pchapman

???? I've only seen 1-ring risers on older Russian gear .... because they had the smaller 2 rings on the harness. Bass ackwards from the US style, but with its own logic.

How did you and Sealand decide to apportion all the R&D & certification process time, as opposed to the actual material & labour to build & install the door? What percentage would they charge you for the R&D overhead, 5% or 50% or whatever? That tricky business decision depends on how big a market everyone expects to see in the future, beyond just your 1 door...

An earlier thread with a mix of advice on how to build (although without having exact manufacturer instructions), and advice on not building them, lest one screw up a critical component that needs dimensional accuracy: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4174511 Take your pick!

My favourite jump was in 2011, jumping a Para-Commander in an old rig with a belly mount. I've got 3200 jumps now, and started in 1990, well after the pioneer era of skydiving. On the jump I had a high speed mal so was able to deal with an emergency in a really traditional way -- dearching, cutting away at the shoulders, falling away onto my back, covering the canopy releases, pulling the belly mount handle, watching the MA-1 pull out the reserve built in 1977, seeing the kicker plate fall away, and finally, standing up the 26' round on the DZ (although that hurt a bit). I even got to thank Ted Strong for his nice reserve, before he died. Despite the other cool stuff I've done in skydiving, I love that jump because of the way it hearkens back to the old days of skydiving, dealing with a malfunction in an old school way, much like the old timers used to do. There's also the simple purity and satisfaction of being thrown an emergency and dealing with it to get a good parachute overhead. (Helmet video & ground stills to share the fun: [ url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpxZ_0js8eM[/url], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqEdXPddj60)

And I'll add that it isn't black or white whether someone is good or not, there's also a lot of differing opinions out there, and different ways things are done in different areas. There are plenty of things some riggers find totally unacceptable on a rig, while others think is quite acceptable even if not ideal. One thing that can catch a rigger is if they have a rig for a while and then try to do the entire I+R just before the rig is needed. Of course the jumper wants a late repack date, and it can be a pain for the rigger to have a bunch of unpacked rigs lying around, but if you inspect the rig Thursday night when the rig needs to be ready for the weekend, then both the rigger and the owner are in a bit of a bind time wise if major issues are found. Sometimes one can ease the shock on a customer by warning them a repack or two ahead of time: "The top inner widget is getting pretty worn. It is still acceptable and I'll pass it, but I strongly recommend we order a new one some time or else I'm not sure I'd pack this rig next season."

Stilettos don't fly like most canopies out there these days. On the other hand, some people must still love them, as they are still in production. So that's still an option.

Raven I's are approved to 254 lbs certification limit. Documents later than the one showing 166 lbs exist. A graph in about 1990 shows the max recommended wing loading for the basic Raven series to be very slightly over 1:1. So you are still legal at your weight. Plenty of people have loaded and landed reserves at above recommended weights. That being said, with gear you'd be getting up towards the certification limit of a 25 year old canopy, loading an old design reserve (that isn't great at high wing loadings) at maybe 1.35 (if one adds 25 lbs for gear), while also not being current. In the end: You would be legal, but not smart to use that reserve.

So part of the argument seems to be: "Gee, it would be nice to have a source of summarized information." vs. "Shut up and look it up yourself." Leaving that aside, companies vary in their helpfulness. The data IS NOT in the manual of every container. For the Wings, Javelin, Voodoo, and Infinity rigs, to give a few examples, the TSOs and speed and weight limits are spelled out early in the manual. However: Mirage's manual shows in a huge font size that theirs is a Low Speed Parachute for use from airplanes under 150 mph. This is pretty useless for the average skydiver and leaves things out. It's a rig, not a parachute, a jumper might think. It takes some experience to understand the implications of the ancient TSO to which that applies. The Vector III rig has no TSO info in the manual, the only reference to a TSO being that there is a placard on the rig itself. So there seems to be a slight tendency to advertise one's TSO if it is nice and new with high limits, and hide basic certification information from the user if the TSO is older.

Good answers rss_v. Sounds like you are trying to be involved in the understanding of and maintenance of your own gear. And ignore the people who take your analogies out of context. The Cypres 1 manual does have some simple drawings of the process of replacing the battery.

Saw that recently. Is it "our own" Diver Driver flying, or someone else with the same handle? Impressive flying & maneuvering to get it on the runway, and the Bob Hoover "roll it to the ramp" for the stop. As to why the approach setup was so bad in the first place, I can't comment without knowing the situation and airport layout. He still got it down without running off the end of the runway, or crashing short, which isn't uncommon when deadsticking a plane in...

I did like the old school aspect of the Dive Rite story, the way that the more people you pass, the better a jumper you are proving yourself to be. While that is out of fashion in formal big ways now, it still is fun when doing speed stars and medium sized formations at the local DZ!

Hmm, "Mel at Skyworks" was the normally the answer to that kind of question....

Yeah last I heard nothing had been publicly released. John Sherman knew some of the rigs involved when the whole issue of the USPA & PIA warning came up but wasn't able to provide more info. (http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3838087#3838087) The rig list doesn't really say much other than that some popular rigs are popular on the list too. To find data one would have to painstakingly dig through USPA and dz.com accident reports to try to find descriptions that would seem to indicate a possible slow to open reserve. Also possibly useful is that document from an unknown author that attacks Airtec, called "CYPRES_AAD_FACT_SHEET ". I think it has plenty of BS in it and I don't trust what it says. It also focuses on the idea that Cypres' are not firing when they should, rather than the idea of reserves taking too long to extract. But it is a starting point for looking for a list of accidents where there was an AAD in the rig but the jumper died.

I'll bite. You're pretty combative about AADs on the forum lately, but it is true that the manuals sometimes are a little hard to interpret, and maddeningly may leave things out. As for your "landing 2500' higher than takeoff" example: a) Cypres has a nice big diagram that takes a little interpretation but clearly shows the 1500' that has to be climbed through to arm it, and that starts at the elevation of an LZ that is higher than the takeoff. So you need to climb to 4000 ASL. Text on the previous page is consistent, saying one must climb to 1500' above both the takeoff location and landing location (although doesn't emphasize the "and"). b) The Vigil arms once it crosses the level 150 ft above or below takeoff, as written in a big bolded section of text next to a diagram that shows the +/- 150 ft levels (although the diagram is used to illustrate a different point, about not flying the airplane level within that 300 ft band) Nothing hidden for either, although one can always find ways of improving how the info is displayed.

"Torah! Torah! Torah! (Ve hate zem!)" ... We're on a roll Twardo.

Jeez, that's why Tempo reserves have that built in turn! They were built in South Africa, and then jumped in North America. I can't believe I overlooked that.

"I'm training as a journalist and would like to start writing articles about American politics. Can anyone tell me like, stuff about the United States and its politics? Thanks!"

Good catch. It is is little unclear to me how slack the bridle really was, rather than just 'bouncing around'. Still, to make a simple statement for this thread: The hesitation of the Racer reserve to deploy may well have been due to the reserve pilot chute catching briefly in the lines & canopy of the non yet jettisoned main.

To be clear... By 'it' one is referring not to the incident but a recent discussion of cutaway cable issues.

It does look like a Racer. An older one (velcro on the riser covers, yellow not red cutaway cable), 2 pin reserve handle, type 13 webbing, L side chest buckle, wide bridle, freebag is pretty clearly Racer as it briefly goes by. Haha. Even the Racer's reserve hesitated to deploy the freebag for good second. But the difference compared to the guy with the Wings rig in Quebec towing his reserve pilot chute (which was even republished on the web through Parachute Labs as an example of reserve extraction problems), is that in this case the guy was spinning around under line twists, main still attached, instead of after cutaway accelerating more in freefall! (I haven't tried timing the exact duration of towing on the 2 videos.) Still, dragging your freebag around your shoulder while on your back appears not to be the best way to do it for any rig -- it does add some drag to the system, even if one has a container that is relatively soft and flexible (Racer) and not boxy and stiff (Wings). Wish we know what main the guy was spinning under. The video is a good example of the risers getting offset during a mal. But given how twisted they are, I doubt that he could have tried to yank on one side to try to equalize risers to slow the spin. As for the cutaway itself, the riser twists are pretty severe. It doesn't look that way from the 'lower' R riser in view much of the time, but the 'upper' L one is twisted right down to the confluence wrap. (See pics) So it is a good example of where a lot of riser twists, some G force, and no hard housings contributed to an impossible cutaway. Of course we don't know how hard he tried but he was presumably motivated! John Sherman suggests that keeping cables well lubed is enough, rather than going to hard housings. There is still some confusion in our community about the results and meanings of tests for cutaway force (3-bloke tests etc) and what the numbers really are -- I think a lot of people would like to see more test results. (I'm not sure about any influence of the 3-ring system being slightly distorted from the twisting. Doesn't actually look like much, since the bottom of mini risers are pretty stiff and resist twisting pretty well. Looks like there's still slack in the L riser locking loop, the worst twisted one. No incipient suck-through of the cutaway cable, so that's not an issue.) Anyway, lots of food for thought no matter what rig you jump.

The slider hold down 'bars' don't need to be so wide. They don't even need to extend past the edges of the mini risers to be able to catch the slider grommets.

If you have time to search, there are plenty of threads about newbies overcoming their fears. Not sure what the best search terms would be, but "fear" would be a good one. Good luck! It's not like skydiving can kill you... oh wait... it can... never mind!

REMINDER: This is the MiG 21 thread cut out of the Z hills speculation thread that's in S&T, not the speculation thread itself. So if you have no opinions about MiG-21's and their ejection seats, stay the hell out.

Just wanted to make a correction to something that was said: The Cypres cutter does use a stranded, shielded cable. The internal wires are also twisted for more physical and perhaps electromagnetic protection. I was curious so just cut open an expired C1 cutter cable. While the wires are tiny, a view through a loupe confirms that there are lots of little wire strands within each of the two insulated wires, which are wrapped with a shield of more strands, within the cable overall. [Edit:] I didn't check the C2 but doubt they made the cable worse. If you want to argue that the Cypres cable is less beefy than the Vigil cable (whether or not that matters in practice), or that the C2 strain relief 'tail' is worse than the flexible tail on the C1, go right ahead!

As Stratostar mentioned, that web link was pretty old, back from early February. But as for the role of the FAA, I never did get a reply to my emails either from the San Jose FSDO or Allen Silver, who were involved in the damning but poorly written FAA report...