gus 1 #1 February 12, 2002 Whenever I hear stories of people ‘loosing altitude awareness’ and going low I can’t help but think that if you’re not up to it you shouldn’t be in the air. However, on Sunday I discovered how easy it is.I got to the dz at 8:30am on Saturday morning, opened the car door and it nearly got blown off, the winds must have been 30 gusting to 40mph. But we sat around, the eternal optimists, until about 2pm when it was called and everyone went home. Except me. It’s a 2.5 hour drive home, I wanted to try and jump on Sunday and I didn’t want the 5 hour round trip. So I mooched about for a bit, went into town, got back to the dz and went to bed at about 10:30pm.Sunday started badly. Despite sleeping on the dz, all of 50 metres from manifest I slept in and missed lift 1, but at least the winds had dropped enough to let us jump. Then all of a sudden there was a free slot and I was on a 10 minute call. Normally that’d be fine but this was going to be my first jump with my new camera and I really needed a bit more time to sort myself out. Did I turn the slot down? No.The jump actually went quite well, I managed to keep the 5-way in frame for most of the dive. I was a bit high above them but I was pretty happy with the results and on a major buzz from my first jump in 6 or 7 weeks. The only problem was that I didn’t hear either of my two internally mounted audibles. I was lucky that I was watching the 5-way break off and that forced me to check my alti.The 2nd jump was a mess: a 3-way flat. I couldn’t get the camera recording and had to exit with it switched off. (Amazingly I managed to start recording at about 6k.) I lost one person all together but stayed with the other, just arsing about and letting him geek the camera. Then he suddenly looked at his alti and started tracking off, on the video you can see me looking at my alti just below 3k. For some reason I didn’t immediately dump: I did a pretty pathetic 2 second track, pulled just above 2k and was under canopy by 1500 feet. A full 1000 feet below my normal altitude and just a few seconds off my Cypres firing. My friend was considerably lower.I was an idiot. So many times I’ve been told that an accident is always down to a chain of things going wrong. Firstly, I was so hyped about jumping that everything else took a back seat. I was tired from not sleeping very well and hadn’t eaten in more than 12 hours. I was rushing about. I recognised that I didn’t hear my audibles (on the first jump) and yet I did nothing about it. I did nothing about it! It sounds SO stupid but it’s true. I was relying on my audibles, I looked at my alti ONCE the whole dive and that was at below 3k. I wasted nearly 1000 feet doing a pretty meaningless track when I could have just turned and dumped. The audible of the guy I was jumping with had somehow moved up inside his Pro-Tec so he didn’t hear his either.That bit at the end of Chronicles (or some video I’m sure we’ve all seen) where the two guys are jumping and the 2nd guy only realises how low he is when the first guy dumps? That was pretty much us. Stupid, stupid, stupid.What bugs me is that I’m not a reckless skydiver. I love skydiving too much to risk my future in it by doing foolish things, but there it is.What lessons have I learnt? Learn from your mistakes. The margins for error are small and get very small very quickly if loose your concentration. Never forget that skydiving can kill you.Gus"Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riggerrob 561 #2 February 12, 2002 Thanks for sharing gus.We have all found ourselves low, but few of us are willing to admit it in public. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MarkM 0 #3 February 12, 2002 Cool tale, thanks Gus. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BenW 0 #4 February 12, 2002 Damn Gus, you really are a dumb ass!! Remind me again why I only jump with you when you really plead and let me make fun of your *cool* goggles...Seriously mate, scary stuff. We're both just starting to jump camera and it's an easy thing to do - get all involved in what you're doing and lose awareness. Let's keep each other in check when I get back!Glad you're safe though bud... Even if you do wear *cool* goggles!B Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #5 February 12, 2002 My goggles are probably the coolest thing ever.And yes, even without snagging stuff on it, camera jumping can be dodgy so I promise to kick your arse if you ever do what I did!Gus"Sex? Once every six seconds. Skydiving? Five times, every six seconds." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
