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thehardhat

Riggers -how to dispose of old gear?

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How do you figure a round reserve of 25+ years is "legally" out of date by age? To my knowledge the FAA does not set age limits on gear. Age has no bearing on gear that has been stored and maintained properly. I have a 40 year old Tri-Conical I jump with my 40 year old PC....it will pass any strength and porosity test you can give it....and it has.



I was told some time ago the FAA I believe, has a rule about that as regards reserve canopies. It's possible though, that I was told this was a policy of manufacturers but I suppose Dan Poynter of Dave DeWolf would have the reliable info on this. My guess is as a rigger you are probably able to jump such an old canopy as your own by choice since you are not certifying it as airworthy for any one else. When I was a rigger I had a lot of lattitude with my own gear.
-Clouddancer
Live like there's no tomorrow, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like you do when no one is watching.

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I say again: the FAA sets NO limits on life span of canopies - main, reserve, what have you. Some manufacturers do but that is not rule of law. I can not and would not say a canopy is airworthy for myself but not someone else....airworthy is airworthy.

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You are right that the FAA does not set limits but I recently was talking to a Master Rigger that said if the manufacturer sets a limit then it is a FAR violation to continue to pack that gear once the limit was reached. So if I understood correctly this really means the manufacturer limit really is law.

This has present day implications because PD Reserves have the 40 repacks/25 uses clause before they need recertified from the manufacturer in their manual. 40 repacks at 3 per year is about 13 years. That puts a lot of PD reserves as needing factory inspections here in the next few years to remain airworthy.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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What kind of gear is it? If it is vintage, I know someone that could make great use out of it.

Post what you have and I am sure that there will be someone that would be willing to take it off your hands for some type of project.



I wonder how many boxes of OLD stuff I have that may make it into a water jump rig yet;)

I am still working backwards to the 1953 C-9 I have that I might just jump into MacGregor lake yet

I figure if I cant tear it by hand or stick a thumb thru it (trying REALLLY hard to do it I might add) It might still be good for a non terminal opening and a trip into the lake.

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I am still working backwards to the 1953 C-9 I have that I might just jump into MacGregor lake yet

I figure if I cant tear it by hand or stick a thumb thru it (trying REALLLY hard to do it I might add) It might still be good for a non terminal opening and a trip into the lake.



I have a 1953 C9 that I have no problem jumping. I have another rig that I am putting together with another C9 I have and will do the same. Terminal and sub-terminal openings aren't a problem if the canopy checks out. On mains I do the tear by hand method as well if they check out in a bunch of different spots, then they are okay for me to jump.

I can't wait for my Pioneer Hornet to get here, that should be a blast to jump. I am looking forward to a fun year of vintage gear jumps, I got more gear i am want to jump and I want to see if I can done more vintage jumps than I did last year but doing more than 100 is not that easy. Some days the openings and landings are much to be desired.

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I am still working backwards to the 1953 C-9 I have that I might just jump into MacGregor lake yet

I figure if I cant tear it by hand or stick a thumb thru it (trying REALLLY hard to do it I might add) It might still be good for a non terminal opening and a trip into the lake.



I'd like to try out the vintage gear, but there doesn't seem to have been any middle-aged, overweight, out-of-shape conservitive jumpers in the old days that left their gear for me... ;)

(I was going to add "bad-knees", but I understand that in the old days there were jumpers that HAD bad knees, and those that do now...)




I have a 1953 C9 that I have no problem jumping. I have another rig that I am putting together with another C9 I have and will do the same. Terminal and sub-terminal openings aren't a problem if the canopy checks out. On mains I do the tear by hand method as well if they check out in a bunch of different spots, then they are okay for me to jump.

I can't wait for my Pioneer Hornet to get here, that should be a blast to jump. I am looking forward to a fun year of vintage gear jumps, I got more gear i am want to jump and I want to see if I can done more vintage jumps than I did last year but doing more than 100 is not that easy. Some days the openings and landings are much to be desired.

Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...

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(I was going to add "bad-knees", but I understand that in the old days there were jumpers that HAD bad knees, and those that do now...)



I am one of those people. I have had four knee injuries, about two years of physio, over a year of not walking, I don't even want to start how many ligaments I have torn and not to mention the cartilage and other damage I have done. Mind over matter and a PLF really helps prevent injuries. I think is one of those things that many jumpers don't know how to do. PLFs can get filed in with spotting for the important lost skills of the sport.

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PD was really smart, what with putting a packing/jump limit on canopies! Just think of all of the income those inspections will generate for the company.......



Won't speak for him, but simply that in listening to Bill Coe, I don't believe that was his intent...

There is a concept that is very unclear in the regs and IMHO he took the conservative reading:
When a canopy meet the TSO, it must perform to a certain performance standard... It is understood that material, when used/handled/aged/etc, will to some degree, loose its ability to perform. Was the TSO standard written assuming that there would be this degredation, or is a used canopy expected to still perform to this same standard? (i.e. during the tests it opened in 3 second because a used canopy must open in 5, or opened in 3 and a used canopy that can't is no longer "airworthy".) It does not say. Some mfg's seem to assume that the TSO builds this in to the testing, some seem to assume their canopies will not be in use by the time their performance would be degraded, and some (PD) seem to assume that their canopies should perform close to this same standard even when used or should not be used in a TSO capacity.

When the standards were originally set, I am guessing, they were adopted from Mil-spec. Mil rigs are aged out whether used or not... so the spec did not have to address old canopies which had been handled too much.

In the non-mil world, we seem to want to believe that a canopy used several times and packed for 20,30,50 years is still going to perform acceptable simply because we can't push our thumb through it... OK, so it might not blow up, but will it still open fast enough? Will it decend slow enough? You can't tell me that your 1954 C-9 will perform to the same standards to which it was tested...

With rounds, this is a legitimate question.
With large ram-airs, even more so...
With F-111 ram-airs, the porosity is effected more by handling than ZP's, so even more...
With tiny, high-loaded sport reserves, made from F-111...

And how do you tell the rigger in the field to test for a level of fabric wear will degrade the performance enough to tell the customer to get a new one...? It looks great, doesn't tear, no discoloration, no frey... just breaths too much...

(And personally, I suspect PD could make better money than via this type of inspection...)

Just my late night $.02

JW

PS - I have heard that the EU ages out all gear at 15 years, but not sure on that... any EU'ers out there to confirm/deny??
Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...

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