billbooth

The solid core on pud reserve handles makes it very uncomfortable, and therefore very noticeable if they are tucked under. It also makes tuck-unders much less likely. I'll never say anything is impossible.

In almost every case, when you need to use your cutaway soft handle, you are hanging under a main canopy, and your main lift web (to which your "pud" is attached) is pulled upward and away from your body. Even if your breakaway handle had been tucked under in freefall, it would be no more, and it is literally right in front of your nose anyway. In contrast, when you need to find your reserve handle, there is no load on your harness. So it will be much lower. and against your body. Therefore, your reserve handle will always be "harder" to find than your breakaway handle. If it is tucked under, locating it might take more time than mother nature has allowed you on that particular jump. Knowing this, before I let Relative Workshop offer "soft" handles for the reserve, I redesigned our breakaway pup with a solid metal core to make "tuck-unders" less likely. Most other manufacturers have now done the same thing.

Call Skydive DeLand, (386) 738-3539. They might have a current phone number.

It's obvious that tying knots in a canopy will make it "malfunction"...But that's no fun! Fun is making stupid (but normal) packing errors on test jumps and seeing what happens. However, I must admit that this approach has never resulted in an actual malfunction on any test jump I've made. It seems that you can make almost every mistake in the book, and the damn thing will still open...that is if you're trying to make it malfunction, and have a "spare" reserve. It's that "perfect" pack job that malfunctions the one time you pull below 2,000 feet.

It is possible that you might be able to shorten the LEG PADS, so that you would be able to tighten the LEG STRAPS a little more. This would in effect lower the chest strap a little bit. I sounds like you need a longer yoke on your next rig. Vectors come with 4 different yoke measurements. You can't change one measurement on a harness without affecting all the others. A high chest strap could really hurt you on a hard opening, especially if your leg hardware slips a little.

Most large countries now have their own tandem rating requirements. Some still accept US manufacturers ratings, so do not. For instance, at a world meet a few years ago, the French would not let me make a tandem jump with my girlfriend, because I didn't have a French rating.

A cutaway was never a requirement for a Vector tandem rating, but it was for a Strong tandem rating. I don't know if it still is.

In all the test jumps I have done (or watched) I have never seen the second reserve used. I have also never been able to successfully pack a partial malfunction of the primary canopy (the one we were planning to breakaway from). I know of only one time when the primary canopy actually malfunctioned on its own, and it was packed correctly. I am not surprised, because mains only malfunction every 1,000 jumps or so, and my test breakaways number only in the hundreds.

Yes, I am worried about makeshift cutaway rigs, used with little or no training. I am worried that there will be more fatalities from a lot of people trying a cutaway on these rigs, than there will be from actual emergencies. The FAA stopped spin training in airplanes years ago, because more people were dying from spin training that were dying from actual spins. I have made three cutaway rigs that jumpers can use, only under Relative Workshop supervision, for the purpose of trying out the Skyhook RSL. They will be available at DeLand, and some of the larger meets. I think Strong also has a few cutaway rigs they will let people jump under their supervision. I won't make a "for sale" cutaway rig because TSOing it would cost too much compared to the number I might sell...And the chance of fatality from careless use is simply too great. I believe cutaway procedures should be practiced often, from a suspended harness if possible, to develop the "muscle memory" necessary to make the real thing go as smoothly as possible. I don't think one "live" cutaway is nearly as good training as multiple cutaways from a suspended harness...and suspended harness training carries no risk..unless you're a real klutz...in which case you shouldn't be jumping anyway.

It's a "gray area" as to whether such major modifications to a container system affect the TSO. This would probably have to be determined on a case by case basis. Problem is...who makes that determination?

Just remember, if you jump a non-TSOed rig, and get hurt, your pilot could lose his license, at least in the US.

I believe that only a manufacturer, or his representative, can jump a non-TSOed rig. In fact, it is required for a manufacturer to jump a new (not yet TSOed) rig to get it TSOed in the first place. When you jump the Relative Workshops cutaway rigs, it can only be done under our supervision. I know of no "TSOed" cutaway rigs. TSOs are very expensive, and there is simply not enough demand to justify the cost of TSOing one. This is a rather "gray" subject, and possibly open to other interpretations.

If you're going to take the risk of an intentional cutaway, you should at least use a rig that closely simulates the real thing. That is, a cutaway rig with all emergency handles in the same places they are on your normal gear. Otherwise, what are you learning?

Hi Pop!

We use the "Meshless" reserve pilot chute on all our products simply because it works much better than the fabric / mesh pilot chutes that came before it. If it didn't, I would still be making mesh pilot chutes. Why on earth would I change to something that worked worse than what I had before? The fact that it cannot have an "acid-mesh" problem is only a bonus, not the primary reason for using the design. My all-fabric pilot chute cannot be used on pop-top or Javelin-type rigs because the "meshless" design demands that the large end of the spring be at the bottom of the pilot chute, to make a large enough air intake. Pop-Top type rigs demand that the small end of the spring be on the bottom, to make the "crater" the exposed pilot chute must sit in.

Sometimes I'd like to have a more colorful past than I actually do. I've just heard stories of people trying to throw a cat out of an airplane, I haven't actually tried. By the way, the cat always won. Dogs, on the other hand, will willingly jump static line or tandem. They just want to go where ever you go, by any means possible.

Every successful device in sport parachuting is "dirt simple". Witness the slider. For you younger jumpers, you wouldn't believe the complicated reefing devices for ram-airs that preceded it. And that's exactly how I know when a system I'm working on is ready for market...when I hit myself on the forehead with the palm of my left hand, and go "duh!"

No matter how hard you try, you cannot baptize a cat...or throw it out of an airplane.

As you know Kelly, I've been working on this system, on and off, for over 15 years now. It's only within the last year or so that I've been able to make it work to my satisfaction. There were single point releases before the 3-ring...some of mine and some designed by others. It's just that none of them were practical.

Like all the others, the Meyer's release came after the 3-ring. Once the idea of a single point release was out there, people tried every other way they could think of to accomplish the same thing. You'll probably see the same sort of reaction to the Skyhook.

Actually, the 3-ring came right after Capewells, and before R-2's, R-3's, Sport Lifewells, the Strong Wrap, and several others. All of those releases were reactions to the 3-ring, not releases leading up to it.

You don't have to choose. There is a combination of Spandex and Cordura called (you'll never guess) Spandura. We have been using it on the Sigma Tandem rig for 3 years, and it is now standard on all Relative Workshop products. It stretches just like Spandex, and is just a durable as Cordura...Honest. Problems with Cordura pouches happen when you put a larger volume pilot chute in your pouch than it was designed for, or sometimes even when you simply overstuff your main container.

When I started jumping, gear was basically unchanged since the 20's, so it was about time. I just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with a different way of looking at things. I had never worked for anybody in the parachute industry before, so I simply didn't know that you "couldn't do it that way"...so I did. Once I decided to make a single point release system, I worked night and day until I got it right...and the second I looked at an assembled 3-ring for the first time, I knew I had it. My entire development budget for the 3 ring was about $100, so I had to "fiddle" it together from existing materials. By comparison, the existing standard, the Capewell release, was developed with a government grant of well over one million dollars in the early 50's. (I wish someone would give me a government grant.)

I knew somebody would ask. I have slides of them somewhere in a presentation I gave years ago, but they are not digitized. Believe it or not, there was a time before Powerpoint.

I've heard that rumor too, but I never saw any device like the 3-ring release until I came up with it. The 3-ring was actually the fifth release I designed. If you looked at the previous four, you would see a logical progression toward the 3-ring.