Got Helmet

[Tonto 1]

Congratulations on surviving. Maybe the 57 fractures to your face absorbed the energy, and so your helmet had no work left to do.

If they change the law here, and I have to choose between wearing a helmet or not skydiving, I'll wear one. But I don't trust them, and I'd never test them.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[skybaby 0]

Well, no...the damage my helmet had shows it did its job....

[billvon 2,998]

>Seriously, take a close look at your friends' helmets. Most of those
> nicks and scuffs didn't come from sitting on the ground.

Most of my cracks and scuffs came from dropping my helmet. If you have friends who regularly collide with people and dent their helmets - talk to them! That's really bad.

[lug 4]

I ordinarily wear a frap hat most of the time the exceptions are sometimes when I jump solo and tandems. With tandems this is usually happens in mid to late summer when a false confidence is high in me that riser strike cant’s possibly happen. This usually lasts one-maybe two jumps and then the fear of painful cauliflower ears mixed with a little blood takes over.

When I am landing on the extreme area swooping for distance or what ever, I will ditch the frap hat and switch to my Protec which offers more protection.

If I were to start doing more belly and or free flying I would probably skip thinking of buying a new rig, canopy, or some other skydiving gadgetry and invest in a good helmet. Now the problem with my statement is I have not heard of any standard testing being done on today’s lightweight hermits, so a good helmet is open to ones interpretation.

Memento Mori

[DanG 1]

I usually wear a full face helmet. The only time I don't wear a helmet is for casual CRW, since I don't have an open face except my camera helmet, and I wan't to be able to talk to my partner.

In the tunnel last month I was doing a three way with two coaches. One coach hit the other in the face with his elbow (unintentionally) hard enough to ring his bell pretty hard. He had to get out of the tunnel for a couple minutes to get himself together. This is a guy with 19,000 jumps. Helmets don't care how much of a badass you are, they can still help protect you from minor injury. Minor injury at 13,000 feet can lead to major injury if the minor injury is to your head. I see little reason not to wear a helmet for any kind of relative work.

- Dan G

- Dan G

[Mush 0]

My reply to people who hit thier heads on anything that was in thier way was,

"Why, it's a dodgey sport but why do poeple jump in situations when thet can't even protect their head leaving a plane, are you slap dash or something or not properly trained, please explaine to me.

If I can't exit without hitting my head on something, or a least know how to avoid it, I'd be a little worried, or is that just me."

I feel a little training for these people would be a good idea.

I am talking about exits here, you can't account for people in freefall, but, you can leave the plane safley.

[slug 1]

Maybe a little history of helmet usage in the sport might help.

In the 60's-mid 70's approx jumpers wore motorcycle Helmets. Certified all that stuff. At that time the RW experience level was low: combat RW etc.

Somewhere in the 1970's jumpers changed to Frap hats and tight jumpsuits to baggy one's (wing wars).

Sometime in the late 80-s jumpers starting switching to full face helmets (in my opinion because the RW teams were doing it and it looked )

Some of the jumper with frap hats were concerned about a jumper with a hard hat running into them in freefall and causing more damage than a person with a frap hat would.

Now jumpers have gone electronic and need some place to hang all their gear: protac's Dytters video camera's.

We recently saw someone requesting info on how to get surface scratch's out of their helmet. No disrespect to the person who asked the question, and If I spent $$$ on a helmet I might be concerned about the "aerodynamic's" of my helmet with/out scratch's.

But what does wearing a non certified helmet with a scratch have to say about how we are looking at the issue of head protection. Are we skydivers who are concerned about adequate head protection or fashion dolls who are willing to accept a sub par product.

R.I.P.

BTW A friend had his bell rung on a RW dive by another skydiver who denied hitting him "that hard" the video showed the meat missle running into him without a flare. knowing your limit's and not hurting other people in the air can help prevent some mid air stuff.

[JohnMitchell 16]

[Scrumpot 1]

Quote

I am talking about exits here, you can't account for people in freefall, but, you can leave the plane safley.

I've been on several door jams when taking off chunks (primarilly out of Otters) where one or more of the inside chunk members have either grazed the door frame on exit, or worse. It happens.

coitus non circum - Moab Stone

[damion75 0]

Having read this thread, I am clear that the skydiving helmets are not certified and may give limited protection etc etc etc.

Now just as wearing an audible doesnt mean you should ignore your visible alti, and having a cypres doesnt mean you dont have to pull your reserve, I agree that having a helmet doesnt give you licence to fly it into someone. BUT

It is clear that there are at least some people out there who HAVE been saved from injury / disfigurement by wearing helmets so I would say... why WOULDNT you wear a helmet? After all it doesnt have to be your mistake - it could easily be someone else's no matter how carefully you fly.

***************

Not one shred of evidence supports the theory that life is serious - look at the platypus.

[Mush 0]

Quote

I'll try to be more obvious for The Mush next time. reply]

Sorry bloke, must have been on one, I find it hard to type things how I mean them & my sence of humor comes across all wrong.



mush

[WeakMindedFool 0]

Quote

Skydiving helmets are complete crap. I see their shattered peices lying about every bounce or relativly low impact head injury I've been at.

If you think, even for a moment that that thing you put on your head will protect you against anything other than abrasion, you're a dreamer.

If forced to choose a helmet for protection, I'd choose a ProTec. Ugly as sin, but if you're wearing a helmet for protection, that's what you should be wearing. Anything else makes you an over confident fashion victim.

Flame away.

t

Well I don't know. You have a hell of alot more experience then I do...but I had one experience today that was...illuminating. 9 way exit from a Caravan...It was a bad exit! One guy dropped off early (2 count) we all bailed out after him. Now I'm new to this sport and I don't have the reflexes that others do, I mostly freefly so when I went for a diving exit, I dove...with my legs out, I wear Dr. Martens. I kicked the girl behind me, who was also diving out, in the head really hard. If she wasn't wearing a full face helmet she would have been a cypress save. If the plane goes in with me in it I hope I have a helment on....oh yeah, pro tecs kick ass!

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer -
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[hookitt 1]

Wow tonto.. Many of your posts are so informative. This one seems like your trolling. I don't know about you, but I've bopped my head on many things and with out the helmet it would have really sucked. I've seen split helmets from impacts with asphalt and it resulted with a headache to the user rather than a split skull.

Once again it's an arguement about protection. I challenge you to stand back to a brick wall with no helmet on and start smacking it against it. Oh wait, actually put a bonehead helmet on first, then smack repeatedely. It will jar your head and probably give you a headache so the second part of the test may have to wait.

For the second part of the test, stand with your back to the same brick wall and with the same amount of vigor, repeatedly smack the back of your head against it.

I'm going to add one more stipulation to the surface to smack your head against. Use a textured brick wall. It will mark up the helmet pretty good during the first test. The second test may very well result in contusion.

Please document this test with video and provide results.

I was at the dropzone when skybaby was injured. I held the bloody helmet in my hands. Why does it piss some people off so much that helmets are a good idea?

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[Tonto 1]

Hi Tim.

It doesn't piss me off that helmets are a good idea.

I see people down on gun threads. We all know that when faced with an armed assailant, that having a gun would be a pretty good idea. But I don't carry a gun, and many other people don't either.

Same thing with the helmets. I'd rather NOT smack my head into stuff - regardless of whether or not I wear a helmet - and I have a lot more control over that than I do about whether or not I'm attacked. I do wear a helmet on my very infrequent freefly dives, simply because my skills suck so badly in that environment that I'm unlikely to be able to avoid a collision. That's the brutal reality of it. I'm a student, and students wear helmets.

I'm not down on others wearing helmets. As an AFF I, I choose the best fitting helmet for my students I can find. I check the clip prior to exit, and make sure any loose strap is tucked away.

I agree - a helmet - almost any helmet, is better than no helmet. I've also seen people saved from more severe injury by them.

I think that bigger, lightly loaded canopies would reduce injury.

I think that not freeflying, or not doing formation skydiving would reduce the likelyhood of freefall collisions.

But mostly, when I hear people asking me to smash my head against a wall, or to jam it between door and door frame with and without a helmet, I simply think "No."

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[hookitt 1]

Are you saying you won't do the test?

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[Tonto 1]

I won't do the test.

I may have some idea's you don't agree with.. but if anyone agrees to this test - it's too late to get them to wear a helmet.

I see something similar in martial arts or personal conflict. There have been some mean looking dudes I've had to take down in my time working as a bouncer and a bodyguard. They looked "rough."
One of my teachers once told me - "beware the pretty fighter." The reasoning is obvious. They can go into a situation, neutralise it, and protect their good looks while they do it. I'm not saying I can do that - but I just don't do 9 ways with people wearing Doc Martins. I don't.

I do AFF - which even at it's worst is simply an arial 2 way game of tag combined with basic sparing techniques, some very basic freeflying with people WAY more competent than me - and some wingsuit stuff - mainly solo's or very small flocks. So I swoop - but it's not exactly like I'm jumping a crossbrace and pushing the limits on every dive. My landings, in a word, are "boring" or "repetative."

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[riggerrob 643]

The helmet I wear on tandems is all scratched up from students standing me up into the door frame. I also had a bad landing from a canopy collapse once that made me wish for a lot more than a frap hat. Then there's also the tandem master who had a riser almost tear off an ear, Van Gogh style. Besides, where else are you gonna put your dytter? And it hurts like hell when you bolt the camera straight to the skull