- If you have enough season like me in Canada,
or you're just simply planning to take a break
from skydiving for a moment,
well you might have wonder,
how can you correctly store your skydiving equipment,
to avoid any damage over time.
Well in this video I'm sharing you the best tips
and advice from actual riggers
on how to best store your skydiving gear.
Coming up.
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Hey there, it's Catherine Bernier from Skydive Vibes,
sharing the passion of skydiving,
and helping you better and safer skydivers.
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All Right, so if you just got you skydiving equipment,
of course, we always want to take good care of our gear.
And so the question that we ask ourselves the most,
is how do I store my gear
to make sure it doesn't get damaged?
And so I wanted to answer that this video.
All right, so the first thing you need to consider
is how long will you actually store it?
If it's a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months,
there's not much you need to do actually
with your equipment.
Simply make sure it's away from kids, bugs, pets,
sunlight, humidity, and you'll be good.
However, if you have enough season like me in Canada,
well you might have to store it even longer.
So up to four and six months.
And so I did ask some riggers
about what is there best advice,
when it comes to storing our equipment.
What I found overall
is that there's no right or wrong answers.
Like, what I'm gonna give you are actually advice
and recommendations, but it's not mandatory to do all that.
However, the golden rule when it comes to storing
your equipment for a certain period of time,
is that when your ready to jump it again,
you gotta make make sure that you bring everything
to your rigger, so that he can inspect
and repack everything,
to make sure that everything is still in good working shape.
This is a very important rule,
because while you were storing it,
you don't know what happened.
If there's mices that came in something like that,
so you wanna make sure that everything is fully operational.
So the first tip I heard from riggers
is to remove the rubber band from the canopy lines.
Those rubber bands can actually cut
your canopy lines over time.
And you don't necessarily need to take
all of your canopy out.
It can remain in the deployment bag.
But you can just remove the rubbers.
Another advice that I was given,
is to remove the pilot chute from it's pouch.
So by doing that we're keeping the elasticness of the pouch.
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So by removing it we're saving the stretchiness
of the pouch, if you know what I mean.
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Next, another thing that you can do,
is to open your riser covers.
Again here, there's some tabs in play,
and by opening them up you're giving them a break
during the period where you're not jumping.
So that can be done as well,
to save your riser covers from getting caught.
Before we continue with the other recommendations,
please hit that Like button, and let me know below,
how do you actually store your skydiving equipment?
And what are the other best advice that you've heard
on how to actually store our equipment.
All right, so now let's get back to the video.
Another advice that I was given,
is to actually unpack your main canopy,
and place it in a sealed tube or bag to protect it.
That could be interesting to do,
but that can end up taking a lot of space.
The last recommendation that I'm hearing a lot,
and that a lot of us skydivers seems to already know,
is to unpack your reserve canopy.
This could help in releasing the tension on the spring
that exists in the reserve pilot chute,
and make sure that we are saving it over time.
However, I was personally recommended not to do that.
Because by opening up your reserve canopy,
well your exposing very sensitive elements
that are actually verified and certified to possible hazard.
So whether it's the canopy itself that could get damaged,
or even the pilot chute spring,
if you end up placing it in a wrong position
you could deform it and then would have to buy another one
when you'll start jumping.
So for that matter,
to avoid any damage on the reserve system,
well my rigger recommended me to just not touch it.
And I think that's a very wise recommendation,
and actually I've heard that the reserve canopies
are made to be stored packed.
So for that matter,
I would recommend not to touch the reserve canopy.
Last year, actually I had to do my AED maintenance,
and for that I needed to pop the reserve out.
And so, I had to actually also store it being deployed.
So as you can see in this video here,
where I did a walk through
about what's inside a skydiving container,
well you can see the different element
of the reserve canopy.
Like the spring in the pilot chute,
but also the risers,
and the fact that the toggles on the reserve has Velcro.
Those are all important details that could actually
damage you reserve canopy.
So I had to take really good care of placing everything,
and making sure nobody would access it,
not to void any certification on my reserve equipment.
So whatever you decide to do
with your skydiving equipment before storing it,
you gotta make sure that nothing could damage it
during the storing time.
So think about direct sunlight, high humidity,
that's not good for your equipment.
Pets and children.
You gotta make sure that they don't have access to it.
So personally, here's how I store my equipment.
So I will most likely put it in a bin.
And I would have opened the riser covers.
I would have removed the rubber bands around my canopy line.
But I keep the canopy in side the deployment bag
to make sure it's not taking too much space.
And I will also remove the pilot chute form its pouch.
So that's how I will personally store my equipment.
Do not hesitate to reach out to your own rigger
to see what he thinks about the best practices
to store your equipment.
Those are all just recommendations
that you can choose to do, or not.
But do not forget that the golden rule
is to bring all your equipment to your rigger,
for repack and an inspection,
before you start again and jump it.
This alone could be a life saver.
Now tell me, how do you store your equipment actually?
Have you heard about other best practices
to store your skydiving gear?
Well let me know in the description below.
And do not forget that you can always support Skydive Vibes
in order to get access to our private Facebook group,
where we discuss about skydiving stuff every week.
And also, you could win skydiving gear.
So make sure to check the links in the description below.
On that you can watch other videos
from Skydive Vibes right there, and keep jumping.
Stay safe, and blue skies.
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