dumstuntzz

para flite is now part of airborne systems .the first para flite parapoint system was drop tested in 1971.

popenhager can back me up on this one.... back in the early80's a certain parachute mfr had an aerial delivery system that used a ramair canopy and homed in on the intended landing area. this company had just recently acquired new facilities,raised their prices and were met with a total lack of orders/cashflow.they were copntacted by a woman who said she was from wyoming or something and that she owned a ranch .she wanted one of these aerial delivery systems to deliver hay/food to her cattle when it snowed and ground access was limited. shewas sold a unit and trained how to operate and pack it.she paid her 18000 bucks and left with the unit. interestingly enough, her car had florida plates. some few months later we got a call from the FBI . seems they had found the canopy in the florida everglades. attached to the parachute was the guidance unit and the remnants of a duffle bags cloth handle.(it appears that the duffle and its cargo was just attached to and not actually placed in the cargo sling.) they called popenhager because he was the nearest dropzone. to find out more about what the fbi had found.

Jo, are you aware that "Mouse "is earl cossey's nickname?

It don't mean a thing if you dont pull the string!

CKRET, you are missing my point! the FBI should have released those serial numbers to the rigging public. you could have had all those riggers looking for the gear if it came back into use as either a reserve (26' navy conicals were VERY much in use in the sport in the 60's and 70's)or as a pilot bail out rig.riggers keep track of what they have packed including names NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THE OWNER. IF COOPER HAD SURVIVED THE JUMP, MAYBE HE SOLD THE GEAR TO SOMEONE WHO THEN PLACED IT BACK IN SERVICE. ok, so fbi has the serial numbers.they didnt do you a bit of good cause you sat on them.doesnt matter who you got the chutes from,share the serial numbers,and mfr. so that if the equipment shows up in someone elses hands , it can be traced back to whoever it was bought from(paper trail ya know!)that trail could lead you to cooper.riggers keep their records for years ( i stuill have ALL my logbooks dating back to 1973).

so why did the FBI NOT release the serial numbers to the rigging public? seems to me that it would have been a good idea to have riggers looking for the gear that cooper took out of the plane with him.

check out the "curved pin" on photo # 3!!

just out of curiosity's sake, did the FBI ever record the serial numbers of the gear that was used?? us riggers do keep logbooks and MAYBE some of the gear found its way back into use?

Frank Zappa grew up in the lancaster california area in the 1950's.there is (to my understanding) a get together each year on his birthday(?).

"good thing he was ok"...maybe physically,mentally i would have to say he was f'd up

HMMMM... could this harness have been constructed using needle woven webbing instead of shuttle woven? rite off the roll i have seen needle woven webbing exhibit this curved "feature". to determine if you have needle or shuttle woven webbing, ,fold the webbing in half,lengthwise,so that the edges are next to each other.are they identical,or does one edge look like its daisy chained?if the edges are identical,you have shuttle woven webbing.if one edge is daisy chained its needle woven.

Noordyn Norseman

one geat thing about stick shifts is that if your battery ever goes dead on you, you can still get your vehicle started by pushing it and popping the clutch.also because there are fewer parts, they are more reliable and not as likely to to stop working.

what came out of that fatality was that para flite developed the safety stow,which was then released to the industry.. after extensive windtunnel testing ,paraflite could not reproduce the situation that caused the fatality.(Manley butler did the work on this project.) at the time, paraflite square reserves were shipped with "o " rings made of buna n rubber on the locking stows(working in qc i was able to break some of these o rings at maybe 5 to 10 pounds of tension).bowing to pressure to "fix the problem" (even tho they couldn't duplicate it)the safety stow was born.interesting enough, at the time paraflite claimed to have final say on what containers were "compatible" with their sqaure reserves. the racer was not at that time approved by para flite for sqaure reserves. (sherman claimed the rig manufacturer was the one who was responsible for determining compatability) it was one of the great arguments in the industry for many years to come.

"rubber bands on the reserve bag caused a lockup and the freebag was invented " before paraflite invented the square reserve and freebag , there were No d bags on sport reserves.

are there any of these old beasts still hauling jumpers?

mostly canopy fabric,but also occasionally a layer or two of cordura.

i understand the difference between a machine w/ dog feed and a machine w/walking foot .but which one is better overall?which one will produce the least amount of shrinkage??

Whatever happened to Ed Cummings??