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AviationTD

Emotions Behind Your First Cutaway

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It has been a long time since I visit this website. I guess I got too busy perfecting the art of skydiving. I just had my first cutaway last week. Boy, the adrenaline was pumping like crazy! The initial training and repetitive drills before each jump work. While I am waiting to get my rig packed, I want to ask how you deal with your first cutaway emotionally and your first jump after the cutaway. Probably not a big deal, but I am curious.

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Embarrassment. It was a CRW jump with another young jumper. More then any thing else I was thinking how much shit people were going to give me and how far I was going to have to drive to the nearest beer store.

CRW cut aways are a little diffrent. More mellow, more time, less adrenelin.

Lee
Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

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My only cutaway was jump #44. Seeing how I handled it gave me a ton of confidence - that I share with my tandem customers now. I KNOW that I will handle a skydiving emergency with a level head, follow my procedures, and will probaby have the best landing (and closing customer service, if applicable), until I put my gear in the loft. Then I will lose my shit, cry, and freak out for about 15 min. Then I'll go jump again.

Knowing you will save your own life when applicable is a really good feeling. That experience was part of why my parents support me jumping, and jumping for a living.

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Like has been said by many others before, training kicked in for me. No thinking or fear, I just knew what had to be done and did it. In my case, I had irrecoverable twists/spinner from an intentional stall.

Afterwards... Elated, from the combination of adrenaline, excitement, and knowing I can do what needs to be done when the shit hits the fan. It's the ultimate validation of training and skills, something that can't be truly tested for any other way.

Didn't have any fear on subsequent jumps.

Obviously, the vast majority of people cut away in emergency situations, but there is a very small proportion that doesn't, maybe through fear. They try and deal with the mal until it's too late - ending with a low cutaway or heavy impact.

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For most people, the story tends to be that when it came time to cutaway... they cutaway. In most cases, they're spinning around or otherwise looking at something clearly unlandable, and the decision is really easy at that point. Sure the adrenaline may be going and heart rate up, but mentally there's little choice to be made.

Afterwards they're really glad to have gotten it out of the way, and performed well enough when the time came to deal with an emergency. A big confidence boost, given that mals are such a big part of training and whuffo imaginings about skydiving.

There may be some minor regrets about performance after the chop, but usually it's a good overall feeling to have performed well enough. ("Whoohoo! That was scary but cool..... Oops, it wouldn't have twisted up had I set the toggle properly... And I should have remembered to arch before chopping.")

Occasionally one gets weird reactions. I recall two newbies, girlfriend and boyfriend. She had a mal and performed OK, and went back to jumping. He got freaked out about it and decided to quit the sport. End of relationship.

As for my first?
I had it a bit easy, as my first chop was an intentional while testing student gear, followed the next year by a CRW chop from a fairly stable position. (Still had a round reserve in that rig, so going backwards on landing in the rising wind added to the excitement.) The emotions were pretty typical -- Some good excitement at the time, no problems making the decision, and feeling pretty good and pumped up after.

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I feel the need to point out that this is an inherently scued poll.

People do react differently to stressful situations. But by definition, if they responded poorly, then they are not answering this post. It will be very hard to get a response from any of them so you are going to get a scued result consisting of positive reactions.

Lee
Lee
[email protected]
www.velocitysportswear.com

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my first cutaway spinning on my back and new it had to go. Performed emergency procedures and good reserve opening. While under canopy I thought well that was not so bad I don't even feel scare/excited. then I landed and realized how bad my legs were shaking.

I guess it was a little more exciting than I thought.
You can't be drunk all day if you don't start early!

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My first cutaway was after 20 years of jumping, and about 2800 jumps. My first reaction was "well, it finally happened." The next thing I did was to grab my second rig and get on the plane since I was training with my team.
There are battered women? I've been eating 'em plain all of these years...

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Not a cutaway. My first was a pull out floater on an old SST rig (Struggle Struggle Thump). Long story short I tried to get the floating pud a bit too long. When I dumped my 26' LoPo reserve the pilot chute didn't clear my burble right away. Line stretch finally ~600 ft.

Emotions? It changed the sport completely for me. I now knew I probably wouldn't brainlock and die. It was a real confidence boost. I had to go to dinner that night with my first wife and her sister. It was there that I decided my life was too short to be unhappy. All I could think about was being where people could understand what I'd just experienced. I left her shortly after.
Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

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My first cutaway was on jump 500, was intentional with a tertiary rig. So that wasn't to scary.

My first true emergency cutaway was on a tandem when I had about 1700 jumps, everything went smooth. I was working and turning loads, so I didn't get a chance to even think about what just happened. Had to just smile and laugh with the passenger, then grab another and go again :P

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Congratulations on your first chop! :)
Mine was due to a lineover at about jump number 300. I was under a big ol' square 190, so although it was rotating it wasn't doing anything dramatic like diving at the ground, and I had time to look at it and regret my decision not to redo the pack job that I'd already suspected was iffy.

I vividly remember what went through my head while looking up at that misshapen canopy, and I liken it to that feeling you get when you've just left your house, shut the door behind you and realised you don't have your keys: surely this can't actually be happening. I wasn't scared so much as pissed off. The few seconds I spent pulling pointlessly at the fouled line were the equivalent of standing on my front path and uselessly searching all of my pockets five times for that missing key as though it might suddenly appear.

Having resigned myself to the fact that my canopy was not going to miraculously right itself, I executed my reserve drills (losing a handle in the process, the only time I've ever done that) and all was fine.

Afterwards I felt an appropriate sense of euphoria and, as most people have reported, new confidence in myself and my ability to deal with a mal. I had no concerns about jumping again either, even though I didn't get back up again the same day because it took longer than that to find my chopped main.

I've known others who have never jumped again after their first malfunction - so we certainly don't all react the same way.

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I had a line over malfunction at about jump 85. I remember being too focused on what I was doing to really have any "feelings" about it in the moment other than maybe an "oh shit" for a second or two. But later on after everything was over, I felt drained like from being stressed. The best part was just as the others said, I learned that the emergency procedures work as advertised, so keep practicing them. Oh, and don't release your brakes if you have a line over with the delusion that it might somehow magically fix it, because it wont. It will just make you start spinning faster.

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Mine was around 1050 and it was a slammer opening followed by spinning diving canopy with my head pinned against my chest. Gave it the old 1,2 fuck you and chopped as it was spinning faster. Everything worked perfectly.

When I landed I had the best adrenaline rush I had since my first tandem. I was high as a kite. I honestly loved it.

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Mine was probably around jump 4-500.
A knot tied around the slider (either the excess line tangled around it, but the more I think about it, it was probably my packing error), slider came down and canopy was turning, I managed to fly above the DZ by grabbing the lines above the slider (Thank you Greg W. ;) ) and tried a few practice flares. For the most part I could either fly straight or flare but not both, not consistently at least, so I decided to chop. I was debating whether to land it or not, but I reached my decision altitude and I still wasn't sure that it was safe to land the canopy.

My main feeling, once I decided I was going through with the EPs: I really can't believe I am cutting away because of this stupid bullshit...well, here we go.
I'm standing on the edge
With a vision in my head
My body screams release me
My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.

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My last one I had a pretty funny thought. I've just bought a JVX-119, and had a severe line twist on my 4th jump with the canopy. I was demoing and decided after the first jump I was going to get it, so when I did the EPs I still didn't pay for the canopy, so i thought:
"Oh hell, there goes xxxx dollars away..."

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MY FIRST CUTAWAY TOOK PLACE BACK IN THE LATE 90S. WHILE JUMPING A DEMO CANOPY (CONQUEST 130), I DECIDED TO DO A PRACTICE FLARE TOO SOON AFTER COMING OUT OF A SPIRAL. (DONT DO THIS WITH A CONQUEST, LOL). THE CANOPY SPUN INTO UNCONTROLABLE LINE TWIST IN A MATTER OF SECONDS. I WAS AT 1800 FT SO THE CHOICE WAS CLEAR. NICE CLEAN CUTAWAY, AND MY 1ST AND ONLY ROUND JUMP. A FEW MIN. AFTER HITTING THE GROUND, I GRABBED MY OTHER RIG, WENT BACK UP FOR ANOTHER JUMP.

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At jump #200 I wanted to know so badly how it felt to be under a reserve, I just pulled my 23ft Tri-Con Chest mount to see how it was. I had an old timer then tune me up and direct me to the beer store and said not to forget a bottle for the rigger. That took all the money I had left. At about #300 had a streamer on a PC. Found myself reacting too fast and missed one of the 1 1/2 shot rings. Don't execute procedure too fast if at safe altitude. Worry about the emotion later. Stay with it..

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Except for your prejump reservations about the pack job (I had no reason to suspect mine was iffy), your account of your response and emotions to the mal nearly perfectly describes my first (and only) cutaway (at about jump 480).

I had a goal to never need to cut away, trying to be a careful and thoughtful packer, and so I remember having a few seconds of disappointment (while I also was doing several pointless things in a futile effort to "fix" that perfectly unfixable bow tie above me) that I wouldn't even exceed the industry average number of jumps per cutaway (which I think is ~700). Oh well.

(Video if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5gnJQybiZA)

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