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FallingOsh

Your first cutaway story

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Okay. I'll bite.

First, the moral of the story: Never try to show off for the young sweetie that caught your eye. :P

Soon after I started jumping and was off student-status, I was particularly enamored of one cute townie and invited her out to take an observer ride. I, the hero with 42 jumps, would make a perilous exit from a perfectly good plane and certainly win her affections. Ahem.

So, we get her into an observer rig and take the 182 up to 3500 or thereabouts. I confidently stepped out and pulled after 3 or four seconds. After an exceedingly gentle snatch to upright, I see my Paracommander's stabilizers hanging out of the deployment sleeve.. and little else.

I shook the risers, swore at it, then reached for my ultra-modern R3 releases ( a cloth-tab sort of hack on shot-and-a-half Capewells ), yanked and as I let go of the R3s, the Stevens Lanyard yanked the reserve handle past my nose.

That 24' flat twill canopy really looked good.

On the ground, the pilot, my pal Gary, was wide-eyed. He had expected to see my RWB PC, but looked back and saw the reserve.

The girl never went out with me, either.

I tell myself that the hero must walk the earth alone. :D

shall

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Let's see...
Jump 31 my second to the last jump of the season, I had just learned to pack. well I ended up putting one toggle through the metal ring when I set the breaks...:$
well.....
I dump and all is good.....
Try to release the breaks...... WTF.......
I tried and tried and tried to get it free, just wouldnt happen, so at about 2000', I did it, and before i could think about it I had the most beautiful white 7 cell canopy above my head....:D:D
Anyway thats my one and only so far *knockin on wood* and to top it all off......
I made my first A jump that same night....:)
HAVE FUN...
...JUST DONT DIE

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So no shit, there I was..... thought I was gonna die:ph34r:


bad body position after being relatively uncurrent. I was leading a tracking dive and after everyone broke off I turned belly to earth and dumped at the same time. 3 good spins and I was done with it as it was not getting better at a rapid rate.
chopped and the rsl did it's job faster than I could pull silver. I use the two handed method, but there is no way to beat an rsl.
I had a handle in each hand and a nice pd 143 over my head before I had time to think about it.
crash landed in front of all my friends:S

I never got scared until after the fact.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!



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I never got scared until after the fact.



I was the same way, It was cool the other people at the DZ made me go right back up and make another jump so I wouldnt have to spend the winter off season (that was our last weekend of jumping for the year) thinking about my last jump being a mal....;)

I didnt have a chance to realy think about it till that night while we were drinkin a few beers, Thats when i got scared....:D
HAVE FUN...
...JUST DONT DIE

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Back in 1982 I was doing a 3 way and I was the last one going out of a c-182. I was still in the door (on my knees) when my main deployment bag went out the door and my main inflated over the tail. I had just over 100 jumps and it almost knocked me out.

I cut away and dumped my 22 foot round reserve at around 10,000 feet. I was 19 years old and scarred to death! I could not figure out what had happened, I just reacted.....My main was shreaded, the plane was damaged but he was able to land.

That was a long reserve ride, the uppers were cranking and I landed about 6 miles from the drop zone and was lost for some time. No roads, no help.

I can't believe I still do this.....

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why did you print out the thread and eat the paper?:ph34r::ph34r:

seriously, can you be more elaborate?
is it becasue your stomach is in knots from reading it or was there something in the thread that is burning you up?
the RSl thing is always a favorite LOL
My photos

My Videos

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1996, my 33rd jump. Best I can figure after the fact is that one of my legstraps went really loose during opening. In any case, I couldn't get the main to stop turning, even with full toggle input the opposite direction. I remember hearing the 3-rings release and thinking "Hey, that sounds just like it does in the movies" followed immediately by "Why the hell am I thinking about movies at a time like this?!" Soon thereafter I had a 26' LoPo over my head. I could see the needle on my altimeter winding down and figured my reserve must be malfunctioning. I looked at it and started to stress, then calmed myself with the thought that even if something is going wrong with it, I don't know how to fix it. I "changed the view" a couple of times to keep from landing (crashing) on a car, and PLF'd as well as I could. I realized at that point that the whole jumping off the picnic table to practice PLFs wasn't very realistic. Jumping off the top of the hangar would have been closer to it. In any case, I wasn't injured. The cute gal that came running up to me was asking "Are you ok, are you ok??!". I pointed to her camera and said "Did you get a picture?" Alas, she'd burned a whole roll on my main, after I'd chopped it, thinking I was still wrapped in it. :D

Blues,
Dave
"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

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What caused your first cutaway?



Jump # 35. Rather boring and still kind of embarassing: First jump with handdeploy after all that ripcord training. I just couldn't find the ball. (if you like to read german, here is the story with all the excitement from the day it happened).

What's strange about it is that I still feel like my first reserve is in the future. Because that wasn't a "real" reserve - It was a no out situation, and I still don't know for sure if I can recognize a bad canopy and react accordingly.I _think_ I can (or else I would stop jumping), but I don't _know_.

Chronistin
(Home @ http://www.fallschirmspringer.net/)

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1998, Jump 101, I am visiting England jumping at a place called Headcorn where in the safety briefing they told me "don't land here 'cause it is a Born Free reserve where there are lions and tigers (and bears, oh my!)". And yes, there was a girl, a beautiful Spanish girl that came up to spend the week in London with me. I tell her to watch for my canopy, I will be spiraling. So I jump out at 6000 feet, the canopy opens beautifully, I release the brakes, clear the area and pull the left toggle on my Sabre 170 hard........all of a sudden I am on my back and the parachute is wrapping itself into a bundle in front of me. I remember thinking to myself throughout the time, it went something like this..."wow, that sucks.....I wonder if it will come out of this by itself......nope, doesn't look like it, I should get rid of it and pull my reserve...okay and here goes the cutaway......Fuck, it isn't coming loose! Oh wait a minute, tear and pull, tear and pull. Arch!!!Fuck that just pull the reserve!!! Wow, my reserve is white...I though it was orange......There is my main I should follow it down........wait a minute...Lions and Tigers and Bears! I'll just land at the DZ....." The Spanish girl had no idea, just asked me why I didn't spiral down so she would know it was me. I was amazed at how nice the dropzone was they actually asked the helicopter school next door to look for my canopy, didn't find it until three days after I came home. I still have no idea why it balled up, I have never heard before or since of a Sabre 170 wrapping itself up by a hard toggle pull, maybe a tension knot. Oh well.

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I remember thinking "Oh, end cell closure, I've seen this before." I took the right toggle and gave a few slow deep pumps. Then the right side of the canopy folded under and it started to spiral.

I was laid out horizontal and pulling the handles before I knew it. No time to really think about it. Then my new favorite color green (as in green reserve) was out and I did hte best landing of my day. The main landed close to the hanger and by the time I was in my friends had the main and freebag indoors looking it over. There was a 5 foot tear in the top skin.

-------
D.T. Holder
SIMstudy

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