One jump, two chutes, the rest of the story
So, here isthe story of my parachuting incident.
Back in the80’s when I did not know any better some friends and I decided to goparachuting. Anyways, we go to a localairport to take a class. Around half waythrough the class another person showed up to do his 1st jump. He informed the instructor he had already hadthe class and for some reason he decided to jump on a different day.
So, we stopthe class to watch this person do his 1st jump. As we watch he came down and hit the ground,but he was not getting up. Everyone runsover and the person landed on the edge of the runway, fell over and broke hiship or something. What a great thing tosee prior to doing your first jump.
We finishthe class and head out for the jump. Icannot recall the aircraft we used but it was a little two seat model withspace behind the seats for a couple of jumpers. You ended up hanging your feet out, stepping on the wheel fender,swinging out on one leg and grabbing the wing support bar and wait for theinstructor to tell you to jump.
This wasback in the round chute days before they had instructors jump with you. It was a low altitude (about 3000 ft.) staticline jump (your chute was tied to a release cable and when you jumped the chutewas pulled out) .
Anyways, Iam standing on the fender with my left foot, my right foot is hanging in theair and I am holding onto the wing cross bar waiting for the signal to jump.
Go, I hear,and I jump. The chute gets pulled outand I realize I am in an uncontrollable spin. I look up at my chute to see one of the cords is wrapped over the chutemaking a bowtie shape in the chute and causing me to spin out of control. I am not sure on the time but I am looking atthis hoping it will fix itself somehow. After some time I thought to myself that we were instructed if thishappened to pull the reserve. I come tofind out later that the instructor was screaming at the top of his lungs for meto pull the reserve, I did not hear him.
As instructedI pull my reserve, this chute was designed to release the main chute and openthe reserve chute in one pull of the reserve rip cord. Some chutes you have to pull a cord torelease the main, then pull another to open the reserve.
As the mainchute releases I drop at a great speed (I guess it was slowing me down some),then slow down as the reserve opens. After the reserve opens I am trying to follow the instructions ofsteering down to the landing point, they had a person on the ground movingaround different sides of a vehicle indicating what direction they wanted youto turn. I come to find out that thereserve chutes do not steer well. Alsoaround this time I start to oscillate back and forth, this issue was covered in the class and thefix was to release the chute cords on the back of the chute and it allows theair to flow out the back. I reach andrelease the rear cords and the oscillation stops.
Now my fearfor the rest of the way down to the ground was not landing on the runway,remember the guy we just watched break his hip. I did not care if I went into the trees or on the buildings, I just didnot want to land on the runway. I feellucky that I ended up landing in the dirt with the little steering the reservechute had.
I guess Ihad it in my mind that I would parachute to the point that I ever needed to usethe reserve. So my parachutingexperience did not last very long as I never jumped again.
