the skydiving thread

[xouper]

http://www.xoup.net/img/vichy98-5%2033percent.jpg

Any questions?

[xouper]

50 skydivers:

http://www.ossipeeaviation.50megs.com/2004-fly-in/50-way-skydive.jpg

Image courtesy of http://www.ossipeeaviation.50megs.com/

[CARLA]

xouper,

WOOOOO.. AWESOME.. :fly2:

Are you in these pictures? Amazing shots brave individuals.. :bow: :bow:

I had a very dear friend who was an accomplished skydiver. Did these kinda stunts often. Sad to say, one day his shut didn't open. He so loved skydiving, he died doing what he truly loved.. :(

JUST BE SAFE, AND ENJOY THE THRILL.. :wink:

[xouper]

CARLA: Are you in these pictures?
Not in the two above, no.

I don't have many pictures of me skydiving, and certainly nothing as spectacular as the ones above, but maybe I can scan some of them and post them here.

[ceptimus]

I do hang gliding and I also fly the sailplanes (gliders) that you sit inside.

I only jumped out of a plane once, and that was on a round 'chute with a static line. I was on crutches for a few weeks afterwards. :(

[Legs]

What? jump out of a perfectly good airplane?

http://img171.exs.cx/img171/3084/a389ju.gif

[slimshady2357]

When I was a kid I worked weekends at a skydiving school, it was awesome. I got to go up in the plane a few times for the ride and watch people jump out, but I was too young to jump myself.

I never saw 50 people in formation, but I saw many, many smaller ones. We would go out and watch them coming down, sometimes as many as 20, though those were rare.

I must have saw thousands and thousands of jumps altogether and there was only one accident while I was there. I saw a figure coming down with a chute only about 1/3 open and they were coming down fast, I was only about 12 and I asked someone if that was a dummy (I can't remember if they did for sure, but I had this idea that they threw out dummies with chutes sometimes to test the wind) and the look that person gave me told me it wasn't. The guy did live, the partially inflated chute slowed him down enough so that he wasn't killed, but he was a paraplegic after that.

There were many of people there that had over 5000 jumps, some with over 10,000. It was a cool weekend job, working with my grandmother :cool:

[viscousmemories]

My brother went a few times to this place where you pay X amount of money and they give you a crash course in skydiving, then take you up and push you out. I went to see him once, and on that day there were some stunt divers showing off whose chutes got tangled up in each others. I watched all four or five of them (can't really remember) just falling through the air after they released their chutes and before their emergency chutes popped, convinced I was about to watch these people die. One guy got a sprained ankle.

I wanted to go Airborne when I was in the Army, but I didn't know I had to sign up for jump school before I enlisted if I wanted to do it as part of my initial training. After that I just lost interest in the idea.

Hilarious picture, Legs. :)

[Dingfod]

What? jump out of a perfectly good airplane?My sentiment exactly.

[Crumb]

I did it once...




once.

[ceptimus]

Here's a snap of me taking off from the Long Mynd, just after I'd learnt to do it. (Sorry, I know this isn't skydiving, but there isn't a hang gliding thread, as far as I know).

[livius drusus]

What a gorgeous landscape, cep. I'd be far more likely to hand glide than skydive. It's more my speed, I think, and seeing that view makes it mighty appealing.

[Dingfod]

I used to watch the hangliders in Telluride, Colorado. They would launch from just above where the highest ski lift went, thousands of feet above the 9000 foot elevation town in the valley below. After gliding for a very long time, most of them would land in the baseball park. It was cool.

[Dingfod]

My brother went a few times to this place where you pay X amount of money and they give you a crash course in skydiving,...A crash course in skydiving? *gulp*

[Ensign Steve]

I love this video. Especially the end. :)

http://www.gonzo.org/fun/parachut.zip

[xouper]

Here's a photo of the world record 300-way formation,
May 2003, Eloy, Arizona:

http://www.skydiver.com.ua/news/300way/300-way_1280x1024.jpg

I don't know who the "me" is pointing to but it ain't me. I wasn't there.

The only world record I personally witnessed was when some of my friends helped Roger Nelson set a record 120-way, August 1986, at the First Annual World Skydiving Convention in Quincy, Illinois.

The sound of 120 skydivers in formation plummeting earthward at 120 mph was quite noticeable on the ground. I can only imagine how loud it was with 300 people in freefall.

At that convention in 1986, I had the uncommon experience of being in the air with 149 other open parachutes all trying to land in the same area on the airport. For those of us at that convention it was a normal occurance for the entire ten day event.

Not many civilian jump planes can carry 150 skydivers at once, and this was the first time a civilian C-130 had been used in the States for sport parachuting. It was awesome.

[viscousmemories]

Wow, very cool picture and story. :yup:

[xorbie]

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

[xouper]

xorbie: If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Aside from the humor in that observation, it is also very true.

For example, if your main parachute malfunctions, the margin for error can be as little as 5 or 6 seconds. Been there done that. If you cannot successfully jettison your main chute and deploy your reserve in that time, you may not get a second chance.

When I was a jumpmaster, we had one student who could not climb out of the airplane onto the step to make her first jump. Three times we tried and three times she rode back down in the plane. I was not willing to push her out. If she couldn't do it, perhaps there was a good reason. She felt badly about it, but I consoled her that she had made the right decision, that perhaps skydiving was not for everyone.

[ceptimus]

A man plunged to his death after losing control of his parachute in front of his fiancée, an inquest has heard.
RAF Corporal Alex Moore, 24, from Caterham, Surrey, performed a turn too close to the ground at RAF Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire.

He hit concrete as his fiancée Claire Neve, now 26, from Norwich, looked on.

The inquest heard he missed his landing zone, and appeared to try to turn back in April 2003. The Oxford coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.

The cause of death was given as a ruptured thoracic aorta.
Full story, and a picture of the deceased (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4291471.stm)

[xouper]

A man plunged to his death after losing control of his parachute ...
He didn't lose control of his chute. What that skydiver did was just plain stupid, trying to do such a turn too close to the ground. He's a Darwin Award nominee, for sure. More than one skydiver has killed himself doing that same maneuver and many more have put themselves in the hospital.

It is something that all skydiving students are taught not to do.

And yet, there are still some hotshot, know-it-all, shit-for-brains, "hey watch this", idiots who do it anyway. I have little sympathy, especially since it gives the sport undeservedly bad PR.

[xouper]

Copied here from another thread:

justaman: You skydive too xouper?? How many jumps are you at?
I have barely more than 300 freefalls. Longest was from 17,000 AGL, from Roger Nelson's Navajo at Skydive Sandwich.

I've had three reserve rides and four malfunctions (I eventually got rid of that canopy, a 5-cell StratoStar).

[justaman]

Crap that's awesome. I've only done 38 now... :hide:

17000's getting up there! The majority of mine have been 14000. But even that's pretty sweet. My pappy used to jump way back when - did about 700 or so - and he only jumped from 14000 once he said. Planes are better these days.

The problem is the DZs are all at least an hour and a half away which is a real whore. I don't like giving up a whole weekend for one thing so i've been pretty lazy, hence the few jumps. I went last weekend and that was the first time in about 4 months. I don't think I've really got the addiction the others talk about. I like it, certainly, but I'm not really obsessed with it.

[Crumb]

I've had three reserve rides and four malfunctions

Does this mean that one of your malfunctions didn't require use of your reserve? Or are these two different things entirely?

[xouper]

xouper: I've had three reserve rides and four malfunctions

Crumb: Does this mean that one of your malfunctions didn't require use of your reserve? Or are these two different things entirely?
The fourth malfunction definitely should have been a reserve ride, but by the time I figured out that I couldn't clear the malfunction, I was too low to cutaway and use the reserve. Big mistake. I rode a partially collapsed, spinning ram-air canopy into the ground at a high rate of descent. I could have been seriously injured. I got lucky. Some years later, a fellow jumper who had a similar problem ended up in the hospital for several months.

If you want to count malfunctions that don't require a reserve, then I've had five malfunctions, one where my right steering line broke. Try landing a ram-air canopy with no steering lines for "brakes". Can be done, I found out. :)

[justaman]

What height is too low too cutaway? I should probably know this but humour me.

[xouper]

justaman: What height is too low too cutaway? I should probably know this but humour me.
For novices, the USPA recommends not cutting away below 1000 feet. For me personally, knowing my own skills and limitations, I might cutaway as low as 600 feet depending on circumstances. Below 500 feet, the odds of having an open parachute before you get to the ground become slimmer and slimmer. Below 300 feet, you can pretty much forget it. BASE jumpers who jump from 300 feet have special canopies or special packing methods that open very fast, unlike most reserve chutes intended for use at terminal velocity.

In any case, the USPA recommmends that B, C, and D-licensees execute emergency procedures by 1800 feet. In my three reserve rides, I had an open reserve well above 1000 feet. On my fourth malfunction, I did not have an altimeter with me but I could tell I was well below 1000 feet by the time I decided my main was not safe to land. It may have been possible to deploy my reserve without it tangling with my main, but I elected not to risk it.

The wierd thing is, had my main been more collapsed than it was, it would have been an easy decision to cutaway much higher instead of fiddling with it for so long trying to get it to open fully. Lesson: do not fiddle with it. If it ain't sufficiently open, don't wast precious altitude - jetison it and use the reserve, and make that decision above 1000 feet.

Does this answer your question?

All of my reserve rides were under a round parachute, a Navy surplus 26 foot conical. Kind of small, but in an emergency, survival is sufficient. On my third reserve ride, I did a standup landing on the pea-gravel target. How's that for good spotting?

[xouper]

I forgot to add - when it comes to your skydiving safety, don't take the word of some guy on a message board. When you have questions about emergency procedures and other issues related to safety or equipment use, go ask the USPA Safety & Training Advisor for your drop zone. That's what they're there for. They may say similar things to what I just said, or that particular dz may have its own safety guidelines that they want you to follow. In any case, don't ever be afraid to ask even the stoopidest sounding question, no matter how experienced you get. The alternative is perhaps to be a Darwin Award nominee, which is even stoopiderer.

[justaman]

Yeah well I didn't really mean to get into a lecture series here but thanks :)

Five malfunctions with only 300 jumps seems kinda frequent...

Whose packing you're rigs? :susp2:

[Darren]

A man plunged to his death after losing control of his parachute ...
He didn't lose control of his chute. What that skydiver did was just plain stupid, trying to do such a turn too close to the ground. He's a Darwin Award nominee, for sure. More than one skydiver has killed himself doing that same maneuver and many more have put themselves in the hospital.

It is something that all skydiving students are taught not to do.

And yet, there are still some hotshot, know-it-all, shit-for-brains, "hey watch this", idiots who do it anyway. I have little sympathy, especially since it gives the sport undeservedly bad PR.

I've jumped four times with a square rig. On my second jump I did that turn - well almost. The choice was power lines or turn so I turned - just before the limit as it happened. The president of the club said I did the right thing. It was far too windy, as it happened, and jumping was suspended for the rest of the day. On my third jump I had tangled lines but I managed to untangle them by the standard manouvre so I didn't have to release the main chute. Thank God because the emergency chute was a round rig, so I would really have bitten the dust because I wasn't too good at landing even with the square rig.