Infensus

(I: Stiletto 120 @ W/L of 1.65 doing 270 deg. carving turns) Eye, using objects of known size for reference. I don't trust my alti (Eureka: analog) nearly enough. I'm not saying my eye is more exact than a good alti, but when you use the eye you constantly evaluate your distance to the ground, and if you were to start too low, you see it early and can abort the dive (going to toggles and landing in the intended direction). I would *NEVER* recommend anyone to use their altimeter wrt. landings.

Landed a Transfair 128 loaded at 1.56. During opening from a (apparently stable) sit-position maybe 0.5 seconds after exit (the person i was linked with inadvertently pulled my reserve ripcord) from 13000ft the canopy developed a 4 turn twist. The canopy was spinning fairly violently and developed 2 more turns before i managed to stop me rotating relative to the chute.. After i while i managed to kick myself out of the twists and stop the spinning reserve. I lost about 2000 ft doing this. The landing itself was no problem as I had plenty of time practicing flares! During the spin i thought that if I werent able to fix the twists/spin within 4000 feet AGL, I would have to cut the reserve lines using the hook knife and deploy the main... there was no way I would survive a landing under that canopy. So.. "heavily" loaded reserves can also spin more than enough to kill you.