🚀 go-pugleaf

I have been in the Caravan.  It *was* nice.  The rear door was wide enough
for 4 across.  Maybe five.  It stayed open all the time.  Therefore, opening
the door was not a problem for exiting the plane.  The plane was just very
low.  In a high speed crash like that, the G-forces experienced in the cabin
would probably have been too great to get hold of anything with which to
propel one's self out the door.


***********

In reference to deploying a reserve before cutting away:

While I was an undergrad in Virginia, I orginized classes for a drop zone.
One of the guys in the class had THE WORST T-10 MALFUNCTION anyone on the
drop zone had ever seen.  Many of them were old-timers in the sport.  The
malfunction was just a line over which had caught a wad of material on top
of the canopy, causing a high (but not lethal) decent rate, and a 1-2 second
spin.  The part of this that I think is important is that the WORST
malfunction that they had ever seen was not lethal.  Had the student ridden
it in, and performed a good (granted, a REAL good) PLF, he could have walked
away from it with no broken bones or twisted ankles.

Students there had also been taught not to cut away.  Instead, they were
taught to throw their reserve "down-and-out at a 45 degree angle in the
direction of a spin."  When this student tried to do it, it didn't work.
Pictures taken of him with a telephoto camera seemed to show him holding
onto it so that it couldn't catch the air.  He said that it kept blowing up
in his face, and he couldn't get it out into the wind.

Who is to say wether the student panicked, or the rate of decent was too low
to really catchh the reserve chute.  In either case, after 2500 feet of
attempts the reserve finally inflated at about 200 feet, and took enough
weight off the main that the main cleared.  He landed under two perfectly
good parachutes.

This incident has always raised some intersting questions for me:

-- Is it naive to believe that students can correctly execute complex
sequences to deploy a reserve?

-- What would he have done if his spot wasn't as good as it was?  You can't
steer two parachutes.

-- Would it have been reasonable to cut away the main after the reserve had
inflated?  What would have been the risks of the main fouling the reserve on
its way out?

-- Is a relatively slow malfunction like this really fast enough to catch a
reserve without a pilot chute, and get it out?  If not, a cut away seems
appropriate.

-- Do jumpers panic so much that they would really hold on to the material
of a chute?  If so, a cut away seems inappropriate.

-- Why aren't Steven's cutaway systems used on more conventional gear?  (A
Steven's cutaway system is really quite simple.  It automatically pulls the
reserve ripcord when the main is cut away.  It also prevents only one main
riser from being cut away, a condition which could cause a streamer.  It
consists of a piece of webbing which attaches the two main risers and the
reserve ripcord.  If one of the main risers is cut away, it will not fly
away and cause a streamer because it is attached to the other main riser.
When the other main riser is cut away, it cuts away the main chute, and
pulls the pin of the reserve as you drop away from it.  Thus, with a
Steven's system, if you only cut away one side, you are no worse off than
you used to be.  True, you are only suspended by one riser, but you are
suspended.  If you cut away both sides, your reserve is automatically opened
into clean air-- guaranteed.)

*******

Happily, the ole T-10's are a dieing breed.  The new student squares are
safe, dependable, and more fun.  They will win in the long run.  The
one-shot cut away and reserve deployment is much easier to teach and
execute.  The only drawback could be in altitude awareness, but I think this
is an easier thing to teach.



What does anyone else think about conventional gear, reserves, Steven's or
the like?  How 'bout the letter to the editor of Parachutist which advocated
a gas or rocket deployed reserve?

Post comments here!


-- 
ihnp4!link!msb	Michael S. Balenger	(201) 949-8789

In <476@spice.cs.cmu.edu> Dean writes:
>I have an unrelated question for the group.  I currently have 21 jumps and
>am doing 20 second delays on T-10's.  We are taught NEVER to try to cut away
>under any circumstances -- in fact the instructor tries to avoid even having
>the students know where the capewells (is that how you spell it?) are.  The
>idea is that it is far more likely that a student will panic and cut away
>from a minor malfunction and/or cut away too slowly and too low.  Instead we
>are supposed to manually deploy the reserve (which has no pilot chute) by
>throwing it down and away from us, and into the direction of the spin if we
>are spinning.  Recognizing that capewells are a relatively slow and tedious
>way to cut away (two motions with both hands), and that serious malfunctions
>on a T-10 are very rare, this procedure still worries me.  Does anyone know
>how safe it is to deploy a round reserve (with relatively short lines) while
>under a Mae West on a T-10?  How about a streamer?

Wow!  Are you allowed to pop a Capewell if you're getting
dragged ?  That's what they were invented for.

I've had experience with both systems and I definitely favor
cutaway training.  If it's good enough for experienced jumpers,
why not for students ?  With a Stevens cutaway system or
equivalent reserve lanyard system its much safer than
hand deploying the reserve.  While involved in training
the old method I witnessed two cases of serious injuries
after the reserve entangled with a spinning malfunction and 
one fatality where the reserve entangled in a horseshoe
malfunction.

Hand-deployment of a reserve is no easy job.  As soon as you
pull the ripcord you have a huge UNMANAGEABLE mass of nylon
spewing out of the reserve container.  It's certainly not
an easy bundle that you can toss in any direction as your
instructor might have you believe.  It so much easier for
a novice jumper to pull a one-pull-does-all handle,
get under a nice steerable reserve and get the hell away
from a nasty malfunctioned main.

I'm a firm believer in student tandem gear with a
one-pull-does-all handle and a lanyard assisted reserve.
-- 
				
Made in New Zealand -->		Brent Callaghan
				AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft, NJ
				{ihnp4|mtuxo|pegasus}!poseidon!brent
				(201) 576-3475

> We are taught NEVER to try to cut away under any circumstances -- in fact
> the instructor tries to avoid even having the students know where the
> capewells (is that how you spell it?) are.

> Recognizing that capewells are a relatively slow and tedious
> way to cut away (two motions with both hands), and that serious malfunctions
> on a T-10 are very rare, this procedure still worries me.  Does anyone know
> how safe it is to deploy a round reserve (with relatively short lines) while
> under a Mae West on a T-10?  How about a streamer?

   Although the equipment that you are using is becoming less common these
days, it was pretty much the standard for twenty years.  There was always some
disagreement within the jumping community over training students to cut away
or not.  It is clear that hand deploying a reserve into a really violent
malfunction is not terribly safe (I beleve that Gene Thacker's son was killed
a few years back when he hand deployed his reserve into a malfunctioning PC).
On the other hand, more than one student has decided to chop a canopy at only
a couple hundred feet and not lived to regret it.
   At the DZ where I started jumping (Orange, VA) I saw three fairly bad
malfunctions on T-10s over a four year period (there were a couple others that
I didn't see).  Two were Mae Wests and the third was just about indiscribable
(a doubly inverted triple Mae West or something like that).  All were handled
successfully by students using the 'no cutaway/hand deploy' method, although
the last caused some anxiety when the reserve hung up briefly in the lines of
the main.  I don't know how well the method would work on a streamer, but I
do know a fellow who got away with hand deploying a pilotchuteless reserve on
a total.
   I suspect that the controversy raged so long (perhaps still rages) because
not cutting away seemed intuitively unsafe, but there was never much empirical
evidence against the method, while there were documented cases of students
cutting away too low to get a reserve out.
   As more and more DZs begin to train their students on ram-air canopies, the
controversy is subsiding, since not cutting away a square may very well
collapse the reserve.  I do have a friend who managed to land a one man
biplane when an AOD deployed his square reserve after his main was already
out.  However, neither he nor anyone else recommends that as a standard
practice.

					Bruce Florman, D-9019
					 Manhattan Beach, CA

I've been watching a bit of TV the last few days:

There was an episode of "The Brain" on PBS last night
(great series).  One sequence used a 1st jump as
an example of a stressful situation.  The exit &
deployment were fine, but the poor devil got brainlocked
into his count and pulled his reserve anyway.  The reserve
proceeded to wrap itself around his lines and stayed
that way until a few hundred feet when it caught some
air.  There he was with two uncontrollable canopies.
The sequence ended with him landing on the roof of a
building and an edited-in "OOOF!".  I can't imagine
the same outcome if he had cutaway.

Cutting away the main with two canopies out is a
safe procedure.  The main goes off to the rear and 
the student swings forwards under the reserve.  There's
no chance of the main snagging the reserve.

I enjoyed "Amazing Stories" the other night where the
gunner in the ball turret got stuck and the undercarriage
wouldn't come down.  Very suspensful.  It's a pity he
didn't know that the hole that got torn in his parachute
would have reduced his descent rate (assuming it was near
the periphery) and given hime some directional control
to boot!

I think the idea of rocket reserves is a joke.  Reserves
open plenty fast enough already.  I can just imagine this:
cramped up in a 185 with your buddy's rocket reserve &
AOD just a few inches from your face when the pilot decides
to spiral down...   or being in the middle of a quadraplane
with a rocket reserve aimed at your butt, then the cowboy
stack pilot decides to spiral...

		Blue skies!
-- 
				
Made in New Zealand -->		Brent Callaghan
				AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft, NJ
				{ihnp4|mtuxo|pegasus}!poseidon!brent
				(201) 576-3475

> ....................................  The exit &
> deployment were fine, but the poor devil got brainlocked
> into his count and pulled his reserve anyway.  The reserve
> proceeded to wrap itself around his lines and stayed
> that way until a few hundred feet when it caught some
> air.  There he was with two uncontrollable canopies.

I have seen this type of thing happen on several ocassions where second
or third jump students were doing TRCP's and went for the reserve ripcord
( front mounted reserves ) instead of the TRC. I have yet see to the reserve
and main tangle in this type of situation ( too bad I missed the show ).

The instructors at the DZ I started out at always told the student not to
cut away if the main and reserve were both deployed o.k. ....makes for a soft
landing but its no fun to spend an hour in the woods with a chain saw trying
to get the poor sucker out of the trees.........


-- 




                                                W. Michael Babineau
                                                Multiprocessor Systems Group,
                                                Dept. of Computer Science,
                                                University of Waterloo.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 	USENET:	 {ihnp4,allegra,decvax,utzoo,utcsri}!watmsg!wmbabineau
                                                    !watmath!wmbabineau

> Cutting away the main with two canopies out is a
> safe procedure.  The main goes off to the rear and 
> the student swings forwards under the reserve.  There's
> no chance of the main snagging the reserve.

	I'm no expert on the subject, but I've really been
	checking up on it.  Isn't it better to
	come down on your main, that is if everything is
	okay with it, than to come down on your reserve.  I
	was instructed to deflate the reserve by pulling on
	the lines furthest from me and bunching it up between
	my legs.  It made sense to me, and that's the way
	I'm going to do it because that's the way my jumpmaster
	expects it, but is what you say better?


-- 

				Mark Smith

				NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory
				Old Westbury, New York
				...{philabs,sbcs}!nyit!mark

>> Cutting away the main with two canopies out is a
>> safe procedure.  The main goes off to the rear and 
>> the student swings forwards under the reserve.  There's
>> no chance of the main snagging the reserve.
>
>	I'm no expert on the subject, but I've really been
>	checking up on it.  Isn't it better to
>	come down on your main, that is if everything is
>	okay with it, than to come down on your reserve.  I
>	was instructed to deflate the reserve by pulling on
>	the lines furthest from me and bunching it up between
>	my legs.  It made sense to me, and that's the way
>	I'm going to do it because that's the way my jumpmaster
>	expects it, but is what you say better?
>
If you have been trained never to touch your capewells then
it's better to stick with the way you have been trained. I 
have had a front mounted reserve pop out a couple of times
and managed to grab it and hold it between my legs before
any lines unstowed.

At my previous club I trained students to pull the reserve
in if it was not inflated.  That's easy to do.  I'm not sure
how easy it would be to collapse a fully inflated reserve.
I'm sure it would not be an easy job given just a few
minutes of canopy time.  I doubt if it leaves enough time
to steer away from obstacles and turn into wind for a 
landing.  The possibility of injury is much less the sooner
the student is under a controllable canopy.  Our student
reserves were steerable 26' LoPos.  They had the same yellow
webbing steering loops as on the main.

Two canopies out occurs most commonly because the student
dumps the reserve during deployment of the main - perhaps
because of a pilot chute hesitation.  I never saw anyone
have any problen chopping the main or landing under their
reserve.  The only hassle was chasing down the main afterwards.

Do you know what kind of reserve you have ?  It should at least
be steerable so you can turn into wind for landing.
-- 
				
Made in New Zealand -->		Brent Callaghan
				AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft, NJ
				{ihnp4|mtuxo|pegasus}!poseidon!brent
				(201) 576-3475