riggerrob

Well said! I am a Canadian Air Force veteran who suffers from prolonged traumatized stress. My worse year was when knee surgery forced me to stay on the ground. It was the first year - in 37 years - that I could not jump. Laying on my couch depressed the "bleep" out of me. Even social visits to the DZ improved morale. The OP's objectives parallel the words in Sebastien Junger's book "Tribe" saying that suicides are rare in combat, but frequent after veterans return home and leave their military "tribe." Skydivers can help veterans join another tribe of like-minded risk-takers.

............................ - Do you do anything relating to planes as a skydiver not knowledgeable about planes to help make it safer day when you jump? ............................................................... Maintain gear well. Keep spare rubber bands and closing loops within reach of packers. Checking if the pilot had sufficient water and snacks, giving him/ her time for pee breaks, time for checking oil, helping him push the airplane towards the fuel pumps, chasing people away from the propeller, etc. Trivial question, why are TIs better at turning Cessna 206 than AFFIs? Lead by example by always having my seat-belt tight, helmet strapped to my head, etc. before take-off. Teasing people who sit too far aft. Promoting calm, methodical exits, etc.

P.O.D.s are easy to build. PODs are just large deployment bags with a extra flap. PODs are also the most reliable deployment device for Para-Commanders. Every Master rigger has seen a few d-bags. Start by asking your local Master Rigger if he still has a #8 grommet-setting die. The rest of the dimensions can be extrapolated from the container and photos. Ideally, you would provide an old POD for him to copy.

Sorry Wolfriverjoe, But I was suggesting a pilot emergency parachute go twing a large square reserve canopy .... say a PD 253 reserve.l .... similar to the reserves most schools loan to first solo jump students.

Yes, our AMO answered those questions, but his cheapest answer was $37,000!

Kudos to that pilot in Wisconsin. If he was partway through AFF (with square canopies) I wonder why he wore a pilot emergency parachute containing a round canopy????? With a square canopy, he could have steered away from those trees and landed on the grass beside the runway. Sorry if I sound like a grumpy, grey-bearded, opinionated, stubborn old fart, but I made up my mind about rounds versus squares 20 years ago and please don't waste your time trying to tell me anything new. Hint: I was jumping Precision P-124A prototype canopies (stuffed into Aviator PEP containers) when my opinion stagnated.

There was a lengthy discussion about slide landings on another thread. The conclusion was that the best slide landings are slightly off-center to absorb most of the impact with a large thigh muscle and buttock muscle to reduce the risk of broken bones or compressed spinal discs. Still keep your feet out in front to allow them to absorb some landing impact, reducing impacts on knees. Still try to absorb most of the landing impact with large muscles the same theory as a military Parachute Landing Fall. PLGs gradually dis dissipate impact along many muscles: balls of feet, calf muscles, thigh muscles, buttocks and finish by rolling diagonally across the back.

Good point. Pilot's doors on larger jump-planes: Navajo Chieftan, Twin Otter, Skyvn, etc. are ahead of the propellers and walking near propellers is a dangerous and expensive practice. Safer to pass a screw-top soda bottle forward inside the cabin.

Just to clarify technical terms: calendaring involves pressing fabric between hot rollers, this slightly melts the outer edges of yarn reducing the size of holes between yarn. Most fabric called "F-111" is MIL SPEC or PIA SPEC fabric that has been calendarized and lightly coated so that it looks like ZP at arm's length. The quickest way to distinguish F-111 from ZP is by shaking. Shaking increases porosity of any fabric, especially F-111 because it loosens the (melted) bonds between yarns, so if you are going to rinse a canopy in fresh water, just rinse it in a bath tub p(with minimum agitation)gently drain and hang it in the shade to dry (as per Para-Flite Service Bulletin circa 1990). Para-Flite's biggest problem was a specific batch of nylon reinforcing tape that shrank when wet. OTOH Dacron suspension lines shrink an insignificant amount. The silicone coating on ZP fabric rattles when shaken. That silicone coating soaks in between the yarns and reduces porosity to zero. Heck, some ultralight hiking fanatics sleep in tents made of ZP parachute fabric.

Agreed, which is why I plead ignorance when asked to install riser tuck tabs on older rigs. Most of those Velcroed rigs are more than 20 years old. I sewed magnets into a Vector 2 a decade ago because I got the rig for free and the magnets were a straight replacement for Velcro. We can count on one hand the number of riggers who remember how to replace hook Velcro on Vector riser covers and I only wanted to do the job one last time. On a similar note, most of my bridle cover updates were close copies of the Javelin factory bridle cover. The average skydiver could not tell the difference. A rigger would need a few miles of sewing experience before he/she could distinguish between my sewing and factory sewing.

Review the oxygen bottles worn by military HALO and HAHO jumpers and ask your local rigger to sew up an O2 bottle holding bag that straps to the student's chest. Maybe only carry a 10 minute bottle during the actual jump. To stay on the cautious side, carry a spare bottle in the airplane and have ground crew standing by with a fresh bottle near the target. It also helps if you clip a blood-oxygen monitor to their finger.

CREW mods try to reduce the risk of snagging your reserve pin on your buddy's canopy. The most common mod is burying the pointy end of the pin in a pocket sewn to the bottom flap. Some containers (e.g. Vector 2) close the reserve bottom flap last to reduce the amount of exposed pin. The CREW reserve flap mod upgrades the reserve bottom flap from Vector 1 to Vector 2. I have "updated" a couple of Vector 1s to Vector 2s. I have also seen a ridge of foam rubber seen into the reserve bottom flap to further reduce the risk of snagging your reserve pin on other canopies. Finally, I have sewn magnets into older Vector riser covers. They stay closed except when I am sideways to the wind when leaning out of a Cessna to drop IAD students.

Take my advice for what it is worth: almost 40 years of jumping and a couple of seasons in the pilot's seat of a Cessna jump-plane. First I check for oil leaks: normal on radial engines but cause for concern on turbines. Secondly, I always wear my seatbelt and tie down my tandem student. Thirdly, I quietly watch how thorough the pre-flight inspection is and keep an eye on how often the pilot checks fuel and oil with a dip-stick. Twin-engine airplanes are not necessarily more reliable. They become the world's worst aircraft when an engine quits shortly after take-off. Any airplane as old as a jump-plane depends on diligent mechanics and well-trained pilots to keep it in the air. Some of the safest jump-planes are turbine singles (Cessna Caravan, PAC 750, Pilatus Porter, Kodiak) because they have large power reserves and are slow enough and docile enough to injure few passengers during a forced landing. My first favorite airplane is anything with a tail gate and my second favorite is Quest's Kodiak. I learned my opinions the hard way: while getting flung around the cabin of a crashing King Air because the pilot/co-owner was too cheap to buy proper seat-belts ...... or Transport Canada refused to allow him to install American-approved set-belts in an American-registered airplane. Lawyers are still squabbling over the details 8 years after the crash. Either way, lawyers relegated the wounded to priority last 4 years ago. Lawyers hate to be reminded of my aching knee because it distracts them from their primary goal: more billable hours. Do I sound bitter?

Another time, I was packing another Phantom into a Pilot Emergency Parachute. When I noticed some blood-coloured spots, I pointed them out to the customer and he replied "That's my blood." Then he told a tale of snapping a wing off of a CAP aerobatic airplane and having the wing fold over top of the fuselage, shatter the canopy and whack him in the head. With the canopy gone, the route for bail-out was obvious. He blamed the broken wing on a rough landing by a student at the flight school where he bought the CAP third-hand.

For sale: reserve canopy, only used once, has some stains. "never been opened" ................................................................. That is so sick and twisted! Many years ago, I was helping a rigger apprentice pack a Phantom into a Warp III container. I noticed several identical stains on the canopy. The stains were reddish and resembled little devil's heads ..... horns and all. The apprentice explained that he had bought the rig from the widow of a guy who "bounced!"

Aircrew who find flying a Chinook "boring" are not paying attention to the finer points. Helicopters always need something cleaned or greased or tightened or corrosion removed. The last few times I flew in a Chinook, I fell out. Fortunately I was wearing a Strato-Cloud.

I've test jumped several of my reserves as a main before putting it in my rig.

Just a caution about historical documents. First, you can really annoy judges and lawyers by referring to old newspapers, NTSB accident reports, etc. because it messes with their carefully contrived plan of only introducing half the evidence. Their favourite half of the evidence is tailored to support their side of the argument. Guess how I learned that! Hah! Hah! Evil laughter!!!!!!!!!!!! Secondly, most bureaucrats, legislators, etc. (Transport Canada, CSPA Board of Directors, etc.) only change rules after accidents. That is why air regulations are written in blood. For example, repeated airplane crashes (in the USA and Canada) forced Transport Canada to include "skydiver restraints" in CARS. What year did TC write "skydiver restraints into CARs? Like wise, by 1990, most Canadian DZs had adopted large, docile square canopies for first jump students, so when BSRs were adjusted to mandate squares, they were only legislating the new average. Finally, a caution about only reading historical documents: wars or legislation rarely drive change, rather the establishment has already been under pressure to change for a while. As pressures gradually increase, legislators are forced to rewrite rules or lose credibility. For example, police and courts are usually years behind the latest drug-smuggling technique. As soon as one drug smuggling method is out-lawed, bad guys invent new smuggling methods (e.g. Columbian submarines) and operate "legally" for a year or three before being outlawed. Police, courts and gov'ts are always behind the curve. Politicians only change laws when a change allows them a photo opportunity or a press conference or a chance at re-election. Politicians make damned sure that new laws are well-documented and it is in their best interest to NOT publish information about quietly increasing pressures that forced the new law.

......................................... How do new(er) jumpers get it into their head that getting to a WL near to or above 2 is something desirable, expected, a normal target? .................................................. That attitude is so passé! Only a few young jumpers are willing/can afford to make the thousands of jumps needed to jump a sub-100 square foot swooping canopy. OTOH the average recreational weekend jumper will only do 200 jumps (on his-her first rig) before getting distracted by wing-suits or BASE. Docile canopies are preferred with wing suits. Meanwhile ambitious young BASE jumpers soon find themselves buying LARGER BASE canopies. Ergo young jumpers are best served by buying mid-sized sport canopies and forget about down-sizing until after they have 200 jumps.

My information was mostly picked up when I jumped at those CAPS DZs: Arthur summer 1979; several visits to Gananoque during the 1980s; Beiseker, Alberta in 1992; Abbotsford since the turn of the century, etc. CAPS DZs were mostly commercial skydiving schools with different priorities than CSPA. Some were industry leaders while others lagged behind the times. None of them liked CSPA's "enthusiastic amateurs" telling them how to run their businesses, so several DZs split from CSPA to form a separate, association of commercial DZs. Gananoque has long been an industry leader. I interviewed DZO Tom McCarthy about developments at Gananoque. Tom started jumping back during the 1960s, qualified for the CSPA national team (classic style and accuracy) and by the end of the 1969s, Tom worked at the big commercial school in Orange, Massechewsetts. Come 1970, Tom moved back to Canada to start a school in Gananoque, Ontario. Tom equipped his first jump students with Para-Commanders and KAP-3 AADs and taught his students to pull their own ripcords on their first jump. Tom also pioneered harness-hold jumps. After Canada's miserable showing at the 1976 Olympics, the federal gov't poured massive amounts of money into amateur sports and specifically into coaching. CSPA headquarters moved to Ottawa and CSPA big-wigs spent their weekends jumping in Gananoque. CSPA big-wigs started telling Tom how to run his business. GRRRRR! They told Tom to scrap his first jump freefall program and convert to static-lines. Tom never enjoyed how fast S/L gear wore out nor how fast it ruined the paint on jump-planes, so Tom adopted an American invention: Instructor-Assisted-Deployment in 1979, along with piggy-back rigs etc. During the 1980s, 'Gan instructors perfected IAD and refined their harness-hold program until it became part of CSPA's Progressive Freefall Program. By 1990, IAD was the norm at Canadian DZs and many of them talked students into jumping with PFF instructors after they made a few IAD jumps. As soon as second-generation tandem canopies were available, Tom was one of the first advocates of first-time tandems. Gan is still a busy DZ 46 years after it was founded by a CSPA outsider. Back during the late 1970s, most DZs dropped static-line students with military-surplus rounds .... including Lloyd Kallio's Parachute School of Toronto in Arthur; Ontario. Lloyd had dozens ...... maybe hundreds ..... of round canopies and the cost of conversion was prohibitive, especially as Lloyd approached retirement. P.S. I am not clear on why Beatnick gets so upset and accuses me of contradicting him??????? I freely admit my ignorance on some subjects, just as he is ignorant of other subjects. The best solution is for colleagues to share documents (logbooks, photos, etc.) to fill in the gaps in each others' knowledge.

Canadian Sports Parachuting Association issues A, B, C and D Certificates of Proficiency. A few old skydivers still hold E C.O.P.s. In cooperation with the Coaching Association of Canada, CSPA also issues skydiving coach and instructor ratings. CSPA's Technical Committee trains most of the Riggers in Canada and recently started issuing rigger B ratings to military riggers. CSPA's Competition Committee trains judges for national and international competitions.

***Thorough equipment list, however new vs old isn't safer, airworthy vs not is the only comparis on there. You'll probably discover new things to add going forward, an audible or 2, additional altimeters (digital for canopy is great, chest mount or mudflap mount puts that altimeter in your field of vision while under canopy, ...... .......................................................................................... Something as important as altitude awareness deserves 2 or 3 monitoring methods. Sense of time is one method, albeit a crude way to measure how long since you left the airplane. Peripheral vision is better. For example, my favourite DZ is Whistler Skydive (Pemberton, B.C.) because they have a distinctive "V"'shaped glacier 5,000 feet above the runway. If today's clouds are near opening altitude, they can be used to cross-check altitude. In-helmet beepers are more accurate, but remember that terrified people go deaf. Visual altimeters tell more, when you remember to look at them. Long and rousing debates surround the choice of analog of digital altimeters. Since I learned to read clocks before digital watches were invented, I am more comfortable with old-school, analog altimeters. I rarely read altimeter numbers any more, just look at the angle. If the needle is near the top (12,000') I know that I have plenty of freefall time remaining. When the altimeter needle points down (6,000') I am approaching opening altitude (5,000 for tandems and accompanied freefall) and when the needle swings into the darker colours in the upper right quadrant, I bloody well better have a parachute overhead! OTOH some young skydivers have only ever used digital watches, so feel more comfortable with digital altimeters. I normally wear my analog altimeter on my left wrist (or right wrist when on the main side of FF students). But used to wear it on my chest because it was easier to read my buddy's altimeter across the formation. Modern mud-flap mounts look easier to read and I would consider a leg-strap mount for under-canopy stuff. A few vidiots prefer flashing lights connected to their digital altimeters. Finally, if you ignore all other altitude cues, an automatic activation device might save your sorry ass. ...... though some POPS consider that a cowardly way to open your reserve. Hah! Hah!

Warning! Nasty Nazi joke. Q: Why do German shower nozzles have 11 holes? A: Because Jews have only 10 fingers! boo! Hiss! Foo! Repeat until the amateur comic shuts up

Does any one have a spare Cessna 205 (aka 210-5) nose wheel strut laying around? Our 205 broke its internal, centering cam. Replacements are rare and expensive (quote $37,000!!!!!!!). Can you substitute a nose wheel from a 210 built the same year? Can you substitute 206 parts? Does anyone have an STC for modifying a 205 nose wheel? The new owner hates our 205 because of maintenance hassles. OTOH I love that 205 because I have jumped from it more than 1,000 times.

Closing loop configuration can make a big difference. For example, if the closing loop is attached to the mid-wall (bottom side of reserve container) then goes through all 4 flaps, then it is longer and can be adjusted to fit a wider range of canopies. My Talon 2 was originally designed to fit a Sabre 190. I jumped for many years with Sabre 170 and 150, but when I converted to Stiletto 135, I sewed in a new main loop anchor and it worked fine for hundreds more jumps.