billbooth

I agree, an RSL is ABSOLUTELY USELESS, when you do everything right...just like an AAD...or for that matter, a reserve. However, every year quite a few of us DON'T do everything right...and you can never tell which one of us is going to be next. It might be you, or it might be me. That's why we have reserves, AAD's, and RSL's, and that's why I use all three. I don't believe that even 35 years in the sport, and over 6,000 jumps, makes me immune to screwing up. In that 35 years, I have simply seen too many "best jumpers in the world" go in. For decades it has been illegal to jump without a reserve. For many years now, AAD's have required on all student and tandem jumps. Right now, some DZ's won't let even experienced jumpers go without one. I believe, that in a few years, properly designed RSL's will be on that list of "must haves" in order to jump. Almost all of the "problems" attributed to RSL's have been on older, "incomplete" designs.

One project at a time, but I think sometime in 2006, I will license the Skyhook.

If you have severe line twists in front of your face, you just might find those two pud handles pushed a lot closer together than you might like when you need to determine which is which. Plus, if you ride that spinner long enough, your vision might become very limited, or even non-existent. If you wear a full face helmut, you might not even be able to see your reserve handle after a breakaway in the first place, and if you wear gloves, you might not be able to feel it. I am beginning to think that an RSL should be REQUIRED on rigs with pud reserve handles.

I am just now firming up prices, and setting up a production line to install Skyhooks on Vector III's manufactured without them. It is actually quite a time consuming job, even on the rig the Skyhook was designed for. You have to add an RSL ring to the riser, build the Skyhook RSL lanyard, replace both the reserve and 3-ring housings, sew on a new reserve flap to attach the Skyhook to, shorten the reserve freebag bridle, and finally sew on the Skyhook itself. After the two tragic fatalities at the convention, the phones have been "ringing off the hook" with customers requesting this service, and I want to get Skyhooks on as many of my customers rigs as want them...as soon as possible. This conversion project was planned for 2006, but I now feel the need to speed things up a bit. I still have to find the people, and set up the line, but we are moving full speed ahead on the project. This project should speed up the release of the Skyhook technology to other manufacturers, because with more Skyhooks out there, their reputation will grow faster. And as someone said above, I have to be sure the Skyhook's reputation is unassailable before I license it. I don't want what happened to the 3-ring (soft housings, reversed risers. etc.) to happen to the Skyhook.

A well designed pilot chute ought to pull 80-120 lbs. at terminal. I find it hard to believe that simply putting an "oversized" bag in a well designed main container could result in an open container pilot chute in tow. I suspect either a poorly designed container or (most likely) pilot chute.

I did figure out tandem terminal openings, back in 1984. (We had to. Tandem reserves do not have drogues.) There were over 10, 000 tandem jumps on our 360 main before I went to the drogue. I made about 300 of those personally, and tandem terminal opening shocks were not the problem. The problem was the speed itself. Several tandem terminal jumps in a row really beat you up, and the photographers simply could not keep up. So according to your prediction, I should be really rich by now. What happened?

You're right. Because tandem reserves take so long to open anyway, the Skyhook doesn't make a whole lot of difference (about 150 feet) in opening altitude, compared to a normal RSL deployment. What a Skyhook does accomplish is to get your canopy to line stretch much faster (3/4 of a second vs 3 seconds). Again, this can be very important as two people have died due to entanglement with reserve lines after tandem breakaways. As to bag strips, we have never seen a bag strip in literally hundreds of Skyhook videos. In the beginning, I too was worried about bag strip, so I did a lot of drop tower tests, and designed the Skyhook bridle to break before it puts enough force on the bag to cause strip. The military has now done a lot of Skyhook tests with much larger and heavier canopies, and much higher loads than we see sport tandem jumping, and also have seen no bag strips.

The Skyhook was designed precisely to solve this "dilemma" with RSL's and tandem. Because it takes so long (nearly 3 seconds) to get to line stretch after a tandem breakaway (big heavy canopy with long lines), and because it is sometimes hard to maintain stability during this time with a "kicking and screaming" student, there have been many jumper/reserve line entanglements after tandem breakaways. Two of these were fatal. By getting your reserve to line stretch in 3/4 of a second, as well as deploying it directly "in-line" with your body, the Skyhook yields remarkably "clean" reserve deployments. Without any RSL, however, I believe that getting into a side- spin while trying to get stable again is a distinct possibility.

You are a smart person. The best way to avoid injuries from that occasional super hard opening (as well as the hard openings themselves), is not to jump no-stretch lines. Ask yourself, "Do I really need the (slight) advantages no-stretch lines offer?" If not, get Dacron. Your body will thank you, because even if you are not ever seriously injured on any single jump, each even slightly hard opening on no-stretch lines is damaging your body...and it all adds up.

Bill, Read this website and see what you think. It made a lot of sense to me. Bill http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

CO2 is only a very minor greenhouse gas. So adding to it has only a very minor efect. The most important greenhouse gas (95%) is water vapor, which is conveniently left out of the socialist (environmentalist) calculations. Water vapor, by the way, is over 99% "nature made" and therefore beyond the control of man. I can remember in the 50's when they were ranting about "Global Cooling" and the impending ice age. I guess that didn't generate enough revenue, so the "man made global warming" myth was tried. Apparently, it has been much more successful at bringing in the dollars.

10 years ago, some Saudi "princes" were learning to skydive at DeLand. For some reason, perhaps intentionally, they were given a (very competent) female instructor. They were insensed. They actually turned their backs on her, and wouldn't listen to a word she was saying.

Sounds good to me too.

After looking at hundreds of slow motion videos of main deployments, I leave as little line unstowed as possible. Unstowed line tends to "dance" around all over the place between container opening and line stretch. And it certainly looks dangerous when your container flaps and lines dance together. The military, on direct bag static line rigs, actually hand tacks, with break cord, the riser ends to the D-bag, after stowing 100% of the lines on the bag under a protector flap. I'm beginning to think that something like this (rubber bands, not break cord) might not be such a bad idea on sport rigs. Your risers and 100% of your lines would be pulled away from you immediately, and therefore your risers could not get caught under your reserve pack tray, and your lines could not get caught around a flap or under a grommet. Plus, both riser covers would be pulled open very quickly, and at precisely the same time. (Uneven opening of risers covers is thought by some to cause asymmetrical and/or hard openings.)

Thanks, Dave. The download, even at high resolution, took just a few minutes. Guys, this is a newer, more complete, version of our Skyhook video. The old version is also on Skydivingmovies.com, so don't get them confused. The new version is labeled "2005 Skyhook History", or something like that. Follow the above link. By the way, the photographer in the last sequence was NOT injured.

I can't think of an RSL with a Collins' Lanyard every causing anyone a problem, much less killing them. When you blame deaths on RSL's, please be specific that these were "old fashioned" RSL's.

I don't really have a firm opinion on this subject. Both type of line stows seem to work well. The only thing that is really important is that the locking stows do their job. We are currently "test jumping" inside line stow bags, and if we find any discernible differences, I'll let you know.

Why all the hostility, Chris? I'm just offering my opinion. I would imagine that failure to cock the pilot chute is one of the most common packing errors, often leading to one of the scariest malfunction I can think of....Your pin is pulled...your container is open...but your pilot chute doesn't have enough drag to lift out the bag. What do you do? Nothing will happen if you breakaway, and the moment you pull your reserve, your main bag is going to go...and, as I have noted before, simultaneous deployments are rarely much fun. For me, NOTHING is worth increasing the risk of that malfunction. For this reason, I DID refuse to make collapsible pilot chutes for many, many years. I finally gave up, and started to make them just a few years ago, because of the often poorly constructed collapsibles I was apparently "forcing" my customers to buy after-market. I have measured forward speed of the same 1:1 loaded canopy, with and without a collapsible, and found absolutely no difference. Extra risk...no measurable added performance... WHY? As I've said above, I will admit that for highly loaded canopies, collapsibles do make a quite a difference. They just are not necessary for everybody, and I think students should be advised of that fact.

Your cutaway pillow is "soft". It feels a lot like your harness or your jumpsuit. With gloves on, you literally can't tell the difference. So you can't really depend upon your sense of feel to find it quickly, can you?" It is also rather unlikely that you will be able to identify it using your senses of smell, taste, or hearing. Let's see...what do we have left? Ah, Yes... your sense of sight...and you say that you want to handicap even that, by making your breakaway pillow blend into its surroundings? Please think again.

It's all very natural...The canopy manufacturer (John LeBlanc) simply wants his open canopy to perform as well as possible. (All those deployment devices, pilot chutes, bags and sliders, are just a necessary nuisance to him.) While the rig manufacturer (Bill Booth) simply wants the canopy to simply deploy as reliably as possible. So, he hates to see those devices made more complicated than necessary, because he knows that that will lead to an increase in deployment malfunctions. (There is simply no doubt that you cannot forget to cock a non-collapsible pilot chute or slider, and therefore they are more reliable.) And remember, a very good percentage of malfunctions are caused by, you got it, human error. It is simply a matter of maximum reliability vs. maximum speed. Choose one...you cannot have both. I have over 5,000 (non-tandem) jumps without a collapsible pilot chute, and I have never had a pilot chute in tow, nor have I ever been injured by my fully inflated 36" pilot chute "dragging" behind my fully inflated canopy. But remember, I don't jump much greater than a 1:1 wing loading. It's a simple rule I live by...I always want a little more canopy over my head than absolutely necessary, for those off-DZ, or broken-line, or last minute avoidance situations. Call me old fashioned, but I still walk without a limp after 35 years of skydiving. So, unless swooping is your thing, don't over-complicate your deployment devices, and don't jump a tiny canopy just to be cool. The tiny canopy injury rate now far exceeds even that of the old flat circular rounds. We cetainly have come a long way...of have we. In my book, a entire class of canopies that hurts a lot of people cannot be called "successful", and certainly isn't "progress". This is clearly NOT the fault of the canopy manufacturers. Canopies do not crash themselves. I believe it is the fault of a DZ culture, which pushes inexperienced jumpers into gear they simply cannot handle. And pushes nearly everybody toward less reliable deployment devices, just to get that last few percentage points of performance out of their canopy. In my oinion, it just isn't worth the risk.

Everything humans do to go faster entails risk....whether it's fast cars, fast parachutes, or for that matter, fast women. Highly loaded ZP canopies, micro lines, and collapsible pilot chutes and sliders, all add risk to your skydive. But skydiving itself is risky, and who's to say when the risk becomes "too much". The answer, of course, is "You are". Don't go too far, too fast. You simply don't need all the fast stuff on your first rig. Freefall ought to be enough for a while. I enjoyed the hell out of my few hundred skydives, and my main, a Para-Commander only went 10 MPH.

It's a basic rule: Main risers should break before the harness. With non-stretch lines, ZP canopies, and faster fall rates the rage, I have actually thought that perhaps we should REMOVE the reinforcement in 1" type 17 risers, and stop using 1 3/4" type 8 risers altogether. The reason for this is that recently, harnesses have broken while the main risers have remained intact. The result of this is, of course, always fatal. Also, several jumpers have been killed, or seriously injured, by opening shock without breaking either the risers or the harness. Since I doubt I will be able to talk very many people out of micro line, what else is there to do. We simply can't continue to make the gear so strong and non-stretchy that people are killed by opening shock. Of course, these weaker risers would require an RSL system that would not deploy the reserve if one riser broke. Luckily, there are several systems available which accomplish this. My advice is not to buy a rig with a single sided RSL if you must jump a micro lined canopy.

Without very long, and stretchy nylon lines on Paraplanes with upper surface rings-n-ropes, terminal openings would not have been possible...well, not more than once every few weeks anyway. When someone tells me they had a hard opening nowadays, I ask them how long they were "out" for. When they say they weren't knocked out at all, I just laugh, and walk away shaking my head.

Sorry you had the problem. Congratulations on landing safely. Before drogues, I broke two lower steering lines. I landed both by giving the good toggle to the student and matching his flare (on my command) with both hands, on the opposite rear riser. I both cases, the student was light and "heads up", and the winds high. If the student had been heavy, or the winds light, I probably would have chopped. Since drogues, I have not had another steering system failure. Because each case is different, it is up to the individual tandem instructor to decide what to do. I don't know which canopy you were jumping, or any other particulars, so I have to assume you did the right thing. One thing I did notice was that the broken steering system had a lot of wear on it. Steering lines take more wear than any other lines, and therefore need to be replaced often. You will notice that on our tandem reserves, all four of the steering lines are continuous to the brake setting. That way, if you lose one steering line on opening, the other three are still functional. If we had a lot of problems with sreering line breakage, we would make the mains the same way. We just don't have a lot of steering system breaks.

The Vector was TSO'ed under TSO C-23b in the STANDARD category, the "highest" category available. As far as I know, no PD reserves were TSO'ed in "B". The Vector Tandem 360 Reserve was TSO'ed in "B", but Relative Workshop holds the TSO. Some PD reserves are TSO'ed in "C", but some of the reserves mentioned above were TSO'ed in "D", a category not mentioned by the AC. Once again, AC 105-2C is advice, NOT law.