arm zipper open mid-flight

[skybytch 273]

Did a solo this morning. Nice poised exit from the Otter, opened the wings and turned east. Played around with my body position a bit; did a little dearch and started screamin' across the sky .

Decided to try grabbing the wing so I could do some "aileron" type turns. Got both sides easily, but apparently I put a bit too much tension on the right side - I'd barely grabbed the wings and the right zipper opened up to the middle of my upper arm.

Thought about chopping the wings away, but I had some time so I played with flying it. Not too bad - I still had ahold of the wing with my right hand so I was able to keep it out there and stay on heading without having to resort to any funky body positions. Made my turn back toward the dz without a problem.

Thought about chopping the wings again before opening but for whatever reason decided to try once. Brought my arms and legs in, got somewhat unstable, got it back, grabbed the hacky and tossed. On heading opening, no twists, it's all good.

Questions - who's had this happen to them? Would it be a bad idea to add a small piece of velcro at the wrists as a zipper stopper? Should I have chopped the wings anyway - what bad things could have happened during deployment because I didn't cut them away?

[kevin922 0]

Howdy, yes it has happened.. i've never had it happen to me - i remember SM1's old suit (i think his gti) has some type of jobby to prevent that, it may have been velcro I don't recall. It wouldn't hurt to put velcro there. I think i've also seen loops through the end of the zipper which then go around a thumb to keep them down.

I think the biggest thing is keeping uniformity especially during your deployment. You did the right thing by trying to fly and see what happened.. I don't think the situation ever got to the point where you weren't in control, which is good. If you stay uniform during your deployment (bringing both arms back, etc) you should be good.


If the zipper were to come all the way up, and you were to loose that wing you would need to cut the wings to get things back to a uniform state, having one wing attached and the other flapping in the breeze could be difficult.

[ManBird 0]

I strongly advice against chopping your wings in flight. As you experienced, it's actually not too tough to fly a blowout. However, it is very tough to fly with detached wings. I had a very, very jacked up mal experimenting with this. You definitely made the right choice on that flight.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[LouDiamond 1]

No worries bytch. Glad to hear you kept your head and flew it out. If you don't get the zipper all the way closed it may open as you found out. You can have a small piece of binding tape with velcro sewn onto the suit so that you can place it over the zipper tab. My old GTI( Chuck's originally and again) had those mods put on it for just that reason. In addition, your average key chain ring was routed through the zipper tabs with a piece of cord on it. You could also route your thumb through the extra cord to keep the zip down but I never used it myself.

If it ever happens again, try to fly it as best you can until pull unless your in some serious unstable situation or feel that you can't control it. Try to get stable as possible , then pull. It is possible to fly with a bootie or both booties completly off( We flew Tall guy this way in Rantoul with no issues) and I have personally flown with one wing partially collapsed, holding my reserve handle that had come unseated and was flopping around with the other arm in normal flight with no issues(yes, I have the video and you can't even tell I'm flying one wing closed down) Cutting the arms away during a flight is not a good idea, especially if your already unstable as it makes one of the golden 3 rules unobtainable, which is to pull stable Glad to hear it all worked out for ya girl.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[VectorBoy 0]

Did it unzip from the end to the middle or just blow open in the middle? It really shouldn't your suit is spanky clean and new.
Oh BTW did you maintain proper WS airspace and flight patterns this time?
Have fun, ya ya I know you are.

[skybytch 273]

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Did it unzip from the end to the middle or just blow open in the middle?

From the end up to the middle of my upper arm - just kinda unzipped itself. It was zipped all the way down on exit, I checked.

I'll see about putting some kind of zipper stop on there... need to add a snap or two to hold the booties up anyway.

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Oh BTW did you maintain proper WS airspace and flight patterns

But of course. It's a lot easier to do in my home airspace.

[ernokaikkonen 0]

See This thread for some mods to prevent premature unzipping.

[SkymonkeyONE 4]

I have jumped with pretty much every combination of zipper coming undone or blowing out and just flew the suit to a safe pull altitude. I have never chopped wings. So long as your thumb is through the loop, you ought to be able to control it. Yes, my old GTi had a zipper that constantly blew out or unzipped. Before I replaced it with a metal one, I put velcro closures on the wrists to prevent "zipper creep" and even added rings to the zipper toggles to route my velcro closures through. Never a "creeping" problem after that, but it still blew out when larger people used it, so I just replaced it with a REAL zipper. No problems whatsoever after that.

Chuck

[jari 0]

Send me your suit bitch and we check it out and fix it for you. I hate to see people out of control...

Jari

PS: I was kidding about the bitch part...

Jari

"Hey, don't be afraid, ever. Because, it's just a ride."

[skybytch 273]

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Send me your suit bitch and we check it out and fix it for you.

Wow, thanks! But... that'd mean I'd be without my suit for too long!

I added "thumb loops" (made out of a pull up cord) for the arm zippers and did two jumps with it today, no problems.

btw... I'm way okay with being called bytch.