As an active IAC member and regular IAC competitor a parachute is just part of my regular routine. The regs are pretty clear on this...

My question is...why would you not want one?

Its like insurance. You are annoyed paying for it and having to go though the process of getting it....but when you need it (insurance -or- parachute) your darn gald you have it.

Responding to the post above about altitude and being safe before hitting the ground. All emergency chutes are quick deploy and rapid fill. They will usually save your butt as low as 3-400 feet deploying. BUT... the more important question is egressing the aircraft and the decision to do it.

I see a lot of RV videos of pilots doing acro around what appears to be 2-3,000. A mechanical failure at that height leaves a few seconds before having to make the decision and act of getting out of the plane. I would highly encourage to add a few more thousand feet.

Part of my preflight routine is to verbally say in what circumstances I plan to jump out of the plane. I also set a hard deck that no maneuver is initiated below.

A split S is a pretty dangerous maneuver....especially in an RV. Its easy to gain speed, approach Vne and build up G's pretty quick. Also, once you start it there is no going back. ITs probably viewed as a benign maneuver, but has probably killed more pilots than people realize.

Just my 2 cents.

How Many?
 

This discussion has been ongoing for years. Bet the weight of the ink expended is pretty close to the combined weight of all those who have bailed out of an RV.

I hope you got a competent one because my experience has been most of them are useless at that FSDO (North Dallas).

You can report an North Dallas FSDO Inspector all you want and NOTHING comes of it. I reported two of them and NOTHING. One of them gave my ROTORCRAFT-Gyroplane ops limits an entry that required me to have a Single Engine AIRPLANE certificate in order to fly it. He didn't want to remove that limitation even after I reported him to Washington. It's all useless unless you get a supervisor with a little bit of common sense.

I prefer Immelmanns, more fun and I'm flying away from the hard surface.

The problem with this question is that the sample set you define is pretty small. How many people fly acro in an RV and how many of those use a parachute? It's like asking how many people with the name Oliver were saved by seat belts on a Sunday morning driving to the airport. Even if the answer is 0 it says little about the value of seat belts.

If you look at just the RV competitors which are forced to wear one by IAC rules during practice and competition I am not aware of any accidents while doing acro. I do personally know one glider pilot who is alive because he had a parachute and you can find a couple of stories of acro pilots (even though not in RVs) which clearly survived because of a parachute.

Now the question of how realistic is it to get out the answer is it depends. There was a pretty good article in Aerobatics (IAC magazine) which showed that to successfully bail if your airplane is in a downward attitude even a prepared pilot will need around 6000feet altitude to start with. This sounds quite reasonable to me and even though I compete at 1500 feet I try out new things at 6000 feet or above to give myself a chance. I would recommend that even during flight testing in particular when doing your first spins and you don't know yet if your airplane will actually recover yet.

Also not all accidents happen in downward attitudes and in those cases people have bailed pretty low. E.g. my glider friend had a control system failure in level flight at pattern altitude and bailed successfully.

For me the decision is pretty easy. IAC tells me I have to have a parachute to play and as I have one I can as well wear it always. Why not?

Oliver
p.s. My bigger issue with this whole thing is the repacking interval. My manufacturer (Strong) says annually but the FAA says 180 days. So even though there is no safety reason to repack twice a year (most of the world does annually) I am forced to do it anyway by some outdated regulation... .

"(2) Within the preceding 60 days, if any part of the parachute is composed of silk, pongee, or other natural fiber or materials not specified in paragraph (a)(1) of this section."

This portion of the reg says a lot about its currency. Right on the money when Glenn Curtis was doing his testing!

What are they made of now? I have an old Air Force parachute that I used with my Citabria decades ago that?s been sitting packed for years in my hangar I?d never use unless checked but I also can?t remember what it?s made of.

Do you need a personal parachute if the airframe has a parachute?

Regulation says the pilot has to wear it not the plane.

Aside from that how many RVs do you know that have a parachute?