Floating reserve ripcord

[SafetyNate 0]

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Also another difference we have in Australia is that there is no seal on our reserve pin from the rigger. Perhaps this means that the pin *could* shake loose but I doubt it, just throwing that out there.

The seal is to identify the rigger and acts as a tamper resistant device like that on chapstick.

Dont buy that chapstick with the broken seal. Skydivers could have used it for a chapped arse!

[chuckakers 370]

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There is a thread on the Aussie Skydiver forum for every single chapter in that article to discuss each area.
Also another difference we have in Australia is that there is no seal on our reserve pin from the rigger. Perhaps this means that the pin *could* shake loose but I doubt it, just throwing that out there.
Neither option is going to be correct 100% of the time. The reserve handle could have been pulled out by someone taking grips and the pin may be almost all the way out.
I know there should be a certain amount of force to extract the reserve pin, but what if the rigger put in a new closing loop and made it too long?
However my split second thinking at the time did reflect a lot of these comments, and in my scenario it was the correct decision. The only thing that made me question that was the effect of a reserve deploying during canopy flight.

Of course there are any number of possibilities. We can pick the issue to death on that basis. Instead, let's go low tech.

How many situations have you ever heard of where deploying the main with a floating resrve ripcord casued a problem?

That's what I thought.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[Travman 6]

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How many situations have you ever heard of where deploying the main with a floating resrve ripcord casued a problem?

Thats exactly why I started the thread, to get other perspectives and to see how others have handles a similar scenario.

[Decodiver 0]

I had a similar situation yesterday, but only noticed the floating handle after I pulled on a 2 way after tracking away.

A pillow on a Javelin in my case. Couldn't get it back into the velcro between the webbing it was too tense so didn't loosen my chest strap and tucked it behind that so that I could still pull it if I needed to.

Did some flat turns and a straight in, guys were wondering why I landed in the middle of the DZ when I was on a back-to-back load.

Anyway all's well that ends well, I'll be taking billvon's advice and trying to refit on the ground a few times.

Blue Skies,

Dave.

[ps5601 0]

I have also had a few floating reserve handles (8-way exits with the person in front of me doing a strange kick as he left the plane), which resulted in people discussing if you should go straight to reserve or not (I pulled my main with no problems).

I suspect the discussion is partly due to the fact that the "text book" is typically what they teach to students and that may not be what people do once they become more experienced. I can understand that for a student the best training option is frequently to teach them one response to as many problems as possible. If the reserve handle is out, then pull the reserve. This removes potential issues such as the student pulling their main, seeing the reserve handle is out when they get low and then cutting away too low - or just not seeing their reserve handle is lose and knocking it while playing under canopy etc.

Blue skies

Paul