rolinj

what was your exit altitude???? 13500 ft what were the other two jumpers doing??? while you were playing with your cheststrap in freefall??? They were sitfalling , saw me playing with my chest strap and carried on their way down. Clouds at 1,500 feet????? and you are In them..??? just above them when I was deciding between the reserve and the main Now then you say,,, you didn't feel the reserve fire???.. hmmm must have been preoccupied i suppose.... Pretty much yes Did you not see the other 2 jumpers deploy??? no they tracked away and deployed, I personally had all my attention focused on making loose ends meet are you using a student AAD or an Expert?? (different firing settings)... -Lowest firing settings, expert good deal that you are ok....sort of shows how much we can get away with..... -Thanks but I don't think i'll have this much luck twice

Tell me about it, not only did I get a close call just as recently as saturday but I also had my load of injuries prior to that my best comment still is though: "read the signs! This is not for you!". Anyways when you do get injured I believe it is just the same as every sport: First get proper medical advice and check up, if you have a sprained ankle that is not healed properly you might just make it worse. Second strengthen muscularly the area where you got injured or where you are likely to be injured, as it is weakened. Third get back on the horse as quickly as you can and learn the lessons from your mistakes. I also had trouble with flare height and hurt my knees in the process I asked for as much advice as I could get, trained high up in the air, went in the Alps speed-riding in order to better understand my canopy at close range from the ground etc... Injuries are first to be avoided, however if they do happen please don't dismiss them right away take a lesson out of it, and take lessons from other people's injuries' as well it might prevent getting a new one of your own. Blue skies J. (who learned lots of lessons but still gets injured)

The chest strap was not totally loose, but it wasn't attached correctly as it tricked one of my (very experienced) co-jumpers into thinking it was actually attached. Thanks for the paragliding advice I've been in the sport since 2003 but only made two AFF jumps that year as I broke my shoulder on opening during AFF-2 (due to a prior ski injury). I had to get an operation and waited until october 2005 to finish my AFF. I have a total of 150 jumps mostly done 2006/2007

Forgot to mention that we had a cloud ceiling around 1500ft on that jump and that when I made my decision to pull I had no gound visual

Hi everybody i'll just put up a quick note about an incident which could have had major consequences but which miraculously came out ok. I'll make it as simple as i can but this post couldn't acount for the sheer fear that this incident brought to me. This note is written only on an informative purpose as I have had misinterpreted/deformed feedback from the incident, even from close friends. NB: for french speakers I posted the same report on www.wuza.net "la routine tue" Second load of the day, plane goes up i'm ready to go on a three way, on the way up my sound altimeter beeps at a wrong and low altitude, I still have my hand altimeter it should be ok. As I exit the plane I feel my harness is loose, I look down and there's my chest strap flapping loose! I spend the jump battling to put it back into place and when I finally manage to do so I put my left hand on the reserve handle. At that precise moment my audio beeps for the first time, in the moment I forgot it was bust and therefore reach for my main canopy. Canopy opens nicely I then look at the ground and back to the dropzone, I pull the toggles to inflate the end cells and make a turn to get back to the DZ as I release the toggle my canopy carries on its course and starts flying vertical in front of me. What I din't realise was that I was far too low and that my AAD had fired, the reserve was out and inflated on the turning motion leading to a downplane configuration. I put my hand on my cutaway handle, look at the ground and think to myself: this is too low you'll never get the reserve out (I didn't realise it was actually out until I found myself wrapped in it on the ground!) so my hands reach for the main rear risers and pull as hard as I can foolishly thinking that it would get back to normal. I impacted on soft and muddy grass a few meters away from the tarmac. Luckily it turned out that no bones were broken and I ended up with severe pain in my back. Lessons that I learned that day: A) even though one of the jumpers I was with confirmed that he saw my chest strap closed before boarding, the fact that it was loose on exit only means that I dind't do it up properly. Therefore I came to the conclusion that you are the only one in charge of your own safety. NB: If your chest strap is loose keep in mind that there is a procedure for it which consists of holding the right strap of your harness with your left hand, release the HD, bring your right arm to your left strap and hold on tightly. This is of course for you to confirm with your own instructors! B) Don't rely solely on your audio altimeter, always double check with you hand altimeter C) Always be careful of your canopy openings and the way you behave right after deployment, make sure that there is only one canopy out (especially after a low stunt like this one). All of these are actually textbook lessons and the reason I made those was my excess self-confidence due to a long serie of uneventful jumps prior to this one. I can only conclude that this incident was the result of gradual neglecting of safety by my own person and that there is nobody else to blame but I. Fly safe and blue skies J.