pchapman

I don't know the answer but in many countries, a foreign license is OK for foreigners who are temporarily visiting. But if you are a citizen, or sometimes just a resident, they expect you to get or convert to the local licenses.

OP: I wouldn't be too happy if your dog bit ME, just because I came within 3m of you or whatever.

Some old parachuting articles are to be found online, such as through Google Books. Google Books has FULL issues of LIFE, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics, for example, that have parachuting articles. I won't put in URLs, just the magazine & date, as one can easily finish the search oneself. Indeed, maybe this thread won't go anywhere, as one can just do the searches oneself. But it gives the idea some publicity and might get people to find a few interesting gems of articles. Hope someone likes this; it sure looks like a new time waster for me! =============== All this initial list are from Google Books: LIFE magazine March 22, 1937 cover and page 28+ article on Irving Air Chute company with many photos LIFE Aug 10, 1959 "Falls for Fun" -- a couple page article on Sport Parachuting LIFE Oct 20, 1961 "Leap Onto the Alps" Three French jumpers land on Mont Blanc. Short article and a few pics scattered on pages near p 78 LIFE Nov 10, 1941 "Parachutist Dives Record 29,300 Feet" p44+ Popular Science Apr 1928 "Hurtling through Space in a Parachute" p43-44 Not about the stratosphere, but about long delays and military parachutes in general. Popular Science Jan 1920 "Stepping off into Space" by Major Orde Lees 3 pages early in the magazine (no page numbers displayed)

Although that Western NY Heritage article contained most of what's in the article, the original LIFE magazine article has a couple more pics and a few more words: http://books.google.com/books?id=PlEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70&dq=life+magazine+march+22,+1937&hl=en&ei=dBCoTvLYMMLg0gHv-t35DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=life%20magazine%20march%2022%2C%201937&f=false Go to p 28 for the article. (Google Books is cool! It would be fun to make a thread with a list of other old parachuting articles in their collections. One can search the magazines on the Google Books page... I'm about to look at some Aug. 10,1959 article in LIFE about Sport Parachuting. And how about one of three French parachutists jumping onto the summit area of Mont Blanc in 1961... I think I'll go start a thread.)

Self-induced line twists: The risk of line twists from sudden opposing toggle turns doesn't get much mention in the Canadian PIMs, just this on p47 of PIM2a: You have to be sensitive to unweighting the lines if doing sudden turns. With tension on the lines, the lines spreading out from both shoulders have a lot of resistance to twisting around each other. As soon as the lines get like limp spaghetti with no tension on them, there's nothing preventing you and the canopy doing different things. If one twists up, what typically happens is NOT that 'the canopy twists up'. Instead, the canopy does something that your body can't follow, so your body is rotated relative to it. Once there's a half twist, there's very little stopping any twisting even with tension applied, so then one's body might continue to turn and spin up 2 or 3 full revolutions. If one is on a smaller more sensitive canopy, the canopy might continue to turn and spiral, making it harder to untwist. (Also, one might still have one brake line pulled down and that could be trapped in the twists.) About 15 years back self-induced line twists killed a then well known Canadian jumper with 4000 jumps. At least you were keeping your playing around with the canopy up high - good - where emergency procedures are still possible.

What do we care? Whatever happens, we'll get a cool cartoon out of it.

Nice. A serious demo: Huge stadium brightly lit at night, everything else dark, flash bulbs going off, flying pyro and a flag. Perfect, other than the slider flapping madly all the way down.

I've only done a fairly 'open' 30,000 seat stadium where most jumpers used their regular crossbraced canopies. Just fly above one set of stands then 180 it steeply past the goal posts to land near the centre. Vid from one of my jumps gives some idea of how fast everything happens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzcSqpjxpzU It could have worked in a more closed stadium. But for one of the really big, steep, closed-side stadiums, that's a different game that I haven't played...

Good question. It's one of those design decisions that isn't always clear to riggers. The Racer has the fabric IN because there's no other place to put it. One pin pop-top style rigs, the Reflex and Teardrop, have cupped caps wider than the spring so there's space to stow the fabric under the cap but OUT of the spring. I generally like the idea of not having the fabric rubbed on between coils. Javelin keeps it OUT, although a bit may be between the coils at the coil top due to tensioning the fabric for all the twisty stuff done with it towards the bottom of the rig. (That's another funny thing about rigging pilot chutes: In some cases a company wants them packed neatly to open quickly and symmetrically, while in other cases one can twist and mangle the pilot chute since it isn't supposed to matter much.) Then there's the Wings, where fabric could be kept out but it is put IN -- rather an inconvenience for a rig where it is so tough to get the pilot chute to seat down tight. I just went and played with a Wings PC. Compressing it on a hard surface, fabric OUT it is about 2.4 cm thick, but fabric IN I typically get about 3.3 cm. That's 1.1 cm thicker, or around 0.45 inches. While those numbers may change with how one measures (I did it quickly) and how the fabric is packed in the coils, it does show how much more compact it would be if one didn't have to jam the fabric between the coils.

And one of his old 26' LoPo's saved me just a month ago. I hope he had a chuckle when the photos got passed around Strong Enterprises. Blue Skies.

What Nick DG recalled in a thread a few years back about Bungee tracking off to the end: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3329538;search_string=Bungee%20Wallace;#3329538 The short NTSB report (LAX93FA055B) is silent on the issue. Bungee was alone in a C-180, with the C-210 having 4 occupants. The long last track makes a great tale. But I found the following LA Times article too. While one can't trust newspapers, it seems clear that there was no initial mystery about the sole occupant of one plane, even just one day after the accident: I wanted to know more about what really happened but am sad that my bit of research found something that goes against the legend. The end often isn't pretty anyway, so remember everything the man did in his life...

Good point. I should have picked up on the harness issue too. This may be especially relevant to bigger people, where the pressure on the leg straps will be more and might more easily be at a level where blood flow is impeded when under a spinning canopy. Reduction of circulation from leg straps affects the whole body, reducing what the heart has available to easily pump out -- to everything including the brain. It isn't just a matter of whether one's toes get a bit numb from hanging in the harness. If I recall correctly (and from your username), BlindBrick, you're a big guy, an 'anvil' in RW. Edit: I think this hypoxia thing from g's will be relevant to older jumpers too, in those cases where an old jumper spins in without chopping or doing so in time. When old, one's heart, arteries, vagus reflex, or whatever, may no longer be able to respond as well in maintaining blood pressure under a stress like high g's.

I dunno but it sounds plausible. We're talking about hypoxia in the brain due to acceleration (not high altitude). Acceleration reduces blood pressure and blood pressure in the brain (Although it may be at least partially counteracted by increased heart rate, other automatic body responses to low blood pressure, or conscious straining). Even if the amount of g's is well short of the amount to cause g-induced loss of consciousness, it could cause serious cognitive problems. I have no citations to support this. Remember also that the g loading sufficient to put someone 'asleep' is much lower for someone who is relaxed (4 g being common?) than for the test case of a fighter pilot in good physical condition with specific straining techniques. I wonder if it would be useful for skydivers to learn something about the concept of straining against g-loading, and good ways to do so. Other factors could also affect reasoning during a spinning mal, such as distraction, disorientation or vertigo. All these factors together could be what has led to incorrect actions like delayed cutaways. This mental aspect would be in addition to the simple physical problem of moving under higher g loads.

Quick (?) answer: Sliding is a more advanced maneuver, that is useful, but only if you have little vertical speed ... and already have the judgment to determine what kind of speed you have, which isn't always true for a beginner. It can also take practice to get right, which a given person may or may not have. With a student canopy, you don't really get the "high" horizontal speed where a slide can be the best option. (Well, except when downwinded.) Don't run something out unless you really are sure you'll have almost no vertical speed and runnable horizontal speed. It all comes down to: as a beginner, PLF is the best overall option if one isn't sure of landing softly on one's feet.

Yes we make sure to have instructor video for each PFF jump, and make the vids available to the students. A very useful tool of course.

Glad to hear the Teuge vintage meet it will be back again, I guess after a couple years without it!

What do AFFI's recommend for a student who tumbles & spins? I've got a student (doing PFF in Canada) who has a couple times started a moderate speed rotation, at the point where he's doing a solo unlinked exit. It happened once on a normal exit, once on a deliberate unstable exit. There was some turning, some tumbling, some turning on his back, and some pretty nice looking solo sidespin -- it all combines together until it seems to stop by chance or I go in to block and take out most of the momentum. The rotations aren't really fast, but steady. Clearly, preventative measures at the beginning would help -- a better arch at the hips, and using arms to turn to oppose any initial turning starting on the hill. (And he has some turning issues in general.) But how detailed does one get about recovery procedures for a student? During the tumble he may have been trying to arch, but body position isn't always perfect, he often shows some dearch, and legs get flung around. Some of this is his doing but it is harder to prevent limbs from being flung around during a tumble/spin. The short side spin parts are probably aggravated by the legs and arms being uneven too. He's also been taught the technique to pull an arm in and 'roll out of bed' if he's on his back, as a better method than the simple arch. How much else do advanced AFF students get taught? I don't think one can make the recommendations too detailed or the student would never get in synch with the airflow. (E.g., if pitching forward and coming face to earth, put arms forward.) There are things like balling up or delta-ing out, that have been taught to traditional solo progression students, but I'm not sure those should be at the top of the list of things to teach. So is there something useful to work on with the student other than to actually get a proper arch going, and to get consistent in doing turns and countering unwanted ones?

Good to have that quote as a reminder from AC105. One reads "direct supervision" -- that's very clear. But then one reads "to the extent necessary" -- which could mean zero percent direct supervision at any given time if the rigger thinks they've got things under control. (E.g., a trained team, clearly defined roles, training logged & documented, occasional spot checks, incident reporting, recurrency training -- some of that being direct supervision, at certain times!) I'm not arguing for either a very loose or strict interpretation, just saying that even "direct supervision" isn't as clear as it initially seems.

I didn't expect Jeb Corliss to make it into the XKCD comic. (Good thing I did a search and so avoided posting in Bonfire.)

The divisions Riggerrob mentioned for the CSPA have been in place, I don't know, 10 years or more. Back in the early 90s though, there was no division by rig type. I started rigging in that era. Since I chose to apprentice doing both rounds and squares, I was therefore qualified to pack both. But there was nothing on paper and I don't know for sure what the rules were.

Nice to see a Bryan Burke post! (Memories of good stuff in rec.skydiving back in the 90s). We are indeed seeing that there's more involved in a good skydiving cutter than just taking an off-the-shelf line cutter. I personally still see more of a safety benefit to having an Argus turned on, than banned and turned off or removed. And the "partially cut loop" hazard should be manageable -- no different than people making sure their pins aren't dislodged in the plane. But it would require Argus owners to have at least a minimal self awareness of their pull altitude and whether they might have popped their AAD. (Even if the Argus fires, the loop is cut much more often than not cut, and those stats should improve with the newer cutter, although we don't have complete proof of that.) Yes that wingsuiter in the "San Marcos Argus incident" wasn't aware of firing his Argus after a deliberate low pull. It still comes down to educating the jumper to do the right thing: such as getting a proper sized closing loop, packing their BOC right, protecting their handles, .... or check that they didn't pop their Argus on the last jump by looking at the display. But that's just personal opinion and I'm not responsible for safety at any DZ.

That issue could indeed be clarified. Is Chemring selling cutters in general to the military, or for military jumper AADs? Is Aviacom or its principals still involved in a military market? Cutters are useful for various line cutting uses, that may not directly involve humans, which may not necessarily require the same specifications as for jumper AADs.

While this was a quality control failure, it happened at the cutter supplier, Stresau (Wisconsin based), not Vigil/AAD itself. This shows the importance of a close relationship, in terms of quality control, with a cutter supplier. Aviacom wasn't able to buy or manage that kind of relationship. The whole skydiving AAD industry would fall apart if experienced explosive devices companies were not willing to supply parts for skydiving. And thankfully the fatal accident didn't happen to a skydiver who got knocked out or the like, but to one who simply didn't deploy a parachute in time.

PSB-06 Oct 4, 2011 My interpretation only - please read the actual attached .pdf bulletin: Recall of all cutters produced in October 2007. Reason: One cutter (involved in a fatal accident in Canada) didn't have the blade installed. Believed to be an isolated incident. Those cutters should all be returned. Other cutters build before June 2008 should be magnet tested to confirm the presence of the blade, just as a precaution. (Later ones are 100% xray tested.) When: before next jump for the list of Vigils provided; at next repack for other Vigils (e.g., in case cutters were swapped around) Thanks to the CSPA who had this bulletin even before the A.A.D. site. [comment: Oops!]