Smoke Pants

[ptwob231 0]

I read about the BASE innovation of smoke pants to improve tracking from objects so I decided to make a pair and see how they worked for skydiving. Atle is the real innovater of this design but I made a few modifications to help improve durability since skydives, in general, produce high airspeeds and longer durations. The original design by Atle calls for one pair of heavy duty rain pants (buy them at a walmart or wherever - $20) sealed off at the cuffs of the legs and the waist and four cigarette burn size holes on either side of the crotch. Its imporatant that the crotch hangs down near the knees so that theres lots of space for the pants to inflate. I bought a ripstop nylon pair made by stearns at walmart and reinforced the seams with 3/4" binding tape and put bungee cord around the cuffs to make a seal at the ankles. I only pulled the cuffs half way up my foot and then put shoes on over them so that they stuck down around my heels. I used a leather belt to seal off the waist. For the smoke holes, I put 5"x5" patches of cordura on the inside and outside of the pants about an inch to either side of the crotch. Then I punched four size 3 grommets in each of the patches for intakes. The design held strong for all three jumps I did with them on Saturday with no sign of wear. If Atle has any other suggestions I hope he can post them here:). As far as performance, I dont have a protrack so i don't have my downward speed but it was slower than usual and my dives were approximately 5 or 10 seconds longer than a normal tracking dive from 11000', pulling at 3500'. Horizontal speed was f-in fast and covering a lot more ground. The biggest thing I found was to spread my feet about a foot or a foot and a half apart to get better inflation. I'll try to post pics this week and get some speeds next weekend. Thanks Smokeman for the sweet invention! Hope this was helpful.