riggerrob

---------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a video on YouTube illustrating that brand of intelligence. The video clip shows a guy pumping gasoline into his car. He notices a spider inside the filler compartment. Since he is deathly afraid of spiders, he pulls out his cigarette lighter and tries to burn the spider! Huge flames!!!!!!!

That reminds me of a carpenter in my home town. He was missing half the nail on one thumb because he got too close to a table saw. A few years later, I noticed that his other thumb was missing a chunk. He replied that he was telling his story (about his first thumb) to a customer. To illustrate his story, he swung his second thumb too close to a table saw!

Packing parachute canopies flattens the back-pad and tightens the entire harness. Bottom line: you will never get an accurate harness fit-check with an empty container.

Another variant on Quick-Attachable seat-packs is illustrated on page 178 (section 5.024 Navy Seat Parachutes) of Poynter's Manual Volume 1. It illustrates a typical seat-type harness with long risers stowed down the back of the harness. The difference is that risers terminate with B4 snaps. Risers snap onto a pair of D-Rings protruding from the rear corners of the container. To connect the harness and container, the pilot connects 4 snaps: 2 risers and 2 pack retainer belts. PRBs go straight up the main lift web (while seated) and snap onto chest-strap hardware. Presumably the ripcord is attached to the left PRB. This alternate sounds more comfortable during opening, because risers just peel off the back-pad (like other seat-packs). Though I have a couple of doubts. First, I wonder if the average pilot could remember to snap all those 7 snaps (3 harness snaps plus 4 more attaching him to the container) when he boards the airplane. Secondly, I wonder if those D-Rings would poke the pilot in his delicate backside?????

----------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreed! A Canadian DZ recently lost a military contract because the army insisted on a large liability insurance policy. That type of insurance is not available in Canada.

A narrowly-focussed program can prepare military students for complex jumps hundreds of jumps earlier than civilians who just wander around the sky having fun. Rumour has it that Alaskan Air National Guard para-rescue specialists are jumping tandem bundles with only 300 jumps! In many respects, jumping bundles is simpler than jumping with flailing, screaming humans. The other issue is that military jumping includes multiple layers of redundant gear checks: pre-dressing, assistance while dressing, pre-boarding, pre-exit, etc. Once those drills are burned into medium-length memory, they are very difficult to change. On the one hand, military drills build confidence. Sometimes that confidence continues building into arrogance. Arrogance sometimes builds into over-confidence and sometimes over-confidence kills. Finally, intense training methods burn skills into the brain so deeply that they can become impossible to change. Which is why most armies retire Chiefs after 20 or 30 years because it is impossible to change their ways.

Are they using different materials than US-made rigs? Jerry Baumchen -------------------------------------------------------------------- For the most part, Avalon materials are the same MIL SPEC/PIA SPEC materials as American-made rigs. APS Bulgaria use top-grade 1000 denier Cordura. A few tapes are herringbone/chevron weave, tougher than the ribbon weave tapes used on American-made rigs.

How many of them were PD Optimums? . -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I cannot give you an exact number, but I believe that most of those fatalities involved "stupid, fat, white men jumping tiny reserves."

Good point about cleaning cutaway cables! California desert dust can dramatically increase the tension needed to pull a cutaway handle. I have noticed a difference of 25 pounds between dirty and clean cables. A decade or so ago, Parachutes de France published a Service Bulletin about cleaning excess lubricant out of cutaway housings. Seems that their factory used plenty of oil while winding housings, but neglected to remove it from completed housings.

Both PRO-packing and side-packing work for airplane jumps, but if you plan to jump it off buildings, then start practicing PRO-packing. PRO-packing will give you more on-heading openings. If your canopy is taller than your shoulder, then hang it over the hooks used by tandem packers. If you can still wrap your tailgate around your steering lines .... Great! If not, do not worry about it, because tailgates are most valuable at low airspeeds. When skydiving your BASE canopy, pack with your steering lines on the Center-line. Stow your lines in the tail pocket and stuff the canopy into a big student rig. For hop-and-pops, you can use a skeleton slider or mesh slider, but any delay more than 7 seven seconds deserves a full fabric slider.

The Canadian Army jump out of civilian airplanes because they cost a fraction of the cost of flying C-130 or C-17 military transports. Around the turn of the century, Canadian Search and Rescue Technicians switched to CSPA's training methods so that they could do refresher training out of a Cessna 182 instead of Buffalos. They hire CSPA Course Conductors to bring CSAR School instructors up to date on modern skydiving instructional methods.

In Vancouver it is fashionable to pull a hard lane change in front of a snow-plow. Oh! And signalling lane changes or turns is NOT fashionable.

Sorry, but I should have included the fact that FC Mini Cricket 130 is placarded at a maximum suspended weight of 145 pounds. I will freely admit to being a grumpy, old, grey-bearded Master Rigger who started jumping back in 1977 (40 years ao). I have seen a variety of fads come and go in the skydiving industry as a young jumper when much of this "questionable" gear was introduced. My bias against older gear started during the acid-mesh era. Considering that most of the suspect round reserves were sewn during 1981 and 1982, they are now 35 years old! While I have tested and packed a thousand .... ish round reserve canopies suspected of containing acid mesh, Ino longer have the tools (bromocreasol and fancy clamps) and refuse to touch them any more because 35 years of tensile-testing has weakened the fabric. My bias against smaller, older square reserve canopies is based on the handful of jumps that I made on its bigger brother, the Firefly, a 176 square foot, 7-cell made of F-111. I weighed 182 pounds back then. Even though all my landings were well-flared, stand-ups in the pea gravel bowl, my ankles stung every time! Another factor adding to my bias against old gear is younger jumpers expecting small, old reserves to fly as well as modern (for example) PD Optimum reserves the same size. We had a practical demonstration of this phenomenon a decade ago. I had been grumbling about "stupid, fat, white men jumping Micro Ravens" for a decade. Young skydivers were tired of hearing my rant until one of them made series of mistakes on his way to the hospital. He broke both arms, spine, etc. He could not wipe his own ass for a month! The price of second-hand Micro Ravens dropped dramatically. This accident occurred around the same time that Precision quit making Micro Ravens and started making R-Max reserves. I have one jump on the smallest R-Max (118?) and it landed fine even though my weight was deep in the darkest corner of the chart. Finally, I have seen a Raven Dash-M 290 torn up by a large jumper who made a series of mistakes including over-loading his reserve canopy. Just to prove that I am not biased against Ravens, I assembled and packed a pair of Raven 3 reserves (249 square feet) for a DZ that wanted to upgrade their student gear to square reserves. I do not automatically obey published limits like a slave. Rather, I try to stay within written limits because I am familiar with the blood they are written in. The other reason I recommend that skydivers stay within published limits is that it reduces the number of lawyers that we have to deal with. Did I tell you about my alergy to lawyers? Hah! Hah!

The company started in 1978 as Diango Enterprises. They changed the name to Glide Path Internatoonal circa 1984. They changed the name the Flight Concepts International during the mid-1990s. If your reserve measures 130 square feet, then it is probably a Mini Cricket with a maximum suspended weight of Anyone hanging more than. pounds under a Mini Cricket should confirm that his medical insurance is up to date!

Ravens are okay canopies as long as you load them within the manufacturer's recommendations. Anyone who hangs more than 185 pounds under a Raven 1 is a stupid, fat, white man.

I just repacked an Avalon Accuracy rig. Materials are as good or slightly better than American-made rigs. Quality of stitching is almost as good. The only wrinkles are on binding tape of difficult curves on the leg pads. Design quality is high, but APS Bulgaria did not slavishly copy an American-made rig. For example, the reserve bottom flap is unique. APS did all the drop-tests required for an FAA TSO but concluded that FAA paperwork was prohibitively expensive. The manual is well-illustrated and easy to read in English. Overall, Avalon quality matches American-made rigs, but the purchase price is significantly less.

A big caveat on older (20 years plus) canopies is that many of them land hard when loaded more than 1 pound per square foot. Consider that back when (1980s) F-111 was a fashionable fabric for mains, no one loaded mains as heavy as 1 pound per square foot. Expecting a reserve designed during that era to land softly - while over-loaded - is ..... um .... "optimistic" ..... we are talking "SEAL optimistic!" So that Glide International reserve will land fine with 100 pounds hanging underneath, but hang any more pounds and you risk injury.

I have the exact opposite experience. I learned to roll canopies years before I heard of Psycho-Packing. Rolling reduces a confusing pile of fabric to one simple roll that can easily be contained by one hand or one knee. Rolling eases the process of stuffing the canopy into the d-bag.

Hi Terry and Jerry, Are you guys planning to present a seminar on lap-chutes during the 2017 PIA Symposium? Sorry but I will not be able to attend. Since we last met, I sewn together third and fourth generation lap packs. These new lap packs incorporate two major innovations: aprons and reversed leg straps. Both innovations simplify dressing. The apron starts at the shoulder junctions and extends all the way forward under the container ... sort of a backwards version of the extended back pad installed on modern seat-packs. The apron/bib does such a good job of keeping shoulder straps in place that a horizontal chest strap may be superfluess. The hole between the back pad and front apron is barely big enough to pass a helmet. The most important part of the apron is its riser covers. Velcroed riser covers completely cover risers all the way from shoulder joints to the inside of the container. The next variable is to determine how wide a "lap" is needed to accommodate seat belts. My first guess is 6 inches to accept 4 inch wide aerobatic seatbelts. Reversed leg straps are not a new invention. My Eze-Flyer harness incorporated reversed leg straps that were more comfortable than any conventional harness I have ever worn. Lower/rear leg straps were so short that B12 Snaps barely hung below hip joints. OTOH upper/front leg straps were so long they wrapped completely around my thighs. Adjustable V-Rings completed the ends of the upper/front leg straps. These innovations simplify dressing. Lay the harness face down on a wing or table. Step into the leg straps. Dive into the yoke head first. Tighten leg straps. Tighten both horizontal side straps. Board airplane. Sorry that I cannot post photos as black webbing and black binding tape do not provide much contrast.

Unfortunately, Kevin O'Leary may become the next leader of the Canadian Federal Conservative Party. While O'Leary may be better informed and better spoken than Trump, O'Leary is still a hard-core, right-wing, libertarian capitalist.

Phil1111 speaks the truth. Phil's truth may be embarrassing, but it is still the truth. Back in high school, I won a public speaking contests because I spoke about Canadian natives being third-class citizens. However those embarrassing facts clash with current "feel good" Canadian multi-cultural policies. So if I want a Phillipina to wipe my bum when I turn senile, I should be a good little Canadian citizen and repeat the Canadian government line about multiculturism. Multiculturalism was only introduced after (1962) after I was born (1957).

Jess's you hire someone who is not the brightest tool in TE shed. Then you train him to travel to foreign lands, meet exotic people and kill them. Consider that the army devotes tremendous time and effort to pounding one attitude into recuits. When that much pain, suffering and exhaustion dives a lesson home, it is difficult or impossible to change attitude later in life. Then citizens are astounded at a soldier's narrow view of the world. Doooooh! Soldiers have narrow world views because battlefields are chaotic places. If a soldier knew everything that happened in his battlefield, the information overload would drive him insane. Also consider that the only way to survive and succeed - dare I say "win" - on a battlefield is a narrow focus to accomplish one objective. And peaceful citizens wonder by soldiers' political attitudes end up so narrow.

Agents provocateur Agents provocateur Most of the problems, fires, etc. were caused by agents provocateur. Welcome to German politics circa 1933. Remember that Hitler did not suddenly rise to power on his charm and goods looks. Adolf Hitler and his national socialist party rose to power because they had better-organized street thugs who intimidated rival political parties. Once they go into power Nazis set fire to the Reichstad, then wrecked Jewish businesses during Krystalnacht, then started imprisoning communists, homosexuals, jews, gypsies, etc. Next thing we knew, Nazis were laying waste the Soviet Union. Recent political events scare me. They scare me because politics are becoming incredibly shallow and narrow-minded and polarized. Canadian politics are not significantly better, merely a year or two behind American trends.

Sorry if my last post sounded racist. Rather I was poking fun at some of the more narrow-minded Quebecois. I distrust fanatics on any edge of society.

If you are working on a roof, you might want to wear a fall arrest harness. They are similar to parachute harnesses. FAH might look expensive but they are still cheaper than hospital beds. Last time my boss told me climb a tree without a harness, my "FU" involved sewing up a couple of linesmens' belts.