Drag Plane lesson (also known as "pendullum")

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

Since there was discussion on show-type CRW going on, I thought I would post a lesson on drag planes. I am pretty sure most of you have seen the pictures of CRW formations with one jumper spun around upside down and sort of flying inverted underneath and wondered "how in the hell do you get out of that thing?" In reality, it's pretty simple, but it's definitely not something that weaklings need to be doing. Anyway, here is how we do it:

Build at least a tri-plane (that's normally all we do it with on our team, but you can technically do them with larger stacks though there really isn't any point in our show application.

Once the tri-plane or taller vertical formation is built, the top guy pilots the formation around until the first transition altitude (about 2000 feet, sometimes slightly lower for us). As you approach the show line from the side (better viewing), the top guy makes VERY certain that his ankles are FIRMLY seated under the cross connectors of the center person; you can't do pendullums from a "plane" configuration without at least the center person having cross connectors.

About 30 seconds is all you can expect the middle guy to be able to hold the bottom guy upside down, so that is about how far out from directly over show-center that you want the bottom two men to commence downplane transition moves. Read the "downplane" thread for the best way to do that. The only difference here is that when the "bottom/rear/pilot" guy throws his move, he will pull the right toggle briskly until such a time that he is directly under the other two people. When the move is thrown, the stack will lay forward, but will remain more flying "forward" than down.

Now, you would think that there would be big trouble if the middle man dropped the inverted person prior to the second transition, but I have never seen that be the case. Yes, the lines will go slack, but I have never heard of a person actually falling into his or her own main. It works sort of like a McConkey Flip if the bottom, inverted guy gets dropped prematurely.

Anyway, in a successful drag plane, the top guy still drives the formation, knowing that in this configuration the rate of descent increases noticably and the forward glide is hampered. That being said, if the initial move was thrown only about 30 seconds out from being straight overhead, you should be ready to do the second transition right over the target. When directly overhead, the top jumper "drops" the downplane by simply unhooking his ankles and forcing his or her head well forward so as to avoid being caught as the middle parachute goes whipping past his rig. Once "dropped", the middle and inverted person's formation turns cleanly into a downplane and those two people break off that formation at their DZ's hard-deck or team SOP. Once dropped, the pilot of the downplane, who was formerly the inverted person, steers the downplane so that they are sideways to the crowd line. On break-off, they either split the target or the "dirt" guy picks up the target prior to their landing.

The original top guy, or remaining members of the larger formation are then free to land individually or as a stacked unit. We don't land larger than a three-stack ever.

End of lesson

On my first pendullum, I was the inverted guy. When we made the second transition it was still working perfectly. On the break from the downplane at 300 feet, my boy Johnny Mulford (the "grips" guy in the downplane) ended up stripping the sole off my shoe! It was pretty damn funny.

Chuck

[PhreeZone 15]

THIS is the type info that I'm always on the look out for! Thanks Chuck!

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[faulknerwn 36]

Any reason you do it from planes rather than stacks? Normally I do pendulums with everyone in a stack formation except the bottom two.
W

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

No hay de que.

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

I guess I did sort of misquote and will edit the original post to reflect that. We do all our formations in the "plane" or fully down to the cross-connector configuration because it is our experience that they are less prone to turbulence and . As far as using the top or "ankle hooking" dude in a standard "stack" configuration, I am sure that works fine on highly pressurized CRW-specific mains, but with our demo mains (StarTrac 1 and 2's) I have found that the "middle" guy's main wants to distort because all the pressure is just on the center two CRW lines. I have seen the main sort of bowtie and stop flying in that configuration, only being held aloft by the top person or people. That being said, we have never had a main snag on the top guy after he dropped the downplane from a "planed" configuration. I don't doubt for a second that you have done your version with "other than real CRW mains", though, so it's certainly worth trying some day.

Anyway, that's why we do it that way. That, by the way, is the SOP that the Golden Knights demonstration teams use. The team leader of the USASOC parachute team I am currently on is Johnny Mulford. His last job was as Gold Demonstration Team Leader on the GK's. We have a great time teaching the new guys CRW. Being back on a demo team made me remember how much I had missed CRW over the last decade.


Chuckie

[faulknerwn 36]

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I guess I did sort of misquote and will edit the original post to reflect that. We do all our formations in the "plane" or fully down to the cross-connector configuration because it is our experience that they are less prone to turbulence and .
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Interesting - I've always preferred being in stacks in bumpy air because they seem to be more stable. Of course I'm usually on Lightnings. Its interesting - even when we're doing downplanes, in the summer time out here you can really feel the bumps in the air, even at downplane speeds.
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I have seen the main sort of bowtie and stop flying in that configuration, only being held aloft by the top person or people.
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That's wild. I've never heard of anything like that. Even when we did a 2-stack/downplane (a 2-stack on each side of the dp) we didn't have that prioblem. Very interesting.
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That being said, we have never had a main snag on the top guy after he dropped the downplane from a "planed" configuration. I don't doubt for a second that you have done your version with "other than real CRW mains", though, so it's certainly worth trying some day.
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Yeah I've done it with most everything. I just rarely have cross-connectors on my Lightning unless its a special occasion because they get in the way. So that's the biggest reason we normally do it in stacks.
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Anyway, that's why we do it that way. That, by the way, is the SOP that the Golden Knights demonstration teams use. The team leader of the USASOC parachute team I am currently on is Johnny Mulford.
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What's USASOC?

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[SkymonkeyONE 3]

United States Army Special Operations Command