Parachuting

“ Immediately it releases the cords that hold the parachute in folds and the silk spreads out in the form of an immense umbrella. The air, getting under this, acts as a brake, and the person comes to the ground much more gently than otherwise would be the case. Even with the parachutes, however, there is danger in the fall, if it happens to be in a tree, and often there is peril in falling into the water. ”

“ Thus the parachute was instrumental in saving many lives during the Great War, and in peace times it will probably be further developed for use in connection with the airplane as well as the balloon. Here the great difficulty lies in the fact that the pilot is strapped in his seat, and that he would not have time, in case of an accident in mid-air, to unstrap himself and attach a parachute device to his body. This might be overcome by having an apparatus already attached, so that all he would have to do would be to free himself from his seat and leap over the side. ”

“ Now the parachute, where the weight of the car, of the attaching cords, and the wrigglings of the aeronaut, is in equilibrium with the expansion—the parachute, which seems to have no other aim but to moderate the shock in falling—the parachute even has been found capable of being directed, and aeronauts who have practised it, take care not to forget it. ”

“ Monsieur Nadar writes on this point as follows:—
“Let us consider the action of the parachute.
“A parachute is a sort of umbrella, in which the handle is replaced at its point of insertion by an opening intended to ease the excess of air, in order to avoid the strong oscillations, chiefly at the moment at which it is first expanded. Cords, departing symmetrically from divers points of the circumference, meet concentrically at the basket in which is the aeronaut. ”

“ The rapidity of the descent is arrested by the large surface which the parachute presents to the air. When the aeronaut wishes to descend by the parachute, all that is required is, after he has slipped down from the car of the balloon to that of the parachute, to loosen the rope which binds the latter to the former, which is done by means of a pulley. In an instant the aeronaut is launched into space with a rapidity in comparison with which the wild flights of the balloon are but gentle oscillations. ”

“ Now let us consider for a moment the urgent need for a parachute which is free from such faults. The man who goes up in a balloon on a Saturday afternoon feels so sure of his "craft" that he thinks he needs no "lifeboat," yet men in ordinary free balloons have been killed for want of them. The spectators at country fairs no longer appreciate a parachute descent as a great and extraordinary [Pg 303] spectacle. But in warfare, with kite balloons by the dozen, with dirigible balloons by the score and aeroplanes by the hundred, the call for parachutes is urgent and irresistible. ”

“ Sometimes the aeronaut makes his descent by means of the parachute, a separate and distinct contrivance. If, from any cause, it appears impracticable to effect a descent from the balloon itself, the parachute may be of the greatest service to the voyager at the present day it is chiefly used to astonish the public, by showing them the spectacle of a man who, from a great elevation in the air, precipitates himself into space, not to escape dangers which threaten him in his balloon, but simply to exhibit his courage and skill. ”

“ Well, I felt sick all over as I looked at him there, and I understood why the balloon had taken longer to right itself, and why George had called after me to ride her down. Should I cut loose with the parachute, the bag would at once turn upside down, empty itself, and begin its swift descent. The only hope lay in my riding her down and in the boy holding on. There was no possible way for me to reach him. No man could climb the slim, closed parachute; and even if a man could, and made the mouth of the balloon, what could he do? ”

“ PARACHUTE (from Ital. parare, to shield, protect; cf. “ parasol,” “ parapet,” and Fr. chute, a fall) , an instrument more or less resembling a large umbrella, which by the resistance it offers to the air enables an aeronaut attached to it to descend safely from a balloon or flying machine in the air. The principle of the parachute is so simple that the idea must have occurred to persons in all ages. ”

“ Bill dragged himself on to the back of his seat, which, now due to the plane’s almost vertical position, had become a small, horizontal platform. With a hand on the pull ring of his parachute pack, he dived head first over the cockpit’s cowl into the open ether.
The approved types of parachutes are the manually operated free type. A “free” type parachute is one that is complete in one unit, strapped to the person of an aviator by a suitable harness, and one that has no attachments whatever to the aircraft. ”

“ The usual method is to insert the parachute, properly folded for use, in a containing case which is fastened either in the car or on the side of the envelope as is most convenient. In a small ship the crew are all the time attached to their parachutes and in the event of the ship catching fire have only to jump overboard and possess an excellent chance of being saved. In rigid airships where members of the crew have to move from one end of the ship to the other, the harness is worn and parachutes are disposed in the keel and cars as are lifebuoys in seagoing vessels. ”

“ A descending balloon half-full of gas either does rise, or can with a little management be made to rise, to the top of the netting and take the form of a parachute, thus materially lessening the rapidity of descent. Wise, in fact, having noticed this, once purposely exploded his balloon when at a considerable altitude, and the resistance offered to the air by the envelope of the balloon was sufficient to enable him to reach the ground without injury. In more recent times the use of the parachute has become fairly common, but a good many serious accidents have occurred. ”

“ Tom cried, for there was one of these life-savers for every person on board. As you know, all the mail-plane fliers now wear these “umbrellas,” as do all army fliers. The parachute is made from a particular kind of raw silk cloth. It can be folded into a very small compass, and is strapped around a flier’s body by means of leather belts going around his legs and waist. On the waist belt is an iron ring, and as the person jumps from a burning plane, or one that is crippled and falling, this iron ring is pulled. ”

“ But although the construction of a parachute is very simple, and the resistance it will meet with from the air in its descent, its size and load being given, can be exactly determined on scientific principles, few have ventured to try it; which may be owing partly to ignorance, or inattention to the scientific principles by which it is governed, and partly to a growing opinion among aeronauts, that it is unnecessary, the balloon itself, in case of its bursting, forming a parachute ”

“ The man is not suspended directly from the small disc to which the tapes are attached but by a non-spinning sling which contains a shock absorber. This latter consists of a number of strands of rubber and it is owing to its action that the aviator who trusts his life to the parachute suffers little or no shock; even when the instant opening of the parachute begins to arrest his fall. And not only does it save him from shock, but it also avoids the possibility of too great a stress coming suddenly upon the parachute or its rigging of tapes. ”

“ TREE SEEDS THAT HAVE PARACHUTES
It is a thrilling moment when the man who goes up with the balloon lets go at last, and drops to the ground. Before he drops, an umbrella-like parachute opens, and by its aid, he comes to the ground gracefully, slowly, and alights unhurt. Should anything go wrong with his parachute he would drop to his death, so every onlooker is anxious as he comes down, and breathes a sigh of relief when the wonderful feat is accomplished. ”

“ The parachutes must be placed so far apart that the current may act fairly on each, and the sum of the pressures forms the force which draws the rope through the water. The moment, however, that any parachute has passed round the return pulley, the current acts upon it in the opposite direction. It then shuts up like an umbrella, and assumes a volume so small that its resistance on the return journey is insignificant. After passing round the drum at the upper end, it at once opens afresh of its own accord, and once more becomes part of the moving power of the whole system. ”

“ The resistance of the air will now balance the weight on the descending surface, and, consequently, it cannot exceed that speed. Now, twenty-two feet per second is the velocity acquired at the end of a fall of eight feet—a height from which a well-knit man or animal may leap down without much risk of injury. Therefore, if a man with parachute weigh together 143 lbs., spreading the same number of square feet of surface contained in a circle fourteen and a half feet in diameter, he will descend at perhaps an unpleasant velocity, but with safety to life and limb. ”

“ It is very commonly supposed that the parachute, in anything like its present form, is a very modern device, and that the art of successfully using it had not been introduced to the world even so lately as thirty years ago. ”

“ In cases of engine failure the aviator can very often glide down safely to the earth; while in wartime, there is always the possibility that if the wings of the airplane were damaged by enemy fire the parachute also might be impaired.
An interesting use of the parachute was made by bombing airplanes and Zeppelins during the Great War. The pilots of these craft dropped flares or lights attached to parachutes, and by means of these they succeeded in locating their objectives and at the same time in “blinding” the operators of searchlights and anti-aircraft guns. ”

“ Ten years later, service type parachutes had been perfected which were [94] strong enough to stand any strain the weight of a man’s body falling through the air could place on them, no matter how many thousand feet he fell before releasing the parachute from its pack; and today, fifteen years after Capt. Berry made the first jump from an airplane, every army and air mail pilot is required to wear a parachute.
The test flight over, we lashed a five gallon can of gasoline on each wing and followed along the Gulf of Mexico to Pascagoula, Mississippi. ”

“ A weight of one pound, suspended from an area of this extent, would acquire a velocity due to a fall of sixteen feet—a height sufficient for the destruction or injury of most animals. But when the plane is urged forward horizontally, in a manner analogous to the wings of a bird during flight, the sustaining power is greatly influenced by the form and arrangement of the surface.
‘In the case of perpendicular descent, as a parachute, the sustaining effect will be much the same, whatever the figure of the outline of the superficies may be, and a circle perhaps affords the best resistance of any. ”

“ Let the strings be 2 feet long: fasten them to the loop; gather them together; wind them round the colour, above the pulley; fold the parachute neatly, and bring the edges down over the strings, nearly to reach the pulley: this will keep the parachute a little open, and help it to expand. Both the tissue paper and the glazed lining should be well rubbed, to get the stiffness out of them. To ascertain how a parachute will act, the learner can take the colour case, and stop one end with plaster, fill up with sand, and stop the other end with plaster. Fire it in the day time. ”

“ Occasionally, the descent of the parachute would be arrested by a sudden vicious upswing of a wind channel, as though Kuan Yu, the God of War were striking out with his fists, flaying the very air itself even as the entire earth was being churned by his huge iron heels. ”

“ A parachute is a thing that you fall out of a balloon with. It is something like an open umbrella, only nobody ever borrows it. If you hold a parachute over your head and drop out of a balloon, it will hold you up so that you will come down to the ground so gently that you won't be hurt the least bit. ”

“ The drop test consisted of attaching a service-packed parachute to a 120- pound weight or canvas-covered dummy, and loading the weights or dummies into a C-47 (Dakota) airplane. A 30-foot lanyard, with snap- hooks at both ends connected the parachute's ripcord grip to the airplane inside the door. The door was lashed open before takeoff. Each of the two men on the test crew wore a parachute and was also secured to the airplane frame by heavy belts as a precaution against falling out. ”

“ And just as the old-fashioned steam-ships were provided with boats, in which the passengers were expected to take refuge, if the ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vessels are supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and in case of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to each parachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descend gently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as much adroitness as a sea-gull. ”

“ As it descends the air inside and beneath it is first pushed downwards and compressed a little, then it commences to move outwards, towards the edge, round which it finally escapes to fill the slight vacuum in the space just above the descending parachute. All this the air objects to do because of its inertia. The parachute has to force it to act thus and in that way it uses up some of the force of gravity which all the time is pulling the man earthwards. ”