pchapman

The flare with the new line set should be BETTER if anything, because the lines are likely back to the lengths the designer intended. But that's about the canopy's capability. What you actually get out of it when not used to it yet, may be better or worse, because you aren't yet used to the new feel. One thing to learn is to feel when the brakes first 'bite' -- how far down you pull before the tail of the canopy starts to deflect, where you are just removing the slack from the brake lines. On novice canopies that may be just a couple inches, but if the distance is longer than before, it may seem that one has to flare a greater distance before anything much happens -- which is true, but not the fault of the canopy itself. As usual, talk to an instructor for details.

We shouldn't omit a well known one: "TK" Hayes - Tent Killer. I know a Thumper, presumably from his early days of landings. One also gets the not so creative nicknames, such as someone called Max who approaches formations too quickly becoming Mad Max. As for Puppy's comment about Downwind Lynn, he means that she became dead Lynn. As in dead, not like Dead Mike (Vederman), who survived his accident. From what I've read, the paramedics thought he was dead and started driving off slowly, lights off, until he started to move and they picked up the pace. And there was the Air Force pilot and jumper Dead Steve (Morrell), who missed taking the fatal Pan Am flight 103 because he had hurt himself BASE jumping. (Tho' he later died in a CRW accident.) Those kind of nicknames don't count quite in the same way since they add to someone's actual name rather than replacing it entirely.

"Bridle" Yes, lark's head it on, snug it up tight, that's the normal way. And of course tell your rigger what you've done so he can check everything extra carefully.

Sorry, I messed up. There was a change in URL because the original video was an incomplete version (that started after the collapse began), and then somehow I screwed up my post Edit. Try http://www.mediafire.com/?a1z9zs7pjs2twrt This should be correct, and should be "E's collapse v2.flv" (version 2)

The "Canopy Control" document is from the well respected Bryan Burke, Skydive Arizona. Your copy seems to be edited to remove credit; so I'll at least upload my copy so he gets proper credit. My copy is from 1997, so some canopy specific advice will have changed, even if the physics have not.

The video is available for download at http://www.mediafire.com/?ilznjawn9c3h1g9 ("at least for now") 3.0MB FLV Edit: changed URL. Previous version of video was incomplete. I don't trust in the cloud; the video did show up after all, sitting in a download folder. Its one of those videos you download not for fun but to help understand how things can go bad. Analysis of it can continue.

Re: the epilepsy girl who was determined to give it a try Man, you have one brave DZO. You guys probably had to scratch out a paragraph or two on the waiver...

Maybe his head was forwards, face towards his feet? The canopy spiralling would be giving say +4g to him (with variations depending on distance from the center of rotation), but his face would get -4g. Just a possibility. Beowolf wrote: Maybe sometimes for all I know, but not always. I did an intentional cutaway from a 200 sq ft canopy where I only chopped on one side at first. About 3 of the 7 cells stayed well enough inflated, despite crossports. The video shows it spun me about 360 degrees a second. I didn't notice any issue with G's but the ride still feels pretty wild.

Lately we've had three simultaneous threads on three different types of tandem passengers. It appears we have videos of the pass-outers, and videos of the pukers... so where are the tandem student orgasm videos??

While it is quite appropriate for you to be told that you don't have to worry about high G-loadingsat this point in your skydiving progression, there's no reason the question can't be applied to skydiving in general. (And you are permitted to have an interest in the details of F1 racing too.) The issue of straining against g loads has come up only rarely that I recall. It was discussed somewhere here in a thread in the last year or so. Also in a thread where an older jumper had a low & fatal cutaway, where it was hypothesized that higher G- loadings could become more of a problem for some older jumpers. (The issue may have had nothing to do with the accident but was just one of those discussions about reasons for low cutaways.) I don't recall the idea of straining against G's ever coming up in formal skydiving information for experienced jumpers. But I have started to think it wouldn't be a bad thing to mention, and I wonder if it is one factor in some cases where people delay emergency procedures too long. We don't need detailed fighter pilot instruction on it; just tensing one's body or tensing legs & abdomen is enough. Tensing up when getting flung around the sky with a mal may well happen for many people, but I'm not sure it is automatic. One could well be relaxed in the harness, even if the person is mentally active. However, 'spinning' mals vary greatly in their character, even for small canopies. Some mals may spin more like a top, and in other cases the canopy is flying a tight spiral dive. Many spinning mals are from things like a popped toggle or just uneven risers with line twists. Such a mal may feel disorientating because one isn't in control, and one is on one's back with line twists. But fundamentally, the G-loading isn't going to be any more than if one held a toggle down and spiralled for fun -- something one can certainly do without blacking out even if getting dizzy. (Even just popping a toggle deliberately after opening to start a spiral, feels a lot more disorientating. Good practice for learning to react to such an issue.) With hemorrhaging happening, the Schoenfeld case is at the extreme edge of malfunction violence. I think a greater issue than G-loading is that some people can become shocked and disorientated when getting flung around in a mal. And that shock factor in a stressful situation is what makes them freeze and not properly carry out even straightforward emergency procedures. That's the traditional concern in skydiving. (Many experienced jumpers have probably known of some case where a student under a mal spins and spins and spins and finally cuts away, taking far too long to take action even in a very clear malfunction scenario. Big canopies are pretty unlikely to generate high G-forces, but can still spin you around sufficiently fast to be confusing.) Indeed, most of us are going to be affected in some way in a spinning mal. We just aren't going to think as straight if getting flung about, may have some time dilation and attentional narrowing going on in a stressful situation, etc. Even if I really like roller coasters, I bet I can do math in my head a lot better sitting at a desk than in the middle of a coaster ride. Exposure to a lot of skydiving and a lot of mals will tend to help of course; practice & exposure to a situation usually improves how someone can deal with it. Our emergency procedures are normally pretty simple too. During a violent mal, allowing the body to get too relaxed and just 'going with it' might be a contributing factor to problems, among a small number of individuals. One can start to grey out (or just lose mental focus) at a lot lower G level when relaxed than when straining. Becoming resigned to the situation and relaxed may, due to G-loads, make it physiologically harder to snap out of that mode to take action. All this is very speculative on my part, and not a generally accepted theory in skydiving. I don't want to overemphasize the G-loading aspect, because it may be a factor only in a smaller number of cases, yet I don't think the issue is well enough recognized. It may play some part in those accidents where someone gets mentally confused and does not carry out emergency procedures in time, even though most of us can most of the time, in any normal malfunction.

I don't know about the National vs. Para-Innovators canopy designs. But yes having more Strong LoPo's around would be nice.

I've seen another rigger build pouches for the spare brake line stowage on the back of the toggles. Much more neatly done than in your photos, without the rainbow motif, and integrated better into the toggle. It is a neat and clean stowage method, but I personally think the space available is a bit too tight, at least when trying to stuff older, softer, fuzzier brake line into there.

I think the point is that if someone is transferring something permanently, the new owner in the new country pays taxes on the full value. But if I send something worth $5k to the US for repair, nothing is paid because its still mine. When it gets shipped back, I pay tax on the $200 of work that gets done, not the total value of around $5k. (E.g., if my Cypres 2 goes in for service from Can. to the US, SSK pays no tax on it. When it comes back to me, I pay tax only on the work done, not the original purchase price or current value of the Cypres.) So a few rigs will cross the border labelled "repaired, returned to owner, value $200" when that's not quite the case. Edit: We do also have to be careful about "tax" vs. "duty". Actual duties are rarer, what with US-Canada free trade, but can come up with items from other countries. E.g, I once had a Paragear order coming into Canada assessed a bunch of duty as customs noticed some non-US origin for parts. I was able to convince them that most of the stuff was probably US made, and they dropped the duties, although I told them that a couple T-shirts were from Haiti and Honduras or some such places. I still have no idea what actually should have had duty paid on it.

Torture it with 1" square clamps set 3" apart! But how "light weight" is the canopy's construction? I tend to use a Phantom as a comparison -- a canopy that one might consider to be around the lower end (above or below it) of acceptable construction solidity, regardless of what the sometimes dubious TSO testing showed the limits to be.

Fair enough, but that's where I get (unreasonably?) defensive and angry about many new rules about deployment altitudes, AADs, etc. One could frame it as a macho / pussy fight there. It really sucks to have things "stolen" from you, things you used to be able to do and take for "acceptable" in the sport. Like being able to pull at a certain altitude. Still there are many ways to "jump smarter" -- an AAD on one's primary rig is nice to have, and altitude alerts sure are handy not just for head down but jumping in general. And we generally tend to accept that seatbelts should be worn, a definite improvement over the old days. There are many rules I think should be followed 90% of the time. But it is tough to write rules that don't say 100%. If something is only "highly recommended", it is tough to use the rule to stop that one person who has shown he really needs to follow that rule. Edit: Davelepka has already addressed one of the issues since I started writing this reply. There is that feeling that the rules one started with are acceptable (at least in some cases) And in France, already by the early 2000s, the minimum deployment altitude was 2800 ft.

@ riggerrob I have a scanned copy of the Innovator I manual if you really need it, but you probably have one somewhere. @ councilman FWIW, the Innovator I method was logical enough for getting evenly distributed bulk. They had the diaper, eg for a Phantom, at the center bottom, with the canopy going up towards the shoulders between the two closing loop locations. Then it wrapped over to the left side for some folds, across the top, and then some more folds at the right. Nicely balanced with the diaper in the centre, but more complex than just side to side. ... And it looks like the Warp III did the same for diapered rounds, and also side to side if undiapered. I'd guess the Innovator could have copied that.

In that vein, and slightly off topic, I was around when a female tandem student landed and blurted out, "Oh my god, that was better than sex!" ... which was a bit awkward because her fiance was there to welcome her down.

Sounds like another tale for you to tell in a History & Trivia thread!

@ councilman I wasn't thinking of any particular rig. Just curious about what the attitudes were about this issue. And you know a variety of old rigs better -- you're saying the issue didn't come up that much anyway, because there were (a) plenty of rigs that did side to side anyway, or else (b) they had a very tapered shape where another technique clearly made more sense. After thinking about it, I realize that I was probably influenced by a rig that was once very common in my area, being locally produced in Canada, but would not have been found in the USA. That was the Westway Innovator, the original two pin version. The manual showed side to side for lines-in-pack-tray canopies, but for full diapers, a more rather complex arrangement. Most people had diapered rounds in theirs, and from the occasional one I saw open, I think riggers usually just packed them side to side "like everything else". @ Jerry Yeah you're right about that. The change from the 'stack' to the 'bottom to top of rig' perhaps made sense to make flatter containers, and also would work better once going to canopies which would pack really skinny, like a diapered Phantom. A vertical stack would be too narrow unless the canopy lengthwise folds were spread out more (as is done for some pilot rigs). (Rounds are on my mind as I just packed a Phantom into a guy's Vector I and will soon pack a T-10R MIRPS for a customer...)

Well, at least there's a clarification by the FAA, something we never get in most rigging discussions where we argue about what the rules allow or don't. It does open up the possibility of changing how seal are done, by working at a different level -- if the PIA can be convinced of a workable non-lead system, then manufacturers probably would come on board and approve it, and in turn the FAA might accept it if the industry accepts a new way. Still, the FAA ruling is a little vague on logic. They make the point that riggers get a seal press to seal things, so it sort of makes sense that riggers are to use that seal press. But that doesn't specifically say anything about clamping that press down on a lead disk. One is left to infer that manufacturer's manuals and 8083-17 tend to talk about lead and not paper, and with little or no info out there about paper, the default is the traditional lead seal.

Anyone download a copy of the video before it went private and want to make it available?

Interesting question. Usually it just involves sewing the BOC to point in the other direction. So I'd be surprised if companies wouldn't be willing to work with you. Although on some rigs there would be a little bit more that has to be done, such as rigs where the BOC is built into the bottom flap (not just sewn on) or if there's a bridle channel running up the right side of the bottom flap. That's a factor that would make more work for the factory, having to reverse a couple patterns and assembly.

Here's a question that's almost History & Trivia but I thought I'd try here. It's something a rigger from the late 70s or the 1980s might answer. How common was it to follow manufacturer's instructions for complex methods of folding a round reserve into a piggyback container, versus just folding side to side? The reason I ask is that sometimes I'd find a round reserve just folded side to side, when the rig's manual specified something more complex, with folds in a complex pattern both up/down and left/right all over the pack tray. The traditional way to pack a round in a pack tray was side to side, starting at the bottom and going up (towards the shoulder end of the rig). Sometimes even if there was a more complex method, riggers reverted to the "default" side to side method. By the time round reserves were getting rarer, that might have occurred just because no manual could be found. But was it seen as acceptable by riggers to use the side to side packing as a default method, even if not actually in a particular rig's manual? Or to be more precise, to what extent was that true for some and not true for others? After all, I bet most riggers have a standard way of flaking a square reserve, and don't change their method according to every reserve parachute manual which is slightly different. For some rigs where the reserve container isn't just a roughly rectangular block, pack tray folding in an "advanced" way makes sense for bulk distribution. That applies to pilot emergency rigs (where the folding can be complex) and a rig such as the Racer (which tapered a lot at the top and benefited from a well in the middle).

If "shady" means "the old style cutters really sucked" and "the company did a terrible job in acknowledging any sort of problems", then I agree with you. If you mean that PIA operatives were secretly sabotaging rigs by lengthening closing loops or inserting small steel balls, then "no" -- that's in conspiracy theory territory. One should be able to separate out the different factors to some degree. I can at the same time both believe that the Argus AAD has had serious problems, AND simultaneously believe that rig manufacturers have been too harsh on it (i.e., permanent bans). Correct me if I'm wrong anyone, but isn't it correct that none of the new style Argus cutters have failed to work? It's hard to remember the results of every incident. I wouldn't say the newer cutters are all that well proven, but I thought that all of the failures we had seen were on the older cutters (which for a long time the company used to say were perfectly fine).

I'll join this resurrected thread. Although I have little formal RW training, I go with the ideas like those Mark Rejhon and rdesilets gave -- dive out to the side, rolled slightly to present chest towards line of flight, then turn to dive 'down the hill'. That may not be the absolute most efficient way, but that's a good way to learn. Like in many sports, you can learn to do things part by part, while later with practice everything seamlessly works together. Diving outwards, then turning left gets the jumper to clear the doorway (no diving into the bottom left corner and hitting the doorway), and to present to the wind stably. So you lose a second doing it part by part; it's better than rolling or tumbling out the door. Then as you get the fundamentals working, the exit can become more of a smooth seamless dive out and down, getting faster while still avoiding the door edge or instability.