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Hi,

strictly speaking this is not BASE but I thought I'd pick your brains. My CRW canopy doesn't have a tail pocket so I was thinking of ditching the DBag and just free stowing the lines.

From what I can gather you just feed them into the container in the shape of a figure 8.

Apart from this are there any tricks & tips?

Thanks & regards,
Dirty

Nope, that's about it. Try to make each successive '8' a bit smaller than the last, so they can't wrap around each other and knot up.

Some really anal people like to rubber band them in "stows" that aren't attached to anything, but hey, you've got a reserve, right?

It's not to expensive to put a tailpocket on, if you're going to do much of this.

those canopies are designed to fly dirty, don't even open up the wing tail stitch to put a tailpocket on, just sew it through the top and bottom skin, done that on two canopies and it works fine.

The pressure of the cell trying to inflate will tear out the stitching (and tear holes in the canopy fabric) eventually. If you plan on using the same canopy for another 1000 jumps, it's probably worthwhile to actually go to the trouble of sewing just through the topskin.

If longevity isn't a concern, then go for it. I haven't seen any real appreciable difference in flight characteristics.

personally, i would take the 10mins to sew on a tail pocket. although rare, free stowed lines could cause a nasty entanglement with a main flap causing an immediate reserve entanglement upon deployment.

however unlikely, i prefer to avoid that situation. but you should be fine.

I've seen tailpockets sewn onto the tail seem with just a few tacks here and there, also easy to take off with a tread pick.