Bailing out

[NickDG 23]

>>Below 1500 Ride Plane Down in crash position. <<

Don't neglect to give your students an option in case something very catastrophic occurs. Riding an a/c down that isn't controllable from 1500-feet won’t cut it. In that case, one parachute out, two parachutes out, who cares . . . Somewhere over the course of a student's training jumps you should tactfully pass on, "If the wings come off, it's always better to jump and try, than stay and fry . . ."

NickD BASE 194

[dorbie 0]

As a student I was taught exit with hand on silver for 2000 and below and delay 1 sec to avoid deploying over the tail but we did jump the original student cypres.

On whether to stay with the plane, I was told that if the pilot or jump master says to get out then get out regardless of the altitude because if you don't then you're probably going to die.

[Oeystein 0]

You should probably stick to your DZ`s policy Bergen. Unless you are using some strange student canopies spending thousands of feet to open. In that case you should get new student canopies.

There is a ten second window from 2000 feet to 1000 feet in freefall, giving anyone heeps of time to jump, pull and cutaway if needed.

When it comes to staticlines I would just get them to bail out as fast as possible, but we use the method mentioned by riggerrob where all students are hooked up prior to takeoff. It is an emergency and time is of essence. An alternative(if student is hooked up) is to pull the students cutawayhandle prior to exit which would give them an RSL deployed reserve and no danger of two canopies out. But do not think i would recommend it. Better to have two canopies then no canopy.

[SkyMissy 0]

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As long as the freebag stays put, then it is like a static line jump, with the bag and bridal trailing.

Trailing right over the tail.

Hopefully more like "right over the I tackling them out the door".

________________________________________________
Mike

[ZigZagMarquis 8]

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Just to mess with you, I know of a couple of static-line schools that connect all static-lines before take-off and their bail-out drills include tossing students out and trusting static-lines to deploy mains.

YeeeeeeAAAAAAA!!!

---------- Anyway ----------

Its been so long since I went through first jump course... it was staic lines for me back in those days... but as I recall, it went something like...
1) Always listen to the pilot in an emergency.
2) Students will listen to their jumpmasters who in turn will listen to the pilot.
3) I'd imagine that if our static line was already hooked up and an emergency occurred where we needed to exit... we'd be put out on our main / static line.
... after that...
4) I can recall the jumpmasters telling us we would be told to get in the door as normal, but told to take hold of our cutaway / reserve handles (SOS), told to exit, but count one thousand, pull thousand... basically getting out on our reserve.
... the only other thing I can recall too is my first jump course JM telling me that if something really really bad happens and we need to get out NOW, that it would probably go something like him telling us to get out and then we'd see the bottom of his sneakers leaving the airplane... at which point, we should follow and use our reserves...

... hey, don't knock him, it was a different era!


Anyway, today, my personal plan...
1) Always listen to the pilot first! For example, I've been in two Cessnas where the engine has coughed, things would have been "bad" if we had started fighting for the door.
2) Anything below a grand, you're better off tightening down that seat belt and landing with the plane. Hopefully the pilot will do a good job of putting it down so at least y'all walk away, who cares if he or she bends the plane a bit.
3) If told to get out... between 1000 & 2000 feet, my plan is to go reserve.
4) If told to get out... 2000 feet or above, my plan is to go main... depending on how high above 2000 and where we're at will factor into how long of a delay before pull time.

In the case of something catastrophic... e.g. smoke and flames in the cockpit or wing falls off... sorry pilot dude, let me know how that turns out... I suppose anything up to 2000 feet I'm going to get out (or at least try... it may just give me something to do until impact ) and go reserve, above 2K, main. Having said that, I've got several friends that un-assed themselves at about 900 feet from a burning Queen Air and they all reverted to the most familiar handle at exit... they all threw their mains, but fortunately this was a few years back before the days of snivelly elipticals, it was all big F111 PDs and Falcons and such on the load... and they all got good mains before landing, not much of a canopy ride, but they all landed and walked away. The pilot managed to tear-drop the burning airplane back onto the runway and get out and run before it burned to the ground.