Forget the old days. Scary Stories From Today!

[skydiverkeith 1]

I want to hear more of these stories, so here's mine...

It was at Skydive Dallas' Just For Us boogie the 12th of June 2008. It was my 58th jump, I had no business on the dive, but nevertheless, I got on a sunset load tracking dive with a total of 14 people.

I had an unstable exit at 13500ft, but caught up easily and set up in the center right of the formation. The plan was to break at 5000ft with the first half fanning out, while the rear half would fan out 180 degrees.

Since I was in the middle, I turned 90 degrees right and took off. Another jumper had the same idea and picked the same line as me. However he sunk out, while I floated.

I was looking directly at the other jumper below me, but had no idea he was there. Me, being the genius that I was, got onto a sunset load wearing the glacier glasses that I use for mountaineering. Glacier glasses, if you're not familiar with them, are simply sunglasses, but much darker because they not only protect you from the sun, but also the bright white snow that covers mountains (or glaciers).

So, with my dark glacier glasses at sunset, the altitude difference between us, and the other jumper's container/jumpsuit blending into the terrain, he was invisible to me. At about 3500ft I saw what looked like a flower blooming in time lapse. I didn't immediately realize it was a yellow canopy, but I knew something wasn't right.

I pitched immediately and sniveled into, and through the yellow sub-100 canopy. My Sabre 150 inflated, and his canopy wrapped me completely. I fought and cleared the canopy and lines.

As the parachute dropped out below me and re-inflated, I saw a rip down the entire center cell and dangling lines in tow. Then I realized that I no longer had an altimeter. He landed the main in the peas with a PLF, and I landed off a bit. My container was covered with line burns and my jumpsuit was shredded. I had a few cuts from the lines, but neither of us had any real injuries.

After making it back to the hanger, several jumpers told me to get a beer, get some sleep, and be on the first load the following morning. They said that if I didn't get back up in the air soon, I probably never would. So I did just that the following morning.

As for the destroyed canopy, I bought it from him for $1000. I put his slider on my main, got the jumpsuit sewn up, and have been jumping them both ever since. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but I truly believe that what I learned on that jump has made me a much safer skydiver that should be around for a long while.

Blue skies,
Keith Medlock

[Meux 0]

This was a couple weeks ago. Just landed in the main landing area. To my right, about 20' away was a teammate. A guy from the group ahead of us was about 20' away from me in the other direction. We were laughing and yakking about our jump when I heard a short shreek, and a sick thud, thud. Turned around to see the guy from the other group laying on the ground knocked out cold and a jumper from the group behind us on the ground screaming. It seems that this jumper hit the fella square in the head, knee to knoggin contact. I was the first person to him, he was out cold, not even breathing, eyes wide open. I thought he might be dead. He started breathing again and in a minute was up and staggering around.

Lesson learned for me; keep your head on a swivel ALL the time. Heck, it could've been me. On landing I automatically turn to face landing direction to make sure no one is coming at me. The problem is that I then go about my business of toggles and such. My new practice is to keep looking all around and check every direction. (ever see people landing in more than one direction?)

One more observation. The guy who got hit still had his full face helmet on with the face shield taped shut. The velcro release strap was on the ground side. I was very reluctant to move his head to remove his helmet. Thankfully, he woke up and took it off himself. The point is, I open my face shield under canopy, not sure I like the thing about leaving it closed (and taped shut). To each his own.

[Jumpah 0]

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in reply to "I never cease to be amazed by our sport and the new group of people entering it. "
..........

Airmanship seems to have taken a serious plunge in a negative direction.

We used to dodge people that needed to wear a hard-hat in free-fall cause it showed how freakin' dangerous they were.
Now it's the opposite.
Any -one silly enough not to wear a hard-hat on a mixed rel load needs reminding how dangerous all those little ground hungry buzz bombs can be.

I'm blaming the tunnel...makes people with few jumps better freefall fliers which allows them to be on bigger/better/more complicated skydives. Creates problems at breakoff altitude, poor tracking, or just simply flying a pattern with all that traffic they just jumped with.

Not hatin' the tunnel or folks who put the time money and effort to learn this way.

[pchapman 262]

Bringing back an old thread. We need a place for random jump stories that don't deserve a whole thread, and aren't old enough for the Scary Stories from the Old Days thread.

This is a minor tale of a couple students (& the DZ) getting very lucky:

On the weekend a first jump student doing a static line jump doesn't check for line twists before yanking down his toggles. He's jumping at a generous 4000'. A brake line presumably hangs up in the line twists, and he starts spiralling, and does nothing else useful. By the time I run out of the hangar to see, the guy is in a full on spiral, horizontal to the horizon, under his modern student canopy of 250 or 270 square feet. He's at about 800', has visible line twists, and seems to be doing nothing. He's not twisting or untwisting as far as I could see, just hanging there. The descent rate with the big student canopy doesn't actually look that fast even in the hard spiral, and the FXC AAD isn't set off. (To simplify slightly, it should fire at 44 mph).

Luckily the guy doesn't decide to chop with the SOS system when he gets super low and gets ground rush. The student disappears out of sight behind a nearby tree line at maybe 150-200' height. This doesn't look good. With the relatively slow descent rate maybe the guy has some chance of survival. Still, I would think that belly flopping at even 20-30 mph into a grassy field is typically going to leave a person pretty broken.

Emergency procedures are set in motion, but then we hear from the aircraft that the student is seen walking. WTF?

Turns out the line twists came out on their own, presumably at 100' or less, the canopy popped out of the spiral, the student flared and PLFed, and was totally unhurt.

Mr. Clueless was really calm about things a couple hours later. He admitted he didn't look up on opening before flaring with the toggles. I'm not sure to what degree he really realized what had happened. Apparently in the first jump class a couple weeks before, he had been a bit of a know it all, trying to finish the instructor's sentences.

So the student and DZO got really lucky. But this wasn't the first time.

Just the previous year another student did spiral right into the ground at the DZ with a mal, and was unhurt except for a sprained or perhaps broken ankle. In that case the guy did start to pull the SOS handle, but either in the wrong direction or not very far. He hit the the ditch at the end of the DZ next to the paved road, skimming the side of the ditch and ending up in the soft ground at the bottom. When a local jumper / firefighter gave the student a medical check at the accident site, the student told the jumper not to worry about his one pupil not focusing -- because he had a head injury from before, a plate in his head, and limited vision in one eye. Well, so much for the student's medical declaration of fitness to jump.

That's some pretty good luck on the part of the students, and the DZO.

[airtwardo 6]

...so I'm on this demo last week, two man deal for a small airshow in No.Cal.

My partner is carrying a large flag on a bellywart type container, wider than the door on the KingAir we're exiting from over the show site.

It's 'Press Day' and all the local media is there to get footage and promo interviews for the weekend festivities.

My teammate has to twist kinda weird to get out the door which causes an unstable exit, I give him a couple seconds and follow...instead of seeing an opening canopy from a quick clear & pull like we've done time & again ~ I see him coming around off his back getting face to earth.

He's a large corn fed boy anyway, and with the extra 50 pounds of flag on his belly he's really hauling the mail toward ole terra firma.

I'm about 500-600' above him when I see him reach for the monkey fist, I unload mine at the same time so I'll be above him and able to riser dive and get in position for our presentation.

I see his pilot-chute inflate and blam...instant canopy!

It looked like he hung his pilot chute on a hook as he went past it at near terminal, I was still sniveling as I went by him!

I didn't have to work much to get on the same level, in fact he was descending at a considerable rate, one much faster than on any other jumps we'd been together on.

The flag came out but he was making only right turns and they were rather erratic when compared to his usual flying style during a performance.

Talk about a helpless feeling...I knew 'something' was wrong, but had no idea exactly what or how serious it was. All I could do is try to stay with him and hope for the best.

The slammer opening completely dislocated his left shoulder...kinda put his arm on sideways. He could only release one side and flew it in that way with the other brake set...obviously flaring was only a dream.

He came in straight and into the wind, he knew he was cooking both forward & down so he purposely missed getting near the flag catchers so as not to get anyone else hurt in the crash.

That 6.1 felt in San Francisco 100 miles away wasn't an earth quake it was Hoss doin' a PLF...

We spent the next 6 hrs. in the ER trying to get his arm put back where it was earlier in the day...he hit feet-knees-face and was pretty bruised up ankles to earlobes.

Damn near had to hog-tie his ass to keep him from jumping the next day...one tough SOB!

Finished the show solo with my teammate running the ground crew recovery ops...every time I landed I looked at him and recalled how Rocky looked good after 12 rounds in comparison.

Thinking~

There but for the grace of the the packing gods go I!


But Hell...if this stuff was EASY, everyone would be doin' it!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[pchapman 262]

Yay, new stuff from Twardo!

Demos and instant openings, eh? In that case:

I'm on a 3-way RW jump a few years ago. One guy wanted to play higher with his canopy so the plan is for him to pull out of the formation at breakoff while the other two of us track. I'm backing off and starting to turn as he pulls. Out of the corner of my eye I see him while his body is only ten feet above my level, yet his canopy seems fully inflated above his head. I don't have time to really ponder this while I deal with tracking and pulling.

Turns out he had an explosive opening on his bigger Triathlon, that sounded like a gunshot on the ground. He blew one brake line and one brake line attachment at the canopy. He tries to land the canopy on rears, but stalls it out at 5 feet and he thumps in, tumbling.

All of us were going to be on a demo jump a few hours later, and he still wants in on it, the bruising, limp, and sore neck be damned. And he wanted to use his own canopy. Nobody else is available to help him, so I find an out of adjustment sewing machine that runs long enough to sew the a new attachment tape back to the canopy. No time or materials to replace the lower brake line, which unusually broke in the middle not at the eye or at the end of a finger trap. So I finger trap a piece of line into the two fuzzy ends of the broken line, manage to sew some stitches to hold the finger trap at one side before the sewing machine jams, and then the jumper hand tacks the other end. The result may theoretically be somewhat structurally sound but is extremely messy, a bit of a rigging nightmare (see attached pic).

Two of us rush to pack the canopy back up and the jumper just makes it onto one last load on the DZ to test the canopy ... and it works fine. He also wanted to test a new flag setup, with container on his belly from which to drop it down after opening. When he lands, I don't see him trailing any flag. I guess something wasn't hooked up right, because the flag and lead weight separated from the harness and fell off into the woods somewhere. Oops.

The demo itself into a smaller stadium for a national league football game worked out just fine.

[airtwardo 6]

Demos and instant openings, eh? In that case:

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http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2915781#2915781

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[feuergnom 22]

if you want to tell sxary stories from today you gotta vivit any other bigger boogie - if you survive it, you'll have stories for generations of jumpers

The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle

dudeist skydiver # 666

[airdvr 198]

Last week I heard a guy jumped without an AAD.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[skypuppy 1]

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Last week I heard a guy jumped without an AAD.

Only once!

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[StreetScooby 5]

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Last week I heard a guy jumped without an AAD.

I had one of those once. Never used it, so didn't bother to buy another one after it expired...

We are all engines of karma

[airtwardo 6]

* I posted this in another thread but thought it kinda goes in keeping with the general topic here... wasn't as 'scary' for me as the other guy though, I only got to see the last 1/2!




Last week jumping the Oshkosh demo I had an interesting visual...

Ten of us in the stick jumping from a DC-3 at 5000'.

We have a certain order we depart the aircraft in which stays basically pretty much the same, other than instance of high cross wind exits...then we reverse the order.


The 3000sqft flag is jumped on tandem system and that jumper deploys @ 4500' following a short drogue fall...the flag is always the last to land so opens 1500' higher than everyone else ~ except me.

I always follow the flag guy out, I'm the one that assists rigging everything prior to his exit and help to keep anything from snagging him while moving round the aircraft...I also pull practically out the door as I deploy & spin down with a smoke candy-cane making me first to always land.

It makes for a good visual effect as the smoke spins down right next to the huge flag...most often I'm the last out...however, when he and I are 1 & 2 in the stick the #3 jumper is supposed to wait 2-3 seconds prior to exit giving horizontal separation from the two canopies opening high.

One day last week #3 had a brain fart and left immediately after I did...doing what he'd done in the days prior he just ran out behind the person ahead of him.

I hop out and watch for the drogue deployment while reaching for the monkey fist and turning away 90 degrees.

As I'm 3/4s into inflation I hear some free-fall flapping and a shout of some kind...looking over my shoulder I see a guy dressed just like me 20-feet off the canopy tail ~ eyes as big as manhole covers, unpacking the main.

I can recall with great detail the bag rocking back & forth as the stows popped and the sound of the nylon catching air.

It sounds considerably different that close when not actually having wind noise too... as when deploying your own 'chute!

He came right over to me after landing offering up an extensive & heartfelt apology...all's well that end's well, he knew he screwed up & how...end of conversation.

That is until we were tellin' the story later that evening in a bar over a chilly one...I mentioned he should probably use tinted googles, as that would better hide the fear in his eyes. ~and what exactly was it that I heard along with the jumpsuit in free-fall?

He said he got stable and looked down only to see the D-bag leaving my back ~ Answering kinda sheepishly he replied:

Whaddya THINK i said.... S H H H I I I T T !



Edit 2 add:
Here's a vid not of that jump but another day, you can see the big flag as I spin past it...AND ~ it's a really cool video IMHO!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SW9k4F7E2M

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[Douggarr 6]

Good story. Can we use it for a book that Tim Long is planning called NSTIWTIWGD? (No shit, there I was, thought I was gonna die.).

SCR-442, SCS-202, CCR-870, SOS-1353

[mjosparky 3]

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Good story. Can we use it for a book that Tim Long is planning called NSTIWTIWGD? (No shit, there I was, thought I was gonna die.).

Tim doesn't know how to write.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals