RiggerLee

They were screwed into the board. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Loftus had them for his boards. The rest of us built our own. Loftus had two cables running from one foot to the loops on the "containor". I recomend one cable from each foot so that both have to sepporate before the canopy can be released. It was basically a large pilot chute. More for form and liability then any thing else. See it has a parachute. It the board is light it just kind of flutters down . Thy generally tumble on there side and fall relitivly slow. The PC stabalized it but I'm not sure it actually fell any slower. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm famous! Basically from under your arm pits. I don'y think it wold hurt too bad. The rings are pretty far back. But it's weird. You'd be hanging with your arms in front of the risor junction at least on opening. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

They are actually trying to do some thing about this. As it says, there are several problems. There is simply more of this activity going on. These groups are expanding. A lot of them are spending a lot of time over seas. They are not always able to maintain currency in these skills. People are aware of the problem and there is progress. They have come to the realization that these people need to become better jumpers. There is a program for... let's call it continuing education, at least officially. Basically they send a group of them out to a drop zone for coaching. They do HAHO and HALO jumps with gear and duffels but they also learn basic fourway jumping ordinary rigs just to become better flyers. It can actually be a little bit humballing for them when they realize how much room they have to improve. It's equal parts training and recreation. And oddly they never seem to do any of this on base. It seems that they always have to travel some where to find the facilities they need. Like, Austen. Nice little drop zone north of town. Strangely the only place they seemed to be able to find hotel rooms was down on fifth street. I suspect the whole mission started with some kind of written operational order detailing primary and secondary targets of all the bars they wanted to practice there infiltration skill on each night. To some degree it's a vacation. Take a group that has just transferred back and send them some place to recreate and blow off steam. But they also get to train. Regain currency. And pick up some new skills. It's a good step towards making them into more competent skydivers and better able to handle some of the border line insane jumps that they do. And some of it is pretty crazy, and I'm saying that. I've been known to do some pretty stupid things my self. But these guys, if they were at a normal drop zone would probable still be on student status. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm not clear on what that insurance would involve. is that protection for the DZ from injuries sustained by the participants? is that liability against damage done to others by them? Land on some one elses airplane? If that then it's not that different from what the USPA offers. May be the would be amiable to writing a similar policy. And any way it's a $100,000 policy. That's not very large. Is that a miss print? I wasn't aware they wrote policies less then a million. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I such a law could be passed It might make the environment much more friendly to skydiving. This is how I understand it. The sking industry got laws passed in CO. You can't sue a mountain. If you are not paying to be on some ones land you can't sue them for injuring your self while you are on it. So you buy lift tickets or what ever you call them for the chair things. but you don't pay to ski. Notice how many ski resorts thrive in CO. If they had the same liability burben as us they would never survive. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Last time I built my self a cutaway tersh I did exactly what he ^^ said. I did it from scratch but same thing. I like to have all the canopies on me not try to deploy them from the plane. I like a solid, closed container that is... as clean as it can be. Things are going to get really cluttered and awkward. I've got a set of three rings on my harness just above the chest strap so I don't need a second harness and it still feels cluttered. I use a set of cutaway risers with seperat cutaways. It's easy to build and the handles are that much more out of the way. They are a tape handle with a yellow cable. The chanel for the cable on the back of the riser has velcro on it so you have to peal the full length of the handle loose before the cable pulls out of the loop. I wear two hook knives on me chest strap in a good stiffened pocket. And I did use one on my last jump. The container attatches to the chest strap with two loops and I have a removable belly strap that goes through loops on the back of the bottom of the container. It's solidly attached when it's on. No movement or shifting. It rides some what high and that's what you want. If you have to set in the plane you will need to be able to pull your legs up. The upper loops stick up 2 inches, so it rides a from a little bellow the chest strap to just above the waist. I built it narrow enough that I can reach both handles easily. If you have a newer harness with a longer latteral you may find your MLW farther forward. You might need to look at sewing velcro or an out board pocket for your handles. If you do move them make sure they are not snag able. There is going to be a lot going on. When it goes smoothly it goes smoothly. When it doesn't... it doesn't. Work to make all of your jumps boring. Mine is also a left side BOC. I like to keep the deployment very separate from my main even down to the hand I use. To put it on I dawn the rig then loop the top loops and knife one to the chest strap. Hook up the three rings on the risers. You're doing that upside down and back wards where you can not see by feel. Pin the loop with the end of the cable and feed it into the channel on the back of the riser. About 2 inches of the riser stick out of the top of the container allowing you to do this. I then loop the belly band through the bottom loops and fasten it. It's now a big block on my chest. What I'm testing right now is kind of a biggish canopy. Some help with this, helps. Especially the first few times. Get some one to check ALL the hook ups, and routing. Check all of your handles. Take your time. Do not let your self be rushed by a call. This really isn't hard but there are lots of chances to make mistakes. Think through a full flow chart of all of your procedures. Write it down. No shit draw it out. Keep the system as simple as possible. For instance, I'm not fond of RSL's I don't think I'd jump one on this. Keep options open. Don't be too ambitious. Don't plan too much on a dive. Loose the cutaway canopy early. Things can get really squeezed at the bottom. That is not were you want to be rushed. Don't add any complication. Jump a mellow canopy and large reserve. This is a work jump. Not an opportunity to practice your swoop on landing. You don't know where you are going to land. Yes, you're going to spot the canopy for a big field but things don't always work out. You want a main that open not one that snivels. I jump a CRW canopy. If you get squeezed down low you don't want some thing that snivels on you or spins up. Instant open, good or bad, yes or no because you may not have 5,000 feet to dick with some thing like you normally do. We put up with all the quirks of a high performance "fun" canopy when we are recreating. This is work. You can try to tell your self that you're only going to do this once or twice. In truth you should do this more then that. And later if you make any significant change in the canopy, say a new trim, you should go back to the beginning and reevaluate it from scratch. Some changes are small and you'll get a since of when you need to be careful. But the smaller and higher performance the canopy even small changes can be significant. I've seen small changes in cross braces make big changes in stability, like live or die changes. As an example, go back and look at the SB on the crossfire 1. The one where they re-trimmed it to increase it's stability, ie. keep it from collapsing and killing people. Notice it's not a huge change to the trim. But it made the stagnation point on the nose more stable. You could do the opposite and make the nose unstable with just such a small change. Final is not the place to figure this out. It's good to have to option to chop it and land with a nice mellow main. If all you have is a reserve do it any way. You will get shit for it but better that then land some thing that's a question mark. You'll say that you're not building a cross brace or some thing with a covered nose like a cross fire. May I remind you that the Nova had a fully open nose and it still was prone to collapse and killed several people. If you're going to play with canopies you're going to do this. More then think right now. Do it right. Don't half ass it thinking that you're only going to have to use this rig once or twice. You can possible get away with jumping some thing kludged to gather once or twice but this rig should be your default set up when ever you have a question about one of your designs. If you're doing development there will be plenty of questions. This is testing. If you don't record the test and it's results then there is no test. No records, no testing. You will not remember the data. What trim was that canopy again? Do you remember to the 1/4 inch? Start making up a set of forms. fill them out religiously as you go over the video right after landing. Start keeping files on every change and iteration. Set up a test sequence. Find a way to record data. Maybe a Neptune and a fly site gps, para log. Those are just some off the shelf answers. It would be nice to have accelerometers as well. There is an app that will allow you to record all the sensor data from an I-phone. Acceleration, a crude pressure altitude, rate gyros, and angles. It also has magnetic data and some other things but the first list is what I generally pull out. GPS never seems to work on it. It will dump it as a comma separated file that you can pull into exel. Check out the 360 fly camera. I used one on our last test jump and I love it. It captures every thing. I can keep my head down on opening and still get the money shot of the canopy opening. The ball is not very clean but they are working on a conformal mounting that will be very low profile on a helmet. Save every thing. We keep a whole file with every thing from every test. I was talking to a guy from PD the other day about some of their testing. Call them up and ask them questions. They're cool. Even though you might one day be a competitor they don't want to see you hurt. Like any one could really challenge them. See if they would e-mail you a copy of some of their testing forms that their test jumpers fill out after every jump. Doesn't hurt to ask. At PIA they gave a run down on some of their testing procedures and how they break down their development into small changes and separate iterations of the canopy. It might even be recorded some where. Some times they video those seminars. I got to get to work. canopy look good. go jump the fucking thing. Oh, I think you were talking about the slider. Don't make it wider then your center cell. If the slider is too wide and the fabric just sits on the bottom skin as the grommets are pushed down before the slider lifts off the bottom of the canopy then the wind will not be holding the grommets up for those first few inches. Just went through this on a recovery canopy. Now opening beautifully with a narrower spacing on the inner grommets. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

It took me a while to catch on that it was supposed to be a comedy. They just seemed French. We were talking to a guy one time. After he left some one turned to me and said what a rude asshole the guy was. My response was, "He's not rude, he's just French." If that's what dating is like I think I see why I'm still single. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Hay, are you in front of your computer? I don't see you on skype? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

What he means is that is the stitching of the bar tack gets above the upper seam where the bottom skin pannels spread it will start to form a stress point pinching the fabric. This is true but being level or just a bit above is not the end of the world. You will see this where one winds up just a bit high. If it's not pinching too much, odds are nothing will happen. If it's really high you might form a stress point and get a small tear at the corner. Basically it will releave it self and then stop. I've seen this on production canopies. It wasn't worth fixing. Hundreds of jumps on the canopy since then, no further tearing. Basically patching it would have been harder on the canopy the leaving it. By the way that was like half an inch high above the seam, old canopy done with a zig zag vertically, not a bar tack. Precision actually recommended centering a second bar tack on the upper seam, stitches above the seam line, in one of their service bullitons. I and others opposed this just be cause it's bad practice, and what if you're a little high? It also did not address the real problem. Bottom line, I recomend trying to stay between the seams, but I don't see any thing scarry there. It's a proto type, go jump it. If you start pulling out your "bar tacks", that's a lot of stitching and needle holes. It's hard on the fabric. Banging one of those in on top of another is not the greatest idea. Some times the "fix" is worse then the problem. Oh, and the canopy looks awsome. Have you thought about how you're going to jump it? I don't supose you have a ring around with tirsh rings? It's not that hard of a mod. You could send an old rig in and have them installed. Or you could build or have built an independent harness to go under your rig. I like to wear the test canopy on the front and release it with a pare of cutaway risers. So three rings on the front of your harness, or sepperate harness, cutaway two point risers and then all the rest is the same. It's not perfect but trying to put all three on the back is a pain. You can also D bag the canopy out of the plane but the openings are funky. I don't like doing that. You can build the rings for the cutaway risers into the main risers and avoid tirsh rings but I've never liked that. Try to keep it as simple and clean as you can. By haveing an independent front mount for the test, every thing is seperat and independent. Less complexity in order of handle pull and perceadures. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

What's the big deal? I think my last five jumps in a row were all cut aways. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Stupid web site just ate my post!!!! I'll try again. Here in the US the cheapest and most economic way to send some thing over seas is often to just mail it. UPS and FED EX will hand carry things over the boarder for you but the prices are high. Strangely the easiest way is often to just throw it in to the US Postal Service. They take it all the way to the boarder and then just hand it over into the countries own postal service. It's a slow boat but it generally finds it's way there. That is speaking from my end. It may be different or more cost effective to go through a service from your end. You'll just have to get quotes. And it's often best to list it as being sent for or returned from repairs. If it's a sale Customs may step in and hold it for ransom. Funny thing is the never seem to ask for ransom. It just disappears and it's up to you to track it down and beg them to let you pay ransom. So don't put it in any special packaging, don't fold it up all neat. Don't put any fancy labels on it. Use an old box that you recycled, stuff it in a bag. Include a hand written note instructing what kind of testing you would like done and include clear instructions for it's return in that note. It's just a personal item not a SALE or any form of COMMERCE. As to the definition. Is the BPA a member of or associated with PIA? I like their definition. Have you thought about coming over and taking a shake and bake course here. Do the respect a US Riggers certificate or could that time be counted towards a BPA certificate. Ether way I actually think you'll enjoy the process and will learn a lot from it. Don't think of it as a task, some thing your being forced to do. It's an opportunity to learn and develop a greater understanding of some thing you enjoy. I think you'll really get into it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

The holes in the grommets on a normal slider are some what inbound on the edge. Some removables wind up with the hole in the ring closer to or beyond the edge. It makes a difference. People will often build an RDS a bit bigger to compensate. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I think he has better taist in colors. It's more attractive then the Brown Thing. You may have to step it up when you start production and sales. You're going to need a wider color selection to keep up with the market. The old Henry Ford mato may not hold up in this new more competitive Kit Canopy industry. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I find it easier to exsplane to people why they are fucking idiots and leave it to them to come to that conclusion then to simply say it out right. When I do that they seem to become defensive for some reason. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I think you'll find the change in the type of canopy far greater then in the size. You would notice only a small difference if you went to a 150 specter. The Crossfire is just a significantly different type of canopy. It's a great canopy it just doesn't fly the same. You'll love it once you get to know it. LaBlonk gave a talk one on kind of the history of their design development. They have a whole spectrum of canopies. It was interesting because he addressed the different niches that they were meant to fill. He grouped them into flat and steep trimmed canopies. He didn't really understand the obsession that people had with rectangular vs tapered vs simi elliptical, vs fully elliptical. It confused him and he's the designer. He showed the plane forms of a couple of them on top of each other and it was like... really? That's it? These canopies are radically different but you wouldn't know it from look at there plane form. There is clearly other magic in it so forget the whole fully elliptical thing. Make no mistake you are moving from a sedan to a sports car. Think ford torsue to a corvet. It's not a Lamborghini and defenantly not an F1 but it is a sports car and you are going to have to make adjustments in how you fly it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

If you approach this intelligently you can of course do this safely with complete success. The thing is you're post to some degree shows a certain lack of understanding. Yes all canopies can be flown conservatively but that word has different meanings for different canopies. Some canopies like to go fast. The depend on that speed for there inflation. Some canopies behave differently at different angles of attack. And the behave differently in there pitching behavior to regain that angle of attack. So when you go through turbulence the old school answer was to pull a little breaks. Now with smaller canopies some manufactures actually recommend keeping your air speed up, staying in full flight. Saw a guy fuck him self up trying to fly a small canopy conservatively. He was coming in over a plowed field, probable warm producing a little turbulence, no big deal. He was making small corrections with his toggles. "Flying conservatively". But every time he pulled on a break line the canopy would rock back and then surge forward when he let up. All canopies do this but this was a high performance highly efficient wing. These were not but turns, he was just keeping it on heading. When ever a canopy rocks forwards like that it unloads the front of the airfoil. The nose gets soft. Well it rolled under on him, careflight. Point of the story. It's important to understand an fly your canopy in a way appropriate to that canopy. Being conservative can have a very different meaning from one canopy to another. The canopy is not ridiculously unreasonable for you. That is not the problem. And it can be flown conservatively. But if you try to fly it like a student canopy you can get your self into trouble. Some times flying conservatively means keeping up your speed not slowing it down. It's a different mind set. If you can make that adjustment you will be fine but you'd better set down and drink a beer with some one while the explane to you how this new canopy works, cause it's just fundamentally different in some respects. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

That velcro wear is worse then you would think. Old racers got that all the time. You would see them where it would shrink that edge. We didn't think that much about it till I saw were they were actually doing some pull test of a harness. I don't recall the exact story. There was a bad spot or some extreme sun fading or some thing. They wanted to see how much load it would still carry. Put it on a hydrolic pull tester. It broke at the velcro damage. Not the spot they were trying to test. It was kind of an eye opener. The idea that relatively minor damage over a larger area could be so detrimental. If you think about it the braid goes in and out and if you damage the surface over a certain length you can damage a lot of the fibers. It sort of changed my preseption of what damage is an issue. Like I said. It failed there not at the weak spot they were trying to test. There are actually some killer deals out there on racers. Some times you can buy a rig just for the canopies. The canopies them selves seem to lose value just from being packed in a racer. There are very good deals out there on much better racers then the one you are describing. But you'll have to bid against Falkner. She has a search engine set up that looks for deals on racer containers and she buys them all up. She has a whole wall of the dropzone decorated with racer containers. I'm surprised it doesn't implode forming a black hole sucking us all in to some alternate hell world ruled by John Sherman where he is worshiped as a god. If all possible realities exist then there must be a world like that some where. Some day that dropzone will reach a critical mass and the whole world will be doomed. BURN A RACER SAVE THE WORLD! Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Be advised the DOM and serial number may be the same thing. It's like a code in there. They did that for a while. And technically you're supposed to be able to read that label. The real question is why? Are you really this desperate? Can any one take pity on this poor guy and help him out with a new rig? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

x=tot/(a+by+cz) Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Of course it can be done. Even be done safely. Eloy is relatively dark with fewer visual clues to altitude but I've been places where there was so much ambeant light that it might as well have been day. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

A lot of the seams you will see are a compromise. Raw edges are in no way a problem now that we hot cut every thing. Like on old canopies you will see where they sewed 1 inch back from the edge on two layers and 2.5 back on the third. Then wrapped the third around the others to hide the fraying edge and sewed the lines through the stack. The 1 inch gave them enough to just sew to the edge with out folding. If you look at how things have changed with time the real push has been towards two things. First, simplicity and easy of construction. Second, smaller external seams out in the airflow. What you see there with PD and I think the newer PD canopies are simplified even further is a compromise. It lets them build in I beams and then put those sections together. Para gliders for example often have no external seams. They basically start at one end and build the canopy from one end to the other. It's necessitated by their all internal seams. So you'll see a lot of them with all individual panels and all ribs loaded. No I-beams. Even the ones with sections, if they have no external seams I think are still built end to end. Things like that mean that it all happens at one station. You can't have a two people doing multibil operations at the same time. One or more sewing I-beams and another putting them together at another station. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

By top seams do you mean the unloaded rib of the I-beam like you show there? You know there has been a movement towards not doing that little under fold. Basically if you just leave the equivalent amount of fabric beyond the seam you can just scab it on. Seems to work. I think the original construction might be left over from very early canopies where they stack cut, not hot cut, the fabric. Then there seemed to be a transition where the hot cut some of the peaces, like ribs. Now I think every one hot cuts every thing. Point is they have gone to simpler seams. As an example. Is that how you are planing to sew the top of your load bearing rib? A full french fell lap seam? I don't think even PD did that. Are you sure they didn't use a rolled under english fell seam? It's a lot easier to get straight, at least the first important stitch line. Again the second stitch line done sepperatly is more to capture the edge of the fabric. I think that was another example of a hold over from a time when some manufactures stack cut their panels. I think if you look at some newer canopies you'll find that they are just sewn with a double needle, stacked like in that first pass and just left raw. It seems to work fine and significantly simplifies construction. I've seen canopies out of newzeland with just a single stitch line on the non load bearing ribs. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

It's been a long time but I don't recall it being that big or having a moving seat. I seem to recall that it was more the size of the bino's but he had some kind of adapter for a video camera. It's been a long time. Honestly I think utter joke made more of an impression on me then the tripod set up. He did get awsome silky smooth full frame video from 12,000 ft. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm probable using the wrong term. What I recall from Eloy is the guy had a tripod with an eye peace at an angle. Good telephoto lens. Crank handles to follow the jumpers smoothly. And a video camera adapter. I don't think the big lens was part of the camera. This was like 20 years ago I don't think vhs cameras were that good back then. I seem to recall that Slictomier had some thing for judging stile but it was always packed away in a crate. I have no clue what exactly it was. I'm not sure I ever saw it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com