Gear Checks

[cloud9 0]

Here I was on a 5 min call for the otter load. I'm all geared up standing in the loading area. Chris a staff member ( I think ) at skydive Spaceland, looks at me and says you might want to check your chest strap. Now I'm not a 1000 jump skygod but I am fast approaching 200 jumps and I know how to put my gear on right. Wrong I look down and my chest strap is misrouted. I couldn't believe it, how could I have done that? I was very imbarrassed and all I could say was " thanks that could have been real ugly". Chris says no problem would you like a pin check? I say you bet, at least there were no problems there. So we go have a great fun jump! So there were a few things learned here I thought I would share.
1. Its easy to make a mistake, and mistakes in skydiving can kill you.
2. Make sure you get gear checks, and when you give gear checks be sincere, a life could be at risk.
3. If you are a very experienced jumper and a low time jumper questions a piece of your gear for saftey. Even if they're wrong, explain why your gear is the way it is and incourage them say thanks. Let them know that the next time they could be saving some dumb ass like me.
4. Don't ever think it can't happen to you! Before this incident I would have told you there is no way I could ever misroute my chest strap and yet here I am.
Now I can't say I would have fallen out of my harness, but I can say thanks to Chris ( who has bunches of jumps ) I didn't have to find out!
However even a new jumper might catch something like a chest strap, so please look!

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

Just to prove that evryone makes mistakes.... Cheers. When you participate in sporting events, its not whether you win or loose, its how drunk you get.

[bhale 0]

When I first started, many years ago, it was standard practice to, at the very least, give your buddy a pin check. It is sad that the sport has grown to such a quick pace, there is no time for safety checks that could save your life. I never get offended, at almost 3000 jumps, when someone offers to check my pin. Stay safe, live long!

[Geoff 0]

Misrouted chest strap is the most common mistake in kitting up. I've spotted it on other jumpers about 3 times, and someone spotted it on me once (in 700 jumps). I would guess that most jumpers with more than a few hundred jumps have done it once.
Very easy to get wrong. Fairly dangerous, but probably not quite as dangerous as people think. If your rig fits well, you probably won't fall out anyway. But of course that's no excuse for not getting it right. I have heard of one very famous and experienced US jumper jump with his chest strap completely undone just for a giggle and to freak people out. (no names - it may not be true, but his equally famous and experienced team mate told me)
A good incident to learn from, but nothing to be ashamed of.
Geoff

[Jimbo 0]

Quote

Chris a staff member ( I think ) at skydive Spaceland, looks at me and says you might want to check your chest strap.

I guess it was about two years ago there was a fatality due to someone falling out of their harness because of a misrouted chest strap. Ever since that incident a regular part of my gear check is a few really good tugs on the strap to make absolutely sure it's fastened correctly.
-
Jim

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"Chris a staff member ( I think ) at skydive Spaceland, looks at me and says you might want to check your chest strap. "
Chris is cool, and you know what? He really does care about people and their safety, I popped open one of his reserve pack jobs and had a good close look at it, I was impressed....Also, I sat and chatted with him after a recent incident there, and he was clearly upset and was quite emotional, even though there was nothing anybody could have done to avoid it.
Don't be fooled by his humour on the ride to altitude, he's a heads up guy.
We all gotta look after each other........
Cya
D

[steve1 5]

The gear now days is simpler in design and there is no doubt less to worry about than gear used in days gone by. But I agree gear checks are important and will save lives. I am grateful to a couple of other jumpers who spotted something wrong with my rig even though I didn't ask for a gear check. One of these involved a misrouted chest strap. The army jumpmaster school taught a very effective way of giving a gear check. You started with a person's helmet and worked your way down in a sequential way checking things. Then you would turn the jumper around and check the back side. If you did this check in the same sequence over and over you wouldn't miss anything wrong. A lot of people flunked out of this school because they didn't do the same sequence each time and were missing things. Years after jumpmaster school I was rigger checking a captain during a practice jump. I followed his chest straps down to where they connected to his quick release box. This held both his chest and leg straps secure. The safety fork was out of the box and the color red was up. A sharp blow on this box would have released all his straps. He said he didn't know whether to kiss me on one cheek or both cheeks for spotting this error.

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

This is why I like the UK style of things where every jumper has to have a check and be signed for before getting in the plane.
When you participate in sporting events, its not whether you win or loose, its how drunk you get.

[gale 0]

That sounds like a good idea to me! I know sometimes people really rush to pack and get on the next load, so this would at least make them stop and think for one moment.
Gale
Life's not worth living if you can't feel alive

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

It only takes a minute and could potentially save your life. Seems worth it to me. The more people look at your kit, the better the chance of a problem being noticed.
When you participate in sporting events, its not whether you win or loose, its how drunk you get.

[nacmacfeegle 0]

Agreed, its a bit anal, but it sure cuts down the "stupid" accidents.
Cya
D

[polarbear 1]

I wouldn't even say it is anal, it is just plain smart. It really discourages me how people will stand around with all their eqipment on, waiting for a plane, complaining about the wait, but won't spend some of that time checking each other over.
It also discourages me when I ask for a pin check and get just that: the checker looks at my pins and that's it, doesn't bother to look at cutaway assemblies, leg or chest straps, other equipment...
I always go with "The check of 3's": 3 rings (cutaway assembly), 3 handles (main, reserve, cutaway), 3 straps (leg and chest), plus make sure the jumper has goggles and altimeter. Several times I've seen a plane have to turn around on the runway and come back because someone left behind goggles or an altimeter.
I remember an incident where a jumper actually made it on the plane and all the way to 5'000 ft. before someone realized he didn't have a rig on. Dumb mistake, yes, but this particular jumper is actually one of the safest, most cautious skydivers I know. He just wasn't paying attention on this jump and got ahead of himself. In addition, the other jumpers and pilot on the load failed to notice. No need to say that could've been ugly.

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

How the hell do you b) forget your rig, and b) manage to get no-one to notice? That's just plain stupid !! This guy shouldn't be jumping.
When you participate in sporting events, its not whether you win or loose, its how drunk you get.

[Spy38W 0]

Quote

I remember an incident where a jumper actually made it on the plane and all the way to 5'000 ft.

Thats some scary stuff, better to find out at 5000' on the way up than the way down though.
--
My poor rig, all alone with no main...

[gale 0]

Yeah, I agree. But I've heard stroies that a guy at my dz has done the same thing, more then once! People think it's funny. I'm not sure I do.
Gale
Life's not worth living if you can't feel alive

[nacmacfeegle 0]

"it is just plain smart"
Agreed 100%, when I'm around my chums from the UK, we check each other whether a check is a rule or not.
"I wouldn't even say it is anal"
They won't let you on the plane unless the paper is signed, as if that makes you safe......and anybody off student status can check you, do newbies know what they are looking at? How to identify a frayed closing loop, or three ring loop, if a bridle is routed correctly, I don't think so.
Here's an example, I was asked to check a guy who was jumping a wonderhog or a sweethog or something like that (an oldish rig, with a strange reserve pin setup). I'd never seen one before and didn't know what I was looking at, I refused to sign the paper, and the jump master got all pissed, cos he had to get off the plane (he was sat at the front of an Islander) and do the check himself........We are all responsible for our own safety, and thinking any different cos somebody has looked you over is just plain wrong.
As for getting on a plane without a rig and nobody else noticing................Yeah, I've even heard of fatalities that occurred like that (pack shed myth??), I heard it was a camera flier........
Cya
D

[slotperfect 7]

I am in the Army, and got in the habit of getting a gear check early in my skydiving career. It is a requirement in the Army to get a Jumpmaster Personnel Inspection (JMPI) before you get on the aircraft. This is done by trained individuals who were tested in their ability to inspect a jumper's equipment for correctness. In the Navy, they get TWO.
The importance of getting a gear check became HUGE for me in around 1990 or 1991 when a French (?) jumper with over 14,000 jumps (one of the top dogs at the time) bounced because he failed to initiate his emergency procedures with enough altitude left to open his reserve.
He was making an accuracy jump, exiting at 2000 FT AGL. He was jumping an older rig with the throw-out pilot chute on the belly band. The belly band was twisted, which created a pilot chute in tow malfunction.
Instead of simply pulling the reserve handle, he chose to unthread the belly band and remove the twist so the pilot chute would clear. He gave up and pulled his reserve, which was still deplying when he went in.
What hit me was that this guy had 14,000 friggin jumps! My personal analysis of this one, learning a big lesson that changed me forever, was that a gear check on the ground might have saved his life. A quick check of his own gear in the airplane before exit may have also saved him. Lastly, simply firing his reserve may have brought him back to earth safely as well.
Now, on EVERY jump, I . . .
-check my gear before I put it on
-get a gear check on the ground
-get a pin check in the airplane
-quickly check my gear on jump run
-run through my EP's for the rig I am jumping (whether mentally or by simulating handle pulls
I jump sport rigs with a BOC, military free fall rigs with a main ripcord, and tandem rigs. Quite often I jump them all in the same day. I cannot remember the last time I reached in the wrong place for a deployment handle.
I learned this from those like Chris (in the original post), who cares enough about his fellow skydivers to help them skydive safely. Thanks to Tito, Eddy, Carl, Jon, and the lot.
Thanks for this post, as it is one of my favorite topics (can you tell)?
Respectfully,
SP

[RichM 0]

We do "anal" pretty well :/ There are pro's and con's to our nanny approach, but it's hard to challenge our safety procedures. While our compulsory gear check can be a pain, it only takes a minute and on every nth iteration it spots and corrects something that could be serious. It also repeatedly causes consideration on the correct way to kit up and certainly helps our own personal thoroughness.
Even so, I've also mis-routed a chest strap once while in a hurry. But spotted on the compulsory check.
Rich M

[RichM 0]

nac - just to clarify, a UK jumper must be briefed, tested and cleared with a signature in their logbook before they can conduct flightline checks. But we don't actually stress this to students so there are probably unqualified people doing the checks because someone asked them too and they didn't know to say no - I always ask if someone is cleared to check kit if I don't know them - then I only get caught out if they down right lie.
I also heard the camera man exit with with no rig story. Truth or myth I don't know. But a scary thought.
Rich M

[slotperfect 7]

If anyone can clarify any of this feel free. The camera-guy-with-no-gear jump was here in North Carolina around 1989 or 1990 at Franklin County SPC, I think (help me out, Chuck). He had been turned away from the airdraft earlier that day by the pilot for coming to the aircraft with no rig.
The camera system he was jumping was one of the pre-camcorder types with the recording deck attached to his chest with a separate harness. Thus the "rig on" feeling.
On this jump he was on the aircraft before the pilot got in, and exited filming his subjects until pull time, when he discovered his error. My wife saw the video from his camera on the evening news (the lower end of the dive was edited out).
Rather than jump on the "boy was that stupid" bandwagon, I choose now to learn from it and check my camera gear almost the same way I check my rig. During my gear check I get my "checker" to inspect by big camera wings as well, to make sure they aren't misrouted.
Respectfully,
SP

[polarbear 1]

"This guy shouldn't be jumping"
That is such a hard decision to make. Serious safety mistakes defineitely need to be addressed, but it is very difficult to tell somebody they can no longer participate in their favorite passtime. This is especially true when that jumper has many hundreds/thousands of jumps. When do you draw the line? Another post in this thread mentions a jumper with 14000 jumps who experienced a pilot-chute-in-tow and tried to fix it instead of just deploying the reserve. He bounced. A stupid mistake. Clearly, he would have been better off had he been grounded, but who really would have grounded that highly experienced jumper had he survived? I have heard of several people who have incorrectly routed chest straps and either had them caught by gear checks or "miraculously" managed to stay in their harness on opening. They also made a serious, "stupid" mistake. Should they be grounded? It really is a difficult decision to make. What about the many, many jumpers who land aggresively and find themselves deep in the corner on occasion. They are also very close to bouncing...should they be grounded?
I am not commenting on how I think serious safety incidents should be handled; I am just posing a question.
I can only say in the case I mentioned in my previous post, it turned out to be a good thing...no one was hurt, and everybody involved got a real wake-up call to doing gear checks. The jumper in question became so safety consciouss it hurts. Complacency kills in this sport, but it is a very, very easy pit to fall into.

[NtheSeaOrSky 0]

This gives me an opportunity to send out a thank you to a 4 way team that helped out a mere student on a solo jump. Last weekend at our DZ, there was a 4 way meet, so when I managed to get on a load, I found myself on a plane full of strange faces. No big deal, it was my transition to throw out from rip cord, so I was repeatedly going over the deployment procedure in my head. The 4 way team next to me (I have no idea their name) asked about my dive, we discussed separation and the importance of not tracking. Ok, I went back to my mind games. Before jump run, I was pleasantly shocked when one of the team members said dont forget to zip up your suit all the way ( i had it down a few inches due to the 80degree weather), and motioned me to turn around for a pin check. I was so busy focusing on the "let go of the handle" I had forgotten to ask! But those "strangers" were looking out for me! I never got their name or saw them around afterward, but if you are reading this THANKS for taking the time, and thinking of my safety!!!

[billvon 2,454]

>It also discourages me when I ask for a pin check and get just that: the checker
> looks at my pins and that's it, doesn't bother to look at cutaway assemblies, leg
> or chest straps, other equipment...
Well, why not ask for a gear check then? We do make that distinction. I've had someone bop my main pin cover and I just asked for a main pin check. Often they are in a position where they can't see the front of my gear, which is fine because I can check that.
-bill von

[polarbear 1]

I meant when I ask for a check on the ground, not in the plane. When you are on the ground, waiting for the plane, why not check everything? It only takes another 15-30 seconds, and there really isn't something better to do for that short of time. In the plane, it is a little different, specifically because you can't see everything and because it is harder to move around. In that situation, I do agree with the "check what you can see" attitude, unless specifically asked to do otherwise.

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

Quote

That is such a hard decision to make

True, but if this guy is stupid enough to get into the plane without a rig.......
When you participate in sporting events, its not whether you win or loose, its how drunk you get.