pchapman

Or nanothermite?

The excerpt from the book below finds the Salvator rig very poor, when evaluated by the German Luftwaffe. Clearly the design had improved by the time it was introduced in Switzerland, as shown in piisfish's links. OCR'd and roughly translated by Google and I: The "manual" opening of the pack closure isn't clear. Perhaps to improve on the original system, the version with a knife at the end was introduced. The world's first closing loop cutter, manually activated? Piisfish's links help a bit with understanding the design, but the whole pilot chute / container flaps / pilot chute cap / closing loop cutter system is still unclear to me. The description of the opening forces suggest that the rubber ring at the apex vent was a very strong one, restricting any stretching until loads had built up a lot, and only then stretching to relieve the pressure at the canopy apex. Maybe that feature was later dropped. The awkward harness with thin leg and shoulder straps and huge belly strap was retained I see. Surprising that they kept using them in Switzerland in their Buecker trainers for so long. Nice bit of history piisfish!

Ooh, ooh, [sticking hand up] I think I might know! I'll guess it is an Italian Salvator brand seatpack rig. First the joking response: If it wasn't Tiny Broadwick, it would be Kate Paulus, the German equivalent! But seriously: The rig has that Germanic / European big belt around the stomach style, common into WWII. On the shiny metal pilot chute cap or whatever it is, I can make out the end of a word, "TOR" at the bottom (once one has rotated the pic 90 right), as in "SALVATOR" with the word at the top perhaps being "PARACHUTE". Over here in North America we don't hear much about all the early European brands, like Thornblad, Autoflug, RH series, Heineke, Heico, Schroeder, Kostelezky, etc I know this stuff only because I read German and bought a copy of "Sicherheit und Rettung in der Luftfahrt" (Safety and Rescue in Aviation) by Ruff, Ruck, Sedlymeyer. Edit: I'll post more once I scan & translate some info on the Salvator.

I do the knot and pull up directly on it. Wrapping the pullup would rotate the dowel too easily.

That hook looks nicely built but I just use a piece of hardwood dowel, pulling up under a knot in the reserve pullup cord. (You do know the knot trick, right? No need to wrap the cypres loop pullup cord a million times around a packing paddle to keep it from slipping.) Just make sure the dowel material from the hardware store is not cheap soft wood that'll soon break. The dowel gives a greater hand contact area (less force per square inch on the fingers), is nice and rounded (no edges to dig in), doesn't take long to orient in one's hand (given its axial symmetry), and is dirt cheap (not $45). Looking much like Homer Simpson's inanimate carbon rod, although smaller, it is just as useful in saving the day.

A DZ in my local area has been trying to do things more that way. But it's in the Canadian environment, where there are a bunch of things after the AFF / PFF that have to get signed off by different levels of coaches anyway, including some RW fundamentals training. (Those sign offs can come only from coaches. Another issue of course is how coaches are paid, whether there is a standard rate through the school, or whether any coach can take up the student for any fee from zero on up.) So in my area novices will have to go up with coaches a bunch of times anyway. The US situation may be different. But it is interesting to see the reasoning: It isn't so much that the DZO wants the money. After all, someone without a license isn't as likely to go off to another DZ, they keep on renting, and they'll still have to do all their coach jumps eventually. What the policy does do is keep people from being eternal students, pushing them to progress, rather than taking forever to finish their license. Those guys are around the DZ so long that people forget their student status, and that leads to bandit RW jumps. The problem the DZO & staff wrestle with, is that sometimes a coach isn't available, or a student just wants to practice something they are having issues with, before paying a coach to witness the maneuver. Or the novice just wants a few fun, relaxed jumps thrown in between what are essentially evaluation jumps. So there are reasons both to push students to progress, and reasons to let them have some fun jumps along the way.

Hey Nova, the Wilcox Webbing test (2 MB pdf) is downloadable from: http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214

For all those wishing to click through: This is a JOKE video, not a serious video. Both are OK, but it's nice to know before hand which is which. Besides, if one charges $10 for a 30 lb main canopy test, why not charge $20 for a 20 lb test -- people would pay extra to not have their main canopy destoyed! :-) You can have an old canopy that'll withstand a bunch more jumps, but the worn center top skin at the back will rip if you 30 lb test it.

Some more points off the top of my head. -- Learn to do a wind check prior to entering the pattern, to see how much penetration you are getting, to estimate whether the winds are high, medium, low, or whatever. You need to get used to both estimating forward speed, and using 'the accuracy trick' to estimate angle of descent. Compare to the windsocks too, as what's happening at 1000' may differ from what's on the ground. That adds some complexity. -- Yes watch others from the ground -- of course, they need to be people with similar wing loadings, maybe other newbies on rental gear, or else the different air speeds will confuse you. -- Work on anticipating what will happen, in conditions of high winds and you are flying downwind. It takes time to turn 90 or 180 so it is easy to be blown too far down wind unless you are thinking ahead. Because you'll drift downwind during the turns and the crosswind, you'll have to start turning base quite a bit upwind of the point where you want to be established on final. -- Get used to estimating the angle of descent you fly with your canopy on final approach into the wind, in different conditions. How steep an approach do you get in high, medium, low, or near zero winds? If you know roughly what the winds are, and how high you want to be when turning final, then you know how far down wind you want to be when turning final. So if you want to learn, you have to remember specific information about past jumps in order to apply it to future jumps.

When someone checks their handles on the ground or boarding the airplane or on jump run or before exit, what do they do? One hand per handle, right? Not everyone will do it that way, but I'm guessing a lot do, even if their cutaway training in two hands on one handle, then two on the other. Handles checks get done way more than actual emergency procedures practices, and win out in muscle memory. Perhaps that's one reasonable explanation?

The Orion was from Para-Flite I thought. So sort that question out first. There's no 20 year limit in the US. (Just some round parachute companies have put life limits on their reserves.) Short answer is that some riggers may as a personal choice prefer not to pack older reserves.

Jokes aside, that is useful info. Been a while since I packed one, but I recall seeing an Eclipse where the numbering order on the last two flaps was NOT the same as what the manual said the order was.

So they prefer that old F-111 stuff? Or are those canopies also made in ZP? (eg, Mantas are available in ZP too these days.) I would think - but don't know - that demo jumpers would also be using big Triathlons or other even more modern ZP 7 cells. Tho' some don't go up to the really big sizes. (For the little demos I do, when there's limited room, I pull out my old F-111 Maverick, so I'm not against F-111.)

If we both own the same type of car and you say yours broke down, it doesn't do much good if I say, "Don't worry, my car is working fine!"

The way things have gone with Argus, I'd actually be more impressed if someone took a cypres cord, put a series of knots in it, pulled each knot really tight, jammed that into a cutter, and then "pulled the trigger". (Karel G. of Argus had complained about some in air testing a rigger, Mr. Oosterveer, did with the Argus in '06 or so, where cutters didn't cut well. The argument was that the test loops were knotted at one end and pulled partially into the cutter, making it cut a dense knot, and doing so with only one side of the circular cutter.) Tough but flexible Spectra looks like more of a challenge than stiff steel wire.

Yeah. I was last out on a demo jump where the pilot had 150 miles to fly back home. Closed the door on the King Air (not known for slow jump runs), while wearing a big accuracy rig, plus a small knapsack strapped to my stomach. A bit windy but doable.

Is the reserve pilot chute cap still the sturdy aluminum cap as it used to be? I haven't seen a newer TSE rig. I packed a Teardrop from '99 that had spacer foam on it, years before most other rigs ever thought of the idea.

To find the photo quicker on that page of this huge thread, search for "silkworm". It is also post #59. Wish someone had a larger than 9.25kb version of the photo!

Someone passed on info about John Sherman's post on to Airtec, so Helmut Cloth of Airtec wrote a reply. Folks at SSK wondered if I might post it to add to the discussion. Helmut's statement is quite long, and does push that CYPRES thing he manufactures, but we don't always hear from equipment designers on this site, so I figured I'd give him the courtesy of still posting it all. I don't think Helmut is trying to get into an argument with John, but his perspective on the reasons for using the Cypres loop material instead of Kevlar (as all Racers' used to have) is a little different -- at a distance of about 20 years since they first discussed how to put a Cypres on a Racer. I have in the past criticized Airtec for seeming to have an attitude of "just trust us", and I have heard that Helmut can get a little defensive when questioned about his wonderful product. However he expresses himself, it is interesting to see some feedback from him about Cypres cutter design and Cypres loops. Especially at a time that cutter design is on peoples' minds. The highlighting in the text is mine, to try to pick out some of the more interesting bits of the letter. I have also added a couple editors' comments where I think Helmut's English wasn't quite clear.

Hi Rhys and everyone: OK, I've got some more information on this incident and how Airtec handled things. It doesn't mean they are perfect, but further info makes their actions seem much more reasonable than they might otherwise appear. I've had discussions with Cliff Schmucker, and so Airtec has released a brand new statement about how the 2008 Cypres 2 recall came about. 1. Injury due to Cypres 2 inadvertent fire in 2006? From information I have seen, it looks like the info that was passed on to Airtec was very limited. Someone involved in running the DZ contacted Airtec about getting a replacement unit right away, but mentioned no injury. It was in no way a full incident report. Even up until now the local Cypres dealer also understood that there was no injury. I also got in contact with another jumper at the DZ at the time, and he did say that the tandem instructor was sore from the landing. I don't know if the instructor was sore for a day or a week, jumping or not jumping. But there was no serious injury, and no information about any injury of any type seems to have made it up the chain to Airtec. Thus in the 2008 Cypres 2 recall, Airtec was being honest, and not trying to cover anything up, when they stated that no injuries had occurred. Clearly a two out has the potential to go seriously wrong. (What I can't comment on is whether the instructor had any direct communications with anyone, and whether there may have been any breakdown in communication there.) 2. Circumstances of the 2008 recall Airtec has written "Regarding the April 2008 CYPRES 2 Service Bulletin" and posted it on the Cypres-USA (SSK) site: http://cypres-usa.com/April_2008_SB_letter_2011_03.pdf Airtec explains the actions they took regarding an intermittent and rare issue with a sensor. It looks like Airtec were the ones whose digging found the error, not the sensor company. So the sensor company didn't warn Airtec, rather it was the other way around. There had been a claim from Vigil that after the sensor company announced the problem, Airtec did nothing for 15 months to tell their customers about the problem. Airtec seems to have believed that they had the situation under control, with the sensor imperfections having no practical effect, so there was nothing to warn about. The sensor company had an oven problem which resulted in minor impurities in the sections of batches of silicon chips used to fabricate the pressure sensor. Sensors still passed the sensor company's requirements, and the Airtec tests, but statistical anomalies were found in one case. Airtec did further engineering work on the issue and decided that they didn't see any risk with the sensors already out in the field, even though they stopped production and replaced all those on hand as a precaution. Imperfections in the supplier's process wouldn't in practice cause any sensor problems. Airtec admits that it worked out that they were wrong, for there were the 2 inadvertent firings in 2008, one on the ground and then one in the air as discussed above. While investigating the first incident, the second happened, and soon the recall was issued. Perhaps they hadn't seen the full potential range of variation in sensor performance that could occur from the imperfect wafers. One can debate what is "good" vs. "bad", but Airtec thought they still had "good" sensors out there, even if future ones would be "better". Despite a problem in an extreme lab test, the sensors wouldn't malfunction in actual use. Only after units had worked fine in the field for over a year, then things went wrong and they recalled some AAD's from within about 6 months of production. I don't believe it was all AADs from that time period, as the center of the wafers were not contaminated and chips made from the centers would be OK. People are still free to question how well Airtec evaluated the situation and reacted to it, whether they should have been even more cautious earlier. But they did seem to be thorough in evaluating the issues raised and acting when they thought necessary. I think Airtec is learning that it would be even more trusted if it were a little more open about its actions. (It's also interesting to see in the document how many of those recalled units never made it back to the factory, even after any in-service unit should have had its 4 year check done. I can't believe that all of those units are stuck in closets.)

I just wonder why no-one came with that answer before. Jerome, you have got the BEST solution.

I wonder if your getting the judgment at least gives you a clear proof in order to deduct your loss from income, for tax purposes. Not to mention legal fees to recover what's owed. Some countries have allowance for theft losses including money. I'm not sure if this qualifies, as I've also seen it stated that there has to be criminal intent. I have no idea how it works when it comes to INTENT to defraud -- whether someone deliberately sets up a business based on a Ponzi scheme versus just being so blindly optimistic that they in effect set one up. I don't know taxation policy but it's an interesting area to explore for anyone who has been clearly scammed. EDIT: Davelepka reminded me -- in the post that follows -- that KKrew didn't just run out of money. He took money in for orders and did not submit those orders to the manufacturers. There's the intent to defraud.

Interesting all right, except aerosports patented this time, before any body pokes their nose in there and copies it. cough 'z bracing' cough conspiracy nonsense propagated by a few misinformed people. I don't know this topic well, so can you clarify where the conspiracy is: Are you saying that comparing it to Z bracing is wrong? But where's the conspiracy in simply being wrong, unless someone is secretly orchestrating a campaign against Icarus? Or that Icarus got a patent for the purpose of protecting their design from copying? (Right or wrong, that's something a patent is used for.) But again, who is actually conspiring? Or that Icarus is lying about their patent? (Oddly, didn't provide any country's patent number as proof. They claimed having a patent, not having one pending or otherwise in progress.) Just asking, as I honestly don't know.

I know the CBC has sometimes been seen as a little bit leftie, but how did you find them in the old days when Liberals like Jean Chretien or Paul Martin ran the country? Weren't they really critical of the incumbent then too? I thought so but wasn't paying close attention to what the CBC's overall bias might be. So I'm "just asking". And at least the article wasn't on the main CBC news page, but in one of the smaller font sections down at the bottom of the Politics page. For what that's worth. (At least this was true when I checked this evening Apr 4.)

It is hard to make perfect categories, but it would be nice to some how have incident threads split into information about the incident, vs. discussion of issues from the incident. Basically every incident thread gets into discussion of issues resulting from the incident. So every incident should have two sections to the thread or two threads. (Naturally some programming would be required for an elegant solution.) And we would still have the option to start a new thread about a particular issue in another forum. So for example in the incident thread itself one might have: "I heard she was wearing heavy gloves." or "But I was told she was used to wearing heavy gloves." The discussion section or thread based on the incident would then have posts like this: "She shouldn't have been wearing heavy gloves." or "We have to do it all the time up north; but they can't be too bulky." One could still make a post in another forum about, say, "What gloves do you use when it is cold?"