UK peeps, tonight, C5 @ 8pm

[Zeemax 0]

No idea what its about and sorry if someone's already posted it, but theres something on tonight at 8 on C5.. A friend just called to let me know.

I beleive its about people who have survived malfunctions etc...

anyhow, just thought you may like to know

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[cpoxon 0]

From http://www.five.tv/media/pdf/11708978.pdf

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i survived…freefall (2/3)

Of all the adrenalin sports, freefalling provides the ultimate rush. Part of its excitement is the element of danger involved: if something goes wrong, death is almost certain. However, the second of this three-part series looking at people who have survived potentially lethal situations examines the cases of three people who managed to survive hitting the ground from 1,000 feet or more. Expert opinion and innovative scientific experiments attempt to explain why.

In 2001, Lyndi Harding was learning to skydive in California. After a blissful first jump (“the best few
seconds of my life”), her second went horribly wrong. Lyndi can recall nothing of the jump
whatsoever: a case of post-traumatic amnesia. Incredibly,despite falling from 4,000 feet, she
survived with relatively little damage: cracked ribs and a broken nose werea small price to pay. How
had she been so lucky?

Examining Lyndi’s X-rays, Dr Rosemary Morton suggests that she might have landed curled up,with her elbows tucked in, with her ribs rather than her head taking the brunt of the impact. Dr Peter Zioupos does an experiment with a pig skeleton which shows how the ribs are made of a spongelike cellular material which springs back, even after collapsing. Landing on her ribs would have improved Lyndi’schances – but there must have been other factors involved.

Barrie Buck is one of the RAF’s leading parachute trainers. He explains, and demonstrates in tests, how it is crucial to relax into a fall, spreading the impact and hence lessening its effect on the body. DR Morton believes that Lyndi accidentally did what Barrie trains RAF members to do: falling curled up into a ball, protecting her internal organs and spreading the impact.

It seems that Lyndi’s first parachute failed to open, then she tried to activate the second one, before finding herself with the nightmarish combination of two tangled parachutes. They would have caused her to spin out of control and go into a nosedive, draining blood away from her head and forcing her into unconsciousness. Strangely,this also aided her survival: fully conscious people naturally tense up before a fall, which is the worst thing you can do. However, drunk people, for instance, have more relaxed muscles and are less responsive. This reduces the impact. Unconscious, Lyndi wasn’t worried about the fall and her body therefore dealt with it better.

Lyndi is relatively slight as well: the lighter you are, the less your impact when you hit the floor. She undergoes wind tunnel tests which show that, with the tangled parachute slowing her down, she probably hit the ground at between 40-75mph – well below the expected impact at humans’ terminal velocity of 120mph. Lyndi has discovered that a whole raft of factors improved her chances: falling unconscious; her relatively small build; her plunge being slowed by the tangled parachutes; and her landing on her ribs. Nevertheless, she was exceptionally lucky: as one scientist explains, no two impacts are ever the same – and she has no intention of jumping out of a plane again. However, in a remarkable display of perspective, Lyndi says ”I’ve still got my faculties and my health. I feel like I’m a better person for having been through this.”

The other two cases featured on the programme are more clear-cut. To survive a freefall, the victim needs something to absorb most of the impact. Paratrooper Alan Craven’s parachute malfunctioned and, in the resulting crash, he smashed so many bones that his leg had to be amputated. However, by absorbing much of the impact, the shattered bones saved his life. And mountaineer Sarah Woodruffe fell around 1,000 feet while climbing in Scotland’s Glencoe mountains. She was saved by landing on soft, fresh snow which broke her fall, absorbed the impact and held her. If she’d fallen on old, frozen snow she would have broken many more bones and plunged further down to her death.

If it's any good, I'll see if I can get it on SkydivingMovies tomorrow.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[Gavin 0]

Once again I say: Complete "HORSE POES" and her her doing 120Mph and walking away, as they say in South Africa!
The brits media obviously don’t get it and never will with scientific investigation!
1) You will ONLY be doing 120mph if NOTHING is attached to you. ie no parachute / reserve is out of the bag AT ALL.
2) Where do these w9nkers get off giving this false info about her walking away from a supposedly 120mph impact without looking at this from a skydivers perspective?
3) Does the media once again ASSUME that two malfunctioning parachutes = 0 drag. WRONG AGAIN MEDIA MAN !!!!
4) Do they know that Luigi Cani landed a parachute with only 39 square feet of material, also walked away miraculously unscathed? This size of canopy is smaller than 90% of most kites
5) The slowest terminal velocity is 120mph, no one can survive this on a impact with "semi - normal" ground - FACT. At these speeds skydivers that impact, bodies split open and pieces go flying every where! hardly anything is recognizable afterwards !
I AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF THE MEDIA GETTING IT WRONG!
THESE MEDIA PEOPLE MUST LOOK LIKE SUCH IDIOTS DO THEY HAVE NO SHAME!!
blueskies
Gavin

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

I thought it was a relatively informative program.

They did state that the mess she landed with would of slowed her, and a skydiver came on and said the same.

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[Gavin 0]

Sorry but they kept stating the fact that she simply walked away from 120MPH, they kept putting it into some kind of miracle category.
There was nothing wanderous about this, except that she was lucky that she lived after most likely not doing what she was told
Go take up golf Lyndi!

[R00tj00se 0]

The show was aimed at the non-skydiving public and built the whole thing up as best it could to increase the drama.
As a skydiver (and someone with more than half a brain) I was immediately shouting at the TV that she had drag.
I thought the explanation of how a PLF works was done well. The explanation of fall rates on objects with different mass/weight verged on the child like. However, for the general public who have just sat through Emmerdale and Coronation Street and had their brains turned to mush then these scientific exercises may have been taxing - that's if their attention span allowed them to watch all of th...

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

Just put your bullshit filters in, ansd watch and enjoy.

Joe public was entertained and learned a little about skydiving too.

They weren't catering to the skydiving viewers (all 20 of us) but to the millions of average Joes.

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[Gavin 0]

how can they put cr9p like that on TV?
does this mean if its not an advert(no money involved) and you have enough time you can feature any sh|t like that?

[Gavin 0]

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Just put your bullshit filters in, ansd watch and enjoy.

it totally blows me away - people are making money from this bullshit.
how do they dream this up?
even with imagination in place and a normal concience I could not do this!!

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

It wasn't that bad, get over it.

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[Gavin 0]

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It wasn't that bad, get over it.

your right it wasnt that bad - it was total HORSE POES thanks for siding with me

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

How exactly can i side with you when I enjoyed it, and you didn't?

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[Gavin 0]

supposed to be sarcasm - something british are supposed to be very good at - are you british?

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

British, English and geordie...

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[Zeemax 0]

Dude, take a step back and stop being so angry at life.

This is the real world. The media have to dramatise things to make them appeal to a market.

Of course when it comes to skydiving they have an easy target, but i think this programme was no where near as dramatic as i was expecting.

Yes through the programme they referred to the girl as falling at 120mph, because at that point in the narrative, that was the evidence they had. Towards the end they then proved this wrong, even showing how by using a wind tunnel! Its called narrative structure. If they just presented all the information from the off there would be no programme.

I actually think she was very positive. Anyone who heard her account of her first free fall would agree.

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[julesshrew 0]

I thought the programme was done quite well in the end particularly the paras' PLF training, I did wonder when it started, but for the sake of Joe public it explained itself step by step (even if it was too basic at points)

Gotta also remember this is part of a 'Surviving' series last week was lightning and next is impailing accidents so based on incidents that most people dont survive

[Chards 0]

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The show was aimed at the non-skydiving public and built the whole thing up as best it could to increase the drama.
As a skydiver (and someone with more than half a brain) I was immediately shouting at the TV that she had drag.

Yeah, me too. It was an ok programme, in a candy-floss kind of way. The bit about the rib bones was interesting though, I didn't know just how flexible they were. And how much punishment a human body can actually take.
Freefall, my arse. But lets face it - if it hadn't been sensationalised as much as it was, your average Joe wouldn't have bothered with it.

*********************************
"I have done that," says my memory. "I cannot have done that," says my pride, and remains adamant. At last, memory yields. - Nietzsche

[UKKid35 1]

There are no other posts on DZ.com re Lyndi Harding, why is that? This seems like a fairly major incident, and only happened a few years ago. Why was she doing her second freefall unaccompanied? Had she been on a static line course before? Also, there was no refernece to what the inevitable enquiry would have determined happened, a major weakness.

The plf part was fairly interesting. As was the part about her possibly losing conciousness, and the bone break demos were enlightening too.

Its a shame the budget didn't extend to chucking some dummies out with tangled gear, and seeing what speed impacts were actually acheived.

[Stumpy 284]

i think at some point in it she said she pulled after 5 seconds so she was probably on RAPS - but i might have misheard.

They did sensationalise - the stuntguy saying in that stunt guy way "every time you jump you were dicing with death!" but to be honest i thought most of it was pretty boring!

Never try to eat more than you can lift

[mr2mk1g 10]

dude, did we even watch the same program?

The program concluded that she wasn't doing anything like 120 after going through a series of scientific tests to determine why she wasn't doing standard skydiver terminal. That's a perfectly valid way of doing an experiment - you start with a known value and work away from it though testing.

Thus the program started with the premis that in FF a human is generally going at 120mph but after testing they concluded that she was going more like 40mph.

Sure they took a whole damn hour to get to the point - a point we would have got to in less than 5 mins, but they were talking to the 60 million whuffos out there not the couple of dozen thousand skydivers who could have watched.

[cpoxon 0]

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=231771&command=displayContent&sourceNode=231773&contentPK=20675758&folderPk=108571&pNodeId=231887

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BRAVE LYNDI ALL SET TO JUMP AGAIN
BY DAN CHARLES
DAN.CHARLES@GLOSMEDIA.CO.UK

09:00 - 21 May 2008

A Woman who suffered horrendous injuries after a freak skydiving accident is preparing to jump again.Lyndi Harding, 27, from Ledbury, fractured three ribs, punctured a lung, broke her nose and chipped a tooth after plummeting from 4,000ft with a partially open parachute in 2001.

Lyndi, who works at Gloucestershire College , was in her second year at Hull University in April 2001 when she travelled to California with five friends for a skydiving holiday.

It was on her ninth jump when the parachute did not fully open.


Now Lyndi is taking to the skies once again to raise money for a charity close to her heart.

"I very much want to raise money and the profile of Winston's Wish, a child bereavement support charity who helped me and my family through two major bereavements," she said.

Lyndi's target is to raise £5,000 for the charity.

To sponsor her, log onto www.justgiving.com/lyndiharding

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live