Learning an invaluable lesson

[Orange1 0]

Having been exposed to paragliding before, I have considered skydiving to be extremely safe. Well, it is - for an extreme sport. I learnt on the weekend that you can follow all the rules, and things can still go wrong. Luckily, there are more rules for when they do! On my 9th jump, everything had been going fine, I saw the wind was a bit turbulent on base leg but didn't think much of it - till I turned for final and got a major end cell collapse which spun me around about 120 degrees before I could react! From setting up for a perfect landing, I found myself now set up for a pretty fast downwind landing, but having already lost height during the incident I decided I was too low to try turn back into the wind... turned slightly to avoid some trees and had a rather hard landing but got away with a couple of bruises... my chief instructor said I made the right decision but I learnt a very important lesson: never, ever get complacent about what you're doing until you are safely on the ground.

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[tdog 0]

Quote

never, ever get complacent about what you're doing until you are safely on the ground.

... and off the landing area. I think sometimes people land, gather up their canopy and start walking without looking up. Heck, it was a while before I figured out that after landing turning 180 degrees and facing the others landing was a good idea – so I can see who is about ready to hit me as I ball up my canopy.

Good post, I was actually thinking this week (after my last jump) that I have had 35 clean openings in a row on my canopy and no other close calls - and I need to stay on my toes because there will be a chance I could get a bit complacent.

[Peej 0]

Good post from you too mate! That's what i loved about coaching with Eli out at Perris, not only was he coaching me on freefly but on all elements of my skydive.

One of the first things he told me was exactly that. Land, step over your canopy and face oncoming traffic. It's so simple and i couldn't believe i'd never thought of it.

Advertisio Rodriguez / Sky

[billvon 2,998]

> Land, step over your canopy and face oncoming traffic.

Yep. We had a collision at Perris a few weeks ago that put someone out of commission for a few weeks. Jumper 1 had landed and wasn't looking. Another jumper landed next to him, caught his canopy, and yanked him off his feet - he landed about 6 feet away. The other jumper was about 5 feet from him. Had he seen her coming, he likely could have reefed his canopy to avoid the collision.

[Designer 0]

All it takes is 1 time.When it happened to me at 50 ft under 189 sg. ft. acc. canopy all I could do was assume the plf and hope!Valuable lesson learned.