pchapman

Thanks guys. Will get around to reloading the pic in a bigger version sometime!

I'm guessing it was Scott Cowan's family -- one of the six killed. He was also the pilot who wasn't able to keep the plane airborne, and co-owner of the DZ. So it isn't quite as surprising that his family might not be involved, although I guess it could go either way. (Would his family have as strong a claim? Would their making millions be protected from any potential suits against the former DZ, and co-owners, dead or alive? I don't know how the system works.)

This is pretty nitpicky, but with the forum template upgrade in early May 2013, my avatar photo went a bit "fuzzy". I'm trying to figure out if there was a change in the preferred pixel size, aspect ratio, or something. Not sure if the photo was somehow resampled or just stretched slightly in the horizontal axis. Any word on what changed? Or should I just try uploading the same photo again, as I did long ago?

It might take less distance though. Who knows. The more important point one can make is that depending on his speed in the spiral dive, the Cypres may or may not have hit the firing speed at 750 ft, so we don't know exactly what reserve opening distance is involved...

Good find. I didn't check the video closely, but once he had the toggle popped from pulling the slider down, it was about 15 seconds and 6 revolutions under a 2.2 wing load canopy, before he chopped. Distracted by the task at hand! Once again a chop with a very widely spread chest strap made it harder to find handles. He wrote that his camera wings were disconnected, but that the flapping was an issue. Guess the smooth soft opening of the Optimum wasn't for him, as it never got out of its snivel (or at least not appreciably so) by the time he impacted. About 2 1/2 seconds from being pulled vertical, to impact. Barely a save. [Edit: Even once the slider is on the links it'll take a bit of time for the canopy to slow to a normal descent rate. His reserve opening on his other video of a cutaway that worked, from a similar spinning mal, showed an opening that was a bit faster.] At least he looked down and videoed the ground coming up, unlike the dead guy in the Russian low pull video recently, who was looking up during his snivel.

Well, that assumes some pretty advanced 2-wheel skills!

Cross ports normally fray over time. Particularly in the curve at the corners, where fibres are less supported by their neighbours so to speak. My impression from inspecting canopies is that end cell crossports tend to fray the most, with center cell ones next most common. But the corner fraying should still be within the 'box' formed by the sides of the often rectangular cross ports. (On modern canopies that is -- older ones had round cross ports more often.) Actual tearing beyond just fuzzy edges would be a concern though.

Yes he mentioned the diagonals but I just hadn't heard of them being lengthened. I'm trying to learn more and expand my rigging knowledge. But given the way that the diagonal is restrained within the container, a longer diagonal would still be restrained by the position of where it wraps around the lateral (at the lower back) and by where it is usually sewn to the pack at the top of the reserve tray, before continuing into the 3 ring attachment area. If the diagonals (usually just one piece of material of course) were lengthened in the back, wouldn't one also want to move the lateral downwards with respect to the container? In the old days of belly mounts, the diagonals were the laterals, if I recall the rig construction correctly.

You mean the laterals at the hips? Do you replace the lateral strap, hip junction to hip junction? I've personally just done quick fixes by converting a couple older rigs to having cut-in laterals. One can free the lateral from the corner of the container, make slot in the jumper's side of the backpad, lead the laterals out -- a couple inches inwards from the container edge -- and resew things. It doesn't totally fix a too short harness, but does open things up if the rig is constricting to the jumper. (It would get messier in newer rigs with thicker, fancier backpad padding, but was easy in old rigs. )

Nice. What did they do for stitch pattern etc? Is it a straight lap joint or is there a confluence wrap too? I would guess it would all be be hidden within the leg pads, just below the lateral junction.

Offhand I think Airtec only allows a trade-in within 1 year of expiry. The policy is there to encourage sometime to buy the same brand again, and not just trade in any of thousands of well expired Cypres 1's laying around. They do allow people to buy the new unit, then send the old one in after the swap is made in the jumper's rig, as long as it is prearranged.

I'm just curious what kind of restricted "A" you were able to get. From old posts, I remember you had some struggles in skydiving.

Yup. Things are different "over there"! Those 3 photos of mine in post #19 are all ones of a local jumper's old gear that he occasionally uses -- so nothing is a stock shot off the web that's mislabelled. The thin black 'mini risers' are the ones on his Talka rig, which are built right into the main canopy. (No separable Maillon links or Slinks.) I've added a couple photos here. The first is another pic of 'upside down' Russian 3 rings, on Beatnik's UT-15 rig. (The rig is face down for packing but one MLW is twisted around to show the 3 ring better) The 'well used' UT-15 shows the harness better, how things do look a little lightweight compared to what we are used to. Relatively soft, thin webbing. And have a look at the leg strap snaps - same as used on the chest strap - just a thin springy plate as a gate on them. (The main canopy isn't attached. The disconnects on this rig are the "OSK" releases.)

Thanks Alexey for that overview of how the industry worked in the USSR. (I have a couple old Russian rigs I've jumped.)

Grey area indeed. I'd rather see someone with an AAD than without. Pick any old rig that has no current manufacturer. Unless the manual says, "We do not approve the Argus in our rigs, even though it has not been invented yet," then I'd say you're good to go. After all, no company has demonstrated that the Argus is physically not compatible with their rigs. So if one rig (Eclipse) happens to look like some other rig (Vector II), who cares. All non-approvals seem to be based on a vague, "We don't like your kind of AAD around here, boy." But someone should check the FAR wording and see if it technically disallows putting AAD's of the future into any rig where the rig manufacturer hasn't explicitly listed them. A quick check shows: 105.43 says "(c) If installed, the automatic activation device must be maintained in accordance with manufacturer instructions for that automatic activation device." That puts no requirement on the installation, only maintenance in accordance with the AAD's manufacturer. 105.45 says "(3) The tandem parachute system contains an operational automatic activation device for the reserve parachute, approved by the manufacturer of that tandem parachute system." That's a much stricter rule for tandems -- There it makes it look like each AAD must be explicitly approved.

Attached: Talka & Radar pics, as jumped by an Eastern European emigrant in my area.

That's useful additional information, although the source of what you were told is also unclear, and where the original information came from is also unknown. As I said, newspapers do get things wrong. Did they mess up that badly despite obvious mystery/shock value? Did authorities just give out a sanitized version of the story to the media? Was the body and wreckage far enough apart to involve tracking rather than just normal ballistic separation? The NTSB info online is very brief. Someone would have to buy the microfiched NTSB docket to get more detail. One version of the tale was that he was "a couple miles away", yet the collision was at about 3100' MSL in an area with ground near sea level. Still, even if a tale was exaggerated, it doesn't mean there isn't some truth at the heart of it...

I'll go with sundevil here. Arch all you want but if you aren't symmetrical you may continue to be applying pro-spin input and continue to spin. And if someone is having a problem with turning, telling them "just be symmetrical" is only slightly more useful than saying "just fly properly".

It is an interesting point you bring up. Getting to swoop with a small canopy is in my mind effectively part of the compensation I get when doing a video jump. Just like in the old days, when I dispatched a load of static line students for a few bucks, I got to to have some fun, and fly accuracy into the pea gravel bowl. Many of the experienced video flyers at my local DZ do fly the small canopies. On the other hand, one full time jumper with a family, although he's young and adventurous in general, flies a medium sized Pilot because that's a relatively docile canopy that'll easily get him down safely. In 2011 there was a fatality in Quebec where a videographer hooked it in low, trying to get back into wind after a long spot, and was possibly subject to turbulence from a tree line with the winds that day. Since it was a working jump, in that province the Workplace Health and Safety Commission created a report on the fatality. Being whuffos and not understanding how skydiving doesn't exactly operate like a normal business, they were a little aghast at the situation: The jumper with 800 jumps on a Katana 107 was probably considered to be of "advanced" experience level, yet the canopy manufacturer charts show that canopy at his wing loading is for an "expert" jumper. They also noted that his employer did not exert any control over his inadequate skill level for the equipment he was using in his work. So it was as if they were comparing the situation to a company allowing a factory worker to use dangerous machinery he hadn't been trained on properly. I don't think there was any big fallout from the report, but if you have a government acting like this, you could understand if some liability adverse DZO started to wonder about what canopies their staff were using. Meanwhile jumpers tend to consider the time under canopy , between filming a tandem freefall and a tandem landing, to be our own time to do with as we please (subject to the usual requirements of not running into other skydivers under canopy). A situation like after that fatality isn't a threat everywhere, but is shows a different, whuffo viewpoint.

I guess John is saying that a cable's susceptibility to pulling through a grommet is not just a function of the stiffness of the cable core and coating, but also how slippery the cable is -- a less slippery cable won't "drag around the corners" as easily, when folding it in half to drag through the grommet.

The problem with the "high or low" question was that people wouldn't know which was "normal". Occasionally a special low chest strap on some rigs would have handles ABOVE the chest strap, but that never found much favour. And I recall old Racers (early 1980s) having a relatively high chest strap, with the chest strap stitching just being an extension of the 3-ring attachment stitching. So it is good to know what the normal version is.

FWIW: His profile (which may or may not be fully up to date) says Velo 84 and 1100 jumps (+ 300 BASE), wing loading unknown. Getting canopy collapses is a bit more unusual than just plain flying into the ground...

Well, we're confused about what the heck you saw, and have given examples of the closest we've ever seen to what we think you saw, given a vague description of what you saw, even if it isn't the same as what you saw... Any more info you can give us on the mysterious gear you saw?? Did the risers have just one ring, not two, and still have a loop through a grommet? Actual risers with attachment points for lines and steering toggle? [Edit:] Since you mentioned Vectors rather than 'hogs, you can't be talking about Capewells or Boothwells either, rather than an actual ring?

(I was landing well short of the metal posts... it's just really hard to tell in telephoto lens shots... guess it looked like I was coming down on them!)

???? I've only seen 1-ring risers on older Russian gear .... because they had the smaller 2 rings on the harness. Bass ackwards from the US style, but with its own logic.