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Ron

Stupid things I have done

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1. About 50 jumps did a two way. We had a good dirt dive and I was told to deploy at normal Alt. about 4500' then. On the taxi way nearing then end of the runway. I looked at my wrist, no altimeter, oops, I told my partner , with about 400 jumps, and he gave me his altimeter and I gave him my protrack. I was still nervous and shocked I had got that far with no altimeter. we launched our dive and did it . Brain fart I guess, I was in front and watched him deploy. I never had seen that before , I was caught up in the moment.
Ok do it right , turn around, track wave off and look. When I saw the 2 lane road, I thought of fuck and pulled so fast. I was in the sadle about 1400'. I did a 180' and just made the DZ. Yes I was sat down and talked to at depth. I remember listening to him and still shaking.


2. About 150 jumps I had worked all night long , went right to DZ that morning. We were about 5000' when this jumper looked right at me and said " Your chest strap is mis- routed. This happened to be the second jump for me that day. After I got down, I relized on my first jump, I had a mis- routed chest strap , because I remebered that my shoulder straps were trying to slide off my shoulders, I had rolled my shoulders foward to keep them on. I had just thought I didn't tighten my chest strap all the way. Lesson learned. was very lucky that day.

3 jump 120 PD 260 main
Safety day 2008
Gear check found pilot chute not cocked. corrected.
Deploy , went into slow turn , grabed toggles got worse , pulled left toggle to wasit then it flew strait. I was looking at main , trouble shooting, finally, tension knot ! I did 3 controll checks and knew it really was a mal I had very little window of controll. I thought shit , I looked down, right over a 4 lane Higway about 2500'.
I will say righ here, that should never have a bearing on EP's but that day for me it did.
I stayed away from everybody and the DZ , because of my controll issue. I came straight in no turns and landed on the " outer fringe" of the landing area. When I got about 100' I relized I was Fast ! I knew I really very little flare, so Butt Slide !! I left a nice skid maybe 10' or so. Lesson learned

4 . 133 jumps
The rigger/packer (at a DZ that is no longer) wanted me to " test" a big main, 288 I think,
with a bikini slider. Student gear for big jumpers was non existent. He was a small guy and I'm not. I of course said no problem. Did a solo , knew to pull high, 7000', did my count, nothing, I looked up, B|, streamer. My first thought was " I can't believe this" LOL, I still can't believe my thought process at the time. Did my EP's , Landed at DZ, I was so frieked out I had no legs , so butt slide in.
Lesson learned

5 I was trying to pack my main and the packer was helping me. The DZO came by and also helped. Anyway got it closed up. Me and a buddy got a free hop and pop. I went without a jumpsuit and helmet , both for the first time. I almost didn't wear my altimeter. I opened , A nice line over B| EP'S landed with my main. lesson learned

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When I got about 100' I relized I was Fast ! I knew I really very little flare, so Butt Slide !! I left a nice skid maybe 10' or so. Lesson learned


If that happens to you today, would you still land on your butt (if you choose to land the canopy)?

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When I got about 100' I relized I was Fast ! I knew I really very little flare, so Butt Slide !! I left a nice skid maybe 10' or so. Lesson learned


If that happens to you today, would you still land on your butt (if you choose to land the canopy)?



Given the fact that I fly much smaller canopy's , probably would have to chop.

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Jump 5, coming in to what i thnk is a perfect landing pattern on AFF, the radio guy tells me im to high and to to 2 S-turns so i do, against my better judgement, well now im downwind and too low, and having the notion that you HAVE to land upwind, do a 180 VERY close to the gorund, so close that if at the last second had i not let go of my left toggle and flared equally as hard as humanly possible i would have hit the ground almost at the same time as my canopy. would up baseball sliding that one out, with no injuries.

lessons learned: DONT TURN LOW!, and take the radio guys advice with a grain of salt he just could be wrong, lol.
Thanatos340(on landing rounds)--
Landing procedure: Hand all the way up, Feet and Knees Together and PLF soon as you get bitch slapped by a planet.

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At my home DZ they say: "Common sense overrides radio." :-)




YEEEAH, i questioned it, in my mind, but thought "he must be right, hes got 1,000's of jumps to my 5. . . "

no more, lol.
Thanatos340(on landing rounds)--
Landing procedure: Hand all the way up, Feet and Knees Together and PLF soon as you get bitch slapped by a planet.

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Butt Slide !! I left a nice skid maybe 10' or so.



that's disgusting

:P

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

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...having the notion that you HAVE to land upwind, do a 180 VERY close to the gorund,...



This teaching/misunderstanding is killing and injuring people. Why are we drilling this into the heads of new jumpers?
"The ground does not care who you are. It will always be tougher than the human behind the controls."

~ CanuckInUSA

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...having the notion that you HAVE to land upwind, do a 180 VERY close to the gorund,...



This teaching/misunderstanding is killing and injuring people. Why are we drilling this into the heads of new jumpers?




In defense of my instructors, it wasnt drilled into my head per se, they just taught the usual landing pattern, and i assumed thats what you HAD to do, being new and all theres soo much shit going through your head you dont really know what to question in the beginning and youre just trying to sort it all out, if that makes any sense at all
Thanatos340(on landing rounds)--
Landing procedure: Hand all the way up, Feet and Knees Together and PLF soon as you get bitch slapped by a planet.

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Jump #60ish- Did a 8 way raft dive, and when I broke off at 4,500ft I decided to track for 5 secs. After tracking, and around 3,000 ft I decided that it would be smart to do a barrel roll to make sure that there was no one on top of me before pulling. Well... I did the barrel roll and became very unstable. I eventually pulled unstable at around 2,200 ft.

Lesson learned.

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remhwa's post about gloves over in the gopro thread and Dave's response made me remember this one.

Don't remember when it was, but it was early on in my time with camera wings....
- Put wing loops on under gloves.
- Could not get to my brakes
- Had to undo gloves, altimeter, etc before I could get flying with anything more than harness, which on my Sabre2 190 wasn't all that much.

Nothing bad happened, but same situation with a simple mal/line twist may have earned me a chop or worse.

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Last year, about stupid as it gets. ;)
I hooked too low.
I crashed.

* even though I was stupid, I was tough (and someone up there really liked me), so I was out of the hospital after about an hour. :)being tough is important :D

dudeist skydiver #42

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About jump 130 (so, not so long ago) got in the caravan as normal - nothing to report...well,

*the floor/rug was different (just thought a Tandem just threw up on it and they pulled it up)
*then the seatbelts were different (guess they changed them out or something)
*and then stickers in the back were new (whatever)
*and the sign above us was new too....(um)

then I looked below the sign and saw my hubby shaking his head and then he leaned over and said...different plane.

I laughed my ass off - ohh.
Yep, I'm a real blonde too.

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Guess all I'm saying is Ive been jumping audibles nearly my entire skydiving life (however short that is) and have never gone low while using an audible.



I have!

Intentionally and unintentionally.

I've gone low at a few break offs in order to clean the air around me (think pilot chute just below me, people who are so far down that I can't know if I'm clear of them or not).

And at one point when my L&B Solo malfunctioned and I didn't notice. I just kept tracking and went "I should be hearing some beeping soon, wow, I'm covering ground when I track, I'm good! OK, maybe stop and deploy, I can see the power line attachments here, this is probably not a good sign".

That was pretty dumb, in retrospect. Don't rely too much on the audible, and don't waste time looking at your wrist mount once you realize that you're low ( didn't, I just flattened out and dumped). The good thing about going low with a malfunctioning audible is that you don't get that high pitched siren in your ear. I'm sure it's harmful to the ear, and it's really annoying too, especially when you've already dumped and have an almost open canopy above your head.

OK, I'm sure this fits right into the spirit of this thread. I don't think the getting clear airspace was dumb, though.
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?

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I have one from this weekend.

On borrowed gear, a size smaller /and/ a more aggressive planform than my normal rig - Crossfire2 119 vs Pilot 132.

Decision process went: It's just a few jumps, at a dropzone I know well, out of a small piston plane in good conditions. I know the canopy is a little too hot for me as a regular ride, but I'm considering buying the same thing a size (or maybe two) up, so it''ll be interesting anyway.

So far, not really conservative behaviour but not actively stupid, right? As they say, it's when something goes wrong you'll wish you had a bigger canopy.

Like on jump #2, when you have a toggle fire and the excess wraps around the guide ring, locking the brake open. That's when you wish you had a bigger canopy. Because it gives you more time to decide what to do (chop it), instead of making a bad decision (land a fast, unfamiliar canopy on on rears, off the DZ) because you're getting low much faster than you're comfortable with.

Once again, thanks to Luci the AFFI all those years ago drilling PLFs into us 'til it hurt, because I ended up with sore muscles and a pretty good grass stain. But I'm not kidding myself that I got away with one.

Lesson 1: There's not really any such thing as ideal conditions, shit can go wrong whenever it feels like. And, when you borrow a small elliptical, much faster than you think. Be mentally prepared.

Lesson 2: If you don't like it, chop it. Really.
--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

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Lesson 2: If you don't like it, chop it. Really.


What he said. Here's a photo of a stupid thing I did while unstowing brakes a while ago. Didn't much like it - chopped it. Still trying to figure out how I managed to do it.


Looks like while reaching for the toggle to release the brakes, you reached through a loop of the line between toggle and cats-eye that had flipped itself around the riser. Should be easy to reproduce on the ground. Once you see how it can be done (on the ground) look to see how to ensure it doesn't happen. Mostly it starts with ensuring that your excess line is properly stowed (and secure) until you extract it during brake deployment.

[soapbox]Until we started getting so freaking anal about not wanting to replace Velcro, or so lazy as to not do go, we had a wonderful way of securely stowing the excess brake line. I've yet to see a better method (elastic wears and stop holding, binding tape loops don't hold all sizes of line securely, and looping them through the riser tops makes this type of deployment knot event worse.) Not saying hold the whole rig together with Velcro, but it has its proper place!!! [/soapbox] (The previous soapbox rant was not directed at rockola, and was the sole opinion of the poster.):P

JW
Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...

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I've yet to see a better method (elastic wears and stop holding, binding tape loops don't hold all sizes of line securely, and looping them through the riser tops makes this type of deployment knot event worse.)



The Vector's pinned toggles work great. Just run the excess through the loops on back of the risers and then put the pins through them and into the riser. The excess can't get out. On my sabre2 there's just enough excess... but on some canopies like spectres there can be too much and it might still be possible to reach through the excess when unstowing the brakes.

Dave

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I've yet to see a better method (elastic wears and stop holding, binding tape loops don't hold all sizes of line securely, and looping them through the riser tops makes this type of deployment knot event worse.)



The Vector's pinned toggles work great. Just run the excess through the loops on back of the risers and then put the pins through them and into the riser. The excess can't get out. On my sabre2 there's just enough excess... but on some canopies like spectres there can be too much and it might still be possible to reach through the excess when unstowing the brakes.
Dave



A friends' V-III has them and we've found his Sabre2-230's brake lines have too much to do this and be secure. Personally I prefer Velcro... always accommodates lines of all sizes and lengths. But, that's just me.

JW
Always remember that some clouds are harder than others...

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Until we started getting so freaking anal about not wanting to replace Velcro, or so lazy as to not do go, we had a wonderful way of securely stowing the excess brake line. I've yet to see a better method (elastic wears and stop holding, binding tape loops don't hold all sizes of line securely, and looping them through the riser tops makes this type of deployment knot event worse.) Not saying hold the whole rig together with Velcro, but it has its proper place!!!



How about just look at what you grab?

I don't stow any brake line excess and have not in over 3k jumps. I just make sure to look at the toggles and clear the lines before I grab and pull.

DOWN WITH VELCRO:P:P:P
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31434306&l=ecceec3113&id=203002032

Always stow brake line, and stow it on the inside of riser.
This lame mal was from the packers. borrowed rig, some tiny velocity I can't even remember what size.
I was working on the RDS with the brakes still stowed through 2.5k, (deployed at 3.5, saddle at 3) and I did manage to get it out by about 1.8k. I had an eye on the ticker, and would have let it go had I not been able to get it out by 1.5

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I don't stow any brake line excess and have not in over 3k jumps. I just make sure to look at the toggles and clear the lines before I grab and pull.



that's cool. But I like my shit working without thinking about it or looking at it. I even have my toggles modded with big grabs. To me this would be like leaving the cutaway and reserve handles unstowed for every jump.

edited for a more arrogant tone

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But I like my shit working without thinking about it or looking at it.



And thats why some people have silly mals. I'd rather not have to chop something for some stupid reason that could have been 100% prevented by paying a little attention.

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To me this would be like leaving the cutaway and reserve handles unstowed for every jump.



Silly analogy, makes no sense. The toggles are stowed, just like my handles.

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edited for a more arrogant tone



Also makes no sense why you would try to be arrogant... And even edit the post and admit to it.:S:S:S
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

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You're right. silly analogy. but I was trying to make the point that I like things to be accessible without needing the second to determine if it is accessible or not. I come from a BASE background so I think of things in a slightly less time-forgiving way. There is no doubt in my mind that if I had looked at the handle in my first post on this thread that I would have been able to prevent that knot, but I did not expect it to be there. My mistake.

as for being arrogant, I was not TRYING to be arrogant, just realized after editing my post for grammar, (most likely just making it worse) that the tone was arrogant. not meant that way, just lightening up. :)


-SPACE-

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