dgskydive 0 #1 March 15, 2005 As I read the thing on the home page of DZ.com, I found it odd that a manufacture would have to post a mandatory service bulletin telling people to clean their cut away housings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you read the bulletin you will see what I am talking about. I guess it is something we need to talk about. Seems that some of us are not smart enough to realize that we need to clean our housings. Real simple people. Perform regular maintenance on your gear. Check to make sure that you can easly cut away your canopy. After all if you can't cutaway you are in big trouble. Make sure the housings are free of dirt and sand. Make sure they are properly lubricated (I'll let a rigger chime in and tell you how to do that properly). While you are at it, why not make sure that reserve cable housing is nice and clean as well. Our lives depend on these systems and I can't believe that it acutally had to be put in a Service bulletin like that. I don' think this problem is a newbie problem alone. I wonder how many experienced jumpers out there actually check their housing on a regular basis. How many times have you landed in dirt or mud and then went and only cleaned off the pretty parts of your container? AS I understand it, the incident that lead to this bulletin happened in South Africa and the authorities over there, wanted this posted in South Africa. I think they should worry more about that trainging of their students and how to handle there gear then to make a manufacture put up a mandatory bulletin like that. To me it shows a lack of training on their part and they need to look at how they train there students and what they tell them as far as maintaining their gear. That being said, it maybe more then just the South Africans. It has been a long time since I went thourgh (laugh at me if you want) Static line training. But what I do remember is the way that they stressed upon us to always check your gear. Checking the housings is something they taught us to do before every jump. If the cables don't move freely then you didn't jump, you went and had someone help you clear them it was that simple. If they don't work you die!!!!!!! I call to all insturctors to teach their students more then how to just fall out of a plane. Get involved with them. show them how to use there gear and care for it. They are more then a student, they are the life blood of the sport and they are the next generation of champions. They are the next generation of instructors and if we don't teach them, how are they going to teach the ones after them. As parachuting gets safer we keep finding way to try and kill ourselves. Stop being lazy folks! Take care of your gear. Read your owners manual follow what they tell you to do to care for your gear. If you can't read then ask your local rigger to show you how to do it. Having dirty housings is like driving your car towards a wall at 120 and not having brakes that work! Think about it. If you can't take care of you gear then maybe you should stay where you belong.............on the ground! Dom Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GTAVercetti 0 #2 March 15, 2005 Yeah, maybe we SHOULD talk about it. But where? Where could we talk about it? hmmmm.... maybe..... Right Here Why yes, my license number is a palindrome. Thank you for noticing. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
