Parachute Bands for Sport Skydiving and Military Use
In order to understand how parachute bands are used for sport skydiving and military operations, you must first understand how parachutes work. Take a look at the video below to learn more about the staged deployment sequence that requires a very specific series of rubber bands.
Staged Deployment Sequence
Parachutes open with a staged deployment sequence. First, the main parachute is deployed by a smaller parachute (known as the pilot chute). The skydiver pulls the pilot chute from the bottom of the container when it is time to deploy the main parachute.
The pilot chute will then catch air and inflate, creating enough drag force to extract the main parachute from the container. Special parachute rubber bands hold the bundled lines of the parachute inside the container in carefully organized stows.
As the main parachute deploys, the stowed lines will separate from the rubber bands and straighten out in order. This ensures that all lines are in place before the parachute fully inflates, and also limits the amount of shock on the body.
The wind then steadily inflates the parachute canopy, allowing the skydiver to obtain a safe rate of descent.
Types of Parachute Bands
There are several different types of parachute rubber bands and each serve a very distinct purpose. For most sport skydiving rigs, large rubber bands are used for the locking stows and small rubber bands for the remaining stows. Tandem rubber bands are used for tandem main canopies.
Our heavyweight parachute bands conform to MIL-STD-105e and are used for free fall and jumping off the line in succession.
If you’d like to learn more, please visit our Parachute Bands for Sport Skydiving and Military operations web page. Have more questions? Fill out our contact form and someone will be in touch soon!
