JayCam

Hey Talonsky (and others) No please dont think that I am taking this lightly. I understand fully how lucky I was. I spent a good amount of time talking through it with my instructor and going through it in my head. Dont think I am going strap into another rig and make the same mistakes. I understand and respec the nature of this sport. Sorry if I sounded naiive and irrisponsible. Still quite shakey and not thinking too well. So try not to judge what I say too harshly lol. And I have removed the lol from the title! J

You don't CARE what the outcome is?? You had a problem that almost killed you and you dont care to know what happened and what you could have possibly done to prevent it?? No thats not what I mean. I hope they do figure out whats wrong with that rig. But chances are it might cut away easily since it wont be twisted and there will be less weight on it. What I mean is that if they tell me "but the cutaway worked fine" then I dont want to hear it. Because it definately did not. J

I want to disclaim this by saying that I'm just fresh out of student status myself with 54 jumps, but what was the rush on the pull? When I did my first hop and pop, my instructor made it a point to tell me "at 4,000 feet, you have 15 seconds before you need to get your main out." You're not traveling at terminal until after 8 seconds of freefall. He told me I should pull at 5 seconds, but ONLY if i was stable, and that if i wasn't, to take a breath and ARCH HARD... My hop and pop went great, but I attribute it to how calm and prepaired (through education) i was for the jump. Do you feel that your instructor made sure you knew that you had a little more time than most students think, and how important being stable while deploying was? My instructors drilled and drilled and drilled these things into my head while on the ground, and I'm glad they did; because I have yet to have any bad experiences. Yeah definately not. My instructor was great made everything very clear. I knew how bad it is to pull unstable, my friend did it recently and got hit on the back of the head by the main in its bag. I knew that. My own bad technique and judgment.

Hey Mr17Hz, Yeah my instructor made it very clear that I had at least 10 seconds worth of freefall he assured me that if he was following me out he would do a 15 second from 4200. The thing is I wasnt THAT unstable at 3 seconds so I just pulled but I must have been more unstable than I thought because I was definately upside down when I saw the pilot chute. In retrospect I definately would have arched hard and waited it out but I guess i didnt think. |That would have been much better coz on all of my other jumps I have been perfectly stable. I was perfectly stable for about 7 seconds on my last 5 seconds (yeah got an annoyed look from my instructor for that one). Yeah next time I am just gonna arch harder. Gues I didnt think and I was a little nervous cos it had been three weeks since my last jump due to an injury on that jump. Not bad but bad enought that I couldnt jump. J

Yeah a couple of dudes helped me with the rig since my left arm wasnt working too well. I didnt see them as I had to leave the DZ but they said they were gonna hang some weights in the harness and pull the cutaway. Ill no doubt find out sooner or later if it worked or not. I dont care what the outcome is though it DIDNT work when i tried it! J

Yeah I guess it aint funny but Im either going to laugh at how lucky I was or be shit scared for ages. I dont know why it wouldnt cut away. I just pulled as hard as I could which as I said is quite hard and it wouldnt come out. I think it might have got twisted or something as I kind of backflipped through the risers on opening if you know what I mean. I dont know too much about how the reserve system actually works. I was pretty surprised that it wouldnt come away and was somewhat angry at someone (dont know who, but whoevers fault it was, maybe mine) because if i had been able to cut away it would have been fine. God knows. But that pretty worrying anyway. J

Ok so today I go to my drop zone and get ready for my second five second freefall. Fine fine put on my gear and get in the plane go up to 4200 feet and set up my exit. I dont arch enough (instructor says not at all) and went completely unstable. After around three seconds I realised I wasnt gonna be able to stabalise so I pulled... on my back. So the canopy goes up between my legs and the left risers twist round my left arm. To make things worse there are line twists from the risers to the canopy. Start spiralling faster and faster with this incredible pain in my left arm where the circulation has been completely cut off. I dare not touch the toggles coz thats sure to make things worse. Try my hardest to kick out the twists but its not going to happen they seem to be twisting as soon as I can get them out due to my spiraling... Safety training kicks in... go for the cut away pad. Look locate got it... peel... pull... nope. The damn thing wouldnt come out. I am a big guy and I can pull damn hard but it just wasnt coming out. So here I really start to freak out. So Im spinning really fast by now and the pain in my left arm is really really bad. I think if i dont get these twists out im going to die checked the altimeter was at about 2500 feet so I thought I had time to do something wasnt going to give up lol. Used all my strength to pull the risers apart and kicked like my life depended on it which it probably did lol. Eventually I got them out but I still couldnt control the canopy as one of my arms was tangled through the risers and shoulder strap. The pain was really bad by now so was not thinking clearly and tried again at the reserve at about 800 feet before I realised this was a stupid idea as I would not get the reserve open in time and my arm was going to get ripped off when I feel away from the risers. Luckily I still couldnt get it out anyway. So im in another situation now heading towards a load of trees and cannot steer the canopy. Eventually i get it heading away from the trees by pulling the right hand side risers. So i took both toggles in my right hand and managed to steer like that since the twists were out. Flared the gigantic manta as hard as I could with one hand and JUST missed a barbed wire fence and a six foot deep ditch. Landed really fast but luckily in a muddy and soft feild slid and tumbled a few feet realised I wasnt dead and fought out of the rig and waved I was ok. When I saw m instructer he just asked "why didnt you chop"? lol "I TRIED!!!" says I. After getting a severe talking to about my lack of spread I got put back on dummy pulls. God damn.

How many tunnels are there in the UK and where? I thought the milton keynes one was going to be the first... J

A couple of weeks ago a girl I know lost control of her canopy somehow on landing and just missed some trees and hit the side of a building and some hedges. I thought she had died as I watched her do it as I was walking back with my rig. I ran over when she came down and it turned out she had managed to swing under this little tiny hole in the bottom of the hedge and UNDER a fence. So lucky she only hurt her wrist I dont think she would have walked away if she was a few feet higher/lower/left/right that was pretty terryifying thinking I had seen a fatality or serious injury. J

See if you can do it with your whole body ablaze as well. J

Really, I didnt think that would be that hard to do, I will try that next time I am up incase I ever have to do it. Thanks for suggesting it, I am learning constantly on this forum lol! Sorry to hear about your friend. As I said on a highers wingloading/higher performance canopy my decision would probably be to chop. J

by the way what is IMO? J

Yeah its definately on the UK cirriculum but for some reason we skipped over it very breifly. I remember being asked to do one and it seemed half decent but that was all. I dont want to complain because my drop zone is really excelent in every other way, I have had amazing instruction on most other aspects of the sport (so far) and we have based our skydiving society (of the my university) there. But I WILL ask to be taught a proper PLF next time I am up there. J

My instructor skipped over teaching us to PFL saying "we would figure it out if we needed it". He was great in every other way but I wish he hadnt skipped that part as a PLF last week would have saved me a whole lot of pain and money (cant go into work as I cant bend), plus now I am not going to be able to jump for a little while. I am going to teach myself to PLF now. I think its a good thing to know! J

Has anyone got any idea how much the new UK tunnel is going to cost when its open? I am pretty broke so this would be an excelent way of getting a step ahead with regards to freefall as I am now working up to 10 second delays and I am running out of cash lol J

Cool man Ill keep that in mind. Ill try that next time I pull a high flare. J

Your paying that much because your provisional membership will have expired over three year so you need training and insurance again. My first jump was GBP140 then after that they are GBP25 each as long as I jump once every three months... If i leave it longer than that I will have to pay the 140 again. J

Not a great story but someone I know was setting up a sit exit from a porter ready to do a dummy pull and instead of jumping to face the slip stream tried to jump in order to face the tail of the plane. God knows why. I imagine he must have given the instructor who was holding onto him a shock as well as he was way bigger and probably could have pulled him out lol. No problems though just about a million line twists! Nowhere near as good as the guy that chopped coz he was goin to hit trees. haha thats classic. J

Your profile says you have done one jump so you are probably like me and flying student canopies which are rigged not to stall (using toggles anyway). If your canopy is anything like my student manta you should have no problems pulling all the way down on one and holding for 5 turns. I found that after five turns the g force gets too much and that the descent rate just freaks me out... J

OMG thats the craziest thing ive ever seen!!! Those planes are so cool, I did a couple from a Cessna 185 then Ive been lucky enough to jump from the Icarus Aerotechnics F-GODZ porter which is so much fun! Thats insanse though I cant beleive it haha I think my instructor would actually murder me if I tried to get back in the plane though lol... J

Hey Mark, I just watched ur tandem video that looks fun lol I would be tempted to do a tandem for fun if it wasnt so expensive lol where did you do it?

Yeah thats what I was told and I was fine until I moved on to freefall jumps. The kit is slightly different and the control lines are shorter so it confused me. I flared too low (about 4 or 5 feet) on my first freefall so next time I tried a longer slower flare from about 15 feet. Worst idea ever. I just stopped at about 10 feet and dropped, focused on doing a PLF and forgot about keeping my toggles level. Left one came up and it drove me down harder, as a result I pulled loads of muscles in my back and legs, didnt PLF at all lol. SO the lesson I learned is lower is better than higher!

Haha no im not it was just a random higher ratio than I jump. And I think if one toggle was stuck I would put the other one back on its velcro lol lol. then im fairly sure it WOULD fly straight. Anyway my point was i would be more worried about cutting away than attempting a rear riser landing. J

Too safe? How does that make sense? Ok there are less craters now but how about these guys that bury themselves in the dirt doing hook landings. My friend pulled while on his back today and has hurt himself pretty badly. I'm taking a couple of months off coz of a bad landing... it sucks. Why would you WANT it to be more dangerous? Thats what i think is great its as safe as you like under a big manta or as dangerous as you like flying head down and opening a 70sqaure foot canopy at 60 feet lol. I wont be bitchy coz u DID say you were drunk when you posted... J

Wow no way I wouldnt even think about cutting away in that situation as long as the canpoy was flying straight. Ive only done 8 jumps but I do fly a bit slow stupid manta so I imagine that would be pretty easy to land on risers. I guess if I was flying a 1:1.3 eliptical I would probably answer differently lol! J