riggermick

Soooooooooooooo...............How did it go????? Mick.

Yeah, that sounds about right. If the rig is CYPRES equipped you will want to "dog bone" the canopy in the free bag. This means you will want to have soft ball size sections of the pack job protruding from both lower corners of the bag either side of the safety stow. This will create a well for the CYPRES box to sit in. Believe me it will make closing the rig much easier, having packed one or two myself. Mick Cottle.

Thank you guys. Can anyone tell me how to paste a hyperlink? i'd sure appreciate the solution. E mail me @ [email protected]. Thanks. Mick.

Go to bomber manufacturings' home page and look up SB1005 on grommet removal. I wrote this procedure for removing stainless steel size zero grommets on the Reflex. It will work on any rig and any size grommet. Properly done it will cause no damage. Hope this helps. Mick Cottle.

Your main lift web is 14" (average length for a waman) yours should be 16" to 17" assuming that you are 5'9" or so. Mick. PS: its a vector 1 or 2 right?

[ Obviously, these are uneducated cynics since Bill did not patent the 3 ring system to allow everyone to use it Wrong!!!!!! six bucks a copy (per rig) $1.00 for each ring used. The patent has since expired so it's now free to all. By the way six bucks per copy is a very small fee to pay for such a remarkable invention. Gotta love capitalisim. Mick Cottle.

Phree, do you want your riser to break in a hard opening or your harness? Think about it. You need to make your risers just a bit weaker than your harness so that the load does not transmit to the harness completely thus destroying it in an overload. Your harness is not going to catastrophically fail during a very hard opening. The worst that's going to happen is a couple of stitches may pop at the lower joints depending on the design of the harness. Most modern harness have been designed with the type of joints that won't allow this type of stitch failure. Joint types with a 3" length four point pattern using 40lb thread (found on most harneses) have a strength of approximately 5400 lb's (twice the rated load of of cadmium plated steel RW 8 base rings and some other common hardware). This doesn't mean the hardware will come apart at it's rated load but it will start to deform. Harnesses are over built to withstand opening shocks that the human body can't. Your risers or lines will fail long before your harness ever will. Don't be afraid or your harness, it's designed to withstand things you cannot. Mick Cottle.

How weird is that? My answer to the riddle would just be that he was jumping a Reflex. Don't blame a rig just because you have a bias against it, this type of malfunction has happened on many other rigs as well. I've seen many strange things in my twenty five years of skydiving and many scary things in my twenty four years of being a master rigger. From the description of the malfunction it sounds as though something was not assembled correctly or broke. A following post mentioned rigger incompetence and cited an example (to which I replied) and rigger incompetence can be applied to any piece of equipment. Mick Cottle.

The fact that a closing flap was missed begs the question what else was missed? This is a serious issue, this rigger needs to have his ticket pulled until it can be determined if he/ she is competent enough to continue his/ her duties. As for the RSL issue, it had to be hooked up as the kinked cable evidence suggests. The Reflex RSL is a very low profile piece of equipment and can tucked away sufficiently to resist becoming a snag point thus making it difficult to see from the casual observers view point. Considering that this rigger incorrectly closed a rig did he/ she also assemble the main riser releases incorrectly causing one of them to release prematurely? It sounds like a very plausible scenario. Mick Cottle.

On the next lift I tighted my chest strap up and tried again. It didn't make any difference and it didn't stay on my shoulder. From what you describe, the rig seems to fit normally under most conditions. The harness is probably sized fairly close to what it needs to be so I doubt that it will require much, if any adjustment. The reason I quoted the passage above from your post leads me to suspect that your rigs yoke area is too wide, this is a function of reserve canopy size not of harness adjustment. Unfortunately it is a fixed dimension so altering it is out of the question. I'm guessing you purchased this rig as a new jumper because it had larger canopies that suited your experience level at the time. Perhaps it's time for a new custom fitted rig with smaller canopies (check with your instructor if in doubt about your abilities). Hope this sheds some more light on your plight. Mick Cottle.

If I had to worry about my rig being tampered with, I think I would choose my friend's and associates more carefully. Any rig can be sabotaged with out even opening the container think of a hypodermic full of sulphuric acid injected into a few places. Not good. Mick.

I believe the pilot chute protector flap mod's are offered for the top flap only. Two reasons for this; 1) It's realativly easy to install. 2) The gaping generally appears at the top of the rig. The mid flap is inherently more complex to build and thus more difficult to modify. Call the factory if you need the mid flap done. Mick.

I feel that a line snagging under the pilot chute cap is not as big an issue as how the line got there in the first place....... think about that one for a moment. Because the reserve is free bag deployed, in the event of a loop snap or ripcord pull the reserve canopy has a reasonable chance of deploying correctly. Like I said before, how the line got there in the first place I think is of greater concern. Mick.

I think your information regarding the 1.5" finger trap's location is erroneous. Fliteline never gave anyone permission to place the finger trap portion of the loop on top of the hard cap. The pilot chute/ loop system was designed and built to run vertically through the reserve container, this was done for safety reasons. As far as finger traps slipping I have never seen or heard of it on a properly constructed loop. The real reason the pilot chute loosens up after a pack job on the Reflex is the same reason it happens on all rigs, as air bleeds out of the packed canopy it shrinks and the surrounding container becomes loose. It is more noticeable on "pop top" type rigs than on enclosed pilot chute types. Hope this helps. Mick Cottle.

Try using SAE #6 steel flat washers, from your local hardware store. Check for sharp edges inside before using. Mick.

Follow the packing instructions, that's why I wrote them. Nothing was made up or stuck in the manual just to fill space. It took a long time to write and edit so that it was easy to understand by all. The Cypres loop/ no silicone issue was recommended to me by Airtec. Loop construction instructions and a packing tip sheet were developed after time with input from the field. Bomber Mfg should be able to help you there. From the description and photo's it could be an incorrectly constructed loop, incompatible canopy/ container, not seating the pilot chute correctly, poor packing or all of the above. it is really impossible to tell without having it here to inspect. Mick Cottle.

Due to the mechanics of the Reflex riser covers, installation of secondary covers can cause riser cover jams under certain conditions. When I designed the Reflex, in 1994/ 95 one of the primary concerns was to engineer covers that would stay closed during free fall and open cleanly when needed. design is an iterative process and it takes many iterations to get a design just right. Realizing that nothing can ever be perfect all of the time, I designed them to have minimal issues if they were ever to open in free fall. During testing with open riser covers at terminal velocity, the risers stayed put in their respective channels and the smaller "tuck tabs" caused minimal discomfort to the neck and ears of the jumper. Initially the design proved to work too well on some systems and it took some time to understand all the forces at play using different canopy/ container/ harness fits. Eventually I felt we got it right. I did do some preliminary design work on on internal covers but felt that it needed more work before it became mainstream. When the company was sold to Bomber Mfg just over a year ago it was one of the many things "still on the drawing board", they may still run with it, I don't know. But, do not and I repeat do not have a local rigger modify your rig with some type of internal cover, this type of work needs to be engineered at the factory. Mick Cottle.

Many years ago (around 1984 or so) I was working the loft at Perris when a pilot's rig was brought in for an inspection and repack. After opening the container and stretching the canopy out on the table I noticed that the fabric seemed odd to the touch. When I went to give it the "thumb" test it literally came apart in my hands on every single gore. Not too good. The canopy was a 1956 Switlik round (24' if I recall). The type of nylon used back then had a short service life an tended to degrade over time without any outside influence. I believe the 24' navy conicals suffered the same problem although I can't remember the manufacturer. Needless to say the guy who brought it in was horrified as he was standing there while I worked on it. He was happy that he found out about it on the ground. I believe he went out and bought a brand new Security 150 but that's another story. Mick.

Welcome to the club. Now, this is where the "real" learning starts. Mick Cottle, Master Rigger, Former manufacturer etc............

Hey Rob, I'm doing fine. Did you not get the message I sent you a couple of weeks ago? E mail me your direct e mail adderss. [email protected] Mick.

If the rig is manufactured under TSO c23d the ripcord will have to c23d markings on it in order to be legal. If the rig was built under c23b then any approved handle built to the same specifications can be substituted. Having said that, an approved manufacturer will still have to make the handle for you as drawings will need to be on file with the local MIDO. Best advice is to check with the manufacturer. Mick Cottle.

You are of course correct. Amigo (and some others) reserves have no quantifed service life stated.

His name was Brooks Mondae. He suffered a main/ reserve entanglement when his slider stayed with his jumpsuit. RIP Brooks. Mick Cottle

When it comes to the air worthiness of a reserve canopy (or complete system), the rigger who is certifying it for use during the next 120 days is the final word. No if's and's or but's. He or She alone takes sole responsbility for the air worthiness decision. I have an Amigo 134 reserve with over 75 jumps on it that I still use as a functioning reserve. All of the jumps made on it were by me during drop testing of the Reflex harness/ container system. I know that canopy so well and how quickly it will deploy at any speed I wouldn't trade it for anything. So to answer the question of "when does a reserve expire?" When a certified rigger says "I'm not packing that because......". As Rob said unless it's being held together with duct tape and knots in the lines you can pretty much always find someone to pack it. Choose riggers carefully. Mick Cottle.