hackish

I remember seeing a T10 cargo with lines cut in a surplus shop for $2200 and I was like is this missing a decimal place? After my gear got stolen I spent months watching e-bay to see if it would show up. I really feel that the chance of getting stolen stuff off ebay is significantly higher than buying it here on the classifieds. Maybe it would be a better idea to have a section created for low dollar beginner gear? -Michael

I agree with separate round and square ratings. The ink dried on my rating and I have become confident with squares. Round and square would have probably been too much to do at the same time. Only a small subset of riggers will ever need to do a round so under the FAA system I think all you have is a bunch of people who are "certified" but not competent. If you invest the time in getting the round endorsement then I think you're far more likely to also invest the time to stay in practise. -Michael

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to sick the USPA on AC GPS manufacturers. It wouldn't be too difficult to have the GPS show a "warning, parachuting activity" in addition to the standard icon. We jump at an executive airport with a tower but it's not that uncommon to see AC taking off or in the pattern when we're under canopy. The pilots seem to be well informed about our activities. Makes me nervous but everyone at our airport is very strict about announcing the paradrop and when all the jumpers have landed to the tower. Some people seem to think having a tower at a DZ is a bad thing... -Michael

Take it over to the local airport and get them to x-ray it :P I'm on board with the others saying take it to the last rigger. I've already inspected mine - one was made around but within the affected dates. Out of interest I tried a varity of magnet tests with the cutter behind a few flaps. Unfortunately it doesn't work reliably enough so you can't get around having it opened. -Michael

Are you claiming here Vigil/AAD did? Somebody died due to a serious quality control error. Some kind of relationship they bought.... Someone died because they failed to activate their parachute on time. Every AAD out there has had a failure of some sort so it's important to remember that these things are backup devices you can't rely on to pull for you. -Michael

I don't think we have to worry about a ban as the cutter maufactuer modified their QC procedure in 2008 to x-ray all the cutters. In this situation I'm happy with the disclosure and correction from AAD. As I understand it the argus problem was more related to the rig manufacturers feeling that the problem was not being addressed by Argus. They did test fire 15 cutters from that batch so they aren't all bad but instead there is a possibility. There are 283 cutters in the field so let's go find them! -Michael

While sometimes symptoms can be similar the cause of a problem may not be. I hope all the firmware in the parts is adequately tested but sometimes failures like this can be as simple as the LCD control unit waits a maximum of 50ms for a response from the control but today the control unit did some additional processing during startup and took 55ms to response. Now the LCD got confused because it took too long to get a response. While I believe strongly in writing code and designing parts that are fault tolerant, strange cases can sometimes bite you in the foot. AAD would have to comment on the difference between these failures, but I don't think it's fair to ASSume that they had the same cause. -Michael

Although I have had the occasional banger I really think this thing tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Successful devices in parachuting lean heavily on the KISS principle. Look how successful the slider is as compared to previous inventions... ropes & rings anyone? -Michael

A more interesting question is whether this oil has any effect on the fiber used in the closing loop material. Cutting oil from machinery can be wildly different formulations albeit not acedic but it will frequently contain very fine metal particulate). The stuff I use is a water soluble oil. Although I don't do cold working of metal I definitely can say that dies do wear during use. I have no idea if this manufacturer is using the same machine shop as everyone else but it would be interesting to know how their cables compare to the others. I can understand why they might be putting it in the cable, but safely washing it out without washing all the lubricant and thus risking internal oxidation at a later date is a difficult balance. Completely wash it out and replace with a clean oil inhibiter? You could probably wash it out with alcohol and only near the pin assuming the thread continues over time to wick the oil down the cable. The pin itself is SS so corrosion is not an issue there. Maybe some SS cable would be more appropriate. (begin holy war) Or a cable made from spectra...(end holy war) -Michael

In the automotive industry I have to deal with this sort of BS all the time. I've had sports cars sit in the shop waiting for payment all winter. Co-incidence? First sunny day in the spring they show up to collect the car and pay the bill. In your case they will show up the week before it's needed. Ultimately the best way to deal with it properly is clear communication. Call the guys and explain that you don't have the space to store the rigs, you need them picked up within the next X days/weeks etc or you will have to liquidate them. That's realistic. Just tacking a bill on it when they show up is likely to solve the problem by encouraging them to go elsewhere. -Michael

I own a webmail system and have seen this scheme run many times - buying used cars with this is a big thing. I've busted accounts where it was apparent they'd already scammed 10's of thousands of dollars. Our community is small enough that anyone buying/selling gear should be able to do it through a rigger. Look them up here, contact the DZO there will be some trace within the community. If not they're probably in Nigeria and have never seen or packed a rig before. -Michael

It took me a couple of chops of my bad tempered Diablo to understand that the canopy won't just turn independant of it's suspended weight. The focus should be on having the canopy fly straight so you can untwist the lines. Provoking the canopy into turning will merely swing you with the line twists out with the g-forces, throwing away altitude at the same time. As a result I think the idea of anti-twist risers is a no-go. There are risers with hard shells to stop the cutaway cables from becoming locked inside but that's a different thing. -Michael

Risks: - accidental reserve deployment - below someone too? A freebag in freefall would hurt! - ending up with a loose handle - possibly a 2 out on main deployment. There are lots of things that could go wrong. I think practise on the ground is good - a place where it doesn't have significant risks associated with it. In general, I think safety "improvements" should be focused around what the satistics say are killing people. -Michael

I have been using a Canon 50D which is heavy and my neck is sore :( I've also been looking into the MagicLantern project to see if we could hack up a Canon 550D to capture both full HD video and stills at the same time. This could be a nice solution if you have to do snapshots and video. -Michael

Enough with the jokes. I'm not going to tie them together even with rigger's thread unless it's approved by PD which I don't think it is. I once found some elastic bands holding stuff together in a tandem reserve but that's a different story for a different time. -Michael

I did it once because of a caught up toggle (toggle passed through the loop on the keeper). It was ugly but I landed it on my feet. 8" on the riser and 20" on the toggle. Maybe I'll grab a student rig and get video :P -Michael

I use the royal bank travel insurance as they don't have an exclusion for skydiving. Last year I had to use their coverage for an issue not related to skydiving and they paid all my bills without a question. -Michael

Tail deflection caused by a toggle and pitch deflection caused by a rear will not be consistant and depending on the canopy can easily change dominance as the flare progresses. Muscle memory and training has taught you to flare symmetrically so introducing controls that require an assymetric flare would be bad. Both rears will be consistant throughout the motion and would be better. Reserves are generally trimmed a little steeper so they should be farther from the stall point at full flight. Fly the canopy through the flare, don't just reef on the rears and you're not likely to stall it out. Falls under the don't forget to fly the thing category. -Michael

They probably will all open properly. I'm just interested in understanding what's going on so I can work on improving my own packjobs. Some of my D-Lines have been moving a little too (not this bad) so any tips & tricks would be appreciated. -Michael

Every time I do a repack I carefully pull it out of the freebag and have a look at how the slider and lines sat from the last repack. I have found a number of times the D-Lines have migrated from the middle of the packjob. Sometimes it occurs on packjob from a 20+ year rigger and sometimes a newbie. Some other riggers you'd swear they used a comb on every single one of the lines on every packjob of theirs I've opened... I think it's happening during the width reduction folds and it seems more common in the larger reserve packs. I haven't done enough tandems yet to see if there is a trend there. Tips or tricks on prevention? Insight into the cause? -Michael

Lots of guys were on my back for wanting to do video when I had about 130ish jumps. On an experienced guy's advice I made an additional 60 or so training jumps learning how to fly a video slot off the cessna before I even bought a camera or helmet. 2 years ago (250ish jumps) I shot a whole lot of bad video with newbie jumpers while at Deland & Z-Hills. Again, part of training. Do a jump, show it to the pro video guys, try to incorporate their advice, rinse & repeat. Now with a little more experience I can't imagine trying to do camera with 50 or 150 jumps! Take it slow and enjoy yourself - you don't need a camera to enjoy the challenges the sport brings. -Michael

Most people thought they were sh*t hot as the ink was drying on their driver's license too. Was that 10+ years of experience driving useful? Think you're a better driver? Better able to react to situations? Skydiving is a lot harder than driving so what makes you think experience isn't relevant here? Don't try to tell that 16 year old that he/she has a lot to learn about driving. We were all 16 once too. -Michael

I actually tried putting an RFID tag into a seal as an experiment. It didn't like the seal press and wouldn't read afterwards. If you could get all the riggers in on it you could put a passive RFID in the AAD pocket with little or no chance of it interfering with anything but how often would that be left in? My first dozen or so packjobs I slipped a small piece of paper in the AAD pouch with the date and now 3 years later I found 2 of them this year. In the big scope of things I don't think pencil packing is that big of a problem. I've seen the mystery disappearing packing card, also the mystery sharpie line across a packjob above. A reserve even packed for years is still more likely to work than not. Whatever we riggers do to try and stop pencil packing, someone will come up with a way to slip one through. -Michael

Tough call because yes you should research the equipment but how many non-riggers are aware of the SB? Joe newbie could ask his instructor and get a green light. I'm up in the air about the Argus sales. If the company goes bankrupt over this then everyone who has one could own an expensive paperweight. If they make it through they will no doubt find a replacement cutter and people will have picked up an inexpensive AAD. Personally I hope they manage to pull through and do something about the issue. -Michael

Some years ago I spent some time comparing glass. Put a body on a tripod with completely manual settings and took shot after shot using the canon and tamron/sigma/whatever other noname glass the camera store had. The results were very significant. 2 identical scenes with identical settings and you'd swear one was taken with a point and shoot camera. The results were published 5-6 years ago but I'll have to see if I can find some of the source images. All that to say buy the canon glass. -Michael