAN, INS, radar, GPS, etc. electronic navigation aids have improved so much that they exceeded the accuracy of the human eye around the turn of the century. Now modern jumpers blindly trust GPS. The ideal spotting technique involves trusting GPS but confirming with landmarks around the dropzone.

A more positive response would be for TIs to share tips and tricks for different airplane types. For example, I like to do SITTING EXITS from single-engined Cessnas. I do all the hook-up and briefing with my butt firmly planted on the floor, facing aft. During jump-run, I can lean my head out far enough to confirm the spot. Then I put my left foot on the outboard (right) end of the step and tap students' legs to remind them to copy my example. Then I place student's hands on their chests. I shift my right foot to the aft corner of the door (toes outside). I lean out until I am sitting on my right heal. Pull students' head back and exit. I fully extend my arms overhead and tuck my feet onto my butt. This usually results in a stable, head-down exit. I hog the "old man's seat" behind the pilot because it allows me to spread my knees wide while tightening lateral straps. If you hog the old man's seat, you are obligated to haul the bigger/wider student. OTOH if I am stuck in the front (co-pilot's position) - of a narrow-body Cessna 180 series (as old as me) - I attach lateral straps before closing the door and ask my student to sit on my lap while tightening side straps.

1. Stiff fabric is usually MIL SPEC/PIA SPEC ballistic cloth. However, since it is purely a stiffener, a dozen other bulky, stiff, heavily latex-coated fabrics will perform the same function. Maybe ask a luggage repair shop. Look in the Para-Gear catalog. 2. Cypres window clear plastic is available from automobile upholstery shops, Para-Gear, etc. It is similar to the clear plastic used to make windows on convertible tops for cars, boats, luggage tags, etc. Just remember to buy a grade that is flexible enough to allow you to tap Cylres buttons.

"....... I was planning on doing a jump a week until I complete my license, but I think it would be better if I saved my money and did my license in a week or two. This will also give me time to bring the weight down to a moderate level as well" ---------------------------------------------- Best plan is scheduling a week's instruction at a busy skydiving resort .... with clear weather ...... ------------------------------------------------------------------- " ........ So theoretical question: If two jumpers are equal skill level but different weights, the heavy jumper could fly and track faster but would have a more difficult time varying fall rate?" Variables also include height, arm length, leg length and suit. With the proper suit, a hefty skydiver should have a similar fall rate range to a slender skydiver.