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lodestar

Almost bought the farm

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Here's an interesting one for you....
It was approximately 1967 or so, and at Aero Park airport in menomenee wisconsin.
I had been flying jumpers all day in a cessna 182 with a snohomich door and it was nearing dusk, a favorite time for a bunch of hop-n-pops by the accuracy dudes.
I had taken up a few loads and on one of them, a lady jumper,Jan, who was last out, as she stood on the step, she looked back at me with a little grin, jumped off and pulled almost simeltaneously. I watched as her srping loaded pilot chute hit the wing as she stretched out lines and began to fall.
When I got to the ground, I looked her up and had a serious talk with her about doing that, knowing it would lead to trouble as some point, she seemed to think I was being picky but I told her, no more of that shit...
Two loads later, she was back in the aircraft, first in, last out and as the other two jumped, she got on the step, looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, and pulled.
With her back to me, i watched her rig open up and the pilot chute head right at me, it passed under my nose and dropped over the steering wheel and dangled down to the floor. In panic, I looked out the door at her, she was almost at total sleeve deployment but not into the lines yet. I reached down, grabbed the pilot chute and as I threw it out, she hit full line stretch and it was snatched from my hand, just that quick.....
Had I been slower reacting, and she had been a millisecond slower, the pilot chute over the steering column would have cought on the steering shaft, bent it and likely caused a malfunction in steering resulting in a crash.
I might add that I always wore a harness and always had a chest pack under the seat just in case, but it would not have been a fun thing.
When I got to the ground, I blistered the air around her enough that a few guys had to pull me away from her. When I told the jumpmaster about the incident, he suspended her lift privileges for two weeks, when she finally returned, we had a sit down meeting wiith her, the jumpmaster, the owner of the field, the club president (Wisconsin Sky Divers) and was told that one more incident, no matter how small, she was out the door forever.
Sometimes you get lucky.....
Bill

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Hi lodestar,

About that same time we had a local dipstick, who happened to be the brother-in-law of the dz owner. The aircraft was a 180 w/Snohomish door and he would do a complete pull-off; just stand on the step and pull and wait for the canopy/etc to pull him from the step.

Eventually, even the DZO got tired of it; it sure made the other guys in the plane to get rather wide-eyed. :o

JerryBaumchen

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Had a SL conopy over the horizontal once, that will get the adrenalin up just as fast as a malfuntion. Slammed in full right rudder and it slid off leaving about 5 ft of canopy behind between the horizontal and the elevator. Only 2 gores of a 28 footer escaped without some kind of damage.
Also had 2 JMs extracted from my aircraft in the days of front mounted reserves. Both of them with helping hands from me. No damege to aircraft or people other than ego. The rest of the students wanted to know why their JM left them behind. Sometimes jump piloting can get way to exciting.
GUNFIRE, The sound of Freedom!

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On my very first load flying static liners, the static line snagged on something and the pilot chute took off while the student was still on the step.

As an experienced jumper, I had heard of such things and just stomped on the right rudder to slip the horizontal stab out of the way of the pilot chute.

The student had an otherwise uneventful opening and canopy ride. The jump master bought me a beer that night.

Oh, the good old days!

BSBD


Harry
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."

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I was the victim of a premature reserve deployment on climb out of a 182 and got hung up on the horizontal stablizer with damage to the plane and a lot of hospital time I am still here. Not recommended to try, it could of killed a plane load of my friends. allways practice good plane safety!!
STEP OUT AND FEEL THE RUSH!!!! LATER
SKYBOMB

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I may have already posted this story somewhere but I was in the back of the C182 with my friend who was a S/L jumpmaster. He was putting two students out and then we were going to do a 2 way. First one went out fine. Second one, well... he went out, but not so fine. Tall and lanky, he wasn't crouching enough to keep the rig from raking along the door (which opens out and up). My friend yelled at him a couple times to get down but he didn't hear. Then, the student snagged the S/L or pin on the door handle. I watched wide-eyed as the main came flying out, ripping the student off the strut and at that exact moment, my friend tried to yank the line down (no effect I think) and the student passed underneath the horizontal stabilizer with just inches to spare, hanging the main on the stabilizer for a second before it slid off. It became a ball of shit and he eventually cut away to the reserve. Round reserve, I might add, and he panicked and didn't PLF on the taxiway like he should have and broke his foot. :D Oh yeah, the pilot was a sub, he'd only flown for us that day and got scared shitless, so we stayed on the plane to calm him down. It seemed to be flying okay so we rode it back down. After getting out, we inspected the stabilizer, and it had ripped several inches from the front at the fuselage, and the tip of the stabilizer ended up 4 inches back of where it should be. I'd bet if the student had hung up on the stabilizer another second or two, he'd have ripped it clean off and the three of us still on it would never have had a chance to get out, me especially.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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1st lift of the day...Skyvan was late arriving. I was a diver. On "set" I headed towards the door. I exited into a sea of blue and lines. I remember thinking to myself rather matter of factly "this isn't right". Took me about 10 seconds to extract myself from this mess. Once I got free I was treated to the site of one of the members of the base now struggling to get the lines unwrapped from her neck. I was about 15 feet below her. She manged to get free, cutaway, and dump her reserve at about 8 grand.

As I mentioned before the Skyvan was late and nobody remembered to duct tape the big hooks that hold the door closed. On exit this poor girl had hooked a closing flap getting setup to launch a 4 way round and it ripped her container wide open. Didn't dawn on me until later that the lines around her neck probably saved my life. What if she'd chopped immediately?

On the ground I saw her up by manifest. She had a ring of raw skin around her neck about 2 inches wide.

NSTIWTIWGD
Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

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182 load at Yolo (if I remember correctly) in the early 80's. It was cold and the plane had no door. We decided it would be a good idea to hold a sheet of plywood over the opening and then just slide it to the back of the plane before exit.
It worked really well, right up until we decided to slide it back. The wind snatched it right out the door and it made a good size dent in the stabliser. Pilot wasnt at all happy but landed OK. Dont know what happened to our ply.

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