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raphaelistics

4-way exit FAIL - skydiver loses shoe

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Have some hilarious footage for yall! xD
Celebrated our B-License canopy course completion with a 4-way docked exit, when a friend of mine completely mistimes the exit jump - jumping out early, and losing his shoe in the process LOL!
I am the guy in front of him with the black G3 and lose my grip when he unexpectedly jumps early, however he proceeds to pull the camera man down with him, who proceeds to pull the 3rd jumper with him, who proceeds to pull me with him!  LOL!

You can hear the camera guy laughing his butt off under canopy hehehe!
We were busting his balls for the rest of the day hahahaha! xD
(the Ninja Turtle socks had me crying! xDxDxDxD)

 

Edited by raphaelistics
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1 hour ago, raphaelistics said:

Have some hilarious footage for yall! xD

Funny video!  But in the future maybe stick to smaller formations until everyone can control their fallrates and approach speeds, and can refrain from mixing sitflying and belly until they have that control.

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(edited)
46 minutes ago, billvon said:

Funny video!  But in the future maybe stick to smaller formations until everyone can control their fallrates and approach speeds, and can refrain from mixing sitflying and belly until they have that control.

I agree on the freeflying - not sure why one of the guys was freeflying - us other 3 were belly down.
We normally do just fine when the exit is good.
That being said we are REQUIRED to do 5 4-way exits for our B-License proficiency card.

Edited by raphaelistics

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8 minutes ago, raphaelistics said:

That being said we are REQUIRED to do 5 4-way exits for our B-License proficiency card.

It's great that you are working on that.  But that particular mix of jumpers may not be the best idea.  Maybe replace one of them with a slightly more experienced/disciplined one?  The exits may go better, the dives will be safer and you'll learn more.

I used to do a lot of work at the WFFC organizing low time jumpers and we tried to avoid dives like that, for both safety and learning potential.  We got a pretty good group of people after a while, so if three people with low levels of 4-way experience showed up, I could grab one of the more experienced jumpers, talk him into going and have a much better dive overall.  Having at least two people who can accurately fly in proximity and set fall rates is a key.

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3 hours ago, billvon said:

Funny video!  But in the future maybe stick to smaller formations until everyone can control their fallrates and approach speeds, and can refrain from mixing sitflying and belly until they have that control.

New B licenses you say?  4 of them on one jump? At least you're having fun, but I also see a potential for great pain.......

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(edited)
18 hours ago, Phillbo said:

When I had my A I did not want to jump with other A's... I knew how flaky I still was and did not want to compound that .... 

two of the 4 jumpers are A's with between 50 to 100 jumps, moving to B's, one jumper has enough for his C and the other jumper is a coach with a D.
We weren't all A license holders and had 2 experienced jumpers and a coach with us.

@jumpsracer - get away with what?  I am confused - no rules were broken on my part or as far as I can tell on anybody's part.
Also that is not a King Air - it's a Caravan.

Edited by raphaelistics

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1 hour ago, raphaelistics said:

@jumpsracer - get away with what? 

A skydive with a larger than average risk of being a disaster.  From the video I saw four things that were dangerous happening in one dive, all of which could have easily been avoided.

We've all been on dives where there were problems; one guy who decides to sitfly, or one guy who went so low he was hard to see on breakoff, or one guy who could simply not control his closing speed and came screaming in to grips.  Or a planned belly exit that suddenly becomes a head down, or a very poorly timed exit.  Those things happen, and you learn from them.  On this dive, though, all that stuff happened at once.  To me that would be a screaming warning sign to fix the problems before they contribute to a much bigger problem (freefall collision, or freefall/canopy collision.)

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22 minutes ago, billvon said:

A skydive with a larger than average risk of being a disaster.  From the video I saw four things that were dangerous happening in one dive, all of which could have easily been avoided.

We've all been on dives where there were problems; one guy who decides to sitfly, or one guy who went so low he was hard to see on breakoff, or one guy who could simply not control his closing speed and came screaming in to grips.  Or a planned belly exit that suddenly becomes a head down, or a very poorly timed exit.  Those things happen, and you learn from them.  On this dive, though, all that stuff happened at once.  To me that would be a screaming warning sign to fix the problems before they contribute to a much bigger problem (freefall collision, or freefall/canopy collision.)

I do not understand the "getting away" part here.
Makes it sound as if any of this was planned.
What exactly did anybody get away with?   Get away from what?  
@jumpsracer clearly words it as if I or anybody else broke dropzone rules, which I ALWAYS respect.

We tracked away from each other and jump run at 5500ft - we were all level - no one was out of line of sight, it should be easy to tell from the video.
We all had eye contact with each other and had an even level separation.
You can actually see us all catching up to the sitflier at the 1:00 minute mark just before track and pull, who is belly up and sees us.
I did not see any one else go head down past the first 500ft post exit either - (besides the freeflyer).
The whole exit was jacked up, which this video was posted to demonstrate.

I am not going to argue about the poor exit and the sitflying by one of the jumpers, which were both pointed out by our coach on debrief.
This jump did NOT go as planned what so ever and I am all for learning from my and other peoples errors.

Edited by raphaelistics

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3 hours ago, raphaelistics said:

I do not understand the "getting away" part here.
Makes it sound as if any of this was planned.
What exactly did anybody get away with? 

"Get away with" doing a dangerous dive (specifically, a poorly planned dive with people of too low experience to do it safely) at someone's DZ.  Most DZO's do not want injuries or fatalities at their DZ - and thus do not want to see such dives.  You apparently "got away" with the dive because the DZO/S+TA did not yell at you for it - and because no one got injured or killed.

Quote

We tracked away from each other and jump run at 5500ft - we were all level

You can see the cameraman's head swiveling back and forth to try to keep the low man and the high man in sight.  Fortunately he could.  You were not all on level.  Then the cameraman punched a cloud, so he could no longer see the other people anyway.

Quote

This jump did NOT go as planned what so ever and I am all for learning from my and other peoples errors.

OK.  In order:

1) Bad exit.  Timing on exits is important; you can cure much of that with a mockup and practicing the exit over and over.  Even 4-way teams who have been jumping together for years do this to keep that image and timing fresh in their minds.  Also, when the first guy goes, everyone goes; no waiting to figure it out.  It looks like the premature exit had the people in the plane thinking "what just happened?  Should we go?"  Answer is almost always "yes" - immediately.

2) Bad exit #2.  After the guy lost his shoe, the resulting two way went head down for a while - at least ten seconds.  If this was intentional, talk to those two people and make it clear that that's not OK.  If it was unintentional, review how to regain stability.  And emphasize that once an exit blows apart and goes head down, you do not keep flying it - you drop grips, get back on level and start approaching again.

3) Guy sitflying, and it looks like he does it TWICE.  Completely inappropriate, and makes it impossible to remain on level with other people.  Talk to him and tell him you won't be jumping with him if he pulls that shit again.

4) Closing speeds.  At about 0:40 a guy comes screaming in from the side.  If he had been closer and hit someone, you could wind up with an unconscious skydiver, or broken arms/fingers (makes it hard to pull.)  His approach speed has to be MUCH slower.

5) Levels.  Near breakoff the cameraman's head is all over the place; he is wisely trying to keep track of both the low guy and the other two people.  But having to move your head around that much, that quickly makes it easier to lose track of people.  Everyone stays on level the whole dive.

6) Punching the cloud.  Makes it impossible to see other people/traffic near you.  Spot so that you will not hit clouds - ESPECIALLY at breakoff/deployment altitudes.

Like I said, shit happens, and we've all had well planned dives go to shit.  But it looks like 1) this dive was not well planned, 2) the people on it did not have the skill to attempt a 4-way, 3) the people on it did not have the common sense to safely pull off a dive like this, 4) it went to shit and 5) your post seems to indicate you found it hilarious and not worrisome.  I hope that's not the case.

In any case, you got away with it; no one got hurt or grounded.  Best thing to do now is learn from it and move on.

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(edited)

I thought it was very funny.
If I said anything else, id be lying and I'm just not that type.

At no point did any of us feel that our safety or the safety of others was being put in jeopardy.
We had altitude awareness and put a ton of distance between one another. 
What we did agree on is that the jump was a mess and very funny and that the sitflier should have gone belly like the rest of us instead of pulling his own gig or just jumped on his own.

As for the camera man, he did an excellent job checking for traffic right when he was hitting the clouds, knowing that his vision would be limited, however it was strictly a precautionary move and I do the same with bigger group jumps, especially when there is partial cloud coverage.  He did not have any real concern.  We ALL had perfect eye contact for the whole second part of the free fall and had a textbook break off:

Capture.png

I am sure you will be happy to hear that me had much better jumps following this hilarious mess.

Edited by raphaelistics

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(edited)
1 hour ago, raphaelistics said:

I thought it was very funny.
If I said anything else, id be lying and I'm just not that type.

At no point did any of us feel that our safety or the safety of others was being put in jeopardy.
What we did agree on is that the jump was a mess and very funny.

Raphael, you should consider the profiles of people trying to give you advice before arguing with them. You've got a couple highly experienced people with instructor ratings trying to up your survival quotient. I agree with everything billvon is trying to tell you. I would add...

 

1 hour ago, billvon said:

At about 0:40 a guy comes screaming in from the side.  If he had been closer and hit someone, you could wind up with an unconscious skydiver...

If he had hit someone, they could both be dead. Even with successful AAD fires. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen that happen.

That this happened is a learning experience. That you find it funny and argue about it is chilling.

Edited by dudeman17

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15 minutes ago, raphaelistics said:

I am sure you will be happy to hear that me had much better jumps following this hilarious mess.

That's great.  I hope you can learn from your mistakes - and you get a better sense of what's funny and what's dangerous.

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3 hours ago, raphaelistics said:

I thought it was very funny.
If I said anything else, id be lying and I'm just not that type.

Brother, you just got FREE great advice from one that many of us consider one of the best on the planet. There's a reason he's been a load organizer for a long time and giving debriefs afterwards. We're talking bigly way shit. Learn & live.  

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Bottom line? Sure, you had fun and no one got hurt. So you posted the vid here thinking you were sharing something funny. Now you are finding out that most experienced jumpers don’t really see anything funny at all. Lesson learned? Well...... one of them should be that video of a dive going to shit is not something to be proud of. But it can be a way to learn what not to do. 

 

So so now you know a little more than you did before.

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14 hours ago, raphaelistics said:

At no point did any of us feel that our safety or the safety of others was being put in jeopardy.

You need to recalibrate your safety feels. Objectively, that was a significantly more dangerous jump than it should have been.

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I know a former AFF instructor who got a kick to the neck on exit. Broke it. Don't know how he managed to do the rest of the skydive and land safely. He will never jump again.  All because the exit went to shit.

I know several people who have suffered shoulder injuries from funneled exits.

Freefall and canopy collisions while in a cloud have happened.  I believe that is one reason why there is both an FAR and a BSR that require a minimum distance from clouds. 

Shit happens.  Because it didn't happen on that jump does not mean it was a safe skydive. 

You can continue to try to justify what happened or you can choose to listen and learn from highly experienced people who have seen shit and don't want it to happen to anyone else.

I hope you choose the latter option. 

 

 

 

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(edited)
On 7/6/2019 at 1:48 PM, skybytch said:

I know a former AFF instructor who got a kick to the neck on exit. Broke it. Don't know how he managed to do the rest of the skydive and land safely. He will never jump again.  All because the exit went to shit.

I know several people who have suffered shoulder injuries from funneled exits.

Freefall and canopy collisions while in a cloud have happened.  I believe that is one reason why there is both an FAR and a BSR that require a minimum distance from clouds. 

Shit happens.  Because it didn't happen on that jump does not mean it was a safe skydive. 

You can continue to try to justify what happened or you can choose to listen and learn from highly experienced people who have seen shit and don't want it to happen to anyone else.

I hope you choose the latter option. 

 

 

 

At no point did I say this was a safe skydive or a successful one.
The word FAIL is in the title for a reason.
This was not a text-book skydive either.
I am sure the people who screwed up, knew they did something wrong.
I can not correct their mistakes.
However I know and have met countless jumpers who made scary mistakes but laugh about it later on.

Laughing about it does not necessarily signify that some one supports or encourages or intends on repeating the act such in this case.
The footage has been shown to coaches and instructors and indeed mistakes were pointed out just as they were pointed out on here, however most everyone got out a giggle.

As mentioned, the vast majority of things pointed out were not ME - but other jumpers.
I can not speak on their behalf - screw ups happen - dumb things happen - sometimes they can be funny.

Edited by raphaelistics

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On 7/7/2019 at 8:54 PM, raphaelistics said:

At no point did I say this was a safe skydive or a successful one.
The word FAIL is in the title for a reason.
This was not a text-book skydive either.
I am sure the people who screwed up, knew they did something wrong.
I can not correct their mistakes.
However I know and have met countless jumpers who made scary mistakes but laugh about it later on.

Laughing about it does not necessarily signify that some one supports or encourages or intends on repeating the act such in this case.
The footage has been shown to coaches and instructors and indeed mistakes were pointed out just as they were pointed out on here, however most everyone got out a giggle.

As mentioned, the vast majority of things pointed out were not ME - but other jumpers.
I can not speak on their behalf - screw ups happen - dumb things happen - sometimes they can be funny.

It seems to me that everyone who has been in this sport for a certain period of time has known someone who has gone in or otherwise been injured, whether critically or minor.  When the old guard tells us young pups that we done messed up, it's definitely worth listening to and taking under serious consideration.  At the end of the day, however, we're all licensed skydivers and can make our own decisions.  The main thing to remember is that we're all one community.  When one of us does something stupid and gets hurt, it affects everyone.  Nobody wants to see one of our own go in or get hurt, and a secondary consequence is that if we fail to regulate ourselves, the FAA will do it for us.  Nobody wants that. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with the guys who are giving you pointers.  They're doing it for the right reasons.  I reacted a similar way a couple weeks ago to someone who delivered the same kind of advice, although in a much less political way.  After I thought about it for a while, I realized he had the best intentions at heart and I should have just taken it in stride and made the best decisions I could make after considering all available information.  You don't have to try to defend anything.  And these guys aren't giving you the "bowling" talk.  They're just making sure to pass some knowledge on to you from their experience so that maybe you have to see one less friend get hurt or killed in the future.  Just think on it, and maybe just let them have the last word(s).

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2 hours ago, yobnoc said:

 At the end of the day, however, we're all licensed skydivers and can make our own decisions.  The main thing to remember is that we're all one community.  When one of us does something stupid and gets hurt, it affects everyone. 

I would add that sometimes it's not the person who does something stupid who gets hurt.  I've had two good friends killed by other skydivers "just having fun."  And in both cases it wasn't something new - these are people that had been talked to several times about the same problem that led to them killing other skydivers, and always answered along the lines of "geez, no one got hurt, what the fuck is your problem?"

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