Hindsight has 20/20 vision ;-)
Ran a small programm this week to test some systems.
From VX275
When it comes to personell parachute systems you just can not do enough dummy drops first to gain experience at all the corners of the envelope
We conducted several rounds of dummy drops. At the end we were fairly confident, but I have to admit that the first live jumpers still gave me butteflies. I'm a qualified skydiver, but for various reason wasn't a test jumper. I think I would have felt better being a test jumper. All went well, in the sense that there were no emergencies. Buty it wasn't easy just being a spectator..... Somehow felt I was not "putting my money where my mouth was.."
This work up should also include any procedures to be taken in the event of malfunctions. Your hung-up dummy paratrooper will damage your aircraft if you let him
We thought about this long and hard - developed mitigation strategies. Still, the hung-up scenario was scary - for all the theory, we had very little real evidence to go on. Worked OK, but was marginal in that the dummy did swing close to critical control surfaces. At the end of the excercise, the FTE said to me that he'd forgotten what it was like to do a high risk test. Perhaps in comparison to some of the work other members of this forum have done it was very little, but to watch a 75 kg dummy heading towards your fabric control covered control surface ....
From PILOT DAR:
As for the techniques of the actual departure from the aircraft, those are generally established by the jumpers themselves
Very true. I'd trained as a sport skydiver, but I found the military crowd very different in technique.
Overall, the concerning issue was that we did have incidents where canopies contacted the aircraft. And, from video evidence, this is not only restricted to the aircraft we were testing - I have seen it on several in-service types. I still have the feeling that this is a very grey area of the aircraft envelope, and will continue to apply caution.
Thanks for the advice, I did appreciate the imput