the very first ram air reserve save

[highspeeddirt 0]

it happened at the herd labor day boogie in 1978.para flite had started to ship the safety flyer that week.Richard"Fang"Fenimore hand delivered the canopy to Jim D'aleria(a ford dealer from the pittsburgh area)jim installed it and promptly had some sort of 'function' requiring him to deploy his safety flyer.

[NickDG 23]

Cool story . . .

Here's the rest of it.

Paraflite had turned their main canopy called the Strato Flyer into a reserve called the Safety Flyer mainly because the canopy wasn't selling well as a main.

A lot of jumpers bought the Strato Flyer main, at first, thinking it was a better version of the venerable old Strato Star. But it wasn't and it landed like a POS.

At Elsinore in those days you'd see people pounding in all the time with them and the call, "Flyer for sale!" was always in the air . . .


NickD BASE 194

[murrays 0]

The Flyer...160 sg. ft. of goodness...

--
Murray

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

[NickDG 23]

I don't have access to my old PARACHUTIST mags here, but there is an advert for the Strato Flyer featuring Dean Westguard that ran for a while.

It's very telling if you know the back story.

Dean got together with, I think, the "Godflicker" (M.Anderson Jenkins), or maybe it was Carl Boenish, to shoot the ad as Dean thought he'd sell a ton of these canopies when they first came out.

They were going for one of those after landing big smile shots where the canopy is still in the air. But Dean kept creaming in with big clouds of dust. They finally settled for an almost landed shot and that's the photo in the ad. Dean is seen flaring for all he's worth and he's still a few feet off the ground.

I can't look at the ad without knowing Dean is thinking, "oh shit, here it comes again . . . "

Maybe someone else has it and can post it up.

NickD BASE 194

[highspeeddirt 0]

NOT TRUE! the strato flyer was in fact the reserve design that para flite came up with. it was released as a main canopy to get statistical data on performance, openings,and malfunctions.in fact each strato flyer main was shipped with a questionnaire to be filled out by the purchaser.and para flite released the saftey flyer only after accummilating something like 20 000 documented jumps. i know i was working there at the time and Dick Morgan and i came up with the d-brake lanyards.back then they were being conservative . it was hard to get the FAA (and the general jumping population)to accept a ram air reserve.also, paraflite required EVERYONE involved with the design and production of the safety flyer to get their riggers license.
it very much landed like a piece of sh** tho.

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

Hi highspeed,

You are so right. In fact (personal soapbox here), I have always felt that Para-Flite screwed the general skydiving public because they ONLY released it (IMO) for development purposes for their upcoming reserve.

And, damn, did it land hard; one of the worst purchases I've ever made.

Quote

it was hard to get the FAA to accept a ram air reserve

I don't know about this, the FAA only approves your QC Program. Everything else is about passing the testing and if you are successful then there is not much that they can do about it. Oh, they could try to disapprove your facility but that would be rather difficult since you just built a product in the facility that passed the testing.

Just my 2 cents,

JerryBaumchen

[highspeeddirt 0]

it is true tho.

[NickDG 23]

Gee, fellows, you should at least give me a "wrong" with an asterisk.

I never owned either Flyer or saw the questionnaire and what I described is how it appeared. Paraflite was indeed the standard back then, and, of course, credit is given to them for the move to square reserves. But, yes I remember what a great controversy that was at the time. "Round" was still considered "sound" by many jumpers in those days.

I do remember a young Al Frisby going ballistic over the issue of square reserves, but for the life of me I can’t recall which side of the issue he was on.

At the time I'd just moved from a Piglet main to a Strato Star and was loving life. But I stayed with a round reserve until well after Precision introduced their Ravens. A little of that was being conservative and wary of square reserves, but most of it was being young and poor . . .

I do remember my first square main jump like it was yesterday. It's something lost on today's generation but after a lot of round main jumps my first Strato Star jump was a revelation. Now it's just taken for granted.

As a rigger the first square reserve I packed was the Swift. And if I recall right, there was something you had to do first, maybe get signed off by a Master Rigger or something like that. I miss those days at Lake Elsinore. Sleeping on wooden packing tables, seven dollar jumps, cheap six-packs of beer, and the original Ghetto that later moved to Perris.

We're getting old, boys . . .

NickD BASE 194

[darkwing 4]

Quote

...

As a rigger the first square reserve I packed was the Swift. And if I recall right, there was something you had to do first, maybe get signed off by a Master Rigger or something like that. ...

Originally you had to get a Ram Air Riggers Certificate, http://www.cofc.edu/~wraggj/images/RamAir.jpg. I was trained by Elek Puskas in Richmond, IN just after the '79 Nationals. I'm not sure when that requirement was eliminated.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[NickDG 23]

I do remember that requirement now, but I never got one of those certificates, so it must have been after that. I packed my first Swift reserve with master rigger Frank Mott in Ramona, Ca.

Not too many small lofts were set up for square reserves so it was he who taught me how to inspect and pack a square on a narrow round packing table. Nowadays that's still a good thing to know in a pinch. And I know some older riggers who still pack that way, Al Frisby always does, and I've seen Hank Ascuitto do it too. (They need a new classification of Rigger for Hank. Wizard Rigger would work).

I mentioned to Frisby once that he should be teaching rigging rather than just die with all that knowledge he has. His answer? "Fuck 'em, let 'em learn like I did . . . "

Ya gotta love it!

NickD BASE 194

[councilman24 36]

Didn't paraflite first do the ram air rigger thing themselves, then let USPA take over for a year or two? Anyway, when I took my practical in 1985 from a real FAA inspector (about 80 years old I think) I asked him if it had any force of law and if I had to have one to pack a ram air. I doubt he knew what a ram air was but he said no, didn't need anything but the FAA license.

Now, it might fall under the manufacturers instructions, but it always seemed iffy as a legal requirement. And since I had an FAA (not a DPRE) guy say no, that was good enough for me.

And luckily I never jumped a strato flyer.

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

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

Hi Terry,

You are dead right. It had no force of law. But I did get it from a Para-Flite designee anyway.

JerryBaumchen

[highspeeddirt 0]

because para flite required it in the packing instructions. if you packed one without the ram air reserve rating, you were violating the manufacturerers instructions and therefore the faa regulations as well.

[councilman24 36]

That was the theory. But there were FAA inspectors who said that PF couldn't require anything beyond a rigger certificate. I think his exact words were 'they can't make things up".
Some think it wasn't in the manual but it was.

"Prior to pakcing a Safety-Flyer or Safety-Star emergency parachute, a FAA Senior or Master Rigger must possessa valid certificate issued by the USPA for attending a Rigger Certification Course held by a qualified Rigger Examiner." No publication date.

But, the FAA guy I took my practical from said they couldn't require any other documentation. But he also was so old and out of date a doubt he knew what a ram air was. But I remember the debate about whether PF could require this certificate over and above a rigger rating. The concensus I went with was no. You SHOULD know what your doing but the FAA wouldn't require it. Of course we all know this depends on the inspector your talking to. And by the time I was really packing them the program didn't exist. Any clue when it did die? Kind of like cypres pocket installs. I needed to do one this year and asked Cliff if I needed to take the test etc. He said all of that had kind of went away. Especially with the entire installation manual on line now. Still a Master Rigger though.

So, while PF wanted you to do this and it wasn't a bad idea, especially for riggers who didn't have a clue about ram airs, whether it was a legal requirement was always up for discussion. There was your point of view and the one based on statements like the one the FAA inspector I talked to made. I don't know that it ever made it to court.

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

[riggerrob 558]

Trivial point, the Canadian Sports Parachuting Association allows new riggers to chose whether they are tested on packing a round reserve or a square reserve.

These days, few young riggers care about round reserves.
If they want to be certified to pack the other (usually round) type of reserve, they need to pass a second packing test.

[jonstark 8]

I loved my Flyer and made at least a thousand jumps on it. It packed up far too large for a reserve in the days of the teeny-tiny round reserves like the Preserve III and KXX. We weren't sold on the square's reliability and were trying to get smaller/lighter rigs for slower fall rates. I didn't have a square reserve until 1990 after PD's 143 came out.

jon

[Zing 2]

Some of the first Strao-Hammers seen in Arizona were the ones the Canadian team got while they were practicing at Ghoulidge. This was the team that won gold at the world meet in Australia, but were stripped of their medals by Canadian authorities for having "too much fun."
In a very few days, almost all of the team were limping around with sore ankles and knees and there was one broken pelvis. At least we all got a free belt that used the same aparatus as the Strato-Hammer's brake releases as a buckle.
About a year later I jumped one on a rig i borrowed from Dempsey Morgan from the team Desert Heat, and had THE hardest parachute landing I've ever experienced under an open canopy. I don't think i hit any harder the time I really did bounce.
We raffled a brand new Strato-Hammer off at one of the Ghoulidge Boogies that same year. D-Ray won it, and was disappointed when he just about had to give it away to get rid of it. D-Ray had no intention of EVER jumping one and no one else wanted it either.
Between the hard landings, slammer openings and the initial malfunction rate, I'd wager that the Strato-Hammer set back the general acceptance of square spares by a minimum of five years.
It was a long time before I finally bought a square reserve ... and it didn't come from Para-Fright!

Zing Lurks

[wmw999 2,123]

Count me among the ones who wouldn't touch one with a 10-foot pole. I kept jumping my little round until something that packed comparably small (that being a relative term these days), and would land me acceptably softly. It was 1980 before I began jumping a square. Note that I'm not particularly large, and wasn't then either.

But there were a couple of folks here in Houston who loved them, and made them look easy.

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)

[howardwhite 5]

For those who forgot what it looked like, or never saw one...

HW

[fastphil 0]

Some of you are being WAY too hard on the little Strato Flyer, the first real small square. Coupled with the KXX reserve and Racer it made for a tiny rig for me, and, at 165 lbs, I thought it landed like a dream for anyone not scared to bring it in fast. It was also the best, quickest, and most reliable opening canopy I ever had, with no way to pack it wrong. I was satisfied for 600 or so jumps on them with plenty of demos, barefoot and BASE, and I think most of us knew up front we were only helping put squares into reserves...

[jonstark 8]

I made my first 5 BASE jumps on mine. Attached is a pic of a very common landing of mine after seeing "Smack" McCollom land a similar homebuilt this way. The difference was he didn't make a slider stop and his slider moved over the front connector link but not over the toggle/steering line rings and put the canopy into a near stall. In this pic I have not cutaway the risers but I did other times.

jon

[fastphil 0]

good pic jon; and really weird. I used to sit on my slider too (slider ride). Can't remember where I picked it up, but maybe from you. I can remember getting some pretty weird looks though...

[jonstark 8]

I like weird looks. I only ever had altimeters for short periods of time and only ever wore them on the front of my helmet for others to monitor. I'd just watch the expression on the others' faces for break-off.

I was jumping in the SouthEast with a Herd Boogie thrown in annually when I had my Flyer.

jon