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ralu

What was your first canopy?

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The first one I owned was a Starlite, in a Starlite piggyback. I put about 400 jumps on it, and really loved it.

Wendy W.
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)

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The first I jumped was an unmodified t-10 in the army. When I started sport jumping I had a 28 ft. (7 T-U). The first rig I owned was a solid red, Mark 1 Para-commander. I also bought a new Navy Blue Super-Pro harness and container. My reserve was Pioneer chest mount with a 24 ft. inside. I wish I still had that rig. Steve1

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Mine was a ragged out Fury 220, d.o.m around 1986 (same as my first container, an SST Racer - y'know, with the exposed risers over the shoulders). I bought it used in 1990 and put a little over 200 jumps on it. Was great for doing casual CRW at the bottom of RW jumps ;)

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> The first one I owned was a Starlite, in a Starlite piggyback.
> I put about 400 jumps on it, and really loved it.

Now *that* is hard core :-) :-)

I had my first malfunction on a Starlite. Well, actually,
I had had a few reserves out from screwing around
in my younger days, but that Starlite was the first one
that didn't open when I meant for it to.

1975, jump #1701, the last jump of the nationals,
there I wuz ...

We, the Exhibition Team, were demo-ing this new
sequential stuff at the style & accuracy & speed star
nationals. The meet was over, the winner, Captain
Hook had just organized a beautiful 32(?) way star.

We were next, how were we going to top that?
We settled on a 25 way diamond, which had never
been done before.

In order to be sure that everybody got a good look
we built it right over the crowd and held it to 3,000 ft.

I loved tracking over a crowd, especially with a
piggyback and wearing smoke, so in the heat of
the moment I may have been a little low.

WHACK ! The legendary Starlite opening, except
that the stabilizers on one side were all tangled with
the steering lines.

Possibly due to the over boogie factor that week
I hadn't had much sleep, so I decided to do the
classic screw around with it, lose track of altitude
and get myself into really deep shit maneuver.

I was really into it when I heard this distant voice
saying "Cutawaaaay!". Somebody up above had
been watching the show.

I woke up - Oh, yeah, right - glance down - I can
do it - ching, ching, shot and a halfs - falling away
with one leg stuck out about 15 or 20 feet trying to
keep that smoke bracket away from my reserve and

Poof! Beautiful 26 foot lopo conical.

I had no trouble with lack of sleep after that, I was
wide awake for 2 or 3 hours.

Skr

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T -10,,,for my first 3 jumps,,, then a red and black and white 28" lopo. for about 15 more
First main I ever owned was a Green and black and white French Papillon.......in a stylemaster rig,,,chest mount reserve.... shot some good downwind accuracy with that papillon..:)1,000 jumps on a round main.....

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I remember them; I had one for my first square. Not a bad canopy.

Wendy W.
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)

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Hey, that was my first rig too!!! I had a 135 tomcat in mine though, with a round reserve. Don't know when mine was manufactured, but it was old when I got it 4 years ago.

The exposed risers really scared the shit out of people....lol

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Mine was an Airforce B-11 28' flat circular with a 7 gore TU and a sleeve pulled by 2 pilot chutes to prevent "burble". Moved on to a modified T-10 because the landings were too hard (I weighed around 225 at the time) My reserve was also a 28' flat circular with a single T.
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