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skydude2000

Awareness during Malfunctions

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bu9LgeGBpU yes, you certainly will get outward throw during a spinning cutaway, however, just like leaving the plane, it will quickly go back to vertical, if you have the time to look around and check for traffic, take a quick look, if shits happening fast and the horizon is whipping past your feet, get rid of that canopy and get that reserve out. this is why the tracking, and clearing your airspace below you is so important prior to the main deployment. the less you have to worry about, the more focus you can put into stopping the freefall.

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One only has to have the mental presence of mind to make a note of whether or not that airspace underneath you is clear.


One normally does that before deploying.


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And for a low-speed minor malfunction, sacrificing a few seconds to wait for......


One is concerned with altitude, not time - in all cases. I could maybe, just maybe, agree with you had you said altitude rather than time but I question the wisdom of suggesting an intentional delay based on timing when so many young jumpers are out there reading what we say here.
My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

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I'm curious about the malfunction you described. Was the slider up or down. If down, would a reasonable action be to un-stow the remaining brake toggle, and steer and land with rear risers? I ask this because you mentioned that your canopy was flying fine. I've not had a malfunction that has required a cut-away, but I've always thought I would keep the canopy I know if it's flying correctly, and is controllable. Even if that means I need to use risers in lieu of brakes.

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One only has to have the mental presence of mind to make a note of whether or not that airspace underneath you is clear.


One normally does that before deploying.



Things change after you deploy - canopies go whizzing around in all directions. While you are surveying your problem, other people can fly underneath you. Ignore this peril at your own risk - and at the risk of the other canopy flyer.

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And for a low-speed minor malfunction, sacrificing a few seconds to wait for......


One is concerned with altitude, not time - in all cases.



"In all cases" is a mighty big all-inclusive statement. There are always exceptions. Quite often, actually. If I'm sitting at 2,500' with a split cell, flying slow and stable, and a canopy is underneath me, I'm going to wait for him to get out of my way before I cutaway. Otherwise, I could turn a minor malfunction into two fatalities. On my last malfunction, if I had followed your advice, two of us wouldn't be here right now.

You are free to choose differently.

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>If down, would a reasonable action be to un-stow the remaining
>brake toggle, and steer and land with rear risers?

I tried that. The brake line would not extend all the way because of an entanglement between the slider and the top of the riser. I couldn't see exactly what was wrong since the slider grommet was between me and the tangle point.

I determined I could get the parachute flying straight with the remaining toggle, but did not want to try to land it because it's a parachute loaded almost 2:1, and if the brake cleared itself at 50 feet I didn't know if I could switch from riser to toggle fast enough to avoid getting hurt. Had the loading been lower I may have tried to land it.

If you are considering whether or not you would try this, I highly recommend trying it under a non-emergency situation. Choose a good day (moderate winds, wet grass, little traffic etc) and try flaring with just risers. It's easy to stall the parachute, so make sure you get plenty of practice up high to find out where the stall point is - and then don't exceed that on landing.

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That sounds almost exactly like what happened to me. I managed to keep it flying straight and did a half-ass flare. But then, that was on a Spectre 170 loaded somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 to 1. I imagine a loading of 1.9 or 2 would be a whole different animal.
PULL!! or DIE!!

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Things change after you deploy - canopies go whizzing around in all directions. While you are surveying your problem, other people can fly underneath you. Ignore this peril at your own risk - and at the risk of the other canopy flyer.


Well, geez, John. If you want to talk about events happening down in the middle of your canopy flight, that's one thing. The OP asks about, and we are discussing, partial mals at opening. Work with the OP, eh?

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"In all cases" is a mighty big all-inclusive statement. There are always exceptions.


I don't know of any partial mal that requires time to be the primary factor over altitude...call me stupid.
So, to use that lame old DZ.com misdirective that so many like to use, what you're saying is we should give students a stop watch and tell them they have to handle their EPs at X number of seconds after eployment.


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On my last malfunction, if I had followed your advice, two of us wouldn't be here right now.


Assuming your aim was just that good.
Well, you'll note that I didn't advise riding around the sky with a split cell giving people ample opportunity to get underneath you.

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You are free to choose differently.


Yes, John I see what you are saying and in the sense of simply checking your airspace underneath you before you cutaway can be a good thing....given altitude to spare.
Yes, I think I might choose differently. Maybe I'll make sure I'm not over the top of someone at deployment time in case of malfunction.

So let me ask you...
You're waiting for the lower guy to clear...and he doesn't. Now what? You may be thinking, "Geez, I wish I had that altitude back." Maybe an quick transfer at a higher altitude would have been a better option?
My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

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Please take note again of Bill's advice...it is good stuff regarding rear-riser canopy flight and landing.

"If you are considering whether or not you would try this, I highly recommend trying it under a non-emergency situation. Choose a good day (moderate winds, wet grass, little traffic etc) and try flaring with just risers. It's easy to stall the parachute, so make sure you get plenty of practice up high to find out where the stall point is - and then don't exceed that on landing. "
My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

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Well, geez, John. If you want to talk about events happening down in the middle of your canopy flight, that's one thing. The OP asks about, and we are discussing, partial mals at opening. Work with the OP, eh?



Malfunctions almost always happen on opening, not in the middle of the canopy flight. That's what I WAS talking about. Taking a few seconds to asses your minor malfunction after opening does not put you "in the middle" of your flight. In fact, that's exactly what we train people to do - to assess their problem before making a decision. "Is it square? Does it flare?"

We train students to respond like robots, because they are already overwhelmed, and that's the best way to get them to do the most correct thing with the best chance to save them. But once we gain experience, we should get beyond responding like robots, and think and analyze more. If we do that, we can improve our odds of survival even more, over the robots.

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I don't know of any partial mal that requires time to be the primary factor over altitude... call me stupid.



It depends upon the malfunction, and the altitude, and the rate of descent. That's where thinking comes in. Our training says that we should make the decision to cut-away by 1800'. And most people these days open around 2,500' on group RW dives, in my experience. Freeflyers pull even higher. So that gives you a few seconds to think about that decision. And if someone is underneath you, no harm will come from waiting a few seconds for clear sky, because you have the altitude to spare. All done within the recommendations of the BSRs. A reserve will open just as fully from 1800' as it will from 2500'.

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So, to use that lame old DZ.com misdirective that so many like to use, what you're saying is we should give students a stop watch and tell them they have to handle their EPs at X number of seconds after deployment.



Nope. See my statements, above.

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Well, you'll note that I didn't advise riding around the sky with a split cell giving people ample opportunity to get underneath you.



When the top skin of your canopy is split open from stem to stern (using my previous example), attempting canopy maneuvers may cause dramatic collapse. If it's flying straight and stable, leave it alone, until you figure out what you're going to do.

Canopies have a speed of about 20 mph these days. If two canopies open towards each other on deployment, that's a closing speed of 40 mph. Do the math on that - they're flying towards each other at nearly 60 feet per second! On a big way dive, it's not uncommon to have only a hundred feet of separation sometimes. So if you have the misfortune of having two adjacent canopies open off-heading pointing towards each other, you have less than two seconds to avoid a collision. If you're lucky, there will be an altitude difference, and you'll pass harmlessly over & under each other. If you're unlucky, one of the jumpers will have line twists rendering them incapable of avoidance maneuvering. Now it's all up to the other guy - does he have the "right stuff" to save both of you?

That does not constitute "riding around the sky giving people time to get underneath you". That's just normal big-way skydiving dynamics. Even if you have more separation, that math demonstrates how quickly another canopy can be flying underneath you. It takes but mere seconds.

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Yes, John I see what you are saying and in the sense of simply checking your airspace underneath you before you cutaway can be a good thing....given altitude to spare.



Now you're actually repeating what I said, instead of twisting my words, and changing the circumstances. That's all I'm saying. If you have the time, it doesn't hurt to check. Don't be a robot. Think.

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So let me ask you... You're waiting for the lower guy to clear...and he doesn't. Now what? You may be thinking, "Geez, I wish I had that altitude back." Maybe an quick transfer at a higher altitude would have been a better option?



Yep, that's a nasty situation. I might try yelling at him to turn. I might try turning myself to get away. I don't want to cut-away, fall into his canopy, and kill both of us. That's a big judgment call. At some point if you've decided that you MUST cut-away, then you've got to choose your time carefully, and go for it.

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Of course I learned this "when I had to" as I'm sure a bunch of us "more experienced" jumpers did ;-P


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Please take note again of Bill's advice...it is good stuff regarding rear-riser canopy flight and landing.

"If you are considering whether or not you would try this, I highly recommend trying it under a non-emergency situation. Choose a good day (moderate winds, wet grass, little traffic etc) and try flaring with just risers. It's easy to stall the parachute, so make sure you get plenty of practice up high to find out where the stall point is - and then don't exceed that on landing. "

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