Reserve extraction - What's a newbie to think?

[JeffCa 0]

I will be ordering my first rig very soon. I am getting pretty concerned over this issue of reserve extraction. We have a YouTube video of a guy who had to pull the reserve out manually. There's another story floating around here somewhere of the same happening to somebody else. We have multiple stories on multiple threads of riggers who couldn't get the reserves out of containers with a reasonable amount of force. We have the British issuing a new test procedure addressing the problem. We have John Sherman apparently keeping a count of the number of people who have gone in because their reserves didn't extract. We have whatever the hell happened in Florida with the double fatality. We have proposals for raising the AAD altitude because reserves aren't coming out fast enough.

So what's a newbie, a first-time gear buyer, to think about all of this? Can somebody very knowledgeable please summarise for us here? Do we have a serious problem or not? If yes, how widespread is the problem? What can we do about, should we do about it, is being done now? Some have said the issue is merely overstuffed rigs, but the guy in the YouTube video it seems had a reserve that was appropriately sized for his container.

I have read Jump Shack's John Sherman's comments on reserve extraction forces and pilot chute drag. I decided to take a look at what the major manufacturers have to say about their pilot chutes or extraction forces on their websites. Here is a quick summary. I may have missed something, but I think if I did, it just means the information is too hard for a prospective buyer to find on the site.


Aerodyne (Icon): "one of the strongest pilotchutes in the industry" Nothing more was written.

UPT (Vector): Nothing.

Sunpath (Javelin): Nothing.

Sunrise (Wings): "This design offers a pilot chute that will create drag from any angle allowing the reserve to be deployed equally as fast given any position." No specifics at all.

Mirage: "Our partial-mesh reserve pilot chute canopy profile is unlike any in the industry, resulting in higher drag forces per fabric area." No specifics.

Velocity (Infinity): Nothing.

Jump Shack (Racer): A document explaining the specs on their pilot chutes and another document explaining maximum allowable extraction forces.


Most manufacturers (no names, but some much more than others) make the embroidery, color options and pinstripe availability very prominent, but where is the more important stuff?

I want a rig that is going to work. There are 3 things that I consider non-negotiable:

1. The harness will hold me in and not release me in flight.

2. The cutaway system will release when I pull the handle.

3. The reserve will deploy in an appropriate amount of time/altitude when I pull the handle.

I don't want pinstripes, I want to live through the jump! Most containers seem to have #1 and #2 down pat, but #3 is presenting issues. Does anybody wish to contradict John Sherman's claim that Racer reserves extract every time? If not, then one solution is to buy a Racer. I'm definitely willing to do this, despite how "uncool" they might be.

Did I miss something? Has any other manufacturer stepped up with this kind of important information?

Comments?

"So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

[ScoopUK 0]

I'm just coming back into the sport after a few years off and I'm thinking exactly the same.

Having been in the scuba diving world in the meantime we had a similar issue there... FINS! They perfected the design of the perfect fin in the 1950s. But you can't keep pushing exciting new products when it's a just a big rigid lump of moulded black rubber. So then you started to get bells and whistles on fins, vortex creating whatsits, lightweight flexible materials that save you from getting tired leg muscles but don't offer any forward propulsion and even split fins, yet all accompanied with bright colours and clever marketing and being a good money earner for the manufacturers. Those in the know stick with the old skool rigid black moulded rubber variety. I kind of see container manufacture as being like that. Obviously there was a need to modernise as skydiving disciplines evolved with head down freeflying for example but there seems to be too much bolt on crap.

In the end I decided to go for one of the new Shadow Racer Classics. No frills, seems to be constructed for function over form (although still looks good IMO) and for a cost effective 1400 dollars it just makes sense. Customer service has been great too with John & Suzie being really helpful.

Scratching my head trying to source all new kit I was given a great offer on one of their reserves and that seems to make sense too. One of their own reserves in their own reserve tray gives me confidence every component in the life saving business end of the rig should work in beautiful harmony when I need it.

I'm not a rigger or even that experienced as a skydiver but I was a mechanical engineer in a former life and I just want something that works, not mini rings here, extra long tuck tabs there, a reserve that is so damn secure it's hindered in its deployment etc... bonkers!

Can't wait to jump it when it arrives
EDIT: I wonder how many perverts find this post on Google and will be disappointed when they realise 'rigid black rubber' isn't what they were looking for

[Quagmirian 40]

I imagine a good reason why manufacturers don't publicly publish this sort of stuff is competition. They want to keep their designs, which they have spent a lot of time and money on, secret.

More importantly, Booth's law. You said it yourself, skydivers are not interested in safety, we are interested in tie die fabrics and pinstripes.

[JeffCa 0]

Jump Shack did not publish (to my knowledge anyway), the design specs or anything, just the size and coefficient of drag. Then they made a chart of the drag force available for extraction vs. airspeed and altitude.

But it seems like a weird explanation because anybody can buy a pilot chute from one of these companies and study the design. It's not a secret, it's out there, and can't be that difficult to reverse-engineer.

The Booth's Law thing, yeah I get it.

"So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

[RiggerLee 61]

I was making the rounds at PIA. Stopped by one of the booths. A young woman walked in and started asking about the features of the container. This was obviously a young jumper taking advantage of the expo to check out gear preparing to buy her first. Had two used canopies looking for a container. So the "sales man" I use that work specificly starts in. What does he talk about? Any thing functional, patern sets that will hold her canopies, etc. No. He starts in with embroidery options. Then he moved on to how shiny the hard ware is. I perticuarly liked his speal about how they were sewing the foam on the back pad in an esthetic fashion. And every other goofball bell and whisle the had on the rig. I was trying hard to keep a straight face during all of this. After he was done and she was going to walk away I asked him if I could add a couple of comments. After covering every thing that he blatently ignored I think I may had salvaged the sale for him. But no shit. That was his sales pitch: cool new embroidery, colors, shiny, fancy nonfunctional esthetic sewing, goofball bells and whisles. That's the sales platform today. That's all they are pitching and I guess that's all that people are buying because I am talking about one of the top selling manufactorers.

Do we have a real problem with reserve extraction? We can have a problem. I'm not convenced that it's one problem. I think we have several. And I doubt it's a universal problem with any one design. But depending on the exact pattern set, canopy, packjob, fit of the container over the shoulders, etc I think we could have problems on some rigs. But how do you judge it when it could even depend on the rigger who packed it last. Then theres the question of how often will it really make a difference and how that will balance against what you would lose in staging by going to a more open tray. We had way more open trays in the past. In fact some of the older designs that predate our obsession with estetics were actually much better designs. And of course there is the question of sales. How much loss of market share are you willing to accept in order to build a safer rig? And don't think that isn't a trade off or that designers don't concider it. Why do you think no one buys fucking racers. In the end it is about selling rigs. Why do you think that Booth and javelin and marage and all these other people are king? Why do you think Sherman is religated to a footnote in pointers. I could pick apart some of his math, and he goes off on the wild herrangs about one thing or another and makes him self look like a nut case some times but in the end he isn't dumb. Just because he's a wacko that most people ignore out of hand doesn't mean that he's wrong.

It's like this. The world is a pendolum. It swings back and forth. Generally you will have problems at ether end. But in time we retreat from what ever extreme we reach. Have people died? probable. Will more people die? most likely but it wont be that many and unless something really blatant happens to bring it to a head then most of these incedents will be explaned away. But over time as people draw new designs or as exesting ones are tweeked we will slowly start to see more open patterns or better staging designs. Hell maybe we will go back to staging loops in the next generation of containers. But they will eventually work there way out of the system just like all of our other mistakes we've made.

I appaude Sherman for trying to bring this to a head. He wants to pop it just like a zit so that the healing process can begin. The problem is that the pendulum is just too heavy to easily kick it back in the other direction. He's gona get squshed, again. Because nobody wants to deal with it. And how could you deal with a problem like this that is just so nebulas and hard to pin down.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[davelepka 4]

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I don't want pinstripes, I want to live through the jump!

Any of the rigs you listed is a good choice, provided you use the appropriate canopies. The first thing you do is figure out what size main/reserve are going to be a 'safe' choice for you. Next, pick a container and then choose the size that provides a 'loose' fit for those canopies.

Does that mean you might have to go one or two sizes up on the container from the smallest the website says? Yes, it does, but that's the way you make the container work.

They all pass the TSO testing (including the reserve PC) but I'm fairly certain that nobody was picking a brick-hard combination of the container and canopy sizes for the testing. It involves repeated drop testing, and I can't seem anyone wanting to pack a bitch of a reserve pack job every time.

When you combine all the flaps/tabs that make a rig freefly friendly, and then jam it full of the tighest main/reserve canopies you can get in there, you create a problem where the rig tends to keep itself shut, more than just the riser covers and pin flaps. The rig ends up being so 'built-up' around the reserve container, that it holds the freebag in place.

So if you're more conservative in your container sizing (meaning bigger), it ends up being a softer overall rig, and makes it easier to get the freebag out. Put three shirts in a pillowcase, and try to pull one out. Now put 30 shirts in a pillowcase and try the same.

If you're really comitted to the idea, buy a Racer. They are good rigs, just different. You may have trouble finding a rigger, and most people won't 'get it', but it's the real solution.

All the other rigs, when unpacked, look like a cardboard box in that the sidewalls of the container sit upright and create a 'box', with the flaps looking just like the flaps on a box. This what I mean by the container is 'built-up' it has some structure to it.

A Racer does not have this. the flaps and sidewalls are the same thing on a Racer, and when they're unpacked (main and reserve) they just lay flat, there's no structure to them. The advanatge is that when the pin(s) are pulled, the continer more or less disappears and there's nothing holding the bag/freebag in place.

Picture a hard shell suitcase, and that would all the other rigs. If you stuff it full of clothes, it could be tough to get the first few items out. The Racer is like a duffel bag if it had a zipper that went all the way down the sides of the bag to the bottom. Once you undo the zipper, you no longer have a bag of clothes, you have a pile of loose clothes with what used to be a bag laying under it.

[hangdiver 1]

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If you're really comitted to the idea, buy a Racer. They are good rigs, just different. You may have trouble finding a rigger, and most people won't 'get it', but it's the real solution.

They aren't hard to pack...just like anything...you need to know how to do it.

I've packed my Racer reserve with these tools...1. wire bodkin 2. pullup cord 3. pair of tennis shoes.

Tool check...yep I got my pullup cord...yep I got the bodkin...hey did I just pack my tennis shoes in my reserve?

hangdiver

"Mans got to know his limitations"
Harry Callahan

[divein15 0]

Why not consider a Round Reserve PC, A lot of Riggers will tell you no but I have used a Round Reserve for 38 years,23 of the years in the Air Force. I have 6 rigs right now and all of them have Round Reserves in them.
No Free Bags, no D-Bags, just the Round Reserve Canopy and the Pilot Chute with the Spring in it to deploy it.
(( I would trust my life and your life to a Round Reserve Canopy before I would trust it to a Square Reserve Canopy )) But there are a hell of a lot of Riggers and other Jumpers out there that will 100 % disagree with me about it.
I have only had 11 cutaway's in 38 years and the one Damn time I used a Square Reserve Canopy in the rig I jumped that day and it almost killed me, all because the Fricking D-Bag hung up and if it was not for all the trees I fell into and the tops of the trees branches grabbing all the lines and Canopy and pulling the Canopy open as I was falling through the trees,
( I would have been very DEAD that day )......??????????????
First time I even used a Square Reserve Canopy to jump with and it was the last time.
For some odd reason I became the Luckiest Man that Cheated Death that day.??????????????

I would rather be a little beat up from the hard openings of a Round Reserve Canopy,,,than very DEAD because a Deployment Bag on a Square Reserve Canopy hung up in the Container or didn't let the Canopy Deploy once it was out of the Container...????????????

But for whatever it is worth, that is only my opinion about
( What's a Newbie to Think )
Talk to other jumpers and ask Questions, talk to the , lets say older jumpers that have been around for a while. \ Not just the young jumpers
I don't think most jumpers under 25 ?? have ever seen a Round Reserve or Main Canopy in real life

Just make sure if you buy new gear you get a Main & Reserve Canopy that fits the Container properly, not something you have to drive a truck onto it to close the Container up and it will screw you on your first jump.
Make sure you know how to pack your Main Canopy properly, take a class and learn it the right way, just don't let Joe Blow the Hot Dog Jumper down the road try to teach you all you need to know, ,, chances are if you look at their rig,, it's a mess ??????
But there are a lot of good jumpers out there too that can help, like the guy or gal who has the same Canopy or Rig ???????

USE THAT THING YOU WERE GIVEN THAT SHOULD BE SITTING BETWEEN YOUR 2 EARS THAT IS CALLED YOUR BRAIN, IT JUST MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE ONE DAY ????

But again that's only my opinion. ! ! ! !

[base283 0]

Wow again though i didnt say before bro. But i think no one will listen other than I.
take care,
space

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

Hi dave,

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Does that mean you might have to go one or two sizes up on the container from the smallest the website says? Yes, it does, but that's the way you make the container work.

It has been a fair number of years ago, but Mike Truffer once wrote an editorial for his SKYDIVING magazine about the time that this 'tight' container thing came along.

He said to size your canopies, and then buy your container for the next larger main & reserve. That would result in a 'proper' fitting system.

And I agree with what you say here,

JerryBaumchen

[nigel99 143]

Maybe it's because I'm an engineer, but I like the hard and fast numbers John puts out. Sure in the same way that car fuel efficiencies are subject to test conditions, gear will be the same. But it allows people to duplicate the testing, and more importantly allows for the evolution of the testing as assumptions made during testing are found to be inadequate or wrong.

I really hate the vague, touchy feely approach, that don't have test data to back it up. Ultimately we the buyers are the problem, we simply don't ask the questions. I think the reserve pc extraction force and appropriate reserve sizing are one aspect. But when we choose our cool mini ring risers do we know that we are trading off mechanical advantage and the increased risk of not having the strength to cutaway? I know the figures for the two sizes of 3 ring are published, but how many people look it up or ask?

People have stopped thinking about the functional requirements and have focused on the aesthetics.

Based on my experience of jumping a pop top, if you go that route be prepared for a lot of ribbing about jumping out dated gear. On a more serious note, seriously consider and look at pop top rsl routing and options. On the tear drop, I think it's horrible and I don't have an rsl as a result, I don't know about the racer.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[faulknerwn 36]

I would really like to see some experiments. Take some out of date cypresses, pack them in some of these modern right rigs, and do some drop tests with them. I would love to see the video. The cutters are already expired so they can be useful for playing with :)

[popsjumper 2]

....numbers for all the combinations of main/reserve sizes that the H/C manufacturer sells.

Harness/Container 1
Main pack volumes a, b, c,
Reserve pack volumes x, y, z

ax =
ay =
az =
bx =
by =
bz =
cx =
cy =
cz =

Results such as that?

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[faulknerwn 36]

Yes. With particular emphasis on the tighter sized fits....a

[sundevil777 93]

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I would really like to see some experiments.

For the price of a repack at most, or just do it when a repack is needed and we can all contribute data of generally how hard it is to pull out the freebag with the main packed. I will be checking mine when I get a repack very soon.

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

[RiggerLee 61]

The Racer RSL is odd. At least in it's factory configuration. It's goes from one riser to the other like a cross connecter behind your neck. Personally I think that a little fucked up in and of it self. But the idea, at least as I under stand it is that if you break one riser theoretically the rsl will not fire the reserve. It sounds great but I don't really buy it. Again I was there at PIA Sunday morning was slow so I went to take a look at the mill version of their rig. There was only a few of us so there was plenty of opertunity to pester her with questions. I asked her if the rsl would actually work that way. She said yes but when she disconnected the left side and lifted the rig up by it the reserve popped.I was surrounded by a room of racer proponents who tend to be zelots and they started to say that that was not really a fair test but I don't buy it. If you think about it that side of the canopy will just rise up. One or one and a half cells will be angled upwards but the rest will still be suspended just like before bearing load. The rsl will be running straight up from the other riser at an angle towards that half of the canopy and it will be bearing almost half the body weight. I just don't se the geometry working. Maybe if you lost the right side and you had enough slack in the ripcord, but the racer has a pretty long yoke. I'm still skeptical.

So I don't buy the you're safe if the riser breaks thing. In fact I think you're doubleing the odds of a problem because now you have issues with both risers. Another odd thing about the design. This is one of those odd ball malfunction modes but it is real. Let's say you go low and the cypress fires just as you pitch your main. People do wind up with dual outs but generally it's the reserve firing while the main is sniveling. So the main winds up in front of the reserve. But let's say you're dirty low and you don't beat the cypress. So now the reserve is in front of your main, that's key. So when you cut away the RSL is looped around the risers and line set of your reserve. This is not obvious. The main is in back so you cut away. Well now the loop formed by your RSL, risers, and slider slides up choaking off your reserve. I remember a picture in skydiving of this, but I think it was a staged thing with a tersh. It is a really odd ball corner of the envelope and I can't recall it actually happioning to any one but it is out there, a product of this odd design.

Back when people were talking about this every one wanted to go to a more conventional single sided design. I seem to recall Sherman saying that his RSL was not part of his TSO and could be modified to a simple loop off one riser. It would be nice if Jump shack could conferm this, my memory is imperfect. It also makes the thing a lot cleaner. Normally it runs across the out side of the rig and just tucks under the edge of the cap. Add that exsposure to the list of thing I don't like about the design.

I've actually found my self defending Sherman and his designs recently so I had to do something to balance it out. End of Racer RSL rant.


Other comments. Testing. I like empirical shit to. I like things you can measure. I like repeatable results with direct corilation to the testing perramiters. And I work in parachute rigging, go figure. I don't think testing is going to be that easy. I think there are too many factors involved. Some of them are not easily repeatable. There have already been some cases where rigs have been sent back in to the manufactorers. And they said they were fine and sent them back. Now you could play the conspearacy theory that they were in stone walling and knowingly sending dangerous equipment back out into the world. I honestly have trouble buying that. Every one I know in this industry has a pretty high since of responcability. The fact is that after they played with it and repacked it a few times it probably was ok. How did they pack the bag? How did the last guy? What was the humidity? FL is different from AZ. You know how a canopy turn into a brick after being left in a truck in the heat of the day and tempiture cycleing at night with the humidity and dew. What about if it's laying on a table with the yoke turned out or tight over a guys shoulder. Is he arching? how tight is the yoke and riser covers? What angle are you pulling at? And that's just one specific rig, and the answer may be different from one to the next. Even with the same container, canopy, every thing. Let's say You have two tall guys. both have small short rigs. But one has stager in the MLW and the other doesn't. Now one rig rides high on his back but the other is lower. It affects the riser covers, the yoke, every thing. One bag might extract and the other wont. Do you see what I mean by a nebulas problem. Short of fundamental changes in direction of some of our design decisions I don't think you can really fix this. And to be honest I'm not shure how big the problem is. In the end it's a question of how many fatalities did this actually play a contributing in.

I don't really like the idea of just hucking rigs out the door of a plane, which has been suggested. First off with the rig only weighing 15 lb. it would be rellitivly easy for it to tow a pilot chute and is a good resipy for alarmist reactions. I think you'd need more then just an old cypress. You really need a good altitude unit with acceleramiters and a wire through the cutter to tell you exactly when it was cut to measure opening time, altitude, etc.

In any case I'm hungry. So I'm going to go eat.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[ctrph8 0]

Rigs have come a long way. Each of the manufacturers will split hairs about how their system is better than their competitor's but from an overall viewpoint, rigs these days are pretty damn good. Every manufacturer has had snafus but as a rule, modern systems are rock solid.

We as jumpers can do things to screw that up (like packing 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag) but we don't have many problems with reserves not extracting from properly sized and maintained gear. There ARE incidents but really, considering the number of reserve deployments that happen every day, these are very very small numbers and usually not the only problem. As with most incidents, there are usually several factors.

Find gear you like. If that happens to be Jumpshack, great. Go rock that. Racer owners LOVE their Racers. If you find another rig that you like from any of the other major manufacturers, rest assured that they have been time tested. They will all save your life. Just do your part to maintain your gear and to pack reasonably sized canopies into it.

Also, each gear manufacturer has a combination of features in their design and really believes that their design is your best last chance. Making safer gear is why they got into the business. To this end there are some wildly divergent views as to how to make this work. You can read about the MARD question ad nauseum. One guide might be to look at what the most experienced skydivers are using for their day in, day out work. Don't look at the sponsored folks because free gear is free gear. Take a look at the ones who pay for their own gear and depend on it to save their lives every day. They have usually tried it all and settle into what works best for them.

Quote

I will be ordering my first rig very soon. I am getting pretty concerned over this issue of reserve extraction. We have a YouTube video of a guy who had to pull the reserve out manually. There's another story floating around here somewhere of the same happening to somebody else. We have multiple stories on multiple threads of riggers who couldn't get the reserves out of containers with a reasonable amount of force. We have the British issuing a new test procedure addressing the problem. We have John Sherman apparently keeping a count of the number of people who have gone in because their reserves didn't extract. We have whatever the hell happened in Florida with the double fatality. We have proposals for raising the AAD altitude because reserves aren't coming out fast enough.

So what's a newbie, a first-time gear buyer, to think about all of this? Can somebody very knowledgeable please summarise for us here? Do we have a serious problem or not? If yes, how widespread is the problem? What can we do about, should we do about it, is being done now? Some have said the issue is merely overstuffed rigs, but the guy in the YouTube video it seems had a reserve that was appropriately sized for his container.

I have read Jump Shack's John Sherman's comments on reserve extraction forces and pilot chute drag. I decided to take a look at what the major manufacturers have to say about their pilot chutes or extraction forces on their websites. Here is a quick summary. I may have missed something, but I think if I did, it just means the information is too hard for a prospective buyer to find on the site.


Aerodyne (Icon): "one of the strongest pilotchutes in the industry" Nothing more was written.

UPT (Vector): Nothing.

Sunpath (Javelin): Nothing.

Sunrise (Wings): "This design offers a pilot chute that will create drag from any angle allowing the reserve to be deployed equally as fast given any position." No specifics at all.

Mirage: "Our partial-mesh reserve pilot chute canopy profile is unlike any in the industry, resulting in higher drag forces per fabric area." No specifics.

Velocity (Infinity): Nothing.

Jump Shack (Racer): A document explaining the specs on their pilot chutes and another document explaining maximum allowable extraction forces.


Most manufacturers (no names, but some much more than others) make the embroidery, color options and pinstripe availability very prominent, but where is the more important stuff?

I want a rig that is going to work. There are 3 things that I consider non-negotiable:

1. The harness will hold me in and not release me in flight.

2. The cutaway system will release when I pull the handle.

3. The reserve will deploy in an appropriate amount of time/altitude when I pull the handle.

I don't want pinstripes, I want to live through the jump! Most containers seem to have #1 and #2 down pat, but #3 is presenting issues. Does anybody wish to contradict John Sherman's claim that Racer reserves extract every time? If not, then one solution is to buy a Racer. I'm definitely willing to do this, despite how "uncool" they might be.

Did I miss something? Has any other manufacturer stepped up with this kind of important information?

Comments?

[JeffCa 0]

Thanks for all of your input, everyone. It has been helpful to me, and I hope it will be for some others who find this thread, too.

"So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

[JohnSherman 1]

Lee,

Your observations were astute. The system failed and your description was enough to send me scurrying. The reserve should not have fired and wouldn't have fired if properly equipped.
We are preparing a video, which we will post, with that very rig. The video will show how the system works and why.
The problem was chased down to be a typical one of trade shows. It is as simple as someone put the wrong ripcord in the rig. The rig was a Tandem with a medium harness. While preparing for the show someone grabs a sport medium ripcord which is 30 inches long. All tandems are 32 inches.
This institutional failure to know the correct component is prompting us to issue a Safety Notice requiring inspection for the correct length on all tandem rigs.
The RSL cross connector is there to maintain drag integrity of the main during a malfunction and subsequent cutaway. It does this with the cross connector by preventing riser separation of more than 4 feet. It also prevents reserve activation when only one riser releases. It does this by having enough slack in the reserve ripcord cable as you noted.

John

[NovaTTT 1]

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Well now the loop formed by your RSL, risers, and slider slides up choaking off your reserve. I remember a picture in skydiving of this, but I think it was a staged thing with a tersh. It is a really odd ball corner of the envelope and I can't recall it actually happioning to any one but it is out there, a product of this odd design.

First of all I will admit that as a jumper and rigger I like the Racer but I've never been a fan of the two-sided RSL.

IIRC there was an incident in the early 90's related to a choked reserve on a Racer. I'll dig through the old Skydiving and Chuting Star magazines one of these days to find the details.

The Jump Shack released a bulletin advising that one or both RSL shackle(s) must be disconnected before cutting away from a two-out.

As Lee said, it is a deep corner scenario.

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[RiggerLee 61]

We're getting a little off topic here but I'd love to see your video. If you're taking request here's what I'd like to see. Find a decent size hanging harness stand or go down to the local school and use the swing set. Take a rope from the top of one riser to the other. run it through two pullies spread apart to replicate the angle of the force going up to the two halves of the canopies line set. Remember you will need several feet of rope between the pulley and riser to allow the rsl to extend. You can have the slider on the rope above the riser if you like but it should be able to slide up as normal. Release the left side so that the rls fully extends as it normally would. You should now be hanging cockeyed in the harness with the right side pulled almost off your shoulder and the left pulled way down as you sit asymetricly hanging by to one riser/rsl.

You want to film that? That shit would sell me. I'm a native born Texacan but my blood line traces back to Missouri.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[JohnSherman 1]

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IIRC there was an incident in the early 90's related to a choked reserve on a Racer. I'll dig through the old Skydiving and Chuting Star magazines one of these days to find the details.

You are correct. There was 1 incident in the early 90 somewhere in the mid-west. I will quote Sandy Reid on this one. "The guy died because he failed to read his owners manual".
1 in thirty years - not bad. There have been other instances of this occuring but none fatal.

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The Jump Shack released a bulletin advising that one or both RSL shackle(s) must be disconnected before cutting away from a two-out.

I don't believe they ever issued a bullitin. USPA procedure is to not cutaway from a 2 out. They say that if a cutaway is descided upon, from a 2 out, you should release the shackle on any RSL, one sidded or 2 sidded.

[NovaTTT 1]

John, I certainly don't mean to say there was a Racer service bulletin, and I admit to choosing the wrong term. Apologies.

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[sundevil777 93]

sundevil777

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I would really like to see some experiments.

For the price of a repack at most, or just do it when a repack is needed and we can all contribute data of generally how hard it is to pull out the freebag with the main packed. I will be checking mine when I get a repack very soon.

Mine was about 12 pounds max needed to pull it out - direction as if in a standing orientation. Infinity I-66 with a 220 Smart and Pilot 210 ZPX.

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

[airdvr 197]

I see maybe 2 things that need to change; maybe the TSO process needs to be clarified a bit and have some teeth? I have zero concept of how it works but i have a gut feeling it's kinda like the FDA, where the manufacturer submits data for approval and the regulatory agency just reviews what they've been given.

It also seems like riggers might need more involvement. I'm sure some riggers have stuffed reserves into containers that are too small.

I know, more regulation isn't popular.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne