Pull reserve before cutaway???

[potatoman 0]

Ok, after recent incident of cutting away too low, after slow spiral, I would like to pose the following, and get your thinking.

Intermediate to high speed canopy, lets say 1.5loaded eliptical 150. Banger of an opening, you semi lost on altitude awareness due to dizzyness. At 1500Ft you are doing a no control spiral, medium of sort, but lossing altitude, now going through 1000Ft. Decision making time is very limited, do you cutaway, (no rsl or anything of that sort) and deploy reserve, hoping to open, do you try and steer/correct the spiral, and now for the finale: Is it worth while to pull reserve, wait for it to half inflate, or at least get out of freebag, and then chop.

1. If you cutaway, you could open too late.
2. If you try and steer, you might not be able, and hard impact/dead.
3. Spiral, you are not going down as fast as chopping, but you would have enough airspeed to extract the reserve behind you, loose the freebag, while trying to steer, and then chop only the main, which in turn should have your reserve open fairly rapidly.

Hypo-pathetically.

You have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to tell you how Fu***** stupid it is.
Davelepka - "This isn't an x-box, or a Chevy truck forum"
Whatever you do, don't listen to ChrisD.

[airtwardo 6]

That's an easy one...make your cutaway decision before 1000 feet.






Trying to 'time' your reserve opening down low, without having a few hundred jumps in each of the conditions you describe up high as practice ~ would be rather risky...Hypothetically.

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

[Crohnie 0]

Worked for this dude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekBvFDimpcs

[chuckakers 370]

I would have no problem whacking my main at 1000 feet. I wouldn't do a couple backflips before dumping my reserve, though.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[diablopilot 2]

Industry best practices would train no breakaway below 1000 AGL, save for a down plane. So the correct response for that situation assuming that the jumper failed in handling the breakaway earlier, would be to deploy the reserve, and land the two out, unless it develops into a down plane.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[davelepka 4]

Quote

1. If you cutaway, you could open too late.
2. If you try and steer, you might not be able, and hard impact/dead.
3. Spiral, you are not going down as fast as chopping, but you would have enough airspeed to extract the reserve behind you, loose the freebag, while trying to steer, and then chop only the main, which in turn should have your reserve open fairly rapidly.

Hypo-pathetically.

All of the 'what if's' are easily answered by simply establishing your hard deck altitudes and sticking to them like glue.

Your main - yes, have a hard deck for your main, and stick to it. It you're jumping with others, that means 'reverse engineering' your pull and break-off sequence, and then using that to establish your group freefall hard-deck. So if you want to pull by 2500ft, and you need 1000ft to track and pull, that means you leave the skydive by 3500ft, no exceptions.

The cutaway - again, figure out how low you would want to pull your reserve, and back that into a cutaway hard deck. If you want a reserve over your head by 1000ft, and you think it will take 500ft to pull both handles and allow for a little reserve PC delay (spring loaded PCs will do that, plan for it, and if it doesn't you just end up open higher) and than you have 1500ft as your cutaway 'hard deck'.

If you find yourself below the cutaway 'hard deck' and still under a malfucntioning main, skip the cutaway and pull the reserve. It's simple. Plan this out ahead of time, and review/visualize these things in the plane before exit. People touch their handles all the time in the plane, some people even mimick the full procedure, but take it one step further and also review your key altitudes at that time. The more times you review it, the more you think about it, the more it becomes 'second nature' and not something you have to 'think about' when the shit really hits the fan.

The best advice I can give anyone is to stay 'ahead' of the skydive. If you want to break off by 3500ft, don't set a beeper and ignore your altitude until it beeps, check your alti in between each point after the jump feels about 'halfway' over. This way you know that if you're closing in on a pont and you see 4k on the clock, as soon as you take your grip you might as well turn and burn. It's close to break off, you won't have time for another point, so exit early. There's no merit to just riding that last point down another 500ft, and there may be signoficant merit to having extra altitude if things go 'off plan' during the deployment sequence.

Always know what's coming, and what you want to be doing 5 seconds from right now. Plan ahead for every move you make, and act on that, as opposed to waiting for things to happen to you, and simply reacting to whatever that might be.

Edit - the above altitudes are for example only, and not suggestions of actual hard deck altitudes.

[potatoman 0]

Great note on thinking through what to do after opening in the aircraft. I grip my handles, and do the routine in my head, then the breakoff etc as planned, but it stops there, but now it will change.

btw. The vid posted was what I was thinking about. If he chopped first, he might not have made it.

You have the right to your opinion, and I have the right to tell you how Fu***** stupid it is.
Davelepka - "This isn't an x-box, or a Chevy truck forum"
Whatever you do, don't listen to ChrisD.

[davelepka 4]

Quote

The vid posted was what I was thinking about. If he chopped first, he might not have made it.

The guy in the video was a dumbfuck. If you're a dumbfuck, or want to act like a dumbfuck, no amount of planning or common sense can help you.

It seems obvious, but the real solution is not to get into these situations. Have yourself established under an open canopy above 1000ft on every jump and you'll be golden. If that means you need to pull by 3000ft to make sure then happens, then pull by 3000ft on EVERY jump.

If you try to make sense of a situation where your actions that got you there don't make sense (like breakling off low, pulling low, or reacting to a mal low), it's not going to happen. Trying to plan for those situations is a fools errand for two reasons -

The first is that you're in the situation as the result of making an error (or series of errors) so the exact circumstances are unknown, and therefore an exact course of action cannot be known.

The second is that you're talking about being dirty low and in trouble, and there's no time to think through the exact circumstances of your scenario. You need to act immediately and hope for the best.

Now it may sound like the second reason is why you should think things through ahead of time, but then revert to the first reason, and you can see that unless you know the exact curcumstances of a situation, you cannot 'commit' to a course of action. The last thing you want to do is imprint a solution on your brain, only to be down and dirty and have that be the worst thing you could do. You might follow that course of action without even thinking, and then you're really fucked.

The truth is that all the EPs have are 'best case scenarios' for when things go wrong. You can never say for sure up front if your EPs or hard decks are right or wrong, but if you back all of them up with altitude to spare, you stack the deck in your favor.

If you do fuck yourself over and get down and dirty with a mal, do something, do it fast, keep doing it until you hit, and get tough because you're going to need it.

[chuckakers 370]

Quote

Industry best practices would train no breakaway below 1000 AGL, save for a down plane. So the correct response for that situation assuming that the jumper failed in handling the breakaway earlier, would be to deploy the reserve, and land the two out, unless it develops into a down plane.

Industry best practices my butt. If I'm at 1000 feet with a SPINNING main, I sure as hell wouldn't dump a reserve into it. The chance of a clean deployment is dramatically reduced and the reserve might even choke the main and create a ball of shit the size a basket of laundry - not something you will land more than once.

Yes there is a time to simply "add fabric to the mess" but at 1000 feet - plenty of time for a reserve to inflate and LOADS of time with an RSL or Skyhook - my choice would be to chop and dump.

Ask me the same question at 500 or 600 feet and I would answer differently, but at a grand I assure you I would NOT dump my square reserve into a spinning mal.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[Ron 7]

Quote

Decision making time is very limited, do you cutaway, (no rsl or anything of that sort) and deploy reserve, hoping to open, do you try and steer/correct the spiral, and now for the finale: Is it worth while to pull reserve, wait for it to half inflate, or at least get out of freebag, and then chop.

BEST answer is don't lose track of altitude. Of course, we know it happens.

What I did (long story on why I was there, lets call it a hard cutaway just to speed up the process) was to pull pretty much both the cutaway and the reserve at damn near the same time. I took enough of a delay to ensure I was free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liq4HYJZaho

But as others have said, the BEST course of action is to have hard decks for both your main and reserve and stick to them!

More people die from trying to "Fix" and issue than cutaway and deploy a reserve too high.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[fastphil 0]

I’ve been there also, in a canopy entanglement (we had one good canopy out) where we elected to do a transfer because of altitude. I knew the altitude and yelled to her immediately to initiate the transfer as I knew I could not get out of her canopy. I can tell you at lower speeds it takes an excruciatingly long time for reserve deployment and there will be short time when you have two canopies to contend with control of. We separated and both made good landings because of immediate reaction and good communication, but this also was with a round reserve and a straight flying main.

[billvon 2,396]

The most important factor in your decision should be this one:

>you semi lost on altitude awareness due to dizzyness.

Get another canopy over your head as soon as possible. Too many other things have gone wrong, and being dizzy means that you're already having trouble evaluating altitude.

If both open cleanly great. If they downplane then cut the main away. If one is flying better than the other one, pull in the worst of the two. But at that altitude don't forget to look down because you will be landing _very_ soon.

[stratostar 5]

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Ask me the same question at 500 or 600 feet and I would answer differently,

When I posted my comment is the other thread, 500 and below is pretty much what I had in mind when I posted.....

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[rehmwa 2]

Too much thinking going on here.

1 - like Dave said - have a simple plan and practice it mentally. Whatever you've practiced is what you'll execute the fastest

2 - like Billvon said - if you lose track of altitude, then clearly you are below your lowest decision point (any other assumption is dangerous), execute the plan for that altitude

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[diablopilot 2]

Quote

Quote

Industry best practices would train no breakaway below 1000 AGL, save for a down plane. So the correct response for that situation assuming that the jumper failed in handling the breakaway earlier, would be to deploy the reserve, and land the two out, unless it develops into a down plane.

Industry best practices my butt. If I'm at 1000 feet with a SPINNING main, I sure as hell wouldn't dump a reserve into it. The chance of a clean deployment is dramatically reduced and the reserve might even choke the main and create a ball of shit the size a basket of laundry - not something you will land more than once.

Yes there is a time to simply "add fabric to the mess" but at 1000 feet - plenty of time for a reserve to inflate and LOADS of time with an RSL or Skyhook - my choice would be to chop and dump.

Ask me the same question at 500 or 600 feet and I would answer differently, but at a grand I assure you I would NOT dump my square reserve into a spinning mal.

You're also not answering as the chief instructor of a skydiving program.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[chuckakers 370]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Industry best practices would train no breakaway below 1000 AGL, save for a down plane. So the correct response for that situation assuming that the jumper failed in handling the breakaway earlier, would be to deploy the reserve, and land the two out, unless it develops into a down plane.

Industry best practices my butt. If I'm at 1000 feet with a SPINNING main, I sure as hell wouldn't dump a reserve into it. The chance of a clean deployment is dramatically reduced and the reserve might even choke the main and create a ball of shit the size a basket of laundry - not something you will land more than once.

Yes there is a time to simply "add fabric to the mess" but at 1000 feet - plenty of time for a reserve to inflate and LOADS of time with an RSL or Skyhook - my choice would be to chop and dump.

Ask me the same question at 500 or 600 feet and I would answer differently, but at a grand I assure you I would NOT dump my square reserve into a spinning mal.

You're also not answering as the chief instructor of a skydiving program.

So when you said "so the correct response for that situation...", you meant for students. Might want to clarify next time, especially if you plan to address deployment altitudes, currency requirements, or any assortment of situations in which the "correct response" is different for students than for everyone else.

The OP didn't indicate he was talking about students anyway.

Chuck Akers
D-10855
Houston, TX

[diablopilot 2]

As I'm sure you're aware it's both hard to teach and hard to find that fine line between what we teach students and when an experienced skydiver changes things for themselves.

Chuck I'm sure you feel comfortable initiating a breakaway at 1000 feet, but then you have years of experience both theoretical and practical that tells you you can get away with it because of your actions and an understanding of the limitations.

Most skydivers are not you nor will they ever attain that level of experience. Would you recommend the same procedure for a 100 jump wonder who took 12 months to get that experience?

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[kuai43 7]

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People touch their handles all the time in the plane, some people even mimic the full procedure...

The more times you review it, the more you think about it, the more it becomes 'second nature' and not something you have to 'think about' when the shit really hits the fan.

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The last thing you want to do is imprint a solution on your brain, only to be down and dirty and have that be the worst thing you could do. You might follow that course of action without even thinking, and then you're really fucked.

I've wondered how much this may have contributed to those seemingly unexplainable low cutaways.

Every fight is a food fight if you're a cannibal

Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man. - Anthony Burgess

[jumpsalot-2 2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekBvFDimpcs.........clicky

Life is short ... jump often.

[Trae 1]

in reply to "I've wondered how much this may have contributed to those seemingly unexplainable low cutaways. "
..............................

There's an old yarn, most likely true, goes like there were two people flying their parachutes near each other. One called out "GOOD DAY". The other one automatically cutaway.

People stopped calling out so much under canopy after that happened.

Doing the handle thing is very important for EP practice but inserting the imagined mal is just as important, especially if you're gunna get all semi-automatic on yourself.

[popsjumper 2]

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I've wondered how much this may have contributed to those seemingly unexplainable low cutaways.

More likely for those taught the K.I.S.S. principle method, I would say.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[davelepka 4]

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I've wondered how much this may have contributed to those seemingly unexplainable low cutaways

I'm sure it has a lot to do with low cutaways. People revert to their training, and in the training they are taught a 'procedure' that includes both handles in the right order.

The catch, is that these people, by virtue of being low under a mal, have already either forgotten or fore-gone the part of their training where they were taught to respond quickly to a malfunction and given a hard to deck with respect to cutting away.

So since there is a 'catch' and since that catch relies on an initial failure on the part of the jumper (riding a mal below the hard deck), we have a 'situation' on our hands. We teach people the procedure so they can react quickly to a mal, and they have a procedure at the ready when they need it, but it seems that this is at the risk of a low cutaway if a jumper busts the hard deck. The operative word there is 'if', and we cannot plan for jumpers to bust the hard deck, we have to train them to respect the hard deck, and train them as if things will be done properly.

Does that suck for people who do bust the hard deck? Sure it does, but those people have a variety of things in their life that will be sucking, so this is just another.

Sport skydiving isn't perfect. I consider my rig to be safe, and fulyl believe that it will save my life when I jump. That doesn't mean I can deploy my Velo at 500ft, or toss my PC while curled up in a ball falling on my back, because the rig wasn't designed to work that way, but if I'm stable and have enough altitude, I believe it will work.

The EPs are the same way. If you use them 'as-designed', they will work for you. 'As-designed' in this case, means you initiate them high enough to allow for the cutaway and reserve deployment. Just like a rig, if you try to use them in a way they weren't designed, you do so at your own risk.

[popsjumper 2]

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We teach people the procedure so they can react quickly to a mal, and they have a procedure at the ready when they need it, but it seems that this is at the risk of a low cutaway if a jumper busts the hard deck. The operative word there is 'if', and we cannot plan for jumpers to bust the hard deck, we have to train them to respect the hard deck, and train them as if things will be done properly.
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The EPs are the same way. If you use them 'as-designed', they will work for you. 'As-designed' in this case, means you initiate them high enough to allow for the cutaway and reserve deployment. Just like a rig, if you try to use them in a way they weren't designed, you do so at your own risk.

Just to be clear....
Those EPs include what to do and how to do it at low altitudes. We DO teach that, well I assume most of us anyway.

I totally agree when you said people practice the high EPs a lot and neglect practicing for the low EPs.

Personally, I believe that is a major cause of the ground rush, deploy-the-main, two-out situations that occur.

Personally, I believe that the low cutaways occur most often for the same reason....they didn't practice the low altitude EPs enough to drill it in.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239