dudeman17

It's distressing that I have to write this, but historical accuracy demands it. I have been skydiving for 35 years, and I am as big a fan of Bill Booth as anybody, and in no way do I mean to denigrate him or his contributions to our sport. But he did not invent the skyhook. He may have redesigned it for skydiving rigs, but the first MARD system was invented by Mark Hewitt, on a base rig called the Sorcerer, and Bill knows this. Credit is deserved where credit is due. ............................................................................. Yes, but Mark Hewitt invented a pin-type MARD, while Bill Booth invented a hook-type MARD. Two radically-different RSLs that do the same job. Like I said, Bill may have redesigned it, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate as much as anybody what Bill has contributed to our sport. I just thought that if the word 'invented' was being used in this thread, then Mark deserved mention. And I hope you and others can appreciate that.

It's distressing that I have to write this, but historical accuracy demands it. I have been skydiving for 35 years, and I am as big a fan of Bill Booth as anybody, and in no way do I mean to denigrate him or his contributions to our sport. But he did not invent the skyhook. He may have redesigned it for skydiving rigs, but the first MARD system was invented by Mark Hewitt, on a base rig called the Sorcerer, and Bill knows this. Credit is deserved where credit is due.

Hell, at our drop zone we do that all day long every week. We even have special rigs built specifically for it. And check this out; we (the experienced jumpers) wear the chutes, and we get whuffos who've never made a jump in their lives to do the chuteless Mr. Bill part. They show up in droves, and here's the really cool part: they PAY us for it!! As for the nudity thing, by God if the Good Lord had wanted us to be naked, we would have been BORN that wa... oh, wait...

Related to Chuck Sweeney?

+1 to what everyone else has said. Don't be intimidated, skydivers pretty much everywhere are friendly, welcoming people. Plusses for the west coast are that Perris and Elsinore are within half an hour of each other, so you have both options available, and if you want to spend a day touristing somewhere else, there are a lot of things to do within an hour or so. Whichever way you go, do have fun!

Well as a sort of older jumper I can appreciate the history of pea gravel. But with today's canopies the landing swoop is usually longer than the pit is wide. And even landing tandems on windy days, I don't like landing in the pit because the damn stuff gets in my shoes.

Bill Booth did not invent the skyhook. I'm sure he redesigned how it works on his rigs, but the concept of direct bagging a reserve off of a cutaway main was invented by Mark Hewitt. The first 'skyhook' equipped rig was a base rig called the Sorcerer. Not to diminish Mr. Booth's contributions, but to give credit where credit is due.

That's crap. Accepted skydiving procedures do indeed include right of ways, and if you skydive the same way you advocate, it is YOU that is dangerous. You DO have a responsibility to yield to those below you, and if you don't agree with that I suggest you get the hell off the plane. You must believe that others think of "right of way" as a law, which of course it isn't. The term "right of way" refers to an agreed upon procedure, not an absolute. No one here has said that the person below has the right to do as they please without regard to what's happening around them because of a right of way privilege. Right of way is a concept designed to take variables and confusion out of a situation, which is crucial in skydiving where decisions must be made split-second in an environment where the ability to do so is the difference between life and death. As I mentioned in a previous post, it IS the responsibility of every jumper to check the air above - which can be accomplished without a barrel roll - and give a clear signal before throwing out. What the "right of way" folks are saying is that following a "low man has the right of way" procedure is safer than people taking their attention off targets below with a full body twirl, which can create a whole new world of deadly possibilities. No one is arguing that we don't need to clear the air above. We are arguing about the safest way to get it done. Unless a person has a mobility issue, there is NO NEED to perform a barrel roll to clear the air above, which brings into question the concept of performing a barrel roll and taking one's eyes off the area below, which IS the area we are responsible to give right of way to. Get it? Every jumper IS RESPONSIBLE to YIELD TO the jumper below them. It's a ONE WAY STREET. You don't have to agree with it, but it's the accepted procedure and thus you are OBLIGATED to follow it. And just for fun, let's try a different comparison. Try telling a cop that the guy in front of you in traffic should have gotten out of the way so you wouldn't have slammed him in the rear. Argue all you want, but it will be YOU that gets the ticket and YOUR insurance company that pays the claim. Our vision is limited behind us, whether we stay on our bellies or barrel roll and get a "flash' of a person above us that still doesn't pinpoint whether they are a factor or not. And finally, since you are schooling folks, let's school you. You said: "If you're leaving ANY part of your survival up to someone else, then you clearly don't fully understand the situation you're putting yourself in and how it needs to be dealt with." That is a very foolish comment and one I hope you will reconsider. The truth is that every one of us relies on everyone in our group for our survival on every jump. None of us can see everything at every moment on every skydive, and thus we ARE dependent on our fellow jumpers for our survival on every jump. It's also the reason we have procedures - like focusing most of our attention on the person below, not the person above who should be following the same procedure. I like your "it's on me" attitude, but when a jumper takes that to a point where they focus so much on their own safety that they ignore best practices that are in the best interest of EVERYONE'S safety, that's a problem. If you can safely perform a barrel roll to clear your air while breaking off, good for you. But my bet is you can do the same thing without a barrel roll, and that would be a safer way to go. Aww, geez, now that's why I don't post on here very often. There are always people lying in wait to take one statement out of context and convolute it into what they'd like it to mean so that they can get all haughty and throw down an argument. Chuck, if you've read the entire thread, then you'd know from my previous post that I do not practice, nor do I advocate, the barrel roll method of clearing your airspace. And if what I've said in totality makes you think that I believe in the things that you're railing against, then perhaps you should move to Hollywood and get a job writing for the soap operas. Chuck, both you and billvon, by the tone of your posts, have missed my point, yet within your posts, you've both MADE the same point as I have. I was trying to emphasize the point because I'm reading in here stuff like 'just wave off and wait a few seconds and let the other guy handle it', and 'watch the guy below you and let the guy above worry about you'. To be sure, in skydiving there are established protocols for breakoffs, canopy patterns, and what-not that include rights of way, and I teach, preach, and practice them every week. When I say 'nobody has the right of way', I do not mean that you should blow off yielding to the other guy's right of way. What I AM saying is that you should not bet your life on the other guy yielding to yours.

I can't believe some of the stuff I'm reading on here, especially from the older-time jumpers, so I'll reiterate a point I made earlier. In skydiving, NOBODY has the right-of-way. It's EVERYONE'S responsibility to keep THEMSELVES alive from every angle and possibility. Two people skiing probably aren't going to die if they collide. Two people skydiving probably are, and you don't get to crawl out of your crater and dust yourself off just because you think it was the other guy's fault. If you're leaving ANY part of your survival up to someone else, then you clearly don't fully understand the situation you're putting yourself in and how it needs to be dealt with.

The operative issue here is clearing your airspace before you pull, especially the airspace above you in the direction of your deployment. If you're backtracking and can see above you before you roll over and dump, you've got that covered, but you may not be aware of what's going on below you. If you can't barrel roll cleanly, or if your roll happens too fast to get a good view, then that's not going to work. If you just wave off and wait, figuring it's the person above you's responsibility to react, then you're abdicating your responsibility. The reaper doesn't care who's fault it is, if two people collide during deployment, you're likely both going to die. So track off and check the airspace around and below you. You can look over your shoulder to see above you as you're waving off. If someone is there, by all means track out from under them before you dump. If your standard pull altitude doesn't allow for that, then it's time to rethink that. Safety's a skill, survival an art. It's your job to not let anyone kill you, even if they're trying to, and in turn not to kill anyone else. Get killed ONCE, you can't take it back.

The Cruiselite was similar to the Comet (and the Pegasus, the Unit, the X-210...), so imagine a smaller/faster Cruiselite with a slightly mushier flare. And IIRC the Swift was a 5-cell with less aspect ratio, so yeah, the Hobbit probably lands better than that. I remember demo jumping a Swift reserve, and the slider had a square hole cutout in the center of it. During the latter part of the flare the front edge of that cutout would vibrate, essentially giving it a stall warning buzzer. And to Ken and Muff - hey, Hobbettes can be fun!

I've got a fair amount of jumps on Hobbits. I knew Bill and jumped with him a lot when he was is SoCal back in those days, and jumped a lot of his canopies. I used to have and got my BASE# on a Comet, jumped Hobbits, Spirits and a Lumen. That Lumen was an aggressive 7-cell with a high angle of attack and opened like a bounce. Made some BASE jumps on that thing, too. Even deployed a diapered Hobbit reserve out of a Handbury rig once, and I still have that canopy somewhere, serial #11. Anyway, the Hobbit, though nothing compared to today's cross-braced postage stamps, was for its time a small zippy high performance canopy. I believe it's about 185 square feet (from a time when the average 'smaller' sport canopy was about 220), and has the same airfoil as a Spirit, in that it has a curved lower surface. I actually liked the Comet better than the Spirit, and wished that the Hobbit had its airfoil. It's fun to fly if you're into nostalgia, but it can land hard if you're not good on the flare. One thing you want to consider, though, is that if that was a Point Break rig, there's a good chance that it's been wet from the water jumps they did into Lake Powell. And knowing a little about how film shoots can work, it may not have been dried out quickly or correctly, it may have been left soaked for a while. So I'd suggest that you have a thorough stress test done on all the materials with that in mind.

Back in the 80's Bill Gargano TSO'd a diaper deployment system for square reserves. I used it once, had to chop a 7-cell for some reason and deployed a diapered Hobbit out of a Handbury rig with a 2-pin / 2-riser reserve container. Seemed to work fine.

I recognize Carl's Yosemite/El Cap patch on the upper left, but on the upper right you have a Yosemite patch with an outline of Half Dome that seems to have your same El Cap number on it. Was that one you made yourself, or what's with that? Just curious.

Just realized this one question was not addressed. There was no change in descent from my perspective. Something like that would have alarmed me. I honestly shrugged it off as a line trim issue or even an uneven harness issue. I will be more diligent in the future if I have a built in turn. Can't say that I will be able to see a torn topskin but at least now I know that it can be the culprit. A torn top skin could very well increase the descent rate, and as noted earlier may not be noticed until you land like a sack of potatoes. One way to assess a possibly torn top skin is to turn the canopy different directions to orient it to the sun at different angles. If you can get the sun to shine through the hole, you can see it on the bottom skin and that can give you an idea of how big the hole is.

I was jumping Perris at the time and knew nearly everyone on that load. My first reaction to this is kinda mixed, but ultimately I agree with Andy - everyone has the right to write what they want, and everyone else has the right to read or not read it. And if these guys lived through that crash then I guess they've earned the right to interpret it however they wish, and again, the rest of us have the right to agree or disagree as we see fit. Related story: Shortly after the time of the crash, there was to be a Grateful Dead concert in Las Vegas, and a bunch of us had arranged to go. Kiwi had put all the tickets on his credit card. In the aftermath of the crash, someone called his parents and said 'by the way we owe you for those concert tickets'. His folks graciously said not to worry about it, they'd cover it. So we all 'went to the Dead on a dead man's ticket'. On the day of the show, which was in an open air stadium, there was a thunderstorm. Well, you know how things can 'seem' at a Dead show, but you would have sworn that the sound guy had control of the thunder and lightning. Also, there are air tours that fly out of Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, and they used Otters. So there we were watching the show, the thunder and lightning perfectly timed to the music, and Otters occasionally flying by in the distance. And the people around us wondered why we kept crying...

hey... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3844262;search_string=%26quot%3Bharley%20davidson%26quot%3B;#3844262

Yup.

So what's the latest on this?

IIRC it was also in 'United We Fall', an anthology put out by Pat Works years and years ago. In any case, lotsa good stuff in that book.

Wow, stretch the memory banks, but I know that rig! Bill Gargano traded rights with PA so they could build his canopies there and he could build their rigs here. That blue/brown one you have was part of a set he built for a team we formed back then. And yeah, the cutaway/reserve handles could be in any of three configurations: SOS, normal or reversed like yours seems to be. And I would strongly suggest that you have that canopy stress tested before you jump it. IIRC, there was a problem with a particular batch of that light blue material and it's integrity wasn't holding up.

Is this some other old gear, or just a LOTR reference? (nothing wrong with LOTR references obviously!) I had to google LOTR to see what you meant by that, haha. Never read any of those books or saw any of the movies. BUT, the Nasgull was another (experimental) canopy that Bill Gargano was working on in that time frame (early 80's). Supposedly it flew at like 60 mph, and the few times it was test jumped it was flown, cut away and not landed. Bill described it as looking "like a malfunctioning Paradactyl".

I had a Comet 228. Loved it. I got my BASE # with that canopy. I jumped a couple Hobitts, too, even had one as a reserve in a Handbury rig. Bill Gargano TSO'd a system to pack it in a 2-riser 2-pin reserve container using a diaper, and Skybill used to pack it for me. (Tacos 'n Hobbitts, haha.) Had another one of Bill's canopies, a Lumen, made some base jumps on that one too. Any chance of resurrecting the Nasgull?

Yeah, those would be the ones.

Yeah, a funny Bobby Smith story: I was one of BJ's proteges from Mammoth. So it's the late 70's, I'm a snot-nosed 18 yr old bein' a ski bum in Mammoth, meet Bob Jones, and end up comin' down to Perris with a group he put together to make our first jumps. My mom and aunt come out to visit and check things out. So at the end of the day we're all standing around where the old packing tables used to be in front of the parking lot, BJ is tellin' stories and reviewing our day, and my mom has a picnic basket full of sandwiches and cookies. Bobby Smith is tryin' to lurk his way past us to get out through the lot and head for the ghetto, and he's taking a wide berth around us lest BJ calls him over. Sure enough, BJ starts sayin', "Yeah, that's Bobby Smith, an experienced jumper, maybe he'll come over and tell some stories...". Bobby's tryin' to look the other way and pretend he doesn't hear, so he can get the hell past us. Whereupon my mom says, "Would you like a sandwich?" Head turns, eyes widen, roadrunner cloud straight at us - ZOOM - "Yeah, (stuffs face, scarf) no shit (snarf snarf) there I was..."