Appleton fatality, horseshoes, and side flaps

[RiggerLee 61]

Following PIA Tom posted a question. Now as it happens that post turned into the big Javelin RSL issue that we are all familiar with. A request was made in that thread for more information about the incident. I was surprised to see it and how long it had already grown. I went ahead and wrote up a description up the accident and the aftermath of it. I told the story as best I could but I can only tell it from the point of view from which I saw it. There was nothing in this case that was cut and dry. There were even more lose ends and contradictions then is normal. In telling it I tried to be clear on what we knew for a fact. I also tried to be clear on what was speculation, both my own and that of others. The post was long and the accident was only one small part of it. Never the less it reignighted the controversy about what really happened. I got a phone call and was talking to some one that had the opportunity to examine the rig. The gear has now been released from evidence and I have in fact had the chance to see it myself. I’m doing an about face and changing sides on this debate as to what occurred in the actual accident. This is what I wrote in the original post:


http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2681081;page=3;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

Some of these things are boring and almost closed cases from the start. This one was odd and left some unanswered questions. You’ll hear fifty different stories from fifty different people but here is what I think we can say. He had a malfunction on his main. He attempted to cut away. One riser for whatever reason failed to release. The reserve deployed. It entangled with the main. The other riser released but the canopies were now entangled. At some point the reserve handle had been pulled. He spun in and did not survive. In the end that’s all that can really be said about the incident.

Now let’s talk about the gear. There were several repacks on the rig since I packed it and removed the RSL. One at least was a cut away. The cut away handle had been replaced with one from RWS. He’d specifically requested one with their larger ridged tube inside. It was inspected by Gene Bland from the FSDO, Master rigger from way back, and John Stanford, manufacturer and master rigger from just about the beginning of time. Bland is good but a little out of date. Stanford is just about the sharpest rigger I know. They do not miss things. They inspected the gear down at the morgue. They found no problems with it. The risers seemed it be in spec. When suspended the left side cut away about 1.5 inches of pull after the right. That sounds just about perfect.

I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, especially a friend, but I think he just got casual. He pulled until he felt himself drop and punched the reserve. The rig did exactly as it was supposed to do. It chopped the right side first. The reserve went up and the main as it spun above him entangled with the reserve. I have no doubt it happened quickly and by the time he realized what was happening it was too late. He just got sloppy and failed to pull his handle to full arm extension. He failed to fully cut away before he himself fired his own reserve into the streamer above his head. Now that sounds harsh as shit but that’s how I read it. There are plenty of other stories to explain what happened. Every one has their own idea and there have been some doozies put forward…

They tried to tell every one that it was not a riser release problem but a packing problem. Supposedly they found damage to a side flap and some stitches popped at the corner of the tray? Now I guess it’s possible that Bland and Stanford missed something but let me tell you I’ve watched Bland inspect a rig following a fatality. He used a magnifying glass. He chided me for not keeping one in my rigging kit for that purpose. Between the two of them I don’t buy that they missed any thing. Never the less the next time Jay, now the Sunpath rep, showed up there they had a new theory. He was going around trying to tell every one that would lessen that it was the packer that had killed Appleton. The Packer and the long break lines of his Specter. So Jeff was the next one on the chopping block. They had this elaborate scenario where you laid the break line like this and pulled the flap like that, and passed the flap through the loop and closed the other side with all the line clearly visible on top of the flaps, some one had to help him by the way he needed a third hand to make it work. And then when he when he goes to demonstrate how it turned into a horseshoe all it did was unstow the toggle. I never saw him succeed in making it work. He could not replicate it. Never the less he was still going around telling any one that would lessen that Jeff, a perfectly good packer and rigger, had killed Appleton. And the more you tried to reason with him the louder he would say it as if he could make him self right and win the argument through greater disable power. So they had no problem feeding Jeff to the lion’s ether to save there own reputation when as far as I’m concerned it was never in doubt. I jump a Javelin always have. And like I said, I think the rig did exactly what it was supposed to. Perfectly…



All that I can say is that when I wrote that I believed it. It was my opinion and I stated it as such. Today I saw the rig and the damage they were speaking of. I’m now firmly on the other side of the fence. It’s not the first time I’ve ever been wrong and probable wont be the last. It can be hard to understand how there can be so much disagreement over what you would think would be clear and obvious facts. Unless you’ve ever been involved in an investigation it’s hard to convey how confusing the evidence that you’re trying to work from can be. It’s not just that there are peaces missing from the puzzle but you are constantly being handed peaces that don’t belong in the picture. There are contradictions. There are always witness statements and they never agree. It’s not just a matter of filling in the gaps it’s about filtering out the noise.

Stanford and Bland saw the gear. The rest of us did not. If I was going to chose two people to look at it I couldn’t have picked any one better. Never the less they did miss something. There is a line burn around the left flap. It’s not big. It’s a subtle melting of the surface of the fabric. It’s interrupted line of glaze where the fabric wrinkled it only touched the tops of the folds where the flap was squeezed. There is a slight bowing in the stiffener as well. The tare is in the stitching closing the bottom corner of the main tray. I’ll attach pictures. The burn is not obvious depending on the light. Taken alone the damage to the corner of the tray can be mistaken for damage on impact. Let me clarify that. There is dirt on the back of the rig. With out the burn, impact it the only explanation that I, and probable they, could come up with. It’s a little week. You wouldn’t expect to see it with the main tray empty but strange shit happens when you hit that hard. With the burn it all makes since. You can even see how the inset of the Odyssey harness put tension on the seam and tore the stitches.

So we have two very good master riggers that come back with one story. The rig is shipped off and Sunpath come back with this totally different explanation. There are eyewitnesses that are telling us all kinds of things including statements that contradict Sunpaths horseshoe story. Who do you believe? It really didn’t help things when a Sunpath rep. showed up here with this story from Javelin. He wasn’t a rigger and wasn’t a good representative for them in this. It didn’t help that he felt the need to grossly exaggerate all of his descriptions of the damage. Telling people that the whole side flap had been torn lose from the rig and that the flap had been sawed in half by the line just wasn’t productive. We’d all ready spoken to Stanford and every one has a lot of respect for him. Nobody believed that he missed the fact that the container was practically torn in half. We were all standing there looking at the guy like he had a third eye growing out of the middle of his head. The completely ridicules scenario he was trying to sell of how the break line had been packed around the side flap went over like a ton of bricks. Basically both he and Sunpath came across looking like a bunch of fools. Now imagine this in the context of all the RSL issues that were going on at the time. Nothing made since and no one could buy the contradiction in the statements.

In the mean time Sunpath had put together a report that they were sitting on. I’ve spoken to some one that has seen it. It’s a straight up evaluation of the container damage that fully explains all of this. I’m told that it is a well-written report that clearly details the reality of the damage and how it occurred. Then at the bottom there is another paragraph that states that they believe that the Fat Daddy cutaway handle that had been installed in the rig was the cause of the whole accident. This is in total contradiction to the findings of the rest of the report and was clearly added later by someone in the management of the company.

I don’t have any doubt in my mind at this point that it was a horseshoe. Sunpath was right in this all along. They just didn’t do a very good job of representing their position. I still don’t buy the break line. I’m more inclined to believe that it was one of the suspension lines that half hitched around the stiffener in the flap. You need the tension from the riser to make the half hitch work. This isn’t new. It has happened in the past. That’s why we have stows on our bags. It was not uncommon to just use the locking stows and coil the rest of the lines in the tray. That lost popularity from incidents just like this. It’s not common but it does happen. There have been a hand full of incidents over the last few years on modern rigs. It almost comes under the heading of a shit happens act of god kind of thing. If there’s any thing to be learned from this it might be to stow the risers closer to the bag. Less free line in the tray can help to avoid this kind of problem. Another thing we might look at is redesigning the construction of our flaps. Wide stiffeners in the side flaps expose you to this kind of problem. This is not a Javelin issue. This is an issue that can affect many of the rigs out there. In the future we might do well to design rigs with more taper to the side flaps. If the actual stiffener is smaller and inset into the edges of the flap so that it does not go all the way across the flap it might be less prone to this problem. I hate to say it but Sherman might have had something with the Racer and the construction of the side flaps. Even then he still has a grommet there and the softness of the flap is dangerous in and of it self. What we really need is a more substantial flap perhaps built with a stiffened ballistic cloth that is tapered so lines will slide off. If it has a plastic stiffener in the end it should be shaped in a way to help lines slide off rather then to form hard corners to create a place for lines to lock.

You know what really bothers me more then any thing else about this is the round about way that all of this has happened. It feels like we have run in a circle all around the world only to come back to where we started. What has all of this been about? All this RSL shit. All this business about the cut away handle. The hiding of information. All these games about TSO’s and alterations. And where has all this hair pulling gotten us? What has Sunpath achieved with all of this? I feel like I’m trapped in a fun house in the hall of mirrors. I hate it and just want to smash them all so that I can see the truth.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[linestretch 0]

Just curious, have you talked to the 2 riggers that initially inspected the rig and asked if they remember ANYTHING about the burn or ripped seam? I just see that as something impossible to miss.

my pics & stuff!

[RiggerLee 61]

Just saw the rig today. Have not gotten ahold of Stanford yet. I think the burn is what they missed. We had to work hard with the light to make that show. It is not obveous. With out that bit of info I beleave they just misinterprited the torn stitches. I hope to speak to him soon.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[dorbie 0]

Thanks for posting, it can take courage, integrity and intellectual honesty to change your position like that.

At least we're getting the available facts and not the snow job with frank posts like yours.

I jump an Odyssey, so thanks again.

[tdog 0]

So... I guess I entered the conversation half way in and am missing a few key points.

The initial theory was that the user only pulled the cutaway enough to release one side, then fired a reserve into a half of a main...

The revised theory is that one of the main lines tied itself around the flap, thus making a horseshoe.

I have a few questions:

1) What was the explanation of the torn stitching in the initial theory if a horseshoe was not suspected?

2) Why the comments about the "Javelin RSL"? In the two theories of what happened, I don't see how the RSL was part of the incident?


I suppose I could search this incident and try to match other comments to your post, but since you did a great job explaining the issues, perhaps you can bring this all together in one post?

[RiggerLee 61]

This is basicly a retraction of a opinion that I stated in another thread here in the gear forum. It was in one of the original threads on the Javelin RSL, see link in post. The RSL had absolutely nothing to do with the fatality it was just part of the fall out. In telling that story I made a speculation on the original accedent and haveing now seen the rig I've found my self changeing my position on this and did not want to be responcable for any missconceptions about it. There has been more then enough missdirection away from the original issues as it is.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[GravityGirl 0]

When the main canopy was inspected, which lines had unusual wear? Were any broken?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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