Why did the original diaper tail fall into disfavor?

[gb1 2]

In the mid seventies, a linestow pad was sewn on the tail of the strato stars by many. It had a #8 grommet installed. Lines were stowed after wrapping a rubber banded tail wrap from both sides through the grommet. This held the first stow. The canopy was then folded in the container. Very few people had anything bad to say about this system. It lasted at least till the eighties. Why did it go by the wayside? Was there a problem that was discovered with the diaper tail? The old guys will remember this. Thank's

[RiggerLee 61]

It's still around in different iterations. If you look at CRW and base canopies you will see variations of this. You'll see tail pockets, tail flaps, and diapers. The Prodigy as an example had a Diaper.

As to why it fail out of favor. People wanted more positive staging and better control of the pack job as it was lifted to line stretch. Free fall speeds increased. Even before Free Fly speeds were picking up. Jump suits were getting tighter, weights etc. Canopies were becoming higher performance. A low aspect ratio seven cell, well you can just throw it out there and it would figure it self out. A modern elliptic is a bit more twitchy.

Another issue was line control. A lot of people packed that way by just coiling the line in the bottom of the tray. This can actually work till it doesn't. Every once in a while you'll half hitch a line around a side flap and get a nasty horse shoe. So the practice of coiling lines with early diapers and bags with out stows went away. People wanted better line control and bags got extra stows beyond the locking stows.

Rigs got tighter. If you do half the stuffing cramming it into a bag you can then crush it even more closing a tight container over it.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[gb1 2]

That all makes sense. Thank's

[wmw999 2,114]

Ah, back in the day. I built a diaper for my main (I started to say “a diaper for myself, but that sounds all wrong ) that addressed at least some of those issues. Enough fabric to completely contain a container’s worth of rolled nose, and enough rubber bands and room to stow all but the last couple of feet of lines. I never liked free-stowed lines.

It worked great. But no one does that any more, and with the new focus on a container that’s as small and brick-hard as possible, who’d want something designed to make it softer?

And I’m no longer as interested in being a self-employed test jumper... I’m too old to be immortal.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[riggerrob 558]

Yes,
Tail diapers were a phase in the transition from round to square reserves.
I have packed a few Hobbit and X210R reserves with tail diapers. They primarily sold to jumpers discarding their (acid mesh) round reserves with square reserves. Neither Hobbit nor X210R required freebags. Neither diapered reserve required any sewn changes to the harness-container.
Eventually, all the container manufacturers perfected free bags and diapered squares were no longer needed.

Back in the day, I jumped Strato-Cloud mains with diapers sewn onto an end rib - at the Para-Flite factory. Stowing lines on end-rib diapers was easy. The hassle was straightening 64 feet of reefing line! These canopies were made before sliders were perfected.

[gb1 2]

Rob, I appreciate your reply and you are correct. My main concern was the diaper tail on a main square canopy. It appears that a diaper deployed main, with the high performance canopies, could give a wicked opening because of being less controlled. At least compared to the original 5 cell Strato Stars they were used on with success. However, the point came up that they caused a soft spongy main pack job, compared to power packed, rock hard main container. Also I think with a bag, the manufacturers can control the shape of the rig. I am concerned with the operation of the deployment. The shape of the container can be controlled in other ways. Thank's to all of you for your input. Yes, it would not sound right if you said you made a diaper for yourself Wendy. ha ha

[Bob_Church 7]

riggerrob

Yes,
Tail diapers were a phase in the transition from round to square reserves.
I have packed a few Hobbit and X210R reserves with tail diapers. They primarily sold to jumpers discarding their (acid mesh) round reserves with square reserves. Neither Hobbit nor X210R required freebags. Neither diapered reserve required any sewn changes to the harness-container.
Eventually, all the container manufacturers perfected free bags and diapered squares were no longer needed.

Back in the day, I jumped Strato-Cloud mains with diapers sewn onto an end rib - at the Para-Flite factory. Stowing lines on end-rib diapers was easy. The hassle was straightening 64 feet of reefing line! These canopies were made before sliders were perfected.

What's the name of the reefing system where bridle was attached to the bottom of the pilot chute then fed through a hole in the canopy to an X shaped sort of slider. The sliding part didn't present enough drag to do the reefing itself, it depended on the pilot chute slowing it down as it tried to descend. I had one on the first square I ever owned, an ancient evil piece of crap designated a Parafoil but called Black Death and for good reason. And not just because it was black. You never knew what you'd get. Maybe a decent opening. Well, anything's possible I guess. Now and then the pilot chute would fall into the burble and not only would the opening knock your breath out but the sliders would be squeezing your face. It felt like the bus driver had closed the doors too soon. The closest thing to making an opening better was the 1500 feet of blue green blue green as it spun you around every which way but open.
That's when I learned my big lesson. Never buy a canopy before you can jump it. I wasn't allowed to jump a square yet when I got this great deal from an experienced jumper. I made about 12 jumps on it, had to cut it away on the last one and never bothered to hook it back up.

[RiggerLee 61]

I don't know if it had a specific name. Some times x shaped sliders like that were called spider sliders. It was just one of the various forms of pilot chute controlled reefing.

Diapers are still around in CRW canopies. A good example is the Prodigy and Express canopies. The were built by Flight concepts and we used them during Diamond Quest. It was an effort to recruit people into a CRW big way project. In the course of that they used to go around doing a bunch of CRW camps promoting it. In any case it was a good diaper with a fair bit of control of the canopy if you packed it right. The nice thing was you could just hook up the main to their container. You didn't have to worry about bag shape or trying to use their bag. It made it much easier for them to put one of the demo canopies into their own rig. Down side, no one was used to packing it, the canopies were on the big end and a lot of the containers were too small, you wound up with some very ugle pack jobs. It became a running joke. Nothing wrong with the system. In fact as a CRW canopy it had some advantages. Not having a bag swinging around like a bollo on the top of the canopy was a real advantage. When a canopy collapses in a wrap the weight of a bag can pull the bridal back out of the retract system and swing around like a weight looking for some thing to entangle with. This is not theoretical it happens a lot.

So it's been done. For that application there were advantages. It was always an up hill battle just because it was so alien to the students. And if the container is tight you can wind up with some of the ugliest pack jobs and rigs imaginable. It really did become a running joke that half the pack job was out side the container, although to be honest some times we did it just to fuck with people. A lot of our containers were just what ever we could find or they were swooping rigs pressed into service for monthly CRW training. One guy open the seams in the corners of his container with a seam ripper to fit a bigger canopy. There was one that I jumped were I would only close the top and bottom flaps. One guy had a pullout, we didn't bother taking the curved pin off the bridal it would get lost so some times it would fall down and dangle below the flaps. So he's trying to climb into the plane and the woman behind him sees it and freaks out. She's got him in a bear hug screaming "No, No!" as he's trying to climb up the ladder into the otter. He's like, "It's fine, it's fine." That's where the term dangling pin came from.

Lee

Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

[Bob_Church 7]

That's great info, thanks. In the very early 80s there were times when I thought the idea of having a rigger sew up a bunch of disposable throw outs and sort of bags and freebagging the main was a good idea. Unfortunately those times were usually when I was under canopy and desperately trying to stay that way.
If you do a google map search on Jackson County Airport in Wv that's where we were doing CReW, including a lot of night stacks. What looks like a big opening next to the airport was Kaiser Aluminum at the time and actually the worst place you could land. The night we built our "official" night 4 stack the winds were out of the NNE and so stiff that we opened in Ohio and almost in West Virginia again. It was cloudy, very little moon and strong winds and the only place you knew you could land was that tiny strip of blue lights way off in the distance. But we got it, with me coming in fifth on a four plane and one stack. I'd never come in later than third before and now allow had to do to get our numbers was fly it for the necessary time so when Gary, who was fourth, shouted about planing it Mig yelled NOOOOOOO loud enough to be heard in Kentucky. But he was right. And we got our numbers. But the idea of our pilot chute brides wrapping or anything else was just to bad to even consider.

[jackwallace 3]

There were a few inventive opening systems in the 70's. I used a strap sewn to one end cell. Wrap it around, put one line stow in and cram it in the container.
Some pushed the slider up, had rubber bands on the line attachment points on the canopy and would stow a bit of line from each riser group to hold the slider up.
That slider attached to the slider was called a pilot chute controlled slider, if I remember right. If would eat the center cell as it went through. I put a slip knot in mine just above the canopy to keep the slider up until I got full bridle extension and it would pop the knot. Yep it worked and yes everyone told me all the bad things that could happen.
Worst thing we did was the nose deployment deal. I did it one day and thought my arm was going to fall off.

U only make 2 jumps: the first one for some weird reason and the last one that you lived through. The rest are just filler.
scr 316

[riggerrob 558]

Yes.
“Pilot chute controlled slider” one of the many steps to a among openings. Just like ropes-and-rings, that long bridle had to slide through the middle of the canopy. Even with big grommets and thick cotton panels, sloppy packing caused canopy burns.

A few Para-Foils and military HALO canopies got double-length PCCS. One end of the long bridle was tied to the Centre cell bottom skin. It was routed through a pulley on the X-slider, back up through the middle of the canopy and finally tied to the pilot chute. Theoretically, the longer bridle doubled the “pulley effect” but they were only briefly fashionable.

[gb1 2]

The canopy burns were caused by ropes entering grommets carried canopy fabric with it. We caused those little holes "astro vents".

[mathrick 2]

RiggerLee

And if the container is tight you can wind up with some of the ugliest pack jobs and rigs imaginable. It really did become a running joke that half the pack job was out side the container

So in other words, just a regular CRW packjob?

"Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

[gb1 2]

Just like many square reserve pack jobs.

[riggerrob 558]

Funny!
Back during the mid-1990s, Rigging Innovations, Jump Shack, etc. are sewing specialized CReW containers for Canopy Formation competeitors with extra-wide riser covers, etc.
Sloppy pack jobs are ........ well ........ sloppy!

As for sloppy reserve pack jobs ..... most start with customers ordering the smallest possible container, but insisting on buying a medium-sized reserve canopy.