RiggerLee

The original vector 3 patterns before the micron m series tended to be longer. I also second the Infinity rigs. I hate to say it but... Racer also has some longer designs. You can also fudge this in the harness construction to some degree. If you minimize or remove the stagger at the hip and make the MLW long enough you shift the container lower on your back. That also meant that your shifting the curve of the shoulder down lower on the yoke. Some riser covers can handle this better then others. Some designs will become less secure over the shoulder and you may be choosing a longer yoke to place the chest strap where you want. To be clear in not advocating this as a solution I'm more warning of the risk of trying to fudge it this way. Your on the right track of thinking about a container pattern set that will fit your back rather then a harness. Some companies will extend the main tray that might give you that extra inch and more room for that 170. Lee

Never thought of Maine as a place for cliffs. Lee

Probably the same accident. I was told this story, had it explained to me by an FAA guy from the FSDO in Dallas. Guy named Gene Bland. Pilot broke the plane in some way. Took wings off? He had good radar plots giving him speed across the ground. He had video and impact data showing the impact angle. From that he calculated the air speed of the lawn dart. They had video of the opening of the canopy. He believed that he had good numbers on the deployment speed. He knew the pilots weight. Based on those numbers he thought that the loading should have been not within what it was certified for but he believed that it was within what it had supposedly been tested to. Bland was like a dog with a bone. He wanted to force them to redo the heavy drop test. No one else cared. He lost that fight. You could see from the canopy how the lines failed. It's easy to understand the mechanics if you just play with the diaper. The phantom was never the strongest canopy out there. You could argue whether it would have survived or not. It never got the chance. It did not blow out it's crown. It did not split a gore. It did not fail in any of the ways that canopies blow up. The diaper failed to stage the opening and it broke in a very predictable way because of it. To be clear, I like Ashudo phantom stile diapers. It was just a failure of imagination. Thinking of the folded canopy as one solid thing rather then as a dynamic flexable object capable of moving and shifting. All you would need is a loop in that crown line. A peace of tape with a loop. An eye in the line. Maybe a heavier tape on that seam. I've been caught out on that as well. I snapped a tape above a diaper on a canopy I built. It was a pain to sew that thing back together and when I did you can bet it had a heavier tape on that gore. Don't confuse it being a bad design with it being an incomplete design. It's just missing a small element. Full stow choaker diapers put the same stress on that tape. I think all canopies should have heavier tapes on that seam. The military apparently agreed on the C9 with the quarter bag. Lee

There are a lot of variables there. For example slider down is more abrupt but the total amount of kinetic energy is much lower. The size of the canopy can also be a factor. A larger canopy is a bigger wall hitting the air on a slider down opening. Terminal openings are at the other end of the spectrum but are moderated by a slider. In both of these classes you have the ability to exercise a lot of control over the situation and the system you are jumping. There is no law saying you can't swap out your mesh for a half or three quarter or full sail slider. You can change PC. The bottom line is I've had way harder openings skydiving then in base. All the openings that have layed me up have been from airplanes. Just be smart. Stupid hurts. Lee

In defense of half stow diapers. Although it's a less intuitive system and there can potentially be issues with it, I will say that it also has advantages. A lot of it centers around mass and weight of the lines. Problems show up in both high and low speed deployments. I'll start with low speed stories. The dz I started at still had round reserves on the student rigs. On the whole this wasn't a bad thing as it made two out's relatively benign in most cases. The rigs had a mix of reserves. We had FXC's. I noticed that the half stow strongs deployed a lot smoother and cleaner in low speed two out sinarios. The weight of the lines was in the tray. As the pilot chute deployed the canopy there was never a sudden weight of a heavy diaper with full stow lines. On the other hand I watched a malfunction where a phantom deployed beside a low speed malfunctioning main. The pilot chute and canopy went up but when the diaper fell out of the tray it stalled struggling to lift the weight of the diaper. It just floated beside the main actually sinking lower as the main turned wrapping the lines of the reserve around every thing till the pc caught enough air to finish in showing the diaper and the reserve started to fill and deploy at which point every thing started to unroll. It all turned out fine. The lesson I took away from watching that was first the importance of an adequate PC. Second to not disregard the weight of the diaper. High speed. On high speed higher then normal terminal deployments the sudden mass of the full stow diaper can put a lot of strain on the canopy. We had a failure where we snapped a tape on the radial seam that the diaper was attached to. Wound up adding a heavy tape on top running up to the apex with a loop on the end to support the weight of the diaper during deployment. Please note that the military did the same thing, or similar, with the adoption of the quarter bag. They found that they needed a 1" type 4 tape just to lift the weight of all those lines. I'll give you another example of a high speed failure caused by a full stow diaper. This was on a phantom at an air show. And yes it was the tighter diaper. It doesn't matter it's the nature of the design. When it tried to lift the diaper the crown line for the seam that held the diaper acted like the rope in a pulley with the PC bridle. It pulled the #1 seam out of the fold in the diaper. That gore caught air and snapped the line off at the canopy. The inflating skirt pulled out the next two Gore's and snapped them. This continued all the way around the canopy breaking the lines at the skirt till the last one broke at the link. Pilot went in under just the lines. All of this could have been avoided it there was an independent tape or a loop in the crown line. Based on the radar data the canopy should have survived if the diaper had not failed. No one's denying that a full stow diaper is much better staging for deployments. But it's also a significant weight concentration which can add it's own issues. As to packing it. Lack of knowledge of how it functions is a failure of the rigger not the system. Lee

I've seen stories of the reverse. Skydiver calls up the manufacturer and asks if it will fit. The answer is always yes. It gets here to the local dealer and he struggles to get it packed. It looks like shit. He disinharits the rig. Refuses to ever pack it again. Now the guy is shopping around for another rigger after the first master rigger declared it an unairworthy combination. This wasn't a one time thing, I'm looking at you Wings! So we had all these guys down sizing to smaller reserves that were really too small for them. I did crew for a long time. We stuffed some really big canopies into some main trays. You can get away with a lot... But. Maybe you permanently stretch out the container. Damage the riser covers. Have less then secure bridle routing. Damage the main flap. Have pilot chute in tow issues. I could go on. You can do a lot of shit. Why make your self miserable? As some one who has packed some egregiously tight rigs I can tell you that this can be done, and that you'll regret it. Lee

I had a similar thought. I was reminded of some volcanic lakes that have out gassed on calm nights and formed a big enough cloud to kill entire villages. I wonder if on a nasty water day with warm air above and no wind if the cave would fill up with nasty gas. But what I was actually referring to in the post was that I had never heard of the cave it self. Little baby cave of the swallows. It would be slider down but a lot less intimidating to jug out of. Lee

Never heard of this before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_of_Barhout Lee

Jeff Wagner did a few for... The guy that used to run the WFFC. Mostly eastern European seats. While I was there I spoke to a guy from the operation in Las vagus. There is a company there that does a lot of mill surplus aircraft. They are the only people I know of that do ejection seats on a regular basis. It was really interesting talking to the guy about all that was involved in dealing with them. Interesting technology. Lee

I built my container for my first base jump. Did not build the canopy. You've got me beat. I remember later when I traveled to norway. I and one of the friends traveling with me were jumping ribs I built. The guy that was checking us in and giving us intro at kjherag kept asking me what type of rigs we were jumping. I kept saying that they were my rig. Finely he caught on. I built them they're My Rig. They didn't have a name so I just decided to name them My Rig. Lee

One thought is the crotch. If it has booties, the tow to crotch measurement is kind of critical. The leg straps pull the crotch up tight and the length to the tow must make the booty tight. In a tunnel that can be based off the shoulder and the crotch can just float where ever it winds up. So the measurements can key off different things. This is just a guess. Lee

I assume it's a 110 motor. Any thing out of a shop will be 220. It's a $100 problem. It's a light weight garment machine. I like them but it's $400 maybe $500 if it's 110 and the clutch is in good shape. Back in the day baught them for $300. Lee

CSR is where it comes from but that's by the spool. Para gear or call up a manufacturer and hit them up for a couple of yards. Lee

It does look good. I hope you had fun with the project. Your skill set is rounding out very nicely. I wonder if you realize how much you've learned in the course of all this and how far youve come with these projects. One thing I think you should look at. I don't know where you would find it at this point. It may not still exist but there was a series of threads on base jumper. They grew out of an accident at perion. It was a pilot chute in tow/pin pull hesitation? I don't think it was ever really resolved but it developed into a series of conversations about flap and cover flap designs. It dug into dimensions for pin clearance, rotation, pin orientation, orientation of the pin attachment to the bridle, even pin design and geometry. They did identify some potential failure modes. It's worth preserving if any one is smart enough to go back and find it. I think it was spread out over a couple of different threads. But the rig looks great. Now you need to go and start testing it... Do they still run a ferry from Newcastle to stavanger? Just a quick ferry ride to lysebotten and kerage. Lee

Sponsored by the NPS? Lee