I'm the jumper in the video. Yeah, definitely a lot of mistakes caused by a lot of things including rushing to catch the load which prevented me from getting a proper gear check by someone else, complacency, not paying attention to my pin in the plane, etc. I can assure you that from the time the plane took off I felt something strange about the whole jump, and even told the guy who did the video that in the plane while ascending to altitude. I learned a lot and I hope other people who see this video do as well. I can guarantee it isn't too long of a closing loop. I shortened the hell out of that thing from what my rigger gave me and have actually been told it may be too short. As you can tell in the video I'm not a small guy and I have to put a hell of a lot of force into the pull-up cord when closing it. I can't say, however, the pin was seated completely due to my lack of a proper gear check and it had been a week since my last jump. I had just shown up at the DZ and had about 10 min get registered for the boogie, geared up, and to the plane. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have skipped it and waited for the next load and taken my time. I am grateful I was away from the plane before shit hit the fan and didn't put anyone else in harms way. What happened to me, I deserved, but not everybody else that could have been put at risk from it, as well. The malfunction I experienced was that during the horseshoe, the bridle and pilot chute came up between the lines and after my main opened and slider came down, the pilot chute wrapped around the slider and lines on the right side. The slider came about 90% down causing the bridle to be pulled down very tightly collapsing the rear-center of the canopy. I was pretty much flying a bow-tie shaped canopy. I was able to hold a straight heading, but that is about it. I let the canopy maneuver itself to point towards a big open field then held it straight and rode it down to about 3k before cutting as I had no chance of making a decent landing. So before you go condemning me for my actions, trust me, it definitely changed the way I am going to approach skydiving from now on and from this one incident I have learned a million things. I know some of you have your D-license and are hoping to just tear into me, but before you do, be honest with yourself and think if you have ever rushed to catch a load and skipped a step or two of the things you learned during AFF. I just happened to be the unlucky asshole that it caught me and am more grateful to be alive than you can imagine. Blue Skies
