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murrays

First Paradactyl Jump

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Just made my first Paradactyl jump a few hours ago!

I borrowed the canopy from Tom McCarthy, the owner of Skydive Gananoque (in Ontario, Canada), a couple weeks ago and have been waiting for weather ever since.

First parachute I've ever packed that nobody could help me with the packing. Tom still had a copy of the packing instructions but it was still a little nerve-wracking throwing the pc out and waiting to see what would happen. Opening was fine....

Unfortunately, I have forgotten completely how to spot and landed about a 1/4 mile away. It's been a long time since I backed up under canopy and had to look out for fences, etc. behind me.

Landing was good. I rear riser flared it and fell down because I had my feet together to PLF but I'll stand up the next one!! ;)

Will post some video in a day or two.
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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Did you stall it ?

Try that next time!



No..I didn't. The only club member who had ever jumped one told me that stalling it was _very_ interesting so I didn't bother. I'll play with it more when I get to jump it on a calm day. I was getting blown backwards and just held into the wind for the entire descent....demonstrating how lazy and lackadaisacal I have become with regards to spotting.;)
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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Forgive my ignorance, but could you describe the paradactyl? Isn't that an old triangular canopy? I know nothing about it.



Here's a photo that was posted to an earlier thread....
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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whoa ! whoa whoa!.....
Before you tell someone to stall a dactyl, they need to know how to recover a dynamic stall. My dactyl was from PI. In the owners manual it had a section on stalls. With a dactyl there are two different kind of stalls.... stall and dynamic stall. If you do a dynamic stall you will know it. The canopy will fall from side to side with the back corners touching, the lines going limp as the canopy dives and pitches you from side to side. The only way to stop this is to turn to the direction the canopy dives. If you do a dynamic stall, you will feel like a rag doll and it will definately wake you up. Be sure to do it up high and PAY ATTENTION to your altitude. It eats it up rather fast, and if you can't recover be ready to chop it. Out of 175 dactyl jumps one dynamic stall was enough for me....

Alan Heter

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You must hold slight toggle pressure at all times to prevent the nose from rolling under. The major "hot" mod in the mid 70's was to hotknife the nose slider(webbing with grommets that ran from the 2nd and 3rd lines) in half. You then used a rubber band to hold the webbing togather on opening. The nose rolling under never reversed the steering on mine.

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Here's a photo that was posted to an earlier thread....



You see how the jumper is looking up at his canopy? You spent a lot of time doing that under a Dactyl.

And...Nobody warned me about stalls. They just said to "try it...heh heh heh"

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Thank you for the information on stalling the Dactyl. What would be the difference between a dynamic stall and a stall and how you get out of either one?

Also, regarding the strap....if it hasn't been hotknifed should it stay up near the canopy or come down the lines?
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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The canopy will first stall sort of like a square. You feel it get mushy then start to fall back. This is a normal stall. To recover from a normal stall just let the toggles up slowly....

Hold a stall for a while(2 to 5 seconds) and it will turn into a dynamic stall. The dynamic stall is as I described in the earlier post. The canopy will dive to one side, the back corners will touch, the canopy will then dive to the other side, the lines will go slack, and you will feel like a rag doll... The canopy will dive to each side. for example to the right, then to the left. The only way to recover it is to turn it to the side it is diving to... i.e. when it dives to the right bury the right toggle. Like I said earlier, do it high if you want to try it. It does make quite an impression on the person doing the stall and the people watching it.

As to the nose slider, if it is not hot knifed, it rides about 5 feet below the nose if I remember right. it doesnt come all the way down. That mod was something Jim Handbury showed me at the 76?77? nationals. I am not sure it made much difference, but the theory was that the nose could open more enabling more stable flight. Did the canopy you jumped have the nose slider(webbing with grommets across lines 2 and 3) along with a regular square type slider?

.....line 1
..... x
.... /..\
...x.....x
line2 line 3

(Sorry for the bad ascii art)

Did you do anything with the steering lines to stow them? If i recall the manual shows a pack job very similar to a flat pack with a square. You lay the canopy flat, with a single keel there would basically be three pieces of material laying flat from the tail to the nose. Then you s fold the canopy from the tail to the nose on each line group, and spread the nose to catch air. Is that how the manual shows to pack it? If i was there I could show you some packing techniques, but I wouldn't want to describe them without demonstrating....[;)

Edited to add:
normal stall recovery instructions...

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The canopy will first stall sort of like a square. You feel it get mushy then start to fall back. This is a normal stall. To recover from a normal stall just let the toggles up slowly....

Hold a stall for a while(2 to 5 seconds) and it will turn into a dynamic stall. The dynamic stall is as I described in the earlier post. The canopy will dive to one side, the back corners will touch, the canopy will then dive to the other side, the lines will go slack, and you will feel like a rag doll... The canopy will dive to each side. for example to the right, then to the left. The only way to recover it is to turn it to the side it is diving to... i.e. when it dives to the right bury the right toggle. Like I said earlier, do it high if you want to try it. It does make quite an impression on the person doing the stall and the people watching it.



Thanks for that information....I'll have to try it out..up high.

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As to the nose slider, if it is not hot knifed, it rides about 5 feet below the nose if I remember right. it doesnt come all the way down. That mod was something Jim Handbury showed me at the 76?77? nationals. I am not sure it made much difference, but the theory was that the nose could open more enabling more stable flight. Did the canopy you jumped have the nose slider(webbing with grommets across lines 2 and 3) along with a regular square type slider?



See the attached...yes, it has the slider as well as the strap. The strap stayed very close to the canopy as you can see from the photo. I didn't experience any inclination of the nose to fold under. Did this mod help in other ways?

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Did you do anything with the steering lines to stow them? If i recall the manual shows a pack job very similar to a flat pack with a square. You lay the canopy flat, with a single keel there would basically be three pieces of material laying flat from the tail to the nose. Then you s fold the canopy from the tail to the nose on each line group, and spread the nose to catch air. Is that how the manual shows to pack it? If i was there I could show you some packing techniques, but I wouldn't want to describe them without demonstrating....[;)



The pack job is as you describe it. I stowed the excess loose steering lines in rubber bands near the cascades on the steering lines. I also stowed the strap in a rubber band that was attached to the front keel line. The strap didn't move downwards very far from there.

I was pretty nervous under this canopy and paying very close attention to my rate of descent. I wanted to be sure it would land me safely or I would have chopped it.

Thank-you very much for all of this information.
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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>[Thanks for that information....I'll have to try it out..up high.

Be sure you open high. It is a very interesting experience.


>I didn't experience any inclination of the nose to >fold under. Did this mod help in other ways?

I wouldn't hotknife the nose slider, if it is not already done. I think we were just trying to wring more performance out of a low performing canopy(but it was hot at the time). The nose slider will not come down very far. That is normal.


>The pack job is as you describe it. I stowed the
>excess loose steering lines in rubber bands near >the cascades on the steering lines. I also stowed >the strap in a rubber band that was attached to the >front keel line. The strap didn't move downwards >very far from there.

That is a factory pack job. Sounds like you did everything. Always make sure the steering line stows near the cascade clears the rubber band after opening. Once I had a steering line stuck in the rubber band, that poped out on final, and the canopy did a 180. Really scared me, and everyone watching.

>I was pretty nervous under this canopy and paying >very close attention to my rate of descent. I >wanted to be sure it would land me safely or I >would have chopped it.

You should be nervous. They are scary canopies. I much perfer my stilletto or sabre. (I am way to fat to try jumping my dactyl, but if I could find a double keel one .... hmmm)

>Thank-you very much for all of this information.
You are very welcome. I hope you enjoy jumping a piece of history. I never jumped a dactyl with a hand deploy or collapsible pilot chute. I always used a spring loaded pilot chute with a ripcord.

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I've done a couple jumps on a double-keel and as I remember it was the one that could go into reverse.
This was 25 years ago so there is a good chance I'm blowing smoke but that's what I remember.
We were putting students out on double-keels and had several land in the lake (after the 1st or 2nd Elsinore flood) and at first we thought it was only women that had this happen (blondes?). They would steer away from the lake and land in it. Naturally we were wrong.

My only jump on a single keel ended successfully after I promised God I would never jump another single-keel again. ;)

I was jumping a Parafoil 252 (too big for me then) and wanted to experience what was so good about the Paradactyl.

Small toggle movements (seemed?) to cause very radical/violent canopy movements/folding. It was also a turbulent day and all in all I was glad to get it over with :)
The buddy I borrowed the single keel from was also using my rig for that jump and he wasn't at all satisfied with my large canopy; he just didn't talk to God.

Red, White and Blue Skies,

John T. Brasher D-5166

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Yep, that's the one he used when he jumped into the pool.
Ben was upset and didn't want to ground him for life like he'd said he would because Larry was on staff.
So he had to jump T10's for a month.
I remember him landing next to me on one of those jumps and his peg stuck in a gopher hole and he just went BONG; I swear I could hear the vibrations :)

Red, White and Blue Skies,

John T. Brasher D-5166

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He explained that one to me. He'd also cut one riser off his main, and had the dactyl on just 2 risers if I recall. He felt he'd achieved the perfect weight for his body, and therefore wanted to take the rest of the weight off his rig and canopies. He told me, but I've forgotten, how much he said he saved by doing whatever he did,

Personally, when you get to that point in weight savings, you have to consider the importance of going to the bathroom...:ph34r:

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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i met larry while he was visitng new jersey in the late 1970s.interesting guy.he was at that time using a paradactyl in his reserve.the late dick morgan of para flite did too while he was in the golden knights except it was one of those irvin para wings.interesting thing,before steve snyder started working with the para wing in1967, irvin was trying to address the hard opening problem.one of their fixes was a really really tight deployment sleeve.our local parawing ownerhad just installed it and packed up for a demo jump at an show.we had very low ceiling and against better judgment,we were making the jump at something like 1300 feet.this guy made his jump and put on a really good show as he bacame the cutaway act!the sleeve was just too damn tight and wouldnt come off the canopy.he cutaway at about 900 feet.was hanging in the saddle around500 .

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Wendy, any chance you remember Jim Culhane from old Spaceland? He jumped a Dactyl exclusively
and could land that thing just about anywhere he wanted. Inspired me to get a Dactyl of my very own.:S

Another guy that jumped triangle canopies exclusively was Bobby Vee at Coolidge. I can't remember if it was a Delta II or a Dactyl but it hurt to watch him land that thing in that high desert air. His landings consisted of a loud thump and a cloud of dust.,:o
The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

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Jim still jumps here in Houston, although he hurt his back at Rantoul last year, and I haven't seen him other than visiting recently. He said Larry actually got him into Skydiving when they were both in Pennsylvania...

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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Jim still jumps here in Houston, although he hurt his back at Rantoul last year, and I haven't seen him other than visiting recently. He said Larry actually got him into Skydiving when they were both in Pennsylvania...

Wendy W.



That's great Jim still jumps, hope his back heals fast. Hope he didn't do it jumping that Dactyl.;)
The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

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Just curious...what sort of malfunction rate did the dactyls have? If people were using them as reserves as well as mains it makes me think they had to have fewer mals than ParaCommanders. Is this guess borne out by experience?
--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

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I remember Lee Wilcox (Livermore Club) jumped an orange 'Dactyl a lot. His landings were always nice. It just had a really short effective flare range. You really had to know precisely how, when, and where to flare. But Lee had it down. Nice gentle standups every time I saw him land it, anyway. Never saw him auger once.

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