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So I recently purchased another rig. However, it does not have a tailgate. Its a fox245 vented. I am still pretty new to the base, about 60 jumps. I have only ever jumped rigs with tailgates and really dont know anyone who doesnt have one, especially for low cliffs. I bought this one from switzerland, so mainly slider up jumps. It looks like she used direct slider control instead of the tailgate. Just curious on anyones opinion on jumping canopies without tailgates off of low stuff, sliderdown. Thanks.

Not using a tailgate is bad news
Take you rig to a rigger and have one installed, it's pretty easy.
Until then just use masking tape, one inch wide is good, 3 raps, center c's d's and all the brake lines just like a tailgate.

hope this helps

Gary

Masking tape. 3 wraps of the tailgate lines just below the attachment points.

Works fine.

Edit to add: I type slow.

What everybody said - masking tape does the job well. You can also larkshead a tailgate onto the line with a rubberband. But you will be loosing them every 5-10 jumps. One think you should NOT do is jump slider down WITHOUT the tailgate.

Miles D has hundreds upon hundreds without a tail gate and has told me he has never had any line overs.

"It will force you to pack neat. and if you pack neat than you don't need one"--- MD

That's roughly equivalent to saying "not wearing a seat belt will force you to drive well, and if you drive well, you'll never need one."

Are you sure? You've carefully checked the top foot or so of both center C lines and see no inserted line or stitching?

Tailgates were standard on all FOX canopies before the Vtec mod was offered on those canopies. Unless it was some weird retrofit of a very old canopy, there's no way a canopy would have come out of the factory in that configuration.

Direct slider control (slider up) and tailgate (mostly slider down) are generally used in different situations.

Miles uses "tail burying" method as a "natural tailgate" to properly sequence the expansion of cells and the tail. Basically, you put the side cell folds on top of the tail, not underneath it. I started using this method after learning it from him and I like it - it totally makes sense. I still use masking tape in addition to this.

Yes and thats exactly how I do it too (minus the tape). Its a very nice way of packing in my opinion.

And when I finaly end up making a tail gate I will use it too.

but there are other drivers out there that can crash into you.

I use that method and i like it. It was taught to me by someone who was also taught by Miles D.

I also learned to pack like that directly from Miles D. Note that Miles will instruct you on the use of a tailgate if you are taking his course, he just chooses not to use one. Miles has a couple of jumps under his belt, all with minimal injury, so he is certainly doing something right. He definitely conveys the importance of meticulous packing to his students.

Hey Yuri. I pack like that, but without burying the last to folds of the tail, so I have the centercell with the tailpocket to lay ontop of it. How do you get the lines into the tailpocket when you pack like that, and have the centercell with the tail pocket under the folds? Am I missing something?

Simon

No it's roughly equivalent to saying "I have some understanding how a tarp opens"

Talking about tailgates...probably one of the coolest things ever invented in BASE: Simple, elegant and efficient.

Anne and I jumped this A in San Diego this past Saturday. I went first and she told me that my opening was great but it just looked different like the tail was very "retarded". At first she thought it was the tailgate releasing a bit late. But then when we were packing she saw the way I was micro-reefing (similar to what Yuri has shown) and she goes "that's why your canopy opened that way!".

I told her how I came up with the idea of this pack job. I'm not calming to have invented it but I stared it doing it before I saw anybody else doing it. Then I told her that Miles has several hundreds of jumps with that pack job and he does not use a tailgate. At first (like 5 seconds) she was a bit shocked then she said that she could totally see how this pack promotes nose-first inflation. I still use a tailgate. FYI the tailgate was developed by Anne and Tod after Anne had a nasty line-over off a A and got bruised up pretty bad (she did not brake a bone thought!).

It wasn't that long ago when there were no "tailgates" and pin rigs were black death. I've got hundreds of slider down jumps without a tailgate....you're not guaranteed to have a lineover if you don't have one. But yes, tailgates do help.

I can definitely see and appreciate how really
clean and neat packing prevents many problems.

However, I do not understand why someone
wouldn't use a tailgate or masking tape?

Cost-Benefit-Analysis

- Using one requires a moment of effort
+ Using one might prevent a line-over

+ Not using one saves me 20 seconds
- Not using one might cause an injury

Occam's razor

IIRC, Marty Tilly developed the tailgate while working at BR.

BASE359

Simon, you just expose the tailpocket by pulling the folds covering it apart and stow the lines as usual, then re-close the folds.

Simon,
It is also easy to put the lines into the pocket before you make the fold. This seems to be slightly easier for me than doing it after the folds. Just a thought.

Cool.. Thanks.. I'm gonna try that. So when you are done the lines are kinda in the middle of the packjob instead of on top of it, if you know what I mean.
That makes sence, as to keeping the tail restricted during deployment.

Simon

totally the wrong context

you probably mean K.I.S.S.

you beat me to it.

  If I remember correctly, Tailgate was designed to resist tail inversions that created line burns on the trailing edge. Not to resist lineovers.
I am a rigger. I really don’t care about line burns on the trailing edge. I WILL repair them when needed.
If a Tailgate could guarantee an on heading opening, I would use it. It apparently does reduce the occurrence of tail inversions, which can be a factor in the sequence of a lineover. But not the decisive factor IMHO. I really try my best to do my slideroff jumps on scenarios that allow for offheadings and lineovers. within my skill range.
Those jumps that are out of my skill range, I normally don’t do (so often anymore). I do stand on the edge and consider if I have a blahblah, can I handle it and if not, is it worth it?. On every jump, slider up or down.
The Tailgate in my opinion is the AAD of slider down/off BASE.
This is only my opinion of course.
Please research and present stats that convey the idea as a statistical fact that a Tailgate is beneficial to BASE longetivity.
That being said by me. I do not think that a Tailgate is negative in itself. Only the way that some jumpers use it in lieu of judgement of the jump itself.
Take care,
space

This statement From a post by Todd S over at Blinc. Leads me to believe that the tail gate was geared towards line overs. The way I understand it is that tail inversion can lead to line overs. Tail inversion is undesirable but the main focus was the line over. So if you nip the cause in the bud you kill two birds with one stone. Line overs are the bastard child of severe tail inversion.

Tail Gate- That is ours. We designed it. We tested it. We GAVE it to the BASE community and our competitors. This was a bad business discussion to give it away with no patent. But we felt it would save lives and that was worth the loss of dollars.
Were other people working on other systems? I would think so. People were getting hurt even dying from line-overs. I am sure others were working on it. But at the time the best the field had come up with was masking tape.

I remember reading a post by DW, stating that the tailgate was not designed to reduce lineovers, as much as it is designed to promote nose-first inflation. Reduction of lineovers is a result...

If you look at the inflation of a slider down tarp w/out tailgate you have three possible scenarios:

1: The nose expands first
2: The nose and tail expand almost simultaneously
3: The tail expands first

When the latter occurs, the chances of getting a line over are greatly enhanced if not guaranteed. However most of the times, line-overs clear themselves and when they don't, well people got hurt or worse because let's face there is not much time to release the toggle, steer clear from the object and then find a spot to land. Moreover during line-over episodes the tarp is usually spinning.

According to the people at BR, the tailgate was developed to get rid of line-overs. It's kinda like a chicken-egg thing, i.e. promoting nose fist inflation vs. preventing line-overs and if you think about it the two go hand-in-hand so really there is not a necessity to make a sharp difference.

Edited for drunken spelling!

i can handle and understand the poor spelling, as it really is not important. but this continuous misuse and/or blatant misunderstanding of common catch phrases is killing me.

i.e. "you nip it in the bud"

and things go "hand in hand" unless it's mortal kombat.

laugh with me people... it's funny.

Sometimes you just gotta cut the guys with doctorates a little slack.

I was wondering how you guys (Nick-Yuri-Miles-Calvin-whomever packs this way) fold the other nose cells to be hidden by the center cell. I agree with this pack job and want to try it out this weekend

the idea of this packjob is to expose the nose and retard the tail, giving nose first inflation.

compared to a normal classic packjob, the nose stays the same on mine.

I do fold the ears into the final folds as if they were 'rolled' into it, and 'pre-strip' the center cell.

I was actually referring to an old post that yuri had made which shows pictures of this packjob in the tray. He exposes the center nose cell, but to me it seems as if the rest of the nose is buried in the packjob.

ahh... ok,

I was taught by the same person who taught me the tail-enclosure packjob to S-fold the outside 3 nose cells on each side to the outside, then lay the center nose cell on top of these,well exposed, for slider off and slider up. (NOT wrapping it around the packjob, as this could possibly 'un-tuck' unevenly causing uneven extraction and inflation)

There are also other variables in your opening that are out of your control.

I see no downside to using the tailgate--only upside. Why not stack the deck in your favor?

I use a tailgate and pack with the tail burried.

What is the process for pre-stripping the center cell.

Lay the canopy down, from the bridle attachment side reach under the canopy and find the nose of the center cell, pull it, then "walk" the whole chord of the center cell, continuing to tension it. (what for? - to set the symmetric split of the packjob, to avoid having parts of the center cell distributed asymmetrically on left and right sides). Finally, pull on bridle as hard as you can (it helps to clamp the lines together at the bottom of the canopy so they do not spread out). The end result is, when you made all your folds (but before you put canopy in container), if you pull on bridle as hard as you can, nothing moves inside the packjob.

BASEHoundSam showed me a technique this weekend for doing this that involved folding the (mostly packed) canopy over in half on itself and pulling the center cell out to equalize it one fold at a time. It was super slick. Maybe he can chime in and explain his technique.

does this method also work with a multi-point attachment?

it seems like it would be pulling on the 2 sides

??

I don't know, I've never used Multi. But the idea is simple: why let stripping happen at deployment time when you can do it on the ground and build the packjob around it. Experiment!

Yuri...

have you ever rolled the outside a,b,c,d's under the tail pocket? vs. rolling them over?

seems to me to roll them under the tail pocket that it leave the back of the canopy clear of any snag points?

I have a friend that recommends a differential stow, but I've never used it. Always tailgate.

Also seems to me that with a multi that stripping the center cell might be possible...

does stripping it make a difference with heading. HAve you done ....oh don't know 10 stripped jumps and 10 non?

IMHO, Stripping hangs there with global warming caused by CO2,
A myth. Kill me. Don't be a sheep.
But, one should always strive for betterment.
"yea Joe, rest his soul, died because of strippage"
take care,
space
(I know I am sounding like an old fart)

when you get to the nose, roll or fold the 3 outside cells into the center symetrically. Then pull the nose around the corners of the canopy, making sure not to pull the outside cells with it. I then wrap the outside edges of the center cell underneath the canopy to hold the outside cells in place.
On a side not I think this pack job gives faster sub-terminal slider up openings, just a theory as of yet...

I don't know for sure. I hate to sound like an expert, because I'm not. These little packing tricks are just something that makes sense to me, I did not actually perform a statistical analysis. To find out if burying the tail actually helps to fight lineovers, one would need monotonously make hundreds, if not thousands of identical jumps - half with the method and half without. Same for heading performance. Since I'm lazy, I just fool myself into thinking that things that simply make sense are good.

Hi Paul,
is that you? If you are taking about the rigg you bought from me - Wioletta then it DOES have a tailgate. Have a look. E mail me if you have questions. Cheers
Wioletta

and god help you if you need any help from her.......

I would not be sending that email Paul...

yep, i did find it about 2 minuets after i made that post. it was a little white spec on the left c-line. Thanks for the info everyone, i'll be at twinn this weekend. It would be nice to see someone do that pre-stripp technique, it makes sense talking about it. I'm easy to find, new rig has vertigo base all over it and i am normally chasing around my little girl while trying to pack.

Why is that?
What's the story behind your anger?

I had to laugh realy just a tiny little bit when I read your post but I hope you forgive me and we are still friends

It's a shit story really