surfrgrl1

Wow. Allen Rounds, AKA Weekend Kyle, AKA "the fork guy", I have never seen someone who is so incapable of letting go and moving on from being told they are wrong. What level of authority does it take for you to respect a decision? In all of my time skydiving and traveling skydiving I have never felt SAFER anywhere than I have at Skydive Delmarva. The staff, the planes, the pilot, the management, the ownership are all absolutely top-notch. I cannot think of a group of people who legitimately care more about the well-being and safety of every single person who sets foot on the dropzone than these people I have had the honor of calling my family for over 10 seasons. This DZ is an example of what skydiving should be. Regarding the TI in question, I have also never met an instructor in this sport more enthusiastic about giving every one of his students the best time of their lives, and sharing with each of them this wonderful, life-changing experience of skydiving. I would absolutely entrust him with my mother and my sister's lives..... and my own. Any day of the week. -Lisa Eckman

I just want to say that this was probably one of the most badass boogies i've ever attended.... and the jumping weather was far from ideal.... Thanks to delmarva for putting on one great boogie! It took me till now to recover from it! Great organizers, great parties and great people. Can't wait till the next one!

Hey David, The weather is horrible in MD/DE/VA in April.... that's what they always say "April showers bring may flowers". We only got one load up that whole weekend and we have only flown 4 loads (including weekday loads) since (and including) safety day... so that's how bad we've been weathered out. Don't let the experience discourage you... I'm not sure what happened and why your classmate went up and not you, or why nobody came around to chat with you, but I can promise you that's not typical for Delmarva. I've been jumping there 7 years now and from the minute I set foot there I never felt like anything less than family. I've been to a lot of dropzones and only have seen what Delmarva has at 2 other places. Next time let me know you're coming out and I'll introduce you around. I actually was looking for someone with no teeth on safety day but I must have missed you. Last weekend I was really busy trying to get my trailer ready for the season so I wasn't around chatting much, and I'm sure that was the case with a lot of people since the season is just starting up and the weather was so iffy. Hope you come out again soon (try May!) and have a much better experience. :-) PS - on another note after a few more jumps I think you'll find that not only do you not mind coming out to the dropzone and waiting 2 hrs to jump, but you'll actually drive the whole way out there just to hang out and not jump... The camaraderie and friendship in this sport is something you will find few other places in life....

Hi David, Skydive Delmarva is having safety day on March 26, starting at 8 am. You should come out and check it out. You can definitely absorb a lot and it's a great way to meet everyone. Dave is a great manager and we have a great staff and a good group of funjumpers as well. We'll also be having a bonfire Saturday night, so bring a sleeping bag, pillow and your favorite beer. Hope to see you out there! -Lisa

Hi guys, Had a few questions... Am borrowing a Xaos-27 109 while my Katana 107 is relined. I am not loading it very high especially since I've lost some weight in the last few months.... around a 1.4. (Was originally loading the katana a little over 1.6). On riser dives the canopy appears to buffet, the tail flaps. I think this has something to do w/ the length of the brake lines. There was a guy borrowing the canopy before me that had the same issue and he was loading it 2.0+ so I don't think it's a loading issue. My first question is -- has anyone else experienced this w/ the xaos or any other canopy and is it resolved with changing the brake line length? Second question is -- could this result in canopy collapse? Third question is -- I really like this canopy (openings, glide, swoop) and am considering buying it as I struggle to make it back comfortably from LONG video spots w/ the katana. Is there any issue with flying this canopy at this light of a loading? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Please practice this on the ground if you're going to use this as your emergency procedures for a horseshoe. It is not the best idea to have differing emergency procedures for different scenerios, because things happen FAST with high speed mals. Adding tasks in between your cutaway and reserve pull aren't usually a good idea, as it is much better to get a reserve over your head than to ride a high speed mal into the ground because you were trying to get clear space to fire your reserve. That being said, I had a non-traditional horseshoe last year. Ever since I was a student I had always rehearsed in my head that in the case of a horseshoe I would cutaway, manually release risers and pull the reserve. It is extremely difficult to manually release your risers in freefall, especially if you have riser covers that don't leave a lot of the riser exposed. I know this because I wasn't able to clear both my risers in freefall before I HAD to pull my reserve. The good thing is that the modern reserve extraction system is pretty resiliant, but it still doesn't make it any less of a dangerous situation.

Excellent advice if I can say so myself :-) http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3627483

No, thank-you for posting as well! It seems like a pretty common starting point scenerio. I'm really glad it worked out for you and that this thread was able to help. Ideally, if anyone knows of a rig that is absolutely bulletproof in freefall, please send me the name... Or on the other hand, if someone is inspired to make one, it seems like you will have lots of customers!

Thank-you for posting about this. I hope people pay attention to this as well, because I can't count the number of student rigs that I've seen in service with riser covers that come undone (even in the plane before exiting). This is extremely scary! This could easily have gone differently and ended up with the same situation I dealt with. I can't imagine having to deal with something like this as a student. Fortunately it still extracted the cutaway main. Can you imagine a horseshoe as a student? I know students are trained for it, but as this is the nightmare scenario for all skydivers, we'd want to be armed with experience on our side for this one!

This type device does exist at at least one dropzone I know of. It's relatively inexpensive to install (approx the price of a new audible), and it helps quite a bit retrieving gear. I know the DZO will ship the tracker to you if they install the device on your main, but it would definitely be more convenient to get your dropzone's buy-in on the tracker (easier sell if you're over woods or a swamp). When you're paying upwards of $2K for a new main, it's worth every penny.

This rig is a “top tier” freefly rig manufactured in the last 7-8 years. I want to stress that I have seen over a dozen toggles out in freefall on just about every single “freefly” specific rig on the market. Rigs that are all considered “synonymous” with freeflying and specifically designed for it. Rigs probably just like yours. Believe me, if I had even remotely thought that this could have happened from a blown toggle, I would have rectified the situation IMMEDIATELY, meaning grounded the rig until I had fixed it. However, as I believe, and so do many other people who have contacted me since this incident, that we all tolerate things that aren't necessarily perfect with our gear. And that level of tolerance really depends on where we are with experience, how much $ and time we have, and where we weigh out the risk / reward. I’ve seen people freefly in rigs with a lot more imminent dangers than riser covers that blow. Yes, this isn't the 1990's anymore, and fortunately we do have better gear. But let's be honest, we're still not perfect. If we were, companies wouldn't have to come up with new and different ways of covering risers in freefall (magnetic riser covers) and they wouldn't have to modify them when they did. Riser covers can blow. No matter how well you maintain your rig or how new your rig is. It can happen. And if the stars are aligned just right, this can happen too. Many people have contacted me since the beginning of this saying that they had never considered this a possibility and since they have had similar problems, they can relate. I think this is worth quite a bit and I’m glad I wrote about it. This thread has served its purpose for me. I wanted to ensure that nobody else would experience the same because they weren't informed this was a possibility. And I don't even mind taking heat and being called "retarded" and "daft" for what hindsight says should have been a no-brainer. But let’s be honest. How many of you when you think “blown toggle” think horseshoe? How many of you even thought this was a possibility? I know I didn’t, but it sure does make sense after the fact. I’m just glad that I was able to think about it after the fact. My only hope is that people understand now that this is a possibility, and they don’t go away from this thread thinking that it’s entirely a gear maintenance issue. Riser covers can blow no matter how well you maintain your gear. And if the stars are aligned just right this can happen the first time they blow. I consider myself on the moderate to moderate-high end of anal when it comes to gear maintenance. And I consider several of the other people who I’ve seen with toggles out in freefall to be equal or better. I think if we’re aware as a community that this is a possibility, we can better prepare ourselves for the situation if we ever face it. But if we go away from reading this with the thought that “this can’t happen to me because..”, this thread is really a waste of bandwidth! My suggestion based on my experience with this situation: deal with it immediately (which I did), try to manually extract risers post cutaway if they do not release (try twice as with everything else in skydiving), and as a last resort know where you must pull your reserve regardless of where you’re at with releasing the risers and pull it. I hope that I have at least given the information needed so that we can better prepare as a community for this rare (but serious) malfunction.

I think the team name was Black Magic. I think they were from Deland too? Hope that helps :-).

Somebody mentioned that to me. Thanks for the tidbit of history.

Riser covers held shut by stiffened tabs. New Risers (100-150 jumps on them, purchased brand new from rig manufacturer less than a year ago), toggles held by elastic top and tuck-tab bottom. Excess brakeline stowage could be designed better (it is a loose ribbon on the back of the riser) and generally upon opening it is flapping in the breeze. I discussed my concern w/ manufacturer before I purchased the new risers and they said they never had a problem w/ this method of stowage. My last set of risers did not have excess brakeline stowage and I had sewn elastic keepers on the back of the risers and did not have a problem with the excess brakeline coming loose on openings.

I’m not usually one to post online, but I had an experience a few weeks back that I was convinced by a few friends might be important to share. Until a few weeks ago I never really appreciated the seriousness of blown riser covers and/or toggles in freefall. I always knew it meant openings were no fun, especially with a katana, but I never understood the gravity of it. I would get the occasional blown riser cover in freefall, but it was never frequent enough to really warrant me urgently looking for a new container. I’ve put 900+ jumps on my very freefly-friendly container and I was already looking into getting a new one this season. Over the last few months, the blown riser covers had become more frequent. I had 3 over a 2 month span which resulted in a toggle out in freefall and fun openings. On the 4th blown riser cover, things didn’t go so well. On the jump, I was head-down, so the blown toggle traveled down. It made its way back to the point where I felt it whipping against the back of my knee while I was tracking away. I pitched and immediately felt my pilot chute get sinched off (mesh side up) by the whipping/lassoing toggle behind my back (see attached frame grab). I knew there wasn’t much I could do, so I cutaway. However, there wasn’t enough drag to dislodge the 3rings and pull everything away from me. At this point, I also felt the pin had been extracted, as I felt the bag was out of the container. I started manually yanking at risers to disconnect. After a few tries, I was getting pretty low so I opted to fire the reserve. I was expecting to see an entanglement and was very relieved to see the reserve opening clean, although the main d-bag had left with the extracting reserve. When I looked at the reserve opening frame x frame in the video it appears I was extremely lucky. Anyhow, if this convinces anyone to replace a container that is getting too broken in or to just be more careful in general, then it served it’s purpose. A horseshoe was definitely not the worst I imagined could happen from a blown toggle, and I hope it helps others realize the importance of having solid riser covers. I’ve personally seen toggles out in freefall at least a dozen times on other people on a wide variety of container types and sizes, and on all of the standard freefly specific rigs, so this is not something that is container-specific. I just wanted to make people aware that this is a possibility. And one more thing - I want to thank my rigger for giving me one of the most beautiful reserve openings I’ve ever seen!