WGore

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Everything posted by WGore

  1. Me too. My first jump was also my first airplane ride...and I never landed in an airplane the first year I was in the sport. I was curious...the Army airborne guys...how many jumps would one typically do in a year - courtesy the US Army and while in the airborne ..vs. what sport parachutists would do in that same time frame? I wasn't airborne so I forget how often they had to make pay jumps. 90 days comes to mind. Our club was on a leg post (Ft Knox) so we didn't get Military aircraft very often. When we did the jumps were free. We jumped off post and rented aircraft for tach time which made the jumps something over $2 a piece. That sounds pretty reasonable but the pay back then was pretty low. I was an E-5 Sgt when I got out and was making $211 a month. I went into the Army with 125 jumps and came out with about 350, most of which were made in 1 1/2 years. The number of jumps I made out of Army aircraft could be added up on both of my hands and still have fingers left over. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  2. The 60s and 70s for me. I have been around skydiving for almost 51 years as a jumper, rigger, and pilot. My 1st jump course might have been a half hour and my 1st jump was also my 1st airplane ride. I was hooked. In the Army I was president of the post parachute club because I had more jumps than anyone else but we had lots of enthusiastic students and we were family. After the Army the DZs I jumped at were also family and the coldest winter nasty day there would be 15 or 20 folks around to drink beer and tell lies. You got the DZ Friday night or Early Sat. and left Sun. night. Everyone pitched in for the sport and primadonnas were few and far between. When we won the 4 way nationals we worked with the students and RW students and passed are secrets on for NOTHING because we were all about the sport. The times and the people were good. Now days it is unusual for anybody to stay much past dark on Sat. night and many only jump 1 day a weekend. For me it was a lifestyle and while I never got rich doing it I wouldn't change a thing. I made a meager living but sure had a bunch of fun. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  3. Just wondering if there is anyone on here that jumped with the club back in 66', 67', & 68'. We never got much support from the Army but jumped off post quite a bit from civilian aircraft in Campbellsville KY. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  4. The 4-way was won by GC Atlanta in 73. Paul Fayard, Chuck Price, Dave Briar, and Bob Vonderau. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  5. Hi mr g You did what. Wle heard about the shelf life of silk canopies, it's about half of nylon. How long was that.? We found another little treasure of my Fil from thr greatest generation. Did you smoke cigs b ack in the day? Found a silver lookinng box, it slid open, there was clip to hold the matches and the rest of the inside was for a pack of cigs but it looked to short. We tried a modern pack of cigs they fit but were to long. Scratchedhead scratched butt, damn that container was for unfiltered pack of cigs. Gotta take a nap. R.I.P. . I jumped the parachute in 67 & 68. It was not that old at the time. I'm not sure who it was made for originally but jumping it with a deployment sleeve would have allowed it to be used after the 7 year limit. You have to remember that, that was a military standard based on non reefed deployments from high speed aircraft. Don't remember anything about manufacturer or the date of manufacture. That was a long time ago. Once out of the military I couldn't wait to get back to a high performance Para-commander. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  6. Anything to get in the pea gravel. That landing would have killed anybody else. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  7. We had a gentleman that use to jump with us at Greene County KY that was an original member of Easy Company Band of Brothers. He transferred to another company at the end of training in the US to help train another company coming through. He ended up making 2 combat jumps in Europe and coming home. His son came out to the DZ to make a jump in the late 70s and he got caught up in the whole thing and started sport jumping with his son. He was 56 when he started jumping again and made 250+ jumps on round canopies back then. I had the honor of taking him on a Tandem jump while his son and a grandson formed a 3 way on him in later years. It was after Band of Brothers had aired and I had a wonderful time talking to him about the characters in the mini series. No better man has trod this earth, he did well after the war and was not hesitant to share the wealth because he wanted to not because he had to. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  8. Suzie was no light weight she was a very fit lady with a lot of muscle. Not trying to say she was fat just a big girl that was extremely athletic. In the 60s and early 70s she was a top notch competitor on the women's US Team. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  9. My uncle brought back a silk flare parachute and my mom made a baptismal gown out of it. I was the oldest but all of my siblings were baptized in it as well. I guess I was born to skydive. Not sure were it is now but my sister probably has it. I actually made a number of jumps on a silk parachute that was part of the gear at the Ft. Knox SPC. I'm not sure where it came from but it was RW&B. It really packed nice but was heavy compared to a nylon chute of the same diameter. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  10. It is a great read if you are interested. Thanks for putting that up David. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  11. Dec 64 took my Christmas bonus from my first job and bought a 28' W-gore (or E-gore) along with a 24' T-7 Twill reserve with altimeter and stop watch for $50. Reserve repacks were $2 every 60 days. When I was in the Army at Ft Knox in 66-68 we could get the 4 color 28s for $10 at quartermaster sales. The lines were cut at the links but there was a rigger on post that would retie the lines and sew and modify for another $10. His wife made sleeves for $5 IIRC. Sage green harnesses and containers (the hot ticket at the time) were another $5. Problem was there was no one around to install D-rings. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  12. Yeah, everyone had the cash for a brand new Cessna Caravan in '85. Yours Truly, 95870-024 I don't have any first hand knowledge of that. Cowboy was a business man and fairly successful at that from what I heard and he was leasing the Caravan out to DZs for boogies. Point taken though. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  13. Drew and Cowboy were friends but I don't know that he was involved in any way. I think that rumor was started by DEA to try and shake some information loose. There were a lot of friends to many people lost in that crash including one very close friend of mine. NTSB ruled it water in the fuel along with a clogged fuel filter. Add to that mix a really green pilot with very few hours in the Caravan and the outcome was a disaster. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  14. Sorry to hear this. I met Coss back in the 70s at the Nationals and always enjoyed talking to him when we crossed paths. RIP. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  15. Drew had a number of rigs. The info that I got was that the reserve was square. I was interviewed and i may have forgotten some of the details but the gist was that his aorta was ruptured and the brakes on the reserve were never released. They were using a Cessna 402 for this run and the door is very close to the horizontal stabilizer. There have been several fatalities over the years with people hitting the tail which is why they were never used much for skydiving. My theory is that he set the auto pilot for climb and headed out to sea and ran to the back of the airplane to exit. The auto pilot probably wouldn't compensate fast enough along with the bag of cocaine maybe catching air and slamming him into the horizontal. He knew he was hurt and pulled the reserve but didn't maintain conscientiousness long enough to release the brakes. I'll try and find my log books from back then and see which reserves might have been used. He had round reserve rigs but that would have been a small reserve for the load he was carrying and Drew was a big guy. I remember a Black main but can't remember the brand, but it was big. In fact he used it to jump off of a building in downtown Louisville KY but didn't use an oversize pilot chute and damned near bought it then. Folks that were there said he was only under canopy 2 to 3 seconds. The others were all opened much much higher. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  16. Sandy/RI has long made a student rig called the Telesis. I don't recall him ever involved in the manufacture of a round reserve or any other canopy. I've known Sandy a long time and spent some time with him last week. We talked a lot about his history in the gear business but I'll ask him more specifically about this. Sandy may have had the reserve made for him. He called me when he was working on the Telesis and asked if I cared if he used the Telstar name in connection with that student rig. In all honesty I didn't keep up with it after that. I didn't care since the Telstar had been out of production for several years prior to that. Please ask him since now I'm curious about it. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  17. It might have been as Jerry suggested and the dealer stamped it. There were several big dealers like Para-Gear and maybe Midwest that could order enough PCs to get there own patterns. In 67 & 68 if you had something different than red, white and blue it sold like hot cakes. My first one was R,W,& B like every other one in existence.That was the first chance to get something different. For containers your choice was OD or Sage Green. The latter going for a premium price. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  18. Bob here. Telstar was always the name of the rig. We never marked any PCs as Telstar. A standard PC would be way too big to go in a Telstar main container. We did build several for RW PCs but most were built for the squares of the day. A guy picked up some of the packing instructions a number of years back for a data base that he was putting together. He mistakenly called it Telstar systems, but it was actually Alpha Para-Equipment. Sandy Reid at Rigging Innovations manufactured a round reserve for a student rig called a Telstar. I seem to remember a PC Pattern called a Telstar but I wouldn't swear to it. For those that don't know Telstar was an early communications satellite, as well as a 1960s R&R instrumental by a group out of England. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  19. How much is that? 5 gal per side? That's correct. And that's assuming the old rubber bladder type tanks don't have wrinkles in them. I believe the 56' model unusable is 2.5 gal. It went to 5 in 57'. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  20. I've made quite a few rides on a Navy Conical modified and non modified and it beats the devil out of a 24 flat. The problem IIRC with the conicals was a chemical treatment of the fabric to make it a duller white. They only used it in 57 and 58 and discovered it caused the fabric to deteriorate at a faster rate. I had one of the affected canopies and checked it regularly and it eventually failed the tensile test. Before the low-pos came out it was the way to go. Packed smaller that the 24 flats. Out of 14 mals only one was on a 26 Phantom, one on a 24' Twill, one on a 24' Flat, none on a square. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  21. Greene County, Xenia OH had a 650HP Howard back in the mid 60s. That thing would give any turbine a run for the money. I was in the Army at the time and only got to make one jump from it before it was severely damaged in an off field landing. I was on leave and it was Christmas Day 66'. Went to 16,500 and it had no door, air temp was -31*F at altitude, I didn't do that anymore after that. Just about everyone on board had some level of frostbite. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  22. What a waste putting a nose wheel on a beautiful airplane like that. That gives new meaning to Butt Ugly. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  23. I was president of the Ft Knox club in 67 & 68 and I think in the 2 years I was there we got aircraft maybe 4 times other than Armed Forces day when we jumped into Main Post parade ground. We would request aircraft every weekend but on a Leg Post it wasn't a high priority. We found a civilian airport that would rent us aircraft for tach time and that kept the club members in jumps for about $2 a piece. I closed the club up right before ETS. It opened again in 71 when a Lt Col and a Maj took an interest in it. They closed it in 79 never to be opened again. They had a large group of members in the early days and plenty of Hueys to jump from. On the weekends that they couldn't get aircraft they would come out to Greene County Bardstown and keep our Cessnas running non stop. In the last years of the Ft Campbell club many of the guys would come up and jump with us. Anybody know what became of Jon Pejka? I know he went to the Air Force and was flying DC-9s but haven't heard anything about him in years. Telstar, that rig you got from Leanne was built by me. She sold stuff for me for awhile until my shop burned down in 80. I don't know what ever happened to her. She was selling gear for awhile but just sort of faded away. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  24. I started in 64 and we called it grab ass when we started trying to make contact. The other local club did style and accuracy and looked down on us peons. "RW" was tracking at each other, one guy holding a stick, hopefully not a dead on heading. Sometimes we actually made the transfer without killing someone. Eventually we converted the other club to our way of thinking and they were a force to be dealt with for several years to come after that, outside of CA. To say that it was a fun time in Skydiving is a gross understatement, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!
  25. Well said Terry, I couldn't agree more. Skydiving today is way more expensive than when I started and I wouldn't have been able to afford it. We worked for the DZ for cut rate jumps but now everyone wants mega bucks for doing anything. OTOH there are jumpers that are willing to pay for advice from the "PROS", and in some cases learn just enough to get hurt. When I started there were 2 guys that jumped together all of the time and could hook up anytime they wanted, pretty impressive back then. They took me and my buddy under their wings and taught us how to do it as well. We in turn did the same with the folks we took under our wings and never took more than a couple free beers for the advice, well maybe a whole bunch of beers. As far as the belly warts I don't remember it being a hindrance but when we went to piggybacks you just had more speed. The first 3 RW nationals I competed in was with conventional gear and we had 1 - 1st and 2 - 4th place finishes. We then went back and shared the knowledge with anyone that wanted to learn, no charge. GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!