riggerpaul

I just looked at the catalog in question. I believe the canopies in the picture are the "Triathlon Competition CRW" model. They have pilot chute retraction systems and TAIL POCKETS. The bit of black that the OP sees at the trailing edge of these canopies is a little bit of the tail pocket. To the OP, as dragon2 mentioned, serious CF canopies don't use deployment bags. But they do have a special pocket on the tail to hold the lines.

As I have said in other threads, I personally have perhaps hundreds of safe low pass climbing exits from low tail aircraft like the King Air 90. So it would not seem reasonable to state categorically that a climbing pass is a priori unsafe. All that is required is to exit the aircraft downward. Posing for the camera, as was shown in the advertisement, is not a safe manner to make this exit, but there certainly is a safe way to do it, over and over. The decision to even provide any low pass exit is a business decision for the dzo. If he sees it as important to his bottom line that he provides it in this manner, that is his choice, and it reflects no careless or reckless behavior. The aircraft is safe as long as the jumper lives up to his responsibility to utilize a safe exit technique. Speaking of technique, it is possible on a level jumprun with flaps etc, etc, to hit the tail if one's technique is sufficiently inappropriate. Do you want to require that all jumpruns be descending so that the tail is even higher? Should we only use high-tailed aircraft because it is possible to pitch a pilot chute over the tail of a low-tailed aircraft? Use this sort of logic and you will quickly see that all wingsuit jumps from low tailed aircraft are unsafe. Shall we make a rule that wingsuits can only be used with high-tail aircraft? I am sure that someone will scream that making this decision based on the economics of the situation is somehow a terrible thing. But, also as I have posted in other threads, we make these decisions all the time. Loading the aircraft would be more safely accomplished with the engines shut down. But that would mean a that a dzo would need 2 or 3 aircraft to provide the same lift capacity as he has now with a single aircraft. This is purely a business decision. How is it different? Stop coddling the jumper. Coddling the jumper is what is a safety issue, not the climbing low pass. When USPA makes statements like this one, it is no wonder we have jumpers whining and suing. USPA's stated purpose is to promote skydiving. This ad directly opposes that goal in that it is clearly assigning blame for poor jumper technique to the dz instead of to the jumper. Skydiving is not safe. But it can be made safer if each participant knows how to make his contribution safely. In ANY exit situation, it is ALWAYS the responsibility of the jumper to execute his maneuver in a manner safe and consistent with the conditions. Knowing how to make this exit safely is the jumper's responsibility. Trying to make it the responsibility of the dzo or pilot or anyone else is not going to help, because the root of this problem is in the jumper, not anywhere else.

I heard that the Lodi tail strike lawsuit was decided in favor of the dropzone, and that is wonderful news and is as it should be. With that in mind, I'd like to open a discussion of the USPA Safety Day advertisement on page 64 of the January 2010 Parachutist magazine. For your convenience, I have uploaded a scan of the item so everybody can see it even if you don't have the magazine handy. This advertisement says a number of things that I have significant issues with. They began by saying that the tail of the aircraft was "much lower than it should have been..." because the pilot was continuing to climb during the exit. They also say that to help avoid a tail strike, a pilot must "provide skydivers with a properly configured aircraft for every exit". As I see it, these statements shift a great deal of the responsibility for a safe jump away from the jumper and towards the pilot. I find that very disturbing. I worry that if this had been published by USPA early enough, the plaintiff's lawyers in the Lodi tail strike case could have argued that the national organization was taking the position that the pilot should be found at fault in that accident. Personally, I believe that if I informed the pilot that I wanted to exit on the climbing low pass, a climbing aircraft is "properly configured" per the agreement between the pilot and myself. I believe that it is then completely up to me to conduct the jump so as not to jeopardize the aircraft and the other jumpers. Should I fail to do that, it in no way reflects on the pilot; he did exactly what he was supposed to do. I invite discussion regarding this ad, and I also invite USPA members to express their feelings, whether for or against the ad, to their USPA BOD members so that they can get a fair reading of the sentiments of the membership. (FYI Since I wrote this, I have recently learned that the same ad ran in the February Parachutist. I have not received my copy, so I have not personally verified this, nor do I know that location of the ad.)

The pilot was doing exactly what was expected - he was climbing past the exit point. He was not being careless. Why did the jumper not use an exit that would provide the safety required? This wasn't an RW exit, it was a solo exit. He didn't have to worry about staying with anybody, taking a chunk out, or anything like that. The only thing he had to be specially aware of was not hitting the tail, and he failed to make that adjustment. In skydiving, we must ALWAYS be aware of the needs of the situation and take appropriate actions. We do it all the time. If the dropzone wants my low pass to be done in a climb, I need to accommodate that, or I need to make a different jump. Consider, there are occasionally accidents that involve people walking into propellers on the ground. Do you want to tell the dz that they must load the aircraft only when the engines are shut down? Of course you don't. But why not? The loading could be accomplished more safely if the props weren't turning. You accept that risk and you take appropriate actions to mitigate the danger. If you don't, and you walk into the turning prop, who was careless? Why should walking into a prop be different from hitting the tail?

No, sorry, I don't think he jumped "exactly as all of you would have". This is not calling you a liar. I don't argue that he may have jumped just as you might have. But he surely did not jump out just as I would have. Most jumps I do these days have exits from a climbing King Air 90 on a low pass. I NEVER come anywhere close to the tail. I crouch in the door, or even kneel, and exit the aircraft downwards, plain and simple. If you want to visualize my exit, imagine that I am going headfirst through a trapdoor that is at the floor level right outside the door. I am below the aircraft from the outset. There is no chance for a tail strike. If he didn't do what was necessary for a safe exit from the aircraft as it was configured, he made a mistake. I am sad that he was hurt. I am sad anytime any jumper gets hurt, no matter the cause or circumstance. But it remains that the accident was a result of an exit that was not appropriate for the conditions.

(Not replying, but asking the community as a whole) Is inertia a property of mass independent of the frame of reference? Or is it only defined within a frame of reference?

Don't confuse angle of climb and rate of climb. Climbing into the wind will have a greater angle of climb relative to the ground than climbing downwind, but the rate of climb, which is altitude gain per unit time, is the same. Climbing into the wind will cover less ground distance than climbing downwind for the same altitude gain, but the time to gain that altitude will be the same. Now, to the question of the downwind turn. You said, At one point, you wrote the following: That pilot you quoted put a very big stipulation on his statement. He said that the aircraft must be capable of changing heading from upwind to downwind more quickly that the acceleration necessary to maintain airspeed. That is not a common capability. Maybe your model aircraft can accomplish such a thing, but aircraft built on a human scale cannot generally get that sort of performance. (I couch my statement with "generally" because I can say with great assurance that there is not some sort of drone aircraft now that might be able to do this at the scale we are talking about. Or maybe one of those military aircraft that have negative stability and must be flown by wire by a computer can do it.) pchapman mentioned that wind shear can cause this sort of effect, and that is one of the few ways that we actually see this with "full scale" aircraft. In a microburst situation, the aircraft is first in a strong headwind, then in a strong downdraft, and finally in a strong tailwind. All this happens without the aircraft actually changing heading. When a "full scale" aircraft transitions from the downdraft to the tailwind, it indeed has an inertial problem to overcome. It is absolutely true that aircraft have crashed when they lost their airspeed in this way. But this depends on a very particular sort of wind situation. It does not happen in a situation of constant wind. It happens in the extreme wind shear conditions of a microburst. Most aircraft cannot accomplish such a change from upwind flight to downwind flight quickly enough to beat the acceleration that will be occurring during the turn. As I said, maybe your model aircraft can. The flight performance in terms of roll rate and turn rate of model aircraft far far exceed the capabilities of any "full scale" aircraft.

the brake toggle line is often lengthened a bit if more slack is needed for front riser work.

(Oops, I realize that this post covers matters that are far larger than just the Rigging Committee. I apologize for hijacking the thread.) Expanding on PhreeZone's ideas, a complete collection of documentation for all the member's products. If PIA members were somehow encouraged/required to supply the documentation to PIA, it would be a great service to the industry. I am not quite sure I understand who PhreeZone wants on the mailing list. But I would love to see a mailing list of riggers. If the PIA site has the documentation, then a mailing to the riggers might only mention what's new, and not contain the actual documents. A cheaper membership for a rigger would be nice. Much to my disappointment, I've not done much rigging lately. I guess the economy has finally hit my segment of the market. Jumping is down, and the change in the US repack regulations had an instant impact on my rigging volume. I can't afford a membership. Having a cheap membership that mostly just gets me in the notification list(s) we're discussing would be great. I had a thought about how the documentation system could be made more self-sustaining. If the system is based on a discussion forum system, you could have the manufacturers "post" the documentation themselves. The top level forums could be for each of the manufacturers, for instance, and the threads could be the complete historical product documentation. The riggers themselves might not be allowed to post at all, but might only have read privilege, except that there probably needs to be an area for questions from the "readers". There could be lots of other ways to organize such a system. But PMs from readers to manufacturers might handle that need, so maybe posting would be restricted to manufacturers entirely. I'm only proposing this manner as a straw-man for discussion. May intent is to distribute the work load of creating and maintaining such a system so that everybody does a little, reducing the immediate burden placed on PIA itself. The less centralized the work requirement, the better chance we have to make such a large project work. Hopefully the server administration would be a very small bit of work, possibly done by a volunteer. This system would be mostly for reading, not having millions and millions of posting members.

Thanks all. I found the setting. Never thought to look in that place. Interesting, though, that the offset I need is unlike most offsets I have seen. Most places that have global time keep their time in UTC, and each user sets the offset from UTC. I am in the Pacific time zone, and most times I have had to do something like this, I use -8, since Pacific is 8 hours earlier than UTC. -8 is what was set in the field that was mentioned when I found it. Since I don't think I ever set that field myself, I presume it was derived from my location information. But it appears that the dropzone.com server is set to Pacific time, which seems unusual to me. My offset setting is now "0", and the local time is displayed correctly. At this stage, it would be silly for the server admins to set the server to UTC, but the fact that it is not seems like a bit of an error to me. Thanks all for the help. -paul

okay, my bad too. It seemed you were poking fun.

Speak for yourself! I just open it to a random page and soak it up. I always find something to appreciate when I do. (Thanks Sandy!)

Is there something wrong with wanting the clock to be at least close to correct? I'd like to get a feel for when people post, and I can't do that if the clocks are all messed up. Right now, even the date seems to be wrong where I can see it on my profile page.

I never thought you were suggesting alkaline neutralizing solutions. My point was that if the neutralizers were alkaline, the substance itself might be acidic, and acids can affect nylon adversely. One of the articles I read mentioned onions. The thing in onions that makes you cry is sulfuric acid. So, personally, I am wary of the whole question. You have added a lot to your original statements, and that's all I was hoping for. I agree that it is not likely that 70 cans of gas were set off right next to the rig. The exposure might have been quite minimal. But I'd rather the OP approach the problem with excessive caution rather than insufficient caution. I was never my intention to argue, and I apologize if I even sounded argumentative.

No. the red safety thread and seal are a non operational part of the pack job that have to do purely with compliance. Unless you work for the FAA forget it. If you are having a drink with the rigger you might bring it up, but that is it. Are you talking about the thread (and seal) on the reserve pin of the rig? That's not what the OP is asking about. There is supposed to be a loop of seal thread that helps to hold the red skyhook lanyard on the hook that is part of the reserve bridle. The OP didn't mention any seal, he only mentioned thread. He is asking about something that is not externally visible.

Is the server clock just wrong? I never get the right times for messages and such. When I check my profile, the local time shown there is nuts. Date is wrong, hour is wrong, but minutes seems okay. I've made sure that there is enough location information to figure my correct timezone, but that doesn't seem to help. -paul

Fair enough. Sounds like you have some practical experience in the area. The reason I ask is the decontamination procedures that are mentioned in some of the pages I read. The decontamination procedures I found involve alkaline solutions. Since alkaline solutions are used for decontamination, I presume that there is some acidic nature to the original chemicals. As acids and nylon don't go well together, the whole topic is a b it scary to me. But, I am no chemist. So my concerns could be completely baseless.

Stiff brush, remove as much as possible from the container, think lots of elbow grease. It goes without saying but I will say it, this requires you wear a mask as you will be exposed to the residual teargas coming off the rig so be sure to do it outside. Once that is done, wash the container in a clean garbage can, much in the same way you wash a container after it's been in salt water (do a search , there is a thread here that explains the process). Do that as many times as necessary and allow to air dry(not in direct sunlight). Re-assemble your rig/ have your rigger pack your reserve. Are you saying that you know for a fact that teargas and/or the residues after the fact will not damage the nylon? Wikipedia says that are quite a few things that might be known as "tear gas". Are they all the same with respect to their effects on nylon?

Lots of good advice in the posts earlier than this. Some rigs, Wings, for example, even call out in the manual that you can do it either way. As already said, the shape of the bag is the key. I want to ask another question though. Why do you want to stow the bag differently? Are you having trouble getting the lines all the way down to the bottom of the container? If that's the case, I'll remind you that bag orientation does not eliminate the need to be certain that the lines are not too tight around the bottom corners of the reserve container. No matter where you decide to put the lines, be sure that they are not inviting themselves to grab on those corners of the reserve container. There are several bad effects of having the lines tight against the reserve container corners. They can eventually tear the bottom of the reserve container off the rest of the rig. Though it probably won't kill you right off, it can be costly to repair, depending on the damage that was done. It can certainly contribute to line twist and other opening problems. If one side snags the corner more than the other you will get unevent tension on the right and left sides during the deployment. Depending on how severe the difference in tension, it can really mess up an opening. So, whatever you do, be sure to properly route the lines so that snagging the reserve container corners is avoided.

I read the specs for the WBT-201 you mentioned. One interesting item seems conspicuously absent - the frequency of "waypoint" when recording internally. How often does it store a waypoint?

Interesting. I recently served on the jury of a civil trial. The plaintiff's attorney requested to allow a particular person as on expert witness in certain areas, and we had a lengthy session detailing the person's qualifications. Some of these qualifications included that he had been an expert witness some number of times in the past, thus establishing a precedent that the witness was indeed an expert. The defense attorney objected on the grounds that the stipulated qualifications did not actually cover a specific area about which the plaintiff's attorney had requested for the witness to be considered an expert. The judge decided that the witness would be accepted as an expert in some, but not all, of the areas the plaintiff's attorney had requested. Just saying that in a sample of 1, I have seen that "experts" are not always so easily accepted. But, I will also say that in the judge's explanation of the role of an expert witness, he did say much the same as you did. He told us that while a regular witness must only testify regarding knowledge of facts pertinent to the case, the expert witness could testify as to opinions that might be pertinent to the case. Thanks for posting. -paul

I've got to be the devil's advocate here. If you look at the 4 sided ISP card, "packing w/o assistance" is part of a Category G jump. Listing it as a required achievement for a Category G skydive sort of says to me that he is supposed to pack for his own jump. The list of "privileges" of a "A" or better license includes "pack their own parachute". Without even opening the issue of paid packers who are not riggers and have little or no supervision, don't you think that the privilege of packing one's own parachute should only be granted after demonstrating that very skill? On the other hand, I admit that I don't see any clearly stated requirement that says you must be jumping your own pack job to get a license. So, I am a bit undecided on this question.

TheCaptain and I were posting at about the same time. He is thinking you want to do a tandem jump, and his reply covers that aspect just fine. From the sound of your question, I think you might be interested in becoming a skydiver, not just a one-time tandem student. My reply addresses that issue. There are a number of reasons for the weight restriction. The reserve parachute that is part of the student rigs used by a dropzone may have a weight limit that becomes a problem with a jumper your size. The weight limit on a reserve parachute is actually a legal restriction. Though you may sometimes see an individual jumper who is willing to exceed such a legal limit, you will see it far less often in the student environment. That said, not all gear is the same, and you may be able to find a dropzone whose equipment can handle your size and weight. Don't give up just because the first place you checked had to turn you away. The tandem rigs, while certainly capable of handling the weight, are significantly different from your everyday sport skydiving rig, and they are not appropriate for student use.

No such a thing. Every canopy is built for a purpose. Goodness, you are difficult to please. The Silhouette has its purpose. My friend has his purpose. The two purposes coincide. In the experience of my friend, the Silhouette meets or exceeds these purposes. Therefore, it is my friends considered opinion that he has found the best canopy in the world.

You are saying that Bill told you his aircraft had not been grounded? We all know that Bill is still operating. That's not the question. Bill told you that his aircraft had not been grounded? Or did you add that to the story?