pchapman

Yeah not much fun. But neither is packing 20 skydivers into the front 6 feet of a Twin Otter when seatbelts aren't worn.

At the DZ we did once find a V-ring on a student rig legstrap (with B-12s) that was reversed. This was at the end of a season and could have been that way for months! Presumably someone had fooled around with the rig, removed the hardware from the leg strap, and reinstalled it reversed. The shape is different on one side compared to the other, with it designed to best lock the strap in position only when installed one way. Nobody had spotted it as nobody expected one to be wrong. It just can't get that way in "normal" use. (Yet despite the problem I never heard of complaints about slipping leg straps.)

A rarer issue I've seen: A novice who completely straightened his legs, but wasn't moving much because he was still in a massive arch. He is flexible and was used to jumping with a fast falling instructor. While his knees were not bent at all, with the big arch, his upper legs (thighs) were pointing up seemingly 30 degrees. Therefore his lower legs (shins) were doing the same and weren't deflecting all that much additional air.

Or was it a sheep?

Nope. But you are on the right track - certainly the right company. As for the exact model, that gets messy because they had a bunch of very similar looking planes. Identifying weird planes is an old idea in aviation magazines, but it is tougher to find ones with inflight pics of people jumping out.

Messy canopy? Yeah, and I don't think he's carrying a reserve either.

Even for this shot from 1934 I had to remove the registration, otherwise a Google search would find it. It's an excuse to post a photo of a classic "drag off" jump. (Scanned from a photocopy of a French parachuting book by Borge and Viasnoff, 1977.)

Random thoughts: Ditto. Good for playing in, or even biffing in. Good for practicing superman landings (photo of a friend attached). Know whether there's a crust on the snow that will trip you up. Sliding in may be better than trying to run it out if the snow is deep. If depth perception is tough over unbroken snow, land in areas that have been disturbed already. A dragging pilot chute can sieve snow and end up with a snowball inside. A wet parachute at the end of the day is just an excuse to trunk pack.

One of the factors in the 'stay or go' decision will be the surrounding terrain. If you are confident that the pilot will make it back to a larger airport (like in this case), that's different than being way out over a lot of muddy fields. Even with seatbelts, I wouldn't relish getting thrown around when a 182 catches in soft ground and flips. The pilot could also do without other people bouncing around his cabin. It's hard to have perfect information in these situations. The tandem instructor won't typically be watching the terrain outside prior to the engine problem, and won't have the time to while trying to hook up the student. The pilot may not have time to fully explain the situation. It'll come down to making a decision based on the limited info one has about the altitude, terrain, state of the airplane, your belief in the pilot's skills, and what the pilot suggests.

Thank you for the parabatic grip details Brian. While practicing on the ground with another guy is of course useful, one gets a lot of snickers from other jumpers while doing so...

Ok, I want to hear more about the parabatic grip, something others are wondering about too. So here is what I remember as a CRW newbie who once took a camp with a couple former Plaid Jackets guys. If you don't like my description or photo, let's have some better ones! Jumper #1 has his legs with knees apart, but crossed at the ankles. Jumper #2 has his legs up through the gap between the first person's legs, from the bottom, and then clamps his feet inwards against the first person, against #1's hips. Grips are therefore kept low, allowing for the rolling of both jumpers, and avoiding feet up at chest mounted handles. How you best achieve all that while setting up for a side by side I don't quite know. I think the order in which the leg locks are created likely begins with the 'inner' set of legs being presented by #2, which are then clamped by #1's. A not-that-great clipping from a photo, attached, shows the grip. (From Craig O'Brien's 2007 ParaGear cover photo of the Skyhawks quadraplane downplane.)

Well, there's the little problem. You fly the Sigma harness, think it is a good system, believe you do the harness up properly, and say that you've never had anyone close to coming out of the harness. Yet at the same time you take these extra little steps at opening with 'at risk' people, to try to help make sure they don't fall out. There's something of a contradiction there. I'm not blaming you. I also fly a Sigma system. Despite thinking the system overall is great, one wonders a little in the back of one's mind if there might be a problem for a very limp or flexible passenger. Whether there is or isn't a problem is another matter.

I noticed a case where there were duplicate postings about a YouTube skydiving video. The second poster should have checked whether such a thread already existed. But then I noticed that he would not have found the original thread if he had done a search. Searches will find words "out in the open", eg, any of the text in http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7mle0ZD70. But it won't find a 'background' URL in other clickable text. E.g., "Check out this vintage parachute video here. ", which has the same URL information. While I don't have to deal with the programming, the search function should find such content too, to better reflect what people actually entered in their posts.

Already posted in the Vintage Weekend at Teuge the Netherlands thread: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3258340 (But it is noteworthy that a DZ.com Search doesn't find that youtube URL, because the full URL wasn't spelled out in the text, and exists only as the link behind other clickable text.)

Hi Gato, It's OK - If one stows one's slider at the bottom of the risers, as normal on faster canopies, then one stows the slider first, then pops the toggles, otherwise the slider tends to jam on the toggles. If one needs steering before then, one uses rear risers.

Edgar Percival E.P. 9. Yeah baby! I was first thinking of the similarly configured Auster B.4 ambulance/freighter. Took a while to find it on the web as I didn't remember the exact name. One Auster web site also had pics of an article about Auster's failed low wing agricultural aircraft that didn't fare well in NZ / Australia compared to the Fletcher (which later resulted in the PAC 750) ... and in a corner of the article they had a drawing of yet another odd little agricultural aircraft... and that was the EP 9.

Currency limits? Not a big deal. Everyone is used to the idea of not jumping for a while, taking it a little easy at season's start, and using personal judgment as for any jump. DZ's sometimes do have spring safety days like in the US, and currency does get talked about then. I can't seem to see any formal currency rules in the CSPA regs, except for students. Besides, if you are going to hook it low and skip off the ground at any time during the season, it is best to do it early and get it done with while the snow is deep. Worked for me this year...

It's hard to provide a quick answer to what the season is. It depends a lot on the jumper. Some people like to come out on winter days and swoop the snow; others don't even think about a reserve repack until the first warm May weekend. It depends on whether one is in the mood to hang out with friends and stick around even if it is just for a couple Cessna hop and pops while all bundled up, or whether one doesn't want to waste time at the DZ unless one can easily bang off a bunch of training jumps from a turbine at 13.5... Some places in Ontario stay open over the winter, but the turbine aircraft are usually only around early May through late October. I remember great days of skydiving in any month, but there is a lot of variation from year to year in the off-season months.

I'm envious! What's the chance of having decent weather for old canopies at Teuge in October -- especially winds? You've got a great event but I'm curious how the weather is likely to be over the years. Perhaps like some DZ's it is easier to schedule an event slightly outside the main season so that experienced jumpers and airplanes aren't all busy with tandems and other instruction?

It is an option to grab the risers and twist oneself 1 1/2 times and land it. But that's still a gutsy move, a theoretical possibility, not "recommended" in any way, "use at own risk". The standard advice is still to chop the canopy!! Putting in just a half twist (180 degrees) in the risers is wrong because as soon as it untwists a tiny bit, it'll apply a strong untwisting torque and one will too easily snap back to untwisted. One and a half twists is enough that it is easy to hold twisted. The twists should end up low in the risers so you just reach up above the twists to grab the toggles. It is easy enough to practice up high in flight on a regular jump - eg, put in 360 degree twist and fly that around - and see if it is easily controllable. (But it can be harder to twist oneself under small sensitive canopies without sending oneself into a diving spiral while yanking on the risers.) (I've flown around with a deliberate full twist this past weekend but I haven't yet gotten around to landing that way... so I haven't yet provided proof of the technique's usefulness.) (P.S. - The 180 twist technique is still OK for the specialized situation of landing a round canopy, that is assembled correctly, while blowing backwards in high wind.)

I liked the minutes of club having its second meeting -- Looks like nobody owned a rig and they were trying to organize the funding to buy one rig for the club as a whole.

As for sewing canopies together, one example of it being done: http://crwdog.servebeer.com/CRWdog/Tandems.html (Pics on CRW dog Wendy Faulkner's site, of Aussies who sewed two 7 cells together to make a 14 cell tandem canopy as a stunt.)

I don't know enough about the airspace system and the Hollister area to answer the questions, but I can ask some of the questions necessary to sorting this all out: Aviation chart for Hollister: http://skyvector.com/#40-16-2-4072-4362 So it looks like Class E airspace. Hollister airport is non-towered (magenta on map). So there's no control zone at the airport or drop site. There's a parachute symbol at Hollister, as well as one by the nearby town of Tres Pinos - perhaps that's the actual drop location? If so, it is marked on the map and pilots would be advised to exercise caution. Are jump planes in contact with any air traffic facility providing traffic advisories? E.g., Oakland center for this area I think. Centers deal with IFR traffic but when they have time can provide VFR advisories. A light plane zipping along at near 11k probably has a transponder. Some centers might have primary radar to pick up non-transponder aircraft too, although the area looks hilly so a far away radar won't have the best low altitude coverage. One source of confusion with a drop location away from the airport, is what frequency would pilots be on -- an enroute FSS frequency, a terminal frequency, or the Hollister frequency? Pilots aren't always on the particular local frequency a DZ might want. Having the drop site away from an airport does complicate things for pilots, despite the parachute symbol on the chart.

Another thing I've seen done: Even if you leave the reserve packed over the winter, and the main packed, at least pull the pilot chute out to lessen the long term stress on the spandex. (I can't vouch for how effective it is but it seems reasonable.)

Either with a MARD or plain RSL, the reserve is being fired into a main canopy that hasn't yet departed. Roll the dice. (The above report might imply that the main cleared completely, coming off his foot, but it isn't absolutely clear.) But I see a point: A MARD generally gets a reserve out quicker after risers release, than during a chop with an RSL, and a fair bit quicker than many a chop without an RSL. Most of the time that's a good thing. It might be a bad thing if one is still attached to a main for some other reason (eg, CRW, horseshoe). A delay between cutaway and reserve activation might not help in some cases, but might in others (such as if cutting away does clear that main off one's foot). One solution is to release the RSL (plain or MARD) before cutting away, but doing that in an emergency situation may be tricky. The 'too quick a reserve' issue is one of the reasons people may choose to have no RSL... and unless I'm mistaken, one potential risk of a MARD. [MARD: A parachuting device named by Bill Booth. Ironically, also pretty much what Eric Fradet mutters under his breath in French whenever he thinks about Skyhooks...]