pchapman

Cool. Then there were also those US smoke jumpers from the Bureau of Land Management who have (had?) a belly mount square, a 270 MT-1S. They use some sort of droop risers so they are suspended from a higher point under reserve. Edit: Their reserves appear to hook on to risers built into the main harness, using lockable climbing carabiners. So there's no worry about accidentally knocking a snap open. So what kind of reserve hookup was used on that UPT cutaway rig? Regular snaps, or something that could be locked?

I can see how a no refund policy will confuse the person coming in off the street. I wouldn't want to go to an electronics store, pay for a TV, have a clerk go back to the stock room and come back to say, "Sorry, out of stock, it says no refunds, sucker." The no refund policy has been an issue at one DZ I'm at too. We can understand some reasons for avoiding refunds or 100% refunds in most cases -- you don't want no-shows at the DZ after the staff have been arranged, and people have to expect to drive back again if the weather didn't work out. The DZO will sometimes relent after enough complaining in certain cases. Or instructors have to catch the tandem students in time to tell them to specifically ask about a potential refund or not having their card charged until the jump. What else is someone supposed to do if they are a tourist or exchange student, and flying home to another country next week?

Re: intentional backflip through lines to fix flip through Sorry, didn't have the camera rolling on that hop and pop exit. But I just got email back from him where he states, "I remember packing it saying there is a flip through in it and I didn't care cause I would fix it in the air." And he was right. (Yeah, "don't try this at home kids". Let's just say he knows what he's doing. He was under a double keel Paradactyl and I was under a ParaCommander at the time.)

I watched a buddy do the back flip to remove a flip through, on a slower more docile canopy. But it is one of those things that one doesn't recommend people to do unless they have really thought it through...

Ha ha, that's the way it can be. Students may love it when the DZ isn't too busy and there are enough instructors to get them into the air a lot. But especially early on, with all the tension and excitement of the jumps, plus briefings and debriefings, and maybe some stressful waiting around too, students can get wiped from just a couple jumps in a day!

The key is to simulate an emergency to SOME degree, if a minor added risk is worth the learning opportunity in case of a real emergency. But not to simulate your way into a real emergency by taking risks that have not enough training vlue. While single engine flight practice is normal on twin engined aircraft, doing it in certain ways at certain times can too easily create a real emergency. Such as doing single engine approaches with one engine completely shut down. Or, it can be debated to what degree pilots should learn spins or just spin entries, balancing the learning vs. risk. I have intentionally malfunctioned a canopy...when I'm prepared for it by having it as a 3rd canopy. And it would be fun to line over a junk canopy. But the standard in skydiving would be to have a third canopy available in such situations. Doing the one brake unstowed simulation can be quite safe if approached gradually as Makeithappen suggests, yet provide an unexpectedly disorientating situation for someone unpracticed.

I'll say again that this isn't just a matter of "clear your airspace and bury a toggle". No it isn't a full simulation of everything that can happen with a popped toggle, such as spiralling with line twists and a cutaway. A popped toggle may cause line twists, or may not. I don't know all the probabilities and how it varies by canopy. The effects can vary depending on whether the toggle was left unset during packing, or it slipped off during the opening due to a poorly secured toggle, or whether one knocked a poorly secured toggle out of place as one reached up to the risers at the end of opening. Pilots on twin engined aircraft will pull the power back on one engine, maybe feather it, and practice flying on the other. It won't fully simulate what happens if one engine actually blows up ... but it still teaches some of the things you may want to do in that situation. Makeithappen's original post did start the exercise out nice and gently for someone new to this, e.g., "Raise the unstowed toggle SLOWLY to the full flight position". But as one gets used to it, one can release the toggle a lot faster, and let it completely out of one's hand. I still maintain that the feeling one gets with no hands on toggles, one brake set, and spiralling, can be a lot different than if one is intentionally spiralling - even if the aerodynamics are the same. BIG difference in the feeling of control. (OK, I haven't tried it lately on different canopies. Sure is true on my FX 88 at 2.0 WL. I'd be interested to hear what anyone finds on a more lightly loaded canopy.) The exercise can also help one with learning to deal with having one free and one stuck toggle. -- Again by not getting phased by an unexpected spiral, and recovering from it. Can a stuck toggle become serious? Yes! This is a bit of a digression, but here goes my example: I know a tandem instructor who pulled in the wrong direction on the toggles after opening, and only one came off its snap. (This was all documented on video.) Fighting with it, he let go of the other toggle, so the speed built up as he went into a spiral. While there was nothing wrong with the toggle, it wasn't being pulled the right direction, so it stayed stuck for him as the spiral deepened. He has little choice then but to cutaway, but his left hand had missed the ripcord handle and was instead inadvertently clamped on the 3-ring, preventing that from releasing. So the RSL/Skyhook activated reserve dumped up into the main still attached on one side, with the reserve pilot chute bouncing off the bottom skin of the main. The reserve opened with twists, and after a couple seconds of canopies fighting each other, he let go of the 3-ring, and the main cleared without catching the reserve. And he had already loosened the passenger side straps before he tried to pop the toggles, so the cutaway was done in that condition. All turned out OK. But that odd chain of events could have been stopped had he been able to keep the canopy flying straight with one toggle popped and one set. As it was, it lead to that panicky feeling of spiralling out of control and the rest of the events that could have ended with a main-reserve entanglement. [Edit: I'm not claiming that Makeithappen's exercise is the best thing since the invention of the reserve parachute. But I'm saying it isn't as useless an exercise as one might think at first. It's not "just a spiral".]

That can change the speed at which it happens, and more so what one would be doing with one's hands. Mentally I think getting whipped around while not touching anything with one's hands is going to be a lot more unsettling for someone than if they are deliberately pulling one toggle down to spiral. Sure seems that way to me when I practice it, despite having 2000+ jumps. So actually popping a brake will have more training value. (One can start off the training slowly though, and not just pop the toggle and entirely let go the first time.) Sometimes a toggle unstowing on opening will cause line twists early on, while at other times the canopy just starts a sudden turn once it really starts to fill with air and fly forward. So this practice won't prevent all chops with a popped toggle, but can help people learn to deal with those situations where it doesn't instantly twist up. I've never had crappy enough risers or such sloppy packing that I had to deal with many popped toggles, but quickly countering the turn with a rear riser pull worked for me once...

Ok, I got the manual I mentioned onto parachutemanuals.com, even if it isn't particularly useful: http://www.parachutemanuals.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=40&func=fileinfo&id=422

I'm personally not convinced that "letting the canopy spread better" gives all that big of an effect in most cases. Yes, with a very small canopy and harness super wide like some swoopers. But for the average intermediate jumper, I bet the dimensional and aerodynamic changes will be so small it is hardly worth mentioning. Of course the canopy flight may not feel much different if one keeps the slider at the top of the risers and it is one that is taut from side to side when under canopy. So the slider situation has to be discussed at the same time. I think the "improvement" in flight comes more from the way the canopy flight feels with chest strap spread, once one gets used to it. Hard to describe but one isn't as much 'dangling like a pendulum' under the canopy, but with a more direct path between one's center of mass and the canopy.

Loosening the chest strap can be used to allow leaning forward on landing, so that the jumper is more upright while the canopy is "behind" the jumper during the flare. Even for less experienced jumpers, at lower wing loadings and not swooping, this has helped improve their landings -- easier to balance on landing and see where one's feet are going. So even at low jump numbers it can be useful. I do however teach the caveats about distractions after opening, and the issue of finding one's handles if the harness is looser and one has a canopy collision or discovers a subtle malfunction. So I'm not sure quite how early in a jumper's career loosening the chest strap would be recommended. What do I know, but I think ladies might like a little extra breathing room too after opening.

May I ask the situations? I had met Mr. Frasca before he bailed without his rig fully done up. And I know of the guy who was stuck with being very fast and perhaps low when getting out of his out of control Sukhoi, and blew up his Phantom canopy. But any other caveats are welcome.

A reply to someone else: Hey, if you can share some more ideas about chops from that much experience, I'm all for it.

I also wanted to correct that to say (similarly to what Jerm said), is that there can be residual spin. The person isn't a point mass. When a person is spinning under canopy, their body is spinning at some speed around its own center of mass (in addition to the overall spin). In an idealized situation of spinning purely in a flat 2-dimensional plane, in a circle, if the spin is 1 revolution per second, the person is also spinning at 1 revolution per second around their own center of mass. When they cutaway, they are flung off at a tangent to the circle -- still spinning at 1 revolution per second! That's of course separate from any aerodynamic issues. Now add on the fact that a spinning, spiralling dive is 3 dimensional, so then even if there is a single spin axis, the spin will be on more than one of the axes that we normally use for a body -- there can be a pitch, roll, and yaw at the same time. After a cutaway, there would be the same 3 perceived axes of motion, even if technically there's only a single axis of rotation. As a simplified example of that, consider again the guy in a spin in a horizontal circle, ignoring the 3-D dimension of height. If the guy is face down, his rotation about his body mass is purely a yaw. If for some reason he is rolled 90 degrees and is spinning on his side, then it is purely a pitching motion relative to his center of mass. If he is somewhere between those two cases, rolled 45 degrees, then when he cuts away, he is flung off and has a combination of yaw and pitching, not along any single axis he is used to. To get stable, the jumper has to apply aerodynamic inputs that he learned against both yaw (a turn) and a pitch (looping) at the same time -- multiple axes as far as he is concerned! If anyone can explain the physics more clearly, go for it. That's a point. One either wants to take the time to get reasonably stable, OR get the reserve out very quickly before much tumble can happen. Skyhook? Seems to usually do so. RSL? I'll leave that up to debate. I'm not so sure.

FWIW, people can find the bulletin about the extension (for replacing Aug '07 and earlier cutters) at: http://www.argus-aad.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209&Itemid=33 07/12/2010 : SB AMMO071210/3

There's a Parachutes de France manual out there covering a number of their older reserves. I got it recently, maybe from some link on this site, I don't recall. I'll contact parachutemanuals.com to get it uploaded. However, it doesn't give any technical details on the reserves like the Mayday, just some very old special flat pack techniques. I have one customer with a Mayday, even got a save on it last year. The photocopies I have from his old manual match the pdf I mentioned. I pack it with the normal modern reserve propack method.

Ah, but most small aircraft have no fixed life. Inspection cycles yes, but there are plenty of antique aircraft out there. The average Cessna piston single in service is probably 30 years old. And even engines with TBO's can be overhauled. But that doesn't change any of the actual issues that people debate about older parachutes and manufacturers' rules. In this case the owners really got screwed, if the rig was built in about 1992 and only in 1994 did the manufacturer attempt to put a life on it. They should ask for their money back.

I'll note that there is some debate about the GQ rules as they apply to the old US company. I have, for example, email from the new company in the UK where they basically say they are a separate business entity from the old US GQ, and thus have nothing to say one way or another about the state of the old products. This was in response to a specific question about the life of reserves from the US GQ company. Riggers are free to make their own choices. Still, it would be nice to have something more standard than a diapered X210, even if one still gets an older reserve.

At one DZ I've been at we've long had an instructor meeting (and a video meeting) before the season. Or early in the season, if we had already been open during much of the winter. Although not necessarily done at other DZ's, we have a tandem instructor meeting where the annual test is written and the UPT videos watched as they want one to do. Sometimes meetings got sidetracked, eg, arguments about video vs. tandem pay. But if run well we could get a refresher on techniques, things we learned in the last year, review any incident reports from the last year, etc. Sometimes the topics for the day would be split up, so it wasn't a 4 hour lecture by the DZO. One instructor would review one topic, another would head up another topic. While some assignments were obvious (eg, the staff rigger talks about gear issues), people didn't have to be the expert on a topic, as it just served to start the conversation. We've had Safety Day separated from the instructional days as Safety Day was more jumper-run and wouldn't get going until later in spring. Lately the DZO has been better in scheduling instructor meetings into a single day, so one wasn't at his beck and call all winter to drive out for each of the meetings separately. The DZ pilots, according to our Canadian Operating Certificate, also are required to have an annual training session on the ground (distinct from their annual in-air checks). So the concept of an instructor meeting makes sense, especially if one doesn't have other good mechanism during the year to go over issues and procedures.

Here's a screencap of the facebook pic plus description. (NovaTTT I trust you don't mind.) Edit: And yes we all have to understand that the "overpowering" only needs to be briefly, early in the sequence, before the RSL/main can apply much force. Guess we need lousier reserve pilot chutes to fix that.

I see that the classic cylindrical yellow E-A-R plugs have a NRR rating of 29, but their tapered closed foam ones also have a 33 rating. (http://www.e-a-r.com/e-a-r.com/roll_detail.cfm?prod_family=Earsoft&ind_prod_num=312-1250001) They've got the same shape as the Sparkplugs that were mentioned. So it seems a few quality brands might all reach the 33 level.

There was a packing weight thread here somewhere just recently, with some lead alternatives mentioned.

I never saw any manual either, whether back in the day, on rigging manuals sites, or on the stored Atair site on archive.org. All I saw was a FAQ with tips on packing, opening, etc.

I'm also all for a calm debrief without outside interruption. But, sheesh. At some DZ's people plug their cameras into a big tv out in the hangar, by the packing mats, whatever. That's what's available. Still, I guess some students new to the sport haven't yet learned the fact that they are there as a source of entertainment to be laughed at.... aren't they?

Hey, the guy is used to thumping in all over the place under rounds, so as long as he isn't a total screwup in the way he flies squares, and is at a DZ with forgiving terrain, he should be able to land the reserve without breaking anything. Still, a size bigger might have been nice.