riggerrob

What types of aircraft are the Indian Air Force using to train AFF? Illyushin IL-76, C-130 and C-17 are too fast for graceful AFF. Once students progress beyond the first few harness-hold jumps, these would be fine for later practice jumps especially with rucksack, rifle and snowshoes. How many Antonov AN-32 are still in Indian Air Force service? How slow can an AN-32 fly jump-run with a light load (say half fuel) and the cargo ramp open? I have done tandems from Dornier 228, but that side door is a bit low for AFF. The Dornier factory-supplied aluminum, accordian-fold door is a nuisance. You would be better off without or with a modern slide-up door made of clear Lexan (see most North American civilian jump-planes). You would also want to add grab rails both inside and outside the top edge of the door. I have done plenty of harness-hold jumps from Beechcraft King Air, with a similar-sized door, but the medium-sized door is far from ideal. Those medium-sized side doors are silly for jumping with rucksacks. Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters would be perfect. Just tell the pilots to open the cargo ramp and fly jump-run at 80 to 100 knots. Harness-hold jumps are easy at those airspeeds. HAL Chetak and HAL Dhruv helicopters would be fine for smaller AFF classes, because they only carry 1 or 3 AFF teams at a time, but still tell pilots to fly jump run at 80 to 100 knots. How tall is the tail ramp on Dhruv? In summary, slow-flying (80 to 100 knots) aircraft with cargo ramps are the first choice for AFF. Slow-flying aircraft with tall side doors (say 1.5 to 2 meters) are second choice, but require more setting-up outside the door before letting go. Finally even a half hour in a wind tunnel will vastly improve and AFF program. Are there any vertical wind tunnels in India? As an aside, I have jumped from more than 30 different types of aircraft .. some cramped ... some comfortable ... some easy to exit ... some a struggle to exit ... Airvan, Breezy, Beechcraft D-18 (3 different-sized doors), Queen Air and King Air, Britten-Norman Islander, Cessna 172, 180, 182, 185, 205, 206P, Soloy Turbine 206U, 207, 208, 210 and a light twin, DC-3 Dakota, deHavilland DHC-4 Cariboo, DHC-5 Buffalo, DHC-6 Twin Otter, Dornier 27 and 228, Ford Tri-Motor, C-130 Hercules, Maule, Pilatus Porter, Piper Cherokee Six, Quest Kodiak, Shorts Skyvan and Skyliner, and Westwind conversion of Beech 18. Helicopters include: Aerospatiale Alouette II and A-Star, Bell Huey and Jet Ranger finally CH-47 Chinook.

Retired President George Bush's first jump was from a flaming Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. It seems that the Japanese did not enjoy him dropping bombs on them. His second and third jumps were from a Shorts Skyvan operated by Skydive Arizona out of Eloy. I assembled and packed his rig (Telesis) for those jumps. Eloy routinely hosts military freefall students from a half-dozen countries. They also have a wind-tunnel and barracks for military students. Consistently clear weather makes it cheaper to send military students to Arizona. The US military freefall school is also in Arizona ... Yuma, Arizona down near the border with Mexico. He later did a tandem or three from light helicopters.

BASE openings vary widely, but they are predictable. The key variable is your speed when you toss your pilot-chute. At the low and slow edge, direct-bagging off a low bridge will give soft openings as will any delay less than 3 seconds. These openings can be made predictable with a few simple packign tricks, like leaving your slider at home. After 3 seconds, you start to hear the wind getting louder and louder. At these speeds, many like to use meshed sliders just to keep the lines in 4 distinct line groups. At the high-altitude and high-speed edge of the envelope, say a 10 second freefall from a 3,000 foot tall cliff, packing and openings are pretty much the same as a skydive at terminal velocity (120 mph). You definitely want a full sail slider at those deployment speeds. Things get more complicated in the middle of the envelope, but most problems (e.g. hard openings) happen when people change their plan halfway through, but are too lazy to repack for the new conditions. Like the guy who planned a 2 second delay, but then sucked it down for a full 5 seconds and suffered an opening so hard that he injured his neck. Most BASE opening problems can be averted by consulting locals and people who have survived a decade or three of BASE jumping. cough! cough my good friends at APEX BASE.

In another failed Phantom story, one of the US Navy test jumpers told me about the time they used a Phantom to slow a test slug/bomb/missile/drop tank/whatever. The drop plane was an F-4 Phantom doing 600 knots. The first frame of the film showed the canopy at line stretch and the second frame showed only reinforcement tapes! All the fabric blew off in that split-second between frames! Hah! Hah!

Yes Jerry, I heard the same story from Manley Butler. The pilot in question was a young ferry pilot, ferrying the aerobat from one airshow to the next. He did something stupid enough to disable the airplane, so stood up and pulled the ripcord. The canopy inflated before his legs left the cockpit. The extra opening shock tore the lines off of that Phantom.

I have seen student retention rates change since I started jumping in 1977. Back then static-line, with military surplus equipment was the only way to start jumping. Retention rates were 1 to 5 percent to A license. IAD and newer equipment reduced malfunction and injury rates, but retention did not substantially improve. Then came accompanied freefall with much better instructional methods to teach the basics of freefall. Most AFF students only did one or two jumps, but retention rates improved when schools started selling package deals (especially in Europe where corporate holidays tend to be treated differently). Package deals or bulk sales of jump tickets kept students around long enough to earn an A License, but I am not sure how many continued much after A License or their second season. When tandem was introduced (1983) it vastly increased the numbers of first jump students, but few - perhaps 1 percent - jumped a second time. Either that or they came back once a year to do another tandem jump, with little interest in learning enough to jump solo. So these days, we get far more first tandem students. Yes, tandem numbers eat into the number of students that might enroll in other programs, because the smarter schools now insist on every student doing an introductory tandem - to get them over that first huge psychological hurdle. Once they have survived the huge adrenaline rush of exiting an airplane for the first time, they calm down enough to absorb new information and the new skills needed to jump solo. Nowadays, retention rates are still in the 1 percent range, but we are drawign from a much larger pool.

Personally I prefer doing accompanied freefall jumps from King Air because it flies a bit faster (90 to 100 knots) than the usual single-engined Cessnas (80 ish knots). The slight increase in airspeed during KA exits means that we have full-speed to work with NOW! ... versus waiting 5 seconds before we have useable "firm" air. If you want to know more about linked exits from C-130 or IL-76, talk to the US Navy SEALS and EOD Techs who were on the Leap Frogs team that dragged 10-ways and bigger off the ramp of a C-130. A couple of them suffered arm injuries. Overall, it sounds like the Indian Air Force is re-learning a few lessons that you should have learned a few decades ago when IL-76 was first introduced. I remember listening to John Sherman describe some of the test-jumps that his people (Jump Shack or Parachute Labs) did when demonstrating military Racers to the Indian Air Force during the 1980s and 1990s. During that same period, they sold a handful of Racer Tandems to the British SAS who used them during the First Gulf War. Ah! The joys of an air force that retires old farts before they pass along their knowledge to the young guys! Please note that I am not specifically criticizing the Indian Air Force, because the Canadian Armed Forces suffered similar problems when I served (1974 to 1987) after all of the Korean War veterans had retired and serving sargents were just parroting fears that they half-understood. Every new generation of sargents passed on less than the generation before.

Dear Slim King, Please consider that the largest single "bump" in North American employment curves are Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964, which makes them 77 to 59 years old. By now most 59 year old doctors have earned enough that they can afford to retire. Thousands of doctors, nurses, X-ray technicians, etc. retired during COVID-19. Those that are still on the job are working plenty of overtime and suffering burn-out ... so any excuse is a good excuse to retire. I don't blame them. As for the debate between Obama-Care versus Trump's magnificent medical insurance plan versus whatever Biden will come up with ... most of us non-Americans are baffled by how a First-World country can survive without universal healthcare. Meanwhile, citizens in most other First-World nations (e.g. NATO and the European Union) take universal health care for granted. And yes, I have some experience with the sort of health care dispensed by a major corporation (Workmens' Compensation Board of British Columbia) and it "bites the green weenie." I am equally amazed at how major corporations (e.g. American Health Management Organizations) can continue to dupe the working class to fight their battles for them.

Buffy Sainte-Marie's song sends chill down my spine.

Since starting jumping in 1977, I have sport jumped and instructed at a wide variety of schools in a variety of countries: Austria, Canada, France, West Germany and the USA. Retention rates were in the 1 to 5 percent range for most schools. When we look at static-line and IAD, retention rates are 1 to 5 percent to A license. The majority of s/l or IAD students only ever wanted to do a single jump, to prove their machismo. Retention rates among tandem students is even lower, perhaps 1 per 1,000. That is because the average tandem student is only interested in a carnival ride and bragging rights. Selfies and bragging rights at that evening's party seem to be their dominant motivators. Many tandem students freely admit that they lack the intellectual capability to learn everything needed to survive a solo jump. The only schools that have a significantly better retention rate are those that sell package deals (10 or 20 jumps) to Solo Certificate or even A-License. How many students continue jumping after that drops rapidly after a year or three. The most frustrating schools to work at were those that sold accompanied freefall jumps one at a time. Since many students could only afford one or two jumps per month, they forgot too much between jumps and repeated too many levels. Rob Warner, CSPA Rigger Examiner, instructor for s/l, IAD and PFF USPA Instructor for s/l and IAD Strong Tandem Instructor Examiner

Most Nazi concentration camps were located beside factories that supplied the war effort. Most of those prisoners were slave labor for the factory. It was only when illness and malnuitrition slowed thier work that they were executed.

Sadly, Brits failed to learn the lessons from their own pummeling during the Battle of Britain. Inaccurate Luftwaffe bombing killed dozens of British civilians during World War 1 and hundreds during WW2. British morale stiffened. Then "bomber Harris" decided to inaccurately bomb dozens of German cities. Most of those cities contained a factory that aided the German war effort, but the bulk of bombs fell on workers' houses. Eventually Germany lost the war because of shortfalls in production and difficulty in supplying troops on the front lines. A relative of mine died while flying a Halifax bomber over Versailles, France during May of 1944. He was bombing a rail yard that supplied German troops who collapsed three months later for lack of ammunition, fuel and spare parts. After WW2, Bomber Harris was quietly side-lined as many within the British gov't quietly admitted that his policies bordered on genocide. We would be unwise to accuse Harris of heinous crimes as he was just following 1930s dogma about "the bomber will always get through." Truth be told, everyones' bombers were hopelessly inaccurate during WW2. Even line-of-sight artillery was hopelessly inaccurate during WW2. Well-armed WALLIED troops routinely called in artillery to flatten French villages if they suspected that German soldiers were hiding within the village during the summer of 1944. It is only since circa 1972 that guided bombs have been available to destroy one bridge with one bomb (see Walleye guided bombs during the Viet Nam War). Nowadays it makes more sense for Ukrainian defenders to use guided munitions to limit collateral damage and the cost of re-building after the war. OTOH It is still in Russia's best interests to bomb Ukraine back into the stone age. Flattened Ukrainian cities will need more years to rebuild before they can resume their plans to invade Russia (see historical Russian paranoia HAR! HAR! HAR!). The flattened steel works in Mariupol gives intact Russian steel mills a short-term advantage in the now tighter market.

The best way to prevent step-throughs is to start your 4-line check at the 3-Rings.

Good points Dear Billvon, One of my grandfathers was an ordained minister in teh United Church of Canada. My mother was a life-long "church lady" singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school, serving on the broad of elders, etc. She was far from a "bible-thumper" and viewed a church congregation as more of a community. Few of her children attended church as adults. I seem to be the only member of my generation that attends church on a regular basis as an adult. While living in the Perris "Ghetto" neighbor Larry Yon suggested attending the Unitarian Universalist Church in Riverside. There I found a welcoming community with diverse interests. Since moving back to Canada, I joined Beacon Unitarian Church in New Westminster (a suburb of Vancouver, B.C.). I even served on the Board of Trustees! But I always viewed church as more of a community. None of the other congregation members are skydivers, but that does not prevent them from providing a variety of viewpoints. A good Unitarian sermon forces me to look at the world from a different angle. This brings us back to Ron's original comment about "Cracking the shell of ignorance." No man is an island. Sadly, COVID-19 has forced too many of us into isolation where we spin too quickly inside our own heads. A Unitarian church provides "community" that came in handy when I needed three references for an application to a retirement home, three quick phone calls resulted in references from a retired medical doctor, a pharmacist and a retired Unitarian minister. Dear Gowlerk, AA helped me quit drinking and I still find myself mumbling "the serenity prayer" because it helps me get outside of the thoughts spinning too quickly inside my own head.

Agreed which is why some critics are calling for Mr. Poutine to resign since he will never be able to dig himself out of the miserable muddy hole he has dug for himself in Ukraine. It used to be that despots were allowed to retire to their villas in the South of France (see Baby Doc Duvalier from Haiti or Idi Amin Dada from Uganda).

Dear Skydekker, Please stop trying to put works in my mouth. Every war in history has killed a few civilians, even if those casualties were purely accidental. Civilian casualties are a fact of war. Even if they did not die from direct fire (bullets) many un-counted casualties still suffer from starvation, hypothermia, disease (see the Spanish Flu of 1919), etc. Look at all of the thousands or millions of Africans currently starving because the War in Ukraine had interrupted grain shipments from Ukraine to Africa. The Geneva Convention attempts to reduce civilian casualties because Europeans learned that if soldiers are gentle on conquered civilians, those civilians are much easier to rule over the long run. IOW If a war only replaces one royal family ruler with a ruler from another royal family, peasants will grudgingly return to their plows. Back in the good-old-days plowing produced the bulk of a nation's wealth. Sadly, Mr. Poutine's army is operating on a model that is 500 years older. It is based on the Mongol Horde's policy of "kill them all and let God sort them out." I agree with Slim King's suggestion that the sooner a peace is negotiated the better BUT that negotiated peace must be gentle enough to support long-term peace.

Every citizen should have a basic understanding of the constitution and laws of his/her/its country before graduating high school. This basic understanding could eliminate half of the "sovereign citizen" foolishness. Reading the original documents tends to displace later propaganda.

If you read the details of that story, most of the civilian casualties were "collaterol damage" from air-strikes called in by American and Canadian special forces fighting in Syria. Collateral damage has always happened - in every war. These civilian deaths were not individually targeted, much less shot by individual soldiers. That many (claimed) casualties requires that their chain of command needs to answer some embarrassing questions. Generals need to publically define rules of engagement, etc. Finally, keep in mind that ISIS, daesch, Iranian Islamic Republican Guard, etc. have never read the Geneva Convention, much less pretend to follow its guidelines (e.g. limit civilian casualties). See Dillon Hillier's book "One Soldier" about battlefield conditions in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq and Syria circa 2015.

Yes, sociopathic repeat killers who are beyond rehabilitation, deserve execution. Hired killers probably also deserve the death penalty.

This morning's news reported that Russia admitted to losing 87 soldiers to the most recent Ukrainian attack (HIMARS?). Ukrainians tracked Russian soldiers' location by a single cell phone call. Taliban learned that lesson two decades ago and banned cell phones from meetings. Why is Russia relearning this lesson the bloody way?????????????

What about a graduated licensing program for new gun owners? Start with a basic firearms safety course (see Canadian Firearms Possession and Acquisition License). Limit them to .22 rim-fire for the first year. After a year, add in a review of the basics (to test how much they remember) then add in a basic accuracy requirement. That accuracy demonstration would require going to a registered gun range and hitting a standard target with 10 rounds fired from 10 meters/yards away. The target would need to be signed by the range officer and submitted with the application to upgrade the license. It would take 2 or 3 years to qualify for a concealed carry permit. Concealed carry permits should require some formal training in situational awareness, risk management, adrenaline management, de-escalation, road-rage, etc. Pre-trained military or police officers might get some slack on timing (for example, the way that the FAA fast-tracks military riggers wanting to earn civilian parachute rigger ratings), but they would still need to demonstrate safety and accuracy.

That is reallllly old and cumbersome terminology. Why invent new terminology? About 40 years ago, John Sherman coined the terms: Type 2 diaper, etc. and most riggers have been using that standardized terminology ever since. Type 1 with all the suspension lines stowed in the pack tray. Now considered obsolete. Type 2 diaper with the left line group stowed in 2 or 3 locking rubber bands on the diaper with the rest of the suspension lines stowed in the pack tray. Considered obsolete for most containers except for Strong Para-Cushion pilot emergency parachutes where the suspension lines' bulk provides a launching platform for the pilot-chute. Type 3 diaper with 2 locking stows and all of the suspension lines stowed horizontally on the diaper. Invented by Hank Asquitto and used on Piglet and Phantom, etc. round reserves. Type 4 diaper with 2 or 3 locking stows and all suspension lines stowed vertically on the diaper. he industry standard for round civilian canopies made since the 1960s (e.g. Strong Mid-Lite round reserve canopy). Also seen on a few early squares (e.g. Hobbit and reefing line Cloud). Type 5 deployment bag with 2 or more locking stows and all of the suspension lines stowed on the D-bag (rubber bands or in a pocket). Type 6 Sleeve - mentioned in the FAA Parachute Riggers' Handbook (2015 revision)

Backing Jerry Baumchen. Follow the container manufacturers' advice. At Rigging Innovations, I was the rigger test-packing all the newly-arrived canopies and deciding which combinations we could recommend. Meanwhile, Sandy Reid was on the far side of the room stuffing newly-arrived canopies into a PIA volume measuring cylinder. We were in the dry desert of Southern California. The manufacturers that I disagreed with were base din humid Florida where everything pack sone size smaller. What passes for a comfortable fit in Florida is almost a struggle in the dry heat of the Southern California desert.

Silliness done by people who do not understand the deployment sequence.

Wishing everyone a peaceful 2023.