pchapman

I personally haven't seen it done but have wondered about that option! The tiny extra drag on the bag wouldn't matter for most jumpers.

One can also have a hard foam pillow tacked or sewn into the main container to take up some volume, although I don't really see this being done on modern containers. (But I'm not in FAA-land so I don't have to worry about their opinion. Since you haven't filled out your profile, I have no idea what rules apply to you.) While pin tension is the big thing, also watch out for BOC tension. With little canopy pressure on the BOC, one sees BOC mouths hanging wide open from the pressure of the rolled up pilot chute inside, turning a modern freefly friendly rig into something less so.

Learning to fly one's body helps. Although for the very flexible, as has been pointed out, being bent in half makes it difficult to dock with others too. Getting a good, tight suit helps too and can solve the problem for some. But often that's not enough. Weights are still the key item in the end when a lot of adjustment is needed. Weights are not a crutch for the inept; they're an important tool to be used. "Just learn to fly your body" is crap! Learning to fly your body is good, "JUST" learning to fly your body is not enough in many cases. When to introduce weights for a student or novice is something I'm not really sure about. Adding weight to their body when they aren't yet landing consistently is to be avoided if practical to do so. But I think one also wants to introduce weights as a tool while the jumper is still with instructors and coaches providing initial RW instruction. (When I started I was 140 lbs and 6'1". Buying a new, custom, tight RW suit was not enough at all. I sucked in RW until I got weights, and I leaned some bad habits in the meantime.)

Yeah, always download these kind of videos if one wants to see them again! And there are ways of finding them in one's hard drive cache too. (Eg, for Firefox, Nirsoft's free VideoCacheView works if one follows the instructions.) Hey, look at that, "LTS" (Learning to Swoop) showed up at: http://www.mediafire.com/?csi4hjxejxj0a3r Funny how that happened.

Not only are there packing instructions without the washer, UPT had actually issued a bulletin too, requiring the washer to be removed at the next scheduled repack, dated back in November 2012: http://unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Product%20Service%20Bulletins/PSB-2012116-Removal-of-support-washer-from-the-Reserve-Staging-Loop.pdf

I sure don't know all the rules but I'm guessing he was covered because he either (a) bought insurance independently, or (b) had some additional coverage through his workplace. (And had a plan where he wasn't disqualified for group coverage at a standard rate because of his sport, and didn't list skydiving as an exclusion.) Technically the provincial health plans do cover emergencies abroad, but only at local Canadian rates. So the fee schedule could say it is a $1000 job but if the US hospital charges $5000 you have a problem. That's why the gov't web sites, like one I just checked, repeat the message to get additional coverage, multiple times in bold letters! (The O.P.'s situation is of course different as he moved to the US.)

Ditto for me because the lines come out the centre. Seems to work but 1000 jumps on it is still a drop in the statistical bucket. Had a few minor twists (360 or less) on the crossbraced canopy but no big spinups.

Based on your photo, I wouldn't expect much objection to doing it face to face. Mind you, the only face to face tandem I did was with another guy. (This was an experienced jumper, he wore his own rig, we deployed after a short freefall, and we unhooked and dropped him -- so he could do RW with another buddy doing the same.) To keep the stresses on the harness the same as normal, he just wore the passenger harness backwards. A little more uncomfortable but doable. We didn't have to deal with the landing. Although the passenger does tend to hang lower than the instructor, it shouldn't be that big a deal with a cooperative passenger especially if the winds are more than minimal. As for the manuals, they show one way to harness up a passenger -- which one might therefore interpret as the only way -- but don't specifically prohibit other ways. They prohibit lots of other things in writing but even then it is up to you do decide which rules are to be broken -- especially when we are talking about having fun as skydivers and not acting as professionals taking up unsuspecting members of the public. Opinions vary.

Yay. This should help close the issue that got me starting this thread back in 2009!

Haha, good point. (At least even with a flat pack one keeps the lines centered.) I have flat packed my FX88 a few times for the hell of it, and it worked OK.

That'll stress your lines! Mountains open up so many possibilities. (Says me, in flat Ontario).

Depends on the type of airplane & the size of the door. Also depends on the dropzone, and depends on the instructor. Some exit methods work better than others in different ways, but there are many variations that are all acceptable.

I won't claim to have the answer but I'm guessing there may be a small effect from the folding, that much of the fabric is folded flat in the flakes and not all crumpled up randomly every time. Like on a reserve: The center cell's front gets massively wrinkled from scrunching it down 'to nothing' in molaring the canopy, while the outer cells get clean neat fold lines in them. I'll bet the former quickly gets a higher porosity than the latter. Yes there is a difference in fabrics, and that reserve wear is more from pack jobs while the mains get the stress of jumps all the time, no matter what the pack job -- that may overwhelm any packing effect. Will there be a difference, 1000 jumps folded neatly vs. 1000 jumps crumpled up? For the thread in general, I dunno, but flaking probably has some effect, even if not huge in typical cases, when one is talking about perfectly flaked vs. just shaken. I know 'shake it out and wrap it' is sometimes used on really small canopies, but does anyone ever use it much on a 135 to a 210?? Lines all to the outside and fabric inside probably wouldn't help the opening reliability in the long run? That would encourage fabric to 'blow through' between the wrong lines, particularly for the brakes, even if the brake lines were placed along the centerline. 'Lines to the outside' is the extreme version the alternative to 'flaked', while 'shaking out' is a less extreme comparison to make. So we have to be careful about what we are talking about as the alternative to neat flaking. As a small benefit, flaking (vs. shaking out) at least to some degree should help in getting the canopy smaller and more controllable during the packing process, improving how symmetrical the pack job is for some people. A test of all this would be to flake one side of the canopy neatly and just shake out the other side and jump the canopy a bunch of times that way. Even if both ways 'work', this would help show whether there is any difference in openings. Any takers?

Didn't know him but sounds like he was an accomplished pilot, 24,000+ hours. While this forum is about the memory of people, perhaps some factual material is OK too. I heard about the accident on an aerobatics list yesterday, where airshow pilot Gary Ward wrote: Someone else provided some links for his aerobatics. I haven't checked them all out: http://www.cabanasaerobatics.com/pilot_fred_cabanas.html http://vimeo.com/23497577 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnFmph7wt94 http://www.keywestbiplanes.com/tag/conch-republic-air-force/ https://www.facebook.com/KeyWestBiplanes

Um, yeah. Even "rights" do have their limitations. I think we understand that Hitler was not just all about good, fast highways, and sharp looking uniforms. I think there were also some issues in the USA about how to apply the 2nd Amendment to slaves & former slaves, whether they should have the right to bear arms...

Well, that's worth a whole other thread. That sort of stuff sure wasn't what was being published in the EAA's magazine when they championed his cause way back when. In any case, one still has to distinguish between temporary and permanent impairment, and between due process and emergency FAA action. A lot of detail to argue.

Would they have been alive with just an RSL, or would they have used the whole Skyhook package? (Mind you, RSL's aren't 'cool' although Skyhooks are to some degree...)

I think the bent pin issue is a much greater danger than the pinched loop issue, if one has a decent cutter design in the first place. Plus, even if the AAD fails and pinches the loop, it should only be happening below 800 ft or so, so the jumper is either incapable of pulling by himself or is almost out of time to do so anyway. (Well, there is the +300 ft or so burble body position issue too.) For the record, the pin pullers that Sentinel had at the end, their Micro Puller, were very slick, low profile and would fit on most rigs -- it wasn't like mods needed for an FXC, nor was it like the giant cylinders used on the earlier Sentinels.

I think most audiences will respond well just to learn about all the different things that can be done in skydiving today. So many different disciplines, whether in competition or out of it. It isn't just falling. Some will know of squirrel suits, big formations, maybe head down or the surfboard thing, but don't really have a good overall concept of what skydivers actually get into on a regular basis. It is clearly nice to have a bunch of different short videos cued up to demonstrate different forms of skydiving. Not hard to find ways to download youtube video so you have the videos stored locally. Throw in a raft dive video or something and they'll know we're all nuts. When in a couple talks I showed video of RW, I also tried to show a little 'beginner RW', or AFF, to show that it takes some work to maneuver properly. That then puts really good RW into context. Formations don't just magically come together. Pilots are wary about the idea of abandoning a perfectly good airplane. Forget the control cables, ailerons and all that. We become the airplane. (Even if our freefall glide ratio sucks.) Since it is an aviation audience, they'll respond well to more details about gear, technology, materials and speeds in freefall & under canopy. We may not have the speed of a Pitts under canopy, but under a small swoop canopy we generate some impressive sink rates and poor glide ratios. You might not waste time trying to get a larger group to crane their necks to see exactly how a 3-ring works, but one can still for example get across the point of how interlocking rings allow force division, so that pulling a cable under low force will jettison a main canopy. I guess one has to watch for being overenthusiastic and using skydiving terminology that others don't fully understand -- stuff as simple as 'cutaway', 'main', or 'DZ'. Not as exciting, but useful for pilots, is a brief discussion about rules for separating pilots from skydivers -- what should they anticipate if flying into an airport with a parachute symbol next to it on the map? Plenty of confusion when those in one activity don't understand another activity. As for safety, some of the stats I've worked through suggest that for fatalities per 100,000 participants, skydiving comes off somewhat safer than homebuilt aviation - that can come as a surprise to the pilots. Show and tell with a rig works, to demonstrate all the parts to the opening sequence, opening the main, as long as the crowd isn't so big they can't gather around to watch. One friend of mine who is an aerobatic and glider pilot did some skydives and remarked afterwards about the differences in cultures. Lots more of the youthful exuberance in skydiving, although not always to the benefit of safety. But the focus on planning for emergencies is there both in skydiving and the rest of aviation. It'll be easy for you to fill 30 minutes. Hell, you could tell there-I-was stories for 8 hours straight.

Nice bit of work to sort all the data. One additional distinction to make in the data would be to try to distinguish low cutaways from no cutaways, and try to determine the factors involved in low cutaways. That isn't always possible with the data available. After all, a couple current threads are about RSLs and MARDs and AADs -- all of which can influence the low cutaway issue, depending on how low is low. From your data, the 5 low or no cutaways were 2 no-cutaways, and 3 low cutaways, of which 1 was a student. The student cutaway was in the 100' range. He would have had an AAD and RSL already, so that just leaves a MARD as having a chance to have had an effect, depending a lot on what the height really was. I'm not sure about how one bit of the data was classified: That Perris 23 Sept fatality involved a low cutaway,that may not be the direct cause. The video shows the reserve was opened -- but then spiralled for about 6 seconds into the ground. While more altitude would have helped, that still looks like a "reserve problem" as causing the fatality, not the rather low cutaway and low reserve opening. (I haven't checked closely but the reserve opening came pretty fast after the low cutaway, so it may have been with an RSL. Don't know though.) So that brings us down to just one non-student "low cutaway" in the revised data. That was Z-hills January 1, where the opinion in the thread was that the cutaway was at 300' or less, and that the jumper had an AAD and a connected RSL. (I was looking at the fatality threads and not the fatality list, where the info might be summarized in a different way.) One year of data isn't much, but that basically shows that there were no low cutaways last year where an RSL or AAD would have made a difference. No cases of "he couldn't find his reserve handle" or "he tried to get stable first". Other potential fatalities probably were avoided due to existing use of the same devices.

"Russell" does indeed sound good according to the Poynters' photos. We're much more likely to remember what the canopy looks like, than the container. You'll tell us the rig's story I assume. And stow the ripcord, it's dangling out of the pocket.

While the OP wasn't asking about the full wash option, it came up. The last post was good advice except I'll question one thing: Maybe you mean some sort of stain remover, or diluted detergent, I don't know. But normal rig cleaning instructions all mention using a MILD solution of detergent. The liquid laundry detergent I have, has warnings about washing well if it gets on skin, and has dissolved paint where it has dripped off the container over time onto a shelf. Unless I have better data, I'm not putting that on a rig. Also a couple additions: Setting a fan to blow on the wet rig is a great way to get it dried fast without it sitting soggy for days (depending on your local climate). And everyone remember to take your reserve card out too before doing the wash.

To answer one question, I have seen Vector PCs in a burble be completely inverted or in any attitude, even for a single jumper (not just an AFF 3-person burble). This was for a Vector PC on a main canopy. Maybe it didn't launch quite as well as on a tightly packed reserve, but still this shows it is possible -- see my video at http://blip.tv/pcxstuff/the-secret-life-of-pilot-chutes-3507191. As for the 2 drawings by Eric Fradet: I don't know Eric's exact line of thinking but this is what I see: -- He's talking about the type of horseshoe you can't clear from its entanglement, or you don't notice in time. If you do clear it, then you don't have a horseshoe any more. Great. -- Now say that you still have the horseshoed main, cut it away, but it is trailing off you at some location. If the reserve PC catches air properly, then it doesn't matter whether you have a Skyhook; the reserve PC is doing the job and hopefully will clear the trailing mess. Everyone takes their chances equally. -- But he says that if the reserve PC burbles for a moment and doesn't catch air, now instead of a trailing mess and a nearby reserve PC trying to catch air (dangerous enough), you also have the Skyhook lanyard still connecting the flapping, trailing risers, to your reserve bridle. So now you are pulling the reserve bridle in towards the trailing main canopy mess, especially just as the main risers are cutaway from your shoulders and whip back to wherever the entangled main is trailing. (Assuming the drag on the risers is enough to peel all that Skyhook RSL velcro in the first place. That has been questioned for some low drag mals like baglocks. Manually clearing risers away by hand has been suggested.) Is the connection between the main risers and the reserve bridle enough to actually drag the reserve pilot chute into the trailing mess? Will even just yanking some reserve bridle towards the mess be enough to cause problems? I'm not sure yet either way, but Eric seems to think so, and asks whether any testing has been done to show what the truth really will be for that scenario.

Note the distinction that the crew must be provided with and use oxygen, while the passengers must only be provided with oxygen.

Your reserve is still certified for 254 lbs, even if the placarded recommendation is 185. You'd be loading at something like 1.15. ( (180+30)/181 = 1.16 ) It was pretty common at one time to start loading smaller Ravens more than originally recommended, as more experienced jumpers got used to loadings of more than 1:1 on F-111. People didn't always expect picture perfect landings under their reserves anyway. Still, it really is not the best wing loading at 32 jumps, adding risk. But it is usable. Your choice. A DZ that is sharp eyed about gear might not be as accepting. Other more modern reserve designs like the PD Reserve or Optimum would flare a little nicer. But even the Optimum 176 chart suggests 195-220 lbs is 'Advanced'. Even a nice flaring canopy has to be flared correctly to land nicely.