Really hard opening

[dayle 0]

Well, I really had hoped that I would never initiate a post in this forum but I thought I'd let everyone know about an incident I had two weeks ago.

I was in a belly to earth solo skydive. I was in a stable box when I deployed and got slammed. I had about 1 sec after I thru the pilot chute, no slow down at all just all of a sudden I was flying under canopy. As I checked my canopy I was fighting to stay consious becuase the pain was so great. I turned myself towards the landing area and left my breaks stowed incase I did pass out. I was in alot of pain. After I realized I wasn't going to pass out anymore I released my breaks and came in for a landing. It wasn't pretty, I just flared it out and slid in on my knees and lay there.

Bottom line, I have a compresion fracture of one of my vertabra and won't be able to jump for most of this season Good news however is that I will be able to jump again and there is no permenant damage.

I'm really not sure what it was that happened, I've been thinking some sort of line dump but other opinions would be welcome.

By the way I was jumping a 135 stiletto and I weigh about 145. I'm really not sure how much I weigh going out the door exactly but I'm not loading up the canopy.

Dayle

[encinoadam 0]

Dayle,

This is an interesting post you have here. I believe the February issue of Parachutist has a very in-depth article about hard openings (someone please feel free to correct me on this) and how to avoid them.

Personally, I have experienced two slammers. Frankly, they suck. I'm sure people here will have twenty reasons why this happens. For me, I am pretty sure both times it was due to line dump. I used to stow my lines pretty loose for fear of ending up with bag-lock.

Quite honestly, I'd rather have an occasional bag-lock than just one more slammer opening. If you look elsewhere in this forum, another jumper is considering not jumping anymore because his doctor advised him against it after a bad opening. I see a lot of people discouraging him from quitting, but I wouldn't blame him if he did.

I'm not so sure that I haven't done some permanent damage to my neck from my two hard openings... and that is a constant consideration for me each time I jump. Since these two incidents of mine, I have double-stowed all or most of my lines (I use tube stows).

I don't know or pretend to know exactly how loose or tight I should stow my lines, but I have been told that a good general rule of thumb is that you should be able to pick up your d-bag by your lines without having them coming undone. Worried about bag-lock? I don't know how much pull-force is generated by tossing your pilot chute, but my guess is a lot more than you think.

And, here is something else about bag-lock. Generally speaking, I don't think bag-lock occurs from stowing your lines too tight. While I am sure you *could* get bag-lock from this, I think it is more common from:

1) one line group passing through the loop of another line group, essentially creating a "lock"
2) worn out pilot-chute
3) uncocked pilot-chute

Anyway, I am sure some of the seasoned veterans here could add a lot more to this than I can. But, I have been wondering if there are not a series of injuries like this that most people never talk about. You feel like a retard afterwards, and there isn't really an injury to "show" anyone, so you kind of just suck it up and deal with it.

After reading your post and the post from the camera-jumper who experienced a similar situation (which was probably made worse by the fact that he had a camera on his head), I am going to scrape together the cash to get myself x-rayed. It's easy to take a little time off in order to heal a minor injury. It's a little more difficult to mend a severe spinal cord injury.

My 200-someodd jumps doesn't qualify me to give you much advice in the air. But I don't need 10,000 jumps to have common sense on the ground (um, not that I have any). But, here is my personal advice. Do what you gotta do to continue to jump safe. If that means not jumping for the season, deal with it and get back in the air when you can.

When you do resume jumping, it wouldn't hurt to get a packing lesson or two from someone who really knows what they are doing in order to minimize the chances of this happening again (it might cost you the price a jump-ticket). Going from 120 to almost zero in just a second or two... is not the way it is supposed to be.

Keep those lines stowed tightly!

Just my humble opinion.

[tlshealy 0]

You might want to measure your slider and contact PD to see if it's the correct size or if they recommend a larger one. I remember hearing that at one time certain size stilettos came with a smaller slider. Also have the line trim checked. How many jumps are on the canopy/ line set, and how many jumps do you have on this canopy?
Tad

[dayle 0]

Thanks Adam, your right about the bag lock, actually I would prefer a seriously f@*!ed up spinning canopy, bag lock or any other type of malfunction then what I expeienced on that opening.

I was on vaccation alone at the time that this happened out of the country. As I was on vaccation I was using the services of the local packer on the DZ. I think I may brush up my own packing skills and do my own pack jobs from now on. I've really always relied on packers because I really hate packing but this incident I believe will change that habit...and save me a bunch of money

I just wish that there was someway I could have know what was going to happen in that split second after I threw the pilot chute so I could have immediately cut it away before it fully deployed and saved myself alot of pain. Maybe a time machine??

Dayle

[wallygator 0]

I have had a couple of hard openings myself and after talking to a couple instructers at my dz one of them reccomended this, on opening as you toss the PC alter your body position to an almost backslide, not s complete backslide but bring the head up so that you are almost looking down at the horizon. If you want degree numbers i was told between 15 and 30 degree up angle and this will reduce the hard opening and also reduce chance of a PC burbble and give you a softer opening. I have been doing this for the last 80 or so jumps and I havn't had a hard opening or slammer.. This has worked for me but make sure you investigate it before attempting. What works for me might not work for everyone. Cheers, blue skies softer landings
heal fast and strong play safe
hind sight is 20-20

--------------------------------------------------
who Jah bless Let no man curse.

[dayle 0]

Thanks for the comments, but I don't think it applies in this situation. The canopy is about a year and a half old and only has about 120 jumps on it. It was brand new when I got it and I never ever had any sort of a problem with it before.

Dayle

[dterrick 0]

Hey Dayle It's Dave in the next province West!

Sorry to hear about your slammer but perhaps I can help. I'm (...still) jumping a Raven 218 - a reserve design (always opens fast) - and have had my share of slammers in the last 100 jumps with it.

I STILL get the occasional slammer even after installing a larger slider and a a slider pocket and reducing the size of the pilot chute. I've done few jumps on elipticals but even a hard opeinig on a stiletto should be softer than a soft opening on my Raven or a Sabre...

A Master Rigger taught me all the tricks of packing a slow opening on my canopy, although a bit of trial and error jumping was needed to get it right. Now that it is right, I notice that two things specifically seem to cause ME to have a bad one...

Slider position.

If you've been told to cloverleaf the slider make absolutely sure you do and do so correctly. Make DOUBLE sure the front quarter of the slider is pulled more than the rear quarter - the sides seem to be less important. Further, when you wrap the tail, make sure you are as tight as possible to the slider grommets and THEY STAY TIGHT TO THE SLIDER STOPS. Double check this before you get into S folding.

Line stows / elastics.

I have microlines on the Raven and the single best thing I did was change to the SMALLEST elastic available and start to replace them every 10-15 jumps or so. I had tube stoes when I first got the rig (ditched them for med. elastics) and switched to double stowing. Things were better for awhile but I broke at least one elastic every jump. A friend suggested the "black elastics" and they too worked well for about 2-3 weekends. I started getting slammed again. With a baglock warning attached, my rigger suggested we try a TRIPLE stow. Indeed this softened the opening ... I could feel EVERY elastic release. Immediately I changed to the teeny tiny elastics.

Take a look at the elastics on your rig and comapare their stretchiness to a brand new one. A combination of worn out elastics and a sloppy slider position could easily cause a hard opening. It was for me.

Speedy recovery bro .. do all your stretches/physio as perscribed and make sure you STILL hang out at the DZ and do whatever you can to help out. Oh ya, bring your BEER! See you at the Nationals?

Dave

Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend (Lennon/McCartney)

[dayle 0]

Hi Dave, thanks for the best wishes. Yes you'll see me at the Natiionals, cause it will be at my home DZ. I'm the guy who will be walkiing around with a plastic cup, crying and looking at the sky since I still won't be able to jump by then. Well, that's not technically correct. I could jump if you could guarantee I wouldn't have a hard opening, but since that's impossible, I wont' be jumping until August.

And hell yes I'll be at the DZ, I may not be able to do it for awhile but at least I can still be around it!!

dayle

[ianmdrennan 2]

Dunno about the "I'd prefer a bag lock". My reserve opened about, if not harder, than you described. I couldn't walk properly for 2 weeks and my back was seriously screwed up. But hey - gotta look at the bright side - at least something opened...right :)

Sorry to hear you had a cracker, in fact heres a link to someone who had one and got it on video :)
It's called Sabre Smackdown http://www.freekfly.com/video/. They guy involved took a huge chip outta his Hawkeye chin piece from slamming it into his j-suit zipper - ZOINKS!


Blue skies and heal up.

Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[skycat 0]

Here read this on line dump.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=121846;search_string=line%20dump;#121846

For line dump to happen you need to have a very large D-bag and and very tiny stowes, and that is only for an out of sequence deployment. Line dump means the locking stowes break open before the rest of the stowes release causing the canopy to come out of the bag before it gets to line strech.

I sprained my t4-t8 on a brutal sabre opening that was due to still tracking when I dumped. We have AFF video of a student completely stable throwing out and WHAM intant canopy, the thing is in the video you see every stow release normal. Derek has asked several times now for someone to show him video of linedump, people are always videoing openings, and no one has been able to come up with one. So if any of you guys have video of line dump please send it to hooknswoop.

BTW....you may want to read this experiment done by a fellow DZ.commer.....only lines stowed were the locking stowes, kindof like the new D-bag javalin is coming up with.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=425419;search_string=openings;#425419

From Sunpath's webpage

Bandless D-Bag

You may have seen a rubberband-less bag at the Sun Path booth at the PIA Symposium. We are currently finalizing the design, and the bag should be available in the next 6-8 months. Contact [email protected] for more details. 2/25/03

There are pics of the D-bag somewhere here in the forums, but I can't find the post.

Fly it like you stole it!

[darkwing 4]

You have my sympathy. Interesting that this topic should come up today. I got slammed yesterday. Serious neck/back trouble today. I will agree with a couple of postings above that seem to say that while line dump gets a lot of blame, there is essentially no real evidence to support it in the large majority of slammer cases.

My canopy is a Spectre 190, which is known far and wide for very mellow openings.

My view, in the absence of real data is the following:
1) Slamming is rarely due to line dump
2) Slamming may sometimes be due to a specific packing flaw (e.g. inverted slider--which I have seen done)
3) Square parachutes open in an environment dominated by turbulent flow. Kind of by definition this means that small changes in opening dynamics happen nearly every jump, and big changes can occur less frequently, but are guaranteed to happen occasionally. I put the generic slammer in this category.
4) By the way, slammers happened on round canopies too, although they tended to be not so bad as on squares.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[Mad47 0]

I had 2 hard openings on Sabre. Both times, I beleive, due to slider not all the way up. Terrible experience but it teaches you to pay more attention to packing. Glad to hear you're ok, bro! Wish you a quick recovery!

[CornishChris 5]

I just have to say that having watched the video on the link you posted I am surprised the guy walked away from the smack in he took - what was all that about and was he AOK?

CJP

CJP

Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people

[Scoby 0]

I had an "instantly open" canopy just like that video about six months ago. It felt like hitting a wall. It has been six months and my back is still not right. I had a concussion from hitting my head on my chest. The canopy was a Sabre 2 190. I have no what caused it, but I am certain that I was falling stable. While I was in a daze on the ground (it took about eight hours for me to feel able to drive home), a number of people told me their own stories of brutal slammers. It seems that they are common enough. Another one like the first would probably ground me for some time.

[ianmdrennan 2]

Chris,

Thanks for the concern but he's fine. That happened almost 2 years ago now - Just rattled around what was already loose in his noodle :)

Brian was jumping a sabre 120 at the time and had one of the local packers pack it for him (A regular occurance).

Guess it was just his unlucky day.

Blue skies
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[Push 0]

Are you talking about Nick? He told me the same thing, he flares before opening. I'm curious if this gives him consistent on heading openings. Maybe this solves one problem but creates another? It seems to work great for him.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[CornishChris 5]

Cool - What about the other video on the page - the guy hitting in pretty hard - was he OK and what happened to cause a landing like that?

CJP

Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people

[Craig 0]

Quote

Cool - What about the other video on the page - the guy hitting in pretty hard - was he OK and what happened to cause a landing like that?

I'd say you can chalk that up to bad judgement. Luckily he was able to walk away.

[R00tj00se 0]

Compression fractures suck. I got one 2 years ago and am just about fully recovered - still need to see the chiropractor every 3 months.

Mine wasn't from an instant canopy - it was a sniveller and then the slider went from the top to the bottom in no time.

Had 5 months of physio - make sure you do all the exercises given to you. Then started seeing a chiropractor to loosen things up every once in a while. Best advice is don't overdo it. Don't try rushing to get back in the sky or you'll only mess yourself up even more.
Be prepared for lots of stiffnes. Make sure you stretch before every jump. And if you don't exercise now, take up some form of exercise when you're feeling better. Even going for a run makes my back feel better.

[SkyDekker 1,150]

Hey Dayle,

I had heard some rumours that you had a slammer down south. Did you get my email?

Look forward to see you at the dz and you can tell me the story over a beer.....

Hope they gave you some good meds

[DJL 232]

How do you pack?

Edit: That's right a packer did it. Do you know what they did as far as rolling this or that?

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[ianmdrennan 2]

Hey Chris,

The other gentleman was Andy Anderson and was taken at the New England Red Bull swoop contest in Lebanon Maine.

It's still unclear as to what he was thinking/doing but from 2nd hand accounts he says he missed his rear risers. Also looks like there was target fixation, but it's easy to be a critic when we aren't in the situation so I can't really say for sure. Hopefully he'll shed some light (He posts here too) on the situation for us in the future.

It's really quite something that he walked away from that.

Moral of the story - Don't try this at home :)

Blue skies and safe swoops,
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[billvon 2,464]

A few comments:

Slammers happen. I know a few people who jump Spectres or Stilettos, pack meticulously, and occasionally have openings that knock their socks off. (It actually knocked one guy's shoe off.) There are definitely ways to reduce the odds but you can't eliminate them. Some of those ways include slowing down as much as possible before opening, going to a smaller PC, tighter stows, bigger/pocket slider etc etc.

>actually I would prefer a seriously f@*!ed up spinning canopy, bag
> lock or any other type of malfunction then what I expeienced on
> that opening.

While I understand the feeling, the other things you listed can be worse. Bag locks either mean a nasty death or a reserve deployment at _higher_ than normal airspeed if you deploy your reserve right away (baglocks often stand you up and you accelerate.) A really fucked up spinning canopy might not be cut-away-able, and that would suck worse than a hard opening.

[dreamsville 0]

I have had one hard opening on my Stiletto 135 and a couple on the Sabre 170 I used to have. Neither one was really severe, praise the Lord. However, here are some contributions from riggers and other experienced people which I think help reduce the probability of slammers:

1) Slider well quartered and all the way up (previous post on this thread indicates that front quarter should stick out more. Haven't heard about this one but I will check it out).

2) Tail wrapped firmly around slider and lines with a little roll or two. Don't use any more material than necessary here to minimize the lines burning the tail skin upon opening. Be sure it stays this way through the S fold process, since the idea is to keep the slider in place until it really needs to come down. Usually give enough of a roll of the tail to hide the rest of the canopy before setting it down, but not so much that you start rolling the nose within it. On a Stiletto, I was taught never to roll the nose. It can spin up on you even without doing that.

3) Make sure the pack job isn't coming apart as you put it in the bag. On a humid day in Florida, I slipped when putting it in. Pulled it out and did it over. We'll never know if that next opening would have been a hard one.

4) Keep stows to no more than a couple of inches so one cannot lock within another. In my case (it's just the way I learned), I used larger stows and double wrap each one. This seems to keep the lines frimly tied, but I have never had anything remotely resembling a bag lock.

5) Allow about 12 to 18 inches of excess line in the packing tray. In any case, depending upon your risers, make sure there is not tension between the last stow and the risers, as in the case of too little excess line. Two riggers have told me that this can impede the bag releasing properly and can cause a hard opening. There should be a little bit of line coiled in the bottom of the tray away from the closing loop.

This stuff seems to work. Anyone please add stuff to this.
|

I don't drink during the day, so I don't know what it is about this airline. I keep falling out the door of the plane.

Harry, FB #4143

[AggieDave 6]

Quote

going to a smaller PC

Before anyone does that, call your container manufacture (NOT your canopy manufacture). Remember, the D-bag and PC size was tested as part of the container system and is known to provide enough drag to pull everything out of the container. Going smaller may give you severe PC hesitation or even a PC in tow (its happened before).

Smaller PCs to fix opening problems is what I call "a bandaid fix" it doesn't actually solve what is wrong. There is usually another culprit, linesets, incorrect slider size, crappy canopy design, etc.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."