mcstain

At 28 jumps, your time here would be better spent listening a bit more and talking a bit less. Fair enough. In the interests of discussion would you like to expand on this? Do you disagree with my opinion that at 5 jumps this jumper shouldn't be concentrating on doing big fast turns under canopy?

My Parachute's usually open by 3000ft, so I do my checks then some big fast turns. At 5 jumps, your time under canopy would be better spent learning how to fly it, not how to dive it.

Did you discuss this in detail with your instructors afterwards? The internet is a terrible place to learn skydiving, and an even worse place to learn your emergency procedures. It sounds as though you had a firm decision altitude in mind, but you weren't entirely confident about the parachute over your head. This is something you need to talk to your instructors about before your next jump. A malfunction can happen on any jump, and you need to be confident in making a decision and executing your plan (land it or chop it) on each and every jump, even when you are a student. I don't have a lot of jumps, but I know that at this stage in your training, your instructors are the best people to talk to to straighten out this question in your mind.

You might have more luck asking this on the skysurfer.com.au forums.

Well spotted!! I'm only new to jumping, but I do up my chest strap completely as soon as I first put my rig on. I then check it a few more times on the way to the plane and during the climb visually and by tugging on it with a thumb on the inside section of the strap near my sternum. My question is whether in the situation shown in the video, would the strap have loosened with a tug from a thumb, or would it have had enough tension to seem like it was ok? I guess this is something I can try at the dropzone tomorrow.

I'm no expert, but I've heard that many DZs make a large proportion of their profit from tandems and students. They will make a small percentage of profit from a $30-40 jump ticket, but that is enough to keep the plane up and running. As far as I'm aware, most DZs will be happy to have you jump as many times as you like without buying a membership or anything... just buy your jump tickets and have fun :)

That's my understanding. However, I believe if you haven't jumped in a few months you may be asked to do a refresher jump with a coach to make sure you're safe to fly with others. Past your A license, the next step is to start on your B-rels so you can do relative work in freefall. Whereabouts are you doing your course?

Umm.. what?

As others have mentioned, you need to know the participation rates to make any sense of the stats from the comic. A more useful statistic is fatalities per unit of the activity. For example, the fatality rate for skydiving is approximately 1 in 160,000. If 160,000 jumped on the same day, you would expect one of those people to die. How do we compare this to other activities? You would find a similar statistic for SCUBA diving if you looked hard enough, i.e., how many SCUBA deaths are there per 160,000 SCUBA dives? When it comes to comparing these activities to everyday activities like driving it gets really difficult. What is one "unit" of driving? It's really hard to compare skydiving with other activities like driving or cycling, because of their relative frequency. The risk of dying on any one skydive is approximately 1/160,000, but of course this is influenced by your skill level and the risks of the particular jump you might be taking part in (wingsuit, relative work, freeflying). For driving and cycling, perhaps the best way to compare the risk is by comparing the approximate distance travelled per fatality, and then working out the risk you expose yourself to on a yearly basis by taking part in that activity. For example, I want to compare the risk of skydiving to driving. In Australia, there are 5.8 fatalities for every billion kilometres travelled by motor vehicle. If I drive 10,000km in a year, this represents an overall risk of death from driving in Australia of 1/17,241. In comparison, the fatality risk of nine skydives is approximately 1/17,777. So while the odds of dying from skydiving are lower for one jump compared to a year of driving, if you jump more than 9 times in a year skydiving represents the greater risk. As you can see, it can get complicated trying to compare risk across different activities, and it is possible to provide support for a general conclusion (skydiving is safer than driving) by manipulating the parameters of the comparison. Hopefully this gives you some insight into the factors involved! By the way, the statistic I provided for motor vehicle risk in Australia includes all road users (including drivers, passengers, cyclists and motorcyclists) per 1 billion vehicle-kilometres.

What makes it different enough to deserve its own thread?

Holy fuck, that is terrifying. Can we discuss all of the events that led up to this incident occurring to give new jumpers like me an idea of what to do to avoid finding ourselves in the same situation?

Awesome post. Certainly adjusted my expectations in terms of the number of jumps it will take to progress in this sport. It's all about the journey though I guess. I'm looking at buying a used rig soon, tossing up between a 170 at 1.06 and a 190 at 0.95. As much as I think I want to fly a smaller canopy, I also value being alive in order to do so. In some way I also like the idea of buying a larger docile canopy and just flying the hell out of it. Anyway, thanks again for the detailed posts :)

Haha wow, I'm only just starting out, but wingsuiting has always been something I've been keen on working towards. Your description of it has sold me on it for sure. Any tips for skills in particular to focus on developing in my first few hundred jumps if I want to wingsuit one day?

I didn't see where the op mentioned she was first. Alls I see is someone who must have put in a lot of hard work, challenged herself, and set out what she intended to do. Seems pretty cool to me, not to mention the video quality on her jump is so much better. Have you done anything really cool lately? Jesus, get more defensive. I said it was a cool stunt, and then pointed out that it had been done before as the OP was wondering if it was old news. Certainly didn't mean to imply that it didn't take hard work or that it wasn't a challenge.

A cool stunt, but it was first performed on Top Gear over six years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZyGMKpgyHA.

That sounds ridiculously fun!

I'm doing my static line progression at Ramblers (Toogoolawah) currently. It's about 1 hour 15 minutes from the Brisbane CBD, and they have a big focus on fun jumpers and students. Most tandems go down to Byron Bay or up to Coolum. A full load on the Caravan is 17 jumpers from memory. Ramblers usually jump throughout the week, but it is best to call in advance to let them know you're coming. They can advise on weather forecasts and let you know if there will be others jumping too. I know that last week there were full loads going up during the week, but a few weeks before that there weren't enough people to jump. If you do head out to Ramblers drop me a line!

Good point. Pull priorities were definitely drilled into me during my training. I asked my instructor on the weekend about this incident. He said that although it was unlikely that I would find myself in such an extreme spin, if it did happen I should try delta position or even curling up in a ball to reset myself.

I am a static line instructor, and I NEVER told my students they had to beat the static line. I told them to IGNORE the static line and do a smooth "arch, locate, pull, arch". I did have the caveat that the static line couldn't "wake up" the jumper. They had to start the sequence right on exit. AFAIK, this policy never caused any problems. Having students try to "beat" the static line is unfair and just makes them rush too much. Aren't we trying to train "smooth"? We have the same policy at my DZ where I am finishing off my static line progression. I had issues locating the dummy handle each time because the main had left the container and the handle was no longer where it was supposed to be. I was a bit worried about missing it each time, but my instructor stressed that he was more interested in the fact that I was in good position and going for the chute, rather than whether I actually found it. He said that for this stage he is simply making sure that I'm aware enough to complete the trained movements and attempt to save my own life before letting me do the first solo BOC deployment.

I'm pretty sure it has been covered with me over the course of my jumps, but obviously I need some reminding. As I said, there's a lot of information to take in. I'm glad I came across this video though, it's a reminder that quite often you don't know what you don't know.

Are you asking what to do if something like this happens to the individual as compared with what an AFF instructor would have done? Because I doubt that any AFF instructor would ever find themselves in this position. How recent is this? It's at the Ranch in NY, and it's the 208, but, was this this year??? I'm asking out of curiosity because I wasn't sure how I would have dealt with it. I'm still a student and wasn't sure if there was a "known-best" way of dealing with this or whether people would have different approaches. I'm not sure how old the video is.

I have 7 freefalls, and I'm not sure exactly how I would deal with it. Perhaps I should take up bowling too. There is a lot to remember when learning to skydive. Better have a chat with my instructors at the DZ tomorrow!

How would you deal with this incident? Bear in mind the g-forces may be so strong that they prevent you from deploying your pilot chute. http://vimeo.com/77473133

Can anyone recommend good skydiving documentaries? I recently watched a doco on Jeb Corliss (called Fearless) which was decent, would be good to see something similar for skydiving.

Very interesting, thanks for this!