Gary73

By "full frontal", I meant that the wire was oriented top left to bottom right, as if he had tried to fly straight through a door with a wire strung from one corner to the opposite corner. And he was only about three feet up when he hit it, so there was little or no sliding. Also, some of the worst damage is 4 or 5 feet back from the leading edge, and is on both top and bottom, but the damaged areas don't line up.. So the "sliding down the wire" theory doesn't seem to explain what I'm seeing.

It was a direct frontal impact with the guy wire, just a few feet above the ground. And the damage was on both the top and bottom of the center cell. No damage to the suspension lines.

No indication of contact with live wires.

One of our jumpers had a dirty-low terminal CYPRES fire. Reserve opened and flew okay, at least unitl the jumper hit a power-line-tower guy wire at about 5 feet. Jumper was uninjured, but upon inspection, there were small/medium burns/tears on both the top and bottom skins of the center cell only. Also a square foot or two of distressed fabric. 2002 FCI Maverick in 2002 Javelin. Jumper reported that there were a lot of sticker bushes in the area, but these don't look like that kind of damage. Any ideas?

I wouldn't worry about it unless your rigger has concerns, which is unlikely. I've done at least a thousand Javelin reserve pack jobs, and this is the only one that ever concerned me.

Heat can cause a temporary stickiness, but a permanent one seems unlikely. And it was a mild Summer, with no hot-trunk shenanigans, at least for this particular rig. Can't see any value to a waterproof freebag. If water gets that far into a rig, it's going to be fully opened and spend some time on the drying rack. Yes, I'm sure it was made that way, but there were uncoated fabrics available that would have been a far better choice for this application, in my opinion.

This one was the worst I'd ever seen. Had to pull fairly hard to get the reserve canopy out of the freebag. Strange thing is that it wasn't a new bag. I had packed it many times before with just the usual level of difficulty getting it into the bag. No idea why it got extra sticky. And no idea why anyone would ever have thought it was a good idea to use such material.

Got the replacement. The fabric is smooth and non-sticky on BOTH sides. What a concept!

On an Altitrack history display, does the deployment altitude listed refer to the altitude at which the jumper had slowed to canopy-type speed, or is it an estimate of the pin-extraction altitude, or what? Thanks!

Sunpath only approves of hand washing with something mild like Woolite. Which does absolutely nothing to help this situation.

So yes, all Javelin freebags are made of fabric that's sticky on the inside, but I have one here for a scheduled repack that's so sticky that it didn't want to let go of the reserve fabric, even after 90% of the reserve was extracted. Is there a good way to un-sticky a bag like this? Talcum powder, maybe?

Thanks!

Thanks, Rob!

Thanks for the clarification; I see what you mean. CSRL wants $1900, not including tests and docs. But I'd be using my DZ's facilities. So, somewhere in between.

Mark, That would be much appreciated, and yes, it's only fair to give credit where it's due. Please send to [email protected] WRT the fee, the DZO will be covering their expenses, but yes, that sounds about right. Thanks!