First Paradactyl Jump

Thank you for the information on stalling the Dactyl. What would be the difference between a dynamic stall and a stall and how you get out of either one?

Also, regarding the strap....if it hasn't been hotknifed should it stay up near the canopy or come down the lines?

The canopy will first stall sort of like a square. You feel it get mushy then start to fall back. This is a normal stall. To recover from a normal stall just let the toggles up slowly....

Hold a stall for a while(2 to 5 seconds) and it will turn into a dynamic stall. The dynamic stall is as I described in the earlier post. The canopy will dive to one side, the back corners will touch, the canopy will then dive to the other side, the lines will go slack, and you will feel like a rag doll... The canopy will dive to each side. for example to the right, then to the left. The only way to recover it is to turn it to the side it is diving to... i.e. when it dives to the right bury the right toggle. Like I said earlier, do it high if you want to try it. It does make quite an impression on the person doing the stall and the people watching it.

As to the nose slider, if it is not hot knifed, it rides about 5 feet below the nose if I remember right. it doesnt come all the way down. That mod was something Jim Handbury showed me at the 76?77? nationals. I am not sure it made much difference, but the theory was that the nose could open more enabling more stable flight. Did the canopy you jumped have the nose slider(webbing with grommets across lines 2 and 3) along with a regular square type slider?

.....line 1
..... x
.... /..\
...x.....x
line2 line 3

(Sorry for the bad ascii art)

Did you do anything with the steering lines to stow them? If i recall the manual shows a pack job very similar to a flat pack with a square. You lay the canopy flat, with a single keel there would basically be three pieces of material laying flat from the tail to the nose. Then you s fold the canopy from the tail to the nose on each line group, and spread the nose to catch air. Is that how the manual shows to pack it? If i was there I could show you some packing techniques, but I wouldn't want to describe them without demonstrating....[;)

Edited to add:
normal stall recovery instructions...

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The canopy will first stall sort of like a square. You feel it get mushy then start to fall back. This is a normal stall. To recover from a normal stall just let the toggles up slowly....

Hold a stall for a while(2 to 5 seconds) and it will turn into a dynamic stall. The dynamic stall is as I described in the earlier post. The canopy will dive to one side, the back corners will touch, the canopy will then dive to the other side, the lines will go slack, and you will feel like a rag doll... The canopy will dive to each side. for example to the right, then to the left. The only way to recover it is to turn it to the side it is diving to... i.e. when it dives to the right bury the right toggle. Like I said earlier, do it high if you want to try it. It does make quite an impression on the person doing the stall and the people watching it.

Thanks for that information....I'll have to try it out..up high.

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As to the nose slider, if it is not hot knifed, it rides about 5 feet below the nose if I remember right. it doesnt come all the way down. That mod was something Jim Handbury showed me at the 76?77? nationals. I am not sure it made much difference, but the theory was that the nose could open more enabling more stable flight. Did the canopy you jumped have the nose slider(webbing with grommets across lines 2 and 3) along with a regular square type slider?

See the attached...yes, it has the slider as well as the strap. The strap stayed very close to the canopy as you can see from the photo. I didn't experience any inclination of the nose to fold under. Did this mod help in other ways?

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Did you do anything with the steering lines to stow them? If i recall the manual shows a pack job very similar to a flat pack with a square. You lay the canopy flat, with a single keel there would basically be three pieces of material laying flat from the tail to the nose. Then you s fold the canopy from the tail to the nose on each line group, and spread the nose to catch air. Is that how the manual shows to pack it? If i was there I could show you some packing techniques, but I wouldn't want to describe them without demonstrating....[;)

The pack job is as you describe it. I stowed the excess loose steering lines in rubber bands near the cascades on the steering lines. I also stowed the strap in a rubber band that was attached to the front keel line. The strap didn't move downwards very far from there.

I was pretty nervous under this canopy and paying very close attention to my rate of descent. I wanted to be sure it would land me safely or I would have chopped it.

Thank-you very much for all of this information.

>[Thanks for that information....I'll have to try it out..up high.

Be sure you open high. It is a very interesting experience.


>I didn't experience any inclination of the nose to >fold under. Did this mod help in other ways?

I wouldn't hotknife the nose slider, if it is not already done. I think we were just trying to wring more performance out of a low performing canopy(but it was hot at the time). The nose slider will not come down very far. That is normal.


>The pack job is as you describe it. I stowed the
>excess loose steering lines in rubber bands near >the cascades on the steering lines. I also stowed >the strap in a rubber band that was attached to the >front keel line. The strap didn't move downwards >very far from there.

That is a factory pack job. Sounds like you did everything. Always make sure the steering line stows near the cascade clears the rubber band after opening. Once I had a steering line stuck in the rubber band, that poped out on final, and the canopy did a 180. Really scared me, and everyone watching.

>I was pretty nervous under this canopy and paying >very close attention to my rate of descent. I >wanted to be sure it would land me safely or I >would have chopped it.

You should be nervous. They are scary canopies. I much perfer my stilletto or sabre. (I am way to fat to try jumping my dactyl, but if I could find a double keel one .... hmmm)

>Thank-you very much for all of this information.
You are very welcome. I hope you enjoy jumping a piece of history. I never jumped a dactyl with a hand deploy or collapsible pilot chute. I always used a spring loaded pilot chute with a ripcord.

I've done a couple jumps on a double-keel and as I remember it was the one that could go into reverse.
This was 25 years ago so there is a good chance I'm blowing smoke but that's what I remember.
We were putting students out on double-keels and had several land in the lake (after the 1st or 2nd Elsinore flood) and at first we thought it was only women that had this happen (blondes?). They would steer away from the lake and land in it. Naturally we were wrong.

My only jump on a single keel ended successfully after I promised God I would never jump another single-keel again.

I was jumping a Parafoil 252 (too big for me then) and wanted to experience what was so good about the Paradactyl.

Small toggle movements (seemed?) to cause very radical/violent canopy movements/folding. It was also a turbulent day and all in all I was glad to get it over with

The buddy I borrowed the single keel from was also using my rig for that jump and he wasn't at all satisfied with my large canopy; he just didn't talk to God.

Say, John didn't Larry Yohn fly a Paradactyl ?

Yep, that's the one he used when he jumped into the pool.
Ben was upset and didn't want to ground him for life like he'd said he would because Larry was on staff.
So he had to jump T10's for a month.
I remember him landing next to me on one of those jumps and his peg stuck in a gopher hole and he just went BONG; I swear I could hear the vibrations

For a while he was jumping a dactyl as both a main and a reserve. Now that takes size large or no brains.
Sparky

i met larry while he was visitng new jersey in the late 1970s.interesting guy.he was at that time using a paradactyl in his reserve.the late dick morgan of para flite did too while he was in the golden knights except it was one of those irvin para wings.interesting thing,before steve snyder started working with the para wing in1967, irvin was trying to address the hard opening problem.one of their fixes was a really really tight deployment sleeve.our local parawing ownerhad just installed it and packed up for a demo jump at an show.we had very low ceiling and against better judgment,we were making the jump at something like 1300 feet.this guy made his jump and put on a really good show as he bacame the cutaway act!the sleeve was just too damn tight and wouldnt come off the canopy.he cutaway at about 900 feet.was hanging in the saddle around500 .

Wendy, any chance you remember Jim Culhane from old Spaceland? He jumped a Dactyl exclusively
and could land that thing just about anywhere he wanted. Inspired me to get a Dactyl of my very own.

Another guy that jumped triangle canopies exclusively was Bobby Vee at Coolidge. I can't remember if it was a Delta II or a Dactyl but it hurt to watch him land that thing in that high desert air. His landings consisted of a loud thump and a cloud of dust.,

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Jim still jumps here in Houston, although he hurt his back at Rantoul last year, and I haven't seen him other than visiting recently. He said Larry actually got him into Skydiving when they were both in Pennsylvania...

Wendy W.

That's great Jim still jumps, hope his back heals fast. Hope he didn't do it jumping that Dactyl.

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Another guy that jumped triangle canopies exclusively was Bobby Vee at Coolidge.

Before he started jumping "triangle canopies" Bobby was 6' 4" tall.
Sparky

Just curious...what sort of malfunction rate did the dactyls have? If people were using them as reserves as well as mains it makes me think they had to have fewer mals than ParaCommanders. Is this guess borne out by experience?

I remember Lee Wilcox (Livermore Club) jumped an orange 'Dactyl a lot. His landings were always nice. It just had a really short effective flare range. You really had to know precisely how, when, and where to flare. But Lee had it down. Nice gentle standups every time I saw him land it, anyway. Never saw him auger once.