riggerrob

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Everything posted by riggerrob

  1. Meanwhile, Svarlabad Island - in the high arctic - is bragging about their new solar panels. Please keep in mind that Svarlabad only gets a few hours of sunlight per day and only during the summertime because it is above the arctic circle. Did I miss something? Wasn't Svarlabad colonized specifically to exploit coal mines?????????
  2. Yes, 60-year-old King Airs can be picked up for a song. Consider that Beechcraft started building King Airs in 1963 and more than 3,000 have been built. More King Airs have been built than all of the other light turbine twin executive transports combined (BAE Jetstream, Embraer Bandierante, Cessna 4??, Piaggio Avanti, Piper Cheyanne, etc.). A DZ can pick up a 60 year old King Air for a song, barely more than the value of the instrument panel and the time remaining on the engines. But long-term maintenance is far more expensive on King Airs with their pressurized cabins, retractable landing gear, de-icing boots, IFR panels, etc. King Airs also require hard-surfaced runways 3,000 feet (1 kilometer) or longer. All those extra systems also make King Airs more complicated to fly, hence not suitable for freshly-minted commercial pilots. Complex airplanes are also more expensive to insure. When my boss bought a 1960s vintage King Air, I asked him why he did not buy a simpler Cessna Caravan and he replied that his 1960s vintage King Air was the most that he could afford. A few years later he was complaining about spending $45,000 on a landing gear inspection due every 5 years. A few years even later he crashed the King Air because of some neglected engine maintenance. Bottom line, King Airs are the cheapest turbine jump-planes to purchase and you get what you pay for.
  3. This latest protest lays bare the differences between how Canada handles internal terrorists versus the way other major nations handle terrorists. Trudeau's weak diplomatic protests are more designed to suck-up to Sikhs who vote in Canadian elections, than any long-term international diplomatic process. Why any Canadian politician is making public statements about an internal Indian political debate is a mystery to me. Traditionally, polite politicians avoid saying anything about the internal affairs of any other country. China, Israel (Gerald Bull), North Korea, Russia (Prighozin), the USA (Osama bin Laden), etc. all routinely assassinate people who threaten their national security. Some of these assassinations are committed outside their borders. Canada is an outlier in this pattern because Canada assigns short prison sentences and soon paroles violent political criminals. For example, during the 1960s, the violent wing of the Front de Liberation du Quebec planted 200 bombs, stole firearms, etc. Alfred Pinisch was a friend of my father and I met him many times before he died in a botched FLQ raid on International Firearms in Montreal. The FLQ then upped their game by kidnapping two gov't officials and murdered one of them in October 1970. Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (father of our current Prime Minister) invoked the War Measures Act and ordered the Canadian Army to patrol the streets of Quebec. I still remember Canadian soldiers lurking in an alley behind a federal building in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Eventually, the guilty bastards (mostly native-born Quebecois FLQ) were allowed to fly into exile in Cuba. These days, sun-burning in Cuba is considered a pleasant vacation for many Quebecois who weary of being up to @$$ in snow for many months out of the year. By 1982, the Canadian gov't had pardoned all the FLQ terrorists and one eventually sat in the Quebec Provincial Legislature. So, this means that Ottawa is upset that India did not treat Indian-born terrorists - who threaten Indian integrity - with the same gentle hand that Canada treats our own domestic terrorists. Abandoning political struggles in their homeland should be required of anyone who immigrates to Canada.
  4. It has been done before. Back during the Second World War, the German Navy moved a few submarines from the North Sea to the Black Sea via, rivers, canals and rail. Mind you those were small diesel/electric attack subs, much smaller than current fashions.
  5. Sorry man, but I cannot access either of those videos.
  6. Yes, the failed engine had more something like 1500 hours past TBO and the other engine was something like 1800 hours beyond TBO and maintenance logbook entries were "smudged." No body mentioned spectrographic oil analysis or vibration studies. Definitely not a "Tier One" maintenance organization. In 2015 the same organization crashed a Caravan.
  7. What? You want to get comfortable in a jump-plane? The last time I rode in a comfortable jump-plane was a good 30 years ago. It was in Jan Van Arvitson's DC-3 over California City. It had a sofa near the front of the cabin where I sat with my tandem student. We stood on our hind legs - like gentlemen - to hook up and casually walked (upright) to the door. I always found the climb to altitude boring. The quicker the better. As for briefing the freefall student on the way up ... noisy airplane cabins are the worst possible teaching environment. Better to do the full briefing before boarding and just touch on the key points during the climb.
  8. The better drop zones post local rules, traffic patterns, etc. on the wall beside manifest.
  9. Jay probably learned at Skydive Toronto. ST's Joe Chow was unique among Canadian DZOs in NOT converting to IAD during the 1980s. Most Canadian DZs started the 1980s with static-lined, cheapo, military-surplus, student rigs. By the end of the 1980s, military-surplus gear had worn out and was replaced by piggyback containers, hand-deploy pilot chutes, IAD and square mains. By 1990, both CSPA and USAP insisted that all first solo students use large, docile, square mains (e.g. Manta 288). The shift was driven primarily by a decision - by the US military and Canadian Crown Assets Disposal - to cut suspension lines and leg straps on military-surplus parachutes. The las thing the military wanted was some silly skydiver hurting himself while using military-surplus parachutes for purposes vastly different from their original mission.
  10. A witness named C.W. recently filed a lawsuit against police and Kotanko's estate citing psychological trauma, etc. C.W. alleges that he was a customer/witness inside Kotanko's workshop when police burst in and killed Kotanko. It is odd that the lawsuit only mentions C.W.'s initials ... which makes us wonder if C.W. was a police informant????????? A key question is why police followed Kotanko back from the grocery store and allowed him to enter his gun shop before starting the arrest procedure. Why does this remind us of the bungled police raid on Waco, Texas???????? A video about this lawsuit had been posted by Runkle at the Bailey on www.youtube.com. Runkle is a Canadian criminal defense attorney who mostly posts about Canadian gun laws. Runkle cuts through much of the ...... legal boilerplate in the initial filing. He also points out a couple of miss-spellings. Hah! Hah! It has been almost 2 years since Kotanko's death. Let's hope that this lawsuit defies Canadian legal custom by resolving quickly.
  11. After only 100 jumps, we expect little wear on a parachute. Any damage is likely to be caused by sloppy packing or sliding landings. Only a rigger can confirm those types of wear. I expect your pilot chute spring will still be airworthy. Yes, Rigging Innovations had a problem with their first batch of pilot chute springs (labelled Talon or Skyhook) back during the 1980s, but most of those were replaced for free by the factory during the 1990s. By the mid-1990s, R.I. had sub-contracted Dennis Trepannier to make all of their pilot chute springs and those springs proved durable. Trepannier made springs are powder-coated black (Talon 1 or Telesis 1) or red (Flexon, Talon 2, Voodoo, Aviator and later Telesis). Hint: I worked in customer service at R.I. during the mid-1990s. I recently repacked a decade old Voodoo and the spring still had more than 30 pounds of force. For comparison, the old MIL SPEC for MA-1 pilot chute springs required a minimum of 18 pounds force to compress it to within 1 inch of full compression. Most modern pilot-chutes are in the 30 to 40 pound range.
  12. Where is your local DZ? When I worked at Square One, Perris Valley, California, the company insisted that all rentals be packed by the full-time packers on the far side of the side-walk ... because they did not want their equipment damaged by clumsy packing and the mistakes inevitably made by junior jumpers who were just learning how to pack.
  13. Hint" grow a white beard because a white beard makes it much easier to negotiate a seniors' discount.
  14. I would vote for Perris Valley because they have a vertical wind tunnel. Even a few minutes in a wind tunnel will vastly improve your skills when you get to freefall.
  15. Some one needs to explain to that woman that not all pistols have magazine safeties. Mag. safeties prevent the firing pin from striking if a magazine is missing. Some one also needs to explain to her that rule one of gun safety is to only point guns at things that you intend to kill.
  16. Not specific to drug prices ... just a general comparison. The other week I got bitten by a dog, so a (pharmacist) friend suggested a tetanus shot, so I went to the emergency room at the Royal Columbian Hospital, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. At the ER check-in desk they had a sign: "ER visit costs $1300 for foreigners. $300 for non-insured residents of B.C." ER visits are free for B.C. residents with a provincial health care card. The last thing I wanted to do was compare the risk of rabes, distemper, infection, etc. with the cost of a simple visit to a hospital or clinic. Since my family doctor does not work on Sundays, I went to the nearest hospital. Yes, service was slow because ER staff took care of me after all those patients who were bleeding or puking or yelling all over the ER. I just sat quietly reading my book until an ER doctor took a quick look at my leg and the nurse gave me an injection. Ten days later, the bite is healing fine with no additional side effects.
  17. Funny! For as long as I can remember, CSPA has taught PFF instructors to always hang onto the right side of the student during exit - when doing one-on-one jumps. The exit can be a bit awkward from Cessnas until you learn how to lay your right elbow on the wing strut. On larger airplanes, I ways always most comfortable in the rear floater position when doing accompanied freefall jumps (AFF or PFF).
  18. Getting a used rig inspected before it sells is normal procedure. Usually the inspection is done by a rigger trusted by the buyer. If it is a long-distance sale, then the rigger often acts as a neutral broker, inspecting the rig, doing any repairs and holding the rig until the money changes hands. When I rigged for Square One Parachute Sales (Perris Valley, California) I inspected dozens of second-hand rigs that were being sold one consignment.
  19. Sealand are a class act. They do a great job of maintaining the jump-planes for Campbell River Skydive Center and hold a variety of STCs. They are also developing a diesel conversion for DHC-2 Beaver. I saw their diesel Beaver demonstrated at the Boundary Bay airshow and they flew it like they were renting runway by the foot!
  20. Dear Mike, Glad to hear that CSPA has learned a thing or two about IAD since the last time I dropped IAD students (2010). Sadly, USPA is still trying to "re-invent the wheel" a "wheel" that was invented in Georgia circa 1976. The last time I jumped a 26' LoPo, I missed the country and landed in France! That was back in 1986.
  21. It helped that back in the good-old-days, our main canopies (e.g. Cruiselite) opened promptly.
  22. One of the problems that contributed to the King Air crash in Hawaii was a poorly-done repair that left one wing at a slightly different angle of incidence than the other. Add that on top of sloppy pilot technique (zoom climb immediately after take-off) and there is little wonder that it stalled. All these King Air accidents have forced Beechcraft to state that King Airs jump-planes cannot be operated "on condition" since jump operations are so radically different than the original mission profile. The original mission profile intended for King Airs to fly two or three flight per DAY, versus the 2 or 3 flights per hour of jump planes. One of the reasons that I keep repeating this factoid is that one of the reasons why I was injured in a King Air crash was because one of those engines was something like 1500 hours past TBO. That combined with a smudged logbook entry about inspecting a fuel pump ... then the fuel pump failed ... add in some pilot error ...
  23. Why does this remind me of all the skydivers who sprained their ankles during Sunday evening softball games? It should be against the law for health insurance companies to deny coverage for sports-related injuries.
  24. Those beards make the deceased look like Chechins.