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shah269

Rolled/fold Vs. S fold

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This is for those of us guys who are jumping 200+ sqft canopies as often as we jump so if you are packing a 150 and under or are a professional packer please withhold snarky comments. Yes we know you are good and can pack with your hands tied behind your back so this is a question for the rest of us.

I will be jumping a 210 triathlon later this summer when I downsize. For now I will be utilizing the DZ's various student rigs. I've had some issues with respect to S folding and keeping material control. Looking around this forum and online I saw a hybrid psycho pack / pro pack method of packing where by the parachute is pulled and folded on itself tightly in one continuous "roll" with the bridle pulled to the side. Doing so significantly reduced packing volume and also greatly increased my ability to "control" the material.

My good friend who is a superb packer came over my place last night for a bit of a drink and I demonstrated the packing technique to him. He was impressed at the ease in which it all worked and liked the overall final packing volume. His concern was due to the bridle being pulled to one side before the parachute was placed in the D-Bag may an asymmetrical pull on the canopy and thus causing the canopy to open up in a line twist. The S fold method placed the bridle dead center and as such symmetrical pressure on the top skin.

Again without getting into a pissing match and self declaration of greatness and infallibility thoughts on the issue?
Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

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Stop tyring to engineer this too. Just go to the DZ every weekend, and pack the student rigs every chance you get. In less than 20 packjobs, you'll see that packing is like any other pedestrian skill in that with a little bit of practice, you can easliy be as good as 90% of the packers out there. If you spent 1/4 of the time you think about packing actually packing, you would be past this issue, and on to thinking about things worth thinking about (hint- packing isn't one of them).

Your good friend who is a 'supurb' packer is not a 'supurb' thinker when it comes to deployment. Routing the bridle out the side will not cause linetwists or any other unwanted consequences on opening. Consider the size of the PC vs. the size of the canopy, and tell me you think the one is going to effect the other (laterally) in a high speed airstream. Beyond that, the PC is seperate from the bridle routing in the bag, and it's out there doing it's job, pulling directly in-line with the airstream long before the canopy ever sees the light of day.

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Yes I'm very sorry it is a 220.
I'm sorry but you said a bridle extension?
So instead of pulling the bridle to the side you would "fold it" in instead of pulling to the side?
Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

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Yes I'm very sorry it is a 220.
I'm sorry but you said a bridle extension?
So instead of pulling the bridle to the side you would "fold it" in instead of pulling to the side?



No. The bridle extension simply allows it to have a little more slack inside the bag. It still comes out to the side of the roll.

And a used Tri is easy to pack. Just practice a bunch of times. Bigger is a bit more of a challenge because there is more fabric to deal with, but it isn't really any different.
"There are NO situations which do not call for a French Maid outfit." Lucky McSwervy

"~ya don't GET old by being weak & stupid!" - Airtwardo

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All,
The true advantage I've noticed and so did my good friend other than the ease is the great reduction in volume. The continuous fold allows one to pull all the material and lines tight and thus greatly reduce volume.
Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

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All,
The true advantage I've noticed and so did my good friend other than the ease is the great reduction in volume. The continuous fold allows one to pull all the material and lines tight and thus greatly reduce volume.



I doesn't reduce pack volume, the material is still there. It makes it easier to manage thats about it (and also tha is a subjective statement) I can S fold the same canopy that you will roll and can get it the same size.

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His concern was due to the bridle being pulled to one side before the parachute was placed in the D-Bag may an asymmetrical pull on the canopy and thus causing the canopy to open up in a line twist



He is wrong.

You should just learn how to pack and quit trying to learn how to pack on the internet.... It requires a rig and hands on experience.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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I'm surprised to find a skydiving-related post with your name on it. I guess I'd forgotten that you occasionally jump between misogynistic rants.

Anyway, I've Psycho-Packed several types of canopies for many years with good results. The bridle being off to the side does not affect the opening, as far as I can tell. The idea that the canopy is being pulled off-center by the asymmetrical placement of the bridle is an illusion. The bridle still comes out of the bag through the grommet in the center, right? This is the point from which the bag (with canopy inside) is lifted. The bottom flap of the bag, held closed by the locking stows, holds the canopy in as the bag is accelerated away from the container. The whole time that the lines are unstowing, the canopy is held in the bag, which is hanging from the center-mounted bridle. Even as the locking stows come out, the bag is being held from the center. The time between when the bottom flap opens and the canopy emerges into the airflow is, I believe, too short of a period to allow the off-center orientation of the bridle to affect it. In that short time the bridle goes from the side to the top of the canopy and the canopy opens symmetrically.

I originally started roll-packing because arthritis in my hands made it difficult to do S-folds and control the material. But it is also great for lower-experienced folks with slippery canopies.

Kevin

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Kevin
Thank you.
so that last little "kink" you get when you test out the parachute on the ground as the bridle pulls the top skin a little is no big deal.
OK cool :)

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

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What Dave said, you are spending way too much time thinking about it.
A psycho pack is a little "thicker" than a PRO pack. I found when my canopy got worn enough that I could PRO pack it I had to tighten the closing loop a little.
As long as the lines are in the center and the slider is up and quartered, everything else is just getting it in the bag. :)



"Don't! Get! Eliminated!"

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Sorry guys, low jump number I still have to "think" before I act.
Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

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His concern was due to the bridle being pulled to one side before the parachute was placed in the D-Bag may an asymmetrical pull on the canopy and thus causing the canopy to open up in a line twist



He is wrong.

You should just learn how to pack and quit trying to learn how to pack on the internet.... It requires a rig and hands on experience.


he does EVERYTHING on the interwebz.. :|
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

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I still have to "think" before I act



There is "thinking" and "over thinking"

You are over thinking.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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For a lot of people phyco packing is easier and I have yet to hear any real reason to propack instead, I'm sort of sick of people getting on here and insisting that your doing it wrong and you need to learn to pack the "real way"
"Do you really want to take advice from the guy we call Tarmac?"

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I will echo the thoughts of the others - get out and pack. Every time you pack, you will find more things to wonder about and ask about. You will also get used to the different ways that components look under different circumstances. It's all lumped together as "experience". Even if you're not jumping, packing a lot will give you a much better understanding of component function, wear patterns, and failure modes than simply reading about it. Yes, it's boring and it's not jumping, but it all adds info to that database brain of yours, and can be useful when you least expect it. You will also learn shortcuts and easier methods as you better understand the packing process.
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Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

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For a lot of people phyco packing is easier and I have yet to hear any real reason to propack instead, I'm sort of sick of people getting on here and insisting that your doing it wrong and you need to learn to pack the "real way"



No one is telling him what you are claiming. We are telling him not to try and learn to pack on the internet and that his buddy gave him bad information.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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Since you don't have your own rig yet, see if the DZO will let you take a club rig home overnight some time. Then put on some music or TV in the background and spend an evening in your living room packing over & over again.



Also works for manifest girls.
"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

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So true... when I begin the attempt to pack a new canopy, the canopy controlled me and I wanted to beat the f%$# out of it and it would not go into the bag. After countless tries it started to happen naturally. It is kind of funny, but when I come from work very stressed out I actually open my rig and pack it over and over until I calm down...go figure..:S

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Here's my 2 cents worth. First of all, psycho packing should be called psycho bagging for this reason. The pack job is EXACTLY the same as a pro-pack. It's just that once you get it pro-packed, it is a simpler and much easier way of folding the canopy to get it in the bag. At least it is for me. When I first read about psycho bagging some 3 years ago I, of course, was very skeptical. Then I began investigating. I called George Galloway (one of the co-inventors of the psycho bagging method) at Precision Aerodynamics and talked to him extensively. I watched the video on their website over and over as I was practicing this packing method. So, no, I didn't just read about this one day and then go out and jump with it the next day. But what amazed me was just how easily and neatly I could prepare the canopy for bagging using this method. I spent many, many days and packed many, many times until I was confident that everything was correct. And remember, the canopy is still pro-packed, so the only thing to learn was the bagging procedure. At this point, I called George Galloway again just to assure myself. He gave me all the stats from the hundreds of thousands of jumps they have made using this method. When I hung up the phone I was totally convinced I was ready to jump with my canopy packed using this method except for one thing. I wanted to contact the manufacturer of my canopy and see what they had to say about it. I was jumping a Pilot, so I called Aerodyne and this is what they told me. They said that a neat psycho-pack was MUCH better than a sloppy pro-pack. They said that even though they don't necessarily recommend it for their canopies, there was nothing wrong with it and it would not damage the canopy in any way. They said that if I could get it neatly into the bag with this method then go for it. I went out the following weekend and jumped my first psycho-pack. It opened as good as any opening I have had with the pro-pack. That was three years ago and I have been psycho-packing (bagging) ever since, and enjoy jumping much more because I am no longer struggling to get the canopy in the bag. Also, I think my openings are more consistent simply because all my pack jobs are now neat. Now, please understand that I am in no way saying that psycho-packing is better than pro-packing. All I am saying is that it sure does work for me.

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