RiggerLee

I've met and talked with them at PIA. If you really want to do this, that's cool. More power to you. But know what you're getting into. That is one of the hardest jobs I've ever seen. It's HARD work. They carry HEAVY packs. And it's about as far from glamorous as you can get. The jumping thing is like 5% of it and the jumping is not supper fun. I'm a base jumper and some of the things they do, conditions they jump in, places they land are kind of sketchy. Base is more fun, less dangerous, and less stressful then what they do. They need good men. And if you want to step into that breach good for you but it will probable be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. And just to add, why are you asking around here? If you're qualified for this, with years of back woods fire fighting under your belt, I would think that you would already know who to talk to. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't know if it had a specific name. Some times x shaped sliders like that were called spider sliders. It was just one of the various forms of pilot chute controlled reefing. Diapers are still around in CRW canopies. A good example is the Prodigy and Express canopies. The were built by Flight concepts and we used them during Diamond Quest. It was an effort to recruit people into a CRW big way project. In the course of that they used to go around doing a bunch of CRW camps promoting it. In any case it was a good diaper with a fair bit of control of the canopy if you packed it right. The nice thing was you could just hook up the main to their container. You didn't have to worry about bag shape or trying to use their bag. It made it much easier for them to put one of the demo canopies into their own rig. Down side, no one was used to packing it, the canopies were on the big end and a lot of the containers were too small, you wound up with some very ugle pack jobs. It became a running joke. Nothing wrong with the system. In fact as a CRW canopy it had some advantages. Not having a bag swinging around like a bollo on the top of the canopy was a real advantage. When a canopy collapses in a wrap the weight of a bag can pull the bridal back out of the retract system and swing around like a weight looking for some thing to entangle with. This is not theoretical it happens a lot. So it's been done. For that application there were advantages. It was always an up hill battle just because it was so alien to the students. And if the container is tight you can wind up with some of the ugliest pack jobs and rigs imaginable. It really did become a running joke that half the pack job was out side the container, although to be honest some times we did it just to fuck with people. A lot of our containers were just what ever we could find or they were swooping rigs pressed into service for monthly CRW training. One guy open the seams in the corners of his container with a seam ripper to fit a bigger canopy. There was one that I jumped were I would only close the top and bottom flaps. One guy had a pullout, we didn't bother taking the curved pin off the bridal it would get lost so some times it would fall down and dangle below the flaps. So he's trying to climb into the plane and the woman behind him sees it and freaks out. She's got him in a bear hug screaming "No, No!" as he's trying to climb up the ladder into the otter. He's like, "It's fine, it's fine." That's where the term dangling pin came from. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

It's still around in different iterations. If you look at CRW and base canopies you will see variations of this. You'll see tail pockets, tail flaps, and diapers. The Prodigy as an example had a Diaper. As to why it fail out of favor. People wanted more positive staging and better control of the pack job as it was lifted to line stretch. Free fall speeds increased. Even before Free Fly speeds were picking up. Jump suits were getting tighter, weights etc. Canopies were becoming higher performance. A low aspect ratio seven cell, well you can just throw it out there and it would figure it self out. A modern elliptic is a bit more twitchy. Another issue was line control. A lot of people packed that way by just coiling the line in the bottom of the tray. This can actually work till it doesn't. Every once in a while you'll half hitch a line around a side flap and get a nasty horse shoe. So the practice of coiling lines with early diapers and bags with out stows went away. People wanted better line control and bags got extra stows beyond the locking stows. Rigs got tighter. If you do half the stuffing cramming it into a bag you can then crush it even more closing a tight container over it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

We are not killing people but you will see scary things from time to time. I've seen choker diapers closed from the bottom and half stows closed with all the lines. I haven't seen the same equivalent errors in squares. I'm pretty sure all examples are attributable to lack of training, inability to read or more probable not having the instructions. Not making excuses for errors but you do see this. Even if you have the instructions some times they are vague. Pack in a standard long fold... etc. If you'd never seen a round before it would be confusing. Their is a not unreasonable assumption of preexisting knowledge. Talk to the guy from Butler. They see a lot of things coming back into their shop. But people are not dieing. PEP just don't get used that much. Their just are not that many saves so these errors slip by with out some one dieing. That doesn't make it ok. That doesn't mean that their isn't a problem. I see it as a decline in training. I think it's a product of the commercialization of rigging courses in which they try to train people in a couple of weeks what they would have once learned over a six month apprenticeship. It hasn't all been bad. It's opened it up to people who would never have been able to presue it before. It has allowed the growth of our sport but new graduates do not have the depth and breadth of knowledge that they once had. The technology is diverging and if you aren't going to have the training to cope with it then you should just divide the two before you really do kill some one. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

There are some differences in orientation and lay out that might confuse some one the first time but they are trivial in comparison between the differences between sport and round pilot rigs. A lot of sky diving riggers are completely unfamiliar with them. Dave DeWolf no longer teaches them in his rigging class unless you stay for some extra training. So in his class you can be trained as a rigger and be tested with out ever packing or being tested on a round. It's the sort of thing that can get people killed. Back in the day, I think it was para flight, that had a special "Square Certification". They at least reconsidered how radically different the technology was at the time. I wouldn't mind seeing the old system scrapped and rather go to Round, Square ratings. I think they do some thing like that in Canada? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm fond of things like this. https://www.rei.com/product/783805/rei-co-op-trail-chair It's nice to be able to set up in your tent and when you're ready to crash you just pop the sides and it becomes a second ground pad. You can also get a cheep stadium seat kind of thing that is like this. It's more comfortable because it's more ridged but it can ware on the floor of your tent. It's nice to be able to hang out in your bug shelter. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

You can go with a house but I'm comfortable in some thing much smaller I'd recommend some this... https://www.cabelas.com/product/camping/tents-shelters/backpacking-expedition-tents/pc/104795280/c/104779080/sc/104303880/alps-mountaineering-hydrus-tent/2495809.uts?slotId=13 It's a cheep low end tent but it has some important things like a real vestibule that is high enough to cook in, if you plan on doing that. Most tents need a little work. I'd recommend adding extra tie downs around the skirt. An extra one in between on each gap. It lets you stretch it out better and improves your air flow. You can add as many extra guy lines as you want and your car makes a good wind break but the safest thing to do with any tent is to pull it down in a real storm. Pull the poles and drop it flat or at least pull the vestibule. There are even more options at wallmart for a third the price. Buy 2 and when one wears out just swap it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

For not so spartan living... https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IQU7WY2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ME985E8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R57LSXE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A8NP090/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WRRJZCN/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Good for several days of fan and light and multiple movies. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't know how long you expect it to last. For UV polyester is better then nylon. I would advise draping a tarp over it during the day. Two person is more then big enough. I think you will be happier with a lighter two season tent. By that I mean one with more mesh and ventilation. You can stay warm but sweating is a bitch. Make your own ground cloth and leak seal the tent it. Pick the best high ground you can find. Nuke it for bugs. Beyond that I'd look for the cheapest thing I could find on sale. You probable won't have any problem setting guy lines So a cheaper non free standing is fine. One thing I really like in a tent is a large high ceiling vestibule that you can cook in. A back door so you don't have to go in and out through the vest is nice. Get a cheep camp chair that doubles as a second ground mat. It's nice to be able to set up and read or cook. Get a good solar light that you can hang above and have shine down to cook or read. You can get a five gallon paint bucket and screw on lids that make great bug proof pantries for food at home depot. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

You're not exactly a student. By now you should have learned to tell people to go fuck them selves. If you're not capable of that by now not only are you not qualified to jump a Katana you have no business skydiving at all. And whats wrong with a freaking Katana? Any one that does not reconise a perfectly good canopy like that has just become way too stuck up and snobbish. They also need to be kicked off the drop zone so they can go join some even more elitist sport where they can measure their dick size with the size of their wallet. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Some of the base jumpers that are really serious about their wing suit flying have been jumping interments on pilons on their bellies. I think Yuori might have been behind it. You might try reaching him on basejumper.com. As I recall he was able to get actual glide and true airspeed data out of it. The problem with useing a GPS system is that it's earth frame. It doesn't give you true air speed or decent rate. For a canopy pilot where the speeds are high enough those errors from wind or thermals fade but if you're looking at doing canopy design and trying to verify design models it's a problem. Some people have been using a towed instrument. You lower it on a tail behind you like a towed sonar array on a sub. It's heavy enough that it rides below the wake from your body and gives you good data. The instrument it self is on a pivot and alines with the free stream to give true air speed and decent glide angle in straight flight. I think it uses a free spinning propeller like an anemometer rather then a Pito tube. I think the technology came out of the paragliding industry they are obsessive about their performance. Tried to track one down and had no luck finding it. I think it's some thing used in their development and testing internal to those companies. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

In regards to the testing. Most of the interesting points were actually side affects of our efforts to find ways to test other things. For example we were looking at using "super slinks" in some aplications. Big mongo sized kevlar slinks made from basically light kevlar rope. Found a number of issues. One being that slinks become less reliable as the diameter of the material they are made from increases. As the line or cord increases in diameter there is a rolling force trying to flip the ring through the knot. It tries to unlock it self. At the loads we were playing with it's an issue. Some of the hard ware problems showed up as Phil was trying to test the super slink. We built a 20,000 lb test stand with load cells and a hydrolic cylinder. The high speed video of the stretching and failure of the joints was very interesting. Phil was pulling all these weird things. I was building test samples for him. He was using any thing he could rig up to pull them. Like for example using RW-9 rings to try to break the supper slinks. On paper they were stronger then the slink but with the load concentrated on that little half inch space in the center of the ring he plucked a .5 inch bight out of the middle of the ring. And the RW-9 is actually a pretty beefy ring. Heavier gauge then the RW-10 that you see on most tandems. We started pulling some of the hard ware and risers that we were building and found that the rings needed to be loaded across a wider area to reach their tinsel strength. We were also looking at the strength of our big kevlar 4 ring risers and found failure points at the second ring where we would just bend and wrap the second ring around the first. It was difficult but we could sew kevlar risers that would not break but the limiting factor was the ring hardware. We wound up going with a different design. It was sort of like an old strong wrap with the end being held by a three ring. Finally in the end we just designed a strap cutter. Think big cypres cutter that cuts 15,000 lb kevlar webbing. It's field re loadable with smokeless powder and electronic igniters. That made all the problems go away. As to the results of the hard ware testing. Most of the failures that we generated were in trying to miss use it in some other way. As such I didn't really keep notes on it. We did find a bad ring that had some kind of fracture in it. They were left over RW-9s that we got from paragear. Might have even been seconds? They had been made by forge craft probable at the very end. I showed them to the guys from Borden Forge at the symposium. They said that the tooling was worn out when it was made. They had no problem diagnosing the fracture. They are the new maker of that ring and had had to make all new tooling for the contract. They were not surprised at all by some of the other failures like the rings with the half inch bites out of them. They were never intended to be loaded in that way and were not surprised at the numbers I quoted to them for the failure points. I don't remember them off the top of my head but 1/3 sticks in my memory. It was in interesting lessen in testing and the use and miss use of hard ware in ways that it was not designed for. Loaded properly Every thing did well, with the notable exception of that defective ring. Being miss used all bets are off. So when I see people for example a base rig manufacture using RW-8s for harness attachment points for base tandem rings I start jumping up and down pulling my hair out and screaming, "NO, NO, NO!" Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

There are many ways that this has been done. Legally it's much simpler to add an attachment point for a main or test canopy. You would like to put the cutaway canopy in the chest mount or at least the secondary main. It's harder to make the argument that that attachment point is for a reserve. It hasn't been TSO drop tested. At the very least you would have to do paperwork on it through the FSDO. Been there done that. But if it's just for a cutaway canopy then it's just a toy you're playing with in the air and as long as it doesn't compromise the TSO'd system... fair game? In any case you can generally get away with it. Ways to do this have been discussed before. Some better then others. The example shown strikes me as a good way to get bitch slapped by that B-12 and it does not lend it self to being cut away so not well suited as a main. Could put 3 rings on it but it could still whack you. If you're making a test canopy cut away, better to put a separable three ring on there below that ring so that it would be less prone to whipping around. What he's showing you there was probable used in TSOing that pilot rig. Probable never regularly deployed. If he did have to use it he would probable be hand deploying it past a may west or torn up canopy from an inversion as the "main" was not designed to be cutaway. It's a suitable solution for that purpose. If you ever really needed to use it in anger, like a total on the "main", a broken orbital in your eye socket would be to least of your worries. But do you want to risk loseing an eye or getting a concussion on every opening? No offence to his attachment point but you can do better. Also just as a note. RW-8's not the best ring to attach a snap to. It's not designed for that concentrated load from the thin snap. I've broken them that way. They beak at about 1/3 the normal point of failure. And yes I've built kevlar risers heavy enough to beak rings. If you look at snap rings you'll see they are much thicker or pointed to load at a small radius to match the snap. And use the heavier snaps designed for reserves. They're rated for higher loads. It's assumed that one may come lose. And cross connectors. If you're going to build risers for a belly mount reserve don't forget them and build it in a non pealing way that could survive an opening on one snap. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

How much of this is a bad thing. Yes animals can become entangled and killed and it looks like shit. But on the other hand it can become it's own ecosystem. Trash on the sea floor becomes reefs. One popular way of disposing of old boats now is to sink them. I saw where they did this with a big military boat... was it an aircraft carrier? Turned it into an instant reef that was soon colonized with all kinds of growth and animals. The huge patches of floating trash, really areas of scattered debree, form floating colonies in areas that were barren before. The open ocean is less populated then the dessert, but if there is some thing floating there all kinds of life will congregate to it. Any thing floating becomes an island in this vast emptiness and to have multiple patches within striking distance of each other, now you have a whole new ecology. It's a floating reef. Feel free to hate my. I think trash look like shit. I'm offended by it. I'm just saying that it's not the end of the planet. Life adapts and often takes advantage of the opportunities it is given. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

An I beam canopy is one that is built with a top skin panel, a bottom skin, and loaded bearing ribs at the ends of the cell, and a non loaded rib in between. There have been other designs but that's what you see now in the majority of canopies. So imagine the cell. You have the loaded ribs at the end and the non loaded in the center and the panels stretched horizontally in between. Two types of distortion. Pressurize it and the top and bottom skins bulge out like a balloon between all the ribs. Ribs stay straight and vertical unless they are an end rib in which case they bulge as well. The distortion is a product of the ratio of the height of the rib to the width in between each rib. This distortion gets worse as you go back towards the tail and the rib gets thinner. Thats why you see sub ribs between the main ribs near the tail on newer canopies to try to thin out the trailing edge and reduce drag. Second type and what we are referring to here. Again imagine the ribs are vertical supports. Remember the fabric is soft. When the wing produces lift that fabric wants to move upwards between the load bearing ribs. It wants to compress the canopy span wise by folding it back flat lifting the unloaded rib till the cell is compressed. This reduces the volume of the cell. The pressurization of the cell does not like that wanting to maximize the volume. These are the two forces seeking a medium. The amount of distortion in the wing from this is a product of the ratio of the lift across that cell and the pressure ratio in that cell. So whats this ratio? it's basically dynamic pressure, Q, .5RoV^2. Ro=density V=velocity magnitude squared, to lift. Lift is Q*CL*S, CL= coefficient of lift of the wing, fixed number, S= surface area generally a fixed number but in this case it's actually going to shrink a bit as the canopy distorts. Cl=A*AoA, A is a slope it's how the lift changes with AoA. We're kind of simplifying all this but in the end even with high induced G loading, like coming out of a dive, you can basically say that the ratio of the internal pressure to the lift of the wing is linearly related to the AoA. And so the loss of lift as you lose span width and surface area of the wing is related to AoA of the wing. Now think about the cross braced canopy. The diagonal ribs support much of the load of the cell. They prevent the cell from drifting upwards. Analogy. Ever seen a cable bridge like in Nepal. Its just cables with a bed and more cables for the hand lines. It's a big bow. Always will be. Now think about a suspension bridge like the golden gate. Road surface is flat no distortion because those big cables support the vertical load on the road surface. Their curve is a product of those forces. There is still horizontal force supported by the anchors at the ends but the road stays pretty much straight. Same thing in a cross brace. As long as the pressure ratio stays below the angle of the angle of the diagonal rib the cell will not distort upwards. So there is a limit to how wide you can make your cell related to how tall your rib is. Fortunately most of the lift is being produced at the front of the canopy where the cell is thickest. Think about it a bit you'll see it. That's a little dumbed down but every one else should be able to follow it. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

You know, the interesting thing about cross braced canopies is that they are better low speed airfoils. I know that sounds strange as they are used on the fastest canopies around but that's actually the point. What allows people to jump canopies at those high wing loading's is that they are better low speed wings. It's about how the wing behaves as the AoA increases. The wing inflates because the inlet is near the stagnation point with the highest pressure on the wing. That dynamic pressure wants to inflate the wing. The lift produced by the wing actually wants to collapse it. That's why cells bow upwards on an I beam canopy. It's trying to flat pack it self in the air. The inflation pressure fights against that. The distortion is related to the ratio of the pressure to the lift. As your air speed reduces and the dynamic pressure lowers relative to the lift the distortion becomes more pronounced. The canopy gets smaller. Example when you are in breaks and slow the canopy. You can see this as the front of the canopy narrows on landing when you flare. Basically it's in relation to your AoA. So right at the point when you need to canopy to perform it's best it's at it's worst. In a cross brace the canopy is now less dependent on the inflation to support the load of the cell. The diagonal ribs carry the load more efficiently and the the compresive force is reduced. The canopy is less distorted and flies more efficiently. This is going to sound strange but the best place for cross bracing is on an accuracy canopy. I can see it now... five cell cross braced accuracy canopies ruling the world meet. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

PD built the Excalibur in some larger sizes. Does any one remember the largest that they built? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

A few things make more since now. There was... I think this was the double fatality, canopy collision. The camera helmet was knocked off one of the jumpers heads. DZ was like, Oh well. One of the jumpers went out and searched through the field all day till he found it so we could know what happened. The DZ was pissed. They gave him so much shit over that he was almost band from the drop zone. At the time I didn't understand why? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I'm wondering about the liability angle. So if there is an injury or a fatality and the DZ shoots video of it, would the DZ own it? In a civil suit would the family have access to it? And could they use it as evidence in the trial. Who would own it? The student may have commissioned it but if the drop zone doesn't deposit the check who owns it? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I've never heard of any one "demilling" a canopy before sale for any type of liability reason. The military started doing that as a policy at some point. I bought a bunch of canopies at an auction once and they made me sit there with a pair of sesores cutting the lines off before I could take them out of the ware house. Generally people, or at least I, tend to be upfront about the age, wear, and condition of the gear from the very beginning in a sale. Why waist time? Their going to see it at some point any way. Why blow all that money shipping it back and forth. And if they can't be trusted with basic maintenance they don't need to be buying it any way. A car is do for an oil change. Are you going to drain the oil out of it before you sell it for liability reasons? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I think there is a little more to the history then that. Coatings on lines have been hit or miss over the years. Think back to when things were TSO'd. We had nylon lines then Dacron. I think Kevlar was the first "high tec" line we had. Didn't last long enough for mains but they were trying to use it on reserves. I believe it was kevlar that they had trouble with. Was it the early ravens? The coating would stick together if it got wet. Lines would come out in a clump. I seen to recall that they had some trouble on some braided nylon line as well? Been a long time since I thought about this. So what did you see in the next round of reserves? Untreated lines. Didn't the swift+ have untreated lines? And PD reserves. They came out around then. And Strong reserves. All of these things came out in about the same time frame and it was fashionable at the time to use uncoated line. Re testing is a bitch so they've stuck with it. I've also had them argue that there are advantages to it or at least potential down sides to coatings. Questions of consistency. Coating prevent fibers from sliding and might reduce ultimant strength. If you ask them they will give you an answer but I think the truth has more to do with what was going on in the industry at the time when these first designs were developed. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I also favor a front mount. I'm not sure I'd say that it's any less complicated. The point is that they are all significantly more complicated and involve fundamental changes to your procedures which is how almost every one gets into trouble jumping them. People have killed them selves pulling handles out of sequence. Doesn't the USPA require a C license to do an intentional cutaway? Seems silly since it could happen on their first AFF but as odd as it sounds intentional cutaways are more dangerous then emergency ones. It's the gear. It's more complicated and it's not what you've been trained to use. The latter could be corrected but you're talking about adding that complexity to ordinary rigs for ordinary jumps for an infinitesimal, or at least very small increase in safety. How many actual reserve malfunctions do you have a year? Now raise your hand if you know some one that has died doing an intentional cutaway... My hands up. You can jump a third canopy if you want to but it's not worth the price. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Size, bulk, weight make it a point of diminishing return. There are also issues of routeing of risers and bridles. You can have three canopies. We do things like that for test jumping. I have a rig I test jump with. I have also built systems for tirshes for canopy relative work. Bumper cars with parachutes. Some times they get tangled up and the ability to deploy a round reserve on a long bridle can be helpful when your tumbling to the ground in a mass of nylon. But in any normal circumstance all of this is just way more trouble then it's worth. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

Face Palm... Do you really have to ask that? Think back, or have you never jumped one? You get a pass if you've never jumped a tempo. Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com

I don't recall a life time on a tempo. Some riggers have a personal standard. If it's a closet queen with relatively few repacks on it it should be in good shape. It's not really an out dated design. For example it's a newer design then a PD reserve. They're perfectly good canopies. Do you happen to know if it's a "R" or an "L" model? Lee Lee [email protected] www.velocitysportswear.com