riggerrob

"Tested to FAA TSO standards" is distinct from "manufactured in accordance with FAA TSO." A production certificate requires annual inspections of the production line, The chances of the American FAA issuing a production certificate to anyone manufacturing outside of the USA are slim ... bordering on impossible ... simply because of the cost of travel for FAA Inspectors. Mind you, most of this legal debate is irrelevant to the original poster who is Russian. Russia never bought into FAA standards. Instead, Russians rely on a series of old Soviet military specifications.

One example is the PD176 Reserve that failed porosity tests at Performance Designs' factory. They sent it back with a note saying that it is no longer airworthy. Since then, no rigger has dared touch it, so it is effectively grounded. It might be possible to "repair" repair it to airworthy status, but that would require replacing all of the top skins, which is more labor and dollars than the cost of a newly-manufactured reserve. Let's be honest, the only people that are doing that level of "repair" are restoration shops that haul RARE corroded wrecks out of Papua-New Guinea jungles in order to jack up the data panel and build a new airframe underneath it. By the time they complete "repairs" they have installed new spars, new ribs, new skins, new hinges, new control cables, new hydraulics, new tires, new radios, freshly-overhauled engines, etc. Wealthy warbird collectors are only willing to do that for RARE airplanes that sell at auction for upwards of $1 million. Think P-51 Mustang or Spitfire whose production lines closed in 1945. For another comparison, look at all the restoration work done on the muscle cars auctioned by Barret-James: new engine, new transmission, new upholstery, new glass, etc. until little remains of the original.

All good advice above. Protect yourself by having any purchases inspected by a well-known loft before it shipped across the border. A complete inspection of harness, container, AAD and reserve is the same as the cost ($80 to $100 Canadian) of a regular reserve inspect-and-repack. Expect to pay another $30 for for a main inspection. An independent loft will tell you honestly whether any second-hand gear is worth four dollars/yen/yuan/euros/etc. If the equipment needs any repairs (e.g. new line set) you are best to have the Australian loft do the work before the gear crosses the border.

A wiser man would leave the bad guys guessing as to how many guns you own.

A wiser man would leave the bad guys guessing as to how many guns you own.

A wiser man would leave the bad guys guessing as to how many guns you own.

Fine! Don't vote. But by not voting, you also lose the privilege of complaining about whichever politician gets elected.

I jumped a rainbow Strato-Cloud for a few years and my jumpsuit had rainbow decorations .... lonnnnnnng before rainbows were associated with gay people or lesbians or trans people or LGBTQ+++++++

Voting is mandatory in some Scandinavian countries ... I forget which. They treat voting the same way they treat jury duty. Personally ... I believe that if you don't vote, you should be forbidden to criticize any politician that does get elected. You had an opportunity to say your piece on electing day.

Yes, but enough Abrams were damaged in Iraq that Russian and Chinese engineer spies understand what the finished armor looks like. The only thing they lack are the finer points of how to manufacture laminated armor.

Terror has always been a tactic in warfare. The difference is that Russia openly uses terror to this day, while Western nations are more subtle in their use of terror. Russians still kill off most of the military age men and sell the remainder into slavery/Siberia, burn all the buildings, rape all the cattle, stampede the women and sell the children into slavery. I would like to know how many live Ukrainian soldiers surrendered in the rubble of Mariupol ... and how many will still be alive to return home after this war??????????

I have only jumped Cessna 207 via the co-pilot's door. That inflight door was configured to hinge up the same way as on most other piston-pounding Cessnas.

Why is Germany reluctant to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine?

If you can afford to buy a second rig .... SURE! Just ensure that its handles are in the same place and that the main canopy is similar in size and handling to your primary main canopy. If the second main canopy differs from your first, then install different-colored risers to remind you when you are under canopy.

Why are you worried about getting a non-airworthy rig back? Why are you wasting time on this "legal" argument. Jerry knows how and why I love and respect lawyers and how much I want to become a lawyer when I grow up. Hah! Hah! Your money is far wiser spent on surgeons, ambulance drivers, mechanics and riggers. Since the factory has determined that the harness is non air-worthy, no rigger can legally repack and return it to the air. Shipping an non-airworthy harness to another country only benefits the shipping company. As for where to do harness repairs, the factory can do the job quicker and neater than any local rigger. The biggest hassle with factory repairs is the cost and time to ship it to the factory. Sinc ethe rig is already at the factory, that question is nul. Finally, some factories forbid major repairs outside of the factory because they have seen too many sloppy repairs done by outsiders who lacked the machines, patterns, materials or skills to do repairs properly. My advice comes from an FAA Master Rigger who used to make those sorts fo decisions at Rigging Innovations. I re-sized or repaired dozens of Talon, Telesis, Javelin, VEctor, Racer, etc. harnesses.

Yes BUT updating thermal sights means at minimum finding those sights in US Army warehouses, Secondly manufacturing new thermal sights. At worse, re-starting a production line for thermal sights. All of those options take months or years ... years that Ukraine lacks as they are being pummeled by Russian artillery, missiles, etc. Curent Ukrainian tanks fire Soviet-pattern 125mm ammo. All the NATO tanks fire the same 120mm ammo. Any new Western tanks will also need a new supply train to push 120mm ammo to the front.

Scary! Sooner or later, some bunch of rabid election-deniers are going to over-throw a recently-elected gov't in the Third World. The only thing worse is the way that politicians manage to convince the working class to do their dirty work for them. See the American Civil War when white, lower-class men did the bulk of the fighting and dying, but after the war those "white trash" got displaced by recently-freed slaves. I can say "white trash" since I am of Scots-Irish descent and was raised in the Appalachian Mountains, albeit the North end of the Appalachians, in Southern Quebec.

Granted, Spaniards did own a few slaves back when they ruled California. Mind you. most of those slaves were native North Americans ... so insignificant numbers of black slaves in California. Now that white "Americans" control the state ... how can they be held responsible for sins committed by a previous administration??????? Usually the slate gets wiped clean after a war changes the administration ... changes ownership.

Over the last 40 years, tobacco consumption has declined, especially after they started printing pictures of cancer on cigarette packages. Now even long-time smokers step out of their houses to smoke. Perhaps similar warning pictures on bottles of alcohol will make alcohol less fashionable. I probably would never have started drinking if I had been warned of all the health risks. I drank heavily for 20 years, but now have been sober for 25 years. Now I suffer from permanent liver damage. Back then I routinely drove home from the bar but never got charged with DUI, though I do remember three conversations with police officers who stopped me on my way home from the bar. As the American Prohibition on alcohol sales a century ago proved that trying to ban alcohol is a fool's errand. The Bronfman, Molson, Kennedy, etc. families all made their first million from selling alcohol to thirsty Americans. The sin taxes charged in Scandinavia also do not dampen thirst for alcohol.

PD Optimum was certified under a one-time FAA waiver for a hands-off descent rate of "more than X feet per second." PD talked the FAA into accepting a flared landing as an alternative way to reduce rate-of-descent. A member of the PIA standards committee told me that will never happen again. PIA worries that an AAD will save the jumpers' life, but then he will be badly injured during an unconscious un-flared landing. So you might "legally" load a PD Optimum reserve more than 1.3 pounds per square foot, but the laws of man must bow to the laws of physics.

Ridiculous! How will they react when Door Dash bans their drivers from delivering to their neighborhood?

Go re-read Canadian statistics on gun crimes. Canadian gun laws may not be perfect, but they do limit gun violence. The majority of guns used to commit crimes in Canada were smuggled in from the USA.

I am willing to do sketches, patterns and prototypes, but I lack an attention span long enough for full-scale development.

That reminds me of a discussion ... er ... drunken bull-session ... many years ago. Given that scared students instinctively curl up in a fetal position and military paratroopers are taught a modified fetal position for static-line jumps, I opined that skydiving students would cheerfully sit-fly if that was what we taught from the start. That led to sketches of a front-mounted main container and a back-mounted reserve. When sketching the front-mounted main container, I added an "apron" to simplify donning. The apron also helped conceal the harness, risers, etc. that might clutter up a cockpit. This apron came in handy when I sewed together a lap-type pilot emergency parachute harness/container. Since the back-mounted reserve could extend the full length of the spine, it could also be made very thin. For comparison, long-back pilot emergency parachutes are routinely only an inch or two thick.