Basejumper.com - archive

An piece about Paul, number 94 on the List.

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/...d_son_pack_chute.php

NickD
BASE 194

Anybody besides me find the title eerie in drawing similarities to another BASE fatality?

It is my understanding that he broke out the pack job to put the slider up on the night at the object. She wouldn't have seen him close the container and restow PC with pullup attached.

Paul changed his PC at the bottom of the object when we got to the site,

And it happened at 11:50pm on 11th March 2006,

Nigel

What did he change it from/to? Why did he change it? There is more light at the top than there is at the bottom; I wonder if he would have noticed the pull up with more illumination?

Does anyone know if any sort of transcript of the inquest is available anywhere?

I don't know what size he changed it from/to,
The Newspaper article says it all really, the journalist was sat at the back of the court making notes, obviously got the Judge saying 5-6 seconds confused with 56 seconds, that would be one long BASE jump.

Nigel

Up sized or down-sized at least? Or why?


How long did the inquest last?


Where did they get that from?? The way this is written implies that it was a deployment technique rather than a packing one.

The press have no knowledge really, they just interpret things differently, in this case they got it wrong, but i doubt Joe Public will be affected by it,

The inquest lasted no more than 40 minutes,
the judge read our statements out, we agreed with them and that was it basiclly,

Regards what size from/to, i don't know the answer, sorry

Nigel

he probaly were as lasy as the rest of us,we wouldnt bring 2 pc´s up there.. i would change it down at the ground aswell..
The wrong thing were the pull up cord..

Craig

Those are interesting questions, no doubt, but they are besides the point here.

I think we can safely say that the root cause of this incident was the technique of using a pull-up cord when stowing the pilot chute.

I am quite tired now of people tip-toeing around this, but this was no accident, this was an act of repeated stupidity just waiting to kill.

There is no reason on this earth that anyone should need to use a pull-up cord, or elastic band, or anything that can impede the function of your pilot chute when packing and stowing it.

Learn the proper technique to do it without tools, it is easy enough to master and if you cannot get that familiar with your gear then you shouldn’t be basejumping.

If anyone wants to know how, maybe I will post the technique, in fact it is so easy that I have used it to pack and stow my pilot chute while wearing my rig.

Let’s be smart out there people! Or we are doomed to follow in the blood trail of those who choose bad mentors/instructors and use dangerous packing practices.

I am sorry if this post offends any of Paul’s family or friends, but I value the truth more than I value never offending anyone.

Craig raised an interesting question: why was the PC size changed?

Might be able to shed some light on that one

On the night Paul died I received a phone message from DC saying he was heading into London to look at a low Building and would I want to hook up. That night was pretty windy so I had binned the idea of jumping and went for a meal with my wife instead. I talked to DTM who also got the call and who also had binned the idea of jumping in favour of waxing his man's bits. We concluded there was little chance of them bagging a B that night.

If Paul was configured for the B then my guess would be he would have had a 46 or 48 on. Due to the winds, they knocked the idea of the B on the head (good call) and decided to go to the pylon instead, which would be jumpable in those winds.

I would expect that knowing he was going from the top at 650 and planning on taking a 3sec+ delay he would not want to stow a 48" or indeed risk centre cell strip after a solid delay so decided to downsize to a 42" (the champions choice).

We know what happened.

Ironically if they'd have gone for the B it would have been a very dangerous call but Paul might still be alive.

Anyway, I would take an educated guess that's how he came to be changing his PC that night. The plan changed (it often does) and he required a field reconfig (which it often does). What killed him was a dangerous technique for stowing his pc under perhaps slightly more stressful conditions than usual.

Yes, Paul made a fatal error and he paid dearly for it, a claim that could be levelled at nearly every jumper on the list and hundreds more who are luckily not. There is no room for any one of us to be either pious or complacent. Not one of us is too big or too smart to not be capable of making a critical error in judgement.

ian

Yes please .
I'd be very happy to learn an alternate technique.

yes. never done that. pictures please !!

Really? There was me thinking the press were experts on all matters and never got things wrong


I am not bothered about Joe Public.


This is the crux of the issue. You may not think 40 minutes is very long, but it is certainly longer than the time it took to read that article, which as short as it was, contained at least one error and one misconception. It told me, a more interested party than Joe Public, nothing. In fact it left me with more questions than answers. I'd like to see a transcript of the inquest or the statements to get a better understanding rather than toing and froing on an internet forum going nowhere.

Was any sort of expert asked to verify your statements or were they taken at face value. I'm not implying anything here but without knowing that an independent person with a knowledge of BASE saw the statements, or I can read them myself, I don't know what to think. Why were they accepted and no questions asked?

Ultimately, Paul was an adult who took responsibility for his actions and it was his own mistake that killed him but I still have questions:

Did Dave explain his relationship to Paul in his statement? It says on the BASE fatilities list that he was his mentor. Was this acknowledged in the statement? Were any questions asked about the responsibilities of being a mentor? Did Dave check Paul before he exited? Did he ask him if he'd removed the pull-up from the pilot-chute? Did Dave say who had taught Paul that method of packing his pilot-chute? Did he acknowledge that it was an extremely risky way of doing things? Would he continue to do things the same way?

Preventing accidents is all about learning from mistakes and I don't just mean the fundamental one in this case, but the whole chain leading up to it.

Stowing a pilot chute when you can't completely see what you are doing doesn't sound very sensible Sam. Are you flexible enough to ensure that the routing of the bridle is free or do you only do it when you have friends who can check you?

Yes, I am.


indeed it does not

but I can feel what I'm doing well enough to be sure it's right

sometimes it is the better option than taking your rig off, say for instance you are climbing a tower with no rest platforms or easy place to take your rig off and your pilotchute gets out of the BOC pocket