Stupid things I have done

[mbondvegas 0]

I've done several WS style pulls without a WS and have not noticed that my openings were particularly hard. I wonder if your hard opening was due to something else?

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I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

[phoenixlpr 0]

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I've done several WS style pulls without a WS and have not noticed that my openings were particularly hard. I wonder if your hard opening was due to something else?

Keep it simple: higher deployment speed.

I'm still wondering why you opened that way? Just touching could have been the right practice.

[wmw999 2,120]

I was looking at an old logbook, and I think this entry counts:

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NWSCSA attempt. We got 5 at 3500. Broke at 2800. Fourth through, and I hit the hoop. Yuck.

Yes, that means I was on a night jump with at leat 9 other people, only 5 in (2 holding the hoop), and we broke that low.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[mgattini 0]

Off-field landing, phat 450 downwind(my normal landing direction) was able to make it under the barbwire fence with only a cut on my pants. Velo 90.....

[bob.dino 0]

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Off-field landing, phat 450 downwind(my normal landing direction) was able to make it under the barbwire fence with only a cut on my pants. Velo 90.....

Under the fence?! How tall was the fence and did you put the canopy into it? Glad to hear you're in one piece after that one...

[kschilk 0]

After reading most of the previous, I don't feel so bad. Besides, I can't believe that anyone reading this...wouldn't have done the same thing, under the circumstances.

I had made 31 jumps, my first season...completed AFF but still unlicensed. In April of the next year, I made 1 jump and until then, hadn't jumped anything smaller than a 210. In May, I left to spend the summer and get married in a foreign country. Just days before I left, I bought a used rig with a 160 Triathlon main.

To make a long story short...I stepped off the plane in a foreign country, where I didn't speak the language...with only 32 jumps, an unfamiliar rig that I'd never jumped and with a main, a good bit smaller than I'd ever jumped before and also, that I didn't really know how to pack...plus an "A" license, that I'd created from my USPA membership card. (Figured that without a license, they might not let me jump.) Might sound kinda' bad but really, everything went off great. Still, I suppose my actions weren't entirely prudent.

[DougH 270]

Or honest!!!

My dumbest so far was failing to reminding everyone to check handles and chest straps on one jump... "its 10 oclock do you know where your handles are??"

On that jump some one left the plane without a chest strap, the person I was jumping with!!! Thank god he stayed in the harness but when I found out I felt like a real dick!!!

"The restraining order says you're only allowed to touch me in freefall"
=P

[NWPoul 1]

Not mine "Stupid thing"
But I was impressed by what my friends did (was told on our way to home from DZ)

At the end of a pozitive weekend one of them came to another with "cool" idea:

"Let's do 2 way and at the break off don't track from each other but lay face to face say about 10 meters from each other and deploy...by my command - will be f***ng cool video!"

and another say "yaeh! let's go!"

Both well respected and (at least one of them) were known as "safety" guys.

Canopies/WL/jumps#:

velo/2+/1000+
xfire2/1.5/400

Luckily on of them cheated and didn't throw his PC "by comand" (give 2+ sec), but even this cheat barelly give him enough separation, coz after he pull, his canopy surge right under sniveling canopy of his teammate...

As velo guy said on my "whata f***ng you hope on?":
"We were relying on different deployment time/altitude of our canopies"

Why drink and drive, if you can smoke and fly?

[pinkfairy 0]

I hope beer has been purchased for every single one of these posts.

And if someone owes: buy it now, it's not too late!

Relax, you can die if you mess up, but it will probably not be by bullet.

I'm a BIG, TOUGH BIGWAY FORMATION SKYDIVER! What are you?

[kschilk 0]

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I hope beer has been purchased for every single one of these posts.

And if someone owes: buy it now, it's not too late!

Naturally...but where I was, it was beer AND wodka! They actually mix the two!!

[rave4funn 0]

I misrouted my cheststrap this past weekend. I noticed my chestrap was loose around 12K. I realized what I had done. Thankfully, it made me paranoid and I started checking everyone around me on every load after that. Two loads later I noticed a girl on the plane had done the same thing. My buddies and I are back to doing complete gear checks on each other before we board the plane and again at around 10K.

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http://www.myspace.com/rave4funn

[sagan 0]

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I misrouted my cheststrap this past weekend. I noticed my chestrap was loose around 12K. I realized what I had done.

A good way imo that i was shown to ensure this never happens and is also the "correct" way to put on a rig at least according to my dealer and sun path rep that was at the dz is to: 1) Get rig on with leg straps. 2) Lean forward and tighten the chest strap slightly more than you would jump with. 3) while bent over with tightened chest strap, do up the leg straps.

If you didn't route the chest strap correctly it'll be pretty obvious. The reason I was told to do this is to position the rig correctly on the back. When you do legs up first you pull the rig down to your butt instead of up on your shoulders where it ought to be.

Not sure how "official" this technique is around the sport but it seems to work really well for me. :)

-Patrick

[hukturn 0]

With about 200 jumps, we pulled a 4 way off of a King Air. Not too bad until you consider that there was something wrong withe the flaps which meant he couldn't slow down the jump runs. Not bad enough... there was a solid cloud layer at about 3K, we were using Lorraine (mis-spelled) spotting at a C-Note Boogie. We landed about 5 miles out.

[pinkfairy 0]

Ahem:

The DZ's nice, big turbine russian transport plane had been down for most of the week, leaving us only a lousy c-182. (well,it's not lousy, it's really a very nice little plane, great view on the ride to altitude, and the way it's bouncing around when it's climbing makes you really feel as if you're flying, rather than riding the bus). AFF and Tandems had priority, because they are what makes the money for the DZ. With one tandem w/video, there was only room for one normal jumper, and they wanted to chuck out that jumper at 3k to save fuel. Not being familiar with the aircraft and never having learned spotting, this was not very tempting.

Then, when we'd been there nearly a week, we got a Cessna Grand Caravan, with a particularly slippery floor, and I also got on the "priority-list", as I was participating in a canopy control course, so got jumps from 4-5k from the 182 and one jump from the grand caravan, and then finally the AN-28 that had broken down earlier in the week had it's engine replaced, and finally we could get in the air with our favourite airplane. I should probably also mention that the military choppers that were supposed to come and lift us to collect money for children with cancer, failed to materialize.

I only got a couple of jumps from the AN-28. The first one was a hop'npop from 7k, where I sang out with joy over all the altitude I got, and celebrated by doing sharp hook turns so I could see the front of my parachute.

And the day after, we weren't sure we would get in the air at all. Low clouds and the wind was coming from the east, forcing us to come in over the landing area from the west. This is not good over the long, narrow north-to-south landing area that we've got. It puts our final over areas with turbulence, and it gives us little margin for error, putting us in places where we don't want to be if we overshoot or undershoot.

But I really, really wanted to jump, so I went up on that load, and everything went fine, till I overshot the landing area, and landed in very rough terrain, and broke my ankle.

Moral of the story? Even if you're desperate to get into the air, if experience and gut feeling tells you you to stay on the ground, then it's probably a good idea to stay on the ground.

I'm also glad I had practiced getting my feet under me to run or roll in the landing rather than ass sliding. Feet can be fixed. Tail bones and backs aren't that easy.

Edited for spelling.

Relax, you can die if you mess up, but it will probably not be by bullet.

I'm a BIG, TOUGH BIGWAY FORMATION SKYDIVER! What are you?

[Trae 1]

Stupid stupid stupid

I was having a nice break from my life by hanging at a DZ for a week or two.
While on a regular nightly phone call to my bestest GF I told her that I had met a person I hadn't seen for many years. I spoke about how good it felt to see some-one that I knew well and how good it was to see how that person had grown and matured into something special.
well .....when she found out it was another she I was talking about funny things started happening.
Instead of being encouraged to do something separatley for my own interest , like before , it went weird. My ghoulfriend turned up at the DZ that night at 2.30am after driving 6 hours.
Somehow the trust that had existed got a bit mutated into boring ol jealousy.

Stupid stupid stupid

[BenediktDE 2]

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Somehow the trust that had existed got a bit mutated into boring ol jealousy.

Telling your girlfriend about DZ-chicks is realy the most stupid thing in this thread.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

[RossDagley 0]

Downsized from a 288 (student gear) to a 188 (my gear at the time) with no transition jumps - at jump #20ish. Nil winds. Scary landing.

[Trae 1]

in reply to " Telling your girlfriend about DZ-chicks is realy the most stupid thing in this thread. "
...........................................

yep , guilty of gross stupidity,
no more of that peace , love and totally truthful open hippy shyte for me. from now on its lies all the way.
eg now its " No! there were no goils there, just a whole heap of blokes , nup not even 1 girl for 10 blokes like normal '
works a charm

[johan420 0]

flying my wingsuit between two tandems in canopyflight.....they were both at 5000feet and i was pulling for 2500feet, didn`t get any kred from those instructors which was fully understandable...but the tandempassangers loved it

[RaXz 0]

I love this thread, learned a lot from it!
I was already aware of time stress I experience when it's time to get in the harnass. I asked to get my gear in front of the jump call to really get the time with the pre flight gear check, and a lot of dummy's with my rig on because it was my first time jumping with gloves. But it got declined, and I didn't try it again later on. :/

So my fear manifested before my eyes, I had just enough time to do the dummy's and the gear check, then the call came to go to the plane. Without any steering briefing and pincheck, luckily there was someone already on the plane that did a pincheck on the last minute, still not good! I felt confident with the lack of a steering briefing, because I watched it from the others and the pattern was the same as the previous time I jumped on that DZ.

As that wasn't enough, I did some backflying just as other times. But this was the first time I tried to steer while backflying, without consulting an instructor about it first! At first it went well, but then I got into a flat spin. Damn, that was scary, I was just around 6000 feet when I on my belly.

I was really shaken, and glad I was under a good canopy. I was still dazed, and didnt realise the hints that the wind direction changed, luckily it wasn't blowing not too hard that day. I found it rather odd that I was going so fast on my final, I landed downwind and other people still in the pattern guessing what I was doing.

I am really glad that nobody got hurt, and that I've done a PLF. I didn't manage to do that in my previous jumps so it was my first PLF landing. PLF ground training paid off!

[Baksteen 84]

Don't be too hard on yourself, dude!

The winds were treacherous that day.
Stick 1: experienced jumper spotting for another student (sabre 210) and myself (navigator 240) as well as the rest of the load.
Only the two students reached the field, the 210 because he opened somewhat higher, and myself because the Nav doesn't really lose any altitude in any kind of hurry. Even so, I barely made it back to the DZ, and was forced to land quite close to the runway, though not dangerously so.

At the time you aare referring to, the winds were so slight that insofar as forward speed is concerned it didn't matter which way you landed - the steering briefing I got right before takeoff actually assumed the T was facing the other direction.

Remember though, we are students - if you get a call but haven't had a briefing/pin check yet, the plane can (and will) wait.


However.....
Upon opening I was well and thoroughly confused; Stick to the plan, or to the T?
I kept hesitating until I was quite low, and then decided to stick to the plan, seeing that my RW-instructor did so too.
However by now I was in such a bad position that I landed out, going over the barbed wire at the end of the DZ during the last stages of my final. I actually flat-turned 180 at 250 feet to get the right heading back, thus potentially endangering anybody who might have been behind me.

Lesson learned: in these specific conditions, (meaning no wind, and an unclear landing situation as well as few people up there) it does not matter wether you land this way or that, as long as you decide at 1500 feet what you are going to do, and STICK to that plan. Land out if necessary, if you think it'll be safer for you or the others.

"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

[RaXz 0]

Thanks for the reply, Baksteen.
I don't feel that I am too hard on myself, I could still feel some pride. Still going to concentrate much more on my belly flying skills first.

I rather landed upwind, because I saw that I went faster than usual on my final. But then again, it was a great learning experience, especially since the winds weren't blowing too hard.

[bob.dino 0]

Got a little lazy while tracking away from a 4-way. Pitched, then realised I'd packed my Samurai 135 with the brakes unstowed. The canopy took me on a bit of a rollercoaster ride, diving, then twisting back towards the centre of the formation.

Where our cameraman was chopping a lineover.

Sometimes it's the little things that add up and turn into a big thing. I got away with it this time.

[gpdm 0]

Put a ParaFoil into a full stall at about thirty feet from the ground trying to land right next to the hanger. That bought me a steel plate and eleven screws in my ankle. Luckily those things are so damn big they have some drag even when stalled, could have been a lot worse.

[mamajumps 0]

This is an AWESOME post! There are things that I have done that I still beat myself up for (2 years later).... in fact one of them has kept me from going back to a favorite DZ out of embarrassment. This post might just help me move beyond that!!!!