riggerrob

When another skydiver is on short final to land close to you, the best thing you can do is stand still. He has already figured out which open area he wants to land in. If you fill that open area, you force him to pick a new landing area with only a few seconds to turn.

Ear plugs reduce fatigue and irritability at the end of a busy day of skydiving.

Sorry I was not clear enough. My solution to side spins is to never get unstable in the first place. I start by planning my exits so the student becomes a "big banana" with their hands on their chest. Students are told to lean their head on my shoulder and try to kick me in the bum. I present my belly to the wind with a minimum of rotational momentum. Then I arch my back and extend my arms and legs into the biggest "X" arch I can. The contrast in body positions ensures that I have a huge leverage advantage over the student. On the 5% of exits where we tumble, I usually delta out of the unstable position. As soon as we are pointed chest to earth, I toss the drogue. By concentrating on stable exits, I have only had one side spin and that was 6 or 7 years ago.

Circa 1990, Hooker Harness TSOed a set of seat belts specifically designed for skydivers. It is a shorter version of regular seatbelts and is designed to slip around the hip joint on parachute harnesses. Circa 1996 Sandy Reid took a bunch of skydiving harnesses and tested them with Hooker skydiving seatbelts on the FAA crash simulation sled. The worst damage on any harness was a few popped stitches in the hip joints or where the lateral strap disappears behind the back pad. After reviewing the video tapes, we concluded that most of the test dummies would have survived with sore necks. It did not matter much whether they were anchored at one hip or both hips. In a Twin Otter crash, the guys in the back should strap in for the benefit of the guys in the front. Seatbelts built specifically for skydivers are readily available. Any Master Rigger could sew them, but only Jack Hooker can supply seatbelts with the expensive TSO paperwork. The only reason they are not more widely used is the high cost of installing extra anchors to suit skydiving seating arrangements. It is stupid to not wear a helmet during take off and the first thousand feet of climb. The only exception should be photographers who should have some kind of strap with a carbiner to prevent their helmets form killing the guys in the front of the airplane. Strapping in helmets became mandatory at several SoCal DZs after the Perris crash in 1992.

billvon, The only way your theory is going to work is if you use the latest generation of rounds with sliders (BRS or Butler BAT series). Unfortunately none of those are certified as man-capable reserves.

Pitt Meadows is open on weekends over the winter. We sometimes do weekday tandems if they call a few days in advance for reservations. Yesterday it was sunny and cool (above freezing) so I went for a long bike ride. Today it is cloudy, so I will rig. Normally we jump Cessnas during the winter. Come April or May we will open 7 days per week. When it gets busy in the summer, we crank up the King Air.

From one canuck to another: I'm sorry. I did one Med. cruise aboard HMCS Athabaskan and a STANAVFORLANT cruise aboard HMCS Iroquois. Yes we burned JP5 in our Sea Pig, er, CH124A Sea King helicopters. I'm not sure if we really burned JP5. It was more like we stirred it around with the engines then dumped massive amounts of soot over board. How those Sea Pigs, er Sea Kings corroded with all those oil and hydraulic leaks was a mystery to me.

quote: I don't remember the container and reserve, but they were marked as being compatible with each other. The container only took one reserve and the reserve could only be packed into one container. The manufacturers were unable to make this stick.: end quote You are referring to Swift and EOS containers built by Para-Flite. Ssince Para-Flite is primarily a canopy manufacturer, they insisted that you could only "legally" pack reserves built by Para-Flite into their containers. This was clearly a marketing ploy, since every Master Rigger knows that a similar-sized Raven or Tempo reserve would deploy quite nicely from a Para--Flite container. This is all an academic debate since both those containers have fallen out of fashion. Para-Flite laid off both container designers (Manley Butler designed the Swift container in 1981 and Troy Loney designed the EOS container circa 1990) before they had time to work all the bugs out of their designs. Hint, it takes most manufacturers two or three years to de-bug a pattern set. Hook

Back in the early 1980s, Dave Martin of Fredericton, New Brunswick built me a main d-bag with a Velcro line stow pouch similar to a reserve freebag. I jumped it hundreds of times with Strato-Cloud and Cruislite canopies. It was quick to pack and opened consistently. Any decent master rigger should be able to sew a similar pocket on your existing main d-bag. The only caveat is to keep your locking stows tight. And ask him/her to sew half of the Velcro onto tiny flaps, similar to Voodoo freebags and BASE tail pockets.

The main problem with Falcons is that they open hard. The hard openings are part of the TSO requirements for reserves. Remember that Falcons are one of the few canopies sold as both mains and reserves. Falcons opened harder than many of the mains of their generation and harder than all modern mains. While it is possible to soften Falcon openings with bigger sliders and careful packing, few skydivers have the patience to pack that neatly, so Falcons never sold well.

quote: QuoteHi Rob, the old F-111-Tandems are "malfunction machines". Ist this a problem of F111 canopies generally or just a problem of tandems?" end qoute. This is not a fabric-specific problem, rather it is a question of which generation of canopies you are referring to. First generation F-111 tandem canopies were malfunction machines because they tried to design one canopy to do everything: open at terminal and low speed. For example, Strong F-111 mains and reserves are cut from the same patterns, with only minor differences in lines and reinforcing tapes. In order to satisfy the low speed opening requirements for reserves, they ended up with mains that opened painfully! Mind you this was before they perfected drogues and were still doing hop-and-pops from 5,000! F-111 patterns are not readily transferrable to ZP fabric. For example, Strong tried building 425 mains with Zero P fabric cut from the F-111 patterns, but they opened so hard and tore so readily that Strong quickly scrapped that project and switched to copying Parachutes de France's Blue Track tandem mains. The resultant SET 400 is a decent canopy. The Relative Workshop went through the same series of problems with PD-360 canopies. PD-360s were the worst tandem main canopies I ever jumped, but RWS still uses them as reserves. In comparison, you will hear the same complaints about solo canopies designed in the same time frame (i.e. Precision Falcon). quote " And another question to you: I want to buy a first canopy which is very opening safe, packs & fly easy and forgivingly and offers really soft on-heading openings. Which canopy do you recommend? Do you know more about the Paratec Super 7 (Zero-P 7 cell)? Or do you recommend Parachutes de France Electra (Zero-P/F111 mixed)." end quote. Sorry, but I have been out of touch with the European market ever since Parachutes de France decided not to compete on the American market.

Reminds me of my last day on the job as gate guard: I jumped in! Gate guard was a shitty job that everyone in the Air Force hated: 12-hour shifts, 30 days straight, weird hours, boredom, live ammunition, etc. The last day of my 30 day shift I landed my Cruiselite beside the guard house. One of my co-workers was pissed! Since I was a few minutes early, all the Military Police sargent cared about was whether I had brought my pass. Ha! Ha!

Riggerrob checking in from rainy Pitt Meadows, BC. I started jumping in Quebec, then Ontario, Nova Scotia, Florida, New Brunswick, Alberta, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Germany, France, Holland, Austria, New York, Manitoba, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Washington and the last 4 years in beautiful BC. Got to log off so I can repack a reserve for a buddy who is vacationing in ^%$#@! DeLand.

Changing your mind halfway through "the act" is really confusing. Someone should explain to little girls that once you have aroused a man beyond a certain point, it is extremely difficult to stop. Does that mean you can change your mind ten seconds after leaving the airplane and get a full refund?

Getting this thread back on track ... I am really bad at: * concentrating for more than 5 minutes on the job * math * sucking up to lying sargents * not taking things personally * logging off dz.com so I pack that reserve for Colin who is going to DeLand for his vacation

Arriving midday Sunday, 26 January.

Arriving midday, Sunday, 26 January.

Good luck on the new job. What will you be doing? Where will you be doing it?

Ha! Ha! I am with Viking on this issue. If one of my three cats brought home a mouse, I would congratulate it being such a great cat. Then I would quietly flush the deceased rodentl. Like PLFXPRT I tried being a vegetarian, but was not getting enough protein.

Speak up there son! I can't hear you over the engine noise! About 2,000 jumps ago, my boss noticed a hearing loss and suggested that I start wearing ear plugs. My hearing has only deteriorated a little since then. I have a set of fancy Sonic 2 ear plugs, but for convenience sake usually wear the cheap orange ear plugs that come on a string. I tie the string onto my goggles so I can find them when I need them.

Start by buying a main you can confidently land today. Secondly, buy a reserve about the same size. Thirdly, buy a container that will gracefully fit them. Since every canopy manufacturer uses a different measuring method, their volume charts border on useless. Simplify your search by only consulting compatiblity charts published by container manufacturers. Lastly, pick up a used Cypres. You can often purchase an eleven year old Cypres for almost nothing. Sure you only get one year of service, but it improves your chances of surviving that year. In terms of Cypres compatibility, 8 or 10 years ago, all container manufacturers made all new rigs Cypres ready. If anyone offers you a rig that is not Cypres ready, be careful. Either it is an ancient rig that was not worth updating, or it is one of the few rigs that cannot be updated and is not worth your time. Finally, remember to ask your friendly local rigger to inspect everything before you part with dollars.

PIA published dsciplinary procedures many years ago. Let's see if I can remember the procedure. First error, call the offending rigger and quietly tell him what you found. If he is chagrined, good. That is as far as it goes. Keep your notes to yourself except for quietly mentioning it to the owner. Second error, tell the offending rigger. Take more notes and photos. I cannot remember if PIA recommended a letter to the offender for the second offence. Third error, take notes and photos before you call in the FAA. Hint, DPREs are the only FAA employees who have clue what riggers are talkning about. I have phoned a couple of riggers on - non life threatening - first offences. Fortunately they were professional enough that those were the only errors I have seen from them

I use a fancy fabric tool bag sewn up by Rigging Innovations. Its expensive, but it does the job well. I set a couple of grommets through it so I can hang it on the loft wall. If I were starting today, I would pick up a $30. bike courier bag and sew up some tool rolls with one pocket per tool. One pocket per tool greatly simplifies counting tools at the end of a pack job.

My flight lands in Jacksonville midday on Sunday. Swimming is a great way to work out travelling kinks, so the bathing suit is coming too.

Cool, now I have an excuse to take my rig to the PIA SYmposium.