pchapman

I don't know what the heck his thinking was, but I think it could be made to work, even if not particularly practical. Normally if you have two Cessnas, from what I've seen, you'll make sure the second doesn't drop until some minutes after the first, to make sure the airspace at opening height is clear. A visual confirmation is useful too - making sure nobody is open high, or that for example tandems on the previous load are indeed well clear and low. (I've been at a DZ with 4 C-182's dropping tandems all day, so it was common to be visually checking that the previous tandems were no longer below.) If you used two Cessnas in a loose formation, and dropped in succession, one plane first and then the other -- with appropriate time spacing -- it would be like having a single, larger aircraft dropping more jumpers. Seems similarly safe. Still, there are inefficiencies in getting a formation together due to different climb rates, and generally having to maneuver a formation more conservatively, making good spotting harder. So off the top of my head, it would generally just be better for a DZ (& its finances) to stagger takeoffs so the two planes will arrive on jump run some minutes apart....

So sometimes I wrote in the person's name next to their signature... so that 20 years later I'd know who the scrawl really was from!

I could also imagine it is like a Micro Raven for flying and landing at anything other than light weight. I only put a couple jumps on National square parachutes, when I was a newbie with 25 jumps, about 24 years ago. I jumped a National Renegade main, a 232 sq. ft 9 cell, at about a 0.7 loading, and found the flare unimpressive, and the stall point at about 60 or 70% of full arm motion. There was also some bulletin out about changing the brake cascades to improve the flare. Again, my brief exposure as a newbie doesn't make my opinion very authoritative. Still, I just wasn't impressed with National's ability to design a good square canopy. Their squares didn't make much impact on the market either.

Has Aerodyne ever figured out tuck tabs, for the riser covers specifically? Off the top of my head, that's the one thing that has visibly sucked the most about Icons I've seen over the last decade. They have tried hard on the rest of the design to go beyond the minimum necessary to have a sellable rig. I have no idea if the nexgen is any different for tabs. There is a magnetic riser cover option, which would change things for those rigs. The Icon reserve container design is bulgy at the top, while the riser covers extend too far towards the back for a rig that thickens in that area. So the aft part of the tuck tabs are often starting to be pushed out or have the plastic bent. (In the manual, they do tell the rigger to flatten the top of the freebag, but the freebag design has a lot of internal volume is at the top, so it is difficult to make it not fill up with something.)

We just had one outside camera on the record, Scott C. getting video & stills, as Gilaad E. was organizing jumps with the bench team at the time. But Gilaad did a nice flyby video of the last 32 way with all the same people plus a few others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKod0QD-dP4 At least for me, that'll do nicely.

And we had a few 32 ways after the record (+ Scott and Gilaad doing camera), that had everyone 'in the picture' but not 'griddable' for a record. So those would qualify as the largest formations flown in Canada. Thanks Scott!

In some European countries, with a 365 day cycle, one might be trying to screw a customer out of nearly a year of their AAD life if using that philosophy. Heck you can't guarantee a customer won't keep jumping your reserve pack job past 180 days at a DZ without strict repack checks, or have a main-reserve entanglement due to a low pull, or fill the reserve container with sand, or bake the rig in a closed car in summer in Arizona, or jump with a wet reserve after a pond landing.... or whatever. But I guess we all choose our own exposure to risk. Edit: Trying to be helpful here and not just dismissive --- At least if the customer disregards your AAD expiry instructions, plus notations on the reserve card, it is pretty clear who is at fault. Print it on his invoice if you want and keep a copy so your warning is on record. Any rigger could have a customer snivel in with a not fully inflated reserve after an AAD fire and have relatives of the deceased come after you. In comparison, I would hope you are pretty well covered for liability if you can show you told the customer what date the rig is no longer current.

One odd possibility: I've seen a velcro on main container that will fit overtop of the existing main container. The rig's original main top flap is used, and the others are tucked away under the strapped on new container that has 3 flaps.. (Would be harder to fold away the original flaps if using a small, stiff container unless it had dynamic corners.) Saw some jumpers in the Aussie style and accuracy team do that at the worlds in '03. They could travel with a small rig, jump style with a small rig, then strap on a container to fit a big accuracy canopy. I built a strap-on main container like that myself. A bit fiddly to get right but it works. As for accommodating a big size range, one could do some sort of removable pillow system. I've done that for a container of mine, putting the pillow up against the reserve tray (reducing the size of the main tray in the head to foot direction). Pillows have also been built to fill the main tray in the area against the backpad. Older rigs are easier to work with, the fancier backpads now common -- which one either has to sew through (messy looking) or unstitch and peel back before sewing through the rest of the backpad. Where the pillow goes depends on whether the space remaining will still fit a reasonable d-bag.

And for my first couple seasons, I kept a sort of log to become familiar with. I recorded student weights vs. how much weight I put on, for a given jumpsuit, and whether I tended to be fast, ok, or slow. (Since I'm tall and skinny, I tend to adjust fall rate more with weights than jumpsuit size.) The log didn't account for all aspects of student behaviour but helped get used to how students tended to fall, with the jumpsuits we had for them.

Which seemed reasonable for the DZ to say to the media right after the accident. Some of us heard the real story later from the DZO's. If one as a pilot hits the throttle or power lever too late, one's first reaction to the accident might also be that the engine didn't respond properly, and not as one expected. So a pilot could honestly report something that later on further reflection turns out not to be the case. (That said, I can't guarantee that the Transportation Safety Board was correct in not finding any engine problem, in whatever level of investigation it found appropriate for this accident)

The 2 incidents were a few years apart. I was last out of the Caravan when it stalled in 2009, with floaters outside on jump run. The only time I recall it happening. Pilot recovered just fine. Funny getting out last on something like a 15 way and flying horizontally across to the building formation in the distance instead of having to dive far down! (The formation didn't quite build but surprisingly we all tried.) The pilot is a good guy, flies cargo 747's now, but wasn't really experienced with big way exits at the time. I can't recall if we jumpers changed anything with exits afterwards, although it is possible we eased off a bit on how many people went aft. Nobody got really hurt. Floaters didn't hit the tail or anything. I got to the door walking, but with hands out to prevent falling over in the unsteady, reduced G's. Video credit goes to Marc Downing. Fun times. The other pic was a few years later, in 2013 [edit, typo fixed]. A different pilot this time. After dropping a load, he got low and slow and flat on his approach to land, and was a little behind the curve so to speak, to spool the engine up and climb. As I understand it, he thought he might mush into the trees before the runway threshold, but was still over farmland, so he dumped it into the field. [Edit: instead of a nice constant angle approach to the runway over the small forest at one end, he was doing more of a step approach, descending and then levelling out to cross low over the trees and then descending again to landing. That does allow for avoiding excess height when getting to the end of the runway, but is a less stabilized approach method.] He was bruised and a bit bloodied but basically ok. No sign of mechanical failure in the investigation. The pilot stayed with the drop zone a while but has since left. The airframe was in one piece but everything major was bent or slightly broken when one looked closer. The aircraft was scrapped as far as I know. The dropzone, Skydive Toronto, was without a turbine for a year and we were back to 4 widebody 260 hp 182's. I was still getting 10 working jumps a day on good summer weekends but it was harder on the knees. DZO found a new Caravan for this season, brought it in all the way from Greece.

I personally wouldn't worry about it. The response you got was fairly old school. Including the advice to cut a hole in your slider. Technically it could work well, but not something anyone typically has done since the early 1980s I'd guess. If one were pulling at 2000-2200' all the time, then maybe a newbie might be wary of a slow opening canopy that takes 800' or so to open. But most pull higher these days -- or you do with that sort of canopy. There's a well known old timers joke, that what is a "normal soft opening canopy" these days would have been called a "streamer malfunction" in the '80s, when you expected to get an open canopy within 500' of reaching for the handle. For emergency exits, just make a realistic plan about what canopy is appropriate to what altitude, knowing the characteristics of your main canopy.

I had forgotten that thread, thanks. The new presumably optional location is not on the Vector III / Micron order form either. Rig manufacturers would do better if they could inform people better about all their options (even if there can be a confusing number of them). More than once I've seen people discover an unusual option and say "I never considered that rig because I prefer option X, but that company never had it. Now I see they will do it, but it isn't even on their order form or web site!"

So I've seen a recent Vector III (built Dec '12) where the main closing loop comes from the bottom of the tray -- or more precisely, from triangular webbing at the junction between main and reserve trays. A new option perhaps? Or has it been around a while? For so many years it seemed that UPT was dead set on having a bottom-flap based closing loop only, with their very specific 1 5/8" length. The current manual, 2010, says nothing about the new method. Companies are always about "follow the manual!" but then can't keep up with all their new options and changes.... While there are debates, I like the pack tray based main loops for accommodating different canopy pack volumes. Their webbing folded into a triangular shape does provide for good snag protection, better than the old Vector II method.

Nice pics almeister. That's one of those "things to download from DZ to use as an example if you ever need a photo".

I'll also add that the LANDING characteristics can be improved by loosening the chest strap -- although in this case it doesn't require the slider to be brought down. It lets you be more vertical when the canopy is flared behind you, so your weight is more above your feet. Makes it easier to land well instead of having to "reach out infront of you" with your feet. I gave this tip to a girl and she loved it... even though she only loaded her canopy 0.8.

Point made although that's rather too simplified for a newbie. Since the line above the knot is anchored the guide ring end, simply pulling down with open fingers will add significant force to pulling the line, as it has to scrape over ones gloves or fingers in a 180 bend as one brings it down below the guide ring. There's less friction if one pulls back and outward, some direction other than the usual straight down. If there's a lot of friction or the line doesn't slide well, one may end up moving the rear riser down too, in which case one will have some interesting mix of brake and riser application. Perhaps you mean that using the brake line above the guide ring isn't that big a deal when making small inputs when flying around up high. But one can't just "fly like normal" when it comes to flaring and landing! Although using the brake line above the guide ring is something to play with, there is some complexity and it isn't taught like rear risering. (I did once land using the brake line above the guide ring, when I lost a toggle just before the flare on a Cobalt 75 with heavy winter gloves on. Worked for me, especially on that canopy that uses a relatively short toggle stroke.)

I wouldn't go that far. That's just something for first jump students. But one does want to be careful with toggles. If one ever pulls down a toggle and then lets it go, allowing it to "snap" upwards, it can flip around its own brake line. The issue doesn't get mentioned much, so a reminder seems appropriate. I've made that mistake a couple times when being too casual with the brakes on a crossbraced canopy. Once I was getting a bit low (25 seconds to landing) with no time to fix it, so chose to land it on one toggle and one riser. No problem in the end but not a smart situation to be in. Using both rears is a more commonly taught method though -- you'll want to get briefed more on that. You might even have had time to fix your problem, but one does have to choose one's priorities. As for not letting go, there are many reasons to let go of toggles to adjust gear, that one doesn't necessarily want to do only before initially releasing toggles. This includes a common task on small canopies of opening one's chest strap wide AFTER confirming that there is no problem with the brakes and canopy controllability.

I once found and photocopied a book called "Le Parachute", by Borge and Viasnoff, 1977 (in the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information library in Ottawa!). I'm not sure what it said about early French freefall techniques, but it was amazingly broad in its general coverage of parachuting in the early days, with plenty of photos I've never seen elsewhere. While it covered parachuting internationally, the coverage of France was especially interesting. Photos of Reichelt in his 'suit', various airplane jumps in '14 (non-freefall), a French BASE jump in '24 off a bridge, a tandem under a round in '38, details of Rod Pack's chuteless jump, and much more. Books in language other than the one we are now using certainly are relatively little known.

Ah, a "museum of rigging horrors" as it was sometimes called in Canada years ago (implying bad rigs, not necessarily bad rigging), or "shit I've seen as a rigger". Nice job! (I don't have as much but had thought of some day displaying it all in one place like that.)

A search resulted in this, which might be helpful: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4531247#4531247 Oh, that was my thread from a year back. Not much has changed -- Here's a pic of another student's Solo opening this year. Sucked to be him. Lots of canopy out while only slightly above his instructors, plus twists and a broken line.

Yeah my 1993 Paragear catalogue has a PD Reserve advert that lists 15 available colours. (Old Ravens had some of the most interesting colour schemes!)

C'mon, it took about 60 seconds to find and download the RE-5L instructions. ...But yeah I know what you mean about gear you have zero history with, especially PEP's where you really want to read every line to make sure things are right. At least, six months later, you'll be the local go-to guy for those rigs. "Und ze instruktions are in English, vit ze pretty piktures, did you not vin ze war?"

In this particular case it is handy that the rigs both have TSO certification and the guy isn't just visiting but is a US resident. For emergency rigs, the FAA unfortunately doesn't have exemptions as for foreign skydivers. (Hey, let's give 'em a call, maybe they can fix the problem in 5 working days... or 20-30 years...) I guess that wouldn't be a problem for situations where one could classify the rig as a seat cushion, but for some flying an emergency parachute is required, and the US rules say something about making sure a rig that is available for emergency use is actually certified and in date. (Otherwise everyone could use non-TSO'd, out of date pack jobs and claim exemption from the rules because they used it in an emergency.) Not having the foreign exemption for emergency parachutes has been awkward for international events in the US for aerobatics. I asked some championships organizers about it one time and they basically just ignored the issue because they had no solution. Foreign pilots probably just wear what they have. More modern foreign bailout rigs often get a TSO for better international recognition but there are plenty of older ones from smaller companies that only have some more local certification.

Indeed, the Canadian contribution was fairly significant for its population. Didn't know that old series (which would still have veteran interviews) was on youtube. As you may know, the BBC also had a 10 part series in 2003 called The First World War, based on the Hew Strachan history book, that was repeated in 2014. Its on torrents and I believe also all on youtube. 'night!