Recently I made a slider down jump, 3+ sec delay, 42" PC, medium wind to the back. After deployment I noted a slight hesitation before the otherwise normal opening. The hesitation puzzeled me as I was expecting a quite hard opening due to the delay. As I was walking past the object on my way back I see a tailgate badly bunged up on the ground. At first I thought somebody must have had a really bad experiance with that until I realized that that someone might be me. So I check my gear and find that my tailgate is missing and that the tailgate that I found infact is mine.
I see this as a quite serious incident. The tailgate was shredded at the ends as if the rubber band or something else had cut into it. If you can imagine a taking a pair of wirecutters to the two ends of the tailgate(as you would cut wire) as it sits when you've use it , so there was some hevy power acting on the tailgate cutting it, not burning it. My best guess is that a line looped/wrapped around the ends of the tailgate, tightend on linestrech and snached/cut it from the power of openingshock. I can't imagin it possible that any rubberband in the world culd do that kind of damage before breaking, I would also expect some kind of burnt material if it was the rubberband that was involved. Has anybody had a similar experience or problem. I've heard of tailgate hangups but never wat causes them.
L.Rains
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks