What a place for a malfunction!

[kallend 2,146]

I don't suppose there's any good place for a mal, but this one was certainly suboptimal.

It was hot and humid in Illinois Saturday, and 8 of us decided to cool off with a pre-sunset x-country. There was almost no wind so we only went out 5 miles from the DZ (which happened to be over downtown Ottawa, IL). Hopped and popped at 13.5k. One canopy (Sabre 2) opened in spinning line twists, so he cut it away. 4 jumpers (including tje reserve rider) followed it down, although it was difficult to keep it in sight due to haze from the humidity. Fortunately, one was carrying his cell phone too.

The canopy landed in the Illinois River right by the main road bridge in the center of town. It was recovered by some folks in a boat who saw it come down. The freebag landed in a park on the south side of the river and was also recovered (although not without some "interesting" obstacles to the landing). No one was hurt. The rest of us made it back to the DZ without incident.

[Viking 0]

i wanna do a cross-x so bad!! but not on stupid (student) gear!!!

I swear you must have footprints on the back of your helmet - chicagoskydiver
My God has a bigger dick than your god -George Carlin

[freeflir29 0]

That is a crappier than usual time to have a mal...glad you guys got the stuff back!!

[Tumble 0]

Why not do one on student gear? I guess if the leg straps aren't comfortable that's a consideration, but I did one on a manta from about 4.5 miles from my dropzone at 9500 ft and easily made it back. It was lots of fun.

[GrumpySmurf 0]

Yeah, I was #2 out the door with Kallend right behind me. I looked back after deploing to see how the line was forming up, watched what I thought was a deployment and thought, "Damn, that canopy has a LONG snivel." Then looked above and beside it to see a white canopy with no PC behind it and 3 other jumpers following it, the guy under the white or what I guess was the freebag. The 'long snivel' was the cutaway main.

So if you happen to do a X-country with a group - make sure that it is understood that if someone has a cutaway that someone else in the group has to follow the cutaway down (we did so and turned out be a very good idea) to make sure he and the gear land ok. Cellphones are also a good idea, I think we had 4 between the 8 of us.

[skydiverbrian 0]

Whose cutaway was it?

In a world full of people, only some want to fly... isn't that crazy! --Seal

[billvon 3,111]

>i wanna do a cross-x so bad!! but not on stupid (student) gear!!!

Student gear is the way to go; I always look for a big canopy when I'm doing cross countries. More hang time, more distance you can cover, quieter, warmer and easier to land out if you have to.

[Viking 0]

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Why not do one on student gear? I guess if the leg straps aren't comfortable that's a consideration,

DING DING DING DING

i know the manta 288 would pretty ideal for a nice slow flight but the leg straps on our rigs really do a number on my legs. They start to tingle from just a opening at 4-4.5 They would be dead asleep by the time i get down from 10k grand or so!!!

I swear you must have footprints on the back of your helmet - chicagoskydiver
My God has a bigger dick than your god -George Carlin

[jtval 0]

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i wanna do a cross-x so bad!! but not on stupid (student) gear!!!

well why dont you rent the SMART stundent gear...duh!


I got a good video of Eric from thomaston grabbing someones freebag while he was under canopy. it was pretty cool. (yes, the guy cut away from it before he grabbed it!)

My photos

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[wildblue 7]

hey professor! You might have been able to look East and see us! (well, ok, maybe with a pretty high powered telescope) We had the same idea. Sunset load, 9 of us... lots of fun. I was maybe 5th or 6th out, I deploy, see the guy coming out of the plane behind me, turn 90, look for everyone else, turn to fly to them, see a canopy come at me on my level (flying the same path as the plane) wonder why he's following the flight line, wonder why he's looking up at his canopy instead of at this traffic he's going though (he was first out), then realize his legs are kicking like mad. I yell to him to take his time, he's got 13,000 feet to deal with it
He did, and all was well. There were a few other people that complain of have line twists too, not as bad as his though ... guess some people just can't deploy sub-terminal

We had an awesome time though, just flying around and past everyone else, going past the ~50 ft layer of clouds with this big orange ball in the middle of them (the sun) and we timed it almost perfect, as we were setting up a landing pattern, the sun was just starting to dip into the horizon.

it's like incest - you're substituting convenience for quality

[GrumpySmurf 0]

A friend of the second 'Chris the pilot' - from Wisconsin, around the Oshkosh region, had about 400 jumps and was a really nice guy.

I just drew a blank on the name

[Sebazz1 2]

Think it would be possible to take a tandem rig for a cross country and use the shoulder clips to attach some sort of cooler so you could have a platform to place your beer on and maybe eat a sandwich while doing your cross country? That would be cool

[nws01 0]

That sounds like a good idea Sebazz. Too bad I don't have my tandem rating!

[freeflir29 0]

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Think it would be possible to take a tandem rig for a cross country

A 3 day assault ruck in an H harness would be much easier...