Liemberg

Ms Vulovic was inside the tail section of that DC9 during her descent. So actually she was flying an 'improvised' airplane / autogiro and never completely in freefall. (most of us 'old farts' have seen how ripcords and cut-away cables started to spin and slow down upon acceleration of their spin...) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Actually, there are TWO WW1 stories of aviators falling out of their aircrafts and getting back inside. Both are rather well documented with eye-witness accounts and/or photografic evidence. First there was lieutenant Louis A Strange (RFC) who had his Martynside S1 aircraft suddenly flip upside down as he stood up to change the ammunition drum of his Lewis machine gun during a 'dogfight'. Holding on to the machinegun drum he managed to get back inside and get the aircraft back in an upright position at 500ft. He was cited by his CO for "causing unnecessary damage to his instrument panel and seat " - after the war he came in contact with the Germans who were also in the fight and he asked them why they didn't shoot him down when they had the opportunity. "Shoot you down?" they replied, "We were clapping and cheering for you!"

I listened to the tape for about 5 minutes and then gave up - I'm 'double handicapped' here since I have trouble with the sound quality (as everybody else) but also I'm not really good in Australian accent. So would I but all I managed to find with the help of 'google' was another website repeating the one I gave in my first post on the subject. Not really helpful - for it is typically (IMO) the kind of story people want to believe to be true - without any real knowledge of 'the physics of parachute openings' like one develops with a few 1000 jumps and a few decades in the sport. The thing is that for instance the Alkemade story - complete with Germans not wanting to believe him, the incredible odds of hitting a snowy slope, etcetera has been around as long as I can remember - I even saw it pictured in a cartoon magazine when I was a kid while this story which is as remarkable I had never heard of until this week. No cartoons, no film - nothing, as far as I can tell. That and countless 'Mr, Bill' jumps made by the skydiving community makes me verry skeptic... And for the 'incredible strenght at the moment you are holding on for dear life'? In 1997 in the Netherlands a pilot bailed out of a cripled C206 without an emergency rig, holding on to another jumper who pulled immediatly. The pilot lost grips and fell to his death... Last observation: But why would he tell such a story when it wasn't true? Beats me but I know that people tell bullshit stories all the time for all kinds of reasons... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Recently on twitter someone told an (in my opinion) highly unlikely story about a WW2 pilot bailing out of a desintegrating Halifax bomber at night over Germany without a parachute above 12000ft and by sheer coincidence meeting up with his mid-upper gunner at around 5000ft, grabbing the gunners legs in mid-air at the exact moment the gunner opened his parachute and holding on to those legs throughout the opening. Both men supposedly landed under that one parachute, evaded capture by the Germans for four days and survived the war as POW's. My bullshit-detector went of the scale as one can imagine but the story was apparently told in a television show. The guys name is "Joe Herman" and of course I searched this forum for that name but found no hits. (For those interested there is a website with the story and a tape recording of Joe Herman telling his story: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C386640) Now of course this would have been the first Mr. Bill jump in history, and it is a terrible waste to check a good story to death but nevertheless I would imagine that the inevitable 'true or false' question has the best chance of getting a half way believable answer on this here forum - if it really happened a few of you guys would know about it...

It is trying to tell you what the weather will be in the next 48 hours Seriously, I sprained an ankle on landing in 1983. Walked on crutches for a couple of weeks, learned to walk and run again and mostly forgot about it. However, during a physical examination more than 15 years later as I was laying on the physicians table he examined both of my ankles and said "the left one has been injured previously, hasn't it?" The general rule is rest, elevation and exercise. To be repeated every time it 'acts up' The general rule is also that you will be rememberded about some of your landings - particularly on cold and damp mornings - decades after you f*#$d up. The good news is that this keeps you cautious throughout the rest of your skydiving career.

Seems like a pretty stupid way of doing business indeed. However, if the USPA has been issuing licenses in a 'suspended guy ran the course and non-suspended guy signed the paperwork'-scenario and the paperwork did come "with an official USPA stamp" this can quickly turn into a legal quagmire for the USPA, even if they were duped themselves and did not know anything about what was going on. Anybody that has any insight about what was really happening there? Correct me if I'm wrong but from here it seems that in order to get your USPA tandem license suspended you need to have one in the first place, but what do I know - I live on another continent and should replace my avatar with a picture of a rocking chair... http://www.uspa.org/News-Events/News/Article/1864/USPA-Acts-to-Ensure-Proper-Tandem-Instructor-Certification "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

OK, I’ll bite. The problem I have with method 1 (pull silver at once) is that it assumes a ‘situational awareness’ on the part of the skydiver that may- or may not be present. After all you have thrown a pilot chute and are anticipating an opening shock in ‘onethousand, twothousand, threethousand...” However the first thing you notice is that you don’t get an opening shock and you keep buzzing towards the planet at terminal velocity. Why? You misrouted your bridle in such a stupid way that it will break before pulling your curved pin OR You did a lazy throw and your pilot chute is in the burble on your back OR You forgot to collapse the pilot chute AND?OR your pin remains in the loop since you have a tight setup AND/OR your pin is out of the loop since you have a loose setup, however the collapsed pilot does not produce enough drag to lift your main bag out of the container OR Gremlins are messing with your system. Now if you jump gutter gear that old farts like me used in the previous century there may be something to say for ‘keeping the 3 rings in place’ and pulling silver at once - what happens next you can sort out under your reserve, hopefully... However, since you jump semi elliptical mains and small reserves at wingloads that I would not dare to contemplate back in the days, chances are that once you start figuring out what to do next with that extra canopy, both canopies may have already decided what they will do with you - which is to give you a spin for your money just as you start to grab for your reserve toggles. Getting slightly behind the powercurve sucks in skydiving - and can be lethal So better take a few seconds to analyse the situation then? Priorities, priorities... When you cut-away while that was not neccesary since your main is firmly locked in place AND you don’t jump Wonderhogs / Rapid Transit or any other form of ‘vintage’ gear your ‘state of the art’ riser covers will keep your risers away from the deploying reserve. That is what they are there for in all the gear produced in the last 20 years or so. Hey, even well maintained Velcro can handle the job of keeping your risers in place, not interfering with the deployment of your reserve. You might want to figure out where an RSL would end up but unless you jump with systems that deploy the reserve automaticly on one occasion and chocke the reserve when things go slightly different on another, your RSL is safely tucked away and even when your main starts to deploy right now it likely will not interfere with the airworthyness of your reserve. This cut-away before you pull silver adds TWO WHOLE EXTRA SECONDS to your EP’s. Figuring out what the Gremlins are up to might take the rest of your life or just the time it takes you to get to AAD firing altitude... YMMV...

The picture that illustrates the article seems out-of-place since the article sums up emergencies that have in common that your freefall is continued which clearly isn't the case in the pic. Also, from a psychological pov - if this is aimed at students (?) - the 'common denominator' of all these emergencies is that "stop the skydive" is the most urgent thing on the students to-do list, not fruitlessly analyzing (hampered by tunnel vision) if that is a pilotchute hesitation or a pilot chute in tow which causes the student's continuation of his 200km/h race towards 'terra firma'... Furthermore, the article promisses "a detailed explanation of these three systems" (throw out, pull-out, springloaded) for which the reader should look in "the chapter on equipment". Where? Whatever you think of the DZ.com forums, most 'afficionados' there do agree that learning to skydive 'online' on both youtube and DZ.com is a bad idea. So maybe that also goes for posting 'informative' articles on this crucial learning subject on the main pages of this website... YMMV.

This is a great idea when you look at it from the perspective of 'rule making' - even if you want to celebrate your optimal freedom and only live by 'rules of thumb/dumb'. However, like the famous 'do not take a camera with you unless you have xx jumps' I could also see something happening like 'do not exceed a ratio of 0,xx' in the volume of your parachute divided by its area unless you have xx jumps'. It is clear that this ratio which ranges from 0,42 for Big Air Sports smallest canopy to 0,65 for its biggest one could give you (and those trying to prevent you from hurting yourself by making dents in their dropzones) an extra handle when assesing your ability to handle a certain canopy.

Then again, you don't see many students cranking out 500 jumps per year. To simplify: If you make 10 times as many jumps as the average student but one single jump you make is "half as risky" due to your experience and being current etcetera you end up with five times the risk involved in participating in the activity i.e. not being around next season.

What's that saying again? "Whatever is wrong in a persons head and life, it usually can be cured with a thousand jumps or so..." ;-)

Though it doesn't deserve the 'best performance of the month'-prize when you end up with a drogue entanglement, the students ankle seems to be the best 'point of entanglement' - provided the situation is handled professionaly from that moment on. Yes - drogue entanglements can end up with reserve entanglements, so the potential for a double fatality is there, but when the attachmentpoint is the students ankle, the +45 degree headdown position which will result gives you the best launch direction for your reserve pilotchute. Furthermore the solution is also pretty straight forward. ("Pull silver - NOW!") and reserves work most of the times, while the droplet-shape of the drogue also reduces the problem. But I do agree that it is an incident (or serious fuckup on the part of the TI if you will) Throwing drogues before you are stable / certain that it will get free of the tandempair will get you there sooner or later. Every TI supposedly learns that in his training but you know how it is: some of us only really learn 'on the job'. With lots and lots of tandemjumps on youtube nowadays it is not hard to find footage of sketchy drogue throws. Great educational value for junior TI's

I'd be sent to bootcamp and would have to give 20 push-ups, to begin with no doubt. "Young whippersnapper!" But that's OK with me; in my ideal world every student skydiver has his own personal drill sergeant.

I never actually met him and in fact this is the first time I see a pic of him. But - he looks exactly like I always pictured him, with a grey beard, garden trousers and a 'Da Nang' cap on his head. Funny to see that my imagination fits reality. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

If there are any cyber-skydivers out there that were also around in the rec.skydiving usenet-days (maybe should 've posted this in History and Trivia) - what happened to Snuffy? "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

When receiving directions and guidelines on defusing IED's on a roadside without getting yourself killed in the proces, would you be intersted in the opinions of a seasoned veteran who defused hundreds in, say two consecutive tours or from the guy in the middle of his third week bomb school training? Thats what I thought

Which is why I have always been advocating: 1. Only jump rigs with some sort of velcro / tongue / magnet closure on your main risers 2. Cut away & pull reserve. Again, there's the 'I'm wasting time analysing' conundrum - that is best counteracted with 'I'm probably just as stupid as the next person, so I better follow ONE course of action that works ALWAYS.' YMMV - what else is new? ... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Actually, knowing how your (human) mind works in emergencies / high stress situations is of the utmost importance when premeditating a course of action. If there IS a decision to be made - other than "I just did what usually stops the freefal portion of the jump, counted to three and I'm still in freefal - NO OPENING SHOCK --> Sh#t! --> EP's!" - it follows that - once you allow yourself a choise - you have to analyse what is going on and then decide if you chose A: your repeatedly trained EP's or B: something else (grab your bridle, shake your ass, go into sitfly, smack your container or any combination...) It also follows that this analyses could eat up a large portion of the one thing you are running out of in 12-8 seconds from NOW: Useful time... It also follows that even choosing B 'as fast as you can' holds the risk that this was the wrong choise (can't get hold of the bridle, shaking my ass doesn't work etcetera) and you end up choosing 'delayed A'... Even if you are succesful here, logic dictates that with 'delayed A' you will be under an unfamiliar canopy, closer to the ground than you would have been had you just reacted like an 'automated Zombie' (After pull in freefal? EP's ASAP) No time to catch your breath - you will land, wether you are prepared or not... And al of a sudden it is doubtful if you can safely cross the crocodile pond / dense urban area / high trees / high voltage powerlines / the railroad track / vineyard / lions den etcetera Wether the benefit of 'saving the day' by choosing B, thus not having to pay for a repack, buying beer for your mates and a bottle of liquor for your rigger outweights the benefit of choosing A and (in all likelyhood) saving your life - I leave for you to decide...

Which allows us to see that it isn't a seatbelt hang-up but rather a 'right lateral passenger band' hang-up. And also to observe (at the end of the clip) they are so proud of this new achievement that they advertise to which establishment one should go for some whole new levels of fast paced adrenaline adventure during one's first skydiving adventure... I guess it is safe to say this is a double fail - first in preventing the added danger by not rigorously following procedures and second in giving yourself a black eye two years after the fact by sending your student on his way with his video to post that footage of 'you with your pants down' on youtube where sooner or later the DZ.com crowd will find it and give you some constructive criticism.

Easy tiger...

Now you are seriously underestimating the power of crowdsourcing on the internet. With my mad computer skilz & google & wikipedia I often find the right answers online even before you have formulated the questions! Its a gift. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Double your price since you have to take special safety precautions given the age of your new customers, smile as you take their money and giggle all the way to the bank! "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Not like a premature opening of the tandem main would "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Why would you think a black displaced economic / political male refugee would be much more likely to kill a young white woman than an american ingenué - that is into the music of Schubert, for crying out loud? And rewarding the true killer (you know, boring physical evidence) with a reduced sentence also doesn't do much for truth-finding usually but hey - they invented law in Rome, so they must know a few things. NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE. especially if you have to adress them in a foreign language... That 'double jeopardy' thing you have over there across the water is something that is lacking in several European legal systems. Then again, we are not in the habbit of executing convicted killers - even repeated ones. .. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

I think the tunnel can be an excellent tool for transitioning from static-line to free-fall, but I would be inclined to modify the progression system a bit and send them 'all the way up' after they have proven they can actually save their own life - by pulling a free-fall parachute system at least once or twice, preferably while being belly to earth/into the wind without losing stability in the opening. Just let them open @4500ft the first longer freefalls and put audible back-up gadgets on them. (Yes, you should explain the pitfalls...) In the tunnel they can practice just about everything you need to survive a free-fall - you could even have them train a high speed malfunction, pulling / throwing a pc and keeping an eye on an altimeter without going all over the place. Granted - you would not want them to try a tracking, but regaining stability can be learned in a tunnel, just as a stable pull. And the beauty of it is that apart from the travel cost, any serious static-line student will immediatly recognize the 'bang-for-buck' the tunnel can give him. For the safety of the student at pull time there is not much difference between coming from +5000ft for a 15/20 seconds delay or coming from +9000ft for "a longer spell of the real stuff". They have to pull their main parachute at terminal velocity at the right altitude and preferably stable but 'Hey, it is no big deal!" There really isn't much point in having people go through several five- eight- and 10 second delay jumps, they often get frustrated and find it hard to ease into it. If you build enough tunnel-airtime into the program I bet you can even teach everybody to wave off before the pull