billbooth

Please remember that Spectra MAIN ripcords, going through exactly the same housings, have been used on thousands of Sigma tandem rigs, for millions of jumps, for eight (8) years now. No one has reported a single snag, and certainly no one has cut or broken one. I wouldn't have put this ripcord on a reserve without testing it very well as a main ripcord. By the way, a single ball swage, which is what most metal ripcords use, is only rated at 600 lbs. This make my Spectra ripcord almost twice a strong. Metal ripcords have served us well, but I believe Spectra ripcords are an improvement. Metal connector links also work well, but nearly everyone has gone to slinks. Only time will tell.

IMHO NOTHING Bill Booth has put on the market has been tested well enough. Not his fault, too expensive to do. Throw out pilot chutes? Belly bands, front of leg strap, rear of leg strap, straight pin, bight of bridle through bungee closing loop, various curved pins, AH HA! BOC and curved pin. In fairness not all Bill's progression. PIA Symposium...paraphrased Booth "We are not done testing the skyhook for sport rigs, We haven't tested it spining forward because spinning a canopy intentionally is usually backward." Entire room.. "Put the main on backwards!" At the same time sales is asking a customer if he wants the skyhook added to his rig. And there seems to be a service bulletin out on the collins lanyard and a bag retainer system. Even Bill says nothing is fully tested until it's out in the field. I like Bill, but repeat after me... BILL BOOTH IS NOT GOD. Bless you, my child. GOD (Oh the heresey of it all!)

Check the length of the "kill lines". Drogue collapse speed (trap door effect) is controlled by this measurement. The shorter the kill line, the more quickly the drogue collapses, and the longer the trap door effect. Simply tying an overhand knot at the base of the kill line can lower snatch force.

Mike was one of the first 5 employees of the fledgling Relative Workshop. Mike could build anything. I remember that he built his own container AND main parachute from scratch. Kirk and Mike together weighed the same as me, so we modified my Wonderhog (with a Strato Cloud in it), made a passenger harness for Kirk, and Mike put "the Kid" (for then on known as "Sky Kirk") in an 11 way star for his eleventh birthday. Bob Favreau also took his son Robbie up on the same DC-3 load for the second "modern" tandem jump. I think it was 1977.

Please don't don't make your first tandem balloon jump with a first jump student. Get some experience with another jumper first. It is difficult to get stable at low airspeed. You don't need to be learning a new skill with a first timer.

The red seal thread is there for several reasons. 1. It helps remind the rigger to hook the red Skyhook lanyard to the Skyhook in the first place. 2. It helps insure that the red lanyard stays hooked up during the rest of the pack job, and during the subsequent 6 months of tossing your rig around, as well as various and assorted hard openings. 3. It keeps the red lanyard attached to the Skyhook during the few hundredths of a second between the moment when the Skyhook is pulled from its "pocket" in the container, and bridle tension is again established as the bag is pulled out of the container (about 7 feet of travel). In short, without the red seal thread, you will have a lot of accidental premature Skyhook releases before it can do its job, especially during spinning malfunctions when relative wind induced side-load on the freebag bridle can be high. Without the red tread, a Skyhook (or any MARD system for that matter) is kind of like a ripcord without a pocket. You need a certain minimum release force on a Skyhook in a main total malfunction situation, just like you need a minimum release force on a reserve or breakaway handle... and just like you need a reserve container to hold the reserve bag in a little bit after the pilot chute leaves, so that the bag doesn't fall out of the container before the pilot chute traveles to the end of the bridle and pulls it out. Besides, a reserve pilot chute, at even 20 MPH, has more than enough force to break the red seal thread. In fact the red thread breaks with much less force than is necessary to lift the reserve bag out of the container...especially during a main total malfunction where the reserve riser covers and main container container are still closed. And how often are you going to be traveling less than 20 MPH with a main total malfunction anyway? Believe me guys, all of the things have been thought of during the 20 years it took me to develop the Skyhook in its present form. After 6 years and more than a million jumps, the Skyhook, while certainly not perfect (what is?) has turned out to be an extremely reliable piece of equipment.

Most people seem to be missing the main reason why I developed the Skyhook RSL in the first place. (Hint: It is NOT the fact that it is faster than a "normal" RSL. Let me digress for a moment. My first skydiving invention was the hand deployed main pilot chute. Yes, it was faster than than a spring loaded pilot chute, but that is just one of its advantages. Its main benefit is the elimination of pilot chute hesitations which cause all sorts of problems beyond just slower main openings. But that still left the reserve pilot chute subject to hesitations. What's worse, because everybody uses hand deployed main pilot chutes nowadays, almost no one remembers how to clear a hesitation. The Skyhook RSL is my attempt at removing reserve pilot chute hesitations from the picture, and because 95 out of a 100 reserve uses follow a breakaway (not a total) it is pretty damn effective. The Skyhook's second main advantage is that it deploys the reserve, not into the relative wind, but exactly where the main just was, or directly in-line with the vertical axis of the body. This means that as your reserve comes out of the bag, you are in "perfect" body position, and all line groups are all exactly the same length. This means cleaner reserve openings with fewer line twists. If you deploy while you are spinning, with an old fashioned RSL, the pilot chute deploys your reserve into the relative wind, which will normally be at some angle to your body's vertical axis. This means uneven line lengths at line stretch, and a greater chance that the reserve bag or lines will come in contact with your body. This can cause a reserve malfunction or hard opening at any altitude. If you jump a small elliptical without an RSL, and your plan it to "get stable" after your breakaway before you pull your reserve, you'd better pull high in the first place. It can often take 600-800 feet to breakaway, figure out which way is up, and then "get stable", locate and pull your reserve handle, from a bad spinning main malfunction. On our Skyhook video, you can watch a experienced jumper breakaway from a spinner and take NINE (9) seconds to locate and pull his reserve. Anyway, these are just a few reasons why a Skyhook is a good idea. Jumping without one is exactly like putting out a first jump static line student on a non-pilot chute assisted, internal spring loaded pilot chute rig, instead of using a direct bag static line system. No one would do this nowadays because a direct bag gives much more reliable openings, with very little chance of the student entangling with the deploying main. The Skyhook does the same thing for the reserve. And remember, when you have your first spinning malfunction, YOU are exactly like a first jump student.

First, after examining ALL of the evidence in the North Carolina tandem accident, I'm still not sure exactly what happened. It is quite possible that the Skyhook was not involved at all, and I have NOT modified it in any way. However, the incident did get me thinking about some "edge of the envelope" scenarios. What I have done is modify the reserve container and Collins' Lanyard to better deal with AAD firings right in the middle of a "normal", but low, main deployment. You would never open your reserve container during a main deploymrnt, but an AAD might. This is not to say that AAD's are bad....quite the contrary. But it is to say that there is a potential problem that needs addressing, and that is what I have done. No system is "perfect", the Skyhook included. Hell, even after many decades of trying, we still don't seem to have a main parachute system that doesn't malfunction in some way every 607 jumps on average (USPA statistics).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN. Wait a minute, I don't have to yell...you live right next door. Thanks for being such a good neighbor for all these years. Bill

No, we have not. If you want to come, I need to hear from you in the next two weeks.

The red lanyard is designed to break if the load on the Skyhook exceeds about 325 lbs. This is a safety feature, designed to prevent a hypothetical" bag strip". If the red lanyard breaks, the reserve pilot chute automatically takes over the reserve deployment as if the skyhook had never been there. The French "safety notice" was immediately pulled, and is not in effect. The Skyhook, while not perfect, has an exceptional safety record. It has now been in the field for over six years, with well over a million jumps on over seven thousand rigs. Every manufacturer out there is either using the Skyhook or trying to come up with something else that works as well. All new skydiving devices have had their nay-sayers. The Skyhook will be no exception.

If everyone was always "in control" of the situation, then almost no one would ever die skydiving. AADs and RSLs are for those times when you are not in control.

Ya' got me...Which one?

Come on! Give me a break. That was a serious scientific experiment. I was trying to prove that it was absolutely impossible to "freeze your ass off". I formed the hypothesis when I met a bunch of Russians who live full time in the Siberian Islands. A lot of them were missing an index finger, an ear lobe, or a few toes...but as far as I could tell, they all still had an ass. I just needed photographic evidence. Don't worry, I burned the frontal picture. People just pointed at it and laughed anyway.

Luckily, there are NO polar bears at the North Pole...at least not yet. They need open water and food (seals or an occasional human) to survive, both of which only exist on the edge of the icecap, which is hundreds of miles away. We might meet some in Franz Joseph Land on the way out, but the helicopter crews are well armed just in case.

You have to see the pictures, they are amazing. North Pole Skydive with Bill Booth www.uptvector.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=60

That's once you leave Moscow for the pole, and return to Moscow. Clothing is also additional. Sergei tells me he can get a good quality polar outerwear set in Moscow for about $300. In the US, it's closer to $1,200. It's still a good deal. Someone else is charging $17,500 for a polar jump from Spitsbergen. The route from Moscow is a lot less "luxurious", but has worked well all the times I have gone. Add everything up, and it's closer to $9,500. But more people might mean a little less. More people also adds up to bigger aircraft. We might even jump a Il-76 jumbo jet at the pole. We will have Mi-8 helicopters on the icecap for evacuation, and possibly a twin engine An-74 for the return trip.

April 6, 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of Commander Robert Peary's historic expedition to the North Pole. As many of you know, I have made many jumps at the Pole, including the first tandem in 1991. My last trip there was with my 12 year old daughter Katie in 1999. This year, I would like to go one last time to help celebrate the Peary Centennial. This will also be the last trip for my Russian partner, Sergei Insarov, who has been every year since our first jump together at the Pole in 1991. The trip (through Moscow and various and assorted islands frozen in the icecap) has gotten more expensive every year, and the Russians now charge individual jumpers $12,500. (A twin otter trip up from Canada can cost over $25,000.) HOWEVER, I have been told that if I can get around 50 jumpers to join me, the cost will go down to something around $7,500. It will never be this cheap again, so if you have every dreamed about this, the "ultimate skydive", now is the time. Tandem Instructors: You can go "free" if you can talk some lucky (and rich) passenger into paying for both of you. For most people, this is a truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Believe me, it is as if you are making a jump on another planet. To pull this off I need 50 committed jumpers by January 15, 2009. I am not making any money on this trip, I just want to go again. As strange as it may seem, I really miss the place. Message me here, or at [email protected], if you have at least 100 jumps, and want to go. I'll let everyone know as soon as we have enough jumpers. The whole trip will take about 10 days (April 1-10). I will put together a full informational package as soon as I know we are going. This is NOT hard, and you will NOT get all that cold. Modern Polar clothing is amazing. Bill Booth

I too was jumping two MA-1's with my Para-plane in the early 70's. I soon got tired of reaching behind my back to free the hesitation on almost every jump. So I decided to make my last ditch effort the first thing I did to deploy my main. I simply took the springs out of my MA-1's, closed the container with a bight of bridle in an elastic loop, stuck the pilot chutes in my blue jeans pocket, and the hand deploy pilot chute was born. Once again, necessity was the mother of invention.

Mr. Booth, I have a question with this scenario regarding rigs equipped with the Collins lanyard. If the RSL was loose wouldn't the weight of the freebag load the Collins lanyard, thus pulling left side CA easily enough to release left main riser? If that situation did occur, the jumper would be pretty much left without an option to cutaway and hope the reserve works right? You know your gear much better than I do. -Simon For this to happen, the snap shackle would have to be released before the opening shock occurs, AND the velcro which holds down the RSL over the shoulder would have to also fail. Now you're piling improbability on top of improbability. And, of course, if both of these things did occur, the Skyhook lanyard would no longer be connected to anything anymore anyway.

Yes Eric, but for this to cause a real problem, the reserve container must open at precisely the wrong moment during the main opening sequence: ie below about 25 miles an hour, but before opening shock. (If it opens above 25 mph, the reserve pilot chute will release the Skyhook and start to deploy the reserve normally. If the reserve container opens after opening shock, the reserve bag will stay in the container. The Skyhook, in this case, may help prevent a dangerous two-out situation.) Then (of course) you must have a malfunction of your main which requires a cutaway. Even then, the reserve is not necessarily "locked-up", and may function normally if you cutaway. All two-out situations, where the reserve bag falls out of the container during opening shock (Skyhook or not) are dangerous, because they carry the risk of the bag flipping through the reserve lines and causing a bag-lock. But, as I said above, if you don't have to cutaway from you main, this does not cause a major problem. Saying that this is problem that should stop anyone from using a Skyhook is exactly like saying no one should use AADs because they might fire during during main opening sequence, causing a main-reserve entanglement. These two scenarios are directly related, because the main way the above Skyhook scenario could happen is if you pull too low, and the AAD goes off at just the wrong moment. The main lesson here is to respect your AAD, and not pull too low. The benefits of the Skyhook far outweigh this risk.

I devised the term M.A.R.D. (Main Assisted Reserve Deployment) several years ago at a TSO committee meeting, as a generic term for all Skyhook-like Devices. We needed something to write into the regs. I tried to come up with a better sounding acronym, but alas, within the time allotted, the poet within me failed. I worked on MARD devices from the early 80's until the early 2,000's, when the Skyhook was finally ready. In that time I went through many designs. Three were good enough to actually drop test, but all had "fatal flaws" until the Skyhook. It passes even my most dastardly scenarios. I developed the Skyhook because MARD systems meet very real needs: 1. Four tandem pairs have tumbled through reserve lines after a breakaway resulting in fatalities. This has also happened to at least two solo jumpers that I know of. 2. Many jumpers have gone in after low breakaways, with one or two lines stows left. I've watched two myself. 3. Many jumpers have had wraps too low to cutaway without a MARD system. I watched one of these also. (Recently, in Texas, two jumpers, in a low wrap, cutaway. The one with the Skyhook made it, the other didn't.) 4. The Collins' Lanyard (a part of the Skyhook system) has saved several lives when the RSL side riser released prematurely because of mis-rigging or hard opening. In this scenerio, you're under your reserve before you even know what happened. Reserve deployments are simply cleaner and faster with a MARD system, and line twists are far less likely to happen. At first, I worried about some of the points brought up in this string, but after 6 years, millions of jumps, and thousands of cutaways on over 6,000 Skyhook equipped rigs, I think the device has proven both its safety and usefullness.

I was not a fan of RSL's either, until the Collins' Lanyard was invented. Broken risers do happen, and if it happens to be the riser that the RSL is connected to, you're in a "world of hurt". I do not know of any fatalities caused by an RSL with a Collins' Lanyard. I do know of several caused by RSL's without a Collins'.

In an ideal deployment, when the canopy comes out of the bag, the suspension lines should be under uniform tension, and the same length. This is the purpose of a deployment bag, after all...to make a lines first deployment. If both riser covers haven't opened before the canopy comes out of the bag, one of two scenerios, both bad, are possible. 1. Both riser covers open simultaneuosly at line stretch (snatch force), and there is sudden slack in the lines. This slack passes through the slider grommets, allowing the canopy to extend upward a foot or so above the slider. This means that you start deployment with the slider a foot down your lines. This can obviously increase opening force. Try packing your slider a foot below the slider stops, and see what happens. 2. One riser cover releases at line stretch before the other. Now you start deployment with one group of lines a foot or so longer than the other group. As you might imagine, this can cause a spinning opening, which in turn can cause either line twists, or worse yet, the canopy rotates one group of cells downward, directly into the 120 mph relative wind, which causes that side of the canopy to open explosively. Velcro and magnetic riser covers both release with a force of under 5 pounds, yet stay shut very well during freefall...especially the magnetics. Line stows, in order to correctly do their job, should take around 10 pounds of force to unstow. So Velcro and magnetic riser covers always open completely before the canopy get out of the bag. I have never seen tuck tab riser covers which actually stay shut in freefall AND open consistantly with a force of under 10 pounds. Now as we all know, most tuck tab systems work well enough most of the time. However, this is my explaination why a canopy that opens fine most of the time, suddenly hurts you. There are other possible reasons, but I think this is a major one, which can be eliminated by magnetic riser covers. That is why I took the trouble to develop them.

Kelly, on the way to the current Skyhook system, I went through a bunch of different ways to do the job, including the bight-in-bridle, pin and loop system. The cable through ring static line system was a bad idea on all of them, not just the current Skyhook. No offence was meant when I used the term "Skyhook like" system. It just seemed like the easiest term to use that everyone would understand. I have measured the riser release forces on many, if not all, tuck tab riser systems, and all of them I measured required more force to release the risers than it takes to unstow the lines. This, in my opinion, can lead to hard openings. By the way, the super hard opening rigs I talked to you about were not Vectors. If they were, I would have remembered which rig it was. Of course, Vectors also have hard openings. I agree, flip throughs are far more common on tandems, but not unheard of on solo rigs. I also find it hard to believe that anyone would put on a rig in that condition, but the fact remains, they do. Mis-rigging the 3-ring is more common on solo rigs, simply because there are far more of them, and they are more often packed by inexperienced jumpers. Kelly, as I've told you before, there are few people in this industry I respect more than you. If you want to call and talk to me about these points in a less public manner, please do.