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Skyhook

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Pobrause

***that was only pdr OP 126. very popular reserve size. so skyhook is only for large reserves? :S



I think the point trying to be made was that it isn't wise to have a high reserve wingload, no matter how skilled.
People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

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I don't know enough about Skyhooks, MARDS etc to add any comment of value but I did see some Skyhook cutaway demos at WFFC that took my breath away. Let's just say that the demo jumpers had absolute faith in the Skyhook. Had it not worked, that would have been their last jump ever.

I had seen Stevens Cutaway System RSL deployments back in the day but they were nothing like the Skyhook. I had no idea that a reserve could be fully deployed so quickly after a cutaway.

I am not a rigger but I am a patent attorney. If Bill cited and accurately described the prior art and still got his patent claims allowed, then he did invent a patentable improvement.

377
2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

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for me it is very simple: that was spinning mall on main and skyhook opened up reserve with progressive spin that look worse then the one this poor guy just cut away from. something wrong with this picture especially considering that jumper had no control over reserve deployment after the cutaway. Without skyhook one can get stable before reserve deployment. it would make a difference with small reserve like in this case.

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Mr. Booth, I´m glad you post on this forum and gave me the opportunity to express to you my thanks and satisfaction for such a great and reliable invention.
I recently purchase a UPT container and installed the Skyhook on it. Two days ago had a very hard opening with line twist also broken control lines, it really works as fast and accurate as you said it would.
Statistically speaking I wasn't planning to use it for a long time but for whatever reasons I had to and works smoothly quick and reliably. Before I had the chance to pull the reserve handle the reserve canopy lines were fully extent with almost an operative canopy. Keep on the great job!!
Blue Skies

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There will always be exceptions, and it seems that some skydivers seem to dwell on them for their final life saving decisions. After a canopy collision, and after a lot of untangling of lines from the other canopy, still inside my lines above my head, I felt that it was necessary to chop what was in my opinion an unsafe canopy to land.

I cannot tell you the altitude I was at when I chopped, but people on the ground thought it was way below 1,000 feet. For me, it was like a canopy transfer and I had what seemed like plenty of time to unstow my steering lines and get away from the helicopter that was warming up on the ground directly below me. I am very thankful that the demo gear I was trying had a Skyhook.
Dano

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377

I don't know enough about Skyhooks, MARDS etc to add any comment of value but I did see some Skyhook cutaway demos at WFFC that took my breath away. Let's just say that the demo jumpers had absolute faith in the Skyhook. Had it not worked, that would have been their last jump ever.



377



Those may have been base jumpers with their reserve packed slider down. Bill has some cutaways like this in his youtube video. IMO these are stunts that have no business in the video trying to sell the product because they have no relevancy to real use. Bill explains that what they are but you have to be listening and know what he means. In another thread we're trying to explain this to a newbie and convince him that cutting away at 100' is not a good idea.
I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

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Thank you Edgar. It's hard to believe, but the Skyhook is now 16 years old, and had been put on over 30,000 rigs. It has been used 10"s of thousands of times, and has had far fewer problems than any of my other inventions, including the hand deployed pilot chute and three ring release.

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Hi Bill,

Apologies in advance if this has been covered elsewhere, but I have a question I was hoping you could give me an answer or some insight into:

How much testing have you done with the Skyhook in a low speed deployment situation, like during wingsuit flight, and how much consideration has been given to things like the burble produced by a large wingsuit (i.e. Squirrel CR+)?

One situation in particular I am thinking of is having to go straight to reserve deployment after losing altitude awareness or having an AAD activation.

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The burble behind a fully inflated wing suit is gigantic. I'm sure you've seen the video of an entire deploying main canopy, at line stretch, literally sucked back all the way to the jumper. Wingsuits were tried in the 30's and 50's, but almost everyone died. The reason was everyone was jumping spring loaded pilot chutes. It wasn't until the introduction of the hand deployed pilot chute, that modern wing suiting became possible.

So, in answer to your question: Deploying a spring loaded pilot chute of any description, behind a wing suit, in certain flight modes, is very likely to produce a terrible pilot chute hesitation. If you're depending on an AAD set at normal settings (below 1,000 ft.), you're probably going to die if you ever need it. The Skyhook has nothing to do with it.

PS. I've often thought that what wingsuiters really need is a rig with a hand deploy reserve. You couldn't have an AAD, but for the above stated reason, even if an AAD fires at its set altitude, you do not have a not very good chance of an "in-time" deployment anyway.

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billbooth

So, in answer to your question: Deploying a spring loaded pilot chute of any description, behind a wing suit, in certain flight modes, is very likely to produce a terrible pilot chute hesitation. If you're depending on an AAD set at normal settings (below 1,000 ft.), you're probably going to die if you ever need it. The Skyhook has nothing to do with it.



I think the one difference with the Skyhook in an AAD fire or straight-to-reserve situation is that a certain amount of energy stored in the spring is spent on disconnecting the Skyhook (i.e. breaking the sealing thread and pulling the green tab out). This is evident when you do practice launches before a reserve repack and it happens when the PC is just 5 ft from the container, making it more likely that the PC will get stuck in the burble. For now, I still jump my wingsuit with Skyhook connected, but this does worry me a bit.

billbooth

PS. I've often thought that what wingsuiters really need is a rig with a hand deploy reserve. You couldn't have an AAD, but for the above stated reason, even if an AAD fires at its set altitude, you do not have a not very good chance of an "in-time" deployment anyway.



I'm curious whether there have been any attempts to design a spring-loaded pilot chute that launches at an angle instead of straight back? An asymmetrical spring or a hesitation/staging device applied to one side of the base might increase the chances of clearing the burble, just like a hand-deployed PC.

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billbooth

The burble behind a fully inflated wing suit is gigantic. I'm sure you've seen the video of an entire deploying main canopy, at line stretch, literally sucked back all the way to the jumper. Wingsuits were tried in the 30's and 50's, but almost everyone died. The reason was everyone was jumping spring loaded pilot chutes. It wasn't until the introduction of the hand deployed pilot chute, that modern wing suiting became possible.

So, in answer to your question: Deploying a spring loaded pilot chute of any description, behind a wing suit, in certain flight modes, is very likely to produce a terrible pilot chute hesitation. If you're depending on an AAD set at normal settings (below 1,000 ft.), you're probably going to die if you ever need it. The Skyhook has nothing to do with it.

PS. I've often thought that what wingsuiters really need is a rig with a hand deploy reserve. You couldn't have an AAD, but for the above stated reason, even if an AAD fires at its set altitude, you do not have a not very good chance of an "in-time" deployment anyway.



Bill - what about using a ballistic device to launch the reserve pilot chute beyond the burble?
Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

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This is a very complicated subject. I been studying it my whole adult life. I would take an hour, with the help of videos, to fully explain it. But here are a couple of paragraphs:

The Vector spring takes 40 -50 lbs. to compress it. It is as strong or stronger than any other pilot chute out there. However, even the force generated by our spring will not launch the pilot chute much more than 5 feet vertically.. a lot less in actual use, because the burble is exerting a downward force on the pilot chute as it leaves the container. The effect you see when you launch the pilot chute horizontally in the loft, has nothing to do with what happens in free fall. (Throw your hand deploy pilot chute on the ground, and your container totals every time.) These systems are dynamic and designed to function in freefall.

A stable burble of a "normal" jumper falling straight down, consists of two counterrotating vortices with the relative wind "blowing" straight down toward the center of the body, and then curving outward. I don't know exactly what it looks like behind a modern wingsuiter. I just know it is larger in all dimensions.

In other words the relative wind, not the spring, is what takes the pilot chute most of the way to "bridle stretch". Most reserve pilot chutes are designed like a parachute and don't develop much drag until they reach the end of the bridle, turn upright, and inflate.The Vector pilot chute is designed like a balloon to develop drag immediately, so that it reaches the end of the bridle faster, and is already inflated when it gets there. In other words, it is designed to "flow" with the burble instead of fight it.

Although we have done very little testing with wing suits, we have extensive testing with tandem, which also has a gigantic burble, and we heave found no noticeable effect of the red break thread on pilot chute deployment. In videos, it is exactly like it thread does't exist.

In answer to another question. I have tried spring loaded pilot chutes that deploy to the side, but it turned out to be a bad idea. You never know what body position a jumper will be in when the reserve container opens, so to lessen the chance of entanglement, the pilot chute needs to spring out directly away from the body and a far from the arms as possible.

Spring loaded pilot chutes chutes hesitate...That's why I designed the hand deploy system. The bigger the burble, the greater the chance. Wing suits and spring loaded pilot chutes don't mix well. It's a problem.

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Being an avid wingsuiter I see two scenarios being most common as far as mals: Chopping due to line twists and going for the silver 1st due to not finding PC. My last trip to the local DZ, I watched a dude flying his new WS and it resulted in him having an AAD fire. According to first hand report, he had stability issues at pull time and tried two many times before it fired. He walked away from an uneventful reserve ride. Unsure what kind of rig he jumps. The suit was a freak2.

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ChrisHoward

*** PS. I've often thought that what wingsuiters really need is a rig with a hand deploy reserve.



If only somebody had invented that ;)

------------------------------------------------------------------

Already done ... decades ago in Australia. Go read the Woomera thread.

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Hi jumps,

Quote

Was it a left hand toss ? Where was it stowed ?



According to the jumper who designed it, and as he showed me how he planned on using it, it could be tossed with either hand. And it sat at the top of his left shoulder in a 'sort of' typical hand/deploy pouch.

Jerry Baumchen

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Round the corners of your chest to streamline it, put an AAD pouch in it and market it to wingsuiters. We've got Poynter's on how to add d rings.;)

And I'm only half kidding. Yeah yeah I know they won't want it on their chest but it's out of the burble.:P

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

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JumpRu

for me it is very simple: that was spinning mall on main and skyhook opened up reserve with progressive spin that look worse then the one this poor guy just cut away from. something wrong with this picture especially considering that jumper had no control over reserve deployment after the cutaway. Without skyhook one can get stable before reserve deployment. it would make a difference with small reserve like in this case.



Yea it must be terrible to have some line twists under a reserve, maybe it's even gradually turning until you get the twist out. I too rather go in at line-stretch, but no twistsB|

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