Hard open, Broken lines, Questions?

[azureriders 0]

I had to chop one this past weekend and have a question for all you wise people out there. First let me say that the cause of this mal was obvious. The line set was way over due and in my opinion the best lesson to be learned here is to not over jump your lines. So, the following question is out of curiosity, not in an atempt to flame my packer.

It was a video/still jump of a tandem. We got out a little low, some where around 10grand, under the clouds and rain. Jump was pretty uneventful, rolled over to film tandem deployment, rolled back over, pitched, line stretch felt normal, then the opening shock, SLAM, you can hear the loud grunt in the video, look up to several lines broken and a ball of crap, was under reserve some where above 2 grand.

Inspection on the ground revealed all 4 lines on the right front riser to be broken, one on the right rear, and one on the left front, 6 total broken lines with no other damage. The comment was made, and I agreed at the time, that one of the lines could have broken from wear, causeing the hard opening and/or the breakage of the othe lines.

From my line of work, I know that a failed structural member can, and sometimes will cause the failure of others. However, after thinking about this for a while it seems to me that if one line would have broken on a normal opening, then the canopy should have already been out of the bag enough that it would be past the point of being able to SLAM open. In this case, I can see where other lines may have broken due to the extra load dispersed upon them, but it seems to me that I would not have felt the SLAM.

I am now thinking that this was indeed a HARD opening to begin with. What do you think? I am asking to get a better idea of what happened, but no matter what the conclusion I will not blame my packer, and I will continue to use this packer in the future.

This was on my secondary rig with a spectre 230, loaded at about 1.15 to 1. Line set was spectra with some where under 1000 jumps on them. They looked good considering, but were in deed way out of trim, ironicaly, the openings have been getting slower and slower as the lines shrank.

[riggerrob 643]

The two most likely explanations for hard openings are line dump and slider slump.

Hey!
That rhymes!
Maybe we can sing a song about malfunctions!

[azureriders 0]

I agree, and I think slider slump is way more common, although I may be wrong. I feel that is something close to what happened here. Slider slump => hard opening => old lines => broken lines.

But as it was mentioned to me by some one I respect, do you think it possible / probable that one of the lines just broke, because it was time, and therefore caused the hard opening that broke the rest of them?

Oh, and thanks for the reply, I was about to think I was going to owe beer for my first thread with no response.

I have dial up here so it is slow, but I am in the proccess of getting the vedio on the web.

[DougH 270]

Why would one broken line cause a hard opening?

Another theory, you had tension knots, which led to both the broken lines and hard opening?

"The restraining order says you're only allowed to touch me in freefall"
=P