Not an Incident but Lesson Learned

[pd190 0]

We had a good weekend at the DZ this weekend but had a scary time on Saturday. Here's the lowdown...

A fairly new jumper to our DZ was working on doing some two way drill dives with another jumper. All jumpers had received checks before boarding the plane. Everything is good, normal climb to altitude.

Normal exits, good spotting, good jump. The jumper has 82 jumps, is current, jumping a Spectre 230, leg pouch throw out. Good combo for him, he had made 2 jumps prior with a PD260 leg throw out.

Everything was good, we watched them break off at approx 4000 ft from the ground, good tracks.

One of the two dumped out at approx 3000, the other kept going. Finally at about 1500 ft we see a main come out. It's open and inflated at about 1000-1200 ft. Everything is good right, (except for the low pull and the grounding he's gonna get.) Nope! Just as he unstows the control lines, the cypress fires and now he's starting to trail a reserve.

Now he is low, with two out. He follows good EP's and gets them apart and chops the main at about 400-600 ft. He then had a slow ride down under a good reserve onto a road.

After we recover him and some boys look him over, the questions start coming up.. Turns out that sometime in the plane his PC was pushed into the pocket. He didn't do a handles check before exit so he decided to dig it out of the pocket in freefall. He finally got out on his second attempt but it was low.

Lesson Learned.....(What would have prevented this)

1. Do a good handle check on yourself and the jumpers around you prior to exiting the plane.

2. Pull, Pull at the proper altitude, Pull while stable, and Pull.

3. Don't waste time executing your emergency procedures. Do them right and in a timely fashion. Two checks and then reserve.

Needless to say the guy is okay and will continue to jump. But, this could have turned into a bad situation.

[Scoby 0]

We had not one, but two similar incidents on Sunday. Both were recent converts to hand deploy. The first jumper couldn't find his handle and kept trying, taking it rather low (I think around 1500 feet). He got his main open, and landed out safely. The second jumper was coming back from a 20-year layoff. He had jumped ROL before, but this was his second or third BOC jump (after getting retraining on ripcord). He couldn't find his handle, made a couple of tries, and then went silver.

As you can imagine, everyone preferred how jumper two handled the situation. If jumper one had a mal at that altitude, he may not have had the time to clear it or chop.

I talked about it to another jumper, who said that he'd had an incident where he borrowed a rig from a smaller person, and then couldn't reach the handle in freefall. He then had trouble with the pillow reserve handle. The cypres saved his life and then he found himself under a PD126R (he normally jumped a 170).

I guess the point of the story is that new BOC jumpers should be really sure of their handles, and also be ready to go silver earlier than later. But experienced jumpers shouldn't assume that they can easily find the handle on a rig they've never jumped before.

[riddler 0]

  Quote

Now he is low, with two out. He follows good EP's and gets them apart and chops the main at about 400-600 ft.

Is this a good emergency procedure for two canopies out? I have always learned to ride both canopies down, steering under rear riser of the dominant canopy. The only reason to chop the main is in the event of a downplane. Was he downplaned at all? Or (I hope not) did he force them into a downplane?

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD