I'm listening now... (1st WS reserve ride)

[Luminous 0]

Another situation where a few little PREVENTABLE things add up to a not so little thing. But it could have been worse. (P) = Preventable.

It's a planned 4way flock. I'm wearing a demo Phantom, which I've flown twice previously. I was not as close as I should have been on exit(P), and seperation was to much for my current experience level, so I peelled off in a safe direction and played with the suit.

At 4000ft I wave off and reach back and grab wing(P), oops! let's try again.. grab butt, move up, grab hackey, pitch and tuck. ... ... nothing. A weak throw has resulted in pilot chute hesitation(P).

Here's where my years of belly training takes over, I did not, as I have been instructed, put my head down and track, I looked behind me(P), to see my PC & bag launch so now I'm in a bad body position for deployment(P).

So the canopy (Batwing 134, 1.6WL), opens with 1 (maybe 2) line twist and starts to turn. 3000 feet. No big deal, let's just reach up here and unzip the sleeves so I can reach the risers. mmmm.... speeding up & spinning past 2800, damn zipper.. come on. (NOTE: at this point I should have used the wing cutaways, I did not(P)). Now on my back, spinning through 2600ft with my leg wing inflated in front of me(P), I STILL can't get this damn zipper to move.... REALLY spinning through 2400ft I'm thinking this is now a big deal. As the risers begin to push my chin back I gave up on the zipper, noted I was at 2200, grab right, grab left, pull right, pull.... wait... PULL RIGHT.... DAMN... release left... grab right with both hands... PULL RIGHT.... DAMNSHITFUCK.... PULL !! RIGHT !!.... and there it goes... but where am I??? grab left... WHERE'S LEFT?? pat pat.. find cable.. GRAB CABLE PULL CABLE I DON'T FEEL ANYTH... ...... That's a fine looking reserve I got there.
Jenn, (aka: MoonGlo), has always been leary of my canopy choice, and has definitly recommend hard housings for the cutaway cable. I ageed that using my batwing wasn't the smartest thing but nothing I shouldn't be able to deal with.

And hard housings are a GREAT ideal for anybody. But I didn't do it. Obviously I wasn't listening. I'm listening now.

I am also going to be more through(sp?) in visualizing types of malfunctions and my reactions to each. I'm listening now.

Things I did right: Jumped, Pulled at high enough altitude to deal with any problems, landed safely.

A great weekend at Aggieland. Although the weather was a bit wet, it cleared each afternoon enough for 4 or 5 loads. Thanks to Todd & Cathy for being great host. Thanks to MoonGlo & Phonix Fly for allowing us the use of their demo suits for the weekend.

A fun time was had by all.

Cheers.
Larry
"I'm listening now"

PS: I really didn't think this was a FIRST first. But I've been instructed that it is indeed. I'll be buying that case. (oh darn)

[moonglo 0]

Thanks for not dying fucker!

I have to admit I tell you these things for mostly selfish reasons- I want to keep flying with you!
As for it not being a FIRST first, I agree it wasn't your first cutaway, but the beer won't go to waste (but it will got to my waist ). I've known a bunch of guys who quit flying wingsuits after their first wingsuit cutaway, so it can be a big deal.

[LouDiamond 1]

Glad to hear you managed with your situation and you're still here. IMO, hard housings should be something every wingsuit pilot makes sure they have, even if they aren't flying a high performance canopy. It's cheap insurance and it could potentially save ones life. I watched Chuck have the same problem several years ago and had he not had the extra altitude when he pulled he wouldn't be here today. The amount of altitude he lost from the time the problem started until he was under his reserve went by extremely fast despite his taking the right steps immediately.

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Obviously I wasn't listening. I'm listening now.

Thats good to hear. Unfortunately it took this incident to finally get your attention. Hopefully others will learn from this and take the necessary steps to ensure they don't make the same mistakes.Thanks for sharing your experience and more importantly, learning from it.

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

[LukeH 0]

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Jenn, (aka: MoonGlo), has always been leary of my canopy choice, and has definitly recommend hard housings for the cutaway cable. I ageed that using my batwing wasn't the smartest thing but nothing I shouldn't be able to deal with.

your canopy choice is the least of your problems.

glad it all worked out for you but you really should have known better with the number of jumps you have.

hard housings are a no brainer. as for all of the other preventable issues... i guess you were having a bad day - glad it didn't kill anyone (including you).

plenty of other people have made similar mistakes, some didn't get so lucky. there really is no excuse for you not learning from the mistake that others have made.

[Tonto 1]

There are only 2 BMI/PFI's in Africa. We've trained about 30 birds between the 2 of us, and helped a few people with over 500 dives get to fly a suit.

Most have followed our recomendations WRT eliptical canopies and wingsuits. 11 did not. Of those 11, 9 have had to cut away within their 1st 20 wingsuit flights. 2 have lost some or all of their gear.

I'm on a Safire loaded to 1.85. I've watched myself untwist from several line twists, all while hanging directly under my wing, and am satisfied with my equipment choice at this point.

Glad you're OK and that you're listening now.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[Luminous 0]

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your canopy choice is the least of your problems

I disagree.

And I'm not making any excuses.

Cheers.

'In an insane society a sane person seems insane.' Mr. Spock

[The111 0]

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hard housings should be something every wingsuit pilot skydiver makes sure they have

Glad you're ok, Larry. I'm with Tonto... on the rare occasion I get 1 or 2 twists on my Pilot, it is untwisting itself before I can even think about it.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[LukeH 0]

I guess you are still only listening to what you want to hear.

it's true that twists on an elliptical canopy have a higher chance of turning into a Malfunction than on a non-elliptical canopy. this is true whether you are wearing a wingsuit or not. the problem with the wingsuit is that you may be more likely to have a poor body position at pull time until you get used to the suit, and you can't grab your risers without doing anything (unless you are jumping an Access or Prodigy), so you may be a little slower to take corrective action

it sounds like you would have been able to stop the dive if you have been straight on the toggles rather than faffing around with the zipper on an unfamiliar suit.

i think that if you are familiar with a canopies opening characteristics, and are familiar with deploying in a wingsuit your chances of having a malfunction are fairly similar with or without the wingsuit.

YMMV.

change your canopy if you like, but you'll be doing yourself a much better service if you address the other issues first

[980 0]

Here’s one view:

From a line-twist procedure point of view, there are two different classes of wingsuit:

1 – suits where you can reach your risers or large 3 ring without unzipping the wings

2 – suits where you cannot reach the risers or large 3 ring without unzipping or cutting away the armwings


Regardless of your canopy (but very important for high performance and/or elliptical canopies), when you open up with linetwists, your procedure should be this:
(you have collapsed your leg wing and you are keeping it collapsed by squeezing your ankles and knees together from before pulltime)


If you have a wingsuit in class 1 from above (the phantom is in this class):

1 - take hold of your risers (or large 3 rings if you cannot reach the risers for whatever reason), one with each hand
2 – equalize the tops of your risers (where the links connect the lines to the riser) and push the risers together until your hands touch
3 – hang directly under this single attachment point to the canopy, as limp as possible, keep the risers (or large 3 rings) together
4 – give the canopy time to recover from the dive and/or turn (if it was doing that) and start flying level (this should happen because you have taken away the input to turn and dive by equalizing the links and getting your weight centralized under the canopy)
5 – if step 4 takes too long or if it is not working, locate your handles and execute your cutaway procedures
6 – once you are flying level, keep the risers together, make your whole body as narrow as possible and allow yourself to untwist under the canopy due to the torsion from the twisted lines
7 – once you are untwisted, unzip your wings and continue as usual

Notes: I have not had step 4 fail me yet, I have over 250 jumps in a S3 (a few in other suits too) on a Nitro 120 @ just over 1.6, about 10 on a Xfire2 109 @ 1.75 and about 10 on a Samurai 105 @ 1.85.
Keep track of time and altitude while following this procedure.



If you have a wingsuit from class 2 above:

1 – unzip your armwings if you have time, use your armwing cutaways if you do not have time or cannot unzip, if you can do neither, execute cutaway procedures.
2 – continue from step 2 above.



I used to deal with linetwists differently until a very experienced jumper saw some of my video and commented on how often I get linewtists and how he knows a better way to deal with them than pulling the risers apart and kicking. I used to get a lot of linetwists with my wingsuit because I dumped in full flight or whatever and really didn’t care too much about trying to avoid them because I was pretty comfortable in a wingsuit.
I started with the standard pull and kick method but that requires legwing unzipping on most suits, so I changed to using a rear riser to fly the canopy out of the linetwists whenever that was possible.

The risers together, get narrow and hang limp technique works the best for me in a wingsuit though and it normally has you leveled out and out of the twists quicker than you could start bicycle-kicking.

Try it, you might like it.

Cya
Sam

PS – I have one wingsuit cutaway in my S3 under a Nitro 135 @ 1.45. That was before I learned this new technique, at a holiday boogie in Eloy where the maximum allowed pull altitude was 2500ft, skydive 451, demo canopy, downsizing from my usual square 155 and moving to an elliptical. That reads like an incident report right there, doesn’t it? I was on my back pretty soon after it started spinning, I spent a few seconds fighting it and getting nowhere before I got off that ride.

[yuri_base 1]

Great advice, thanks, Sam!

Ever since I started dumping using "arm-wing only for a couple of seconds, leg wing closed, look at horizon" technique (vs. from full flight), and packing grommet-to-BOC I haven't gotten any linetwists (~40 flights), and openings are very soft and on heading. But I'll make an effort and get linetwists on my Spectre just to try the untwisting techique you decribed.

Yuri

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[moonglo 0]

I've never heard of that method, but I also cutaway from line twists with a wingsuit early on. I will have to induce some linetwists and try it Thanks Sam!

[AveE 0]

thanks Sam... never heard about this technique before...

unfortunately i had a wingsuit from class 2 (vampire) yesterday. and had no time to unzip my armwings...

[980 0]

hey dude

no problem, I am only passing along knowledge from another jumper that has worked for me

I am curious that you would class a Vampire as not being able to reach the risers or large 3 rings?

what is your build like?

I would class the wingsuits that I have flown and can remember like this:

Class 1
Gti, Prodigy, GS-1, S3, S3S, Phantom, Vampire, Vampire2

Class 2
Classic


I guess what class a specific wingsuit falls into for you, depends on your build. I am 6'0 and 165lb, with long arms, so more suits would be Class 1 for me than Class 2.

Have you really tried different ways of getting your hands up with the wings zipped up?

I cannot reach straight up for the risers, but if I rotate my arms towards each other with the palms facing me I can get my finger in the 'V' of my risers from the inside.

Play around with it, all you need to be able to reach is the large 3 ring (attached to the harness).

maybe we should poll this and see what people's experience with reaching their 3 rings and risers are?

[AveE 0]

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what is your build like?

187lbs, 5`9" tall with rather short arms. i have to incline my head to get my goggles on

tried it again 5 minutes ago :) yes, i can reach large rings and even the risers if i act like you say :)

thanks again!

[Luminous 0]

Thanks Sam!

This is Excellent stuff. Hope you don't mind that I'm printing out copies to share.

Cheers.
Larry

'In an insane society a sane person seems insane.' Mr. Spock

[Luminous 0]

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it sounds like you would have been able to stop the dive if you have been straight on the toggles rather than faffing around with the zipper on an unfamiliar suit.

you are correct. I definitely faffed to long, .

Also should have kept those legs together to keep that wing deflated. I may have started trying to kick but they were definitly just flying out in front of me after a few revolutions.

Cheers.
Larry

'In an insane society a sane person seems insane.' Mr. Spock

[normiss 622]

While I have a considerably more docile canopy...i can almost relate to this...
I had a simple line over on a Spectre 150...but it put her in a nice down plan spin...losing altitude fast...STOOOOOOPIDLY working on zipppers instead of cutting away wings
control restored at 800 feet..
NEVER AGAIN!!!!!

[MarkM 0]

So doesn't anyone else just hang passively under their docile canopy all pissed off at ther rushed crappy packjob while it untwists itself?

[phoenixlpr 0]

I got 1 stable line twist so far. Mine was not a result of rushpacking.

[bert_man 0]

Never rush a packjob, it is not worth it!!!! you imbeciles!

On the other hand, most of mine are from drunk/hungover packjobs (or when i give a whuffo $3 to just stuff the tarp in the backpack for me while i grab another cold one)

-Ghetto
"The reason death cannot frighten me, is because life has cured me of fear."
Web Design
Cleveland Skydiving

[droquette 0]

I have a Pilot 190 loades at 1.1 and I have had a few hardcore line twist.. Fortunatly only one was spinning and I was able to kick out of it. Usually I just watch the line twist happen.. then watch it unravel.. I love my Pilot!

HISPA 72 ----- "Muff Brother" 3733

[snafuhere 0]

for the record:
I just had my first-ever reserve ride because of linetwist ([email protected]) while flying Firebird

when I watched the opening I immediately reached for risers but failed (forgot the wings first)

when I reached for the zippers canopy was already spinning fast so I decided not to risk more altitude

I failed with one hand and had to pull with both hands to cut-away

somehow I have lost the reserve handle :(
next time, if enaugh altitude, I will try this trick with risers

PS. this was my 100th jump this year and 1-st wingsuit this year (I have in total 15 WS flights)

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