some question

[Freeflaw 0]

hi im new here, had my first aff saturday.
Wondering about a couple of things. 1) Why not round reserves anymore (considering the potential stability of such a setup in a biplane situation)?
2) Why not hand deployed reserves? (maybe because of the ease of deplyoment which is important for obvious reasons).
3) how come wingsuit base jumpers are able to open at terminal with parachutes packed to open in 1-2 seconds without ustaining any injuries. How do the advancements in base jumping equip Aement help to improve skydiving equipment?

[billeisele 130]

1) they land like crap & most likely will not get you back to the DZ from where you are
2) easy to deploy but other issues like it might not work, and springs with the extras wide bridles have proven to work much better
3) if you tie your shoes tight enough you don't have to worry about how the parachute opens

Give one city to the thugs so they can all live together. I vote for Chicago where they have strict gun laws.

[Will_Evo 0]

Ive never jumped a round, but from what everyone says, we are blessed to be using square mains and reserves

They open at terminal....so do we...I don't see the difference?

-Evo

Zoo Crew

[Tomcat933 0]

Evo, the difference that he's talking about is that base rigs pop open like a freaking magic trick and ours just kind of snivel out relatively slowly. I know nothing about BASE but i have often wondered how BASE rig openings don't come close to knocking those guys out from terminal.

[GaryRay 0]

its all in the packing, they are packed more like a reserve than like anything else, minus a spring loaded PC. the canopies themselves are designed for consistent openings first instead of being designed for landing characteristics or flight characteristics first like our standard sport canopy is designed. there are some other things that are done to a base rig/container system that allows for faster opening but i wont get into that, you can visit basejumper.com if you are interested.

JewBag.
www.jewbag.wordpress.com

[evilivan 0]

1) Others here are better qualified to answer this, but in basic terms square parachute technology has become reliable enough for square reserves to be viable, which then gives you the advantage of being able to control your flight and to only need to learn one kind of parachute - given that reserve situations are generally stressful, it is an advantage if the situation is as familar as possible.

2) You can't throw it as far as a spring can! If its clean air you are looking for when in wrap of zero P mess, it becomes very important. But that's little simplistic, there are many other reasons - again, someone more qualified can respond.

3) BASE rigs are packed without a slider for "low" stuff and with a slider for delays above 4+ ish seconds - its not the gear (so much) that determines the opening speed, its whether a slider is used or not.

"If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation."
David Brent

[BrianM 1]

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Why not hand deployed reserves? (maybe because of the ease of deplyoment which is important for obvious reasons).

In addition to the other replies you've received, hand deployed pilot chutes are incompatible with AADs.

"It's amazing what you can learn while you're not talking." - Skydivesg

[riggerrob 643]

" ... 1) Why not round reserves anymore (considering the potential stability of such a setup in a biplane situation)?
..."

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Round reserves are less reliable, more bulky and land harder.
Round reserves fell out of fashion with skydivers during the acid mesh scandal twenty years ago. Ergo it is difficult to find riggers who remember how to pack round reserves.
Similarly, USPA, CSPA, etc. banned round mains for students, so it is very difficult to find a young instructor who can teach you how to land a round canopy.

Rob Warner
Canadian Rigger Examiner
70 jumps on round parachutes while earning Canadian Army and German Army paratrooper wings.

[riggerrob 643]

" ...
2) Why not hand deployed reserves? (maybe because of the ease of deployment which is important for obvious reasons). ..."

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I have jumped "hand-deploy" reserves (chest-mount, round canopy) but the "hand-deploy" function was more of a "work around" to compensate for weak pilot chute springs.
Back in the 1980s, an Australian company (run by Barry whatshisname) built a hand-deploy reserve as part of piggyback container. To deploy the reserve, you grabbed a handle(Velcroed to the front of the left shoulder) which pulled the pin and pulled the (soft) reserve pilot chute into the wind. He built them for a decade or so, until a senior woman jumper died when she could not deploy her reserve in time. By the mid-1990s, Barry was building reserve containers that looked like "Vector clones."
The other problem is that hand-deploy reserves are not compatible with modern. electronic,loop-cutter type automatic activation devices. You would need to add some sort of air-bag or slug-gun to push the soft pilot chute out, into the wind if you were unconscious.

[Ketia0 0]

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"
Round reserves fell out of fashion with skydivers during the acid mesh scandal twenty years ago. reply]


What was the Acid Mesh Scandal?

"In this game you can't predict the future. You just have to play the odds. "-JohnMitchell

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[Snowflake 0]

***3) BASE rigs are packed without a slider for "low" stuff and with a slider for delays above 4+ ish seconds - its not the gear (so much) that determines the opening speed, its whether a slider is used or not. ***

Are you sure about that? Although I don't BASE. I thought it was slider up for terminal or long delay jumps and slider down for short no delay jumps. I don't recall ever seeing a BASE rig open without the slider somewhere. Just my .02

[riggerrob 643]

Quote

Quote

"
Round reserves fell out of fashion with skydivers during the acid mesh scandal twenty years ago. reply]


What was the Acid Mesh Scandal?

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Back in the early 1980s, the demand for mesh (for steering vents on round reserves) exceeded the supply. While a few companies (FFE and Strong) were able to find sufficient supplies of MIL-SPEC mesh, many other manufacturers resorted to mesh originally made for the tenting industry. Some of that tent mesh was coated with a fire retardant chemical which turned acidic under certain conditions of temperature and humidity. Furthermore, some of that acidic mesh rotted out certain batches of nylon fabric. After a couple of round reserves failed in the air, (circa 1986) riggers started reporting reserves tearing during routine inspections.
This caused a short-term rush to find methods to test and re-certify canopies "acid free."
The long-term solution was a rush on square reserve (Ravens and Swifts) sales, so that round reserves disappeared - from American DZs - by the end of the century.
Twenty years after the acid mesh scandal became know, most manufacturers of suspect round reserves have either gone out of business (Advanced Air, Eagle, Handbury, GQ Security, Pioneer, etc.), or (GQ Defense, National, Para-Phernalia, etc.) tell riggers not to repack any of their equipment more than twenty years old.

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[Will_Evo 0]

Awesome Info man! Always cool to hear about the history of this sport! Thanks!


-Evo

Zoo Crew

[Snowflake 0]

Is that where the 20 year lifespan that some countries have came from?

[Freeflaw 0]

Round reserves are less reliable.

So it is the case that round reserves are less reliable because they are less prone to malfunction, slower on openings, harder to deal with malfunctions, more dangerous on landings? Just curious, I don't want to be presumptous because I have little to no experience and this questioning is mainly motivate by a hunch that a round chute may provide better in air stability (i.e. you wouldn't get into a spinning malfunctio [this argument of course ignores the possible malfunctions which may be particular to rounds that I know nothing about). Bye the way, thx for your thorough reply, I appreciate it.

[riggerrob 643]

I suffered three malfunctions during my mere 70 jumps with round canopies.
My first malfunction involved knotted stabilizer son a Cross Bow (Para-Commander copy). The primary cause was a junior packer not folding the stabilizers neatly enough, but the real cause was complicated stabilizers, a problem shared with the first generation of square canopies (eg. Strato-Cloud)

Granted, round reserves rarely suffer spinning malfunctions (knot in steering line?), but they are far more likely to suffer inversion type malfunctions.
Inversions occur when part of the skirt (lower lateral band) blows across the mouth of the canopy and starts to inflate OUTSIDE the other side. Most of the time the weird lobe never gets very big and the only evidence is a few burns.
I have survived two inversion type malfunctions during my 70 jumps with round parachutes. The first one was a brutally hard opening, but when I looked, I saw a fully round canopy so I pulled the right steering toggle and turned left????
Then I pulled the left steering toggle and turned right????
When I strained my sore neck to look up a second time, I noticed the sleeve and both pilot chutes hanging INSIDE the canopy, dozens of small burn marks and that the drive windows were at the FRONT! The canopy had totally inverted!
My second inversion type malfunction was simpler because the canopy was non-steerable, I just saw a lot of small burns.

Inversions are less likely to occur at low airspeeds. Deployment bags also reduce inversion type malfunctions. Diapers also help reduce inversions, partly because the pilot chute continues to pull, helping straighten the skirt.
The only way the military was able to eliminate inversions - on static-lined - round canopies was to add an anti-inversion net around the skirt.