riggerrob

Whether a pilot wears a pilot emergency parachute depends upon STC paperwork and individual risk assessment. Risk assessment is based on the record of crashes of that type of airplane and the pilot's confidence that he/she is good enough to avoid all accident scenarios. All pilots are more confident than the general public. Sadly, a few pilot's confidence exceeds their skill level. OTOH I have flown with a half-dozen King Air pilots who never wear pilot emergency parachutes. By their logic, the pilot's seat is too far from the jump-door to bail out. Twin Otters are even worse because of a bulkhead and longer distance to the normal door. Furthermore, some twins (e.g. Twin Otter and Skyvan) have pilot doors ahead of spinning propellers. SCARY! The easiest airplanes - to bail out of - have doors beside the pilot's seat (Airvan, single-engined Cessna's, Kodiak, Porter, Navajo Chieftan). The two most likely bail-out scenarios are engine fire or a jumper bending the tail during exit.

Slider grommets are not the only way to determine if a slider is right-way-up. Tapes are more important. Tapes should face up, towards the canopy. The theory is that if stitching fails, fabric will will be blown up, to press against tapes, keeping fabric attached to grommets.

Revision lists or high-lights allow readers to quickly scan changes. The alternative is spending all day re-reading a boring manual to winkle out minor changes.

AA also hosts "atheist" and "agnostic" meetings for drunks who fear organized religion. AA also hosts meetings for drug addicts, "women only" and Alanon for the families of alcoholics. That whole creed about "a higher power" is about getting alcoholics to think outside they own self-pity or self-loathing. Some of they need to admit that their drinking has harmed others and apologize. AA helped me sober up 20 years ago. Life has gotten easier since I quit drinking.

Under FAA rules, a dui conviction is a quick way for a pilot to lose is medical. Flight surgeons see excessive alcohol consumption as a form of mental illness and drug addiction. To regain his/her medical, a drunken pilot must attend counselling (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous) and prove that they have been sober for "X" number of months. Then they can apply to the FAA to renew their medical.

Multi-point bridles are most valuable for controlling openings at low speeds like BASE. By the time you accelerate to the 80 knots typical of airplane jumps, other factors dominate and a multi-point bridle has less effect on openings. If I was going to hop-and-popyour old Comet, I would keep the two-point bridle, while adding a deployment bag and regular throw-out pilot-chute.

Inverted "Y" bridles were fashionable during the early 1980s, then faded from the skydiving scene as canopy manufacturers learned how to reinforce Center bridle attachments. BASE jumpers revived multi-legged bridles during the 1990s. The most prolific has 4 legs: middle of center-cell, cell immediately to the left, cell immediately to the right and a fourth leg to lift the line-stow pocket. BASE jumpers' primary goal is on-heading openings. The extra leg to the line-stow pocket helps keep the tail even, controlling tail inflation.

Para-Flite introduced a square reserve packing endorsement shortly after they introduced the first square reserves (late 1970s). The first square reserves were 5-cell Safety-Fliers and Safety-Stars and Swifts. Later (1980s) on USPA took on the task of training FAA riggers to pack square reserves. Eventually (1990s) square reserves became the norm. Now young riggers barely pack enough rounds to pass the FAA Pratical Exam and forget everything about rounds the following week. Sure, some rigs were TSOed with plastic ripcord handles, but a few years later plastic ripcord handles started cracking. After many years of service, cracks reduced handle strength to less than 22 pounds. IOW old plastic ripcords deteriorated until they were weaker than the TSO standard. So manufacturers issued Service Bulletins (grounding plastic ripcord handles). Newer SBs over-ride the original list of TSOed components. On a related note, I have seen fibreglas handles 30 years old that were still strong .... even after a decade serving on ground training vests.

Mostly, they get lazy and forget to arch. Outer rings pulling also flattens the formation.

A: Where is "Jesus loves you" not good news? A: in a Mexican prison.

Split sliders were fashionable with precision landing competitors. Splitting the slider allowed lines to separate wider, improving lateral stability. That was before we had connector links small enough to allow jumpers to pull the slider all the way down to neck level. I have fabricated a bunch of split sliders, but now find it easier to install small soft links on narrow (Type 17 webbing) risers and pull the slider down to neck level. Slider catchers sewn to the risers help keep the slider down at neck level. Returning to the OP's question: I suspect that Tom Sanders split his slider to make more room for his huge camera helmet.

Hee! Hee! John please share some of your stories about jump-planes wandering through your airspace.

Yes, skydiving can be expensive. Fortunately there are so small jobs (packing, manifesting, driving the van, mowing grass, instructing, video editing, etc.) that many dedicated weekend jumpers break even (financially) by the end of the year.

The first dozen jumps are the most expensive and time-consuming. So save up enough money for a dozen jumps, then spend a week at the DZ to complete all your solo jumps.

Learn to dress for cold weather by donning in multiple layers of long underwear, sweaters, turtle-necks, neck warmers, etc. because your fingers will only stay warm if there is an excess of warm blood in your core. To avoid over-heating on the ground, wear leave turtle-necks un-zipped and wait until after take-off before slipping on your neck-warmer. The best gloves (for me) have thin, leather palms ( to reduce wind-chill) with big, puffy backs sides to hold it warmth. Thin, leather palms allow me to find all my handles by feel and they are loose enough not to restrict blood-flow.

Different DZs require different numbers 1 to 5) of tandems before teaching you solo skydiving skills. The first tandem gets you past that first HUGE psychological step. It halves fear so that during your second tandem jump you half as scared and have more brains cells available for learning new skills. By the time you have 3 tandem jumps, you have learned most of what you are even going to learn on tandem. Indoor wind tunnels are great at teaching the basics of freefall, but sooner or later you are going to need to do a few (6 to 10) jumps accompanied by an instructor(s) to combine all those different skills. When you visit your local AFF dropzone, bring along your certificate as proof of your first tandem jump.

What is a "free fly tab?"

.................................................................... I've once told a group of newer jumers that we give those kind of parachutes to our pilots as an extra motivation to do their damndest to land the plane intact instead of bailing out. ............................................................................ Best answer to date!!!!! Yeah! Give the man a cookie! I used to work for a DZ who spent vast amounts of money on his King Air, but he equipped his Cessna Pilots with cheap PEPs containing "old" Phantoms. He could buy old Phantoms for maybe $50. I had lost count of how many cracked, white plastic stiffeners and mangled grommets were replaced. Those poor Phantoms had been bromocreasol tested and pull-tested more times than I could count. After National said to not pack any of their gear more than 15 years old - I quietly left that DZ because I did not want to waste energy on that argument. Challenge to young riggers: how many service bulletins have been issued about Phantoms? Can you describe the malfunctions behind each Service Bulletin? What year was the last Phantom seen?

Sounds like a methodical packer, even if he is not a licensed rigger. Don't get too hung up on written laws. Yes, most of them were written in blood, but some were written so long ago that the original reasons were forgotten. Federal Air Regulations (about parachutes) have not been up-dated in decades because of the low fatality rates among skydivers. If you still worry about packets and rigger's, continue reading packing manuals (for the gear you are currently jumping) and start packing lessons. Learning to pack your own main is part of the process of earning your USPA A License. Over the winter, you can attend a course to earn your FAA Rigger Licence. Quit worrying about whether or not your local DZ is USPA-affiliated as long as most of the staff hold Instructor ratings issued by USPA. Some of the best DZs in the USA are not affiliated with USPA. Finally, if you suspect that the local rigger does too many drugs, graduate as quickly as possible, so that you no longer need to jump gear he has repaired. When you buy your first parachute, have it inspected by another rigger. As for your local rigger having weird eyes, he reminds me of another rigger who used to sell drugs, but was imprisoned for his sins. He found Jesus in prison, but unfortunately he also found "man love Thursdays" in prison. "man love Thursdays" shattered his sphincter and shattered his sanity. Rape victims were the first PTSD sufferers analyzed by the pioneering psychologist named Sigmund Freud. The shifty-eyed rigger eventually became a decent rigger and tandem instructor, but he remained permanently dis-trustful of other men.

Reminds me of California City during the 1990s when so much "gutter gear", and too many "closet queens" were being sold to unsuspecting junior jumpers. Bob Celaya - the DZO - put his foot down and insisted that all gear sales go through the DZO or a handful of trusted local rigger's. As to the OP, expecting junior jumpers to inevitably down-size is so "last week's fashion" because - by the time they have 200 jumps - many will want to start jumping wing-suits or jumping off cliffs and both those sub-sports require large, docile canopies.

Yes! When politicians - like Trump - say scary things, I often wonder which "real" issue they are trying to distract us from????????????????????

yeah, kind of like how skydivers aren't allowed to say "hey asshole!" Wendy P. ........................................................................... Careful where you yell that! If you yell that on the packing mat, everyone will stand up and ask "What the bleep do you want?" pause to watch brightly-coloured things fall out of the sky and forget what they were doing ..... Chaos ensues .... Hah! Hah!

Replacing hook Velcro on old Vectors is a dying art. The task starts with removing the old Velcro, cutaway housings and reserve ripcord housing. Sew up a new flap, binding tape and all. Copy the factory pattern. Lay the new flap on the outside of the yoke, a hair inboard of the original flap. Push slack towards the ripcord housing. Sew through all layers of the yoke. Copy the factory stitch pattern with straight stitches and zig-zag at the ends. Re-install metal housings. Ask a second rigger to inspect your work. Did you leave the secret 1 inch slack in the cutaway housings? Replacing pile Velcro on Vector riser covers is easy in comparison. Good thing, because pile Velcro needs replacing 3 times as often. Hint: I always see on Velcro with 3 rows of stitches. Can anyone repeat the theory behind that trick? He! Her! Another trick is installing magnets in older Vector and Javelin main pin covers. My technique only requires popping a few stitches.

If you want to build your own rig, the best place to start is sewing your main canopy. I could mail you photo-copies of the Lone Star/Para Kit manual. Fortunately, Lone Star's methods do not require industrial sewing machines. The toughest of home/hobby sewing machines are strong enough as long as they will pull E-Thread (commercial size 69) through a #19 - 22 needle. For example, I sewed a pair of para-kit canopies with an old, cast iron Pfaff 230. It could only sew two types of stitches: 301 and 305, but it could sew canopy fabric all day. These days I mainly use a Sailrite zig-zag machine for canopy sewing. Hah! Hah! Yes folks, I know that I drifted away from the OP, but I am a grumpy, old, grey-bearded Master Rigger who learned the meanings of words like "building" and "design." Kind of like yesterday when young guys were playing Pokemon Go as we rode the van back to the airport. Old farts did not have the first clue what they were babbling about??????

Today I met a "Dreadneck." His hairdo is obvious from the term. The only hassle was clearing his dreadlocks away from the risers so I could inspect 3-Ring releases after opening. He enjoyed cranking turns and help me flare for landing. He was an extremely athlete construction worker who was in top from from tuning up and down ladders all day. He was originally form the Yukon Territories, but now lives on Salt Spring Island. He does not care what recreational drugs you do. He does not care about your sexual preferences.