[Previous entry: "5 Minute Call/Mirage Containers"]
[Next entry: "Used Gear Inspections/GSL 2002"]

Racer manufacturer Jump Shack broke away from the industry norm last year when it issued a service bulletin on the line stow system of its reserve freebags. In the sport skydiving market, the reserve deployment line stows for square reserves includes an elastic Safety-Stow for the two locking stows and a Velcro pouch to S-fold the remainder of the lines. Jump Shack’s service bulletin (and addendum) recommended that the Safety-Stow and Velcro pouch be replaced with rubber bands. After the service bulletin is completed, the freebag closely resembles a main deployment bag. In the April 2002 issue of Skydiving Magazine, one rigger details his experience with the new system. Rigger Dave Hillebrandt, says a Racer that came to his loft for a repack had the new system installed and he replaced the rubberbands during the repack. According to the article, when the rig came back to Hillebrandt four months later he found several problems with the rubberbands. “The mil-spec, bag-locking, rubber bands were gummy from contact with the unplated brass grommets,” Hillebrandt said in the article. “One band was broken; the other was half rotted through. The canopy ‘dumped’ when the bag was lifted by the bridle, leaving the lines still stowed on the bag.” Jump Shack owner John Sherman has spoke with Hillebrandt but does not believe the new system is flawed. “Mil-spec rubberbands should not melt or fail … Dave got some bad rubber bands.” Sherman says the rubber bands and system have been thoroughly tested. But Sherman and Hillebrandt continue to disagree on the issue and further argue on which system is less likely to result in line dump. Chuting Star Rigging Loft is looking for more feedback from other riggers on what they have found during the repack cycle on the new Jump Shack line stow system. We believe the jury is still out on this system for sport reserves and are taking a “wait and see” approach.

The “Riggers Forum,” conducted by the Parachute Industry Association, started up as a moderated e-mail based system. Riggers who had questions, comments or advice could send an e-mail to the riggers maillist and other riggers or manufacturers would respond to the entire maillist. Important matters, questions or requests were handled immediately and the information was quickly raising the bar on the quick dissemination of rigging information. But along with all the relevant topics came a gluttony of useless e-mail clogging up e-mail boxes. Similar to rec.skydiving, those who were actually looking for good advice or discussions would get fed-up with wading through the garbage. The good thing is that the maillist was open to only riggers or manufacturers, so the garbage was never too bad, but just enough to be annoying. In addition, there was no catalog system to look up old articles or just look through the topics that interested you. So the PIA recently changed its system. According to a recent e-mail announcement from Communication Services Committee chairman George Galloway: “We are now happy to introduce to you the re-organized PIA Riggers' Forum. It has been rebuilt as a threaded and moderated group. You will be able to see in succinct order the categories, messages, and replies. As the forum and number of messages grow, you will be able to search the forum by keyword, by author, by date, and other criteria. You will, when some time has passed and the message content grows, be able to search archives of information that has been posted in the past.” To subscribe to the Riggers Forum, see the member communication section of the PIA web site at www.pia.com. As for now, you must be a rigger to view the messages and I recommend all riggers to check it out. This forum is an invaluable resource and keeps the knowledge base for riggers growing.