Basejumper.com - archive

 

It came standard on my WS- Extreme . I have used a bunch with no noticable hesitation.

Morpheus, certainly. I think that Rob at Morpheus developed it.

I've watched video of it in action, and played around with it a fair bit.

My personal opinion at this point (based on perhaps 15 jumps on it, and slow frame video) is that it is a damn good idea. It's pretty much like a tail pocket for your bridle. It stages the bridle in the same way you want to stage the lines.

I'll write more later when I have more time.

[replyI'll write more later when I have more time.
Any chance of a few pictures too Tom?

.

Here is a pic from the Morpheus web site.

Why isn't this pocket installed on PC's end of the bridle, much like a tail pocket on the canopy? With existing setup, I can see the potential for PC hesitation in small delay jumps if the bridle snags around the bottom corner of the container, turning this pocket into additional force distribution point (like 3-ring): corner - one, pocket - two, bridle tucked under the flap - three, and pin - four. Besides causing hesitation, this off-center force can quickly rotate the jumper towards the object, if he is in head high position during deployment.

I wonder if a safer solution would be to simply install small pieces of velcro on the bridle at regular intervals. S-fold the bridle, mating the velcros, and put inside the mushroom.

Yuri

About four years ago I played with the idea of a pocket on the bridle, made a couple samples. The people around here thought it was too much hassel to pack. Maybe attitudes are changing in regard to exta steps/benefits with regard to deployment issues?

I've played with that, too, a little, but haven't had time to actually build anything. I'm not sure if Rob (or anyone else) has done any testing with it.

I found that it was difficult to create a "bridle pocket" with minimal hang-up potential (the fact that it's wobbling makes it harder to predict extraction direction and encourage clean feeding, making it much more challenging to create a good setup) and that doesn't effect the inflation of the PC (because if you don't want the pocket to wobble, you will eventually try attaching it to the PC itself, which looked to be a pretty bad idea when I played with it).



I can see that also. The easiest way to avoid this is to do short delay jumps hand held, and route the bridle over the shoulder.




I tried that, too, as well as using a tailgate rubber band to gather the bridle together.


So far, the Morpheus bridle staging pocket is, in my opinion, the best thing going. That doesn't mean we can't improve on it, though.


I'm not sure that the canopy tail pocket is the right place to look for a model, though. Things are different in the two systems to a significant degree. And don't forget that we usually deploy round canopies with the lines stowed in the pack tray, rather than on the parachute.

Could someone explain a dumb fucker whats wrong with todays setup and what benefits such system gives?
Is it to adress the remote possibility that the bridle wraps around the PC and thus preventing it from inflating?

Yes.

Regardless of how remote the possibility is, bridle/PC entanglement did kill a leading BASE jumper (see #69, on the List), and we would be foolish not to take a hint from that and try to minimize the chances of it happening again. The more lessons we learn from each accident (for example, the floating handle from that accident), the less chance we'll have to experience them again.

Personally, I know 3 cases of this occuring (one is on the list, one cleared after a hesitation, and one landed with a full knot in the bridle). I am absolutely certain there are many more. If we can avoid this problem, I think we ought to.

 

 

Yes. And also about the construction of the PC.

I don't think there's a silver bullet here. I do think that there are lots of incremental improvements to be made in PC deployment and inflation.

Collin,

Is this from a test that you did?

When I played with the Morpheus system last year, practice pitches (on the ground) got the PC all the way to bridle stretch.

Exactly. Both chances are small, but who knows what exactly they are. If, for example, the chance of bridle wrapping around PC is 0.05% and the chance of bridle hang-up in the pocket is 0.5% (both - hypothetical figures), then this bridle pocket is nothing but safety hazzard. Is it possible to measure these figures? I doubt any manufacturer would do thousands of test PC throws in wind tunnel just to determine these probabilities. Unfortunately, some things are impossible to predict until The List claims another test jumper...

If you ask me, anything that keeps bridle on the container when you throw, instead of providing a clean PC-to-pin path, looks scary. I noticed in Keen n' Able in the opening scene (Miles' 1000th jump) that he didn't tuck the bridle under the side flap. Asked Shane why and he said that's to decrease the chance of bridle hang-up on the bottom of container in case of gainer overrotation. Clean path = good, all kinds of contraptions between PC and pin = bad.

Yuri

Are all theese 3 cases WS jumps?

I meant #70 (Lukas Knutsson), as several people had pointed out to me.

Interestingly, I got the number by pulling up www.BASEFatalities.com, which I thought was just a mirror of Nick's site, but which appears to be an out of date copy of the information, with a different set of numbers.

No. Only one of them was WS.

The knot in bridle case was an over-rotated aerial (interesting that it's the same case in which Yuri_BASE is saying this system might be undesirable) in which the pitch was made in a downward direction, and the PC ended up floating back up through a flailing wad of bridle.