Your right about high and low speed bail outs. I did not get any
crotch burns during my bail out with a canopy in a bag.

I was addressing the comments about round canopy inversion which I
never saw with the round chutes in a bag.

Big John
************************************************** *****

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:35:33 -0500, "Tim Mara"
wrote:

there are high speed parachutes and low speed parachutes.....we use low
speed parachutes for emergency parachutes in gliders....and everyone thinks
at first...."hey, I'm pretty fast I want a high speed parachute"
.....wrong....
low speed parachutes (150MPH or less) mean they open quickly..High speed
parachutes (with delayed opening (150MPH or higher) so they don't explode or
rip themselves off your back along with appendages...when you suddenly bail
out of your F18....
tim

Please visit the Wings & Wheels website at www.wingsandwheels.com

Tech Support wrote in message
.. .
Will use this post to add some data.

In 1968, when I had to use a military chute, they packed the chute by
folding the canopy and then pulling it into a long slim bag. Pilot
chute was attached to top end of bag. When rip cord was pulled, pilot
chute came out and pulled the bag, with the canopy in it, full
extended and then the shroud lines extended. When lines full out the
weight and air resistance of pilot let the pilot chute pull the bag
off the canopy which then deployed.

I had access to Air Force accident reports and never saw where a
canopy did not deploy properly. We were never told this packing system
delayed the full deployment of chute and reduced the altitude at which
it could be deployed safely.

Any idea why the round glider chutes are not packed this way?

Big John
************************************************** **************

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:06:44 GMT, Eric Greenwell
wrote:

Gregg Ballou wrote:

At 23:58 09 December 2008, Eric Greenwell wrote:

Are there published tests for opening times?

http://books.google.com/books?id=2Po...sult#PPA235,M1
Hope the link works. Read pages 234 and 235. There is info on
deployment
speed and reliability. I rest my case.

Now I'm confused. I don't have notes from my March 2008 calls, but
before I made my purchase, I talked to two major parachute
manufacturers, one of which makes a ram reserve, and also a well known
rigger. What I recall is they all encouraged me to stick with the round
parachute for my glider. One reason I recall was the round emergency was
more tolerant of body position during opening. These same people also
made similar comments to the ones made here about the advantages of the
round emergency for the untrained "jumper" (like me - I'm just a pilot).

Another issue I think recall correctly, was I could find only one
company supplying a ram air parachute that they claimed was suitable for
the "lightly" trained pilot looking for an emergency parachute. I wasn't
persuaded by what they said on their website that it's advantages were
small and might not actually exceed the disadvantages.

There was puzzling statement on page 235 of Poynters book:

"Round canopies blow up more often, possibly 30% in normal use."

This sounds incredible for certified emergency parachutes, and it makes
me wonder if he is even talking about the same thing I am, where "normal
use" is 20 years as a seat cushion, and very rarely, only one jump in
it's entire service life. My perception is round emergency parachutes
function properly with failure rates far less than 30%.