Safety advice for Mr Bills

[Push 0]

Since the recent Mr Bill trick, there has been an increase in the buzz about Mr Bill type skydives around here, and in the real world. I'm not uber-experienced, but I've done a successful and an unsuccessful Mr Bill. This is the story of the unsuccessful one, as well as some other observations. Names and places changed to protect the guilty.

First, some glossary. Alice and Bob - just names, Mr Bill - the type of skydive, as well as the person whose parachute is deployed first, Sluggo - the person hanging on to Mr Bill.

So, it's a cold winter day, just enough to go up to maybe 6,000' in a C206 with a cargo door. Bob has been doing Mr Bills for the last couple of days, so I decide "heck, why not?" and go up with him for my pre-second Mr Bill. We ask Alice to static-line us when we leave by holding on to Bob's pilot chute until our deploying canopy rips the pilot chute out of Alice's hands, and not a second earlier. This is because Bob figures that it's very difficult to launch a stable Mr Bill out the door, and that's when we need to pull, so he wants Alice to treat us like an unstable IAD student.

So, 6,000' rolls around, I wrap myself tight around Bob, we give Bob's PC to Alice and roll out the door, trying to stay as stable as we can without any real control. Guess what Alice does? That's right folks, Alice tosses the PC right after us!

As this is my pre-second Mr Bill, I wasn't sure what was supposed to happen. A couple of seconds after exit, I figure something is wrong and pull away in my death grip to look at Bob's face. The look of terror that I saw confirms my suspicion. I push away, separate, lose one of my gloves, almost lose my shoe, and immediately go into a hard track. As I'm tracking away, I can see Bob shaking the PC off his hand and his canopy beginning to deploy. I flip on my back to see that my friend is not about to die. By 4,000' on my altimeter, I saw his canopy properly deploy, flip over, stop my track and pull. To top it all off, we land off the DZ.

What happened? We rolled on exit and the PC wrapped around my foot. As I let go and pushed away, the PC cleared me and wrapped around Bob instead. This could have easily turned ugly.

Being skydivers, we shook off the shivers, kicked the very apologetic Alice around a bit and went up to try again. This time we got an experienced IAD instructor with over 2,000 jumps to static-line us and the Mr Bill went smoothly.

The lessons to learn here are:

a) Aim for stability, plan for instability. Don't give anything a chance to wrap around anyone.

b) Sluggo should grip Mr Bill in such a way as to make it easy to let go. Putting hands under harnesses is a bad idea.

c) Don't try Mr Bills unless you are comfortable in freefall. If everything goes right, no problem. If something goes wrong, you have to be able to deal with it, and it's not so hard to get things to go wrong on a Mr Bill.

d) 5,000' - 6,000' is a minimum. Anything below that and things would have gotten hairy.

e) If you're Sluggo, hold on! You'll get yanked around pretty hard. Watch for handles, try not to hold on to Mr Bill's harness. Don't try this at terminal. At best Sluggo will just let go. At worst, broken bones and dislocated joints. After watching someone land a 66 VX with a dislocated shoulder, let me tell you, it's not something I would plan on trying.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[falxori 0]

thanks.
i've learned a few things...


O

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."

[billvon 2,991]

>Guess what Alice does? That's right folks, Alice tosses the PC right after us!

That's better than hanging onto it. About eight years back we had a Mr. Bill go out of our King Air. The "JM" held on to the PC and essentially static-lined the main; it opened in the prop blast. Result - destroyed main canopy, broken femur. And the jumper was not too happy landing under his small reserve with a broken femur.

>This time we got an experienced IAD instructor with over 2,000 jumps
> to static-line us and the Mr Bill went smoothly.

I strongly suspect he did a normal IAD assist, where he places the PC in the air a moment after the 'student' leaves. That way the canopy opens normally, well below the prop blast.

[Push 0]

Quote

That's better than hanging onto it. About eight years back we had a Mr. Bill go out of our King Air. The "JM" held on to the PC and essentially static-lined the main; it opened in the prop blast. Result - destroyed main canopy, broken femur. And the jumper was not too happy landing under his small reserve with a broken femur.

I'm not sure how and why this happened. Did they hit the tail? Could you elaborate?

Also, would one have the same problem in a C206 or an Otter?

Quote

I strongly suspect he did a normal IAD assist, where he places the PC in the air a moment after the 'student' leaves. That way the canopy opens normally, well below the prop blast.

I doubt that he remembers, but I will ask him next time I see him. Regardless, waiting until some kind of bridle stretch and placing the PC in the wind is better than tossing it with some force as soon as the pair leaves, isn't it?

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[billvon 2,991]

>I'm not sure how and why this happened. Did they hit the tail? Could you elaborate?

The guy in the door held onto the PC. The bridle was about 8' long, and thus opened the parachute about 4' below the airplane, still well within the prop blast. He held on until the main was out of the bag, and the PC was open and being pulled forward by the bridle. At that point, the slider moved _down_ the lines (blown by the prop blast backwards) and the PC was finally yanked out of his hands. The parachute (a Sabre) then opened in the prop blast from the King Air's left engine with the slider part of the way down.

>Also, would one have the same problem in a C206 or an Otter?

I suspect so - no parachute opens well if it's slider gets blown in the wrong direction.

>Regardless, waiting until some kind of bridle stretch and placing the PC in
> the wind is better than tossing it with some force as soon as the pair
>leaves, isn't it?

I would think so. I'm not an IAD instructor, but the few times I've done this I've held the PC above them, let them exit, then moved the PC to the bottom of the door as low as I can reach and then let go. The split second it takes to lower the PC seems to give them plenty of time to get separation from the PC. Another option is to just hold the PC out the door, below the sill, in a very light grip, and let it get pulled out - the obvious danger there is that you release it too soon and they have a PC under the tail.

[headoverheels 333]

I think you have the Sluggo and Mr. Bill names reversed. i.e., Sluggo is the one who deploys first.

[Push 0]

Thank you for your correction Bill. This should help people do these skydives safer.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[EricTheRed 0]

Pay close attention to cameras and helmets, I've seen some pretty ugly noses as a result of soft nose vs. D-box

illegible usually

[Zenister 0]

Quote

I think you have the Sluggo and Mr. Bill names reversed. i.e., Sluggo is the one who deploys first.

exactly, because Mr. Bill is the one in danger of losing his/her arms....

the only Mr. Bill's i've observed close at hand worked nicely, a quick toss off the step of a cessna, but i'm not interested in trying it myself at the moment....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[chuckbrown 0]

Quote

>I'm not sure how and why this happened. Did they hit the tail? Could you elaborate?

The guy in the door held onto the PC. The bridle was about 8' long, and thus opened the parachute about 4' below the airplane, still well within the prop blast. He held on until the main was out of the bag, and the PC was open and being pulled forward by the bridle. At that point, the slider moved _down_ the lines (blown by the prop blast backwards) and the PC was finally yanked out of his hands. The parachute (a Sabre) then opened in the prop blast from the King Air's left engine with the slider part of the way down.

>Also, would one have the same problem in a C206 or an Otter?

I suspect so - no parachute opens well if it's slider gets blown in the wrong direction.

>Regardless, waiting until some kind of bridle stretch and placing the PC in
> the wind is better than tossing it with some force as soon as the pair
>leaves, isn't it?

I would think so. I'm not an IAD instructor, but the few times I've done this I've held the PC above them, let them exit, then moved the PC to the bottom of the door as low as I can reach and then let go. The split second it takes to lower the PC seems to give them plenty of time to get separation from the PC. Another option is to just hold the PC out the door, below the sill, in a very light grip, and let it get pulled out - the obvious danger there is that you release it too soon and they have a PC under the tail.

The other danger, especially out of a 182, is the PC bridle getting snagged by the step, which is a distinct possiblity if you hold the PC until extraction. I've always used the method described by BillVon. Let them leave the step and throw the PC down and away from the aircraft as they're falling away but before the pin is extracted. The relative wind will immediately inflate the PC and deploy the canopy normally.

[whatever 0]

that King Air situation certainly scares me!

the more Mr.Bills I do, the more I think that they're probably not a very good idea...

I had a similiar experience with a really fast and hard opening from getting a shortline PCA from a B&N Islander.
It was under a 252 Parafoil, Mr.Bill said as we left the plane, he saw us fall to linestrecth and then saw a fully inflated canopy the next instant.
That was it for him, he did bruise my thigh rather nicely as he got ripped off me.
We faced into the direction of flight, which I think is a factor here too, would you think that facing away from the direction of flight will make for a slower and gentler opening?

The next time we used my 170 instead, went facing back, stowed and clear-and-pull, which worked nicely until the bridle got caught on his foot, I felt the container hadn't opened and managed to clear the bridle from his foot, resulting in more freefall than we wanted, but he held on this time!

Some time later I tried out being Mr.Bill instead of Sluggo, with the very same Bob that Push talked about. Despite a less than perfect exit this went well in so much as I hung on and Bob managed to clear the linetwist we had just as the canopy started diving - what a ride!

And more recently I was Sluggo again out of a C182, clear-and-pull. This time we got some good video, as a camera guy exited hanging from the strut.
The exit went unstable a bit and I pitched as we cleared instead of waiting to build up more airspeed.
We got some linetwists, but Mr.Bill hung on and as we were flying level, when he asked if he should let go, I said 'no' and proceeded to clear the linetwists, after which we had a very fun canopy ride.
I did get some finger shaped bruises from Mr.Bill on this one from where he had his fingers under my harness....

so, Push, I guess my 2-cents is:
-have a detailed plan not only for it going well, but also what to do with unstable exits, bridle entanglements, linewtists, etc.
-face away from the direction of flight on exit
-use the slowest flying plane you can and ask for as slow a jumprun as you can get
-watch those handles!
-be VERY aware of where Mr.Bill's legs and feet go, you want them around Sluggo's knees, no higher, or you can get the bridle catch like I once did, or even scarier, some lines on deployment like the video with the British dude yelling 'chop it!' repeatedly...

which you can see here:
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=1437



edited to add: make sure to get video!!

soon to be gone