What is this?

[howardwhite 6]

Found in the desert in Eloy earlier this week.
It's marked Paratec.
Military?

HW

[NickDG 23]

Looks too short in the cables to be from an intentional cutaway set-up where the cutaway main is d-bagged from the aircraft.

Might be from a flag bag or a really over-engineered ash bag . . . LOL

NickD

[usedtajump 1]

Is there velcro on the underside?

The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

[howardwhite 6]

Quote

Is there velcro on the underside?

Nope.

HW

[quade 4]

My wild assed guess is that a rigger decided to recycle a riser dive loop into a cutaway handle for something. What that something is could be just about anything though. It's Eloy and they drop a lot of goofy shit with special rigging for commercials so it could be anything from a car to a freefly tube.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[lucky508 0]

it looks similar to the handle on single point release system for lowering a ruck sack. The one's I used just had a white webbing strap and not a toggle type handle like this. This may be an improved and more robust version. it looks like the 550 cord keeper broke and it flew off after being pulled.

[JerryBaumchen 1,441]

Hi howard,

Paratec is a gear mfr in Germany. They make a fair amount of military gear.

I would suspect something from the military side; maybe used in some testing in the AZ desert.

JerryBaumchen

PS) They usually have a booth at PIA.

[matthewcline 0]

I think JerryB and lucky508 may have been real close and that may be a release handle for some newer type of military parachuting equipment bag.

Matt

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[howardwhite 6]

The German army was there in force in Eloy (along with the Dutch). They were making static lines as well as freefalls from the Skyvan.

HW

[ZigZagMarquis 9]

Okay, this is going to be WAY easy, but what the heck... What are "these things" in the enclosed photo? Lots of them used to be found littering the desert around Cal City. I'm surprised local desert tortoise didn't evolve to look like them to blend in better.

[JerryBaumchen 1,441]

Hi Zig,

Pretty slick.

I just sent a handful of launching plates off to Dave DeWolf as I do not have a need for them.

Using them for a clock(s) is about what they are good for these days.

JerryBaumchen

[ZigZagMarquis 9]

I've even got one hanging up at work with a reverse movement (also called a barber shop movement). Totally screws people up.

[BCA 1]

kicker plates

[IanHarrop 42]

Quote

I've even got one hanging up at work with a reverse movement (also called a barber shop movement). Totally screws people up.

But they work great when you are looking a mirror
http://www.bitwisegifts.com/page/bg/PROD/20016

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[howardwhite 6]

I still see these from time to time as handles for Cessna 180/82 inflight doors.

HW

[davidlayne 5]

I know where there are a bunch of kicker plates, perhaps two dozen.

Also about twenty B4 containers, an assortmaent of old rounds and early squares and pounds and pounds of hardware.

Is there a market for this stuff?

I don't care how many skydives you've got,
until you stepped into complete darkness at
800' wearing 95 lbs of equipment and 42 lbs
of parachute, son you are still a leg!

[Beatnik 2]

No real market but there are some of us out there that collect this stuff. I am always looking for more stuff. Send me a PM if you want to share your source.

[NickDG 23]

There was a rigger here in So Cal who was replacing traditional kicker plates with plastic coffee can lids. His argument was they were safer to people on the ground, but I think "cheaper" was his underlying point.

In the same vein I once asked the late owner of the Perris Ghetto why he always wore a hard hat outdoors. He told me because one day he got beaned by a lead rigger's seal. I laughed and said, well, that's one in a million, and would surely never happen again. His answer was if there was a film camera set up to record the area around Perris for the last thirty years, and you watched that film at a very high speed, you'd see it was raining lead seals . . . LOL!

NickD

[pchapman 279]

Old canopies and hardware?
Sounds like you know of a storage trailer at some long-time DZ.

Let me know what canopies you find if you sort through the stuff!!

There are a small bunch of us on DZ.com who are interested in jumping old canopies. Old canopies do get sold and traded around. Prices stay low since it isn't about collector's items, but getting things back in the air for the occasional jump. We sometimes get donations from old timers, and sometimes we pay a bit plus shipping to make it worth while for someone to dig things out of the basement. There's often someone out there looking for a decent ParaCommander, and some early squares are fairly rare.

So it would be cool if you dug around and figured out what all the old nylon was.

[lucky508 0]

Ditto from me. I just finished refurbishing a H/C for a jumbo PC. I could really use some kicker plates. I pack a lot of chest reserves and am always scrounging for them.