Tailgate hang-up

[guest]

Marta recently posted about one of her students having a tailgate hang-up at Twin Falls. With the kind of openings you get slider down I can't understand how a small rubber band can hold the force of the brake lines at inflation.

Anyone like to enlighten me? Is it possible that the new super strong black bands that have recently been issued could begin to cause problems?

Cheers,

Craig

[BASE359]

I made a jump in Moab in late December 99 and experienced a TailGate hangup. I had left my red "regulation" style TailGate at home, so I made one out of some 900lb dacron that I had handy.
I didn't take time to fingertrap or even burn the ends, so it would not unravel(First mistake). After several jumps, the ends were getting pretty frayed, but I kept jumping it, because it had worked so well up to this point(Second mistake). On the jump in question, I was last off, hand held, and had quite an audience in the landing area, all with their own version of events. However, I am going to have to go with my version because it was so up close and personal. The TailGate rubber band had wound itself up into the frayed ends of the 900lb (watch someone with long hair try to roll a rubber band out of their hair and see what happens. The rubber band was very tangled in one side of the TailGate, upon inspection after landing.) and refused to depart until the steering lines had been drawn across it several times. I had used the TailGate stowing method that uses the least amount of lines and all of these were affected by the hangup. Most of the jumpers on the ground said it looked like a line over, but I am 100% positive that it was not. I kept the canopy pointed away from the wall with LR riser, then pulled the toggles twice, the rubber band released and I then flew to a normal landing.
I would recommend that everyone learn from my mistakes and avoid the use of sub-standard BASE components

BASE359

[guest]

I saw a tailgate hang up last week on a low object.

The jump was a PCA, with both the jumper in question and the PC holder having tons of experience (well over 500 jumps each).

The tailgate did not use the new rubber band. The canopy was not a main stream (i.e. Fox or Mojo) canopy, but was BASE specific and appears to be working quite well for a variety of BASE jumps.

I'm not sure what caused the hang up (we all scratched our heads and speculated), but it couldn't have been the new rubber bands. The gate was triple wrapped, so it might have been the tight wrapping combined with the low airspeed (static line) deployment.

Anyone with more ideas about what could cause this?

--Tom Aiello

[Yuri]

Yo !

There is little i can add to what Tom has said. From my point of view (under canopy) the hang-up lasted between half a second and a second (much like a slider-up opening) and cleared by itself. The rubber-band was standard, but they vary a lot and this one was on the tighter side. It has been tied to the tailgate using Lars head knot and then tripple-wrapped. This combination would have been fine for a freefall jump but obviously proved too tight for a PCA.

On another subject, i have finally seen and jumped BR's new V-Tec mesh-mod Fox. This technology is an absolute must-have for low-altitude slider-down jumps, but it adds a lot even if you go higher. Slider-down pressurisation is unbelievable, you get an instant canopy that is controllabe right away. Now you can turn your canopy away from the wall faster and without stalling.

V-Tec also lets you sink the canopy better, it doesn't rock near the stall point and the point itself feels deeper. Some accuracy canopies had openings in the bottom skin for same reasons, so it's a time-proven concept.

Overall, the difference is so radical that jumping a BASE canopy without mesh-mod is now like jumping an old Cruislite in the era of first Mojos and Foxes. I would recommend to retrofit your old Fox, as long as BR doesn't mind to clean their cutting tables ;-)

bsbd!

Yuri.