HOW TO PACK A TAIL POCKET

[Anvilbrother 0]

If you do tail pocket, or free pack like I have seen some crew do it, and for some reason have to take it to terminal that would hurt like a B!! right?

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[BillyVance 34]

Quote

If you do tail pocket, or free pack like I have seen some crew do it, and for some reason have to take it to terminal that would hurt like a B!! right?

When I had my Lightning, it had a tail pocket, and no, I never wanted to take it to terminal for any reason. I still packed it in a way to soften the openings enough. Even with a 1 second delay, openings can hurt with some packing methods.

Edited to add: I never did any competition jumps but those that do, probably set their pack jobs to open damn near instantaneously.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[relyon 0]

I packed my tail pocketed Lightning like a reserve with a totally exposed nose, etc. for competition. Barely clearing the A/C out the door almost always resulted in a horizontal deployment with my feet at the horizon. There's sweet spot with fast opening deployments in the 2-3 second range after exiting. That allows the body to slow down horizontally before the vertical velocity builds up too much. I've deployed the same setup in the 8-9 second range due to a dropped PUD and while vertical the deployment was, shall I say, brisk and memorable.

It's quite possible to pack a tail pocket for reasonably gentle openings. The two items I've used with great success one or both at a time are rolling the nose extremely tightly to the B lines and not stowing the brakes. I roll all the cells together in one direction. Be sure to clear the stabilizers in all cases as that is a key ingredient in avoiding off-heading openings. Many are wary of not stowing brakes but it works fine for Lightning CRW for several reasons: 1) It slows down the deployment such that the brakes can be grabbed while the canopy is still deploying, 2) an off-heading opening can be corrected while it's still occurring, and 3) the formation turn and/or collision avoidance can be initiated as early as possible.

Bob

[faulknerwn 36]

I experimented with not stowing the brakes for a while, but while the openings were quite soft, I got line twists about 50% of the time.

What works for me is just burying the nose to the tail like I do on my freefall canopies. I rarely have a hard opening on my Lightning and it stays on heading this way too.