Stupid things I have done

[DougH 270]

Quote

And then, by the corner of my eye I spotted "something odd"...
I looked beneath me to see what is this odd thing? About 7-10 feet right of me and 30 feet below I saw a pilot chute and deployment bag coming out of container! First half of a second I thought (like a moron): "Hey, a parachute is opening... Second half of a second I thought: "Nooooooooo!!!" And then I screamed by it. Didn`t have time to do anything. Turn, track, slide away...
The guy had a brain-lock or something after the formation fell apart and deployed his main at 7000 feet.

Did you have words with this jumper? If I am shooting video a make it ultra clear that I get the center. They will track at the bottom of the dive, at the altitude we agree on. I think it would have been pretty hard to avoid freaking out on this jumper long enough for him or her to understand how fucking dangerous of a bonehead move that was.

Did you properly discuss with them before the jump?

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

[mircan 0]

Quote

Did you properly discuss with them before the jump?

Yes, before jump, in the plane... Even the pilot later said that i bored him to death while I was explaining them what to do over and over again. The whole group forgot everything the second when they exited. I was aware, to some extent, of possible problems and that is why i stayed more sideways and in level, not above. But when they fell apart he flew right towards and beneath me.
...3 secs later there goes the canopy...
...3 seconds i was not looking at everybody (which was impossible considering how scattered they were)

Quote

I think it would have been pretty hard to avoid freaking out on this jumper long enough for him or her to understand how fucking dangerous of a bonehead move that was.

Well i`m known to be pretty calm person and i explained him what he did wrong and what should he do later in his jumping career. His only reply was: "well the formation fell apart so I opened..."

i would post a video, but you can only see part of a opening canopy passing by right part of the screen... so no use.

dudeist skydiver #42

[sriddy 0]

I pulled a real boneheaded move about a month ago. It was after an uneventful 3-way out of a Porter. It was one of those no-wind days, so the correct landing direction was less than obvious. The first guy down landed to the South, so I set up to do the same. On the base leg, I saw another guy off the my left, at roughly my level, heading West. Then he turned South.

Cool, we're all on the same page. So I turn South for final. Great. Heading for the peas, heading for the peas, gonna be a tad long, but close.

OH SHIT!!!! I'm about 30 ft up when I see a guy coming from the left touch down in the peas (landing in towards the West). FUCK! So I pick my feet up to keep from dragging the top of his canopy while I give it too much right toggle (more panicky than I like to admit). Once I got about 10 degrees of turn I give it full left toggle, then full right toggle before the canopy was back over my head. I salvaged enough flare to make the landing injury free, but it was ugly enough to make the entire dropzone cringe. Turns out, the guy I saw turn South was just taking a hitch in the pattern to line up with the peas.

As luck would have it, the DZO was in the landing area to talk down a student and saw the whole thing. At first, I thought about taking the long way back to the hangar to avoid him, but instead I went right up to him to talk about how dumb I am (and more importantly, how to become less dumb.)

The primary lesson to learn is if there is a canopy on your level, don't fucking lose track of it. Instead, I assumed he was gonna stay pointed South and then target locked on the peas. Granted, he didn't see me either until I crashed in front of him. And he was the lower canopy and technically had right-of-way. But, this all reinforces a lesson from motorcycling. Don't assume other traffic will keep you safe. Its better to operate with the assumption that you're invisible and everyone is out to get you. I later talked to other instructors about practicing flat turns for obstacle avoidance.

Since all I broke was my pride, I feel I learned these lessons at a discount rate. So I'm glad it happened for two reasons:

1) It pointed out how much canopy skill I don't have. Good to know when I think about downsizing.

2) When I was jumping Casa loads this past weekend, my head was swiveling so much I felt like that chick from the Exorcist.

If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough. Personally, I'm trying to be less dumb.

[dalemeyer 0]

1. Jump number 30(ish), training jumps still. break off came and i turned to track only then to realize how far from the dz i was, so i stopped and turned to track back to the dz. Luckily the instructor saw me and i saw him so back i went again in the other direction. Fortunate to still make the dz and got a good talking to... Thanks Mark

2. Was rushed to boarding point with the porter waiting specially for me to fill the load, standing outside the plane and Tonto says to me, "you not getting on the plane like THAT?" and he then proceeded to point out that my leg straps were loose and my chest strap was routed wrong... Thanks T.

3. jump # 40(ish), doing a 2-way with instructor, I got REALLY into the jump and lost alti awareness and instead of turning and tracking like a BIATCH i tracked like 5 meters and pulled... Instr. went a little lower to get vert seperation... great thinking on his part, brain fart on mine... Thanks Stinkhout

4. not the smartest idea yet but it has not bitten me in the ass yet. jumped a 290 canopy for about 50 jumps (student gear) then had to downsize to a 230 (also student gear but we had a gear shortage for a growing club) for a about 40 jumps, with a W/L of about 1.2... partook in a canopy course with Swooopa-X and ProSwooper and was allowed to downsize to a 200... for 6 jumps or so... the eventually jumped my own pilot 188 and been jumping it since.
Needless to say, the first jump on every downsize i pretty much faceplanted for a good 5m... but on ly on the first jump with the new canopies... been jumping the 188 since and no plans on going smaller soon. W/L at 1.4. I have been fortunate enough to have not gotten injured while downsizing.

5. Jump #157, low SLOW turn into wind and slightly off dz landing... clubhouse reckon i got lucky but i still reckon i had it under control (not that i plan on doing it on a regular basis).

Thanks Ron for the original post, i most definately have been learning TONS not just in this forum, but all of them...

Take it easy... and if you get it easy, take it TWICE!

[Ether 0]

Quote

If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough. Personally, I'm trying to be less dumb.

Channelling NickDG here: that's a nugget!

Looking for newbie rig, all components...

[potatoman 0]

jump 70ish. 2 way with jumpmaster for fun. too many students, so he jumps two rigs, just flops on the next after landing. Popping out the students, at 8k I get out onto the wheel (c182 or some c ), look back, and jumpmaster has not fastened his legstraps, nor is his cheststrap routed. I immed aborted and pushed back into the plane.

He bought me some beers

You have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to tell you how Fu***** stupid it is.
Davelepka - "This isn't an x-box, or a Chevy truck forum"
Whatever you do, don't listen to ChrisD.

[Stuntbabex 0]

This one is a VERY stupid one...
I had less than 20 jumps at the time and I was having trouble keeping the toggles in the cateyes when I was packing. I decided to wrap rubber bands around the toggles to keep them tight. Well I forgot to take these off before finishing the packjob. Comes time to pull, canopy comes out, I grab the toggles "OH SHIT FUCK" one comes unstowed just fine while the other one was stuck in the cateye. Canopy starts to dive fast. I spend a little time trying to free it up but it just wont go. I look at the alti and Im just under 1000 and was scared I didnt have enough altitude to cutaway safely (I was directly over some powerlines as well). I ended up wrapping the free toggle hand up so that the brake lines were the same length and the canopy straightened out and I landed.

I learned a crapload of lessons that day!

[Kinaa 0]

Quote

I once more jumped in the minefield vicinity.
It was in Croatia. Bad spot and strong winds made our canopies fly backwards. We were all landing out, so I picked a spot on the dirt road and landed. One guy landed to my right, and the other one to my left, not on the road, but in the field. Do I need to say that both fields on my left and right were mine fields. You can tell by those little signs with skeleton head. But, then again, they are putting those signs everywhere where they assume that can be mines. So, nothing happened. We were sooo far from the DZ that no one even consider that this is going to be an issue.
It can get interesting in these parts of the world...

Where in Croatia that jump happened?

[siddacious 0]

Quote

This one is a VERY stupid one...
I had less than 20 jumps at the time and I was having trouble keeping the toggles in the cateyes when I was packing. I decided to wrap rubber bands around the toggles to keep them tight. Well I forgot to take these off before finishing the packjob. Comes time to pull, canopy comes out, I grab the toggles "OH SHIT FUCK" one comes unstowed just fine while the other one was stuck in the cateye. Canopy starts to dive fast. I spend a little time trying to free it up but it just wont go. I look at the alti and Im just under 1000 and was scared I didnt have enough altitude to cutaway safely (I was directly over some powerlines as well). I ended up wrapping the free toggle hand up so that the brake lines were the same length and the canopy straightened out and I landed.

I learned a crapload of lessons that day!

What type of container/risers were you using? Usually the stow above the guide ring that the top of the toggle goes into after going through the cats's eye should keep the toggle in place. I wonder why yours didn't.

A dolor netus non dui aliquet, sagittis felis sodales, dolor sociis mauris, vel eu libero cras. Interdum at. Eget habitasse elementum est.

[Chubba 0]

I got one from Saturday.

Landed ~30ft from the hangar on a 25 knot wind day attempting to get my last landing requirement for my A license.

Got hit by turbulence, my flare provided ZERO lift at all and to top it off I lifted my legs up and landed on my ass instead of PLFing... lucky I'm not in a wheelchair, my body is still very beat up but no injuries and I'll be jumping again this weekend.

The CI/DZO ripped me a new one after that landing Wide open spaces from now on for me.

[mircan 0]

Quote

Where in Croatia that jump happened?

Borovo Naselje, near Vukovar (where the big shit was happening).

dudeist skydiver #42

[maadmax 0]

Last weekend. Took two young jumpers without specifically telling them to let go if the formation funneled out of the door. Sure enough it happened, I waited approximately 600ft for them to let go of each other and settle out before joining them in a round. Suddenly a reserve chute pops out at 12,500 ft and barely misses me as it screams by. Luckily everything turned out well.


______________________________________

[tbrown 26]

Quote

Quote

This one is a VERY stupid one...
I had less than 20 jumps at the time and I was having trouble keeping the toggles in the cateyes when I was packing. I decided to wrap rubber bands around the toggles to keep them tight. Well I forgot to take these off before finishing the packjob. Comes time to pull, canopy comes out, I grab the toggles "OH SHIT FUCK" one comes unstowed just fine while the other one was stuck in the cateye. Canopy starts to dive fast. I spend a little time trying to free it up but it just wont go. I look at the alti and Im just under 1000 and was scared I didnt have enough altitude to cutaway safely (I was directly over some powerlines as well). I ended up wrapping the free toggle hand up so that the brake lines were the same length and the canopy straightened out and I landed.

I learned a crapload of lessons that day!

What type of container/risers were you using? Usually the stow above the guide ring that the top of the toggle goes into after going through the cats's eye should keep the toggle in place. I wonder why yours didn't.

Actually, no they don't. That's just an elastic stow and it's quite common for the toggle to rip the stow loose from its stitching if the toggle wasn't set correctly in the catseye. Happened to me once.

Anyway, even if the elastic stow DID hold, the length of steering line that should've been stowed, but wasn't, will still cause a spin until the stowed brakeline is released.

The lesson to be learned from this mishap is NEVER go adding homemade rigging as an alternative to simple established procedure. The guy's toggles were fupped duck because he had them wrapped up in rubber bands that never should've been there in the first place. The real thing to do is to give your brakelines a short tug after you stow them, while looking to SEE that the toggle has gone through the catseye the way it's supposed to. Very simple, quick, and effective.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[mjosparky 3]

Quote

The real thing to do is to give your brakelines a short tug after you stow them, while looking to SEE that the toggle has gone through the catseye the way it's supposed to. Very simple, quick, and effective.

A very simple solution to a simple problem. It also helps to understand how the gear works and not just pack “monkey see, monkey do”.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[monkycndo 0]

Quote

“monkey see, monkey do”.

Sparky

Sure, pick on the monkey.

50 donations so far. Give it a try.

You know you want to spank it
Jump an Infinity

[mjosparky 3]

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[markovwgti 0]

2 weeks ago i grabbed my risers on opening,,,,well i had a hard opening...the risers whipped my fingers on my left hand and broke my middle finger in 2 spots :(

[jclalor 12]

After a brief 27 year break from jumping, when I started AFF my first 5 jumps were done without sleeping for about 36 hours. As a nurse working nights I was use to this but this was the dumbest thing I ever did.

[mrwrong 0]

Bumping this thread to draw some attention again.
C'mon folks spill your guts and share those stupid moves

“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

[pilotdave 0]

Alright, my turn...

Two weekends ago. My 3rd attempt at classic accuracy (all that day). Misjudged my approach and came up short of the tuffet. Should have realized it higher, but I felt like I was going to make it and needed to sink in. Held in brakes too long... when I realized I was short of the tuffet I flared the rest of the way to try to slow my descent a little. STUPID me, accuracy canopies just sink faster when you do that. Thought I was gonna be ok, then SLAMMED into the ground. Feet, butt, ouch. That hurt. Nothing serious as far as I know... but boy is my butt sore.

Dave

[poe62 0]

Quote

2 weeks ago i grabbed my risers on opening,,,,well i had a hard opening...the risers whipped my fingers on my left hand and broke my middle finger in 2 spots :(

oooh ouch! I did that only my fingers didn't break. I lost a good layer of skin on both hands though.

~Nikki
http://www.facebook.com/poe62

Irgity Dirgity

[gearless_chris 1]

Our hangar was being moved so we were using the terminal building at the airport until it was finished. We still used the same landing area but we were now on the west end of it instead of the east end. There is a concrete parking lot for airplanes that was separated from our landing area by a waist high chain link fence. The fence runs from southwest to northeast. Somewhere in the north end of our new landing area was a 2 inch steel post with what looked like a golf ball cleaner on top of it. The winds on this day were out of the north. We had the evil weeble (spiderman) thrown out in the landing area for an accuracy target. My original landing plan was to do a left 180 front riser to get the weeble and land northwest to avoid the pole to the north. While I was starting my turn Ballsack Jack's kids moved from where they were standing and were now in my planned path. I had plenty of altitude so I turned a little harder to put them on my right instead of my left. It worked out perfect, I still got to hit the weeble, and I missed the pole by miles since I was landing west now. Oh yeah, about that fence I mentioned earlier, I never in a million years would have thought my 170 would've covered that much ground but it was quickly apparent that I was not going to stop in time. I briefly thought about stabbing the brakes to pop over the fence and decided landing on the concrete would be bad, besides what if I ALMOST made it over? I better stay on the ground and slide it out. I checked to make sure I wasn't lined up with a pole and it was all good, so here we go. I ended up on my back, under the fence to my neck, with the canopy draped over the fence on the same side as my body. I don't know if here's a moral to this story, I'd do every thing the same except move my initiation point farther east, or get my feet up to catch the fence instead of going under it. It's a great video because you can't see the fence until I hit it.

"If it wasn't easy stupid people couldn't do it", Duane.

My momma said I could be anything I wanted when I grew up, so I became an a$$hole.

[RMK 3]

At about jump #22, I was on rented gear and went out to manifest with the wrong rig on. Luckily some “jobsworth” sent me back to the hangar because I didn’t have the packing card which was required at that DZ. Glad to have not found out how much smaller the canopy was than the 240 I was expecting. Beware new jumpers, a row of same colour rental Javelins can catch you out.

And I must admit, I also did the newbie one of getting on the plane without my helmet (to the displeasure of the other waiting jumpers)

"Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to attend his classes"

[drewcarp 0]

Quote

#75 Under canopy, focusing on the tetrahedron instead of the wind sock like I was used to. "Eat the carrot" doesn't work for those and they are just unreliable peices of sh*t! Scared many people on my final, myself included when I quickly realized that I was heading downwind (wind was probably 5-10) but I ran that unintentional downwinder out! I responded to every instructor who approached me with "I was looking at the stupid arrow" and every single one said, "ahhh, don't do that, look at the windsocks."
Lesson: stick to your plan or at least follow traffic if a wind indicator confuses you!

Haha. Glad to hear that happens to people other than me. That fucker is confusing if you are use to a windsock!! Did the same thing on jump 4, ate some dried crawdads and dirt after putting it down in the dried up swoop pond downwind in about 10-12k wind. At about 50 feet I thought, shit...this isn't right, I'm going way too fast. Luckily, my experience flying planes taught me enough not to whip a turn that low so i rode the bitch in on my heels, walking back to a trailer full of quiet but relieved jumpers with grins. ONE WAY STREET, ONE WAY STREET!

[ozzy13 0]

Quote

2 weeks ago i grabbed my risers on opening,,,,well i had a hard opening...the risers whipped my fingers on my left hand and broke my middle finger in 2 spots :(

Marko, Marko you have done a lot stupider( If thats a word) things then that lol

Here is one lol
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=6847&string=marko

Never give the gates up and always trust your rears!