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Mikhail

Low Opening w/ Line Twists; Chop

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Hello all,

While doing a 4-way with Mad John from 4.3K this past Sunday (aren't we the bright bunch?) I wound up opening very low. Worse, the opening was accompanied by a solid set of line twists. Before attempting to deal with the line twists (the canopy was flying straight), I glanced at my altimeter which showed 1300ft. I cut away immediately.

As a student, I learned that cutting away below a 1000ft was a serious gamble. This was the root of my decision making process. I did not know if the situation would improve if I was to fight the line twists, so I pushed the reset button before I was too deep in the red. The flaw in my decision process, in hindsight, was a lack of explicit knowledge of where I was. Though I knew where I was going in my track, I did not know if I was over the nearby hills after opening.

I would like to ask you for a brutally honest opinion of my decision to cut away. If, in your experience, I blatantly pushed my luck, please tell me so. I got myself in a world of shit and did what I thought was going to maximize my chances of walking away.

Some extra bits of info & random thoughts:

- This was my 209th jump. I've averaged 10 jumps per weekend for the last 3 months.
- This jump was a second such 4-way, but we had less altitude and got an extra point. Stupid.
- I do have an RSL, which beat me to the reserve (left a dent in the cable).
- I recently caught myself fighting line twists without checking my altimeter. I made an effort to change this behaviour and I believe this paid off.
- This was not my first cutaway, so I was confident in my gear (although this particular rig was essentially brand new).
- I've found myself being more afraid of mid-air collision on opening than opening lower. Yes, I did hear my audible on this jump. Lesson learned the hard way.

Stay Safe,

Mikhail

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If, in your experience, I blatantly pushed my luck, please tell me so.

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Yep.

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I got myself in a world of shit...

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Yes, you did. Now....stop doin' the first thing and you'll probably stay outa' the second thing. :)

"T'was ever thus."

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I'll fess up and admit my part in this nonsense. I was one of the others in the 4-way, and I opened as low as Mikhail, though with a decent enough canopy (#$%@ Saber 2 likes it's collapsed end cells). As I said in another post, this falls under the category of 'stupid things I've done skydiving'.

My thoughts:
Not having been in your situation, and not knowing how bad the line twists were, I think I would have tried to kick them out. I've never cut away, so I trust my anti-line-twist skills more than my reserve. This may well be stupid.
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I would like to ask you for a brutally honest opinion of my decision to cut away.



To answer what I hear to be the main point of your question:

Regardless of your admitted error in taking the dive too low...your decision to cutaway immediately after spotting the malfunction was the correct thing to do. You had no choice but to implement your EP's because...at that point in altitude you were: 1) below your hard deck (but above 1000', or lowest safe opening altitude for your reserve) and, 2) your canopy was not landable.
(NOTE: Even if line twist recovery at that altitude were even just slightly in question, I would recommend chopping since every couple seconds of thinking about it might result in 100 feet or so in altitude loss...then before you know it in 5 or 6 seconds you you might have been below your safe reserve opening altitude with no other recourse but to ride the mal in.)

Hope that makes you feel more confident about the decision to chop.
-----

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You did the right thing. If you'd been higher, like at least above 2 grand, you might have tried to clear the line twists. But if you really opened at 1300 ft, you'd already used up most of your options.

A spinning canopy is going down FAST. Yours may have been stable, but the load on a canopy can shift while you're untwisting the lines. I recently had a situation of my own, where I did exactly that. My canopy was stable at first and I was making good progress with untwisting it, but suddenly the load shifted and I found myself in a real classic spinner. I cleared that too, but unacceptably low. It was dumb, I could've got myself killed. Spinners go down FAST, it's amazing how many hundreds, even thousands of feet they can burn up in just seconds.

It just isn't worth it. So you have to pay for a repack and you'll probably have to replace your kinked ripcord. Hope you got your freebag and main back and in good condition. Cutaways aren't cheap, unless you compare them with your life.

Anyway, it was your life and your decision (and your mistake that got you there in the first place). You made the right call and lived to learn from your mistake. All in all, I'd call it good.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

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I think you did the right thing. Low opening, lots of twists. Get rid of the fucker quick and land with a good canopy. Just my newbie oinion.

doc
"We saved your gear. Now you can sell it when you get out of the hospital and upsize!!" "K-Dub"

"

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Congrats - you assessed the situation, realised what needed to be done and acted decisively. 1300ft can get eaten up very quickly if your canopy starts turning or spinning.

Reminds me of a recent jump where I had severe line twists and elected to fight out of them - by the time I got them untwisted, I was at 500 ft ! :S- just enough time to turn and land. Luckily the canopy flew straight the whole time and the brakes were stowed - in retrospect I should have chopped.

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My thoughts:
Not having been in your situation, and not knowing how bad the line twists were, I think I would have tried to kick them out. I've never cut away, so I trust my anti-line-twist skills more than my reserve. This may well be stupid.



Am I the only one who's having a problem with this?

To the OP, just out of curiosity, what would you have done had you been say, 400 ft. lower? No criticisms, no wise lesson.

*Noob S'ingTFU again*
"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

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To siddacious:

We have hard decks for a reason. If you find yourself below your hard deck without a landable canopy, get a landable canopy over your head immediately. Line twists are a malfunction.

Don't be the guy that died fighting line twists.

- Dan G

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Yep. I've done the same thing, twice, and from a somewhat higher altitude (bigways, I was in the "pull at 2-2200 group).

My vote goes for "did the right thing." Among other things, you walked away, and can second-guess yourself. That means your first guess worked.

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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You did the right thing. If you'd been higher, like at least above 2 grand, you might have tried to clear the line twists. But if you really opened at 1300 ft, you'd already used up most of your options.

A spinning canopy is going down FAST. Yours may have been stable, but the load on a canopy can shift while you're untwisting the lines. I recently had a situation of my own, where I did exactly that. My canopy was stable at first and I was making good progress with untwisting it, but suddenly the load shifted and I found myself in a real classic spinner. I cleared that too, but unacceptably low. It was dumb, I could've got myself killed. Spinners go down FAST, it's amazing how many hundreds, even thousands of feet they can burn up in just seconds.

It just isn't worth it. So you have to pay for a repack and you'll probably have to replace your kinked ripcord. Hope you got your freebag and main back and in good condition. Cutaways aren't cheap, unless you compare them with your life.

Anyway, it was your life and your decision (and your mistake that got you there in the first place). You made the right call and lived to learn from your mistake. All in all, I'd call it good.



You did good. You were at your hard deck with a canopy you didnt want to land and you followed your emergency procedures and lived.

I had a very similar event like tbrown in that when I was kicking out of the line twists and the load shifted resulting in a ground hungary spinner. I knew from previous experience that I had to deal with it quickly as it wasn't salvagable or survivable. The spinner contributed to a very hard pull and I ended up in the saddle of my reserve below 400feet.

We had an event earlier this year where an experienced jumper spent way too long clearing line twists before cutting away then ended up under a reserve with line twists which he landed under. This resulting landing caused serious injury to the jumper. It was not a highly loaded canopy or a high speed spinner which may have contributed to the lack of urgency in dealing with the original event (his short term memory of the incident is fuzzy).

Major Dad
CSPA D-579

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I think you made the wrong choice.

I think you were high enough to cutaway, as long as everything goes right. However, I think that cutting away from line twists was unnecessary. This is just my opinion, and obviously, I did not see the configuration of the canopy. Most simple line twists (i.e. without turns or spins) will come out on their own with no problems. You should be able to analyze the problem quickly, and make a decision. Your decision was OK, however, given the fact that reserves are not perfect, why chop for a fixable anomoly ?

This is only my opinion, so I urge all students to heed their training and their instructors' advice. However, you, Mikhail, having considered yourself bad-ass enough to smoke it low, should be up to understanding and operating your parachute. I consider chopping simple line twists to be like chopping for a brake fire rather than simply unstowing the other brake. It's a very amateurish move.

Please understand. I congratulate your successful EP implementation and survival, but you asked for brutal honesty.;) Now I will undoutedly receive the same from our learned colleagues.

Kevin Keenan

_____________________________________
Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

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I missed the part about the canopy flying straight.

His first guess was still good enough that he can second-guess himself, but yeah, if it's not spinning, I'd be likely to keep the canopy.

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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A few thoughts:

1) It's you up there, and if you didn't think you could clear the line twist in a few seconds, you probably made the right call. If it were me, I would give it no more than say 5 seconds of kicking, then cut away if I could not clear it. There is very little time at 1300 feet.

2) Obviously better altitude awareness is key here. Think ahead on what altitude you will pull by even if you don't have adequate separation; in some cases risking a collision at opening time is better than a no-pull or a low pull.

3) Ironically I've been in exactly the same situation with Mad John. Lost Prairie 1995 I think it was. Tell him to knock it off.

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I'll consider myself learned. My comment about kicking out came from only ever having line twists that I could get out of in a matter of seconds. I suppose while this is true now, it may not always be true, especially if I eventually downsize to a less forgiving canopy. No need to start bad habits now.

Thanks all for the reality check.
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You lived. Sounds to me like one of those situations where only you knew whether or not it was right to cut-away.

Edit: Now that I think about it, unless you got video, I guess no one but you ever knows the facts of the situation. That's why we should learn as much of the facts as we can on the ground. When you're up there, it's all you. That's one thing that makes this sport so unique I guess.

I've had a lot of line twists and just recently fixed my packing and solved the problem. I'm very confident in my ability to get rid of line twists pretty quickly, but only you know what you're capable of and how bad it was. At 1300 feet you may have been able to get rid of the line twists in a few seconds, but the fact is no one can tell you whether or not that is true.

I'm not experienced by any means, but it sounds like you did everything right by checking your altitude first and making a quick decision instead of pausing to think about it.

At 1300 feet I honestly can't tell you how I would react. I think I would be so afraid of cutting away at that altitude that I would sit there for far too long trying to decide.

Good job.
Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033
Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

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but you asked for brutal honesty. Now I will undoutedly receive the same from our learned colleagues.



Okay, here's my brutal honesty.

Mike Ramon had really bad line twists over Skydive Orange last year. They started out spinning, but he got the spin under control by about 1000ft. He now found himself in the situation where you describe cutting away as "amateurish". A few seconds later, for reasons unknown, the canopy started to spin again. What Mike's thoughts were as he dealt with this "fixable anomoly" we'll never know. He died on impact.

To everyone, please try to learn from the mistakes other have died making.

- Dan G

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my major problem is a 4way at 4k, with people on it with less than several hundred jumps.

what was your planned breakoff alt?




Agreed!

The problem Mikhail is that you put yourself in a bad situation by "doing 4 way" from 4K and apparently several times. If you hadn’t started the chain of events with something so foolish you wouldn't have been in a bad situation to begin with. I refuse to even comment on if it was a good idea to chop at 1,300 feet and will tell you the better answer is not to put yourself in that situation in the first place.

Mikhail at a very fundamental level you are asking the wrong question here. I hope you learn what the real problem was and take steps to avoid it in the future.
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." CP

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I agree, the best fix to this situation would be to avoid it in the 1st place.

Do you have an AAD? Better to chop the main at that altitude than fight line twists down to an AAD fire and have to handle a 2 out scenario at a low altitude. Although I think you said you were not spinning, so I'm not sure that would have happened.

I think you made the right decision given the circumstance. What if you had kicked out of the line twists only to find your slider stuck up with tension knots or a problem with your brake lines and then have to decide if you need to land using your rear risers??

You landed under a non-malfunctioning parachute and lived to skydive another day. You obviously did something right. ;) I just hope you learn how to stay out of that situation in the 1st place...:S


Enemiga Rodriguez, PMS #369, OrFun #25, Team Dirty Sanchez #116, Pelt Head #29, Muff #4091

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doing a 4-way with from 4.3K


Can't add anything that has not been said - good thing you decided to check your alti first and base your priorities on that vital piece of information – everything else, looks like you survived a great learning experience, thanks for sharing…
Mykel AFF-I10
Skydiving Priorities: 1) Open Canopy. 2) Land Safely. 3) Don’t hurt anyone. 4) Repeat…

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A famous basement puller told me they can tell when it's coming out of the bag if it's going to have line twist and they chop it right then and there. :o

Until you get that good, pull quite a bit higher. :)
Trust me, solo CReW from an AAD fire or cuz you're too low to chop is not fun. B|

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

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