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It was a nice summer day in 1983, and pilot Jay Tipton was going flying. Tipton was flying a small ultralight known as a Pterodactyl, and had specific plans for the days flight. He intended to fly low over his house, and had told his wife and young daughter to be on the lookout for him. But the flight did not go as planned. While in sight of his wife and daughter, a thermal suddenly lifted a wing. When Tipton tried to roll back to level, the controls did not respond, and he quickly found himself only 200 feet above the ground, with the airplane rolling past vertical and the controls still not responding. He had seconds to live. Or, at least, that would have been the case had the same scenario occurred just a week earlier. Only one week before the ill-fated flight, Tipton had installed a Ballistic Recovery System (BRS), a rocket-powered parachute designed to safely lower an entire airframe to the ground in an emergency. Tipton pulled the handle, the rocket fired and deployed the parachute, and with his family watching, Tipton and his airplane floated safely to the ground. Tiptons was the first life saved by a BRS, but it was not the last. As of October 2008, Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc. reports 214 lives saved. The concept of utilizing a parachute to lower an entire airframe to the ground in an emergency is not new; interest in this idea has existed almost since the very first airplane flight. But Ballistic Recovery Systems was the first to develop a reliable and practical system. One of the key problems in developing an airframe parachute was the variety of speeds at which the parachute might be deployed. The airplane might be low and slow, requiring that the parachute deploy and open very rapidly, or the airplane might be at a high airspeed, which would require that the parachute open very slowly to prevent structural damage to the chute. BRS solved this problem by designing a sliding ring that causes the parachute to deploy at a speed suitable to the situation. For a few years, the only airplanes utilizing a BRS were small, experimental aircraft similar to the airplane Jay Tipton was flying when he became the first BRS save. But BRS developed the system to be practical for larger airplanes and to be able to conform to FAA certification standards. Currently, Cirrus Designs, the worlds best-selling single engine manufacturer, and Flight Design, the worlds best-selling Light Sport manufacturer both include the BRS as standard equipment in their airplanes. Emergencies so extreme that the only option remaining to the pilot is the deployment of a BRS are exceedingly rare in aviation. And since a BRS does require the sacrifice of some interior space and useful load, there are those who insist that the statistical unlikelihood of needing a BRS argues against continuously hauling around equipment that almost certainly will never be used. But there are at least 214 people in the world today who are REALLY glad that they thought carrying a BRS was worthwhile. |