pchapman

A couple to try. Obscure stuff but the company is isn't terribly so. #1 Good story about it: Test pilot heads out for a high speed dive test. Telegram arrives at airfield. 'Revised calculations show that the structure isn't strong enough. Stop testing!' Too late, pilot has taken off, no radios in those days. Engineers were right. Wing structure fails in dive test. Pilot tries to bail out, newfangled enclosed cockpit canopy jams, pilot manages to get out through smaller side entrance hatch. He survives to have a long life as a pilot & aviation historian. Fate! #2 Another design that went nowhere.

Kallend's plane.jpg: Handley Page Heyford. ... or something very close.

("Plane99" photo) Yes! That's that East German jetliner developed in Dresden, Germany, my mom's home town. The VEB 152 or Baade 152, although official names vary. From 1958 only 3 flew, 1 crashed, and the overall program was generally unsuccessful so they gave up on creating an East German heavy aircraft industry. Edit: already answered by the time I typed it up & submitted it

I once asked on dz about the BCRW stuff but didn't get anywhere. Someone told me Gary Cobb had moved to Australia but I don't know for sure and never tried to track him down. Perhaps someone should!

No big deal, but one can argue about the implications of that: 1) The original reference to using other canopies may refer to using them for manual bailout, not part of the ejection seat system 2) If the ejection seat is optional in the use of the aircraft (as has been stated), does the ejection seat have to be maintained to its full original specifications, or can it be derated? What was written about having to replace the charges annually suggests that it might be like AADs in the US -- You either don't use one, or you have to follow all the rules on them. 3) Due to ejection seat sequencing and drogues and the the like, the max ejection speed may well be higher than the max main canopy deployment speed. So the canopy might not need to be rated to 450 kts. 4) There are plenty of rigs & canopies used for bailout from aircraft, where the aircraft is certified to higher speed than the parachute. (I'm not arguing anything seriously here, just taking the one statement and running with it. It looks like you, Mel, were "just talking" too, and not making a precise statement regarding FAA regulations.)

An interesting case. One could argue that it wasn't a problem with one hand per handle at all. On the reserve pull, she tried one hand, she tried two hands, a third or fourth hand would have been equally useless if she had continued to pull on the housing. On the cutaway, one can argue it either way. In that one instance, she didn't have the strength or whatever to cut away one handed. But one can argue that USUALLY one should be able to cut away one handed, and taking the extra time to go to two hands shouldn't be an issue. Also, in the usual case of being able to cutaway with one hand, then she'd might have had her left hand properly on the reserve handle instead of grabbing it too quickly after chopping. (I'm not arguing for or against any particular method, just arguing about how that particular incident doesn't seem to me a great victory for either method.)

A local 172 is C-FSEX. The Brits have a lot of fun registrations, as with their "G-xxxx" they can make a lot of words.

I'm not of the type to say, "How dare you ask questions? You're insulting the sport! Die like a man! You signed the waiver!". As for radio instruction, is tough for a student to make decisions based on little experience. Almost all the time you do want to listen to radio instructors. But still you can be ready to realize when they don't see what you see, that you have to make a decision to save yourself based on your training, not what you hear over the speaker. Fatality rates? Very roughly 1 in 100,000 jumps. Stats are only stats; so not doing something dumb helps keep you in the 999,999 category. Injuries? Who knows. Maybe something minor like a sprain every couple hundred jumps?

Also upper 70's in a long track. (6'1", 150 lbs, tight RW suit, SAS speed from Protrack graph which is normalized to 3000')

Have they always been black? It's been a while since I've packed either (a very long time since I've packed a Dolphin), but I don't remember the freebags being black. Could just be that I've forgotten. FWIW, as a sideline to the thread topic: - I've seen mid '90s Dolphins with black freebags - The older Mirages such as in the late '90s used ripstop bags in white. (Not like the molar bags of the G4.)

Maybe we're thinking of different things but technically a PD 230 is an F-111 canopy basically from the late 1980s. Which would explain why any you find are old. I have heard of people describing something like a PD Navigator 220 in a student rig as a "PD 220" as a modern abbreviation though. A PD 230 may be appropriate if you are looking for something really cheap to get you in the air. But otherwise for anyone new in the sport, looking for their first rig, they need to be looking for a zero-p canopy. So I'm guessing you really are (or should be) looking for a 230 sq ft docile zero-p canopy instead, from any of the manufacturers, not just PD. (I haven't looked at your profile to think about appropriate wing loading, whether a 230 or something smaller would make sense.) Hope that helps with getting on the right track.

Ok, ok, I'm not THAT annoyed. Everyone gets to make their own decisions on what to do. It is common courtesy and practice to help each other out by chasing expensive equipment. So if the other guy is heading back to the DZ, does that mean (a) he has a issue and feels much safer to do so, and would really appreciate your help in finding his gear, or (b) money is no problem for him, so don't feel any moral obligation to follow the gear if he doesn't, or (c) he's a bit of a newbie who hasn't thought through the consequences of losing gear or is unnecessarily frightened of off-landings even where the risk is low, or (d) he's clueless or doesn't care about skydivers helping each other out and probably would screw you over when you yourself needed help on some jump? So there is some ambiguity as to the frame of mind involved. In the end, I have chased (& will chase) stuff for others if I feel like it, because I want to help and like the challenge. And not because I expect any sort of material reward (e.g., beer).

The decision whether to chase the main & freebag, and to what degree, naturally depends on a bunch of factors -- terrain around the dz, your familiarity with your reserve and the terrain, availability of others on ground to see where things went, etc. Around where I am though, it is normal to chase one's stuff. Or maybe you chase one item, and someone else on the load chases the other. No reason to throw away money by flying back to the dz ... but you want to land safely too. As for what to do when following the main & freebag, you do what you can to stay airborne (eg, fly in brakes) and watch things descend. But at some point concentrate on planning your own safe landing. Keep the circling or passes fairly wide, I'd suggest. It can be handy to do a pass right above airborne gear to get a good view of where it is over the earth at that particular time (which can be trickier if looking diagonally). But if one gets in too tight, one gets forced to circle tightly and quickly to keep the stuff in sight, and it makes it tougher to devote time to planning one's own landing. What can be annoying is if you see someone else chop, and they head back to the DZ. Maybe they have a good reason to do so, but then if you try to help out your fellow jumper and follow their gear, you take on all the risks of landing out. (E.g., While chasing someone else's freebag with perhaps too much of a generous attitude, by the time I broke off the circling, I had to take a downwinder into rough grass between bushes with my small crossbraced canopy. I was happy to help the guy out, when nobody else saw the freebag, but I was putting my ankles at risk for his wallet. My choice though.)

The topic of round canopy reliability came up in another thread ("Most reliable main..."), as it has very occasionally on this site. How common was it to get minor mals or canopy damage to round reserves in the old days? Did you ever hear about anyone having to repair or replace their reserve after use? I'm thinking of a couple different eras. To generalize, there was a) the age of unreefed military-strength rounds, and b) the age of lightweight, diaper deployed rounds (Phantom 24 etc). Things like temporary partial inversions can happen which end up fine for the jumper but could cause burns on the canopy. And I've always wondered about how well light weight round reserves fared, in high speed openings. Poynter's has some info but is vague about the configuration of the round canopies involved. I'd think diapers would improve openings a lot as the skirt would stay symmetrical until line stretch, although it could still get out of whack once the diaper released. But diapers came in I suppose around the time reserves started getting lighter - although I don't know the exact chronology off hand.

While the OP was probably just thinking about typical mains you buy, as for rounds: Remember that Poynter was talking about "malfunctions" on rounds including temporary partial inversions. From a jumper point of view, there may be no mal at all. From an engineering point of view, it is not a properly controlled opening. And as speeds increase, damage to the canopy is more likely to occur. I'm also not sure to what degree Poynter was taking into account diapers, so at least the skirt starts out more aligned than for canopy-first deployment, which should reduce but not eliminate uneven inflation at the skirt. This doesn't solve the round vs square reliability debate but I think it isn't quite as dire for rounds as first presented. I think I'll start a thread in Gear & Rigging on round openings, particularly on experiences with round reserves in the old days.

That in particular I can't say much about as I haven't personally seen it. Maybe more common with a relatively quiet plane (e.g., Twin Otter vs. C-182 or Skyvan).

So I'm curious, what qualifications does he have? Anything military, or some paperwork from the Commemorative Airborne Wing? Interesting issue, how to deal with someone with non-USPA experience at a USPA DZ. (Where the person isn't, say, a foreigner with an FAI approved skydiving licence.) It is implied that they do demos outside of USPA rules. So that gets into the details of what constitutes a demo, what the demo rules are, and to what degree the FAA accepts demos outside of the rules of the sport parachuting association known as the USPA. (E.g., like the Red Bull guys who could have gone to the FAA directly but wanted to get an allowance from the USPA first to do low opening demo jumps, if I recall the story correctly .)

Going back to the original question, can the original poster confirm that he saw jumpers putting IN ear plugs shortly before exit (who, it could be implied, were wearing nothing before)? Or was it a misapprehension?

It certainly makes packing easier if you aren't the one paying for a lost cutaway canopy or worried about burning holes in the canopy!

I use a molar strap only on Racers. The bag isn't a molar bag, nor does one hold the Racer bag partially shut with a cord as one does for other non-molar bags. So the Racer freebag balloons up with no restraint at all, nothing to corral the canopy inside. More like a shopping bag than freebag. (There are many ways to pack a Racer so I suppose someone will use a restraining cord. But the top grommet is rather close to the top of the bag, so having a cord through that isn't like having it through the grommet of a 1 pin rig.) Anyway, for the Racer I find the strap helps keep the canopy controlled. It's harder to leave the molar strap the rig, if one also always uses it to compress the pilot chute before flipping the container.

God forbid someone should ask a question here to try to learn something. He presented what he understood of such situations, and people answered about how that knowledge was incomplete and added more useful information. That's all.

So should he be able to handle an engine out? Normally, yes, but who knows during a high AoA slow pass. Way behind the power curve. With a loss of power he might have to trade away altitude to get airspeed again to reduce drag, but he didn't have altitude. But it is interesting to see that he didn't just mush downwards, but lost control in yaw. Even with engines near the centerline, in a relatively modern fighter that has reasonable high angle of attack capability, it seems like losing an engine during a slow high alpha pass may be hard to control. Not sure what sort of Vmc applies to an F-18! The Russian in the MiG-29 at Paris, wasn't he doing something similar, and lost an engine from a birdstrike? He rolled / yawed right over into a vertical dive before ejecting.

Yup, I believe it. First pocket I built for a slider was on the Sabre 135 I had at the time. Since there are no hard rules on pocket size, mouth size, etc, I had to guess when building it. First couple jumps on it, the slider took a long time to come down & I was at the stage of getting on the rear risers & giving them a bit of a yank to pop the slider down. I fine tuned the openings by sewing up part of the mouth of the pocket. Problem solved. (How it sews up best depends a bit on the design.) There's still a bit of a snap in the opening as the slider comes down the lines, but the main thing is that it snivels a few seconds first to scrub off speed.

A Canadian fighter pilot did a nice ejection yesterday, during a practice for a weekend airshow. It is some good low altitude parachuting! It's not quite as spectacular as the classic MiG-29 bailout at the Paris airshow 20 odd years ago -- the trajectory is more horizontal -- nor is it quite as low & high speed as the Thunderbirds F-16 ejection at Mountain Home a few years back. Still a good one though. Frrom youtube video, eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYXYyBnNJDs, it looks like it was during a high angle of attack slow pass. It makes for a good show, although on the expensive side. Attachments are a couple pics of the bailout from the web.

It's easy to want to get in on the conversation but since dz is a busy place, it helps to hold back and have some restraint. Sometimes I (2500 jumps) want to write up an answer to something, and then realize that someone else probably can give a better answer. If after a day or two nobody seems to be giving a better answer, then it might be time to chip in in the conversation. We make do with what we have here, and if better answers are there or are likely to come along, one can hold back. Jump numbers obviously are far from the only criteria for the validity of an answer. Usually people have maybe 50 jumps or more before they get so totally into skydiving that they want to be in on every thread. Lately though, the site has gotten well enough known that some people are over-researching the sport. They haven't taken a single jump yet, but they're already asking questions about what kind of chute and jumpsuit they should buy! So this is the next step: You can understand that the guys who have been around a while are rolling their eyes when someone with zero jumps is doling out advice! ... even if they are sincere and researching things and not full of themselves. So... get jumping!