RiggerLee

One last try and then I'm giveing up. Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Ok I give up. I don't know whats wrong. I suck at computers. I'm thinking a black shirt with white print. Block letters front: ROCK CLIMBING IS DANGEROUS MAKE RAPPELING SAFER... back: BUY A BASE RIG You get the idea at least. Come on wont one of you at least represent? Some body needs to wear this in the valley. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'll try again on the picture. I don't get it it was working for a while. But as I was saying if you want this t-shirt printed you must all sppek up now. I need ammo for my argument with Tom. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

There were a bunch of norwegion climbers on the wall when I got there. one of them was a skydiver and I kept threatening to death camp his ass when he got to the top. There were also a number of other climber/jumpers there this year. There seems to be a lot of cross over happening. I'd like to print this t-shirt but Tom of course thinks it's stupid. If you would like to see this, or want one speek now or forever hold your peace. I need backing to talk Tom into this. Any body got the balls to wear this in the valley? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm coppying this question from another web site. I'd like to get a wider range of oppionions. I'm going to put this here as I think it might have shown it self in a base inviroment more then when people are skydiveing feel free to move it if you think fit. Wing suit CG question? « on: June 21, 2007, 11:11:38 AM » Quote Modify Remove -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First off,not that I exspect any one to have noticed much less care, I'd like to state that I am back from my trip with all my fingers and all my toes. I've had a lot of time to sit around in a tent and dwell on the accedent up there this year. I'd like to toss out some questions and see what other peoples opionions are. I'm not saying that any of this was the root cause of the accedent but it was what got me really thinking about it. Every one up there was of course jumping down with at least some gear. they were also wearing diffrent cloathing and boots then they were used to. By my standards every one includeing my self was jumping very light. With so many people around I felt no nead to carry as much shit as I normally have with me. I was really kicking my self for not bringing a second smaller rig. As light as these people were they were really noticeing a diffrence in their track. All of these people were jumping tracking pants and wing suits. Being "necked" or worse all the time it wasn't quite as noticeable for me. I need to get a bit more hi tec with this. With gear stuffed into any avalobaly pocket they were noticeing a real diffrence in tracking and body position includeing built in turns. People also commented on there Koflocks and seemed to have trouble tracking with them. Things I noticed. In skydiveing with my javelin I tend to track with my knees just slightly bent. I just can't seem to cup my upper body enough to avoid diveing. With my Kofocks on I can fully extend my legs. Same thing with my wing suit. An old original classic. Really punched out with the rear leg spread I feel like I'm diveing. I find that I again need to bend my knees just a bit. With the boots it ballances much nicer. It's like the upper wing is a bit small. What got me thinking was Jimmys accedent. Aparently he never got flying. I was wondering if any of this contributed to his diffaculty. The weight of his boots and the ballance of the wings on his suit. Now as it happens that he was NOT wearing double boot but that's what got me thinking about this. I was talking to one of the frogs and they've seen issues like this. He felt Jimmy was just trying too hard got too flat and mushed in a stall. He sold me on that idea but I'm still interested in your thoughts on wing ballance between diffrent designes and cg issues with boots and gear. Lee Report to moderator 24.117.211.238 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com The funniest T-shirts, finest skydiving accessories, and scariest BASE shit available. nicknitro71 I'm the asshole in charge here! Tom Aiello wonnabe Karma: 2 [applaud] [smite] Offline Gender: Posts: 253 Re: Wing suit CG question? « Reply #1 on: June 21, 2007, 12:11:19 PM » Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First, it’s really hard if not impossible to identify the CG of a wingsuit coupled with a pilot because it varies with body position, i.e. every small movement of any body part moves the CG. When designing a wingsuit rather than the CG, the balance between leg and arm wings has to be found. A suit with large arm wings and small leg wing will be inheritably “floaty” and possibly unstable with little forward speed, vice versa for a suit with big leg wing and small arm wings. However we fly a flexible frame so certain characteristics of a suit can be masked by changing our body position. Also what works for my body type might not work for somebody else’s body type. Even if two pilots have the same height and the same weight chances are their legs, torso, and arms won’t measure the same. Also their mass distribution won’t be the same. As for the boots instance…I do not believe the weight of the boots has nothing to do with this incident. Many people found that flying many wingsuit with boots actually improve the performance. While this is true for some suits, it has nothing to do with shifting the CG aft! On most suits the leg wing can be tensioned better while wearing boots so better leg wing tension equals better performance. If you do not believe it then find out the weight difference between your boots and your sneakers and wear ankle weights to compensate for this difference while wearing your sneakers. Chances are the performance is going to be better with the boots on, not with the sneakers with ankle weights. Being aware of this problem when I designed the leg wigs of our suits I made the booties in such matter that in order to correctly tension the leg wing forces must be applied towards the outside rather than down. On all our wingsuits the toes and knees should be pointing outwards (sideways). I know many people use wingsuits with sneakers in a skydiving contest and heavy boots in a BASE contest hence the reason for such design including the adjustable booties. In contrast on my old Skyflier 3 performance was better with boots on and the booties acted like “gas pedals” “press down for speed”. This does not apply to our wingsuits; you must push out your toes and knees for speed. Report to moderator Logged -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Memento Audere Semper BASE 903 krisflyz Please help me! Karma: 0 [applaud] [smite] Offline Posts: 11 Re: Wing suit CG question? « Reply #2 on: June 23, 2007, 10:40:04 AM » Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Agree with what Nick said and would like to add the following... The toes cannot be pointed when wearing boots and if the suit legwing goes all the way to the floor as seen in the attached picture, it creates loads of legwing(trailing edge) camber. WS BASE Exits =========== Johnny Utah was at the exit point when I did my first WS BASE jump and he said this... "You will go a bit headlow, don't fight it". I was shitting myself so didn't hear a thing but its on the video. From the second second, A little bit headlow is lot better than headhigh or flat. Trying to remain flat too long after exit causes burning up too much altiitude to get the flight started. I have seen this on WS BASE exits...forward movement in a big wingsuit taking 4-5 secs to start. Kris. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BootieV2.JPG (42.45 KB, 648x486 - viewed 3 times.) Report to moderator Logged RiggerLee Please help me! Karma: 0 Online Posts: 10 Re: Wing suit CG question? « Reply #3 on: June 23, 2007, 01:42:34 PM » Quote Modify Remove -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the boot question. I was just unpacking and I weighed my boots. my shoes are 1 lb 12 5/8 oz. My Koflacks are 6 lb 5 1/4 oz. It's a pretty big diffrence. Now Jimmy was wearing a light weight single boot and I think that was really just a case of some one trying too hard to fly fast. Lee Report to moderator 24.117.65.244 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com The funniest T-shirts, finest skydiving accessories, and scariest BASE shit available. krisflyz Please help me! Karma: 0 [applaud] [smite] Offline Posts: 11 Re: Wing suit CG question? « Reply #4 on: Today at 06:50:51 AM » Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from: RiggerLee on June 23, 2007, 01:42:34 PM On the boot question. I was just unpacking and I weighed my boots. my shoes are 1 lb 12 5/8 oz. My Koflacks are 6 lb 5 1/4 oz. It's a pretty big diffrence. Lee That is a substantial difference in weight. It will move the CG a little bit. I did some approximations and calculated that the difference in CG for me(44 inch legs(approximated as a cone) and 30.5 inch rest(approximated as a rectangular block of same dimensions as the waist) the CG will approximately move 1 inch back with 5 lb weights added to the ankles. Will moving the CG back help L/D? Or is that related to where the center of lift is located as well? Kris. Report to moderator Logged RiggerLee Please help me! Karma: 0 Online Posts: 10 Re: Wing suit CG question? « Reply #5 on: Today at 11:19:41 AM » Quote Modify Remove -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Think of it as more of a moment issue. the boots are probbable 30 in behind the cg. that's a pretty good lever arm. Put a 5 lb weight on the end of a 3 ft broom stick and try to hold it horizontal by the other end. If your in ballance before then thats the amount of moment that you have to over come to remain in ballance. I find it to be noticeable. With my old original bird sute I can really extend and streatch out my legs. I find that it flyes much better for me. As another example. Back when we first got the early bird suits around here one of the best and fastest flyers was Howey. This kind of surprised us all as he was kind of a tubby guy. I'm thinking the better proformance that he was showing might have been from the fact that his cg was a bit lower. Women tend to have wider hips and less upper body muscular development. There cg tends to be lower. I wonder if that might be why some of them fly so well? I'm curious what your thoughts might be on how this might relate to diffrent wing suite designs that have differing sizes of wing and how they seem to ballance. Lee Report to moderator 24.117.65.244 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com The funniest T-shirts, finest skydiving accessories, and scariest BASE shit available. Pages: [1] Go Up Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Thinking back to the size of a pod I can't help but think that you may find that it is still tight even in that container. You'd be better off with a RW PC. I don't know the shape of the bag your putting it in. You may find that it wants to pack up long. Most bags are short and wide. The old pods were long and let you make fewer folds. You might almost be better off russion rigging it and s folding it into the bag sidewase to take advantage of the width of the bag. Can you just s-fold the sleave in the container side to side? Most PC's were packed in sleaves and even with the slumping issues seamed to stage better out of the sleaves then out of pods or bags. I don't see why you would want to go with a ripcord unless you just want to go old school in which case you might just stick with a conventional rig. Try to find or build a large pilot chute. you've got a lot of weight there. Oh and you'll need a rappid link or something on the inside of the bag for the briadle to pull aganst. You'll have to stow the crown lines on the inside of the bag to keep them neat. The other choice would be to open up the hole in the top of the bag. A soft edge hole or a big #8 grommit. That way you could eather stow the crown lines on the out side of the bag. You could let them unstow during the early stages of the deployment or stow them on a flap like on a sleave that would take the load of the pilot shoot and let the crown unstow as the bag strips. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

A shot gun is a really good choice. Nothing is more versitile. pistol grip and folding stock shot guns are legal in Canada. act what I have caried in the past. Canada is in some cases more rational about these things then the US. They have a baral length requirement of 18.5 in. and an over all length requirement if it is fireable. A take down shot gun is ok becouse it can no be fired. I think any thing with a folding stock would meet the requirement. There are some good hot loaded big game slugs that do ok. Ordenary slugs suck. They do not penatrate well enough. I've done some research as well. I wanted something with a lot of power and I wanted something better then a shot gun slug. I wanted a good jacketed bullet that would punch through bone and get deep. An expander that would mushroom with out breaking up and loseing mass. That's a tall order for just a chunk of lead which is all a slug is. Most slugs lack the sectional density to punch deep. The 50 Alaskan fires a 450 gr bullet. It's as heavy as a ordinary slug. It moves at over 2000 ft/sec and it's a good dense soft point bullet with a heavy jacket. That was what I wanted. Marlin builds good guns. This one is a custom rebuild from Alaska, see link in earlier post. The 457 is their baby. It's just a step above a wildcat. Starline builds brass. There are a couple of people selling loaded ammo. Unless you want to get a big thumper in 50 Alaskan, you don't need that, then get a gun in 45/70 or 450 marlin. There is good hot 45/70+p out there that you can get off the shelf. Don't bother with the old pussy stuff. 45/70 gov. was a black pouder round originaly and is low presure. 450 is nice but in the end it isn't any better then hot 45/70. In the end it's just more exspencive and harder to find. The brass in nicer and I think tougher. There is actualy a bit less case volume. By the way now that I have my gun Marlin has anounced that they are going to start selling the same take down rifle for 1/3 the price. Such is life. I recamend you call Wild West Guns in Alaska and get one of his trigers. The ejector and big lever are also worth the money. Oh, and magnaporting is so worth it. I have one in 450 Marlin. The new one is ported. It really stops the muzzel rise. I was sighting it in on a bench rest. The diffrence was obveous. The new one is neutral. The old one would jump up out of the rest with out the second hand to hold it down. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

The standard minemum equipment list for a trip like this is a little diffrent from normal jumps. It incudes things like: Crampons ice axe liquid fuel stove bivi gear rope bolt kit and a jumpable gun with some ass. This is a base thread. I've had conversations with Chad and others over the years about how to jump gear down and this is one of the larger hurdles. Restricted fire arms, I think that what they call it, are a pain. There are a few reasons why they will let an American bring a hand gun in. An established compatention, etc. Very restrictive. Where will it be stored, what route will it take, etc. Big hassle. There is no way they would just let you wonder around with a good hand canon. A manual gun like that lever action is relatively easy to get in if you are headed up to the wilds. There are provisions spicificly for that. The statistics he is quoteing make my point for me. If I need to kill some one. I want my gun with me. It's much safer to cap some one with a gun then to get close enough to use a knife. Those numbers simple show that you do not have an adaquite number of fire arms in your country and that they are not easly enough accessable. Go to our web site and look at the humorous T-shirts. I think you'll get my point. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

For all practical perpouses the are no hand guns in Canada. Actualy it's all our fault here in the US. Remember we shipped most of our pinko hippy passafist north of the boarder back in the 60's. The have been breading and multipling up there. Now their spawn have taken over the goverment. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Not a silly question. There are in fact lever action shot guns. Or there were at one time. http://iacshotguns.com/87w.html This is a Rifle. It's built off a Marlin. An 1895xlr to be specefic. That's a dime by the muzel. It's 45 cal. chambered in 457 see link. Not the most powerful cartrage around but it's a take down and cheeper then some of the bolt action take down that were out there. The 50 alaskan has a good bit more ass but it wasn't going to be ready in time. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

They are pricey. They are Slow. But they do good work. http://www.wildwestguns.com/CoPilot_And_Guide_Rifles/body_copilot_and_guide_rifles.html Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

New Bang stick is in. Bad news is the 50 cal barral was not ready in time. Jease you'd think 8 months would be enough lead time. They had to ship it with a 457. It's a slightly longer version of a 45-70. The brass is thicker and allows it to be loaded hotter. It will be a lot nicer to jump with. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

But... but... we were just getting ready to buy a banner ad. The pictures are taken we're just waiting for the photagrapher to burn them to disk. It's gona be a cool ad. Where is every one? Hello... Is there any body out there? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Eloquent? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Tom, please give him a chance to sober up and appolojise before you ban him. His post are normally some of the few worth reading. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Have you cut a hole in your "Roof" to give your self a "Drying Well"? Sorry I don't know what else to call it seeing as your "Loft" is in your basement? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

We were discussing this a couple of years ago on a slow day in the loft. My partner was talking about ways to knock off the bank across the street. The police force in this town is a joke. I don't think any of the natives have a triple diget IQ. This is the shallow end of the gene pool. I may not be able to spell but we have two of the best minds for 50 miles around and should be able to pull it off. We were debating the marits of tunneling in vs knocking it over. I pointed out that sooner or later the FBI would step in and we would have to deal with more chalenging opponents. Personaly I lean towards hitting the bad guys. First off they can not simply go to the cops and say some guy stole $20,000 that they had hiden in their crack house. If the cops do become involved the investigation would be on a totaly diffrent scale. They will be prone to assmueing that some other nonspicific bad guy did the dead. I had an idea for a nice quiet approach. Sneek up to the house in the night with a bottle on Carbon Monoxide. Find the intake to the airconditioning unit or a cracked window, base of a door, or just drill a hole. Just start a nice steady trickle. It's oderless. You don't need a high concentration. It acts like a poison. It builds up captering the red blood cells. It can even happen over a couple of days. In this case you want it to hit over a couple of houres in the early morning. You just start to feel tired and shitty and go to sleep. What probable happens at that time any way. With luck you can just walk in. If you do it in the winter and pick a low rent one where they don't have gas heat you could set up a little habatchy with charcoal in one of the rooms like they were useing it to keep warm or cook. No questions. Worst case if it goes loud they wont be worth a shit and then your back to the , some bad guy did it plan. Your right finding the right people is a tough one. No one keeps his mouth shut when he gets cought. The real trick is to find some one that keeps his mouth shut when he doesn't get cought. A lot of people get nailed when they open there big mouth or let the money burn a hole in their pocket. The key is to find some one with the kind of disaplin to stay on the down low. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Don't do it. Normally the grommets are pulled toward the top of the container by the loop. Placeing the loop in the bottom flap alows the top flap to fully extend. A lot of Javalins do not take this well. It puts more preasure on the risor covers and the tuck flap on the main may not close well. A lot of the problems people have with risor covers and main flaps come from over sized mains with too long of a closeing loop. this is the same thing. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

This is in the classifieds under spare parts. I'm not trying to give the guy shit. In fact I applaude his thrift. He's even cheeper then my partner Tom Who is a cheep son of a bitch. We laughed so hard I had to share. For Sale: Used VX 90 Line set Price: (MO) Shipping: Buyer Pays Shipping Used Vectran Line set from VX 90,

This is basicly a retraction of a opinion that I stated in another thread here in the gear forum. It was in one of the original threads on the Javelin RSL, see link in post. The RSL had absolutely nothing to do with the fatality it was just part of the fall out. In telling that story I made a speculation on the original accedent and haveing now seen the rig I've found my self changeing my position on this and did not want to be responcable for any missconceptions about it. There has been more then enough missdirection away from the original issues as it is. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Just saw the rig today. Have not gotten ahold of Stanford yet. I think the burn is what they missed. We had to work hard with the light to make that show. It is not obveous. With out that bit of info I beleave they just misinterprited the torn stitches. I hope to speak to him soon. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Following PIA Tom posted a question. Now as it happens that post turned into the big Javelin RSL issue that we are all familiar with. A request was made in that thread for more information about the incident. I was surprised to see it and how long it had already grown. I went ahead and wrote up a description up the accident and the aftermath of it. I told the story as best I could but I can only tell it from the point of view from which I saw it. There was nothing in this case that was cut and dry. There were even more lose ends and contradictions then is normal. In telling it I tried to be clear on what we knew for a fact. I also tried to be clear on what was speculation, both my own and that of others. The post was long and the accident was only one small part of it. Never the less it reignighted the controversy about what really happened. I got a phone call and was talking to some one that had the opportunity to examine the rig. The gear has now been released from evidence and I have in fact had the chance to see it myself. I’m doing an about face and changing sides on this debate as to what occurred in the actual accident. This is what I wrote in the original post: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2681081;page=3;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25; Some of these things are boring and almost closed cases from the start. This one was odd and left some unanswered questions. You’ll hear fifty different stories from fifty different people but here is what I think we can say. He had a malfunction on his main. He attempted to cut away. One riser for whatever reason failed to release. The reserve deployed. It entangled with the main. The other riser released but the canopies were now entangled. At some point the reserve handle had been pulled. He spun in and did not survive. In the end that’s all that can really be said about the incident. Now let’s talk about the gear. There were several repacks on the rig since I packed it and removed the RSL. One at least was a cut away. The cut away handle had been replaced with one from RWS. He’d specifically requested one with their larger ridged tube inside. It was inspected by Gene Bland from the FSDO, Master rigger from way back, and John Stanford, manufacturer and master rigger from just about the beginning of time. Bland is good but a little out of date. Stanford is just about the sharpest rigger I know. They do not miss things. They inspected the gear down at the morgue. They found no problems with it. The risers seemed it be in spec. When suspended the left side cut away about 1.5 inches of pull after the right. That sounds just about perfect. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, especially a friend, but I think he just got casual. He pulled until he felt himself drop and punched the reserve. The rig did exactly as it was supposed to do. It chopped the right side first. The reserve went up and the main as it spun above him entangled with the reserve. I have no doubt it happened quickly and by the time he realized what was happening it was too late. He just got sloppy and failed to pull his handle to full arm extension. He failed to fully cut away before he himself fired his own reserve into the streamer above his head. Now that sounds harsh as shit but that’s how I read it. There are plenty of other stories to explain what happened. Every one has their own idea and there have been some doozies put forward… They tried to tell every one that it was not a riser release problem but a packing problem. Supposedly they found damage to a side flap and some stitches popped at the corner of the tray? Now I guess it’s possible that Bland and Stanford missed something but let me tell you I’ve watched Bland inspect a rig following a fatality. He used a magnifying glass. He chided me for not keeping one in my rigging kit for that purpose. Between the two of them I don’t buy that they missed any thing. Never the less the next time Jay, now the Sunpath rep, showed up there they had a new theory. He was going around trying to tell every one that would lessen that it was the packer that had killed Appleton. The Packer and the long break lines of his Specter. So Jeff was the next one on the chopping block. They had this elaborate scenario where you laid the break line like this and pulled the flap like that, and passed the flap through the loop and closed the other side with all the line clearly visible on top of the flaps, some one had to help him by the way he needed a third hand to make it work. And then when he when he goes to demonstrate how it turned into a horseshoe all it did was unstow the toggle. I never saw him succeed in making it work. He could not replicate it. Never the less he was still going around telling any one that would lessen that Jeff, a perfectly good packer and rigger, had killed Appleton. And the more you tried to reason with him the louder he would say it as if he could make him self right and win the argument through greater disable power. So they had no problem feeding Jeff to the lion’s ether to save there own reputation when as far as I’m concerned it was never in doubt. I jump a Javelin always have. And like I said, I think the rig did exactly what it was supposed to. Perfectly… All that I can say is that when I wrote that I believed it. It was my opinion and I stated it as such. Today I saw the rig and the damage they were speaking of. I’m now firmly on the other side of the fence. It’s not the first time I’ve ever been wrong and probable wont be the last. It can be hard to understand how there can be so much disagreement over what you would think would be clear and obvious facts. Unless you’ve ever been involved in an investigation it’s hard to convey how confusing the evidence that you’re trying to work from can be. It’s not just that there are peaces missing from the puzzle but you are constantly being handed peaces that don’t belong in the picture. There are contradictions. There are always witness statements and they never agree. It’s not just a matter of filling in the gaps it’s about filtering out the noise. Stanford and Bland saw the gear. The rest of us did not. If I was going to chose two people to look at it I couldn’t have picked any one better. Never the less they did miss something. There is a line burn around the left flap. It’s not big. It’s a subtle melting of the surface of the fabric. It’s interrupted line of glaze where the fabric wrinkled it only touched the tops of the folds where the flap was squeezed. There is a slight bowing in the stiffener as well. The tare is in the stitching closing the bottom corner of the main tray. I’ll attach pictures. The burn is not obvious depending on the light. Taken alone the damage to the corner of the tray can be mistaken for damage on impact. Let me clarify that. There is dirt on the back of the rig. With out the burn, impact it the only explanation that I, and probable they, could come up with. It’s a little week. You wouldn’t expect to see it with the main tray empty but strange shit happens when you hit that hard. With the burn it all makes since. You can even see how the inset of the Odyssey harness put tension on the seam and tore the stitches. So we have two very good master riggers that come back with one story. The rig is shipped off and Sunpath come back with this totally different explanation. There are eyewitnesses that are telling us all kinds of things including statements that contradict Sunpaths horseshoe story. Who do you believe? It really didn’t help things when a Sunpath rep. showed up here with this story from Javelin. He wasn’t a rigger and wasn’t a good representative for them in this. It didn’t help that he felt the need to grossly exaggerate all of his descriptions of the damage. Telling people that the whole side flap had been torn lose from the rig and that the flap had been sawed in half by the line just wasn’t productive. We’d all ready spoken to Stanford and every one has a lot of respect for him. Nobody believed that he missed the fact that the container was practically torn in half. We were all standing there looking at the guy like he had a third eye growing out of the middle of his head. The completely ridicules scenario he was trying to sell of how the break line had been packed around the side flap went over like a ton of bricks. Basically both he and Sunpath came across looking like a bunch of fools. Now imagine this in the context of all the RSL issues that were going on at the time. Nothing made since and no one could buy the contradiction in the statements. In the mean time Sunpath had put together a report that they were sitting on. I’ve spoken to some one that has seen it. It’s a straight up evaluation of the container damage that fully explains all of this. I’m told that it is a well-written report that clearly details the reality of the damage and how it occurred. Then at the bottom there is another paragraph that states that they believe that the Fat Daddy cutaway handle that had been installed in the rig was the cause of the whole accident. This is in total contradiction to the findings of the rest of the report and was clearly added later by someone in the management of the company. I don’t have any doubt in my mind at this point that it was a horseshoe. Sunpath was right in this all along. They just didn’t do a very good job of representing their position. I still don’t buy the break line. I’m more inclined to believe that it was one of the suspension lines that half hitched around the stiffener in the flap. You need the tension from the riser to make the half hitch work. This isn’t new. It has happened in the past. That’s why we have stows on our bags. It was not uncommon to just use the locking stows and coil the rest of the lines in the tray. That lost popularity from incidents just like this. It’s not common but it does happen. There have been a hand full of incidents over the last few years on modern rigs. It almost comes under the heading of a shit happens act of god kind of thing. If there’s any thing to be learned from this it might be to stow the risers closer to the bag. Less free line in the tray can help to avoid this kind of problem. Another thing we might look at is redesigning the construction of our flaps. Wide stiffeners in the side flaps expose you to this kind of problem. This is not a Javelin issue. This is an issue that can affect many of the rigs out there. In the future we might do well to design rigs with more taper to the side flaps. If the actual stiffener is smaller and inset into the edges of the flap so that it does not go all the way across the flap it might be less prone to this problem. I hate to say it but Sherman might have had something with the Racer and the construction of the side flaps. Even then he still has a grommet there and the softness of the flap is dangerous in and of it self. What we really need is a more substantial flap perhaps built with a stiffened ballistic cloth that is tapered so lines will slide off. If it has a plastic stiffener in the end it should be shaped in a way to help lines slide off rather then to form hard corners to create a place for lines to lock. You know what really bothers me more then any thing else about this is the round about way that all of this has happened. It feels like we have run in a circle all around the world only to come back to where we started. What has all of this been about? All this RSL shit. All this business about the cut away handle. The hiding of information. All these games about TSO’s and alterations. And where has all this hair pulling gotten us? What has Sunpath achieved with all of this? I feel like I’m trapped in a fun house in the hall of mirrors. I hate it and just want to smash them all so that I can see the truth. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

It's interesting that the skiing analogy keeps comeing up. It is in fact perfect. A few years back there was an artical in... Outside Magazine. I don't know if you remember it but it was following the fatality in Ouray, CO. at the ice park. I'll spare the detailes but there was threat of a big law suit. Just the threat was enough to ripple through the insurance companies causeing rate hikes that shut down many out door busnesses. The article was about the history of liability in this country. In point of fact all of this shit started with skiing. A guy got paralised and won a law suit setting a presadent for liability law that has fucked us all. There's more. The ski resorts did not retreat and cower. They were able to get a law passed limeting the liability of a resort. They did this by standing togather not by hideing in the shadows and bickering. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Built one last summer. The lines can be shorter then you would imagion. The skirt tends to be tight and makes it hard to stear with three vents and it needed a bit more venting to stop the osolation. Note the more recent photos of the irving canopy have a mesh vent band on each side. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm pretty sure that it all comes down to the data package that they submited to the MIDO during their original aplication. No one out side Sunpath has been privy to the comunications that have passed back and forth between them and the FAA. They have not seen fit to share the details of any of it. If it was truly and clearly in stone then I can not understand how they could have ever waffled back and forth all this time as they have. I tend to think that this has all been driven by the manufactorer rather then by the FAA. I doubt any other manufatorer would chose to open this can of worms. I honestly have trouble understanding why Sunpath has chosen to turn this into as big of an issue as they have. I'll have to leave it to some one else to make that call to them. I've got enough hit men on my trail as it is. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com