'r#jt,3lll"o,,', - Parachute Industry Association

MEMBERS:
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
John LeBlanc Chair
Sandy Reid Co-Chair
Cliff Schmucker
George Galloway
Performance Designs
Rigging Innovations
SSK Industries, Inc.
Precision Aerodynamics
The committee met at 3:00pm on Saturday,
September 14, 1996. All voting members were
present, as were several other interested people who
contributed much to the meeting. We went through
the various projects and updated everyone on
progress made, the highlights of which are
described below.
The purpose of the Technical Committee shall be to
draft technical documents, recommended
procedures, and safety bulletins for approval by the
general membership. The Committee will also
coordinate its investigations and information with
outside technical groups as appropriate, and release
its finding to the public, and the parachuting and
aviation communities.
DISCLAIMER
PIA rules provide that: "All technical reports,
including standards approved and practices
recommended, are advisory only. Their use by
anyone engaged in industry or trade or their use by
governmental agencies is entirely voluntary. There
is no agreement to adhere to any PIA standard of
recommended practice, and no commitment to
conform to or be guided by any technical report. In
formulating and approving technical reports, the
PIA and its committees will not investigate or
consider patents which may apply to the subject
matter. Prospective users of these documents are
responsible for protecting themselves against
liability for infringement of patents."
PROJECT ID NUMBER: TC-004
PROJECT NAME: EQUIPMENT AGING
STUDY
COORDINATOR: GeorgeGalloway
PROJECT GOAL/PURPOSE: To study the
degradation of strength and performance of modern
equipment due to exposure to the environment and
of modern parachuting equipment
CURRENT STATUS: We are continuing to jump
parachutes we put in various jumping environments
approximately | % years ago. The documenting of
the jumps has been simplified compared to the
original format, mainly for practical reasons.
Several samples of fabric have been collected from
the canopies at periodic intervals, but they haven't
been tested yet. There are still no harness and
containers in the study. The various manufacturer
representatives attending the meeting discussed the
practicalities and limitations of such a test program.
Unfortunately, we were unable to improve the
approach, nor could we justiff scrapping the
project. Work continues.
PROJECT ID NUMBER: TC-016
PROJECT NAME: Round Canopy Damage
Study
COORDINATOR: Manley Butler
PROJECT GOAL/PURPOSE: To study the
incidents of round canopy failures to deterrnine the
causes.
PROJECT BACKGROUND: A letter from Dan
Poynter several years ago prompted this project. In
his capacity as an expert witness in several lawsuits,
he has noticed several instances ofround canopy
damage that seem to form a pattern. He had seen
enough of this that he felt it warranted further
investigation. After several years of inactivity on
this project, we considered scrapping it.
However, Manley Butler volunteered to champion
the project approximately a year ago.
STATUS: Unfortunately, Manley's attempts to find
reliable information on these reported failures have
not been successful. Therefore, the committee
decided that this project be placed on an inactive
status.
Para NewsBrief - December 1996
PNBNEW96