pchapman

Any idea about how the courts consider things that are written by someone related to an incident? For example, a DZO didn't like me as a rigger for the DZ writing things like "old and worn" in gear inspection sheets. I was being accurate, but such a statement alone could be taken out of context if there were ever an accident on the gear. I was still approving the equipment as being within safe and reasonable limits, but in terms of its life within those limits, the equipment was indeed old and worn -- and I was improving safety by noting for the next person to inspect the gear, what wear points to look for. Heck, I could have said the DZO himself was old and worn, but that in itself shouldn't be a bad thing.

I'm not sure about that, although if it works for you, great. It's just my personal impression that handles up high are harder to move downwards. I don't know what everyone else thinks. When trying to move handles downwards, one may be trying to transition from elbows down to elbows up high, to be able to push down. If the handles are low, one can more easily have elbows higher than hands and apply a strong push downwards. For low handles, it is more like starting a push-up with one's hands, while for high handles, it is like doing a chin-up, and trying to chin-up even higher.

The gear should be fine as long as you haven't put on 50 lbs since you last jumped... (In addition to making sure the old gear is good to go, being physically and mentally ready is also part of the process of getting back into the sport after a long layoff.)

"So, what are you doing to celebrate 50 years since the first baton pass in North America?" The history of baton passes has been a bit mixed up and unclear. It sounds like the first may have been Potron & Chalon in France in '56, followed by Hoffmann & Pearson from the US in Canada in '58. (The main baton pass thread on dz.com has been http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=266298;search_string=baton%20pass;#266298) But in any case: Three of us who are into old school skydives got together to do a couple baton passes, mostly wearing balloon suits and belly mount rigs. All of us had ParaCommanders. The others were Jerod Cole and Jim Wilson ("Beatnik" here). We realize there were some anachronisms in our jumps, for the era of the first baton passes, belly mounts, and balloon suits did not all coincide. It was all just small-way RW jumps with very few points, but the old gear made it more interesting. An edited video of the freefall and landings is at http://blip.tv/file/1182485, viewable online or downloadable in Flash Video or higher resolution wmv. (It'll also go up on Skydivingmovies.com.) Anyone who knows old skydiving movies will appreciate the background music. The balloon suits made exit and maneuvering a little tricky, as the experience level with RW in those suits was negligible. Arms get tired when jumping those suits. One can see that on the second jump the right arm of the orange jumpsuit didn't fully inflate. The white balloon suit is really a huge one that does justice to the name. We made three round jumps each this past weekend, once landing off DZ but the other times in the main landing area. Landings were easy with rolls or standups. No injuries, which is better than what can be said for a couple people with those newfangled square parachutes at the DZ that weekend!

Pizza puke in the sky! I got the canopy flying again. Attached are a couple photos looking up in flight. The first is unfortunately slightly out of focus and the second is just a video capture. Staring at the canopy one starts to wonder if there's a hidden Magic Eye autostereogram in it...

Not that relevant to the boogie, but whatever. (It's the video of the fatal crash where the pilot presumably left the gust locks in place before takeoff. That's a classic way for pilots to kill themselves. It was a test flight so no skydivers were involved.)

A poised 182 exit does tend to involve a step that goes both backwards, and optionally off to the side, keeping the chest forward, body inclined maybe 30 degrees from the vertical as one gets into freefall. I don't know how to teach a poised exit, but some ideas are: Like buff suggested, it goes easier with only the left foot on the step. One has to find a balance, a combination of forces when pushing off with both arms and legs, so that one doesn't pitch backwards or forwards. Too much pushing off with the arms pushes one into a backloop off the step. This also happens if the feet get "stuck" on the step, when one's weight distribution isn't right, and one can't easily hop one's foot off. (E.g., if both feet are on the step and one is leaning back too much, body too vertical.) Someone else can probably explain it better. Too much pushing off with the legs relative to the arms kicks the legs out too far and puts one belly to earth, which isn't what one wants while still travelling forward with the plane. Normally there's no problem with hitting one's head on the underside of the wing, if one steps off and arches as one leaves. It only happens to those who get it out of order, arching first before stepping off. Too weak an exit can leave one's face close to the step, but that's usually just an issue for first jump students who pretty much just let themselves collapse on exit and lose all muscle tension.

People own and love classic cars, but they don't usually commute to work in them. The same in skydiving... I love my ParaCommander but don't jump it on a regular basis. Besides, it kind of takes over the whole DZ packing mat...

I take the main off the rig carefully, keep the risers weighted down away from where I'm working, and reattach the main carefully after the reserve pack job. So it is all hooked up again. I tell the customer that I do this as part of standard procedures and as a courtesy -- and that it is their responsibility to do a line check to confirm that the main went back on correctly. They have to do a repack on the main. That's been the way I've seen it done around my area. I often temporarily pin the main back in the main tray, using just two flaps, just to make it easier for the customer to carry the rig away. (Then there's the other issue of whether one inspects the risers. While risers come with the harness/container, I consider risers to be part of the main canopy system when it comes to inspections. But I do twist the bottom ring on the riser to reduce stiffness in the riser - as I know users never do that themselves - and glance over the risers for any obvious major safety defects.)

I don't think it's an American thing, just an internet thing. It is funny though how people sit at the computer to answer others' questions on an online forum, and all they do is to tell the original poster to get off the internet and talk to their instructor or rigger.

Sorry, gotta call you on that. Saying SAS is a fudged value is like saying that aircraft flight test data for certification & operating handbooks is fudged because they didn't actually all do the flight tests at 29.92" Hg air pressure, 15 deg. C, 0 % R.H., at Sea Level. Data is collected and then adjusted to show what the plane would be doing at some set of reference conditions like those. The SAS concept is similar, adjusting speeds from different altitudes to compare them as if every measurement were done at 3000' in a standard atmosphere. So it is a useful adjustment to help compare numbers taken at different altitudes. But it only adjusts for altitude assuming one version of a standard atmosphere. It doesn't compensate for air mass temperature or other non-standard atmospheric conditions, and isn't going to give professional aerospace level data quality. I'll accept that the data is 'fudged' if you meant that it is 'adjusted in a rough manner', but won't accept it in the pejorative sense that it is likely to be taken, that 'the data is adjusted to lie to you'. The SAS numbers are more useful for comparing data between jumps and skydivers, than the raw unadjusted "TAS" numbers.

Paracommanders and similar canopies did indeed vary in their use of material - some heavy, some light, some a combination in different places. Eg, Gary Lewis' Paracommander Handbook says 2.2 oz taffeta for the basic Mk1 PC; 1.5 oz ripstop in 1977 onwards; 1.5 for the RW PC; while the Russian PC's included 1.1 ripstop too. How it all affected opening, I dunno.

TrojanHorse's explanation about ensuring a clean calibration sounds logical and reasonable. So there isn't anything broken with the hardware. But there is a problem in that the user isn't given any clue on the display what is happening. And it sounds like the display doesn't just temporarily freeze while the unit keeps trying a little longer to get a good calibration. It sounds like it can essentially permanently freeze, the computer in an endless loop, not allowing the user to regain control without opening up the reserve pack. Sorry to say it but this is a problem with the design, even if it is a rare occurrence. At least some warnings in the manual about startup conditions might help avoid the problem and allow users to recognize it. (Where's the Control-Alt-Delete??)

I don't know the history of these changes but I'm guessing it is part of some international (ICAO?) standardization effort. In Canada we got extended medicals very much like this about 5 years ago.

One may want to be careful about distinguishing the overall effect of UV on the fibres vs. that on the entire woven line. I haven't done the research and don't have answers, but it seems to be a question that isn't asked enough?

The riser is actually from a Canadian Niagara Parachutes rig (Eddie Grimm). I'd certainly not use the cross connector on Rapides. Ugh, cross loading issues. Thanks for all the input.

Hey Jerry, To help clarify things, I've added a pic of one of the risers, out of the container, plus the links and cross connector from the military container I found them in. So there are 2 loops built into the top of each riser. I'm the rigger / customer / owner in this case. And now I'd actually like to get the rig ready for a weekend event... so I may consider what is 'reasonable' for now, and consider other 'best practices' at the next repack. My current thinking is that the best cross connector is a 2 layer tubular one, with slack, but the current short 550 cord one is acceptable. It is professionally built, which suggests that it was once a normal way to do things. Given the solid riser construction, and the strength of L-bars in general, a single cross connector between two links is likely OK. That's the way the cross connector was set up in the military belly mount when I found it. You would prefer looping the cross connector through all links? (Front and back links won't pull apart from each other on the single riser.) Or would you have two cross connectors, one for front links, one for rear? Technically that's what Poynter's calls for. The reserve I'll use is actually an 80's design that uses 4 rapide links normally. I'd probably put it on the 4 L-bars and pack the length of the L-bar (with elastics? or wrap with 550 cord?) to keep the lines from sliding along the bar and trying to load it unevenly.

There's a bit of a discussion here about the tricky issue of which rule is more important, avoiding obstacles or avoiding turns on landing. It does end up depending on the obstacle (bush or power lines?) and the extent of the turn (moderate turn away, or bury a toggle?). And what's right for the first jump student may not be right for the student progressing to smaller canopies. I don't have a perfect answer to all this. At the DZ I'm at we put obstacle avoidance first, but after presenting the rules I try to give the students a little talk about what should be common sense (to skydivers). E.g., that if the student did end up close to an obstacle despite having been taught the idea of turning away in time, they would have to make a decision -- a fast turn that can break bones may be an OK choice if faced with power lines just ahead, but maybe not the best choice if it is a small tree ahead. The downside of some extra talk is that it can muddy up simple rules in the students' minds, filling students with too much info to digest. But I hope that it can be done well enough to help them better interpret the true meaning of the basic rules. It also may impress on them that they are using their minds to make safer decisions and not just blindly following some rules that were listed on the classroom board.

I don't like the first one down rule either. If using something like that, I'd prefer a more vague "do what others are doing if it is reasonable". Then people aren't fixated on the actions of one person. I figure it is better to have a plan ahead of time what the landing direction will be if the wind is almost zero, with "do what others are doing" taking over if a trend becomes evident among the first ones down. It's a good reason for all jumpers to try to become comfortable with landing in light cross- or down-wind conditions, as that will sometimes be necessary in order to play nicely with the other kids.

Just a curiosity here: The photo shows an MA-1 reserve pilot chute recently found in an out of service rig. The production location provides an interesting tie-in between faith in one's god and faith in one's reserve. I didn't know that Pioneer once had a production site there!

Hi Jerry, This isn't academic, I have a rig to put into service. It does have a single riser each side, with space for 2 links on each riser. The 550 cord cross connector came off another rig, a military style belly mount of some type. There it was inside the pack, between 2 of the 4 links.

Somewhere I saw it said that one should have a cross connector between both front links, and both back links, if it is a 4-connector reserve. But: 1) In my very limited experience I haven't seen rigs with two cross connectors. 2) The rig I was looking at just has 2 risers, with 2 slots at the top of each. So the front and rear L-bar connectors on each side, are right next to each other, and are well secured with a confluence wrap. It isn't as if there are widely spaced front and rear risers. So I'm thinking in this sort of situation a single cross connector, between one set of links only, is acceptable.

Simple version: Is it OK on a belly mount to have a short cross connector, between 2 of the 4 L-bar links only, built from 550 cord that's wrapped 12 times to create the cross connector? Long version: I'm trying to better understand cross connectors, and don't know what is actually normal practice. Some designs go between the snaps, some are longer and go inside the pack between the links. Is the inside-the-pack version considered the better style? Poynter (7.83) describes the standard design of 3/4" tubular inside 1" tubular. But there's also a pic of one that's like some I've seen where the cross connector is a length of 550 cord wrapped around multiple times, for a total of 12 strands for the one I have. The design looks professional - ends knotted with stopper knots and servings to keep it neat. This design is acceptable, is it? What about short vs. long cross connectors? Poynter mentions longer ones inside the pack to avoid getting a face full of connector on opening, but the ones I've seen are short, just long enough to go between the links on the reserve. I'm not sure how one would pack a longer one, with slack in it, to keep it neat in the pack and not getting in the way of the reserve.

You'll have to check the manuals but I seem to recall that Aerodyne mentions tacking their soft links in the Icon manual, but not in the Smart manual. (Smart reserves come with their soft links.) In any case, not being under FAA rules, I tend to leave reserve soft links un-tacked, just stretching them to try to seat them. I prefer having them inspectable. Remember all those rigs with rapid links that had no bumpers and no tacking? Links rotating, lines sliding around, contacting the barrel? I never liked that much but I guess when the reserve was used everything usually lined up properly and didn't cross-load the link (across the short dimension). Definitely uglier than un-tacked soft links.

My experience in Canada was that repack rates didn't really change when we went from 120 to 180. Perhaps a rigger might have decided that it was a good time to bump his rates up by $5 in any case, but generally the longer repack cycle was a non-issue. (Individual results may of course vary - as seen by one previous post from a Canadian)