riggerrob

Will someone please explain to me why every manufacturer hides the reserve packing data card in a different location? I am beginning to suspect that it is all a capitalist plot to drive parachutists insane. ... don't know about you, but I am rapidly loosing touch with reality!

Back in 1994 I made one jump on an Amigo 206 configured as a main. The Amigo 206 flew so welll that I vought an Amigo 172 reserve and it is still in my reserve container. I strongly agree witth the concept of test jumping various reserve canopies packed as mains. At a bare minimum, everyone should have to do a few jumps on a Triathlon the same size as their next reserve. Landing a heavily loaded seven cell will be a real eye-opener! Few skydivers appreciate how much farther main technology is ahead of reserve technology.

Student gear is usually proven designs that are more reliable than gear used by experienced jumpers. Any new design feature needs a few years experience with licensed jumpers before they incorporate that feature into student gear. For example, BOCS came into fashion around 1990 but were not incorporated into student gear until 1996. Student gear is usually more reliable than the students. For example: last year at Pitt Meadows we had four reserves opened on our student gear. One student experienced a line-over type malfunction on her main and pulled her own reserve ripcord. Two student reserves were pulled by PFF Instructors because they were rapidly approaching the hard deck and the students couldn't be bothered with pulling! The third student reserve was opened by an FXC. The A Licensed jumper noticed that the FXC was set to fire too high, but he jumped it anyway! Sounds to me like 75% user error.

Only use volume numbers published by container manufacturers. Since they are the ones who "eat it" if a new container doesn't fit, they have an incentive to be honest. Just ask the factory which canopies will fit gracefully into their container. Ignore most of the numbers published by canopy manufacturers. Their numbers are based on a variety of measuring methods with a large dose of salesmanship thrown in. Did I word that with enough political correctness?

First of all, canopy fabric rarely "blows up" these days, unless you are sloppy packer. The life of a canopy is determined more by abuse than fabric durability. Now canopies are retired because they have too many tiny holes in the center tail, or they have lost flare power. Wing loading has a far greater affect on line durability. Lines wear out quicker on heavily-loaded canopies. It is partly due to increased opening shock and partly due to heavier loaded canopies being more sensitive to lines that have stretched/shrunk even slightly out of trim. Line durability is also a function of how you fly your canopy. A friend liked to open high and crank the toggles - hard - all the way to landing. His Dacron steering lines wore out quickly from all the rubbing up and down through the slider and steering guide rings, but he also noticed that the Dacron other lines wore out quicker than on similar, more gently flown canopies.

BOC represents about 90% of the market and Pull-out represents about 5% of the market for a reason. We could expound the virtues of BOC at great length, but it is quicker to explain the disadvantages of pull-out. TK Donle of the Relative Workshop explained it beautifully in an earlier thread. The gist of his thread was that any throw-out pilotchute will generate at least 70 pounds of pull at terminal velocity. This is more than double the pin extraction force than the strongest guy in his shop could generate! Secondly, many skydivers waste so much energy pulling tight pins that they have too little strength remaining to get the pilotchute out to full arm's extension. Lazy pilotchute tosses can be the first step in all sorts of weird and perverted malfunctions. Thirdly, all that tugging and hard work with the right arm frequently results in an assymetrical body position which is the first step in unrecoverable line twists under a Stiletto! Finally, I have made plenty of money over the years repacking reserves for guys who lost track of their pull-out handles. Wait a minute, why am I telling you this? If everyone bought pull-outs, then more of them would suffer floating handles and I would make more money repacking their reserves. Belay my last thought. I bought my first throw-out (precussor the today's BOC) in 1979. Since then I have made more than 3500 jumps with various throw-outs, but only about a dozen with pull-outs. Sign me an arrogant, opinionated, grumpy old Master Rigger who figured it out more than 20 years ago and does not want to waste any more brain power on this issue. riggerrob

The danger zone is somewhere between 50 and 500 jumps. Consider this, they won't let you become a tandem instructor until you have survived more than 500 jumps by yourself. But it really comes down to a question of attitude. I was dangerous to myself at 60 jumps and I didn't start to mellow out until after I had 600 jumps and a tandem rating. I started tandem jumping and BASE jumping at the same time, but time constraints forced me to chose one or the other. I chose tandem jumping because it paid better.

Sounds like you got the correct advice for the wrong reason. The main reason for doing a few hop & pops on a new canopy is to give yourself plenty of time to learn how it flies.

Let's face it, most of what the news media knows about skydiving it learned from barnstorming barkers back in the 1920s. Then they parrot this hopelesslyl antiquated information to the public who swallow it verbatum, like the good little consumers they are.

Yes, Skydive University's "Basic Canopy Flight 101" is great for recent AFF graduates. Another excellent video is Pier Media's "Pack Like a Pro." PLP goes into more detail about the various parts of a canopy and teachs two packing methods, with a lot of litle tips and tricks that will save time and sweat.

Study all the above mentioned pamphlets, but the most important skill is to learn how and when to bail out of a bad approach.

This sounds like a CReW mod to make it easier to grab the front riser dive loops. Even if you forget the cable and just fold the loops in half and sew the rear edges together, they will be easier to grab.

Wow! Zelmo, You mentioned three distinctly different canopies. The Parafoil is a 1970s classic designed for hardcore accuracy competition. The Falcon is a 1980s vintage mid-range sport canopy. Finally, Cobalts are at the fast end of the scale and worn by several leading blade running competitors. Zelmo, the first thing you have to do is ask yourself what kind of landings you want. What will you be doing the most: accuracy, stacking, blade-running, exhibition jumping or just fun jumping? Your second question should be "What are the better canopies in that class?" Thirdly, ask where you can demo the top three canopies in that class. Finally, ask several dealers which one will give you the best price.

Military static-line jumping is so vastly different from civilian skydiving ..... Considering that they expect 40% casualties in battle, a handful of broken legs during a peacetime exercise is insignificant, besides leg injuries allow the medics to practice their trade! Giving ram-air canopies to those airborne bozos is definietly not the answer! The answer is round canopies that are reliable enough to be deployed below 500 feet and that descend slow enough with a 300-400 pound suspended weight. Over the last decade, all the major manufacturers have developed ways to improve reliablity on static-line chutes - a far more complex engineering problem than most manufacturers are willing to admit. The gist of the problem is that round canopies open in a snivel-snivel-snap mode. It is very difficult to predict how many seconds a round canopy will snivel. If the jump plane is doing 250 knots on jump run - the avoid anti-aircraft artillery - the opening shock can break necks! The solution to the "snivel-snivel" problem seems to be to revive a 50-year-old patent called the slider. But sliders for round canopies have to be far more sophisticated than the simple squares of fabric used on ram-air canopies. The first step is to create a spreading force at the mouth of the canopy. Irvin Industries of Canada figured this out during the 1980s. An Irvin engineer named Webb found that if you suspended a pilotchute level with the skirt, it generated sufficient , predictable spreading force to eliminate the "snivel-snivel" phase of opening. The biggest single problem with round canopies is that some fabric often blows under the far side of the skirt and inflates on the wrong side. This confusion produces "line-over: type malfunctions 5-10% of the time. Fortunately, most line-overs clear themselves before the jumper can look up, but line-overs vastly increase maintenance bills, In 24 jumps, I have experienced a total inversion - the mother of all line-overs - on a Canadian Army canopy and a partial line-over on a German Army canopy. Both canopies were so badly damaged that they were scrapped. The second step in improving openings was to install a slider to reduce the "snap" phase. Yada, yada, yada. Eventually several manufacturers combined the Webb chute with a slider. The end result looks funny, but it solves two problems. For a detailed look, visit Butler Parachute Systems website and check out the BAT Sombrero slider installed on their HX series of high speed canopies. Sliders also help to keep lines organized during the snivel-snivel phase, further reducing the chance of line-over type malfunctions. The final part of the equation is reducing landing velocity to the point that ankles will survive. A large part of this problem is the extra equipment that every army adds to every airborne soldier every year, so they end up way over the original design weight. The solution to slower landing speeds is more fabric.

Gear is definitely a fashion issue. The DZO at Pitt Meadows was a Racer freak for many years and a couple of POPS are still jumping their old Racers. The guy who was the local rigger for a while was a Vector dealer, so there are a fair number of Vector IIs still kicking around. Currently, our DZO is a Sidewinder dealer, so half the folks jump Sidewinders. The second most popular rig at Pitt Meadows is the Javelin. Since our current rigger used to work at the Talon factory, Talons and Voodoos are the third most popular rig. In terms of main canopies, our DZO used to jump: Fireflies and Sabres. He now jumps a Stiletto. Guess what the most popular canopy is this week? Our manifestor jumps a Triathlon and has convinced several other fun jumpers to buy them. Newer jumpers are now buying Icarus Safires and Crossfires. Reserve canopy-wise, our DZO is a Tempo dealer, so half the reserves are Tempos. The second most popular reserve is P.D.

Clarification - Parachutes de France holds TSO s on most of their current production items. They stopped selling on the North American market because they do not want to have anything to do with low down !@#$%^&* scum-sucking, bottom feeding California lawyers.

Guys date blondes, marry brunettes and have affairs with red heads.

Only had one horseshoe type malfunction myself. It was early in the season. I was wobbling when I tossed my pilotchute. It was a lazy toss to boot! I waited a couple of seconds and nothing happened. So I looked over my shoulder and saw my pilotchute trailing behind me. I traced the bridle with my eyes, concluded that it was wrapped around my chest-mounted altimeter, grabbed the bridle and tossed it a second time. This time my main opened at about 1500!" Lesson learned: throw that pilotchute all the way out to arm's length! USPA recommends pulling both the release and reserve ripcords. That way the reserve has less of a chance of entangling with a long skinny mess, as opposed to trying to fight its way past a loop. And besides, most of the time when you take the pressure off the main container, the main falls out anyways. Far better to have your main fall clear.

Geoff's last post reminds me of a jumper at California City who was too cool to tighten his leg straps before boarding. He was also too cool to tighten them before exit. In freefall, he could not reach his main handle, so he had to pull his reserve. That's cool!

Triple risers are used by the top canopy pilots to reduce friction on steering lines and allow the tail to spread a bit wider. Spreading the tail improves stability and slightly flattens the glide. Triple risers were originally developed by accuracy competitors back when parachutes were square. Now they are being revived by top blade running competitors for the same reasons. Since triple risers require an extra minute to pack, you should only spend the extra money after you have tried all the other tricks: pulling the slider down to your shoulders, loosening your chest strap and spending a few hundred jumps learning all the corners of your canopy's performance envelope.

Conclusion: 1.46 pounds per square foot is too heavy for a Spectre.

Pollution is the main reason the parachute industry is shifting from cadmium plated to stainless steel hardware. Traditionally, parachute hardware had a cadmium plating to prevent corrosion. Unfortunately, the cadmium plating process produces nasty toxic waste that is very expensive to dispose of. Another disadvantage of cadmium plating is that cadmium is comparatively soft and easily abrades off hardware. Corrosion is not really an issue unless you jump in a highly corrosive environment like the ocean or the Amazon basin. Then the reddish-brown corrosion of regular steel starts to abrade nylon webbing. Webbing will wear out long before the strength of the steel is significantly affected. Stainless steel is not corrosion proof, it just corrodes at a slower rate and the corrosion residue it produces is a harmless black/grey powder.

Skydive University publishes "Basic Canopy Flight 101" and 2 videos on on "Body Flight." Pier Media sells "Pack Like a Pro" and "Fly Like a Pro."

Today, I stopped three people with mis-routed chest straps! All on the sunset load!!

Fellow skydivers, My original point was that the key to surviving under any canopy is curiousity (aka. continued canopy instruction.) And it has to be a series of phases of instruction. First jump courses only cover the bare minimums of how to survive under a docile student canopy, because that is about all that a first jump student can absorb. Sadly, the first jump course is where canopy instruction ends at most DZs. As they progress to smaller and faster canopies, all skydivers need a series of blocks of instruction, with dozens of practice jumps at each block to understand all the corners of the performance envelope of any canopy. A few DZs provide little bits of advice for free. Bless their souls. Some smaller DZS simply may not have the experese to teach advanced canopy techniques. For example, if the chief instructor still does low altitude toggle hook turns, ignore most of his advice about high speed landings. The bigger more progressive DZs provide formal blocks of instruction (ie. Skydive University's "Basic Canopy Flight 101) but charge for the coach's time. BCF provides valuable advice, but some skydivers are too arrogant or cheap to pay coaches. In a capitalist economy, DZS cannot force lazy skydivers to learn anything. Skydivers who are not willing to pay for formal coaching can always read the textbooks, watch the videos and practice the canopy exercises on their own. In the end, the length of your skydiving carreer is directly proportional to how curious you are about your canopy. The key word here is CURIOUS!