Reserve drill for old round kit

[howardwhite 5]

Gee, no one mentioned "shelf" and "cover."

I didn't teach that, but it was taught down the road a bit. It referred to pulling your knees up under your reserve to provide a "shelf" that was supposed to keep the canopy from dropping down between your legs. I guess just keeping your legs together might accomplish the same thing.

HW

[niu 0]

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LOOK
REACH
PULL
FIND SKIRT
THROW
SPREAD
SHAKE
DEPLOY LINES
From 1971 FJC

That would be correct for a low speed malfunction,if the reserve is not equipped with a pilot chute.
In case of a high speed mal,we were taught to pull the reserve first and cut away/fix any entanglements afterwards.
If the reserve had a pc on it it was cutaway while sticking the legs forward to tip backwards that was the way to do it.
Never had to try any version,which can be seen as either fortunate or unfortunate.

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[steve1 5]

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dont forget to throw away that main ripcord!.killed at least a few people getting tangled in the reserve lines!

.........................

I wish someone would have told me some of this back in the 70's. Noone I knew covered their capewells or threw away any of their rip cords on purpose.

Actually I got kind of rattled on my second malfunction back then, and did drop my main rip cord on my second mally. I gave my chest mount a pull after cutting away, and the handle seemed stuck so I said the hell with the main rip cord and gave it a toss and finally got the reserve to open.

I think one of the most interesting malfunctions that I recall was watching a streamer. (Do you remember Sam Scott....Fred?) At any rate Sam somehow got on like twenty second delays. Every time he would start spinning like a top and then finish by opening his main. This was kind of entertaining to watch from the ground. I don't know why someone didn't put him back on hop and pops.

One day Sam was jumping and needed a reserve. I said hell, I've got a reserve you can borrow. So I loaned him Randy Jone's belly mount which didn't have a pilot chute. Sam wasn't trained to do cut aways yet. So anyway there he went spinning again, but this time on opening he had a streamer that wouildn't clear.

Sam did as he was trained and just pulled the reserve (without cutting away). It saved his life but he ended up burning all kinds of holes in the reserve from friction, (by opening against the main lines). And then he kind of forgot to pay for getting the reserve fixed, or packed. Randy is still pissed over that one.

I know that Sam still shows up at Lost Prairie once in a while. Maybe Randy will too. I wonder which old fart would win if they scrap it out. Sam's definitely in better shape. But Randy is a wild man ex-logger. I don't think being old and fat will slow him down much! Anyone want to take any bets on this grudge match. I mean it's only been about 35 years.

And then there was that malfunction Randy had up in Canada. He had a May West, and was jumping another reserve without a pilot chute. He threw it out in the direction of spin, but it went up inside his main. Somehow he pulled it out and threw it out again. This happened a couple of times and then he slammed into the snow and frozen ground. His reserve never did deploy! Well Randy was banged up some, but that didn't stop him from drinking that night. He was jumping with the Canadian Army freefall team and his money was no good that evening.

It kind of helped back then to be young and dumb and really tough!...Steve1

[skr 1]

> Gee, no one mentioned "shelf"

Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that.

I was taught the grab the skirt and shake it approach,
but a couple years later I had moved to Southern California

(is it normal to apply to graduate schools base on where
the best dropzones are? :-) :-)

and I learned the down and out and into the spin idea
from Bob Sinclair.

I had the impression that he had come up with that,
but I don't actually know whose idea it was.

Anyway, I went up and tried it a couple times, and without
thinking about it I drew my knees up to make a shelf to
hold the blob of canopy while I was getting a good grip
on it.

You needed to throw it as a blob and it tended to squirt
out like a watermelon seed if you didn't get a good grip
before raising it up over your head for the throw.


The shelf seemed like a good refinement and I started
teaching it that way.

Boy, that seems like a different lifetime!

[davidlayne 5]

When jumping with a non pilot chute equipped, belly mount reserve. Under a spinning malfunction we were taught to spit to determine spin direction and then throw the reserve out into the prevailing wind.

No recollection of procedure if your mouth was all puckered up!

I don't care how many skydives you've got,
until you stepped into complete darkness at
800' wearing 95 lbs of equipment and 42 lbs
of parachute, son you are still a leg!

[sundevil777 94]

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Could be...

Of course the Center Pull was instrumental in many
instances of 'instant dental work' when the
Steven's system went into use...

When I was a student, I would detach the Steven's line when the jumpmaster wasn't looking (in the plane). I didn't like the thought of the dental work or getting it ripped out of my hand. I would also pull out the Sentinel power cord to disable it.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[Andy9o8 0]

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Could be...

Of course the Center Pull was instrumental in many
instances of 'instant dental work' when the
Steven's system went into use...

When I was a student, I would detach the Steven's line when the jumpmaster wasn't looking (in the plane). I didn't like the thought of the dental work or getting it ripped out of my hand. I would also pull out the Sentinel power cord to disable it.

I had a cutaway with a chest-mount reserve and a Stevens line. The reserve handle was gone before I could reach it; and no, it didn't smack me in the face (I don't think). It was a right-side mounted handle, though, not a center-mount. It had that additional heavy Sentinel rod attached to it, so if it had hit me in the face, I'd probably have noticed it.

As for Sentinels, I know one person killed because of one (premature firing), another person killed who might have been saved by one, one person who was killed despite it functioning properly, and one person saved by one. For what it's worth.

[tbrown 26]

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Yeah, I forgot the direction of the spin part, and the cover your capewells with your left arm part. As soon as they were mentioned the memories came flooding back.

Oh yeah, definitely cover those Capewells with your left arm. The old one and a half shot Capewells in standard use by the seventies left a lot of nasty snaggy garbage hanging out in front of you. The day I made my first freefall (7/13/74) my JM and I had no sooner landed than one of my JM's pals approached him and told him that a friend had just gone in on a demo jump at some County Fair. I'd never met the guy, but his name was Paul Pogorzelski, or "Pogo" and he'd cutaway from a malfunctioned ParaPlane Cloud and snagged some part of his reserve on his open Capewell hardware. It streamered his reserve and he'd gone in. He's part of the group picture in front of the Twin Beech at Akron in the "Beaver" thread (scr72.jpg, my old friend Jimmy Tavino identifies names a couple posts down from the pic, Paul was the kid third from left in the back row). I knew another guy who was friends with Pogo and went to his wake. So when R2's and R3's came out, they were considered a HUGE advance because they replaced all that gnarly metal with soft fabric.

As for the Sentinels, I remember those too. Andy9o8 and I both got started at the same place and we've PM'ed a lot about it. There was a Sentinel that prematurely fired at 3 grand, killing a freefaller above the deploying reserve (the guy had calibrated it in the plane, after takeoff, a really dumb thing to do that cost someone else his life). But I also knew a chick from my school who never pulled on her first freefall and the sentinel saved her. she never jumped again, but had the spent squib made into a piece of jewelry that she always wore afterwards.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[Amazon 7]

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Oh yeah, definitely cover those Capewells with your left arm. The old one and a half shot Capewells in standard use by the seventies left a lot of nasty snaggy garbage hanging out in front of you.

I had 5 chops on shot and a half Capewells( Military called them J-1 Releases.)
3 of those were on belly warts, first one at jump #5 on an old B-4 surplus rig and again at about jump #60 same rig. The reserve was a surplus C-9 .

The procedure was see the garbage.. pull the covers down... insert thumbs into the rings and pull out and away with both hands....
bring your left arm over to cross the top of the reserve/ cover the capewells... put your butt down bring your legs up and together similar to the old military static line exit so you would go into a tango uniform position as you reached for the reserve handle... and look to the side so you did not eat the reserve pack tray as it came up to meet your face. #3 was a water jump.. static line and the procedure worked there as well.. although I was sitting under the 24' flat at about 500'

All of them were due to packing excellence.. the first two I can blame my excellence in packing my french papillions steering lines... #3 was a military rigger who I had a little chat with... about what causes a madly spinning 50% 180 inversion figure 8 mae west...

[Tonto 1]

I was trained on C-9 and T-10 mains, with capewells. There was no cutaway in our procedure, and no pilot chute on our reserves.

It went like this:

1. Tuck. (De-arch)
2. Left hand across reserve, right hand on reserve handle
3. Pull and throw (the reserve handle)
4. Right hand back in, then both hands open reserve container
5. Throw canopy down (and into the spin)

In the event of a cutaway,

1. Look. (Which was odd, cos you couldn't see both at once)
2. Open (Dust covers)
3. Thumbs in! (to the 2 wire hoops that (sometimes) popped up)
4. Pull (Evenly, or only one side would release and you'd be fucked.
5. Get your thumbs out of the loops, and then start the procedure mentioned 1st.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Amazon 7]

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3. Thumbs in! (to the 2 wire hoops that (sometimes) popped up)

They always popped up for me.. BUT the reason some did not pop up was that some people would put the cable in the same slot that the bottom of the cover would fit in.. BAD IDEA.....They just need to be folded down and put under the cover as it is closed.

Edit to add.. another REALLY bad idea.. is how some people would install the risers into the capewell and then put the cover into the slot and close the whole thing... thinking that would secure the whole system... NOT..

Proper procedure is to put the riser male connector into the capewell with the large end first with the lip overlapping into the female portion on the harness.. then put the small section down into the lower portion of the capewell.
Then bring the locking mechanism with the cables up ( it slides up a slot and holds the riser in place properly)

THEN with the butt of the palm push the locking portion down into the main portion of the capewell. You will feel it click into place as it locks into the riser and main portion of the capewell. Then you can bend the cable down as you close the cover.

The first way of doing it does not lock it in place.. and it can come loose.

I am finding it more difficult to describe.. than to just show someone... its far more complex than a 3 ring.. but it works well when you know how it works.

[patworks 5]

I was an instructor in 1962-63 -- Front-mount reserve parachute procedures -- included: placing your left hand over the belly-mounted reserve container before pull, pull and throw away the reserve ripcord, grab the reserve canopy in both hands and throw it into the direction of spin. The FAA exempted sport parachutists’ from the rule requiring a reserve pilot chute because a frount-mount’s standard-issue ‘spider’ pilot chute was considered unsafe. We said, "Look, Pull, Grab, and Throw" -- If you threw the un-bagged round reserve canopy well, it might catch air and open. Shaking out the lines helped some. If you had a total or a streamer, the reserve would open. Capewell-cut-aways were dangerous and were banned at some Clubs and DZs.

Pat Works nee Madden Travis Works, Jr .B1575, C1798, D1813, Star Crest Solo#1, USPA#189,