pchapman

When did PD reserves first come on the market? Some time at the end of the 1980s I think; someone newer at PD recalls 1988. I don't have a Paragear catalog that goes back that far, and the PD web site isn't exact about it. Over the years we've seen threads on how some riggers start refusing to pack things beyond a certain life, down to as little as 20 years. I wonder to what degree they are fibbing or just using a 20 year limit as an excuse because they don't like particular gear. Maybe they don't like light weight round reserves from the acid mesh era, or think someone is heavily overloading an older design square reserve which is more likely to stall out when the jumper tries to flare it. There can be valid reasons for those beliefs, but that's a separate issue from calendar age and the slow degradation of nylon over time. In the US, the PD reserve seems to be considered the first "modern" square reserve, in that it is OK at higher loadings, is well reinforced, and continues to be popular. Given that it is now about 20 years old, I'm curious whether any riggers will change their tune about how old is too old. Are some going to start saying, "Get rid of that 20 year old piece of PD crap?"

As an aside to the general readership, I should mention that that's the Group record. The Individual Canadian record is still 36,916 feet by Bill Cole (Chuteless), set in 1973. The CSPA finally allowed it to be on the books this year, after Bill's history of pissing people off and getting two lifetime suspensions.

Now that would be something for someone to dig out of an old stack of magazines! Nice to see the replies in this thread, including by some who aren't posting all the time, even if they are lurking.

Gee, thanks! Mind you, I'm Canadian, but that's getting into Speaker's Corner territory.

The higher categories in the poll seem to be for the "turbine babies" generation. Low Cessna passes have normally always been 3500' in my area. That's quite adequate even for those with snivelly canopies who want to be completely open before 2000'. For those who have been around a while, it is completely normal to jump at 3000' after dispatching IAD or static line first jump students at the same height. I've been at competitions where the accuracy jumps were from 2500', although that's for big canopies, and usually they go higher to drop more jumpers per pass. Nowadays you still get those "ceiling check" loads that go up and decide to get out even if the ceiling turns out to be a bit low. Even at a relatively conservative DZ like I've been at, traditionally C-182 equipped, we have on rare occasions made hop and pops with our sub-100 crossbraced canopies from 2000' or 1800'. I think the latter is the lowest we'd get a whole plane load of the more experienced jumpers to agree to go out without having the mindset of doing something crazy. Not everyone will go up on a day like that, and I'm not sure what the opinion would be for those jumpers with 50-300 jumps. (Crazy stuff is another issue. Who says you have to be stuck doing hop and pops when the clouds are at 2000'? I was getting 15 seconds of freefall on my Protrac from 2000' when using my wingsuit... on a very grey day when almost nobody was looking up.)

Typical liberal hippie reply. Did alternet.org tell you that or did you come to that conclusion all by yourself? Funny, it actually sounded right wing to me (at least, as a liberal) "What, you want me to bail you out for the decisions you made? Where's your personal responsibility? If you join up and then get injured in war, don't start whining about it. That's as stupid as not buying decent health care [in the USA] and then complaining when you get sick. You have to plan ahead when making your choices."

What kind of wind conditions did people jump in, back in the days of Paracommanders and similar advanced rounds? Now I'm not talking about the extremes -- I'm sure there are plenty of stories about landing rounds in howling winds. But for a typical DZ, how much ground wind was too much for the intermediate to advanced jumper? To what degree did people keep on jumping when they were being blown backwards on touchdown? Did the guys who still had cheapos stand down a lot earlier than the Para-Commander jumpers? I know a few of the tricks for landing rounds in high winds, eg, - angling off the wind line a little so one doesn't roll straight back onto one's head - for the skilled, hook turning the Para-Commander to get extra forward speed for landing - grabbing risers and turning oneself 180 to land when being blown backwards Any other tips on dealing with higher wind landings? I'm curious because I'm still working my way up in wind speed when it comes to jumping my Para-Commanders, which I've only jumped in the last few years. The tendency is still to bring them out only on milder wind days or in the evening.

Oooh, cool! That's a whole other topic, to discuss the code and its outputs. Interesting to see it is showing a less positive recovery arc at a higher wing loading, not just in distance but in shape. (That's with initial speed and equilibrium glide ratios. Is this for varying wing loading by changing the canopy size or the suspended weight?) Need to start a new thread if you are ready to present your analysis methods for everyone to critique? To go back to the original thread topic, yeah, if one is on front risers there's no way to know when to let up without experimenting.

If a student or novice can't convince others that they are taking things seriously (even if joking a lot), they've failed as a student just as much as an instructor who knows a lot but can't teach. I could see that if she were having more problems than typical as a student, treating things as a joke too much of the time could leave her looking entirely clueless, unfocused, and not ready for this sport. Still it sounds like she should have been around in this world a fair bit longer.

This is a bit of an aside, but how is the cutter "timed out"? The manual says nothing about it (at least the one I read from a few years back). Those are the company's official instructions. I have found a FAQ online that says the "shelf life" of the cutter is 10 years, in a question about the "mandated service life". And that's on a page with news that hasn't been updated since 1997. Now this is rules lawyering but: a) Is something a mandatory instruction from the manufacturers, in the eyes of the FAA, if it is not supplied with the product, or an official bulletin, but just happens to be on their web site? How is a user to know that something not in the manual or an official bulletin is "official"? b) The FAQ question ASKS about "mandatory life" but ANSWERS with "shelf life". One reasonable interpretation is that there is no mandatory life except for the shelf life of the cutter and battery. The definitions of shelf life out there tend to say it is how long the product stays 'packaged on the shelf' before it is opened and placed in service, not the time in service. I've seen technology companies use that definition. I don't know what the US military does (a customer FXC must be very familiar with), but I thought they also had limits for service life versus shelf life. So it may be reasonable to want to replace an old cutter, but one can argue that the shelf life rule was likely not broken, and that the rule is not official anyway, not being in the official manual on how to use the product. Edit: The factory has no cutters? Is their plan to just let the product fade away? Or it it an unforseen and temporary supply issue?

She ended up having a strange relationship with the skydiving community... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1773718; http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1664428

In your deployment photo, what exactly is the bridle arrangement being used? Seems like an early retractable bridle system for those CRW jumps.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment or concept, I wouldn't want to do it unless there was something I could easily see and grab. I figure most of the time stuff would be whipping around somewhere above my shoulders or back, that I can't see well, so I'm not sticking a hand in to get wrapped up by spinning brake toggle and line -- especially when there's a good chance I'm going to have to jettison that canopy.

Sorry Chris, I won't buy that aerodynamic explanation. I'd say the effect of turbulence is less for the same jumper flying a smaller canopy of the same type, faster. I don't see a big adverse relationship between ram air pressure and surface pressures or lines loading each square foot of canopy, when it comes to increasing the loading on the canopy. Unmanned ram airs can fly at 10:1, Mr Bills can fly at twice the recommended loading, and so on. If the stall point happens to be a little higher than down at one's hips, or the recovery arc is a little longer, that in itself isn't a problem. Now if one is arguing that a trickier to land parachute, one that approaches the ground faster and has less time in the flare window, is going to add risk if one is getting bounced around by turbulence, sure. There's just less margin to get levelled out and slowed down, which gets even trickier in less than idea conditions. But I don't see that that relates specifically to being outside the recommended weight range. I'm not so concerned aerodynamically with a Sabre 2 at 1.9. A guy we both know, jumped an original Sabre 107 at 1.95 when he had 360-500 jumps and was OK with it, although he didn't exactly surf much at all, and that loading was also well out of the published flight envelope. Not saying it was smart, but it was doable. I'd still not recommend a Sabre 2 at 1.9 for a backup rig with higher wing loading than the main rig. But me saying "I'm not sure that's a good idea" still doesn't answer the original question of just how a Sabre 2 flies at 1.9.

The Parachute School of Toronto (PST) at Baldwin, Ontario is having its 2009 reunion on the weekend of 1-3 August, at the DZ. The event is also for old timers from any DZ to get together. This is a follow-on to the reunion of last year, which brought out a bunch of old timers, and former PST jumpers, especially from the many years the DZ was located at Arthur. While we are neither old timers nor PST Arthur jumpers, Jimmy "Beatnik" Wilson and I plan to jump our Para Commanders and perhaps other historic canopies at the event.

The altitudes don't look TOO bad to me. A 1500' difference roughly between breakoff and pull should be standard enough these days. The cutaway altitude was getting a bit low -- it is easy to screw around a little long with a problem canopy. The distance until reserve opening seems a little long given an RSL was used, but the numbers aren't exact, and one might lose some altitude between the opening and when one actually looks at the alti. Overall it is a good example of how one starts to run out of altitude pretty quickly, a couple hundred feet here, a couple hundred there. I don't mind going right down to the legal minimums for pulling but you have to know there isn't time to screw around down there.

Just off the cuff, without careful thought as an instructor on how to teach circuits: As a pilot you tend to let one airplane land at a time... as a skydiver there may be 10 of you all landing in the same general area at the same time. So some degree of proximity is expected. In general it can be OK to cut inside someones base leg, as long as there is still plenty of separation. It's not like at the airport where if the student in the circuit is pretending he's already flying a B-777 when it comes to circuit size, you can't normally just zip in front of him in the circuit. You can cut across if you leave enough distance & time, and put yourself in a position where the other guy can see you. That is unfortunately a bit vague sounding but you can get the idea -- don't put yourself in a spot where the other guy might not see you or make a turn and be within a couple seconds of a collision. You don't want to place yourself right infront of someone else (especially slightly lower, right in their flight path). But parallel landing runs side by side is OK. What might work is to cut inside his base, but then turn final early too, so that his final will be inside his pattern -- Both flight paths therefore never cross. You just have a tight circuit, and the other guy a wide one. Then overall there are the priority issues to consider. You have to balance that original plan, "land near the instructor", with other priorities that quickly become far more important: a) don't have a mid air collision, b) don't land in trees. You'll find there are a few other differences between skydiving and airplanes. Swooping for example. Even Pitts pilots don't usually do a 270 diving turn at red line, chop the power, skim trees and fences and spectators and then try to land as far down the runway as possible...

They never found that one guy's body from a previous race, eh? (Just playing up the danger aspect. I'll see the report in Thermik magazine later anyway.)

Interesting perspective in the original post. Why would anyone buy Strong tandems any more, with the Sigma out there? I'd guess UPT charges a big premium for their system, and of course DZ's stick with what they already have unless they completely replace all their tandem gear and retrain instructors. I hadn't previously heard much critique or discussion of the Strong reserve system. What exactly is the use of Kevlar in the reserve? Not just Kevlar lines but also some reinforcing in the canopy? I try to keep an open mind on the design. But statistics be damned, I can't help be a little suspicious as I had two friends blow up Strong tandem reserves, with not very reassuring explanations from the company. However, I only heard what others said the company said, and haven't seen any actual report. In one case, the company suggested the rigger might not have packed the reserve properly, snugging up those chokers correctly, something like that. It is always possible but the rigger was experienced and detail oriented and we had zero reason to suspect she did something wrong. That accident came after an inadvertent main container opening with the drogue out, leaving the bag spinning around. The speed would have been drogue terminal or maybe more if the drogue were choked off. The video shows that the instructor properly released the drogue & jettisoned the main. A hole blew into the reserve on opening; they only had a few cells open; but got a couple more cells shortly before crashing in a field and incredibly didn't break anything. In the second case, the instructor had a hard pull on the drogue, couldn't get it out, ended up at tandem terminal, blew up the reserve, with instructor and student receiving serious injuries. The company apparently said the instructor should have pulled the reserve earlier, before ending up at tandem terminal. I can see the point about not screwing around too long but it doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about their reserves when the advice is basically not to use them at high speed. So I'm curious whether there have been many other issues or I just hung out with unlucky people!

The July 30 to Aug 2 event is the one at Skydive Burnaby that's just before the Canadian Nationals all week, at the same location. The following weekend there is the 40 way training camp (that does require preregistration). One can't keep all events out of each others' way, so the weekend of August 1-2 is also the reunion at the Parachute School of Toronto (PST) at Baldwin, for jumpers from PST over the years. As part of that event there's also an old-timers reunion in general for anyone who has been skydiving in Canada a long time.

You might get some cheap shots about weight that don't address your question! Sounds like the Heatwave 150 worked at that loading. I knew someone who regularly jumped a Sabre 107 at 2.1 and it landed no problem. But the question is whether the Z-Po, in that class of early '90s Sabre-style canopies, will also behave well at 2.1...

Looks like that's a good thing to have (given proper instruction of course). Here in Canada where the incident happened that prompted my post, that hasn't been on the list of all the various canopy maneuvers to learn before the A license.

Any comments on how easy it is to self-induce line twists at low wing loadings, below 1:1? The method would be by the usual sudden turn or sudden turn in opposite directions, unloading the lines. I've never personally experimented with that, although I did it accidentally at about 1:1 loading as a novice years ago. Locally a jumper with 30-50 jumps apparently managed to accidentally self induce line twists under a rental Sabre 190. I don't know her weight, but I don't think she is big, so the wing loading should have been well under 1:1. I'm thinking that sometimes people may not think much about teaching the risks of too-sudden maneuvering, while a novice is still at a very low wing loading. Students may be warned generally about not being too sudden and sharp on the toggles, but at some point when they transition to a more "fun" canopy one can see that they could get themselves in trouble.

One can look for "parawing wrap" by "screamingskydiver" on YouTube. It's not every day that jumpers have a PZ-81 and Delta II collision and then go to belly mount reserves...

Re: "Sorry I asked" Yeah, on dz.com it is common to get a little slammed for whatever one says... and for whatever one leaves out as well. But there's still lots of good info here. We still have the issue whether there is any guide for prospective students out there, that goes beyond explaining different training methods, to actually attempt to help someone evaluate the safety of an operation, despite the difficulty in doing so? DZs do generally try hard to keep their students safe, but with limited resources some are a little better than others in different parts of the business. In my area there are bunch of different drop zones. Skydivers can argue endlessly about which is better and what is safe enough, but luckily there are none that are bad, none that any skydiver would really hesitate to send their friends to.