Big-way, hard pull, reserve, biplane, tree landing

[EDYDO 0]

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snip.. but id like to say something as far as the tree landing.

climbing down from the tree was stupid.
people have died from doing this.
the williamstown fire company is VERY good at getting people out of trees (infact they have their own skydiver lowering device (snaps onto big 3ring) snip

Allen,
Dave has been criticized for everything from his choice of reserve to rescuing himself. The reserve by the way is a common choice. I have a number of jumps on a rig with identical numbers.

You know people die skydiving as well as climbing down from trees and many consider skydiving stupid. I will whistle my tune and others may whistle theirs.

He made the decision to come down after a long period of time. It was a good decision as proven by the end result.

Ed

[payback462 0]

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You know people die skydiving as well as climbing down from trees and many consider skydiving stupid. I will whistle my tune and others may whistle theirs.

He made the decision to come down after a long period of time. It was a good decision as proven by the end result.

i know two guys that decided to do insanely low intentional cutaways from skyhook tersh rigs.
i know a guy who base jumped an 88ft firetruck ladder.
they both walked away fine, but they were still VERY BAD IDEAS!!
just because a person ends up uninjured doesnt mean they made a good decision
my point is, when it comes to climbing out of a tree after landing in it, unless you can touch the ground with your feet, dont do it!
ive had two friends recently get very badly injured because they fell out of a tree, so this kind of hits home a little harder then usual.


btw im pretty sure the only reason it took the fire dept so long to get there was because someone else had landed in a tree at the other side of the woods a few loads before that. (i swear our dz doesnt have THAT many tree landings )

[EDYDO 0]

It's good to know we have someone here who is smart enough to make these decisions for the rest of us.

Ed

[payback462 0]

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It's good to know we have someone here who is smart enough to make these decisions for the rest of us.

whatever, i really dont fucking care.
i was just trying to point out what is KNOWN GOOD INFORMATION. that climbing down from a tree landing is a bad idea.

this has nothing to do with how many skydives a person has.
if he had fallen out of the tree, split his fucking head open and gotten brain goo all over the inside of his helmet everyone would be singing a very different song.

[Foggy 0]

Ok here is the scoop. Dave and I chatted via e-mail about this incident and I said that if he felt that some learning could be shared then post it.
I did not anticipate a debate upon his choice of main size vs reserve (170 and pd143, same as myself). He made two attempts to deploy his main then pulled the reserve as per the SIM. The two canopies out is interesting because he must have partially deployed his pilot chute during the attempts while possibly grabbing the excess material of the shirt worn to increase drag (which is a common technique used on big ways to my knowledge; (which is limited)). He then flew the resulting biplane again as per the SIM. As for the tree landing, he waited what he considered to be a reasonable period of time before deciding to take matters into his own hands due to an increasing numbness in the legs and his location. We teach first jump students to sit tight until we get there but at some point a licensed jumper has to make decisions outside of those suggested in a first jump course.
I believe Dave was fortunate in his decison making but also correct in that he made each decision based upon his training then deviated as an adult when it required it. This is the reason I suggested that he post his incident so others could analyze and perhaps learn from his experience. He made in an interesting comment about having recently done his Coach rating in that it was the first time he had reviewed two canopies out since his FJC.

Foggy

[kallend 2,108]

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Ok here is the scoop. Dave and I chatted via e-mail about this incident and I said that if he felt that some learning could be shared then post it.
I did not anticipate a debate upon his choice of main size vs reserve (170 and pd143, same as myself). He made two attempts to deploy his main then pulled the reserve as per the SIM. The two canopies out is interesting because he must have partially deployed his pilot chute during the attempts while possibly grabbing the excess material of the shirt worn to increase drag (which is a common technique used on big ways to my knowledge; (which is limited)). He then flew the resulting biplane again as per the SIM. As for the tree landing, he waited what he considered to be a reasonable period of time before deciding to take matters into his own hands due to an increasing numbness in the legs and his location. We teach first jump students to sit tight until we get there but at some point a licensed jumper has to make decisions outside of those suggested in a first jump course.
I believe Dave was fortunate in his decison making but also correct in that he made each decision based upon his training then deviated as an adult when it required it. This is the reason I suggested that he post his incident so others could analyze and perhaps learn from his experience. He made in an interesting comment about having recently done his Coach rating in that it was the first time he had reviewed two canopies out since his FJC.

Foggy

I think the shirt issue is well worth learning about. I wore a tee-shirt on some of these jumps (and I'm a skinny bugger that normally wears lead). When doing my gear check in the plane I looked at the shirt and the thought occurred to me that the flapping fabric could get in the way of my handles, so I tucked the bottom of the shirt into my leg straps and cinched them down on it so it wouldn't flap near the BOC, and made sure the front was tightly held under my chest strap with no loose folds to flap over the cutaway and reserve handles

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Scrumpot 1]

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...so I tucked the bottom of the shirt into my leg straps and cinched them down on it so it wouldn't flap near the BOC, and made sure the front was tightly held under my chest strap with no loose folds to flap over the cutaway and reserve handles

Interesting thing though, what freefall windspeeds can do, to still pull/flap this "loose" potentially. Rather than the "bulk" of the material flapping so that it was covering handles (presumably you mean by that cut-away & reserve)... **Edited to add: DOH! yup, actually that's EXACTLY what you wrote! ** wasn't this particular case instead probably where the bottom of the shirt worked its way UNDER the legstraps perhaps (precisely where you are now tucking it) ...or maybe "around"/under the hip rings, so as to in a peripheral vision sense maybe manifest itself as this jumper then "saw"?

I'm thinking that probably what he saw was the bottom/tail portion of his shirt that got either under the legstraps or the hip rings (or webbing juncture if no rings), more so than excess "torso"-width material that would flap over/around the laterals. ...Possible?

coitus non circum - Moab Stone