cpoxon 0 #1 April 25, 2003 Whilst I was in Florida, I got a chance to jump an Alouette Helicopter. Being the tight-arse that I am, I wanted to maximise my freefall, from a low (5,000 feet) expensive (2 jump tickets) jump, so I took my wingsuit. The jump was uneventful but the opening was interesting. The problem was an uneven opening. Eeking out the altitude, I threw the pilot chute at 3000 feet. As I felt the canopy deploy, I felt the harness on the shoulders wider than they normally are and also unevenly seated. In turn, I unconciously felt my body bend sideways slightly to "lean into it", which all contributed to a horibbly uneven opening resulting in line twists. Once the canopy finished twisting up, it started to spin, which is unusual for this canopy (Crossfire 149 loaded at 1.5:1) as it usually flies straight and level when twisted. At this point I was seriously considering chopping it, but as the canopy started to spin, it also started untwist itself quite rapidly, so I decided to stay with it. As I came out of the twists and levelled out, my alti read 1500 feet. I'd eaten up 1500 feet in 15 seconds and not looked at my alti during that time, but I can't say I was surprised and was happy that I had a reasonable idea of where I was. You can see on a ProTrack graph of this jump the speed decreases until about 22 seconds and 3000 feet which is where I deployed. I think the first peak my not be truly representative, but the second one, where the canopy is spinning towards the ground, indicates a maximum speed of 50 mph before it stops. As the ProTrack was set to slow mode, it captured the canopy deployment and concurs with my estiamte of 1500 feet for when it finally cleared. There are a couple of contributing factors to this. The first is the uneven deployment, emphasised by I believe a loosish chest-strp. I was fairly uncurrent wingsuit wise. I'd only done a couple of wingsuit jumps a week before, a fun one and my BMI evaluation. As such, I spent too long looking at my canopy and not undoing my arm zippers getting to the risers. With free arms, I probably could have stopped this a lot sooner. When I'm regularly jumping the suit, I naturally unzip the zippers whilst deploying, but when I'm uncurrent, I seem to forget about this. Deploying at 3,000 feet although not contributing to the problems (unless perhaps sub-conciously I felt rushed at the pull due to the height)reduced my margins. You can see a video of this jump at ftp://ftp.skydivingmovies.com/public/CraigPoxon/AlouetteBirdman.mpg There are a few other fun, small videos in there from my trip to the States, a couple of my head-down jumps, me shooting a shotgun/M1 Carbine/AK-74, my "swooping" attempts, and the planes used in the 120-way doing a flyby. Sort your view by date for the most recent ones. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Casch 0 #2 April 26, 2003 Dude that was one crazy little malfuntion there, I'm glad that it cleared its self up, yet scared that it went that low before it did Insane opening there. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
highfly 0 #3 April 30, 2003 Mmmm. Watched it last night Craig. Very glad you are here to talk about it. Couldnt quite tell whether you was spinning around the axis running through the lines or was both you and the canopy spinning in in opposite directions? Most exciting ride yet under canopy Craig? www.myspace.com/durtymac Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
