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What are the pros & cons of using rising covers in B.A.S.E. jumping?

I have never heard any cons... so i dont know why i'm commenting.

I could think of a few though...

cons-harder to inspect a 3-ring or L-bar, could -possibly- come open asymmetrically, creating asymetric loading and inflation.

pros-protects 3-ring, 'stealth'

edit- all my gear, freinds gear, and every rig i can remember jumping has had riser covers. no problems noticed.

This was the con that I was most concerned about. Does anyone know if this is a real con or a perceived con?

 

I dont think that the PC ever actualy opens the riser covers, I think it is the parachute opening, after linestretch. but just a guess.

I seriously doubt that air going into the container (I assume you mean the lack of a riser cover could make the shoulder yoke of the rig act like an air intake) has ever mattered. the container is way to tight for that to do aything. again just a guess. a serious guess...

When the pin rigs first came out almost all the BASE rig manufacturers had trouble, to the point of tearing their hair out, with their first generation version of riser covers. Riser covers have to be rigid enough to stay in place prior to jumping but pliable enough to always release on deployment. And that was easier said than done.

Keeping in mind earlier Velcro closed BASE rigs had no riser covers it might be said they are only on today's pin rigs for cosmetic purposes, but to make sure, let's look at the history of riser covers . . .

When skydiving first changed over from gut gear (reserve on the front, main on the back) to piggybacks (both on the back) they somehow had to route the main risers out of the lower main container, up passed the reserve, and over the shoulders of the jumper. Most did just that only adding a small Velcro tab to hold things in place. Basically just think a modern skydiving rig without riser covers at all. In the below photo I'm wearing an early Wonderhog set up this way.



Soon however, there started to be problems. The steering toggles and stowed excess brake line were actually on the outside of the container. And in a funnel, or just due to sloppy stowing, a toggle, the excess brake line, or both, could come out in freefall. It would then trail above the jumper and present a serious problem on deployment. I remember one jumper who had this problem pointed out to him in freefall and he panic pulled his reserve and the resulting entanglement killed him. This is the reason older jumpers are so anal about securely stowing excess steering lines and even with the current style of skydiving riser covers I shudder when I see jumpers not stow the excess steering line at all.

Anyway, the skydiving manufacturers did a big, "Whoa," and decided to cover the risers. There first attempts were mostly Velcro closed covers and we had those for years and they weren't all that much better than nothing. The Velcro would wear out after 50 to a hundred jumps and you had to remove the reserve from the container to apply new Velcro. I had a Racer where the covers would flop open in freefall all the time.

Meanwhile, the first Velcro closed single canopy BASE containers were starting to come out and they were more like the early gut gear skydiving main containers and thus didn't really need riser covers. Except they did because now we were using the Three Ring setup and normal handling would always pull a bit of the risers out of the container and we started getting something called Three Ring sag. This was dangerous when climbing around on towers and things due to the snag potential not to mention it messed up your pack job by making the bottom of the risers asymmetrical.

We sort of put up with that until the pin rigs came out. And the first "BASE" riser covers on those just trapped the riser against the top of the wearer's shoulder and the Three Rings were out in the open. The problem is we first went with less is more, which is a laudable BASE tenet, but the smaller the cover the stiffer it had to be to stay in place. On short delays jumpers began to worry about a riser cover hang-up and that's where the practice of pre-opening the covers on short delays came from.

Then it was taken into consideration that BASE jumpers sometimes packed in rough field conditions and the Three Ring, especially the little white loop, needed protection. So then we went to the larger covers that now shield the Three Rings too. And one side benefit was a larger cover didn’t need to be so stiff to stay put. However I still see people pre-opening their risers covers at places like the potato bridge. There are so many BASE rigs available now I haven't taken a close look at them all, but I'd imagine most of them work pretty well as designed if they just copy what already works.

I'm also trying to recall if anyone has experienced a riser cover hang-up that actually held through an entire jump, and don’t believe I have but maybe someone else has. Yet, I did hear, in the earlier days, some people say that had momentary hang-ups that gave them off heading openings. But that may have been someone looking for an excuse for their crummy pack jobs.

The worst version of riser covers I ever saw, and I can't recall who was building it, but there was a BASE rig that actually had a metal snap fastener on the riser cover. Sort of like the early Dolphin skydiving rigs had. There a lesson in that being as BASE gets more popular more people are going to start building BASE rigs to make a buck. That's good in a price competition sense, but if they start trying to re-invent the wheel there might be problems an unsuspecting end-user may not notice . . .

NickD
BASE 194

I remember my first Eloy trip, back when in the day when skydiving was cool. A girl had her new rig shipped back because the riser covers would NOT open, I watched her do several jumps where she landed with her head pinned forward, and the rig slightly deformed with the riser covers still stowed.

I think that was one of my first realizations that went-
'holy shit, skydiving gear really IS sketchy... I cant wait to start BASE jumping where everything makes sense and the rig is not controlled by the FAA'

I have had a riser cover hang up momentarily on my skydiving rig quite a few times before mostly on hop n pop no delay type stuff those riser covers are mean to keep things contained while freeflying ect. If you notice most CRW jumpers will exit with their riser covers allready poped for this reason among a few others. I have never had a hang up on my BASE rig and I belive it is because their designs are very different and not intended to serve the same puropse. I have also never heard of a hang up but I suppose anything is possible in this BASE.

I've had just more than a handful of jumps where I landed with one of my two riser covers still closed.

I did not have any noticeable off-headings because of it.

My canopy felt a bit strange, but if you didn't have a few hundred on your canopy you probably wouldn't feel it.

I attribute these riser cover stay-closed incidents to doing gainers and getting the timing just right, resulting in very little to no rotation due to the snatch from opening.

These jumps were mostly slider off, 1-3 second delays.

That's kind of hard to understand.

If your riser cover didn't open and held down a riser low on your main lift web, I would imagine it would cause a big problem. I would think that would result in a canopy that felt a "bit more" than just stange.

Am I not getting something here . . . ?

NickD
BASE 194

are you sure your not talking about the 3-ring covers? on the vertigo warlock, post velcro closed covers, there were 2 seperate tabs that hold the riser cover down, on most of my jumps these lower tapbs stayed stowed/ closed. you might be talking about that.

I would find it hard to beleive that a full riser cover stayed closed on a BASE specific rig, this would be extremely noticeable i think.

would magnetic riser covers "a la Micron" help avoiding the eventual cover hangup at lower speeds ?

When I sat down to design the BaseR, my goals for the riser covers and pin covers, was to have bullet proof protection, but with the easiest deployment. That is why we actually added "Magnets" to our design. The magnets prove to hold up in freefall in all orientations, but yet only need a couple of pounds of force to open.

Most base rigs today have tuck tabs that add a lot of bulk and pressure to the covers. Plus they are all very wide over the shoulder. I wanted soft and narrow over the shoulders that's why the BaseR NOS is so comfortable.

I didn't want to re-invent the wheel, I just wanted to polish the rims and put a wicked set of treads on, then fill it to the right amount of pressure and armor all it! You know give the customers what they want, A BAD ASS MACHINE!

 

I jumped (skydived, but BASE-jumping it is coming) Sonic's rig 3 times so far and today when swapping the canopies I noticed that the 3-rings crawled on the floor and jumped to the riser covers from a couple of inches. MAGNETS!!! Since I've never seen magnetic riser covers before, I examined them closely. And I liked what I saw. The result is basically the slickest shoulder fit I've ever seen. I have a Vertex rig which is also thin, light and comfortable, but it's small on me, and I can feel discomfort. BaseR that I jumped is also smallish on me, but I can't notice it, so comfortable it is. Instead of having three layers of thick Cordura with plastic inserts (flap, the fold holding it, and the pouch holding the fold), there's only two slick covers that snap to each other with magnets.

But my point is not so much about slickness than about importance of equal opening force for the covers. There's thinking that this is not important on more than 2-3s delays. I think it is wrong.

Think about the mechanics of the opening. The container opens, the lines start to pay out from the tail pocket, but the riser covers stay shut, as paying out the free-stowed lines creates no or very little tension. We now have two possible outcomes. 1) The lines pay out evenly, we have a nice symmetric linestretch and the opening shock of a few hundred pounds opens the riser covers instantly and evenly, since the force is so overwhelming. 2) The lines pay out unevenly, some line maybe snagged on the velcro of the tailpocket, or one of the figure-8's knotted with another... we now have some tension on one side that opens one cover while the other stays shut. Depending on the design of the container, the difference in length of the lines for the open side and shut side could be minimal or it could be a few inches. The result could be as bad as a linetwist out of the blue - good body position, good packjob, non-orbiting PC, and yet - a linetwist. Or worse yet, a tension knot.

I think introduction of magnetic riser covers in BASE deserves a Nobel Prize in BASE. I always thought that there's no Nobel Prize in BASE, only Darwin Award (Nick, does this qualify for a nugget? ), but I think magnetic covers is the best idea since the sliced bread.

And the last, but not the least... wearing BaseR near girls with nipple or vagina rings can have amazing results... I had to sneak out of the hangar to preserve my virginity!

First a few comments on risers and such...

I let this putz pack my Mirage G3 for me one time
and went out for a head down skydive, this guy did
NOT stow the excess brake lines, nor did he use the
internal riser covers.

So I am on my head when I noticed something, it is
one of my toggles, spinning around, before I can say
"Oh Fu(K!!" it is wrapped on my wrist.

At the time I did not have a lot of jumps but I quickly
ran through the permutations at light speed, got on
my belly, took it off my hand, pitched and prepared
for my 1st cut-away.

The canopy came out and immediately put me in a
steep diving turn, luckily it was a large canopy and
I was able to easily counter the turn and unstow the
other toggle.

From then I have always been a huge fan of making
sure everything is properly tucked, stowed, etc.

_________________________________________

A couple months ago I got the chance to do some
tandems on the new Sigma with magnet riser covers
and loved it!

Which got me thinking.... The big draw back for a
velcro rig is that velcro wears out and needs to be
replaced, which takes more skill and effort than
just replacing the closing loops in a pin rig.

So what do you guys think of making a rig that
closes with magnets? Of course not for terminal
jumps or flippy dos, but for slider down jumps I
think it might be quite slick. Any thoughts?

I thought about this for a breigf moment when designing the BaseR. The problem is the tension to keep the four flaps closed will be to much for magnets to hold. At least that's how I felt, but you never know, some one may design one and then we could all tell him he's an idiot and that new ideas SUCK and will KILL somebody!

Per the nature of velcro, there is a large amount of force holding the side flaps together. There's also a decent amount holding the top/bottom to the shrivel flap. Velcro only works cause it peels. Magnets couldn't replicate velcro's unique characteristics.

I like the creative idea but here are my thoughts take them as you will. Velcro holds the flaps together because it has a very high shear force when pulling from the side but it opens relatively easy when separated vertically. However magnets have virtually the exact opposite properties.

as I wrote on other forum section already...
Magnets are just ''hook'' for new customers. The reason why they came out is just the ''must do something'' solution from Relative Workshop to their primary screw up on Vector III rig back in 1996 . when the very first Viii made had ''hang up'' problem.
Magnets are heavy, in overall ugly looking and not clean smooth at all. Of course all about the design and look is very subjective. However, I do not like the copy-paste transfer from skyidiving to BASE.
Skydiving equipment looks more and more like cars... shiny but heavier and heavier w no reason for it...

[ However, I do not like the copy-paste transfer from skyidiving to BASE. Skydiving equipment looks more and more like cars... shiny but heavier and heavier w no reason for it...
I was just wondering what you didn't like about it and could you explain better what your were saying here. Thanks.

the reason the riser covers open a combination of pull force on the riser and the direction it is pulling. a head down opening the riser covers wills tay closed until appropriet force vector and amount occures. on a head high, less force is needed to open riser covers, so maybe a pilot chute could open those. It was just a guess though.

IMHO, it would take a lot more than 120mph of airflow to mess up a packjob, lines and all, while its still INSIDE a closed container. as for pin covers, I always though those were for only 2 reasons, high speed freefall airflow protection, and access protection/transport.

I am curious as to whether your riser covers come open and magnet to ladders and railings and such while you are climbing around on towers.

I do not like.
Shape of the rig were the shoulder part is narrower than bottom, since there is no reason for it. It makes packing harder and pack job uglier too.

Narrow joke make no sense, because why not to use wider joke to distribute the weight throughout whole shoulders.

Magnets, what is the point heaving them?! Did we experienced any problem w existing ones?
if you want to make product heavier and more complex and more expensive -OK.
IMHO, magnets does not make the pack job smoother nor more secure.
don't get me wrong, magnet in skydiving rigs are funny too

The Vertigo Warlock and some of their other containers were shaped smaller at yoke as well. I like that. the final folds change, so I thin it is actually easier to pack than a 'box' rig. I also like the way the container looks, more so than the other ones I have seen.

95% of the rigs has this shape w no reason. especially since the secondary inlet is on most of the canopies.
first fold is than just at the top of the tray, resulting in folding the bulkiest part of the canopy to match the narrower part of the tray.... bingo...
no problem for skillful jumpers but for beginner and average ....

hmmm... i think I fold the canopy different into my warlock tray then...

I bring the bootom of the packjob (tailpocket) to the bottom of the tray, then make a half-tray fold, in between the pin grommets, then fold up at the bottom of the container again. then usualy it is just a matter of tucking in the ears of the packjob. this can be done after or before closing top pin.

I agree though, it is easier and simpler to pack a box-tray container.