0
FLYGUY702

preventing line overs

Recommended Posts

Line overs are almost always induced during packing by allowing a brake line to come off the top of the line stack and end up on the wrong side of the nose, often during the "cigarette rolling" or compacting of the canopy before placing it in the deployment bag. This causes the canopy to inflate with the brake line over the top of the fabric.

That said, I agree with another post that it's probably best to have a deep understanding of packing and the causes of various mals before packing for others, paid or otherwise.

Going a bit deeper, I wonder why this type of mal (and others?) wasn't covered during your basic packing class. The line over is typically covered in detail because it's the one mal that is almost always caused from packing error.
Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I guess you could say any line malfunction is caused by packing error, since if you didn't pack the chute in the container you wouldn't have had the mal. :)

The only line over I have had was caused by a delay in the chute coming out of the d-bag. It was a temporary bag lock that cleared itself, but not before the bad flipped through the lines.

It could be argued that the temporary bag lock was probably caused by a packing error. The only thing unusual about the pack job was I had to replace two line stows.
For the same reason I jump off a perfectly good diving board.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
DiverMike

I guess you could say any line malfunction is caused by packing error, since if you didn't pack the chute in the container you wouldn't have had the mal. :)



I'm guessing you didn't get my meaning. My point was that most mals have little or nothing to do with how the canopy is packed, while nearly every line over is induced during packing.
Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Firstly, are you sure it was a line over? Often tension knots cause mals that look like line overs because of the shape of the canopy before the cutaway. If it truly was a line over you will almost always find line burns on the topskin afterward.

As far as preventing line overs, it's simple. keep the lines in the center of the pack job. This is one of the three basic rules of packing, along with slider placement and proper line stows.
Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Make sure the lines are in the center after the canopy is flaked and on the ground. The D lines and the control lines are the most suceptible to spread and if at inflation the nose goes between two lines, well you have a line over.

Trick.
When you put the flaked canopy on your shoulder, first hold the D-lines and control lines (on large canopy) at the end, grab them and begin to wrap the tail around, then transfer the grab on the top including the tail material. Now, before putting down the whole canopy, transfer the grab of the lines including the material from below, and put down the canopy to only let go the grab when lying on the canopy. That way you put the canopy on the floor while keeping the lines at the center, supporting the weight of the canopy in the middle and with the other hand, holding the canopy at the lines near the slider.

Dress the canopy while laying on it and check thru the material if lines are not passing the edge of the dressed canopy. If so, feel the lines thru the material and get it back toward the center. Putting the canopy on the floor is when the lines are spreading the most.
I know it should take 4 hands to do that but with practice, it's possible. Use your chin and shoulder to lock the wrapped canopy around the lines.
* Large canopies are more prone to get line over then additional care to keep lines in the center should be observed.
* Do not twist the tail more than 3 x 180 degrees and more than ⅓ of the length of the canopy. If you do so to ½ or 3/4, you are pulling parts of the canopy where the D-lines are and get them away from the center.

Practice practice !!!!;)

Learn from others mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
FLYGUY702

Hey guys I'm relatively new to this sport. I'm currently a packer and just had a cutaway due to a lone over. I was just looking for some advice on how to prevent tjem. Thanks in adcance for taking the time to answer my question.


Psycho pack! (just do it when they ain't lookin'.)

Seriously: it is virtually impossible to create a line-over when narrowing the pack job when all you are doing is folding it. (As opposed to stuffing/man-handling it.) Plus, you can peal open the pack after you flop it on the floor to check that the lines are still where they should be. (Cain't do that with the normal pro-pack method, as it's all underneath and out of view.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
FLYGUY702

Hey guys I'm relatively new to this sport. I'm currently a packer and just had a cutaway due to a lone over. I was just looking for some advice on how to prevent tjem. Thanks in adcance for taking the time to answer my question.



Ask the rigger that "supervises" your packing as a paid packer...
www.facebook.com/FlintHillsRigging

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
that is a very interesting idea - I am not a rigger but did train as one with two different riggers before I decided I really didn't want the responsibility.

lineovers are kinda rare and when we were doing test drops trying to create them we failed even packing with the tail way out in front of the nose which was pushed way into the pack - which made us all wonder... what really causes them... bad luck coupled with bad packing? As we really tried to induce them.

All I have done for quite a few years is clear the nose then wrap the tail.

knock on wood... no lineovers yet
They say I suffer from insanity.... But I actually enjoy it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
D22369


lineovers are kinda rare and when we were doing test drops trying to create them we failed even packing with the tail way out in front of the nose which was pushed way into the pack - which made us all wonder... what really causes them... bad luck coupled with bad packing? As we really tried to induce them.

I've heard these kind of stories before. Thanks for sharing your experiences. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
personally with the people I have known who have claimed line overs with a canopy that showed no damage when inspected - I am inclined to think that their line over was a misdiagnosed tension knot.

I am not saying line overs don't or can't happen, I just believe they are more rare than everyone thinks - the tension knot I had on my first stiletto 135 took the brake line above their cascade to the a-b cascade on the front right and it pulled the tail in and the nose in, if I hadn't had the altitude or been able to stop the spin and really look at the problem and see the birdsnest I would have probably would have chopped and thought it was a line over from the look of the canopy.

Roy
They say I suffer from insanity.... But I actually enjoy it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Bad luck and weird shit happens i suppose...i had a weird bridle over.. not line over lol bowtied the canopy i cannot figure out how it possible happened everyone said it must have been a lineover but i could clearly see it was the bridle doing it...The more i thought about the more impossible it seemed that i could have packed it...dont even know what to call that sort of malfunction and of course it was on a lower pull then i usually do...typical
FTMC

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
It can be hard to confirm exactly the type of mal someone had, and I can see that someone might call a mal a line over when the cause isn't clear. Sometimes it takes a still from a video to confirm one way or another.

Of all my reserve 'saves', there are plenty of generic 'spinning with line twists', a few reported tension knots, and a few reported line overs. On the face of it, I have at least not been seeing massive over-reporting.

As for the thesis that line overs were rare with flat packing, that's an interesting idea. How true is that?

I do know that POOR pro-packing can greatly increase the malfunction rate. I knew a DZ with 2 C-182's at the time, and static line progression, that tried pro-packing all its student gear for a period in 1991, but the technique was so new and poorly understood that they were having a student mal about every second weekend. They went back to the old way for a long time after that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I've seen the "bridle over" a couple of times. It has always been on tandems.

They do tend to bow tie a little, but still seem to fly OK. All the ones I've seen have been landed.

I thought I had one once(on a tandem), but turns out it was a blown center cell top skin! It was confusing to look at, I couldn't see anything wrapped around the nose, but the center was drawn in like a bridle over. It flew fine, turned fine and flared fine, so I landed it :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
justme12001

I've seen the "bridle over" a couple of times. It has always been on tandems.

They do tend to bow tie a little, but still seem to fly OK. All the ones I've seen have been landed.

I thought I had one once(on a tandem), but turns out it was a blown center cell top skin! It was confusing to look at, I couldn't see anything wrapped around the nose, but the center was drawn in like a bridle over. It flew fine, turned fine and flared fine, so I landed it :)


Yeh my bridle over or whatever u call it tied the bowtie enough to distort it and go into a spiralling turn and it was a sabre1 ..i pulled on the rears hard a few times trying to stall/shake it clear.(no idea what i was doing)....was low just got rid of it and the only thing i can assume was someone mentioned a canopy can stall on opening and the bridle goes where its not supposed to and maybe wrapped the canopy and went threw a cascade or something like that...i really got no idea but people under canopy above me commented on it one person said they could see the bridle wrapping the canopy the other person said it looked liked i opened and buried a toggle hard in a turn till they realised something was wrong....weird shit but yeh
FTMC

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Line overs come from letting the lines creep out while your randomly shoving shit under the canopy while laying on it... Personally, I psychopack. It's easier to keep the roll together than a stack of folds. However my second psychopack job was on a sabre1 which bang! Came out with a line over. Jump 50 or so...It was a brake line. And it was a hop and pop. I reached for my handles and then realized I was still at 4000'. I remembered a series called cutaway that drill "perform two full flares". I figured fuck it and released the brakes and before I could even flare, it cleared. I remember staring up at it confused for the next few moments and then a very serious controllability check. A friend was flying around me yelling at me to chop that shit... Oh well. Made a good video at the time.
I flake with the slider out of the way and I slightly roll in the tail, tucking the inner edges in and when its laid out on the ground I get behind it and pull tension on all the topskin folds and make sure they're tight and in line.
What I was told when I was training to be a rigger was, "fabric out, lines in, lines tight, slider at the stops and quartered, the rest is voodoo"

I'm kind of of the opinion that having a slider not on the stops can make a line over more likely... More slack in the lines above the slider when shit gets chaotic. Along with a hard opening. If you watch a canopy open, the rear corners inflate first and try to spread out. You get two cups of fabric that tend to want to fan out.... Then the rest of your bottom skin inflates exposing the center nose cell. As your canopy gets bigger during snivel, you slow down which decreases pressure on your slider and with the canopy slowly pressurizing will reach the tipping point and down comes the slider. Now if you imagine a d line is just down the side of a canopy.... Now if the tail inflates, it effectively locks out that line and the canopy will inflate the rest of the way in it. Line burns ect.
I'm bored and I may have sniffed too much glue today, but that's my 2 cents. And I can replicate it on a small scale with scale canopies. A highly tapered nose makes this much more difficult to replicate.... Just saying...
I was that kid jumping out if his tree house with a bed sheet. My dad wouldn't let me use the ladder to try the roof...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

reading back I can see I wasn't very specific on what we did -

tests were done on a raven IV and if I remember right a mighty max?.... mac?... both F-111 square canopy's, both very large to make it easier to see the what/where/omgwtfcrapisthat... - no taper at all. Pretty sure mighty max was the name of the 2nd but its been many years ago [:/] - both were freaking huge canopy's - the raven was the smaller of the two but both had extremely loooong brake lines which we took the brakes attachment point to the opposite side of the nose with a small X to start then wrapped the tail - both were pro packed, - by the end of the tests we were able to do we were pulling that attachment point as far across as fabric would allow then rolling the tail - and on those beasts its a long ways with still no luck - we tried that technique coupled with actively shoving the tail down into the well of fabric with the nose - we flaked out one side and left the other a jumbled mess...loose wrapped tail, tight, one pack was with the brake lines barberpoled around each other - a no wrapped tail with the attachment points for the brakes stretched as far as possible etc...
we had planned on the last drop being a pick up the canopy and crush it into the d-bag with no care given but didn't get the chance to try that :(
each pack job was watched by the rigger in charge and who wrote down on exactly how it was packed. We had a pool going on who would get the first (which bought the consolation beer when we failed)

we tried and were stumped, we were supposed to do 20 tests but the weather rolled in and put an end to our weekend of fun at #16 and we never got back to it again.

we tried everything you are not supposed to do...

nobody ever thought about loosening the slider down from the stops, I'm not sure that would promote a better chance of a malfunction or not, but Im pretty sure it would have been a painful opening.

all I have done for the last decade or more is clear the nose, quarter the slider and wrap the tail, throw down and put it in the bag - unless I am packing for someone else... many people get nervous if you do that for them :D

I can see how a tapered nose probably makes a lineover less likely - but if you could replicate a lineover and post the video here to dz.com along with the packing "error" I know I sure would like to see it.

Roy

They say I suffer from insanity.... But I actually enjoy it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

0