Krueger Thunderbolt Skydiving Jumpsuit?

[sburkart 0]

One of these on the bay again; what was it good for?
Looks like a rig would render the material under the
arms useless...

[Skymonkey13 0]

Link or pic, please

[sburkart 0]

Thanks for asking, but last time I posted an ebay link
it got deleted. If you paste Krueger Thunderbolt Skydiving Jumpsuit into the ebay search it'll come up.

Thanks again, I'm just curious about the thing.

[Skymonkey13 0]

Found it, Thanks.

[BIGUN 1,297]

Quote

Looks like a rig would render the material under the arms useless...

Not really. with a set of swoop cords, they can be tightened to give tension and create sort of a "wing" catching air to slow the skydiver down.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[Skydivesg 7]

I actually still have one. In fact I just went down to my basement and tried it on. Man is that a lot of fabric. It's also very heavy material, much like canvas. They came out right at the end of the "wing wars". Thank God that era ended. I don't think I actually ever jumped mine because I didn't like the big suits anyway. I've always been about flying your body instead of a suit.

Today's new rigs would constrict the fabric under the arms because our laterals ride up higher than in the old days due to the smaller rigs and canopies we now jump, but our old Wonderhogs worked great because the main lift webs were longer due to bigger main and reserve canopies. Our rigs would ride very low on our backs.

The suit has built in swoop cords that are permantly attached to the wrist cuff which is held closed and adjusted with velcro. (Oh did we have lots of velcro in those days) Just before exiting the plane we would say to the guy who just gave us a pin check "Hog me" which meant pull out as much fabric as possible from under our arms. I wish we had a way of measuring our fall rate in those days but it had to be well under a hundred. It's a good thing Bill came out with the throw out pilot chute because I don't think we could have ever cleared those pilot chute hesitations.
Yoowza

[sburkart 0]

Quote

I wish we had a way of measuring our fall rate in those days but it had to be well under a hundred.

Sub-terminal is exactly what I was thinking, something to slow my old aint-jumped-but-11-times-five-years-ago butt down to something my back can better handle on opening. (I'm doing some jumps next week and have a Bev suit for my re-currency leap.)

My rig is a not-small Vector V3 M Series w/a Lotus 190 and PD 189R stuffed in it, so you think maybe this Thunderbolt thingy might work with it?

Thanks!