parachutes

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

pec1985 - 2015/09/12 10:17:46 UTC
Bay Area

Might be out of topic, if so I'll open a new thread...

You'll be fine. Just don't make any references to T** at K*** S******.

Why is the chute attached to the carabiner?

'Cause that's what the harness is designed to be suspended and loaded from.

Why is it not attached to the harness itself?

The harness itself where?

Out of all the things that could go wrong, a broken harness strap is one of them.

Not if you've got a pilot with half a brain or better.

There are two straps (main and back up) coming out of the glider that attach to the biner and one that goes from the biner to the harness (A shape on mine).

Makes the idea of a backup loop even more moronic than it would if you just considered the glider...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=12536
standard operating procedures

Tad Eareckson - 2009/06/19 03:31:10 UTC

How come hang glider pilots back up the webbing above the carabiner but not below and used curved pins for their barrel releases?

...don't it?

If the harness strap breaks and the chute is attached to the biner, you're done.

If the harness strap breaks below a couple hundred feet it doesn't matter what the fuck the chute's attached to.

(Also if the biner breaks, but there's less chance of that happening, I guess).

Don't guess. They're both zero for all intents and purposes.

I think that the closer your body is to the chute, the safer you are.

I think that when you've gotten into most of the situations in which a parachute is your only hope for survival your odds of survival ain't all that great anyway. Most situations in which a parachute is your only hope for survival occur when the glider has broken and broken gliders are really good at eating parachutes before they can start functioning as parachutes.

Now, if the bridle breaks on deployment, that's another issue all together.

Yeah, that means someone's done a totally shitty job of keeping critical equipment out of the sun when it's not in use and I'm not much concerned with what happens to assholes like that.

This Javier Yunquera bullshit happened over seven weeks ago and there are motherfuckers who knew EXACTLY what happened and why within the first hour and they're sitting on that information for ass covering purposes with zero regard for the people who fly these things.

And we, as PILOTS, need to be able to look at our suspension systems during preflight and verify that they're not gonna disintegrate at one and a half Gs. Fuck the parachute. There are a few situations in which I might find myself needing a parachute and that's not one of them. Preflight your suspension and find some REAL issues to worry about. We have no shortage of those. Suggestion... The motherfuckers who knew EXACTLY what happened and why within the first hour and have been sitting on that information for over seven weeks for ass covering purposes with zero regard for the people who fly these things.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

Nigel Hewitt - 2015/09/12 15:11:26 UTC
Brighton, Sussex

I was wondering this. The normal intention is to recover both the glider and the pilot when the airframe breaks...

Get a paraglider. No airframe thus no possibility of it breaking thus no need for a parachute. KISS.

...but if we are seeing instances of the hang strap disintegrating...

WE'RE NOT. There has been one extremely scantily reported INSTANCE - SINGULAR - and the motherfuckers who inspected the wreckage and took the pictures aren't making any useful information available.

Wanna talk about shit disintegrating in the air and killing people?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8394/8696380718_787dbc0005_o.png


Motherfucker had a perfectly good glider with perfectly good harness suspension and a perfectly good parachute system and ended up dead as a doornail three seasons ago 'cause of a safety device DESIGNED to disintegrate in the air with the glider under control. And there hasn't been one shred of official recognition that that was a problem.

...then this is an incident that is not covered.

The priority must be to recover the pilot with the minimum links in the chain.

Bull fucking shit. Ships use ACTUAL CHAINS to anchor themselves, those chains have zillions of ACTUAL LINKS, and zillions of lives have been lost when and because of the weakest of those links failing. The solution is NOT to Keep It Simple Stupid and minimize the number of links. It's to ensure that the weakest of the links is way the hell more than up to the job.

Here we go:

http://ozreport.com/13.238
Adam Parer on his tuck and tumble

Adam Parer - 2009/11/25

At Forbes in 2007 I watched Austrian pilot, Andreas Orgler, experience an almost identical accident. While his incident did not involve the violent sycamore rotation he did tumble twice and then separated from his glider. His pilotless wing then descended straight at me, head-on, and only just cleared mine with a closing speed that would have certainly brought me down too. Meanwhile Andreas quickly deployed his parachute during his freefall and well before achieving terminal velocity. Despite his much lower speed the inflation was explosively and the parachute failed. He continued to freefall right before my eyes.

That's exactly how it should work. If something blows before the parachute you've done a total shit job engineering your system. And if you wanna be able to survive a moderate freefall then certify the fuckin' parachute to handle a moderate freefall and make sure the cheap low mass peripheral stuff is more than up to handling the parachute's max-out point.

The only thing wrong with the conventional parachute system is that you have extra crap you're unlikely to ever need and use in the airflow for one hundred percent of your airtime and that's not a relevant safety issue. Just looking at the relevant safety issues it's the optimal way to do the job. If you wanna eliminate the harness suspension link you need to replace it with another almost certainly more problematic link on the harness. Same number of links in the parachute system, more components in the overall glider configuration.

And if you don't think you're up to the job of ensuring that everything between you and the parachute itself is substantially stronger than the parachute itself - that the parachute itself is the weak link of the system - then you should find another hobby.

Similarly the shock of deployment if the pilot is free falling is only a consideration if it beaks the linkages.

How 'bout beaking the parachute itself or fatally beaking the pilot? Adam wasn't too far below that point by the time he managed to pry his parachute out of its container.

Far better to have a quick deployment, we often fly low, and if the price is some stove in ribs on the infrequent occasion that a pilot free falls at least we get to send our sympathies not condolences.

See this?:

Adam Parer - 2009/11/25

What came next was the most painful and violent impact I have ever felt in my life, like I had been torn in half. Extreme pain instantly filled the body with the worst of it concentrated in chest and upper back. I knew I had sustained serious injury and immediately suspected my back was broken. In less than fifteen seconds I had fallen four thousand feet, the parachute and harness survived the deployment and so had I but not without injury, and the pain suggested I was in a real bad way.

The thought of paralysis filled my mind and I needed to know. I tried to wriggle my fingers and they moved. I thought with some dread, 'My legs?' I wriggled my feet and they moved too. Relief mixed with the pain but concern remained that my back was probably broken despite the spinal cord being intact. I needed a soft landing to protect what wasn't damaged. I looked down and the remaining two thousand feet came up very slowly. I could only just breathe. I needed to get down as soon as possible and get help.

After a minute of trying to get more air into my lungs my color vision started to fade, I was graying out. I remained conscious but gradually blacked out and feared I may have sustained fatal internal injuries.

My thoughts immediately went to my wife who passed away earlier this year. I hoped that if this was what was happening to me then I would be with her soon and I felt content for the first time in four months. My soul mate, taken away so early in our life with whom I had shared so much... Pain was no longer on my mind and I felt calm. A few moments passed before awareness came over me, I was not dying, I would survive, and this was not my time. The peace gave way to the pain which returned with a vengeance. Shock set-in and I passed out.

That's too fuckin' close. If his descent hadn't been witnessed he could easily have died of exposure anyway. And NOTHING has been done in the past half dozen years to address the ACTUAL PROBLEM.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

Dave Hopkins - 2015/09/13 21:48:54 UTC

So far the only reason I've seen not to use a Screamer is that some are made of tubular webbing.

Yeah, you ignored the ACTUAL reason to not use a Screamer - which is they don't actually do anything - and you picked up on idiot red's total bullshit reason.

Yates has designed screams for many different purposes.

One purpose: selling to total idiots.

Seems reasonable that they could design one for our purpose or may already have one that is close to what we need.

Yeah, the Placebo Screamer line. All the same units they advertise for rock climbers but packaged for hang gliders 'cause they don't know what "placebo" means.

I'm sure WW would not have put them in the covert if they did not think it was a good idea.

And ya know why Wills Wing gliders have backup loops?

It also seems reasonable that many structural failures in topless gliders end with have the pilots being in a free fall. Why couldn't a Screamer be made of 1" solid webbing Sewn as a one piece bridle?

If the pilot is in freefall, shithead, why does he need webbing resistant to being cut by flying wires?

I would feel better then having no shock relief at all.

Just don't bother with the Screamer or parachute and use your glider as a crumple zone. Or, if you separate from the glider, use your helmet.

Deploying at all is rather terrifying , deploying in free fall much more so.

Well just don't deploy then. Problem solved.

Give me a SCREAMER designed for our situation.

Yeah, hang glider shock absorption has little in common with shock absorption associated with other sports.

Someone that can crunch the numbers should be able to answer the question of how it needs to be built.

Jason crunched the numbers and explained them to me then I came up with an analogy that I thought you dickheads would be able to comprehend. How naive I was back then.

Dave Hopkins - 2015/09/13 22:35:18 UTC

I remember that during AP's tuck and spin that the spin forces were so strong that he could not reach his chute until he was in free fall. Maybe he could have been quicker but it sounded like he was reasonably quick. To say all is fine with our present system is not correct. Our systems are not designed for free fall deployment. I think any one flying a topless has a bit of queasiness regarding how they might fare in a spin free fall situation.

Did ya read the part where he ate up four thousand feet while he was streamlined like a fuckin' bullet on his way to breaking the sound barrier trying to pry his chute out of the container his piece o' shit harness design had jammed?

Never mind. I'd forgotten all about your twelve second attention span.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

JJ Coté - 2015/09/13 23:47:08 UTC

Why is the parachute typically attached to the 'biner? If you make the assumption that the most likely accidents that will call for a deployment do not result in the hang strap or backplate failing (AP's accident being an unusual one)...

The hang strap didn't fail. He tore it out through the keel. Everything else on the fuckin' glider will have failed twenty times over by the time the hang strap fails.

...then the glider will take most of the opening shock, rather than the pilot getting it.

Most of the time there's enough glider intact for there not to be any opening shock.

The time when I deployed, which was a presumably more typical airframe failure...

Yes.

...had no perceived opening shock at all.

Yes. Often enough there's not enough of a descent rate to get the canopy inflated.

I had no idea whether the canopy was open until I could see it. It may be that a screamer would be the solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

- Like the backup loop and foot landing.

- And isn't a solution to the problem when it DOES exist. If Adam had had a Screamer the results would be indistinguishable - and the Screamer would've been credited with saving his life and Yates would've sold tens of thousands of them to the idiot hang gliding community.

How often would it even come into play?

Close to never. And when it did come into play it wouldn't do anything. See above.

Brian Scharp - 2015/09/14 00:04:40 UTC

His harness back plate also wasn't designed for the forces it was subjected to before free fall.

Wasn't designed for the kinds of forces one would expect just prior to the need of the parachute.

It's...

Possessive pronoun.

...failure added time to...

Half the fuckin' afternoon.

...and could have prevented the deployment of his parachute.

Moral of the story... Try to schedule your Industry equipment disasters really high.

Scooped me by three and a half minutes.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

Dave Hopkins - 2015/09/14 16:48:48 UTC

My rotor has a carbon back plate and side mount chute. I can see the same scenario happening. A failed back plate is likely to seriously deform and compress the chute container. The price we pay for performance?

No. The price we pay for shoddiness, shit engineering, stupidity.

Jim Gaar - 2015/09/14 17:23:25 UTC

NMERider - 2015/09/12 04:47:26 UTC

There is nothing wrong with the current reserve deployment systems. The thing that is wrong is twofold:
1 - Too few pilots do enough practice tosses on a regular basis.
2 - Too many pilots freeze when it's time to toss their reserves.

We fly hang gliders

You never have been or ever will be any part of any we I'd ever be part of.

We take on the risk that accompnies the sport

Get fuckd

There is no perfect solution unless we don't fly!

Goddam! You're right! I'm gonna get me a three thousand dollar racing harness which disables my thousand dollar rapid deployment parachute whenever I tumble and hit those thermals as hard as I can. Parachutes that work when we need them to are for girls and faggots.

NMERider - 2015/09/14 17:40:02 UTC

That's not a great person to not treat like total shit, Jonathan.

NMERider - 2015/09/14 17:44:40 UTC

I agree that increased risk often comes with increased performance...

Yeah - OFTEN. A Falcon 4 ain't always gonna beat a T2C in the survival gain and the risks to which we subject ourselves need to be MANAGEABLE. And a parachute ONLY comes into play after a situation wasn't or couldn't have been managed.

That parachute configuration is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. Fuckin' moronic to pay a permanent cost, weight, and drag penalty for a system most likely to fail in the one situation a competent pilot is most likely to need it to stay alive.

...but a lot of risk goes with lack of funding to perform testing and development of higher performing systems that are also safer.

Yeah? Jeff Shapiro apparently found the time and resources to engineer a totally bogus solution to the problem. "This harness will still jam your parachute in a tumble but if you have a mile of air under you at the time and are able to use it to pry the parachute out of the container as you're passing 250 miles per hour this will greatly reduce the likelihood of you being converted to a jellyfish by dropping the opening shock from 20 Gs to 19.995 Gs!"

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=992
Continuing Saga of Weak Link and Release Mechanism Failures

Warren Narron - 2012/03/06 02:26:04 UTC

Tad, used to post about as nice as anyone, and nicer than some. Remember?

Blowback... You put in a thousand plus hour$, tooling, te$ting and documenting safety issues for the masses and have it ignored and suppressed by people, for whatever reason, and you would get testy too.
You're fairly snarky as it is, and you haven't done the work...

I worked my fuckin' ass off for years developing, testing, refining, documenting...

http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3347
Tad's barrel release tested

Janni Papakrivos - 2008/06/30 15:35:44 UTC

Tad showed me the release system he installed in Hugh's glider. I was amazed at the quality and complexity of the system. Being able to tow and release without ever having to take your hands off the base tube is wonderful and much safer.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=12587
weak links (here we go)

Patrick Halfhill - 2009/06/21 23:22:23 UTC

You and I met at the ECC a few years ago. We spent 45 minutes or more together going over your system. I saw it first hand. I was quite impressed with the quality of engineering and the time you spent on it.

...the best goddam aerotow release system this planet will ever see which could be built into any factory hang glider for less than the cost of a VG system and less than the slap-on garbage that comes out of Quallaby and Lockout. And it WOULD SELL like fuckin' hotcakes. And I tried to GIVE IT AWAY and just had it and me ignored and pissed all over. And so far there've been at least five people who've died and a shitload more crashed and mangled for its want.

A lot of safety features in other consumer products evolved from racing and competition and even from military.

Whereas in hang gliding we tend to get bare basetubes, pro toad bridles, Davis Links, and parachute disabling harnesses.

There is so little profit to be made in hang gliders and our equipment that the funds simply don't exist to perform all the R&D we all like to enjoy the benefits of.

I did the R&D like nobody has before or will again. But Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney won't pull homemade gear, funky shit, or test pilots. He'd much rather be breaking John Claytor's neck locking him out on Industry Standard gear in a gusty fifteen plus mile per hour ninety cross on an improvised runway.

People are paying fortunes for comp equipment and opportunities to fly it. Trust me, they'll fork out an extra three hundred bucks if that's what it takes to get a USEABLE parachute system on a racing harness. But the industry isn't admitting that it has a deadly problem and would rather spend it's efforts providing a shoddy bogus fix for the deadly problem it doesn't have.

These harnesses are being developed and sold to give tiny performance advantages to dickheads who have crossing finish lines twelve seconds ahead of other such dickheads as their primary purpose for flying hang gliders. And the meet heads are trying to present a facade of valuing safety to the participants, sport, and general public.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31052
Poll on weaklinks

Jim Rooney - 2013/03/04 19:31:36 UTC

I still won't tow people with doubled up weaklinks. You don't get to "make shit up". I don't "make shit up" for that matter either.

We all play by the same rules, or we don't play.
Morningside decided that they were happy with 200lb weaklink. They changed their tug's link and they don't just pass the stuff out either. If you'd like to know more about it... go ask them.
The law of the land at comps was 130lb greenspot or you don't tow. Seriously. It was announced before the comp that this would be the policy. Some guys went and made their case to the safety committee and were shut down. So yeah, sorry... suck it up.

So...

- "No parachute, no participation. (We don't give a flying fuck whether or not you have a parachute that has any chance of working in an emergency (hell, we MANDATE use of releases we KNOW can't be operated in any emergency situation), we're just requiring that you have one.)"

- CIVL should OUTLAW these harnesses for all sanctioned competitions beyond spot landing contests on the dunes. But as things are competitors are rewarded for flying no-parachute-option harnesses just as they are for flying without wheels or skids.

- If we can get to the smoldering wreckage sites before the official investigative teams and recover a few videos of popular hotshot comp pilots frantically and futilely attempting to pry parachutes out of jammed deployment ports, maybe sue a harness manufacturer or two back into the Stone Age, we'll see things move in a good direction. But nothing less is gonna do the trick.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

Dave Hopkins - 2015/09/14 16:48:48 UTC

My rotor has a carbon back plate and side mount chute. I can see the same scenario happening. A failed back plate is likely to seriously deform and compress the chute container.

And ya think the manufacturers of all of these design concept harnesses are unable to see the same scenario happening? Jeff Shapiro's bullshit Screamer modification is a total acknowledgement that this is a HIGHLY likely scenario in a tumble incident. And in the near six years since this incident have you heard one single one of these motherfuckers whisper anything remotely resembling a recall or even an advisory? Any Dense Pages equipment reviews in the magazine? How 'bout the national organizations, CIVL, meet heads?

"We're really rabid about the safety of our flyers so we're gonna mandate the safest fishing line capable of getting you airborne (the same stuff that put Zack Marzec into a tumble which is exactly how Adam Parer started his little adventure), the most easily reachable bent pin pro toad releases money can buy from us, certified helmets and parachutes but we're totally cool with you stuffing your mandatory certified parachute in a racing harness we know will weld it into its container at any time you're gonna need it."

Are the dealers briefly interrupting their spiels about the amazing performance advantages to mention this little peripheral issue? Has Betty Pfeiffer mentioned anything about which harnesses her parachutes shouldn't be installed in? It was one of HER chutes, by the way, that was trapped in Adam's container.

NMERider - 2015/09/14 17:44:40 UTC

I agree that increased risk often comes with increased performance but a lot of risk goes with lack of funding to perform testing and development of higher performing systems that are also safer. A lot of safety features in other consumer products evolved from racing and competition and even from military. There is so little profit to be made in hang gliders and our equipment that the funds simply don't exist to perform all the R&D we all like to enjoy the benefits of.

So what do you think it cost to extract Adam from the farm he partially bought and put him back together? What's the value of the life of the pilot we WILL kill if we keep putting this crap in the air? How smart is it to keep manufacturing lethally defective two or three thousand dollar harnesses and pumping them into circulation?

If Adam had tumbled at three thousand feet we'd be trying to decipher the mystery of why he made no effort to deploy his chute. But when the next guy tumbles at several thousand feet everyone and his dog will know why he made no effort to deploy his chute. And people are gonna put these racing harnesses up...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22540
LMFP release dysfunction

Jim Gaar - 2011/07/14 15:40:13 UTC

In a litigious society like the U.S. it's all part of the game. If you don't like it, you just take your ball and go home...

This is the reality of the sport we love. "Always the student". Learn how to use it or don't. You just missed out on what every American pilot already knows from birth.

We assume risk every day. Sometimes with a LMFP release. Hope you get your issues ironed out. The classified section is ready if you don't.

...on the Jack and Davis Shows classifieds in order to get something to help cover the costs of their NEW harnesses.

But we in this sport don't have the money to start doing things right half a dozen years ago.

Red Howard - 2015/09/14 17:56:39 UTC

Dave,
I would not accept that possibility, on my harness.
The answer can be as simple as...

It ain't rocket science to design a racing harness comparable to what we have now that won't and can't jam the parachute in a typical emergency - or any other - situation. But so far nobody on the production side has expressed the slightest interest in doing anything of any actual substance and there hasn't been shit in the way of same from the user side. So let's just wait until the next guy dies doing what he loves and not speculate out of respect for his friends and family and the official investigative process.

And then we can continue our little chat about how the sport is dying and strategies for attracting more new pilots of varying ages. Almost twenty-two consecutive fatality free days now and counting. Let's keep up the great work.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

Vrezh Tumanyan - 2015/09/14 04:04:44 UTC

"Rapid parachute deployment" ?
BRP or BRS comes to mind.
Do they still make them?
You might want to investigate.
This might be the answer to your quest.

In theory... Yes. In practice...

Hand deployed parachutes, because Joe flyer fails to manage them properly, are the causes of about as many incidents as they're the solutions to. And even when managed properly they tend to be crap shoots when the shit hits the fan.

Ballistic parachutes... In the big picture they were a disaster for hang gliding, a fad from the late Eighties / early Nineties that didn't last long.

No thanks. Expensive, heavier, more complex, temperamental. Don't get into a situation in which you need a parachute and good luck if you do.

John Hesch - 2015/09/19 00:20:53 UTC
Morro Bay, California

Rocket-deploy chutes are great in theory, that's why I went with one when I first started flying. When I tumbled in '95 and needed it, the handle was jammed between the down-tubes and I couldn't deploy. They seem to work well for ultra-lights like the Dragonfly...

If...



...you mount them such that they won't get eaten by the wreckage when they fire.

...but I stick with hand-deploy these days.

And how many times have you needed to hand deploy since you tumbled in '95?

Rolla Manning - 2015/09/19 00:43:15 UTC

I really think...

Actually, you really don't.

...in most situations down low a screamer would hurt more than help.

A Screamer doesn't do anything - one way or another.

If Wolfie had one, the outcome may have been really bad...

Bullshit.

...even if it only adds a second or two to the deployment time.

- It doesn't. WHEN it activates it's virtually instantaneous.

- Wolfi's problem was that his glider was spinning and generating enough lift to slow his descent rate to the point at which the canopy wouldn't inflate until the last second. Highly unlikely that he ever got the 450 pounds it would've taken to blow the thing.

- A larger chute adds a second or two to the deployment time. That's why - unlike the Screamer - it actually works to reduce shock in an Adam Parer scenario. So how come we're not talking about the danger involved with larger chutes?

From the time he needed to toss (:57sec) and the time he hit the ground (1:07) it my have not opened soon enough.

The Screamer doesn't delay your opening time, idiot. It can't activate until your canopy is fully inflated. And after it activates you fall an extra four feet or so while it's dissipating a microscopic degree of shock. So if you're worried about that then how come we're not talking about the danger associated with slightly longer parachute bridles?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCCVBC6GejU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCCVBC6GejU
Rhythm of Flight - "Shit or Chute" - Ep 2

skyfreak909

Welcome to the E, and thanks for posting yet another bit of evidence supporting the idea that back frame harnesses are a liability. As soon as you started drifting feet towards the keel, instead of pulling in and curling up around the basetube, all the static stability of the glider is gone, then your mass contacts the DT or wires, and you get structural failure.

Neville Styke

I was in a stirrup harness, so I would've had no problems getting the weight forwards.

And nobody's talking about the price pretty much all of us pay for flying rigid framed harnesses - which was quite likely the critical issue here.

But go ahead, keep talking about the fake problems with the fake solutions to the actual problems with the actual solutions that everybody wants to studiously ignore.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

W9GFO - 2015/09/19 22:13:53 UTC

A screamer would add only a dozen or so milliseconds to the 'deployment' - that's only if it ever came into play, which for "regular" deployments, it would not. A screamer does not delay the opening, it absorbs some of the extra gees (after opening) that you would experience if the deployment occurred at an unusually high speed.

'Cept you wouldn't EXPERIENCE any perceptible difference. And how come we've gotta try to explain this stuff to a...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?

Jim Rooney - 2011/08/25 04:55:25 UTC

Ditto dude.

It always amazes to hear know it all pilots arguing with the professional pilots.
I mean seriously, this is our job.

...fucking 747 pilot?

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33404
Rapid parachute deployment

W9GFO - 2015/09/19 22:13:53 UTC

A screamer would add only a dozen or so milliseconds to the 'deployment'...

Which is a damn good explanation of why the Screamer doesn't do anything.

Let's be real stingy and say that Adam Parer's deceleration - from canopy pop through shrouds and bridle stretch to twice stable descent speed - is one second. That would most assuredly turn him to liquid but let's use it anyway.

So the deceleration time is increased from 1.000 seconds to 1.012 seconds. Only 98.8 percent of the shock / stress on the system / damage to your body!!!

If it reduced the shock to 75 percent it MIGHT be worth talking about. But if it did - using that extremely optimistic scale - you'd be adding a third of a second to your hauling-ass-straight-down time - close to thirty feet at an average of sixty miles per hour. So it's a trade-off - if you want reduced shock you've gotta pay for it with altitude. No free lunch regardless of what James and John Yates are telling you. And the title of the thread, remember, is "Rapid parachute deployment".

And let's also consider that you couldn't get a much worse scenario than Adam's if you tried. Freefalling for thousands of feet at terminal velocity in a super clean streamlined harness in bullet configuration - and nothing in the parachute system blew a stitch and Adam came through in astoundingly good shape considering.

Any chance we can look at a few existing actual solutions to our actual lethal problems instead of wasting our time on this crap?

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33438
Accident in France



No.

David-CH - 2015/09/22 07:09:24 UTC
Lausanne, Switzerland

He was doing loops and wingovers, went vertical, full stall, the wing (a T2C) started tumbling, broke and started to spin very fast, he threw his reserve but the bridle got entangled in the glider.

Big fuckin' surprise.

The chute barely opened as it was stuck at the leading edge level (or what remained of it)...

Too bad he wasn't using a Screamer.

He was already dead when the emergency services arrived

Too bad he wasn't using a Rooney Link. Those things allow you to survive most of the way to the hospital.

Thibault was a 30 years old pilot, very talented...

Not talented enough.

...and member of the hg french national team.

Please guys consider buying a second reserve if you want to do any acro manoeuvres... he would still be with us if he had one.

Maybe. Wouldn't have made the outcome any worse. And I guess we're not gonna hear anything about a ballistic 'cause they're no longer in fashion.

If you're gonna do aerobatics don't blow them 'cause the outcome is gonna be a crap shoot.

Twenty-seven days since the previous - and well over a quarter of 2015 left to go. I'm SO hoping for a 160 pound safety device to increase the safety of the towing operation. But I'd settle for somebody running off a cliff without having done anything to give himself a false sense of security. We're overdue for one of those and this time we'll have Mike End-Of-Story Bomstad to shove into Aussie Methodist face.