Craziest Stunt I have Ever Seen

[SWATcop 0]

I am quite sure this has been posted here at some time before and probably a lot of you have seen it. I was wondering if anyone knows if this guy just held on to the rig during deployment? It looks like it but its hard to tell.

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&stream=http%3A//www.videotiger.com/vids/skydiving.wmv&partner=singfish&atturl=http%3A//www.videotiger.com&player=wm&scroll1=&scroll2=Skydiving&referer=http%3A//aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search

Kevin

Muff Brother #4041
Team Dirty Sanchez #467

[mr2mk1g 10]

There was a wire running up his arm. Still a rather dangerous stunt mind even if he was wired to the rig - if it got away from them or malfunctionned in any way he would have been in a very very bad position.

There have been several true chuteless jumps done in the past however where the jumper exited entirely seperate to his canopy and was passed it in freefall by another jumper.

[SWATcop 0]

Yikes!

Kevin

Muff Brother #4041
Team Dirty Sanchez #467

[hobbes4star 0]

ya and they had a extra chute for each one of the boulders that he calls his balls.

if fun were easy it wouldn't be worth having, right?

[BIGUN 1,053]

Yup, Mr. Cole goes by "Chuteless" on here and can be PM'd.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[Beatnik 2]

If I remember correctly that was an old Javelin ad. He had a special harness under his clothes. If the video was higher quality you can actually see it run up his arm.

Cheers,
Jim

[airfury17 0]

I am almost positive there was no tricks to this. Greg Gasson I believe is his name and On Good Stuff the DVD I am sure he does not have anything

[skydiverek 54]

From Greg Gasson:

"I had a harness on underneath my jumpsuit that attached to the B-12 snaps on my Javelin. There is an article describing the stunt in further detail in the April 94 issue of Parachutist."

and

"Sun Path made special mods to my rig so I had a cutaway handle and a reserve handle on the legstraps for my rig. I am a master rigger and I consulted with three other master riggers, the DZ owner and the S&TA. As for the FAA I called them before doing the stunt and asked them if I needed any special paperwork for jumping an experimental harness. I was told that since I was a master rigger and if I was the only one who was jumping it then I did not need to get any paperwork. I may be foolish, but I'm not stupid."

[skydiverek 54]

More from Greg Gasson:

"This is something I wrote a few years ago for Parachutist and Jason
Bell used it as a basis for his article on my "chuteless" jump. I
think it appeared in the April 94 issue of Parachutist. Joe Jennings
reshot the stunt on 35mm film to be used in his upcoming video called
"Good Stuff".


The Madness to the Method


Strangely enough it did not seem unusual the first time I jumped
out of a plane without a parachute on my back. You probably think
that I am psychotic, but I will try to convince you otherwise.


In October of 1991 I met Mike McGowan who had just moved to my home DZ, Skydive Arizona. I had a video of myself hanging upside down from the legstraps of my rig by my feet. Mike liked it enough that he wanted to get some footage of it for his video "On the Fun Side". After he finished up the video he asked me to start thinking of
something for his next project. My original idea was to jump out of
the plane without wearing the rig on my back and then put it on in
freefall. So I called up the FAA and asked them if I need any
paperwork to build an experimental harness. They told me as long
as I was a master rigger and was the only one jumping the gear that
I didn't need any. The next few months I kept running through the
stunt in my mind and it just seemed to be lacking something. Then
I was going over it again and thought of a twist to the stunt that
would really raise some eyebrows. What if I did not put the rig on
at all but instead deployed the main while holding onto the rig.
Now that I had an image of what I wanted the stunt to be I had to
figure out how to do it safely.

The first thing I needed to do was to design a harness that could
be concealed under my jumpsuit. I went over to Bob Sprague's and
he and I spent about an hour discussing various types of harnesses
and what we came up with was very similar to a climber's seat
harness with extensions that could be run up through the sleeves
of my jumpsuit. The harness was built out of type 7 webbing. At
the end of the extensions I put a large 3-ring. The 3-ring attached
to both of the B-12 snaps on my rig which made an even load bearing
point for attachment. I did not want to attach it to just one side
since it would probably cause a turn after deployment. Since I was
attached to the B-12's I needed to be able to cut away and deploy
my reserve. I made some modifications to the rig to do this.

The best way to keep the rig stable in freefall would be similar
to an AFF dive with the rig as the "student". For the first attempt
I wore another rig so that we could get an idea of how the jump
would go. My partner in crime was front float, the rig was center
and I was was rear float. The exit went well and the rig was very
stable in freefall. At 7000 ft I reached for the pullout and deployed
the main. The opening was fine and the rest of the jump went without
a hitch.

Now it was time to do it for real. I felt like a first jump student
all over again. I got some very strange looks from out-of-town
skydivers on the ride to altitude who didn't know what we were doing.
Ready, Set, Go!!! We exited without a problem, leveled out and
geeked the camera. My fall rate was a bit slower without the weight
of the rig on my back. At 7000 ft I deployed. The opening was nice
and soft. I kicked my legs up and put them through the legstraps
up to my knees. Since the harness is attached to the B-12's and
runs under my jumpsuit I had to take off the left side of my jumpsuit
so that my left arm was free. When I got my arm free I reached up
with both hands and grabbed the harness under the cutaway and reserve handles. I pulled myself up so that my legs were all the way through the legstraps but my body was still outside the container. I
unthreaded the lateral adjustment on the right side of my rig so
that I could lift the back of the rig open and squirm into the
rest of the harness. Not too bad for the the first try.

On the second jump the right brake line unstowed on deployment so
the canopy was spinning to the left. No problem. Since I'm not in
the harness it is easier to hang all of my weight on one side in
order to slow the spin down. Then I just unstowed the left brake
and all was well. We made several more jumps without any problems.

I met Derek Thomas from Sun Path at the 1993 World Meet in Eloy and he was very interested in the stunt I was doing with Mike. I asked him if he could help build a rig with better modifications than the one
I had built. So we sat down one afternoon and I showed him what I
had done to my rig and asked him for his suggestions. He came up
with a much cleaner method of cutting away and deploying the reserve
than I had designed. It's great when you can talk to the owner of the
company directly. I also met John LeBlanc from PD who was kind enouhg to let me borrow some canopies for the stunt.

In order to get footage of me climbing back into the rig I jumped
by myself with the rig on, then climbed out of the harness container
and then back in again. On the first jump with the new Javelin I did
not loosen the legstraps enough. When it came time to climb back in I could not get my feet through the legstraps. The previous jumps I
was barefoot to make this part easier but it was to cold to jump
without shoes. I landed outside of my container hanging from the
legstraps. Fortunately I was prepared for such fun. I was using
a PD-235 7-cell. I landed in full flight with no flare and did a
PLF. Now this was a great jump to add this to my NSTIW (no shit
there I was) stories. We made seven jumps where I climbed out then
back in again. We made thirteen jumps where I exited without the
rig on my back. On two of the jumps I had such soft, slow openings
that I am convinced that I could have hung on without using a harness. So for this particular stunt I was out of my harness twenty times. On the stunt for the "On the Fun Side" video I climbed out of the harness ten times. I've got about thirty jumps now with my body
completely outside the harness container.

Don't worry the next stunt will be better than this one.

Blue Skies"

[Katherine 0]

so when he is under canopy, climbing in and out, is he attached to anything?

Leeds University Skydiving Club
www.skydiveleeds.co.uk

[FrogNog 1]

It tripped me out the first couple times I watched it on "Good Stuff", but after awhile I became suspicious because of the long sleeves.

-=-=-=-=-
Pull.

[SWATcop 0]

That was very good, thanks for posting.

Kevin

Muff Brother #4041
Team Dirty Sanchez #467

[Inthebuff 0]

Saw a stunt in the 80's on a UK TV show called Just Amazing.

A guy exited an aircraft and at the same time they threw his Rig out of another aircraft.
The Rig was attached to what looked like a big old cooking pot that was weighted to match his fall rate.

He dived to pin on the pot and attached himself to it using the anchor points a bit like what a tandem master uses.

Looked real to me.

Now he realy was a Crazy Mother F****r.

***********************************
Fly Like Zie Eagle, Not Like Zie Chicken !
Good advice from an instructor I know.

[mjosparky 3]

Quote

Saw a stunt in the 80's on a UK TV show called Just Amazing.

A guy exited an aircraft and at the same time they threw his Rig out of another aircraft.
The Rig was attached to what looked like a big old cooking pot that was weighted to match his fall rate.

He dived to pin on the pot and attached himself to it using the anchor points a bit like what a tandem master uses.

Looked real to me.

Now he realy was a Crazy Mother F****r.

That was real, it was Jimmy Tyler

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals