pchapman

One type of dive you can do is where you do nothing in freefall ... except feel the air. Often as a student you are doing maneuver after maneuver with little time between. I'm not suggesting you just sightsee for 60 seconds. Maybe you've already had time to just relax in freefall but if you've been too busy with maneuvers, you could try this relax dive. Just get out, relax, feel the air, think about every part of your body position, move your arms and legs and back a little to make sure you are aware of their positions and effect of moving them. So you might do tiny little turns while doing that. Of course you'll still do alti checks. If you're feeling constrained with the radio under canopy, talk to the instructors to see if you can be more in charge, making the decisions, with the radio just there for tips and backup if they see you getting too far off of a good flightpath.

Ok, your post is the perfect excuse for me to compile the links to a bunch of round canopy pics & video of mine, which are scattered across the web. (For some of the more unusual gear & jumps there are dz.com threads. I have excluded links to some Rogallo canopy jumps.) I started jumping after rounds were gone except as reserves in older gear. I acquired my first vintage canopy in 2006, although I had gone to an old school DZ in the 1990s to jump their ParaCommander school gear one time, and had a Phantom 24 landing after a CRW wrap with a buddy in 2000 (going backwards towards the gravel road beside the DZ, when the surface winds picked up to 15-18 mph). Here's some of the fun I've had since getting into vintage gear: 2012: -- "Jumping a 55 year old parachute 2012 Nov 17" This was a 1957 26' Navy Conical reserve I jumped as a main, one that Bill Cole had owned and dyed yellow. The theory at the time was that dying your reserve at home might reduce its porosity. Try to get a rigger to pack your reserve today if you do that. Descent rate was 20-21 fps on average. (I'm 155 lbs although in this case the canopy was a 3rd canopy so I had a little extra weight on my back.) The canopy has now been retired & lines cut! Stills from my video show (a) how poorly an MA-1 pilot chute can perform in the burble on one's belly, (b) how messy undiapered deployments can be, and (c) a very brief rebound/wake recontact when part of the canopy deflates after opening. In real time it all happened very fast, but taking stills one sees all the messiness. An outside still shows the canopy in an unstable oscillation just before landing. Stills from my video: (Facebook links are naturally viewable only to those logged into a facebook account.) http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152323186345657.941373.855495656&type=3 2011: -- Video of me using a 34 year old belly mount reserve, a 26' Strong LoPo, after I accidentally detached an R-3 release while opening the ParaCommander. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpxZ_0js8eM A still photo sequence from the above jump, using stills from the ground with a 400 mm lens. It captures the back to earth deployment nicely, something there aren't a lot of photos of. The best pics are at: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150856282580657.744997.855495656&type=3 Or for convenience some are in a slide show on youtube in lower quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqEdXPddj60 Tried to save my main ripcord by sticking it between my knees but still lost it on reserve opening. There's a kicker plate out in the farm field too. That jump might have been be my favorite jump ever. An honest-to-god old school emergency, with a shoulder mounted cutaway system, manual reserve procedures, and dearching for the cutaway! Plus it is on video including my excited commentary as it happens. I showed off and stood the reserve up -- was a bit sore from that -- on the dz. I think Ted Strong had a chuckle at the pics when I sent them his way, not long before he died. 2010: -- "Russian paratroop canopy D-6" A few photos of my Russian paratroop parachute, D-6. One static lines a freefall drogue, and descends under that at 80 mph until deploying the large 'square cut' round main. The drogue allows paratroopers to exit at high speeds from jets and still use a lightweight main canopy. No TSO on that gear but it was widely used in the Eastern Bloc. It is an unvented canopy but can be turned & slipped. It still flies stable due to long lines and high porosity cloth. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150206208735657.438690.855495656&type=3 --"Russian UT-15 rig & canopy" A few photos of my UT-15 rig. The UT-15 is like a ParaCommander but those in the East think it is even better for accuracy. This version of the rig has OSK squeeze & pull cutaway mechanisms at the shoulders, and uses dual pilot chutes. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150287946545657.550965.855495656&type=3 2009: -- A 5 minute video of some round & triangular canopy jumps with a buddy, Beatnik on dz.com. (ParaCommander, Paradactyl, Double Keel Paradactyl, Thunderbow, Russian UT-15) Includes me flying a 'dactyl accidentally hooked up backwards. There were some winds so I landed it, rolling backwards. "OLD SCHOOL 2009 -- Jumping Para-Commanders etc" http://blip.tv/pcxstuff/old-school-2009-jumping-para-commanders-etc-2459016 -- "Rounds at PST: A UT-15 and Para-Commander opening" A little video where I and Beatnik exit, I film him opening his Russian UT-15 canopy on a UT-15 rig, and then I deploy my ParaCommander, having a bit of a hard opening having let myself go a little head down during a pilot chute hesistation. Riser slap knocked away my ProTrack, damn. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=245895635656&set=vb.855495656&type=3 2008: -- "Baton passes with belly mounts and balloon suits" Video of three of us (Beatnik, Jerod Cole, and I) all jumping rounds and a couple of us in balloon suits, doing a traditional baton pass. At the time it was 50 years since the first North American baton pass! I stole the music from the old Gypsy Moths movie as a sound track. http://blip.tv/pcxstuff/baton-passes-with-belly-mounts-and-balloon-suits-1188643 Some photos of our gear and landings etc: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.82359410656.149763.855495656&type=3 Paracommanders include two of mine -- a pizza puke colour scheme & an ex-Golden Knights canopy -- plus a former Canadian team canopy. 2006: -- Video of a CRW dock of a square canopy (Cruislite) with a round (ParaCommander). I'm under the round and rely on Brian diCenzo's expertise for an accurate, high speed dock, as he flies his canopy into me. With the closing speed it nearly wraps me. We landed individually, and the last scene is a standup landing with the ParaCommander. http://blip.tv/pcxstuff/round-square-crw-88627

Re: the OLD SCHOOL vs NEW SCHOOL I tend to be on the side of Sundevil and Kallend, in that parts of the Old School idea are correct, even if some may be wrong. It all depends on what one defines as "old school tracking"... It is TOO old school if someone "dives for speed", intending to pull out flatter later. And doing "more of a delta" will also be wrong. But trying to accelerate horizontally quickly is good (within the limits of any tracking teams). With the limited time available, you want to be getting to a high speed track quickly to maximize distance. A moderately steep body angle early on will achieve a faster acceleration and an overall benefit, with very little altitude loss at the start. (Because if there is an ideal angle of attack, the body angle must be steeper at the start when the airflow is from directly below.) It is still be useful to get big during the turn (= new school). There's little downside to that as long as everyone is slowing down to a similar degree.

Not an issue overall. Yes there is the idea that having a similar sized main and reserve would make them fly better together during a two out. That may be true, but there are so many other issues involved in sizing canopies, that that factor isn't usually the dominant one in choice of reserve. That includes the simple economics of switching reserves every time one changes the size of the main. Generally people don't want a reserve that is too big or bulky, and not too small either -- Although there's a large variation in what a given jumper considers too small. I've jumped rigs with a PD 143 reserve, a conservative size for me, whether it was a rig with a Parafoil 282, or a Cobalt 75. In both cases, I felt comfortable with that choice of reserve.

I'm not adding much here; just giving a thumbs up. It is nice to see that the PIA is trying to get things changed. It doesn't mean the sealing process has to change, just that it would be good to have a process by which the FAA would accept input and consider changes in the future. I personally think that it is worth examining the possibility of non-lead seals, and examining how other countries do things, whatever the outcome may be. The new water meter in my house has a plastic seal on the sealing wire, so governments can change. (Although its particular design isn't necessarily practical for parachutes.) Plus for the short term, it would be useful to get clarification on the issue of broken seals, and inform them on the sport's views on that issue.

Huh? As far as I recall from visits, Germans all just say "Zweiter Weltkrieg" = Second World War. They say that it was a "liberation" from Hitler & the Nazis (even if many of that era had willingly been supporters). Now I did snag a copy of a grade 10 East German history textbook shortly after The Wall came down, and it has section titles like, "The world dominance plans of US Imperialism and the struggle of the Soviet Union for the establishment of a peaceful post-war order". Edit --on a tangent to the thread: I think everyone in Germany realizes who started the war. It certainly took time to acknowledge things, especially when some of the old guard were still in the workforce so there was a sort of collective amnesia. Even 20 years ago though, when I was an exchange student there , in school they'd look at subjects such as the role of slave labour in German industry. I think they're pretty good at acknowledging the past. I don't think Japan has come nearly as far.

I heard about that one. For example, a young Canadian teacher was teaching in England on some sort of exchange. Her kids were coming in from outside, so when she noticed that some kid had dirt on their clothing, she innocently said something like, "You really messed up your pants!" ...leaving the kid red faced and the others all laughing.

Having the alti on your left allows you to start reaching back to pull with the right, while still checking the alti with the left.

Instead of just yakking away here, I also went up a level and did send a couple brief & respectful notes on the web to Allen Silver a week back, and just now sent a longer letter on the web to the San Jose FSDO who issued the report. I haven't heard back from Mr. Silver, but I suggested I understood it if he wanted to lay low and not get further dragged into this whole argument online. Nevertheless, I did want to make it clear to him that his name is associated with a shoddy report, which perhaps he had only limited control over -- a sort of situation that could be troubling to any rigger. I thought it was worth telling the FSDO what kind of effect the report was having. Perhaps it was meant for internal purposes only, and became public through a FOIA request ... I don't know. But when the media and lawyers start quoting it as a seemingly authoritative report, one could easily see the FSDO as having some responsibility to try to set matters a little more straight. Serious accusations could use some serious evidence.

Pretty much just your Commercial is needed. I'm not current on this, but I recall one DZ's aircraft insurer needed something like 250 TT minimum, although it might have been possible to have it waived in particular circumstances.

While I wouldn't think that is necessary, I see your point: There are for example specific rules on who can modify TSO'd components, and even who can modify or pack main parachute components -- whether or not most skydiver and even riggers may think the FAA rules stupid. (eg, You were a big contributor to the discussions on clarifying about Master vs Senior riggers replacing lines on mains). So what is a seal? It isn't part of the main parachute system. It doesn't seem to be an actual TSO component. For now I'll say it is something that must be installed by FAA rules, but after that, it doesn't fall into any specific airworthiness category. So someone with a different initial position than you would have to ask: Cite an FAR that shows that the seal cannot be removed, for example due to it falling into some category of required equipment. Edit: Hmm, in the "discussions for another day" category, how about what happens when the reserve card is lost. The rigger may have filled everything out as required by the FAA, but if the card falls out in freefall, or an owner loses it, what then? It does happen from time to time.

Again it depends on the DZ. I don't know what a 'typical' DZ allows, but some may consider backing out not acceptable -- more of a risk of snagging something on the doorway. Some DZ's might have a more standardized exit, while others allow more flexibility. (E.g. one DZ I'm at has a strict 'no flips' policy -- since manufacturers typically state they want a stable exit with a customer. While at another DZ they are more liberal, if you want a front flip diving out, or gainer facing aft, no problem.)

Nope, my rigger rating isn't from the FAA. I don't particularly care about intent. (Just like the NPS doesn't care about the original intent of its rules on aerial delivery, as they apply it to BASE jumpers.) If the FAA has a rule that a rig without a seal can't be jumped, whether the seal was removed accidentally or deliberately, then that's another matter. Just wanted to state my case; leaving further argument to the other threads dedicated to rigging rules. Perfect, that was the FAA interpretation from a previous thread that I was thinking of -- the FAA want to see a lead seal rather than say paper, no matter what a manufacturer might say.

I didn't see any obvious revision markings on my first skim through it, so has anyone gone through it in detail to see what the revision is? I hate companies who don't clearly mark what has changed in a revision. Very poor human factors design. It isn't even clarified in the title of the page -- one has to check the footers.

But I thought the idea was that the rigger has to seal it, if the manufacturer says, which is 99% of the time. But nothing says the user, or indeed the rigger, can't rip the seal off a minute later. If there's another reg that says a seal must be present to jump the rig, great, but 65.133 doesn't seem to prevent ripping the seal off... If a DZ or jumper doesn't want to jump an unsealed rig, that's another matter.

I don't know the area at all but it sure has that Colorado Front Range look to it. As for the airport photos, it looks like another little airport about to be swallowed up by subdivisions...

This thread could use some new stories, and so I'll add a few minor ones, even if they aren't from the crazy days of the 60s and 70s: These were mainly static line students in the 1990s, which is still 'old days' in that that was the main way to learn at the time, at local Cessna DZ's. Among the many students, 20-30 every weekend day in the summer, there were always ones that did their best to hurt themselves. It's amazing nobody every got killed around where I was. Watching students do dumb things was part of the excitement of the sport, sort of a life & death hazing ritual, or like watching car races for the crashes. Now when doing tandems or AFF there's more of an expectation that you have to keep your student alive... 1) Nearly an unintentional cutaway low One student has a minor canopy problem on opening, closed end cell or tension knot that's starting a slow turn. He starts to pull his SOS handle, but then remembers or hears on the radio to do his normal toggle grab and flare first. This he does, the problem goes away, and all is fine. He comes in normally to land, and I go over to meet him as he approaches, as his metal SOS handle can be seen dangling from his chest, well away from its pocket. I reach him as he touches down, and the DZO comes up too. Looking at the students' cutaway cables, one is only 1 cm (< 1/2") past the white loop. The DZ dodged a bullet that day. The student could have had a riser cut away at any moment. (The RSL wouldn't have helped, as the non-RSL side is supposed to cut away first.) 2) Grabbing something other than toggles Static line student has a good canopy, but then the round reserve streams out and inflates for a two-out. He chops the main and it clears fine so he lands OK. What happened? On the old gear that was a sort of Wonderhog style, the RSL happened to be a big Type IV yellow strap exposed at the shoulder, going up to the link on the riser. The student had grabbed that while looking for the yellow toggles... Not a good design. 3) Turning downwind at low altitude There was a clueless student who kept coming back for years, just a few jumps a year, never enough to progress much. One time I'm on radio helping guide her down. She's at 100-150 ft or something, not far out infront of the crowd line, on final, when she gets confused, and cranks a sharp 180. Now she's low, heading straight downwind, and headed for the side of two C-182s parked nose to tail maybe 20' apart. I tell her to steer between them and then "Flare like hell!" Not standard radio procedure but the best I could think of. She flies between the two planes and skids in, and is uninjured. She never had a rational explanation of why she turned like that. 3a) Another bad student landing Another static line student wasn't following commands well, at a time when the instructor had brought him in pretty close to the crowd line for landing. The student on low final angles off of the LZ, and heads for the firepit. He's coming in fast, and not flaring in time. He just misses hitting one of the huge solid logs that is seating around the fire pit, and ploughs into the large wooden box that contains all the empty beer bottles. That created quite a spectacular crashing & smashing noise! The student managed to limp away without serious injury. 4) How not to propack One DZ learned about propacking when it was pretty new, back in '91. With limited packing space in the packing trailer, they decided to give it a go for their students and packers. Well, the technique was new, and the person who brought the technique to the DZ didn't know all the tricks yet -- in particular, the danger of wrapping the brake lines around towards the nose. I was a newly licenced jumper, and had my packing down pat, as I had had my rigger rating at 50 jumps. I had learned to propack from what was a new video put out by Precision for their industry-leading Raven reserves. But for the rest of the DZ, there was a student mal pretty much every second weekend. One got to watch students float around under round reserves a lot. Good amusement. A number of students who got licenced that year had their first cutaway already under their belt. 5) Deploying reserve into the main I had one student who got broken, my first year of dispatching students. She was the last out of the 182, her canopy looked OK initially, I glanced away, but as the 182 turned I looked out again and saw her in a rapid spin with one side of her canopy collapsed. The student wasn't cutting away so the radio instructor called for her to to do her emergency procedures. After another 10 seconds of spinning, with I and the C-182 pilot looking out the door, we see a reserve canopy come out, stream up beside the malfunctioned main, and after a couple seconds of two canopies fighting for air, the main departed without snagging the reserve. The pilot and I look at each other, both thinking "Phew!", after seeing the near main-reserve entanglement. The problem had been that she had deployed while falling backwards off the step, snagging one riser under the reserve container, causing the rapid spin. When she pulled the SOS handle, that riser stayed snagged for a few seconds while the reserve came out, before clearing. The student broke a couple bones in her foot or ankle, landing the round reserve. 6) Bad reserve toggle colour This one was surprisingly only 6 years back but anyway: A DZ had a lesser known, non-U.S. brand of rigs for students, a type that was getting pretty old and has thankfully been replaced since then. A student has a mal, gets his reserve open, then floats off into the distance and gets slightly injured as he hits a small tree on landing and just misses a fence. What happened? The reserve toggles were BLACK, on black risers, and the student never found them. I can't believe anyone would build or pack gear like that... 7) Blown up canopy A heavy student did a 5 second delay or something and opened up. At first he seemed to be doing OK, so the instructor on the radio looked away and dealt with a less experienced static line student still in the air. Maybe he didn't keep a close enough eye on the advanced student, but he then noticed that the heavy student was a lot lower than expected. The guy wasn't spiralling down, but somehow was losing altitude relatively fast. At first the instructor called for the student to cut away, but soon the student was too low for that , so he was just talked in to a landing, emphasizing to do a PLF. The student slammed hard into a muddy field and was taken away with back pains but it later looks like nothing is broken. Turns out that the pilot chute attachment point wasn't all that well reinforced on that design of canopy, and after a lot of use the canopy had split nose to tail on the topskin on that opening. The canopy had flown just well enough that nobody understood what the problem was in the air. (Can't recall what model it was, maybe a Man O War. In any case, the couple other such canopies that the DZ had, went to static line direct bag only.)

Just some ideas with no solution: As with everything it depends. Is it older gear that you won't get much for? If the capital sitting in the closet is less, one will be more likely to keep it. How much stuff can one afford to keep around, or what depreciation can one affort? How will the prices change? Older gear might become nearly unsellable, or keep its (low) value if the components are still valued in future years. Newer gear might depreciate more in actual dollar amounts, yet still be pretty current some years from now. A Cypres of course is losing value just sitting around. How customized is the gear? Will it be hard to find something to fit when buying again? It can be hard to tell. For example, old Sabre 1's are still seen around, but getting a bit rarer. They have sold around DZ's but not for that much. In 5 years, would the jumper coming back from a layoff still want that canopy, or want to upgrade anyway? Even if they are still around now, maybe in 5 years they will be hard to sell at all because there'll be too many good priced Sabre 2's and Pilots around.

Give him a break. Maybe he hadn't heard that Chris Dorner was already dead.

Smoke 'em out... I can't blame cops for not wanting to stick their heads into windows. (I'd hope cops are a little more careful with smokes when more civies are around, but the good smokes do burn hot which can lead to a lot of property destruction.) I saw a video that came out on CBS of some of the gun battle. There sure was a lot of firing, continuous shots for some time, hundreds of rounds. I really wonder in which direction it was going though -- was Dorner continuously firing out, or were cops pouring rounds into the house? If it was the latter, it was more like full on war than carefully putting a couple shots at a visible target. Just Thursday morning quarterbacking. (The vid is probably all over now but I saw it through the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/ID/2334555779/) Edit: A news report suggests a lot of ammo was cooking off in the fire. In any case, details and timeline are unclear to me so far.

Wanna start a History & Trivia thread? (But as for your challenge: I saw a mouldy old one locally that Beatnik tells me is a Tom Cook version of a Bird container. A rip-off rip-off so to speak. Plus my first instructor jumped a container with a shoulder mounted throwout reserve PC - it was a custom build 20+ years back, not the Aussie system that had that. )

Ah yes, Bob knows military round canopy gear. I only got to pack a T-10R MIRPS because someone local to me was headed to his little DZ at Dunnellon FL, where people go to jump military gear. e.g., things he sells http://stores.ebay.com/National-Parachute-Test-Center He's got a web site too but it is half finished at the moment.

TM-10-1670-269-23-and-P.pdf is the manual I have, for both the basic T-10R and the newer MIRPS. Search the web and if you can't find it, I can send it or upload it to a rigging site.

Jeez, for a moment I thought there was a bulletin on Vector I's.

Incidents thread started today on the same incident: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4442054