pchapman

You've downloaded the 2005 FAA-H-8083-17 Parachute Rigger Handbook already? That would be the place to start these days. A high quality, heavy page stock paper copy is available too, although expensive. Eric Fradet's rigging manual is really interesting in its look at modern gear, and is out there somewhere on the web. But because those French speak French, it's in French. Someone else could better compare the "8083" to Poynter's II, but I'll have to admit the latter is dated. Still nice for historical stuff and basic rigging techniques, where either book might have more than the other on a particular subject. 8083 is more step by step in its rigging repair instructions, but is maybe a little thinner on theory -- instead of going over stitching concepts, it might just say 'check that the stitching is the same as the original'.

More like $200 - $260 plus shipping....

While canopy courses are great, what's someone to do at 2 jumps? I think they'd hope to get decent instruction from their instructors now, rather than signing up for the next local canopy course starting 8 months from now... If you got one that was appropriate for your level when not even licensed, lucky you. As for frogerina's question, it is of course hard to teach flares by text. Still, when you are light under a huge canopy, you may need a fairly rapid flare to get the canopy to pitch back nicely to level you out for landing, as you don't have a lot of time and energy on a big slow canopy to gradually plane out and adjust your flightpath before touchdown. (On the other hand, with a really big student canopy, even if you flared at 20 ft, you should be able to mush in and not get hurt as long as you have a good PLF.) At the same time, ideally everyone takes just a little bit of time during the flare to adjust it. Start the flare, take a split second to see how it is going as far as levelling you out, and then finish off faster or slower depending on whether the flare is going to slow you down nicely to a point just above the ground. One doesn't want to haul down on the toggles as fast as possible, even if that is one of the ways taught to students for simplicity. That takes away your ability to adjust for being even 1 foot high or 1 foot low when you hammer the toggles down. The usual "talk to your instructors" caveat applies.

They are an accepted method, but fair enough. You get big long canopy dumped out more or less all at once. Bag vs. sleeve used to be one of the debates back in the day I hear...

Quite the project! The Gary Lewis Paracommander book has some tips on lightening PC's although you'd be going further in going to lighter fabrics, like some of the later RW rounds. The book even mentions things like cascading suspension lines. At least put it in a bag and not a sleeve; that'll save you a lot of volume and make piggyback rigs more practical. Edit: I'd like to see that line length chart too, that ripcord4 has!

Since you started a new thread on the subject, I think I'll recycle a post I made recently in another thread. To get attention, I might have called the thread "reserves are NOT designed to open in 300 ft"! My post with updates: ========================== Mark Baur wrote about one of the TSO variants, "manufacturers can choose either 3 seconds or 300 'vertical' feet." That's the dirty little secret of TSO certification. Skydivers mostly think that reserves are supposed to open within 300 ft, imagining it to be in vertical freefall, when really the manufacturers can test it from planes flying horizontally -- so there is plenty more distance for the opening, and plenty of time. The 300 measured feet have to be vertical, not the trajectory of the opening parachute. Every high speed parachute test video I've seen shows horizontal drops! That's how you get a dummy with a parachute to open at high speed, you drop it out of an aircraft flying fast at low altitude. PD even has a nice video of them doing tests using a B-25. The regs mention "vertical feet" for checking the 300', and say nothing about vertical drops. The wording is always about "altitude loss" not anything like "opening distance". And as mentioned for much gear there was a choice between 3 seconds and 300ft; one did not have to satisfy both conditions. Each TSO is a little different though. -- C23b/NAS804 requires 3 seconds AND no more than 500 ft in the slow speed test (70 mph "Functional test"). For the high speed strength test, there is no time requirement at all, but presumably the canopy has to be open before it hits the ground from 500 ft max. -- C23c/AS8015A allows 3 sec for slow and normal speed tests (up to 110 kts) , but has no height or time requirement for the high speed strength tests! The canopy just has to open and not blow apart. -- C23d/AS8015B requires 3 seconds OR 300 ft. -- the new C23f / PIA TS-135 v1.4 requires 3 seconds OR 300 ft (With gradually increasing numbers if certified to higher weights or speeds than 250 lbs & 150 kts) (There are slightly different times in some regs for RSL's, low speed cutaways, etc, but I'm presenting the main requirements.) Also, in C23c all the distances and times are until the parachute is "fully open" -- it could still be mushing downward with too much speed to land safely for another second or whatever. That made it easy to calculate on video -- just see when the slider hit the links I suppose. Only in C23d does it start to mention "functionally open", with a descent rate less than the max allowed for certification. So basically reserves are NOT in any way designed to open within 300' of vertical travel!

I guess I'd start with a slow flare to check the stall point. Once I've found that, then I'd try a couple faster flares to see how the canopy reacts, both in terms of pitching through the flare and the g-loading indicating a pullup from one's descent. One will never quite know how the landing flare it while trying it up high but it is the best one can do.

I'm trying to improve our understanding the history of MARDs as we know it here on DZ.com. Did Hewitt have the disconnect mechanism worked out for skydiving? Was his MARD tested in the shop or the sky or just a cool concept for future development? In one online video about the skyhook, the text shows that Bill wondered about the concept during the first years of experimenting with tandems. (Holding the pilot chute for a test jumper jumping from the front of a tandem -- thus allowing the tandem pilot to "fly the jettisoned canopy" back to the DZ in effect.) In the video he mentioned '20 years and 3 false starts' later, before having the Skyhook, but doesn't go into the details. I can't recall what Bill has written over the years on the Skyhook history here but someone should go through the posts. Still, a search for posts by "billbooth" show zero that include the word "hewitt". The Sorcerer rig has often been mentioned, but Hewitt's role at Relative Workshop less so. (My opinion is that Bill Booth will be a little like Edison: Not everything that comes out of his shop is 100% personally invented, even if he had a significant hand in design / development / popularization.)

Excellent. We never hear much about stuff like that over here. And I see (from searching dz.com as I suggested) that the LES was one that Eric Fradet designed. But it has since been taken off the market, and indeed Eric Fradet is now a big fan of NOT having MARDs on sport rigs. His ideas are controversial but interesting. As Eric wrote here, "I can answer this one since I designed the LES : it was withdrawn because MARD system was found unsafe in sport rigs, what was the case in 96, and it is still true in 2012 ". But that's all a discussion for another place!

Hey, I don't know what happens at the typical DZ, but I'm not aware of any regulatory link between what aircraft do and what skydivers do. That FAR has no applicability, unless you know something I don't about how the FAR's apply to skydivers (which is possible). If someone is making up a single pattern to follow and has a choice, sure, they'll probably pick "left" as a standard. The SIM actually shows no preference. It mentions both "standard left hand" and "standard right hand" patterns, and indeed for its graphic example of pattern shape and heights, uses a right hand pattern. It also says that if you come in on a left pattern, stay to the left of the field, and on a right pattern, stay to the right. So in the absence of DZ rules, I'd expect to be able to come in right or left, whatever suited me for the spot and landing direction and landing location. Edit: I just don't want to get into some shouting match after landing. "You're supposed to go left, idiot!" "No I'm not, there's no rule abut that" "Yeah but that's the convention" "Maybe here it is but nobody told me and nothing in the SIM says it is!"

It depends on what one means. First off, the "Skyhook" with a capital is obviously his. As for MARD like devices: Direct bagging a reserve off a main had been done before Booth. His innovation was to come up with a way to detach the connection, in case of a mal where the main isn't being discarded. Otherwise the system would be useless for skydiving. (Unless you wanted to fiddle with undoing an RSL manually if you had a total....) I can't recall offhand if someone else came up with the theory earlier than Booth or not - one would have to search dz.com for more info. (Eric Fradet had some early ideas too for example.) But Booth must have been the first to actually get a MARD device into production.

Hmm, not sure how often. Have heard of medium sized aircraft being stolen, to make cargo runs "across the border". And the occasional small plane being stolen for a joyride. I guess it is rare but always makes the news, if some teenage student pilot decides to do that. Radios & electronics do get stolen from aircraft, after all, light planes have traditionally had pretty flimsy locks and doors. Also related but not quite the same as your question, there has been vandalism and arson against planes and hangars with aircraft. Not quite sure by whom, but I get the impression that it has been radical anti-airport environmentalists. Have heard of it a few times in Europe.

Were there perhaps different canopies in different L-39 seats over the years, or some confusion over parachute numbers?? When I googled PL-70, I got this photo on the Czech MarS parachute company site, on their PL-70 page, showing a dummy ejection test. The canopy is a sophisticated round: [inline obrazek_21(PL-70).jpg] In any case your canopy photo was quite interesting, a canopy I've never seen before.

Although the intent may have been for general comfort for any jumper, Style was still a driving factor in some cases: the couple times I saw the reversed leg hardware, it was on gear specifically for Style & Accuracy, by Rigging Innovations. For example, using archive.org, back at the end of the '90s, R.I. did have the Reverse Thread Through option for their Classic Pro rig, but not for their other rigs like the Talon 2. It was thus not seen as something that most jumpers wanted. Perhaps Wendy P. enjoyed having reversed hardware on a regular rig from another company? All this reminds me, there's another reason about why the BOC was put into regular production. When the first hip rings appeared, it would be pretty awkward to run a line of velcro across the ring from the pack to the leg strap. Hence the need to 'invent' the BOC. (There were rigs with rings at webbing joints even back in WWII, but I guess Rigging Innovations Flexon was first in skydiving, and they got a patent for it.)

There, that's clarified. Now, what about the non-standard ones?

To add to your points, Ron: With the practice flares I also mention to people that small stubby F-111 canopies don't necessarily have a lot of energy for a long flare. So then you can't start a gradual flare from up high and slowly add brakes while evaluating the progression of the plane out. You may have to wait until pretty low and then "flare hard" (and not beyond the stall point). This may not be as apparent to people used to modern canopies. If you have had to flare a baffed out 7-cell F-111 main canopy, that's a somewhat better simulation of what might be needed. A practice flare up high will reveal the stall point but some jumpers might not notice that they aren't flaring out of the dive very well if they pull the brakes more slowly. As an example, last year a local jumper thumped in pretty hard on a reserve ride. While only slightly smaller than his main, he was flying his PD 113 for the first time, and at a 1.85 WL. He was amped up a little from events, and low enough on opening to scare the AAD after he pulled, so he forgot to practice flare. He tried a gradual flare from higher up and "ran out of flare". Soft spring mud in the farm fields saved his ass (& spine & ankles). So even the "good designs" aren't immune from misuse.

What was the purpose of relocking the thread thru in the rear? I don't know if others used it, but I did see the "rear" leg hardware a couple times on style & accuracy gear. Then it makes sense, as a way to get the metal lumps away from the crotch-to-leg intersection, for people using a tight style tuck.

For Jerry: Ok, I've annotated my post with fixes and clarification -- there's even more to it than you mentioned! For Mark: Indeed one has to distinguish between Functional and Strength tests. Skydivers generally aren't going to care about the difference however: If they expect a 3 second opening or X feet, they expect that not just at slow and medium speeds (which is what the Functional Tests end up being), but also at the high speed test (which is what the Strength test ends up being too.) Most of us are used to the idea of having all requirements met at once, that at high speed the parachute will still open quickly and won't blow apart, rather than "it won't blow apart... but who knows how long it will take to open." Good stuff, delving into the details of what our parachutes really are supposed to be able to handle.

On the one hand, full-on extended back & sitflying will probably be discouraged. On the other hand, when you learn to do basic maneuvers like unstable exits, barrel rolls, or backloops, you are expected to sometimes end up on your back accidentally for a short while. So I don't see harm in a little bit of playing with going on your back, to try out the different feel of not being on your belly, and work on recovering to your belly. Naturally for a student, some discussion with an instructor etc. is still needed to cover issues like gear suitability and sliding around the sky up jump run.

That's the dirty little secret of TSO certification. To sound conspiratorial, "that's what THEY don't want you to know". Skydivers mostly think that reserves are supposed to open within 300 ft, imagining it to be in vertical freefall, when really the manufacturers can test it from planes flying horizontally -- so there is plenty more distance for the opening. Every high speed test video I've seen shows horizontal drops! And as you said, one can test for 3 seconds OR 300', not BOTH. The regs mention vertical feet for checking the 300'. Maybe it was intended to mean a vertical drop, but nothing seems to prohibit horizontal high speed drops. The wording is always about "altitude loss" not anything like "opening distance". [Edit: I have been informed that at least one manufacturer, no longer operating, did do true vertical tests at freefall speeds with an electronic AAD. However, I don't know if those tests were part of the actual TSO paperwork or just to satisfy the designer.] Each TSO is a little different though. -- C23b/NAS804 allows 500 ft [Too simplisitic. Based on Jerry's subsequent post and more additions from NAS804:] 3 seconds are required for the 70 mph test ("Functional test") (and effectively 500 ft too since that's the max test altitude), while for the high speed strength test, there is no time requirement at all. Presumably that canopy must be open before it hits the ground from 500 ft maximum drop altitude. -- C23c/AS8015A allows 3 sec for slow and normal speed tests (up to 110 kts) , but has no height or time requirement for the high speed strength tests?! -- C23d/AS8015B is as you mention Also, in C23c all the distances and times are until the parachute is "fully open" -- it could still be mushing downward with too much speed to land safely for another second or whatever. That made it easy to calculate on video -- just see when the slider hit the links I suppose. Only in C23d does it start to mention "functionally open", with a descent rate less than the max allowed for certification. So basically reserves are NOT designed to open within 300'! If I'm wrong, please correct me and add to our knowledge! It is easy to miss things in the TSO regs.

Skydive Burnaby (near Lake Erie in Ontario) uses a tandem progression system, using 'working tandems' to progress to a single 2:1 PFF, then 1:1 PFF's. They are a well respected DZ with a very competent chief instructor. So if their system is a little more involved than some, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, figuring they do that to train better, and not to fleece students out of more cash. In the Canadian system, you will still be jumping with a PFF instructor right through to your Solo licence at a minimum of 10 jumps. (Except for the solo hop and pop jump). That's even though the classic PFF levels are similar to AFF levels, with both systems having had a core set of around 7 jumps. (Though I don't know the fine details of how both systems were historically implemented.) Hope that answers your question. @ the O.P.: As for prices, I can't compare Ontario DZ's. I know some of the Quebec DZ's have large PFF programs and are able to keep costs a little lower. Skydive Toronto does get pretty busy with tandems, especially this season where they lost their big plane and are working on getting another. PFF jumps are therefore best made on weekdays if that's an option for you, and they are open 7 days a week in the summer. Edit: Tandem progression really sucks if implemented poorly, but can work if done right. If an instructor is doing tandems all day and is handed a student at a 10 minute call and is told "he's doing his level 2", then the system isn't right. If the DZ & instructor handles it more like a full PFF jump with plenty of briefing and practice, then its OK.

Hang on -- with pilot chutes we need to distinguish more than just BOC's, which didn't exist for a long time. For example, on my first jump in '88, a Canadian PFF, I hand deployed from a belly band. Experienced jumpers then and in the early 90s had however already changed over to "ROL" leg throw outs. Nobody would put a deployment handle some place you couldn't see, that would be crazy! Well, there always were the small proportion of people who used pull-outs, but one always seemed to hear tales of one of those types going in with a floating pud. BOC throwouts didn't start appearing until the 1990s. My '91 Paragear seems to show no BOC's, but by the '93 catalogue, a couple companies had them, while most were still ROL. Student gear can of course often be quite a few years old, so the latest innovations aren't always seen at most DZ's for quite a while. I'm not really familiar with US training methods, but in Canada IAD was around at some DZ's in the 80s onwards, which allowed for using "more normal" rigs for student training than if one used static line. In a similar vein, Canadian PFF used normal style rigs, while in the US, AFF jumps had to be done with spring loaded main pilot chutes. Allowing possibly tumbling students to use a hand deployed pilot chute was considered far too dangerous to allow, I suppose. When did US AFF change from using spring loaded pilot chutes and allowing hand deploy? (The '93 Paragear shows only student rigs with spring loaded pilot chutes, being advertised for AFF use.)

Where sliding landings are used, what I don't like is when tandem instructors want their students' legs "all the way up", level with the horizon -- although maybe that works just fine at some DZs with certain weather conditions. But I'm used to a DZ with ups & downs in the landing area, and sometimes some turbulence. So I want a student's legs both forward and down, so that if we drop in a bit hard, the student's feet will hit the ground first -- not their spine. A student can have their upper legs horizontal, and lower legs at a 45 degree angle. As an instructor I'll try to take the hit first if we come in with some vertical velocity, but I can't take all of the impact force and want the student to contribute to their own health & safety. Usually the slide in landing is smooth, but one should be prepared for imperfect landings.

Does that mean the USPA annual fatality report is available online or something? PS - Check your little typo.

Consider the Benny too. Decent looking and inexpensive. I'd get the upgrade for the new better lining -- a real helmet lining. That's listed at Chuting Star but not at Para Gear, at least when I looked a couple weeks ago. Not just unenclosed foam, which I've seen crumble along its surface, when in heavy student use.