To me this comes across dumb and a huge risk with lots that can go wrong?
Sounds a lot like skydiving in general.
I've seen it done before - Mike something or other I think it was, at Perris a few years back. Had radio and recieved essentially student talk down. Went fine. Think it was for charity or something - I forget.
There's at least 1 blind skydiver out there - John Fleming - listen to skydive radio show 12 for an interview with him and some funny first hand stories of what it's like to be blind, under a canopy, with your radio malfunctioning.
Dan Rossi, another blind skydiver, has a couple hundred jumps, and even packs his own rig. he jumps with a couple of audibles, and makes sure there's a couple of AFF Is on every jump he makes. He's not doing student jumps, just fun RW, but the AFF Is are there in case both audibles fail. He uses a radio, but it's failed before and his solution was to 'flare when he could hear the crickets'. Seemed to work out fine.
I did 1 jump with scuba diving mask for fun. Poant is after exit it is totaly fogged. So it was similar blind sensation, he he he,... It was 1000 meter jump, so only 5-6 sec of freefall,...
A couple guys at a local DZ have done a blindfolded jump, on student gear, with a radio to talk them down.
The scary thing isn't the jump itself, it's your friends on radio, depending on how much they want to screw with you. After they give you flare commands while high up in the air, you're gonna want to disbelieve them, but at some point, the ground really will be there.
On the jump I saw where Jeff King was the jumper, the final flare command was OK but a bit high (better than a bit low), Jeff flared too hard and popped up a bit, started feeling for the ground, running a little with his legs, started to doubt himself about whether the ground was there, let up somewhat on the brakes, and dove and pounded in. No worse than a typical bad student landing though. A gutsy jump!
I once accepted a dare to jump blindfolded when jumping in Ohio. I left the aircraft at 7500 ft, and Larry Hartman was to hook up with me, and I would count 5 seconds after he let me go, and open my Para-commander.
The plan was that someone would talk me in on the 3 ft bull horn used for students, but the horn broke about the time we exited the aircraft, and could not be used.
To make things worse, Larrry overshot and I never did know how high I was when I opened.
I flew around, still complely blindfolded, and finally I hollered, " Where am I ".
No answer, so I hollered again, and about two seconds after that, I hit the ground.
I had swung right down beside a mega group of high voltage lines, and landed in the ditch beside the road about 1/2 a kilometer east of the DZ .
I peeled off the blindfold, and Larry came in his car racing down the road. He was very apologetic, and we had a good laugh at how close it came to being a disaster...but close doesn't really count for much.
It was an unusual jump to say the least, and I never got fried on all those wires.
The scary thing isn't the jump itself, it's your friends on radio, depending on how much they want to screw with you. After they give you flare commands while high up in the air, you're gonna want to disbelieve them, but at some point, the ground really will be there.
The scary thing isn't the jump itself, it's your friends on radio, depending on how much they want to screw with you. After they give you flare commands while high up in the air, you're gonna want to disbelieve them, but at some point, the ground really will be there.
That's when the blindfold comes off.
Yup!
Just takes a second to pull it back up after ya land!!
A couple guys at a local DZ have done a blindfolded jump, on student gear, with a radio to talk them down.
The scary thing isn't the jump itself, it's your friends on radio, depending on how much they want to screw with you. After they give you flare commands while high up in the air, you're gonna want to disbelieve them, but at some point, the ground really will be there.
On the jump I saw where Jeff King was the jumper, the final flare command was OK but a bit high (better than a bit low), Jeff flared too hard and popped up a bit, started feeling for the ground, running a little with his legs, started to doubt himself about whether the ground was there, let up somewhat on the brakes, and dove and pounded in. No worse than a typical bad student landing though. A gutsy jump!
haha thats great. That feeling of looking for the last step in the dark!
After taking a tandem student for a jump who was blind, I had wondered what it would be like. So I blinded folded myself, used a student canopy and had radio. With audio altimeters, altitude is easy enough to figure out. On opening, I could feel the risers had no twists, and my body felt stable, so I figure I was not having any type of malfunction. As stated the scariest part is trusting the guy on radio, he flared me a bit high, but the landing, not stand-up, was relatively gentle. The feeling of jumping without site is unique. I would recommend everyone tries it. I made sure that I was able to remove the blind fold at any time if required.
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