kevin922

I don't see how you can get a horseshoe when your PC is in tow. Perhaps i'm having a brainfart here, but I thougth a horseshoe is when your dbag is out and your PC is stowed. At any rate, I thought about the whole reaching back and messing with the pin crap (after the fact I thought about this -- this did NOT cross my mind during the emergency) and i came to the following conclusions: 1) In a birdman suit that is just stupid. the more you move around the more unstable you could get, and having been unstable in a birdman suit once before it is not something I want to have happen in this situation. 2) With no birdman suit on this is just wasting time. If I had not been in a birdman suit I would have pulled a lot lower, been falling a lot faster, and thus had a lot less time -- so again it's 50 bucks (or 250 if you loose your freebag so I found out) just pull the handle. Also for anyone who is interested, my descent rate at pull time was 77 mph. The cypres activates at 78 mph @ 750? or 700 feet. So if I had messed around with the PC trying to get it out, lost altitude awareness I would have went in most likely.. this of course is not surprising to other birdmen because it's very clear cypreses will not fire during a controlled descent (as opposed to a spinning high speed descent). For those who don't jump the suit, it's another thing to think about if you decide to get into it :) Of course that being said, I did deploy (or tried to) at 4,500 feet.. so if i went in then there is another question of why I screwed with the stuff for so long... Thanks for the words of encouragement -- i'm very surprised to see this happened once before and was posted here.. shows I need to read up on the incidents fourm because it wouldn't have happened to me if I had.

Therapist broken up is actually the rapist Mole-ster (as in a cool person during avagadro's mole day) looks like molester :) (our high school celebrated mole day.. by painting cars with 6.022 x 10 ^22 and "mole day" and everything else.. one guy put "molester" on his car.. hehe)

Im sorry but he is absolutely right. You missed this basic check and obvious mal. You could just as easily missed something else the may have caused a double mal. Yes I know, and I have already acknowledged that I messed up.. would you like me to print up a t-shirt that says it or would you like to continue to harp on this? Thats right, we all have some have cost us more dear than others, Ive just had the metal out of my ankle due to my mistake, but it was MY mistake, not PD's for having loops instead of blocks on their demo canopy risers. Okay i'll print 2 shirts, one for you too If he has accepted responsibility for misrouting the bridal after the rig being out of his sight for over 2 weeks, then he is a unique charachter. As I said before once it leaves his loft its no longer his responsibility. Well I told you what the facts were, are you calling me a liar? I know where my rig was.. Sorry but although you had the balls to post what happened, the fact that it did shows a certain lack of experience. Buzz I'm sorry is it me or did I overlook the post on your fawk up ? It was posted for people to learn, if you want to criticize then PM it to me. i'm done. Kevin

Bob, thanks for your candor however Jari himself checked me off and gave me the 1st jump course (and he knew my jump numbers then). The profile is correct and as you can see I handled myself just fine with the suit on the jump. If you're implying that based on my jump numbers I should have caught this mistake I think you're out of line. People make mistakes and i'm sure you're not mr perfect (and if you are, by all means accept my apology but I don't know you so I can't really say for sure). Keep in mind someone with far more experience than put the mistake there.. so accidents happen. So not to bash you or anything but unless you know me and have jumped with me or seen my abilities keep it to yourself or have the decency to PM it to me. Kevin

After getting down and thinking about things, it freaked me out about the possibility of a reserve becoming entangled with the PC in tow. Which got me thinking even more, how much of a risk is it? and with a birdman pilot chute (the longer ones) how much more of a risk is it?? Kevin

Yes, believe it or not I did a quick pin check.. but didn't catch it. no one else gave me a gear check. Lesson learned.. won't happen again.

I have about the same number of birdman jumps and have had PC hesitation maybe twice. I still feel the deployment is a little slower than a "normal" skydive, my typical fall rate is between 70 - 80 mph.

No you didn't need to.

Let me preface this by saying the only reason i'm posting this is for people to learn from others mistakes.. don't tell me something I already know in my "lessons learned" section. This past weekend I had my first reserve ride in my skydiving career. I was on load 1, sunday afternoon doing a birdman. The jump it self was uneventful, exit was great, fall was great.. came pull time (for me on a birdman this is around 4,000 - 4,500 feet). I collapsed my wings threw out the PC and waited, just like normal only this time I waited, and waited (or so it seemed). With the birdman and the standard bridle the PC hesitation does occur occasionally, but it isn't too dramatic -- maybe a second or two longer than normal, because I thought it was a burble collapsedased my wings thinking it would fix itself.. it didn't.. I looked over my shoulder to see a fully inflated PC getting clean air. I went for the silver. The reserve came out on heading and in under 3 seconds. When I got to the ground, what we found was unbelievable. Pic 1 Pic 2 The bridle was routed underneath the right flap on my rig, making it impossible for the pin to be pulled. Okay with that being said, here are the facts as I know them. I had my rigger (who will remain nameless) pack my reserve December 3rd, before I made my trip to Florida. For some reason or another he did not put his seal on my data card (filled everything else out). I went to 4? dropzones in Florida with no problems. I came back to VA read an incident with a birdman and a spinning mal which resulted in a hard pull due to no riser inserts, I immediately had my rigger put them in. He did them while I waited, I watched him work - and saw he is very meticulous about things being right. He did a very professional job with the riser inserts. He and I talked about various safety related areas on the rig and he noticed my closing loop was a little loose. He also noticed my PC could be folded in a different way that would help with safety. He popped my main open shortened the closing loop and showed me a better way to fold the PC. We briefly talked about how I should practice folding the PC some more and I went on my way. Took the rig home and never got around to practicing, it sat in my APT for 2 weeks, until this weekend. I took it with me to a demo just in case something came up, then I went to Orange on Sunday to jump. I came to Orange, manifest wanted to see my data card because they hadn't seen the reserve repack - showed it to them and they caught the seal not being on there. Had to call the rigger to confirm it was packed, he confirmed it and off I went. I know my rigger - I know he is a good rigger. The reserve opened like it was supposed to, I feel part of this is my fault for not catching it on the gear check. For whatever reason it happened - if it was the fact we were distracted while talking, if it was the fact I was supposed to practice the PC packing, I don't know. I do know the rigger took responsibility and offered to pay for everything. My rigger loves the sport, and was very torn up that is could have happened. I have no qualms about continuing to use him and I can't badmouth him. Lessons Learned: 1) Do a better gear check. 2) Get a PD reserve. 3) Do a better gear check. 4) Training and practice pays off, I was calm throughout the whole ordeal. The tempo reserve I have was very very unresponsive. Full toggle turns resulted in very very slow turns (my first canopy was a cruiselight 220 and it turns at least as twice as fast as the tempo). It also had little to no flare. From a reserve standpoint it worked pefectly. I'm alive and limping. (hard landing) Exit wt 155 - tempo reserve was 150. Main (though it never made it out) was a hornet 135. Also the freebag & PC weren't found immediately, however my previous rigger had me write "RETURN TO NEAREST DZ - REWARD $35.00" on it, and someone walking their dog returned it a few hours after I left. A great idea. Kevin

Um.. because that is like landing an ant on a pencil.. and if you fuck it up the first time you're dead. Waaay to dangerous there. You don't have a speedometer on the wingsuit so you can't match speeds or anything like that with any real accuracy. Kevin

Do they normally pie for 200??? I thought it was 100 & 500

So I was thinking.. i noticed on pisa's website, for the tempo reserve they have a picture of the reserve and it says "TEMPO" on the bottom skin.. so along these same lines, could i get them to put "HOLY SH!*" or something like that on my reserve? Or do you think that would modify the flight caracteristics too much for it to be a valid "reserve" (if there is such a thing)

If all else fails, get her tipsy on good red wine, it always makes mehorny as hell. *note to self, have good red wine when you meet Mujie*

She isn't your wife yet buddy :) You yelled at your fiance, which isn't smart if you want her to become your wife Good luck man, that sucks.

I saw a video, I think maybe from Eloy? of a chick who would pack your rig topless.. quite nice :)

Yes he told me specifically he quit because it was dangerous and because it was an inconvenience for other jumpers in the airplane.. Yes i've seen the stunts he pulled for MTV you can read the interview here we talked about some of them.

I thought about skysurfing once.. i actually did the interview with Troy hartman a while back, and try and keep in touch with him - i feel troy is a great skysurfer. I personally feel skysurfing was a neat accomplishment however it is just too dangerous. when the professionals at it stop doing it because they feel it is too dangerous, that must say something. Be careful if you get into it...

If you want you can come give me a massage on V-day.. and i'll take you out to dave and busters.. i'll even pay! ;)

Ho-Lee-Crap.. what are you having to do to make up for that ??

Makweeta -- and yours?

Oh my gosh i am so excited! I just got my first rig!! Isn't she just beautiful!! Tell me you haven't seen a rig as beautiful as this one. I know, I know.. beer and all that Here She Is!

Oh shit! Don't tell anyone... btw, there are plenty of whales in NV.. I think hugh hefner is one of them..

Uh, return the product. :)

Ray, if I hadn't met you i would think you're a total nutcase

Just saw some footage of what appears to be organized, legal, base jumping off the seattle space needle.. of course the footage was about a spinning mal, by a girl named jessical klutsmier or something like that.. anyone know the details on the base event?