davelepka

I hope that the Argus design is proven to be sound, and then the ban is lifted, leading to good competition. Wihtout the first part, the resulting competition couldn't be considered 'good', as one of the members of the competition might have a design flaw. Beyond that, this report does little to inspire confidence. The author is of unknown qualifications engineering-wise. Being an experienced jumper and rigger does not qualify him to analyze a pyro-technic cutter. The photos are of poor quality, and the tools used to hold the items both appear to be rusty. None of this adds credibility. Is anyone aware of a past relationship between the author, and Argus owner Karl Goots? It appears that 'skysupplieseurope' is a gear dealer, and last time I checked, Argus is a gear manufacturer. This report should have been left to an official regulatory body, or at least an unrelated manufacturer of cutters or similar equipment who have engineers and test facilities on hand.

Intakes and props, for obvious reasons, need to be exposed to the outside atmospere. Access panels need to provide access for service and inspection. The inner workings of a cutter require neither access to the outside atmospere nor be available for inspection and/or service after leaving the factory. While I am not convinced that the shot ball could not have fouled the cutter even if a plastic insert was used, I am convinced that your comparison is flawed, and does not apply to this situation.

In all fairness to other DZOs, Mike owns his own fast, high capacity airplane. Not all DZOs are able to give away slots or pay coaches out of their own pockets (or have coaches willing to work for free). However, none of that excuses the behavior of DZOs who use the coach jumps as a revenue stream. The idea of the coach program was to produce better trained, better preparred A license jumpers, not to bolster the bottom line of the DZ. At the very least, they could set the standard that coach pay is minimal, and maybe knock a couple bucks off the cost of each slot and a couple off the gear rental. You could save the student an easy $20/jump with these discounts, and all while still making a (small) profit on slots and gear rental, and not making the coach work for free. Maybe offer coaches one free jump for every 5 coach jumps they make without being paid. Again, save the student big time, and only give up 1/5 the value of a slot at cost to the DZO. While Mike is certainly setting the gold standard, and deserves to be applauded for that, you cannot expect all DZOs to live up to that standard. There's a lot they can do (and many do), but not everyone can be Mike Mullins.

You could take that advice yourself. The actions of Airtec are not being called into question, but seeing as you have a grudge with them, you continue to interject their actions into this discussion. Based on what? They denied a problem, and then it resurfaced. They admitted to one problem, offered a solutuion, and then the problem resurfaced. Now they have said nothing aside from accusing the 'industry' of conspiring against them. When did accusing the indsutry of conspiracy amount to a satisfactory response to a unit malfunctioning, and doing so in a way that could cause a fatality in the right circumstances? They have offered no factual information to defend their product or it's performance. Tell me how this is acceptable without referencing Airtec or Vigil, or any other company? In of itself, how is their response enough?

That toy weighs 45,000lbs empty, and upwards of 60,000lbs full without fuel. It is a testament to the build quality of the CRJ when the vertical stabilzer can take that type of load and not snap off, or even really bend all that much. I just caught on thaty the A380 was taxiing out for take off. So they have a plane full of fuel and god knows how many people going trans-atlantic, then the pilot gets into this fender bender, and now what? How long does it take to get another A380 in to replace that one? How about a 747 and reroute the overage to other carriers? Anyway you slice it, a couple hundered people had their travel plans seriously fucked by what amounted to a parking lot fender bender. Wonder how much it's going to cost Air France? Aircraft repair and down time, rerouting all those customers and whatever esle it takes to make them happy, the bill from JFK for all their emergency services. That's going to hurt. I wonder if they'll can the pilot? I wonder if they can even afford to lose an A380 driver, how many of them do you think they even have?

Impressive list. I'm surprised nobody thought of the Infinity rig / Infiniti car brand. Anyone want to bet on how soon Aerodyne will debut the new Accord student canopy?

I had the exact same thought as the other dave. A big student rig can shift around and catch air, and push you in different directions. I hate to blame the rig, but if your performance in the tunnel is good, and has been over the course of several visits, I would lean toward the rig giving you some trouble. You have a doulbe whammy in that you're smaller, so the rig may over-hang your body, but you also have shorter arms and legs, which reduces your ability to counter the effects of the rig. What next? Well, the one idea is to take the rig to the tunnel, if they'll allow it. There are covers made for rigs that secure the handles and canopies for use in the tunnel, but each tunnel is different as to what they will, or will not allow. It might prove the rig to be the problem, and it might give you more 'working time' to figure how to work around the rig. You managed it on the last jump, now you need to figure out how you did it and repeat that. The other idea is to look for a rig that fits you better. I have no idea what you're jumping, or what options even exist for you, but a rig with different dimensions might do you some good. Some are shorter and fatter, some are longer and skinnier, some are just plain smaller. Look into that and see what you can come up with.

Somebody else mentioned a slot price of $27, so you're into it for $54 to get on the plane. What's gear rental there, did I read $25/jump, or was that about another DZ? Even if it is, there's $79, and add $16 for the coaches pocket, and you've got your $95. Did I read somewhere esle that the DZ was hurting for coaches and student rigs last year? Want to know how to get more of both? Make coach jumps mandatory for every post-AFF pre-license skydive. Bingo bango, you're pulling in $400 more per student ([pays for new rigs) and creating a shit-ton of coach jumps (pulls in more coaches). One more thing, to the fun jumpers who were complaining about slow starts and manifest getting backed up 11 loads, this ain't gonna help. All this is going to do is make student jumps take up more slots in the plane, and you all know how it works, students get priority over fun jumpers, so you all can look forward to fewer free slots on every load. It's another case of a DZO shooting themselves in the foot. It wasn't that long ago that Mile-Hi was considered a pretty cool place. High up for long swoops, and a good reputation with fun jumpers. Now this shit comes along, and there going to start losing fun jumpers. Now the DZ is less 'fun' and less attractive to students to finish the program. What do they have to look forward to, becoming a coach and doing 8 coach jumps per day? That will be the closest thing to 'fun jumpers' you'll have, and that's no way to draw people into the sport. At some level you have to cater to the fun jumpers. You need a variety of colorful people at the DZ to hook students in. Skydiving needs to look like a fun and interesting sport, with some depth to it, if you want people to follow through and become 'skydivers', and like it or not, DZOs need skydivers. If nothing else, where do you get your next crop of TIs from, who really pay the bills?

Of course. The concept of full timers getting work before the part timers only applies when there is a shortage of work. If everyone is busy, and full timer is on load 12, and a part timer is on load 11, there's no cause to switch them to keep the full timer 'more busy', they are both manifested, and will both be working. The idea of a full timer taking precedence over a part time comes when there's not that much work. If everyone is not working, and one tandem walk in at noon, give it to the full timer. If another one walks in at 2pm, again, back to the full timer. If anyone is going to get screwed out of work, it's going to have to be the guy who didn't commit to the DZ full time. I worked a DZ that had an overflow of staff such that they did a 'who's working' rotation on top of a daily rotation. They would schedule one group of guys for Sat, and another for Sun. Anyway, some of these guys were clearly just in it for the money, and some of the TIs didn't even have rigs, or keep their rig in-date since they knew they were just doing tandems. Sonner or later, the DZO caught on, and put the word out that employees who didn't fun jump wouldn't be employees for long. Most of the guys took the hint, and started showing up on their off days to jump, but a couple figured he was bluffing. Those guys were fired, mid-season, and have never been heard from since.

If you listen to the audio, the A380 was instructed to give way to opposite traffic, which I can only assume is the CRJ. If you look at the video, and pictures of the damage, you can see that it was just the wingtip of the A380 that hit the rear half of the vertical tail on the CRJ. It's hard to tell the scale of everything, but it's really just a matter of 5 or 10 feet that would have made this a near miss. I have to think that the size of the A380 played a role in all of this. Not in the 'duh' way, where a shorter wing wouldn't have hit the CRJ, but in the sense that the taxiways weren't made with an airplane that size in mind. A 747 comes in at 40ft less wingspan, and that's always been the 'standard' of big ariplanes. Seeing as this accident was caused by far less than 20 ft of clearance, even a 747 would have slid by without incident. While I think the pilot is surely to blame, I do think that a reworking of ramp procedures with regards to the A380 is surely in order. They have to look at every combination of taxiway, intersection, hold-short lines and other aircraft needs to be taken in to account. If anyone had done the math, it would have been clear that an A380 on the centerline and a CRJ at that hold-short line would have been very close, too close for comfort, and probably would have put procedures in place to make sure that combination or factors never occured. Maybe the A380 needs to be treated more like Airforce One, or a fire truck. Everything need to stand down and back off when they are coming through. Of course, the airline would need to cover the costs in time and reduced capacity the airport would suffer, but if you want to run the big dog, you need the big wallet.

If you earn a coach rating and perform a coach jump, you deserve to be paid for your work. I will say that I think the value of the work is in the neighborhood of $10 + slot. It's cheaper and less work, with fewer jumps required, to get a coach rating as opposed to an AFF or tandem rating, so the pay should be structured accordingly. I also think that the lower pay is appropriate, even for AFF rating holder performing coach jumps as a way of 'giving back' to the sport. The student is cleared to self supervise, so the level of instructor (coach) responsibility is lower, and by the time a student reaches the point of needing coach jumps, they have made an investment of time and money to the sport, and demonstrated they will most likely get a license and become a 'skydiver'. Back to the subject at hand, this is a huge jack for the students. It's true that students need a certain number of coach jumps in order to complete their A license cards, but nowhere does it state a maximum number of overall jumps before applying for an A licesne. What that means is that a guy with 12 jumps can show up to the DZ with $45 every 25 days, and do a solo to maintain their currency. So if the money is short, they can stay current and active in the sport for $45/mo. With this Mile-Hi program, the price is roughly doubled, where it takes closer to $90 to stay current, as every jump would have to be with a coach. Along those same lines, a student jumper who might have $200 to spend on their one sunny day off, can only afford two jumps with a coach, as compared to four solos, or one coach jump and two solos. In the end, I think that the average student can get an A license right at 25 jumps, with all of their coach jumps included and still have 6 or 8 solos mixed in there where they don't need a coach, just the jump numbers. So the Mile-hi gig is going to $250 to $300 to the overall cost of the license, combined with the scheduling and funding requirements of having a coach on every jump. This, combined with the tale of waiting for hours to turn a prop, then being manifested 11 loads out, makes it sound like Mile-Hi is drowning in costs. Mayeb they need to scale back to a Caravan, and only feed one engine and require fewer bodies to fly. It would cost less, and they could keep it turning sun-up to sundown. I remember this same thing happening when a Casa would show up to my old DZ. It was exciting, but you needed 20+ to fire it up, and 35+ to turn a load, so there was a lot of time sitting around with nothing happening. When we jumped the Twin Bonanza (10 place), it would fly non-stop, all day long, with every slot filled.

Actually sounds like your altimeter is working fine. Keep in mind that 11,500ft, on a 12k altimeter is the same thing as -500ft. The needle didn't rotate clockwise all the way to 11,500 between the shipper and your house, it moved slightly counter-clockwise during the trip as the pressure increased for one reason or another. As for the stiff adjuster knob, take it the DZ and ask an instructor to look at it for you. If they say it's good, you can take another altimeter with you on the first jump. Compare the two on the way up to see if they 'agree', and do the same in freefall. Make sure you are clear on which is the new one, and which is the 'experienced' one, so in case they read differently in freefall, you know which one to believe (that would be the 'experienced' one). Also, keep in mind that none of these are 'precision' altimeters. It's common for there to be differences between two good altimeters, with those differences typically becoming greater the higher up you go. So if one is at 12,000, and the other at 12,500, that's normal and you should not adjust them to be equal. As long as they are equal on the ground (both at 'zero') then you're in good shape.

I think this is the more common way to go, as most DZs don't have an overflow of staff always available. So it becomes a combination of the above system, mixed in with 'whatever it takes' to keep things moving. Keeping it fair and balanced is one thing, but unless every member of the staff is multi-rated and all the same size, sometimes the circumstances will dictate that one guy gets more work than another. All it takes is one 90 lb or 250 lb student to throw things off. Then you need your bigger/smaller instructors specifically, and the 'rotation' gets knocked out of whack. All of this, of course, is out of everyones hands, so whatever happens is what happens, and you just have to deal with it. I think overall there are a dozen different ways to run a rotation, and all of them have their ups and downs. This issue has been brought up before, but I think then the problem was a guy who felt like he was getting screwed on the work. My adivce to him, and to this thread as well, is to know what the deal is before you make jump #1 for the DZ. Sit down with the DZO (and possibly manifestor) and go over their system, how it works, how much you get paid, when and how you get paid, and any additional expectations or perks they have for you. Conversely, this is the time to go over your expectations you have for them as employers. In the end, the key is to make sure that you have a clear and concise 'meeting of the minds' BEFORE you start to work for them. None of that guarantees you won't get screwed by a DZO, but it guarantees that if you do, it really is a case of the DZO screwing you over, not you mis-understanding the policy of the DZ.

Wear on webbing is a case by case basis, as all webbing experiences wear during use. The degree of the wear will dictate the decision. Rust on hardware is a no-go as not all hardware experiences rust. No degree of rust is acceptable because you don't how the rig will cared for, or where it will be jumped for the next six months. If the rig is jumped, but otherwise ignored, in an oceanside setting, the rust could quickly worsen, and begin to effect the webbing.

That's a negative ghostrider. First off, the canopies are the heaviest parts of the rig. The harness itself is 12 to 14lbs, the complete rig is going to be twice that weight. You're going to ship 20lbs there and 30+lbs back as compared to 14lbs one way. Not to mention the threat of loss. Even if you insure it all, how long will it take to get your money out of the shipper, and then replace all your stuff? All while your new container sits empty and you're not jumping. the best way to protect your stuff is not to ship it anywhere or ever leave it in your car aside from driving to the DZ and back. Never put it in a checked bag on an airplane either, always keep it in your posession. Beyond that, have a local rigger to the assemble and pack. First off, you need a rigger so now is a great time to meet one and develop a relationship. Have the DZ reccomend a few locals to you, then call and see who's up for you watching your first rig assembled and packed. You'll have to be flexible as far as scheduling the time of the work, and you have to promise not to ask too many questions, but you should be there to see how your gear goes together. The bigger reason is to get another set of eyes on the container. Rigs have left the factory improperly built, and if you have them packed there, the problems are hidden in the pack job. Get the 'second opinion' from your local rigger, just to double check the factory's work.

Thanks genius. Did you read my entire post, or the post it was referring to? How about my first post on the thread? The guy claimed tail flutter, and that it was solved by lengthening his steering line by 3 inches. The rest of my post was tyring to find out if it was actual flutter, or the bucking you typically see with short lines. Quite the contributor, you are.

So short steering lines caused tail flutter? Is this during front riser dives, or is it present when you use only harness? I ask because short lines have traditionally caused more of a 'bucking' than a flutter, and it comes from pulling the riser with the toggle in your hand, so in essence your diving and braking the canopy at the same time. Traditionally, this has been a problem for 'newbie' swoopers who don't know any better, but who also don't use harness only for any part of their turn. It would be interesting to see if this phenomenon would go away when you release the front riser, but continue the dive with the harness. Either way, I also have a 103, and it currently has a brand new factory line set. Between the original line set and the first reline a couple years ago, I haven't had any problems with flutter or bucking of any kind. I'll jump this thing in the next couple of days and see how it all shakes out.

I also think you're high on your numbers. A 'nice' 206, with a low time engine, and nice paint, panel, and interior might be $200k, but it would have to be real nice. A 'nice for jumping' 206, could be had for less than half of that, and if you find one with a run-out engine that drives the price down even further. In terms of the PT-6, the -20 is a 'plentiful' engine with all of the upgrade programs out there. They're pulling them off of King Airs all the time, and the upgrade companies give credit for time remaining on the -20, encouraging owners to upgrade now rather than wait until their -20's are run out. The end result is plenty of good, mid-time engines available. I think if you can put one on the ramp for $300/$400k, it would be a winner for smaller DZs. The price puts it midway between running two 182s or a Caravan. It's great way to get into a turbine for 'cheap' without the MX headaches or costs of a worn out King Air (which can also be had for $400k).

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Gary woke up years ago and came up with a scam to steal money from people. As mis-guided as it might have been, everyone knows that his efforts up to a point were in good faith and for the love of the sport. However, the day you accept a customers payment for a rig that you don't order, and you use that money for other purposes, it's over. Moving forward with any business besides repaying that first customer is when he became a bad person. It seems that trading while insovlent in Aus is a crime. I'm from the US where trading while insolvent seems to be a way of life in the business community, but even I recognize that as soon as he didn't complete one order, that was his impossible to ignore sign that it was time to shut down and take a hard look at the viability of the business. Instead, he followed one bad order with another, and lined up a string of jumpers across the globe who are out significant amounts of money, and now Gary and their cash are nowhere to be found. He might have started out as a 'good guy', but as of now, he lost the right to that title.

Just to clarify what others have said, you need to be a rigger or under the supervision of a rigger in order to pack a main for someone else. This is loosely enforced at most DZs, and they tend to consider having a rigger on the DZ to be sufficient 'supervision'. I have also heard of DZs who consider having a rigger available by phone to be adequate supervision. In either case, I have never heard of any getting busted by the FAA for packing while not being a rigger or supervised by a rigger. Also, there are no discounts for anyone until you are in charge of packing at the DZ. I'm sure you've seen the number of rigs that filter through the packing room, and if you multiply that by $5 or $6 each ($10 or $12 for tandems) you can see that it's not a small amount of money. Due to that, packing is serisous business, and a sole source of income for some people. Get on board with the packing staff, and see about getting checked out to legitamately work there. If you don't have cash to jump, that's the place to make it. Speaking of packing, there's a packer who took a packing consession and turned it into a DZ. Packing Kathy ran a travelling packing consession that followed the boogie circuit during the season, and would set up camp at a busy DZ in the off season. She did this for years, and is now DZO down in GA somewhere running (I think) a King Air.

A couple of years ago, I think this was commonly seen on the Xaos canopies in competition. I don't know if it has been resolved, or if it needed to be resolved, but it did come up on DZ.com. About the same time I was getting a reline on my Velo, and seeing as PD bartacks the loop for the toggle, I asked for an extra inch or two of length, and was surprised when they refused. This lead to an e-mail exchange with John Leblanc where he explained the the length of the brake line was such that it 'held' the tail in place during high speed dives, and that if you made it longer, it would lead to flutter. However, very recently, like within the last month, I have read here that people have been letting the steering lines out on their Velos, and that one guy even claimed that the factory built him a line set with longer brake lines. I don't know if the longer lines have resulted tail flutter, or if the guy claiming the factory did his is full of shit, but that's what I read. Overall, I think it's just a function of loose steering lines and super-high airspeeds in a dive. From what I recall back when it was discussed here about the Xaos guys, it was no big deal and it just goes away when you slow down or apply a little control pressure.

Ok, so you've pulled before, but I don't think you've ever managed to stop your own spin, or maintain a heading, right? So this is a victory. Not pulling is a tough one to ignore, but think about it this way - you've got 7 previous tries at AFF 3, spread out over a couple months due to your injury, right? So what happened is that you put your mind to it, figured it out, and flew right. The problem was that you got wrapped up in it and forgot to pull. I'm going to come right out and say that's a mother of a problem, and thank god for your instructor who got it done for you, but try to look at the upside of your situation. You succeeded in flying straight with no help, and I would even suggest that countering or stoping a turn and then flying straight is harder than just being released to fly straight the whole time. Losing it and getting it back is way harder. Take this success, combine with all the times you succeeded in pulling for yourself, and you're on to AFF 4. Also, stop telling yourself that 'you' do better on the second jump. It's not just you, it's everyone. There's nothing odd about you, or nothing odd about the first jump that makes it 'bad' for you, the simple fact is that currency is king, and when you make a jump an hour after the last, everyone is going to be more relaxed and do a better job. Making more than one jump a day is universally a good thing, and makes everyone do better. Drop the idea that you and the first jump of the day don't get along, or you'll never have a good first jump. Overall, you came back after a long layoff, did a warm up jump, then went on to tackle your biggest problem with AFF 3, flying stable without assistance. Yes, you forgot to pull (which we could really just call a loss of altitude awareness., you might have caught on a pulled at 4k or 3k if your instructor had not done it for you). It was a simple mistake, and you just need to go up and correct it.

First off, if you want to talk money, are you sure of exactly what you get at each DZ for the money? Unless it's jump for jump, with everything included, you have to figure in for the differences. Beyond that, how many times will you have to drive to GA to get your A license? Keeping in mind gas is headed north of $4/gal, you'll drop $30 or $40 on gas each time you have to go back, vs. $5 to drive to Z-hills. Have you thought about weather? If you get a week of rain, you get no jumps at the Farm, and drive out for nothing. If you get a week of rain at Z-hills, you lose nothing (always call before driving to the DZ). Beyond that, if the skies clear for a half-day during that week, you can run up to Z-hills and make 2 jumps. If you were jumping at the Farm, all you could do is check out their Facebook page and look at pics of what you missed. Really, the best reason is to get to know people at Z-hills. Friends are great to have, but instructors are even better to have. When your instructors, who worked with you from day one, are at your home DZ, it provides you with an excellent resource for advice and information. Can you go to any DZ and ask an instructor for help? Sure, and you'll probably get it, but you'll get more of it from the guys who actaully put you through the program. Here's what you do, whoop out the AFF program at Z-hills and get your A licesne. Then hoof it up to the Farm for some fun jumps. It's a great idea to 'leave the nest' once you have a license, and the Farm is a great place to visit.

Not really. What I'm saying is remove the seal from the ripcord all together. If you go higher up on the top flap, like near the yoke, and put a small notch in along the edge of the flap, maybe 1/2" wide. Then you take a piece of binding tape, maybe 1/2" long and fold it in half to make a loop, and sew one of those to the top flap next to the notch, and another to the side flap on the part of the flap exposed by the notch. All of this would probably be along the right side of the flap, as the ripcord and housing are along the left side. Now you have the two loops next to each other, and in an area that would still be covered by the pin cover flap. Simply run your seal thread through the loop, and press on your seal. You would need to make sure that the side tuck tab for the pin cover flap starts below the location of the notch so it doesn't interfere. Again, if the notch is higher up on the flap, it shouldn't be an issue for the functioning of the pin cover flap. The whole affair could be covered by a flap similar to the one used to hold the main container closing loop when they're located on the bottom flap. If you made this out of clear material, you could check the seal without opening it, and disturbing the seal. Again, all of this would be concealed under the pin cover flap. The idea is that it keeps the seal away from the grommet and pin, and removes the chance that it will get wedged in there. If the seal got stuck in the soft fabric loop, the thread would just break. It's not the thread that holds the seal when it gets stuck in the gormmet, it's the mechanical function of the soft lead seal being pulled into the SS grommet. Remove the SS grommet from the equation, and there's nothing for the seal to wedge against. As far as using the wrong thread, even if it did happen, that's why you mount it further up toward the yoke. Those flaps don't need to seperate all that much for the freebag to slip out. So even if you used HMA line, the flaps should be able to open enough to allow the bag to escape. Not that you should plan ahead for riggers to use 'whatever' thread they want, but if it did happen, the location of the seal should take care of it. Of course, you need to open the flaps much further in the course of a pack job, so opening and packing the rig would require the seal to be broken and re-set after the pack job, which is really the purpose of the seal. I literally thought of this as I read this thread last night. There may be a monster of a problem I'm not thinking of, but the point is that there has to be a way to update the seal system to something that eliminates the one failure mode we know of, and prevents the casual breakage from everyday handling.

I'd go along with that, but it makes me wonder if a seal and thread belong on a ripcord? There has to be a better way to seal a rig than to strap a thread and lead seal to the rip cord down by the pin and grommets. How about sealing the top flap to the side flap? You could rig it so the whole affair would still remain under the pin cover flap, just off to the side. Engineer a loop of some sort off the side flap, run your seal thread through it and over to a similar loop on the top flap. Enclose the whole thing under a clear protective cover to prevent accidental breakage during regular handling, and you're done. No more lead seals in the grommets, no more broken seal threads from doing pin checks, and we take one more little step away from 1940's technology.