Peter is an L1 Paraplegic. He completed AFF last yer and continued to get his A licence. An unrelated injury (Breaking his leg having his car door slammed on it during a hijacking attempt has kept him out due to a 9 month healing process after quite a few ops.
We video'd him on 2 Tandems and solved the wobbly legs problem by building a special pair of pants for him. There is a high density foam bar between the knees. The section between this bar and the thighs is filled in with mesh to reduce the likelyhood of a horseshoe malfunction. Peter wears leg braces under the pants with about 60 degree from vertical straight legs dialled in. This allows him to get moderate forward movement in a crusifix upper body position, and fly neutral with arms forward a bit.
He had a serious de-arch during AFF, mainly due to shortened hip flexors as a result of his time in the chair. Lots of phsio helped here.
After deployment, Pter's procedure is 1st do a control check on the canopy. If it's ok, he uses 2 straps velcro'd up the thighs with rings on the end to hook his legs up to a locking caribiner (Non locking could engage the reserve handle in freefall) on his chest strap this puts his legs out straight in front of him, with heels as the 1st point of contact, followed by his backside. The seat is heavily padded with high density foam.
Peter is fully independant. He owns his own gear, a Vortex 2 with a Skymaster 290 main and Tempo 250 reserve. during boarding the Porter he really just needs a shoulder to lean on to get in, and once inside is fully mobile. (More than most birdmen!)
He has chosen to remain on a ripcord/spring loaded pilot chute dispite demonstrating his ability to recover stability from intentional forward loops. Since backloops require pulling the knees to the chest we never did backloops during AFF. After landing freinds wheel out his chair and help him with the gear.
The doc has given him the all clear to continue jumping, and within a week or two I'll be taking him out on a few check out dives to make sure he's good to go solo again.
Thanks for all the info. The reason I'm asking (don't know if you've read it) I've been making some BASE jumps as a T3 complete para and have been trying to figure out how to land on the ground. For BASE I think there is a bit more worry on good body position right away for exit. What wing loading does he fly with in order to not break his legs or heels when he lands? Does he leave the braces at 60 degrees for landing as well? I've been doing all my jumps off of bridges and have been landing in the water.
Could you PM me and give me his e-mail address or phone number so we could chat?
Peter's wing loading on the Skymaster 290 is about 0.75. Our DZ is 5000ft ASL and hot - and dispite biffing in a git faster than expected a few times, he's been OK on his +-30 dives as a Para.
Well I'm an instructor of 20 years and have developed a manual for disabled skydiving and it's free and online: http://www.jagworksdesign.com/html/Para%20Manul%20opening%20page.htm so I myself have taken over 400 disabled or how I like to label it Adaptive skydiving. here is my skydiving history online http://www.jagworksdesign.com/html/R%20Mack%20Skydive%20History.htm So look add or email me if you can add and spread the word that I have deveopled a structured system for safe tandems and for a Adaptive athelete to get to solo. Cheers Rodney Mack CSPA D-422
THANKS PETER for the great geal! amazingly well kept...
some day another para will fly it I'm sure of it,
BLUE SKIES FOREVER TONTO! I OWE you BIG.. each time i jump i salute you, and remember to say thanks for getting us 'gimps' in the skies-your the pioneer of it Tonto
(This post was edited by gimpboogie on May 22, 2009, 2:13 PM)
THANKS PETER for the great geal! amazingly well kept...
some day another para will fly it I'm sure of it,
BLUE SKIES FOREVER TONTO! I OWE you BIG.. each time i jump i salute you, and remember to say thanks for getting us 'gimps' in the skies-your the pioneer of it Tonto
Peterpara2.jpg
) on his chest strap this puts his legs out straight in front of him, with heels as the 1st point of contact, followed by his backside. The seat is heavily padded with high density foam. 
) 
