Quagmirian

This is stated quite clearly in the packing manual.

Here's something I forgot to post a while back. While it is beyond the scope of this project to manufacture live risers, I have been making some for ground handling and launching. Here's my latest effort (it's actually quite old) compared to a bought, and I suspect rigger made, riser. My thoughts so far? Accurate three ring riser construction is difficult and best left to manufacturers. I will not be jumping home made risers, as I consider them part of the H/C system. [inline 3_rings.jpg] Recently, I have been doing a lot of 'thinking'. While I am very happy with the performance of the brown thing, I think I can do better, particularly in the flare department. I have redesigned my ribs with smaller nose inlets and smoother profiles, in an effort for better glide and flare power. One other thing, from now on I will be building canopies with fixed aspect ratios and at recognised sizes. While in the past I have made wings with areas of 'about 160-170 square feet', I will now stick as accurately as possible to known sizes, as in 135, 150, 170, 190 etc. Here are the redesigned ribs, both seven and nine cell versions, in this case for a 150 square foot canopy. [inline 139-2362_small.gif] [inline 150-2571_small.gif]

Very nice. Another good one of those and we'll take you up to 3500 and you can do a 10 second delay.

While we're on the subject on three rings, I wonder if anybody can tell me whether this riser is acceptable. [inline wat3.png]

Do you have any links or any other info? I can't seem to find any information on this new reserve.

Chest strap hardware is only rated to 500lb as far as I know.

Just a suggestion, don't give away the size and serial number, because everybody will says it's theirs.

I thought I'd share this little gem from Poynter's. [inline slope_soaring.gif]

That's absolutely fine. Buying new has a number of benefits, like having the harness sized to you, and knowing exactly what you're getting. Be aware that there are some downsides, like the initial lead time and a significant drop in resale value when you come to sell the rig.

Yes, get a Diablo loaded at 1:1. That would be a great student canopy.

A radius of about 1.9 inches sir. Anyway, a better solution to the problem is the imagine a cube with edges of length L and volume V. In this case that makes a cube with sides of about 3 inches.

Twenty nine cubic inches is about the difference between a Sabre 190 and a Sabre 210, one size in other words. You can tell us what canopy and container combo you are looking at, and see if anyone else is using it, and with how much ease.

"Overrule you." Never, it is after all your project. That may be, but I'd rather you say something before I make any shitty design choices.

From what I can gather, it seems to be a bit of a trade off. If I spread the tapes out too much, I think I will end with something like this: [inline pd_reserve_small.jpg] Taking it to the extreme, if the tapes were infintely close together, ie one tape going straight up, it would look like this: [inline 300652_small.jpg] I have moved just the c1 and d1 v tapes back a few inches, so I should end up with something like this: [inline trango_small.jpg] From my not very extensive studies, I have decided that I am more afraid of tapes being too far away from each other than too close. I'm sure you'll agree that all this isn't going to make too much of a performance change anyway, since I am working on relatively large, conservative 7 cells. Feel free to overrule me on this if you feel I've missed something.

...but maybe not smooth enough. Here's an idea for a new rib and stabiliser, similar to the brown thing but with a few changes. The airfoil's a bit thinner, the nose opening's a bit smaller and steeper and the line trims are based on the brown thing after re trimming. I've also moved some of the V-tapes in an attempt to make the top skin perfectly smooth. [inline 2732_rib_stab_small.gif]

£2K may not be so bad depending on what's included. Have you had a chat with Scotty? http://www.activeskydiving.co.uk/

As far as I am concerned, the main canopy is not a TSO'd item, so as long as you do a good enough job to fool people at your DZ into thinking a proper rigger did the reline, it's 'airworthy'.

Here's a photo highlighting the topskin. I think it looks nice and smooth. [inline topskin.jpg]

I think it would have been better customer service for L&B to at least show some good faith and offer some kind of small discount on a new product, rather than saying 'there's nothing that can be done'. To use the phone analogy, if you took your old phone into the dealers and they said it was unfixable, wouldn't you expect them to at least try and flog you some kind of new service instead of leaving you high and dry?

Remember that the Triathlon is a 7 cell canopy, so there are only 40 lines rather than 48. I reckon a 130 would use less than 100 yds of line so it's not going to cost that much either. A triathlon isn't going to be as sensitive to trim changes as something like a velocity, and to make it easier, all lines in a spanwise group will be the same length. I say go for it OP, if you can borrow a bartacker the tools required will be minimal and I'm sure you'll be able to find a rigger who will help you out. Even if you cock it up monstrously, you will have learned why linesets are so expensive.

So I said there weren't any pictures from Monday, well, that's not quite true. [inline 5th_pic.jpg] I don't know if it's coming off in these posts, but all the study and work is worth it for moments like this. You'll notice I wore a helmet and gloves this time.

I don't think that's what's going on here. My problem is people who say 'my Raven 181 is 20 square feet larger than a PD160R'. Perhaps we need more transparency from manufactures, although that's not really something for me to get into.

This is a great can of worms to open.

I took the brown thing for its first flight today, a ground launch. No pictures I'm afraid. I sorted out the stability problem I was having by flattening the trim by a few inches. The flight performance was amazing; I must have had a glide ratio of at least 1.5 to 1.

I was seventeen when I made my first jump. I wish I had done it a couple of years earlier.