Incident at pull time.

[petetheladd 0]

Sunday, my chute opened up at 4300ft in twists. Not a big deal as I have had twists before and the canopy flies straight as I unravel.
However this time as I was untwisting, it started diving towards the ground in a tail spin.

I took a look(not easy) at the brake line to see if I had a toggle fire but it looked fine. However I was face down parallel to the ground in a rapid spin.

I again tried to look at the whole canopy to see what the hell was wrong with it and went to reach for the rear riser to halt the turn.
oops, arm will only reach shoulder high, grap harness at shoulder with both hands and hang all my weight onto one side and again get a look at the canopy - wtf looks fine and my alti is dialling through 2200 ft.
Cutaway in now looking like my option except I decide to give one more effort before 1800ft hard deck.
let go the harness, unzip one arm and grab rear riser in one smooth motion and haul on it canopy, it zips out of the spin.

However I am at 1900ft and not sure if the canopy is flyable even though it looks ok. I let go the riser, it flys straight as I unzip the other arm and then I decide the canopy is fine after a quick flare check.

However, by the time I unzip etc..I am not going to make it back to the DZ so I land off in a field.

Lesson learned, taking an assessment of my performance, I see now, I should haved pulled the arm cutaway immediately to reach for the riser.
I am glad to have had that extra altitude to handle the emergency.

As you usually hear with this kind of thing it all happened quite fast. I almost regard that jump as my second cutaway.

Canopy was a xfire2 139 loaded at ~1.3

However I cranked my neck and lower back a bit with the straining back to look up at the chute during the spin.
Its a Good job I am a healing machine.

I went on to have another 6 uneventful wingsuit jumps that day.

No, Not without incident

[piisfish 135]

which wingsuit are you using ???
I already had 5/6 linetwists, and the 1st reflex was to cut the wings (and cross my feet) before anything else... Hopefully the canopy flew straight and the twists undid themselves really quick (Fusion 135)

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[petetheladd 0]

Quote

which wingsuit are you using ???

A GTI with a LQRS.

As I said I have had 3/4 twists before and the canopy flew straight while I untwisted.

This was the other end of the twist outcome spectrum.

PtL

No, Not without incident

[ManBird 0]

I usually just go for zippers, but to each his/her own. Point is to get your arms free if the problem (not malfunction) is salvageable.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[LouDiamond 1]

Good job saving yourself. Yet another example of why we open higher than a normal skydive. As I always tell people, when something goes wrong, it goes wrong very fast.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[leroydb 0]

agreed.. jsut go watch my NC BM SF3 cutaway #1 on the video server... link anyone?

Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

[Kevin116 0]

Sounds familiar. At Perris Memorial Day weekend I dumped at about 4000 and had 2-3 twists and a stable canopy over my head. Unzipped arms and cut away right leg with LQRS, then kicked leg out as usual. As I slowly unwound after leg kicks with a twist and a half remaining I ended up flying backwards in a stable mode. No problem, lots of altitude left. Tried several different leg and arm position while trying to help with kicks to finish unwinding. 2500 feet left and I'm starting to run out of ideas! Hadn't released brakes and didn't want to upset canopy by pulling on risers, oh yea and had been flying away from the DZ's south corner of wingsuit area the whole time! While thinking, I must have relaxed whatever I was doing to hold my stable backward flight. The last of the twists came out like the others I've had thru the years. Turned to face the DZ and thought very light thoughts hoping to get closer to home. I could see the wind blades at the DZ and hoped it was the same out by the levees. Didn't like the speed I was able to slow to over the soft ground and PLFed the landing . A lot dirtier but none the worse for wear. 250 lbs out the door on a Sabre 2 210 and flying my wonderful S-3. Anyone else played around and discovered how to get into and more importantly OUT of this situation?