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TKruger

Jump 120

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Saturday, first jump was a 5 way. After a bit of a struggle we all got together around 7.5K tried for a Right Hand doughnut and it went to crap couldn't get it back together. We all broke off and here is where the story begins.....

After coming out of my track I reached for my hacky and deployed my main at around 3K. I'm jumping a Sabre 2 190 and have around 30 jumps on it. I generally get a couple types of deployments over the last 30 or so jumps. Sometimes it a stable on heading opening with the advertised longer snivel while others it's more of an abrupt (less snivel) opening but not a hard opening. I know what that feels like. On this jump having a feel for the snivel it seemed like it took a few seconds more meaning 1 or 2 for it to go from ball of material above my head to the slider coming down and being fully inflated. Upon the slider coming down and the canopy being fully inflated it dove down and to the right. I didn't think much about it at first since I've had that type of a dive to the right in the past. Where things became interesting is rather than the canopy settling to normal flight as it has in the past I began to slowly at first spin. Now I've had a break fire on a Pulse 210 that I had so immediately that was what came to mind so I check for my breaks to see if they were still stowed. Upon inspection it looked as if they were in fact still stowed and in the holders on my risers. Now I'm beginning to spin faster as I continue into rotation number 2. Not seeing a problem with the breaks I grabbed my rear left riser and noticed that due to the spin I wasn't able to pull enough to offset the spin to the right. By now I'm at about 2K feet and after realizing this I decided it was time to chop and hope for a better canopy. In doing so I was reciting....Look, Locate, Peel, Punch PULL but when I got to peel my one handed attempt wasn't allowing me to get the pillow off of the Velcro. So I went at it with both hands, successfully chopping dropping my cut away handle. Before I could reach for the reserve handle the RSL had already had the reserve out and over my head.

I ended up making another jump that same day so as to not allow the incident to affect me negatively.

I spoke with some of the instructors who said that it was possible that the eyelet came off the tab on the handles while keeping the handles in the elastic pouches. The common consensus was that this is what happened and that I could have potentially fixed the problem by releasing my breaks prior to going for the rears.

Now I have replayed this event in my head over and over again and I still believe I saw both handles still stowed.

First question:

Does anyone else have any insight or suggestions as to what may have happened?

Second question:
My Vigil II which I turned on before this jump was OFF when the rigger completed my repack. When the rigger tried to turn it back on it would go to Hello and then turn off.
The Vigil has been sent to Deland to be inspected and I'm waiting to hear back from them what the issue is that caused this problem.

Has this ever happened to any of you or someone you know?

Thanks in advance for your replies!!!

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I've only ever had a couple brake fires and both were quite a while ago, but from your description it definitely sounds like it was either a brake fire or a brake that was unstowed to begin with.

A released brake won't always be obvious and depending on the canopy and how quickly you react, rear-riser input may not settle things out. If your canopy is turning after deployment but appears to be fully open (and you've got the altitude) try popping the brakes. You might be surprised to find only one of them actually "pops."

Another important note is that risers don't last forever. People pay a lot of attention to how many jumps are on a canopy or a canopy's lines when buying and selling gear but main risers are frequently overlooked.

As far as the Vigil issues... well... I'm not a fan of Vigils based on the types of problems they've had and the company's responses to them, but I've already written my piece on that on this site.

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Does anyone else have any insight or suggestions as to what may have happened?



I've seen this where the person didn't put the toggle tab through the loop in the steering line when they set the brakes, and when the main deployed one brake is effectively released even though the toggle itself is still stowed on the riser.
__

My mighty steed

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Another important note is that risers don't last forever. People pay a lot of attention to how many jumps are on a canopy or a canopy's lines when buying and selling gear but main risers are frequently overlooked.



Thanks for that. The Container is a Wings that was purchased new and has fewer than 80 jumps on it.

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