KellyF

I'm only going to reply to these statements, and try not to get too wrapped up in this discussion. John, MARD's DO NOT preempt the function of the reserve pilot chute, they simply assist it. If any part of the main parachute assembly fails to provide enough drag to extract the reserve canopy from the container, or bag from the canopy, the reserve PC is still there to finish the deployment as originally designed. You can see this happen in the video that Jerry posted during the baglock test. The main initiates the deployment, but the reserve PC finishes it. It's also interesting to note that the RAX interlock does not disconnect in this scenario like the Skyhook does in the UPT video- there is no need in this situation. I do agree with you that SOME MARD's can interfere with the normal function of the reserve PC in some low speed scenarios, which is one of the reasons you don't see us selling Infinitys with any MARD's currently available to the sport market.

I think that is a definite possibility, but I don't think it was the cause in this case. Morten is a 26 year veteran of the sport and has/does work for some of the manufacturers in DeLand. He told me specifically that the RSL was routed properly, and I see no reason not to believe him. As far as the interaction with the camera, I'm not clear on how or where it was mounted, but I've had a theory about the freebag getting pulled between the jumpers' right shoulder and head, possibly getting hung up for a moment, leading to the breakage of the red lanyard. In Morten's case, he says the lanyard didn't break until the reserve was at linestretch, so the only thing I can think of is there was some sort of rebound when the reserve "broke free" of a restriction.

I spent some time on the phone with the jumper a couple weeks back, and he says he has a shot from his Contour camera that got knocked off his helmet, that shows the red lanyard still attached to the hook at linestretch. It seems that the lanyard broke after the bag couldn't be pulled off the reserve.

In this incident, the Collin's Lanyard didn't function as you describe because all of the velcro that holds the RSL lanyard to the rig (that normally the reserve pilot chute would be pulling against before it loaded the Collin's Lanyard) had been peeled by the opening forces when the stitch pattern failed. This allowed the piolt chute to load the left side cutaway cable (which may have been somewhat dislodged during the deployment) and cut the left riser away at ~200-250'. I hate to "monday morning quarterback" this jumper's actions since they obviously worked for him and were the right actions IN THIS CASE, but standard EP's would have been to either ride in what he had, or immediately deploy the reserve. His reserve was already deployed and ineffective due to the seal thread holding the hook to the RSL lanyard. So it was either ride in 1/2 a main or gamble with his life and cutaway. No other system gives the reserve pilot chute the ability to cutaway 1/2 of the main parachute, and the force required to break the seal thread should certainly not be higher than the force required to extract the cutaway cable. I don't think a hook is the ideal design for a MARD due to the nature of the environment that it needs to operate in. Premature releases WILL happen. To counter that, a seal thread tack was added, which sacrifices the ability of the reserve to deploy at speeds where it would normally deploy. This creates a new set of EP's in some situations that aren't widely discussed. I pay close attention to the Skyhook because I'm not convinced that the level of main/reserve integration that it has is a good thing. How many incidents have there been in the past 10 years where a standard RSL was implicated as a contributing factor?

We get ours here: http://www.pullupcords.com/, but thanks for noticing!

Hi Shaun, I just found your email buried away in Outlook, so I'm sorry I didn't reply to that sooner. You spoke with Tony, who has been working for me for about 6 years now, and we have been producing our risers with the integrated hard housings since before then. I was in the shop when you called, I was gone when your rig was here, and now Tony is out of the office for the week, so it's been rather difficult to get everyone on the same page. I cannot know exactly what words were exchanged, but it is my understanding that we offered to pay 3 day shipping both directions, among other solutions, but you insisted that we needed your rig here, and that it had to be overnighted both directions. We feel that sharing the overnight shipping expense was a fair compromise since you had put 150 or so jumps on your rig. The comment about the riser most likely failing during deployment is based in fact- the vast majority of riser failures occur on opening- I can't recall an incident where a riser failed during a swoop. I would hope that you can understand that no company can be manned 100% of the time waiting for some customer concerns. I think we do a rather good job, but sometimes there will be a customer who just is not satisfied with our efforts. The grommet from your cutaway housing was saved for me to look at, and I didn't find it to be as sharp as I had expected based upon the information that I had. There was a definite ridge on the outer edge, but it wasn't sharp enough to cut skin. In your first post you mention that the housing would not lay flat upon receipt of your rig. This is normally easily rectified by turning the housing far enough to give it a new set in the clamp so that it lays flat. It appears from your post that you made the decision to continue to jump your rig without getting the housing repositioned. That is what contributed to your loop wearing prematurely. This did not happen in one jump, but over the course of 100-150 jumps. It is possible that your loop wore excessively on the last jump you made, but I am certain that it didn't all happen on one jump, the evidence that I see just doesn't support that. If you can explain exactly how the top edge of the cutaway housing grommet can scrape against the riser housing fitting AND cut the loop in one motion, I'm all ears, and I think the skydiving community would benefit also. We are looking into ways to prevent this, but with thousands of sets of risers in the field, it is certainly a very rare occurrence. Your #3 picture has some strange ghosting effect going on that makes the loop look like it partially disappears behind the logo on the riser, and makes the grommet look somewhat mangled, also. The fibers that you see on that loop circled on the right quite often show up on the T-2A loop material as it comes off the roll and is certainly not a factor in the structural integrity of the riser. The fibers circled on the left appear to be light abrasion from something rubbing on the loop as it is resting on the small ring of the riser. Neither are structural issues, and neither are related to the loop wear on your right riser, as they are in completely different locations. As a little experiment, I made a Ty-2A loop (the material that is used in riser construction) and cut it 85-90% of the way through to make it look similar to your right riser loop. I put an 80 Lb. load directly onto the loop and it didn't fail. This would translate to over a 4500 Lb. load on the riser, or about 1000 Lbs. more than average breaking strength of Ty-17 risers. I'm not implying that anyone should jump risers with a loop that is that damaged, but it certainly shows how over engineered that loop is for job it does. We are here to do our best to keep all of our customers satisfied to the extent that it is possible.

If you're referring to decision and execution altitudes, we can agree, but when the smelly stuff hits the fan and 1/2 your parachute goes away at 250' (as happened in Chicago not long ago), the standard EP is NOT to pull the cutaway handle. Typically in a situation like that a jumper will want to get more material above their head. Simply pulling the reserve to get more fabric out may very well do nothing at all except launch the reserve PC on a Skyhook equipped rig, as there likely won't be enough airspeed to break the seal thread holding the PC (via the bridle) to the RSL. So this jumper had two options- ride in what he had, or get rid rid of it entirely and hope that he got more out before impact. Luckily, pulling the cutaway handle mostly worked out for him. The same type of thing can happen if your AAD fires at the tail end of your main deployment- PC towing behind the jumper. This is being touted as a "feature" because it "prevents a two out scenario", but it doesn't necessarily prevent it unless the jumper reels in and controls the PC, which I think is silly if you just opened ~750'- your attention should be focused elsewhere. Thats enough thread jacking for me.

It's $125, IIRC. $100 for the patent royalty and $25 for the hook and misc. parts, as I remember. Even if it were free, you wouldn't find it on an Infinity since it can complicate things (relative to the majority of rigs that are currently in the field) should you scare your AAD during main deployment. This creates different EP's for different brands of rigs, which I think is a step backward for the sport. To get completely back on topic, I could see raising the AAD firing altitude to 1000', but I think 1250' is a bit excessive.

Bill, can you point me to an incident where an Argus (or any AAD for that matter) fired and only cut the loop on the top side of the cutter? All of the incidents that I'm aware of have had the loop cut on the bottom side of the cutter, meaning that if the jumper had pulled their reserve handle, the PC would deploy.

I've been trying to stay out of these discussions while we collect some Argus cutters for testing, but at this point, there is no evidence from the documentation on the PIA webpage that an Argus cutter will render a reserve container inoperative. The two incidents that have the best documentation are Portugal (the pictures are in the Italian incident link for some reason) and San Marcos. In both incidents, the loop was cut on the bottom side of the cutter and trapped on the top, meaning that if the ripcord had been pulled, the parachute system should have operated normally. Thats all I have to say about this stuff for now.

There is a lot of good information in that document, but the illustration is not accurate in regards to the anvil location relative to the hole the closing loop passes through. The anvil location is the same as in the "V-Blade" cutter illustration, as least based on the two Argus units we have in house, and the technical drawings I've been provided with.

So besides your tiny mains, how would your reserve behave with some line twists and a little bit of harness input?

It was an early PD-106R, possibly a prototype, and I'm not sure if the brake settings were changed after that time period or not. I was asked if I wanted to jump the 99 and I declined. I'm not sure if anyone had jumped one at that point or not, but I wasn't anxious to be the first.

Well, I'm guessing that the first jump would be a nice landing after a big turn starting around 700', followed by the realization that he may not want to land it without a turn and may not have the time or altitude to plan and execute a turn after an actual cutaway. At least his first jump on the 99 wouldn't be after a low chop. I'd rather lose a sale than lose a customer. FWIW, 160lbs and a wing loading of about 1.5 on a reserve gave me a decent rate of 1500fpm with deployment brakes set, and ~2000 with with them released.

Funny you should mention a 2 to 1 reserve WL, we had an order come in yesterday for a 190 lb. jumper that wants an Infinity with a 99 sq.ft. reserve. I talked to the dealer today and asked him if the jumper has ever jumped that particular reserve, and he hadn't. I suggested getting a demo for him to jump and that it would be a couple of weeks before the rig was due to be cut. We'll see what happens....

I've been seeing a lot of comments from jumpers that are choosing to disconnect their RSL/Skyhook afte cutting away from a spinning malfunction (usually spinning line twists) and having line twists on their reserves. To me, this is flawed logic considering you're going to burn through more altitude trying to get stable in freefall than you will kicking out of line twists under an open reserve. I suspect that these comments are coming from jumpers that started jumping after tapered/elliptical canopies became the norm and spinning line twists became a common malfunction, so they view line twists as a borderline malfunction without consideration of the type of parachute on the other end of the twists. Reserve parachutes are designed to be very stable and are forgiving on harness input (the input that causes the spin in spinning line twists). A tapered or elliptical canopy is designed to be moderately to very sensitive to control inputs (including harness input) and can spin readily with just 2-3" of asymmetry, where a rectangular seven cell might change heading at a rate of ~10 degrees per second (depending on wing loading), but come no where near a nose at the earth, high descent rate spin. I'm sure people will point out the lack of control while in line twists can contribute to a collision, but keep in mind that you probably burned through some extra altitude before you decided to cutaway, so there could be some extra vertical separation. I encourage everyone that has never jumped their reserve or a rectangular seven cell to demo their reserve as a main and TRY to make it spin with harness input, as well as discover how it behaves in a flare, stall and all modes of flight.

Jerry would like to see the tab tacked in place with seal thread, I don't see it as necessary, but wouldn't cause any functional issues. As far as "positional durability", I think it comes down to where it is installed in the reserve container, but I don't think there would be significant movement once the container is closed. I would like to point out that this is just a concept at this point as far as VSE is concerned and we haven't installed one in an Infinity at this point. UPT won't license the Collin's Lanyard separate from the Skyhook, and while there are other ways to accomplish the function, UPT pretty much has the simplest solution. That said, I've never heard anyone say that they would jump a standard RSL "if only it had a Collin's Lanyard", so why one and not the other?

You're right, this is one of the issues that I was categorizing under "misrigging"- not so much the RSL getting pulled far enough to dislodge the tab, (ideally, the ripcord pin should get pulled first), but the idea of riggers doing steps 2 and 3 and not doing step 1. Just pull the snap shackle tab, right? lol I like your concept of anchoring the tab to the closing loop, and will explore that, but it would require different placement than my current ideas.....

A couple of things about the history of RAX- I built a VERY rough prototype of an idea that I had and shared it with Jerry and a couple of other manufacturers/designers (on the right in the first pic, one of Jerry's samples on the left). Jerry really liked the concept and asked me if he could develop it further. Not having any time myself, I told him to go ahead so he made up some samples and sent them around for opinions and had some test jumps done. He also named the system and added the pocket on the bridle which makes things a little neater when packing, but is completely unnecessary (he and I have gone back and forth on this). The pocket tries to prevent the RAX interlock from rotating around the loop on the bridle when the PC takes over during a high speed mal like a baglock and can result in a bent pin. OK, now I'll try to take a stab at an explanation with a couple of pictures. The system consists of essentially 4 parts and 3 steps to assemble it while packing. The reserve bridle would have a loop of Ty-2A (or any other line type deemed appropriate), and the interlock has two legs, one with a #0 grommet and pocket for the tip of the pin, and the other with a stiffened section with the pin secured at the base. The last part is the pocket sewn onto the reserve container. During packing, the rigger would FIRST put the tab into the pocket, then put the loop on the bridle through the grommet, then put the pin through the loop and into it's pocket. The third picture shows the system completely asembled (on Jerry's mock up that I have). Paul, once the RSL has initiated deployment, and pulled tab out of the pocket, the reserve bridle is locked to the RSL (see the second picture). I consider this a "mechanical" MARD, and consider the Skyhook (and most others I've seen- Sorcerer being an exception) to be "aerodynamic" MARDs. Meaning that aerodynamic forces cause the system to lock or unlock, and can cause the system to release prematurely during a cutaway. The ability to "change it's mind" in the middle of a deployment was one of the design elements for the Skyhook (horsehoe mal, RSL entaglement, etc.), but I believe it creates VERY diffecult design challenges if you want to prevent premature releases AND license the system to other manufacturers that use a different reserve pilot chute with different drag characteristics (and I'm not sure I agree that it's a "requirement"). The only way I see RAX releasing prematurely during a live cutaway is if the reserve pilot chute somehow launches out ~5' and pulls the loop off of the pin before the RSL covers the distance from pulling the pin to pulling the tab out of the pocket. Of course like everything else, RAX can be rigged improperly, so I'm constantly trying to come up with ways to prevent that (and I think the required rigging is pretty damn simple). But in the end, is the additional complexity (in rigging and use- and anyone that says they don't add complexity for the user is WRONG) of a MARD REALLY needed? This is one of those situations where I feel we have time to wait and see how things shake out, and if the demand really IS there, we can offer the BEST system to our customers, not just the "FIRST"

Why would I be disappointed because someone DIDN'T do a canopy transfer and lived (I wasn't even suggesting a transfer, but maybe pulling the reserve before cutting away)? I try not to come onto the forums to "Monday morning quarterback" people's choices, especially when I didn't witness the incident. All I'm saying is that there seem to be a lot of people that feel they can safely cutaway lower if their rig is equipped with a Skyhook. This is a scary trend if it fails to perform as advertised ~15% of the time (according to DiabloPilot's experience). Look at it this way- if our main pilot chute collapsed before it extracted the bagged canopy from the container 15% of the time, or if our AAD's failed to turn on 15% of the time, we would get a new main PC or send the AAD back to the manufacturer. There will always be exceptions to the rule, but jumpers should not cutaway any lower with a Skyhook than they would with a standard RSL, because that's exactly what they might get.

Was this with or without a skyhook? If it was with, I think (without knowing all the facts of the collision) that she put too much faith in the system, given the fact that it DOESN'T work all the time. Obviously she made a right choice, but every situation is different, and I hate for people to think that cutting away at 2-300 feet is a good "safe" option.

SOME but not ALL. I never said they did. If it's well documented that rigs with four flaps above the pilot chute and closing loops that are too long, in combination with a cutter that is placed below the pilot chute, can prevent the pilot chute from lauching when the cutter fires, doesn't it stand to reason that while frictional and leverage forces are lower with the two flap system, that they still exist? Keep in mind I said the launch can get "restricted" not "prevented". If there's no functional difference between the two deplyment methods on semi-exposed rigs such as the Javelin and Wings, why don't they put the ripcord pin on the backpad for better pin protection and mount the closing loop the the top flap? Seems they missed the boat there Then we agree In the past 20 years or so since pyrotechnic cutters have become commonplace for AAD's, how many fatalities have there been where the AAD fired and cut the closing loop, but the reserve didn't deploy? How many where the closing loop was cut and the reserve didn't deply that didn't result in a fatality? Now compare that to the number of incidents where the cutter failed to sever the closing loop. Enough fun for one day.

Cutting the loop close to the pin keeps the opening mechanics of the container closest to the original primary deployment configuration. The farther the cutter gets from the pin, the more loop has to get pulled through flaps and the pilot chute (the Racer would be an exception), most likely inhibiting the launch of the pilot chute to some degree. Most rigs are designed so that when the pin is pulled, the flaps and pilot chute top get pushed off the end of the closing loop to provide for the lowest restriction container opening and pilot chute launch. As the cutter gets farther from the pin, the machanics of the deployment change completely, as has been mentioned in pervious posts, and the launch gets restricted.

The Cypres is going on the reserve, and there is a system in place to prevent Felix from running out of O2 if a premature deployment happens, and it's not "bigger bottles"

Hi Nicole, simply put, as the manufacturer, we can control the length of cut loop, but we cannot control the closing loop length once a rig leaves our shop. Even saying to "pack the rig as tight as possible while maintaining a maximum pull force of 22 lbs." is not sufficient since how well the canopy is compressed before the rig is closed is a variable that could affect the length of cut loop if the cutter is placed below the pilot chute. Good luck with that I want to stress that this is simply a PRODUCTION change, NOT a service bulletin.