Anyone remember para-planes?

[steve1 5]

The first square canopy that I remember seeing was a para-plane back in the mid 70's. We were all in awe watching a club member swooping in and doing a standup with it. I even jumped it a couple times, but it was kind of scary, because it would malfunction about every ten jumps or so. Maybe we weren't packing it right. I also didn't have a clue how to land it properly. But at any rate, I was just wondering if anyone remembers this canopy? I'm sure it was really primitive by today's standards. Steve1

[slotperfect 7]

Never saw one (other than pictures), but I heard it had-non-cascaded Type IV suspension lines and no stabilizers. Can anyone back me up on that??

Arrive Safely

John

[cpoxon 0]

From Classic Heritage

Quote

Steve Snider was an early skydiver turned entrepreneur who saw the commercial/sport potential of the ram air canopy. Snider formed Para Flite to market advanced canopies. Its first product was the Delta 2 Para Wing a triangular Rogallo canopy that enjoyed moderate market success. The next canopy was a ram air, dubbed the "Para Plane."

The Para Plane was almost identical to the Notre Dame Foil, only the line attachment was shifted up into the rib itself, to avoid possible legal action by Jalbert. Thus was borne "direct line attachment," which Para Flite subsequently patented.

The Para Plane was really fast, close to the speed of a Sabre, and as such, was not much of a accuracy parachute. But it was a thrill to jump, a real crowd pleaser at demos. The pack volume was enormous by today's standards, but by far the biggest shortcoming was a brutal opening shock, enough to leave serious bruises at any speed above a sub terminal exit.

No mention of stabilisers though

[jimmytavino 16]

Sure,,, LOOONG lines,,,, Huge D-Bag... We used to use TWO MA-1 spring loaded pilot chutes,,, packed inside the container which was closed with cone/grommet mating,,, and then pinned with a 3 or a 4 pin ripcord.... Pull the ripcord,, all pins extracted
at the same time,,,,"bungees" helped peel the container aside,, pilot chutes jumped out....
They (para planes) were fast, compared to the rounds of the day......... No sliders, at that time, so openings were stiff..... But they could cruise.......I think they did not have stabilizers....(Later the para plane cloud and the para plane cloud lite may have) .The first time I jumped one, I was briefed before boarding,,,,,,,
had a good opening and was " rippin' accross the sky... the wind noise was impressive....... I thought the toggle pressure was HUGE,,,, anyway,,, landed near the pea gravel.... and as I'm walking in with a buddy he looks over at the gear and goes,,,"Hey Jimmy,,,,
you NEVER popped the toggles out of the Brake finger traps.!!!!...Then came the STRATO STAR.... but don't get me started...... about THAT canopy....

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

My dad had one of the first Para Planes. He acquired it straight from Dickie Morgan; I remember it vividly.

Chuck

[Kirils 1]

In 1971 my buddy showed up at the DZ with an all red Para-Plane. Now most of us jumped T-10 rounds or the canopies like the Para-Commander. The Para-Plane canopy was awesome to see fly. It was a beautiful canopy and the esthetics of it cannot be compared to the canopies of today.
The Thunderbow was the only other one that I really fell in love with. I wish the younger jumpers could understand how beautiful these canopies were!

[AggieDave 6]

Well, anyone have some photos to help a young jumper out? Geez, I mean, I was born in 1980...

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[wmw999 2,121]

Imagine a square; much closer to square than they are now, with REALLY REALLY long lines, with no cascades.

While this isn't a paraplane (it's a parasled instead), it gives you an idea of how long the lines were, and what a 5-cell looked like in those days.

http://www.parachutehistory.com/ramair/parasled.html

The plane would have had a flat bottom and no stabilizers -- kinda like a mattress.

Wendy W.
(oops -- forgot the link)

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)

[steve1 5]

The Thunderbow was the only other one that I really fell in love with. I wish the younger jumpers could understand how beautiful these canopies were
..........................................................................
A girl in our club used to have a Thunderbow canopy. It looked cool and usually opened very reliably. I don't know if this is true, but some of the old guys in our club talked about the time when she had a line-over malfunction. Supposedly another guy landed on top of her canopy with his para-commander and walked off the edge of her chute with the line in hand, thus fixing her malfunction. Supposedly this really happened. It does make a great jump story. Steve1

[AggieDave 6]

If that was true, that'd be one hell of a feat!

Thanks for the pic, I love hearing these sort of stories and learning about the sports past.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[councilman24 36]

I have one jump on a Para Plane. My first ram air was a Strato Cloud, also by ParaFlite. I jumped a ParaPlane once just to say I had. It's still around the DZ used in the class. Comes down like a rock, doesn't flair a whole lot, but I stood it up.

Terry

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[billbooth 10]

I had been jumping a Delta II Parawing from Paraflite, so I had had a lot of contact with Steve Snyder. On one phone call, complaining about this or that, he told me he had hot new design that I just had to jump. I bit...and a few weeks later Steve showed up a my drop zone in Homestead, Florida. He had flown down from New Jersey to personally deliver his new Paraplane to me. At this point, I had never even seen a ram air canopy, so Steve told me what he knew, modified my container with a locking strap to stow the 35 foot pilot chute controlled reefing lines, packed it up, took my $550, and promptly left... promising to send me a packing manual when they got around to writing one.

That day was rained out, so bright and early the next morning I hopped out of our Cessna on a 3 second delay. BAM! There it was, the first ram air I had ever seen, right there over my head. What a strange looking beast. It had 30 foot suspension lines, so it looked more like a postage stamp than a parachute. Then I made my second mistake. I released the the brakes. The sudden accelleration and the wind noise scared the hell out of me, and I almost cut away. It had always been serenely quiet under canopy, but this beast was making more noise than a malfunctioned PC.

The lines were so long, that if you tried to turn too quickly, the canopy would be already turned 180 degrees before your body started turning. The long lines also made it hard to stand up landing in light winds, because in a hard flair, you were thrown so far out in front of the canopy, that you ended up falling over backwards most of the time. After 4 or 5 of us spent hours trying to figure out how to repack the contraption (the rings and rope reefing system, although it didn't work nearly as well as a slider, was 10 times more complicated), I decided that one jump was more than enough for that day.

Nonetheless, I was hooked, and my log book shows over 300 three second delays in a row before we figured out how to take it to terminal. I can't believe that I didn't have the idea of the slider beaten into me during those early jumps.

By the time of the first relataive work Nationals in 1972, I was regulary taking my ParaPlane to terminal. The openings were brutal, but I was young and foolish. Besides, the canopy always looked so beautiful with all the brightly colored stars floating around it.

When I got to Tallaqua, I was told I wouldn't be allowed to jump my Paraplane in competition because ram airs took up so much space on opening, that doing relative work with them was unsafe. After a lot of arguing, a comprimse was reached. I would be allowed to jump, but only if I promised to open lower than anyone else on my team...and with a team full of low pullers, this scared the hell out of me.

On the last jump of the meet, I tracked off, went into my normal tight tuck (if you stayed spread eagle through a terminal opening on a Paraplane, you hands were thrown down so violently that they got all torn up on the leg hardware), pulled the ripcord, and woke up in an ambulance. The beast had finally knocked me clean out. (I have to laugh when someone tells me they had a hard opening nowadays.)

Luckily, soon thereafter, the StratoStar came out with a decent reefing system...and then the slider was rediscovered. I turned out the slider had been invented, and patented, in the 30's for round canopies, and then promptly forgotten. I have often thought that all the abuse I went through on early ram airs could have been avoided if only I had read through all those forgotten patents in the 20's and 30's.

[AggieDave 6]

Quote

I have often thought that all the abuse I went through on early ram airs could have been avoided if only I had read through all those forgotten patents in the 20's and 30's

Mr. Booth, once again its a pleasure to read your posts.

Do you think that there is anything else out there that we've "forgotten"?

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[steve1 5]

Mr. Booth,
You should write a book of your life. We are truly enjoying your stories. I'll bet a para-plane does look prettier with all the little stars floating around. I never thought of it that way. That kind of reminds me of my boxing days when I finally came to the conclusion my head wasn't hard enough for that sport. Best of luck. Steve1

[billbooth 10]

You can bet I've read all those old patents now. I've also tried to talk to as many "oldtimers" as I can find. I remember talking to Tiny Broadwick just before she died. She of course made the first freefall jump back in the "teens", and made over a thousand more through the 1920's. She weighed just over 90 lbs., and jumped a 32 foot silk round. She had her parachute in a backpack, held shut by break cord. Attached to the apex was a short piece of static line with a knot in one end, which ran over her shoulder and was held in place with a rubber band. At pull time she would grab the knot, extend it to arms length, opening the container and pulling the apex into the slip stream, and wait for the freepacked canopy to blow out of the container, releasing the "static line" at just the right moment.

When I asked her how many malfunctions she had using this rather unique deployment method, she quietly answered "27". When I then asked her what she used for a reserve, and she questioned, "What's a reserve?" I almost s**t. Then I realized that her malfunctions were most likely "Mae West" partial inversions, and that her large canopy combined with her light weight allowed her to walk away from all of them. A real pioneer like that really puts all us hot shots to shame, doesn't she?

[jbrasher 0]

I met her in 1977 at an air show where she was the guest of honor. She signed my logbook
Very interesting women, she was 83 at the time and used a walker because of a stroke but it didn't slow her down. She believed we should all be paid to jump

Red, White and Blue Skies,

John T. Brasher D-5166

[darkwing 4]

One of my teammates in 1976 had a para-plane. We stripped off all the old reefing system, took off a bunch of the reinforcing tapes, re-lined it, and put a slider on it. We also messed with the trim, which I did after chatting with Elek Puskas of ParaFlite. We called it the "scara-plane" but it was jumpable for RW, although still kind of big, even by the standards of the day (e.g., a Strato-star)

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[cloud9 0]

I remember the paraplane, but never saw one. It seems though that I do recall a square I saw in Z hills that someone was calling a baby plane. Did they make a smaller version? Anyway my first square jump was a Strato star, with the reefing system on top. It malfunctioned twice in 20 jumps! Had a slider put on it and cured that problem.

[fergs 0]

I made my first jump in 1973 in Papua New Guinea. On the same load, my instructor had a brand new paraplane - and believe me, he was more nervous than I on that load.

His was made by EFA, a French parachute manufacturer, as opposed to Para Flite, who made the US versions. The two guys in New Guinea who ended up with paraplanes always maintained that the french model was superior to the US one - but that belief was probably a product of the fact that they never actually saw or jumped a Para Flite one.

So after 20 jumps on a 7TU, I went to paracomander, UT15, Thunderbow, reefed stratostar, slider stratostar x 2, paracloud x 2, cruisair, pegasus, X-210, Raven x 2, Sabre, and now a Spectre.

So I think I've experienced the evolution of canopies over the past 30 years or so.

At the time my first strato star arrived in the post, there were no longer any square canopy pilots left in the country.

So I had to try to work out how to pack the baby from the manual. Remember, all the terminology was new. I remember distinctly reading something like "...flake the canopy by going from high point to high point ...". Huh?!!!!! what the heck was a "high point"?

The strats came with their own taylor made little containers, so that had to be installed on my harness too. This container had special locking stows to put the 15 miles of reefing line into.

Anyhow, it opened, much to everyones amazement.

70 or 80 jumps later I was on vacation in the US. I busted my femur at Antioch in California after the canopy repacked itself at 100' or so . Soon thereafter the manuals started warning about something they called a "gust induced stall". I guess that's what caught me by surprise and gave me the rough landing. Ironically, another guy on the load (you still out there, Larry?) had a malfunction, cutaway and was riding an unmodified 24' flat reserve. I thought I should land near him as he was sure to be injured. Yep, you guessed it, he didn't even end up with bruises, despite the 30 mph winds that day ..... no, there's no moral to the story - we still should follow down people we think are or may be injured.

The shorter lined strat with slider was a different machine altogether. Gone were complicated pack jobs - and performance improved too.

Before jumping squares, my Thunderbow was my favourite canopy. For those who have never seen one - it was triangular, with a huge arrow pointing foreward (so we knew which way we were flying ...hahaha). Mine was all black, with red arrow - very classy!!

The T-bow (all cool thunderbow jumpers called them a T-bow) opened with the nose - the front pointy end - semi collapsed. You had to get it up to full drive with a quarter brakes. And the T-bow could actually be flown in reverse quite easily and stable.

SO whatever you happen to be jumping today, stay fun, keep smiling and be safe.

Blue Skies, fergs

[Thom 0]

The T-Bow was a wonderful canopy and I went thru two of them in the 70's and early 80's. It could keep up with the squares (I'm quite tall) if the other jumper was average weight or less and actually had a 2.32-1 glide ration which was actually better than the early squares.

On bad days in Colorado myself and the Strato-Stars would be the only ones to make it to the DZ while the PC, PAPS etc were blown all over the country. Its the best non-square ever designed and the best of the triangles.

[Thom 0]

I found an ad for the PP dated 1970 today. Price was $550 with EPOD (Extra painful opening device)
THOM

[hilly 0]

Bill sure remembers what the para-plane was like.

I jumped one in 1972 and it had 19ft lines - really long I ordered one @
costing a huhe $550. We were told they were shortlining the new one. When mine arrived and I had the first jump everyone around commented on the long line length. Without measuring the line length I decided to shorten them by 6ft. I took the canopy up and jumped. The canopy was very close on opening. The factory had in fact shrtened the lines by 3ft. I had a canopy with 9ft off the uriginal line length. A least the canopy did not get line twists like all the other paraplanes.
I also did my first tandemmaster jump in 1972 with a paraplane by attaching another jumper to me and exiting attached by a harnessand opening, We flew around together (at an incredible speed) The passenger cutaway from my harness at 2000ft and opened his PC. It was the passengers first square jump.
Hilly

[fergs 0]

Hilly,

you're still a bloody legend!! So are we to accept that you invented Tandem? OK, I'm convinced ...

Incidentally, I was in Oz for a few days last week - called in to Wilton wednesday arvo as I was driving up to Syd from Cbr to fly out - only to find no one around and all aircraft tied down. Disappointing.

May be back in MArch or April - will make it on a weekend day that time...

fergs

[afgbigal 0]

I remember seeing my first para-plane when a couple of jumper came up to Fairbanks, Alaska in early 1971. All I could think of was how to get my hands on one of those "rocketships". Bought my first one from Steve Snyder in early 1972 when I went to his house in Cherry Hill, NJ. Later I modified my original paraplane with a slider, and stablizer panels, short lined and removed about what seemed like 10 lbs of binding tape. I jumped that canopy into 1984.

[moodyskydiver 0]

I watched the video of a friend of mine jumping his dad's para plane that he'd used in the 70s.He was telling me ths history about it and stuff..pretty cool to learn.

"...just an earthbound misfit, I."