Ack Attack,Rocky Robinson and the Parachute question.....

Rocky Robinson

In yesterdays post of "Pit Pics Vol 4" I made the comment that Rocky always packs his own parachute.I emailed him to ask him about this,but unfortunatly got his reply too late to make the post.So I thought his reply was worthy of it`s own post to shed a little racers insight on this topic.
So here is a direct copy of Rockys email to me.
As an aside,if any of you have seen the video of his `07 crash at over 300 mph,you`ll know why this part of the procedure is pretty important.

Murph,
One of the duties of the driver (rider) its to insure the parachutes are packed properly. This is the only insurance you have of getting stopped safely, or in an emergency situation, the parachutes can be all you've got to minimize damage, and possibly save your life. I don't take this lightly and always pack my own parachutes. We use ribboned chutes designed for high speed deployment. Are chutes are made by Stroud and the high speed chute is only three feet in diameter, and can hanlde a 350 + mph deployment. The lanyard is 90 feet long; the reason for this is so that it opens in clean air behind the bike away from any turbulance. Our back-up chute is five foot in diameter, on a 70 foot lanyard. I only use this if I'm in trouble and it rarely gets deployed. Both chutes are wired to a tip-over switch in case of a crash they will automatically deploy once a certain lean angle is reached.

We use bagged chutes, meaning the parachutes are packed inside a bag which is pulled off at deployment by the pilot chute. The reason for this is so the chute doesn't open too fast creating too hard of a 'hit'. The bag has to come off first, forcing the chute to open gradually.

Just having the mental certaintly that the chutes will open perfectly on every run gives me the confidence to push the limits and not have to worry about stopping. That's a good thing!

Rocky Robinson
2010 World Motorcycle Land Speed Record Holder @ 376.363 mph.