hi. my name is mark. currently before today, i had 3 tandem jumps. today, i went out and did my first afp jump. i was a little nervous before hand, but overall i was alright. my exit was unstable, i was kicking and flipping. after about 10 seconds i was slightly stable, with some spinning. my main problem was i wasnt arching enough, and i didnt have my legs out. at 5500 i waved off, and at the point i pulled i was in a very unstable position. i wasnt arched, and my legs were god knows where. my canopy came out, and i looked up. i did the 4 "s" check, which is when i realized there was a problem. my two end cells were collapesed, and almost all of the front lines on the canopy had an extreme amount of slack, and they werent taunt like the back. the left few lines were also tangled. i didnt panic. i immediatly flared, held it, and repeated. nothing. same problem. tried a few more times. nothing. so i turned left, and it worked fine, i turned right, good, i flared, good. i made the decision not to cut away, because the canopy was definetly landable. now, on to my second problem. because of the fact that i was dropped really far away, and the upper winds were very strong, i realized there was no way i was going to make it to the lz. at about 4000 feet, i realized i was way to far away to make it. i looked around for a good place to land, but nothing. i kept heading straight at the airport the entire time to get as close as possible, but there was no way in hell i was going to make it. at 1000 feet i picked out an extremely small place to land. a patch of grass no larger than 100ft x 100ft. in front of it was power lines. on the right side, a small building surrounded by barbed wire fence. behind it, a plane hanger and runway, and in front of it trees. i stalled just over it and waited unitl about 500ft, when i made a quick right turn, went straight to abut 300 feet over the hanger, then pulled a U turn and went at the grass i was aiming for. i landed safetly right in the middle, about 1/2 mile from the lz, surrounded by death objects. i had a radio, one way, so my instucter could talk to me, but there were 5 separate afp jumps in the load we were in, ALL ON THE SAME RADIO CHANNEL. i was hearing "turn left, turn left" so i started to, when i realized they were talking to somebody else. the only thing my instructer said to me the entire time was, "please dont hit those power lines" the reason i know we were dropped far and the upper winds were stong, was the guy who jumped right after me landed about 2000 feet from me also on the wrong side of the runway. throughout the whole thing, i never paniced, and im really proud of the fact that i was able to steer correctly and avoid the trees, roads, buildings, power lines, and fences. im suprised at how good i preformed. now for you guys, i have a question. what exactly caused the malfuctions i had? was it the fact that i was unstable at deployment? my instructer said he was going to check the rig for snapped lines, but i had to leave and i never heard the results.
