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Freddiekz

Mirage and skyhook

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And if you are pointing to the chicago incident as a recommendation for a skyhook, you have no idea how they work. HAd that been a normal RSL, the jumper in question would have most likely had 2 canopies out, as opposed to having one half of his main cutaway. He could just as easily have died as a result of that incident, it was pure luck and not engineering that allowed him to survive.

Johnny
--"This ain't no book club, we're all gonna die!"
Mike Rome

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Ok, maybe Bill Booth should step in here :-)

I may be wrong on some terminology. Skyhook is for sure a Reserve Static Line. In addition to just pulling the reserve pin (white lanyard) it also has a red lanyard connected to a "hook" placed in the middle of the bridle of the reserve canopy. Can we agree on this?

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And if you are pointing to the chicago incident as a recommendation for a skyhook, you have no idea how they work. HAd that been a normal RSL, the jumper in question would have most likely had 2 canopies out, as opposed to having one half of his main cutaway. He could just as easily have died as a result of that incident, it was pure luck and not engineering that allowed him to survive.



I am not pointing to the incident itself, just my posts there with pictures regarding the missing red lanyard. I had my second cutaway a few days after these posts, without the "Skyhook functionality", just RSL or me pulling the reserve (I pulled both handles of course and lost them because of line twist in the reserve).

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>In addition to just pulling the reserve pin (white lanyard) it also has a red lanyard
>connected to a "hook" placed in the middle of the bridle of the reserve canopy. Can we
>agree on this?

Yes. Regular static lines work several possible ways:

1) Pin only. Pin(s) are pulled by the static line as it leaves. That's the way static lines used to work.

2) Pilot chute assist. The pin is pulled and a piece of velcro or breakcord pulls out the PC, which starts deployment.

3) Direct bag. The SL is attached to the bag, and the SL pulls the bag out to begin deployment.

The Skyhook is something between 2) and 3).

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One specific case was and intentional cutaway on upt's rig. Just a normal rsl deployment. Then Greg wrapped the seal thread a few more times on the repack.

Others were random tandem and sport cutaways I have witnessed. It worked more than it didn't, but I've seen it function as a regular rsl numerous times.

Johnny
--"This ain't no book club, we're all gonna die!"
Mike Rome

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One specific case was and intentional cutaway on upt's rig. Just a normal rsl deployment. Then Greg wrapped the seal thread a few more times on the repack.

Others were random tandem and sport cutaways I have witnessed. It worked more than it didn't, but I've seen it function as a regular rsl numerous times.



That’s not very specific. [:/]

Sparky
My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

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Do you want the ambient temperature and the load number the jumper was on? I don't know how to give the specifics you want over the Internet.

Suffice to say I have seen the p/c "win the race" over the red lanyard on not only tandem and sport rigs, but on a upt 3 canopy setup.

Johnny
--"This ain't no book club, we're all gonna die!"
Mike Rome

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I have seen the p/c "win the race" over the red lanyard



Perhaps it is not only "winning the race" that can result in the skyhook not actually "hooking". It is reasonable to think that it just fails to "hook" occasionally due to the design, or due to rigging, or ...
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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Well you can always talk about rigging errors, but then again a rigger could hook up your reserve slinks wrong too. A rigger should be competent enough to do the job, but we all know that is no guarantee.

I've seen freebags come back after a cutaway with the seal thread still intact on the skyhook, but with what appears to be enough slack to allow the red lanyard to pass off the hook.

Is that design or rigging or some unmeasurable combination of both?

The end result is the skyhook in no way guarantees a faster reserve deployment, and a lot of jumpers treat it as it does.

Even if it does work, at best it saves about 1 second and about 100-200 feet. And for those of you that say that could be the difference between life or death, that jumper would have had to made the decision to cutaway really low to have that be the case. And then who is to blame? Bill Booth for not making the skyhook perfect?Or the jumper making piss poor altitude decisions and relying on a backup device to save them. Pull and pray!

Johnny
--"This ain't no book club, we're all gonna die!"
Mike Rome

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Well you can always talk about rigging errors, but then again a rigger could hook up your reserve slinks wrong too. A rigger should be competent enough to do the job, but we all know that is no guarantee.

I've seen freebags come back after a cutaway with the seal thread still intact on the skyhook, but with what appears to be enough slack to allow the red lanyard to pass off the hook.

Is that design or rigging or some unmeasurable combination of both?



As you mention, perhaps part of the cause of it not "hooking" every time is that there may be subtle things that can cause it to not work correctly, but not what would normally be considered a rigging error.
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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>Skyhook is not just an RSL.

It is exactly and literally an RSL. It functions as a static line to open your reserve from your main.



More of an rsl than an RSL is..... ;)
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Whats a MARD then? Is that not what all these devices are?



The traditional RSL is a lanyard that is attached to one or both risers on one end and looped around the reserve ripcord on the other end.

The departing main parachute then pulls the reserve pin.

The MARD is a device that uses a lanyard to attach the main riser to the reserve bridle. In theory the MARD uses the departing main as a huge reserve pilot chute to extract the reserve from the container.

But if the main is not cutaway or is still in the container then the MARD is designed to detach from the reserve system so as not to interfere with a ripcord activated reserve deployment.
"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

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So is this generally available now? There is still almost no info on the mirage website that I could find
__________________________________________________

they have better to not advertise on it, there are laws in the US going against people infringing patents ! Mirage Research and Developpment office is only a copy cat machine, not even able to do it right...
eric Fradet

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>Whats a MARD then?

MARD stands for "main assisted reserve deployment." In function it is very similar to a direct bag static line. (You can think of a standard direct bag static line as an AAMD, or airplane assisted main deployment.)

>Is that not what all these devices are?

That's a general term that can be used to describe several Skyhook-like devices.

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