Basejumper.com - archive

I was supposed to go do a heli jump over lauterbrunnen a week ago but my buddy had a bad opening at yellow ocean and went home with two broken ribs his first day out there. It was his first jump of that trip with 22 previous jumps from various points in lauterbrunnen. After a good exit and 8 second delay he had a line twist and sligthly slow opening. He did not have time to even look up at the canopy and impacted at the little open area(inclined) at the base of the wall amongst all the trees. I have not seen this area up close but he apparently slid down it a bit and that might of absorbed the impact alot. He walked away with two broken ribs. He said that the rig had been packed for two months and he hesitated as to whether or not he should repack it and decided it would be ok.I suppose the canopy could move alot with the lower pack pressure of a base rig... anyway maybe a repack could have avoided that. The footage from his camera shows a normal deployment with no apparent twists but the camera shuts off on opening so we never see it inflate. anyway the video is my on my youtube page under "SaschaBASE" at http://www.youtube.com/...ile?user=pfcbandgeek the delay of the actual footage before deployment was 8 seconds but this video is slowed down a bit just fyi...

 
How were the winds at the time? Any hint of a bad condition at opening altitude?

as far as what he told me there was nothing wrong with the jump and everything was done right... he said the opening was slow and that as soon as it was open he hit the ground. He thinks that the lines might have moved around just from the rig being moved over the last couple months. This was his first parachuting accident ever. I was just with him on his 1000 skydive and then this was his 23rd base all at lauterbrunnen... I think he was lucky to land where he did, but Ive been told luck has helped a base jumper or two over the years. :)

hmm messing up the pack job??
if so he either has werry litel(read nothing)pintension
OR
he really made a good job trashing the rig..

I would usual say its the sliders fault,so ill do so again
Sliders slow your packjobs getting out the more time it use getting out the more thing can happen.
small things like tipping a shoulder winds or what ever has bigger impact on slowopening packjobs..

Atleast thats what i think.. Then add the thing that sometimes shit just happens..
Good thing nothing more happened

I had a 3 line twist at yellow last year, there was strong cross wind coming from right side, I can feel the wind coming up the side of wall. my body was nice and stable
be carefully of the wind.

Will he wear a helmet next time?

Helmet? Absolutely!

Slightly slow opening; do you know whether the nose of the pack job was rolled or not? My guess at the moment is that it was; one side inflated before the other and, as he deployed in a bit of a track, the twists were induced as the canopy surged round.

Rolling the nose is not a good idea for subterminal delays (6-8 seconds) - you can get all sorts of funky openings. Trust me.

If there's a strong wind blowing down the walley, north to south, then you can get rotors and a significant down draft in the bowl of Yellow. I think there must have been a strong wind on that jump because, from the video, I cant see the Staubach waterfall hitting the ground, though the vid is pretty low res. The wind just blows the water away about a third of the way down.
Best just to track from Yellow on a windy day :-)

Mike.

Can you explain what you mean by "rolling the nose" ?

I have been rolling the outside 6 cells in (and spreading the center cell around them) for virtually all of my jumps for the last 7 or 8 years. I have not noticed the funkiness you refer to, even in the 6-8 second range.

Two month packed is no problem. Rolling or not doesn't change a lot on jumps with more than 6 sec of delay neither.

1. Side wind (from right) at yellow is a bitch as said the rotors are strong. Orbiting PC might be the result (which i see in the Video)

2. Camera in one hand

3. Bad luck, sometimes

I'm glad he is alright

/t.

Rolling the nose by taking the 3 cells on each side of the centre cell together, and rolling tightly - rolling right down from the top to where the canopy is folded (and rolling tightly there). This would be done evenly on both sides, and folded down on top of the pack job. I would leave the centre cell exposed, but not wrap it around the packjob (this I would do for 4 sec delays, but I wouldn't be rolling the nose!)

My heading performance didn't appear to be affected at longer delays (12s); at the 6s delay, I've had a 360 and suffered high line twists (3 of them), the effect of which was described here. The line twists resulted when I pulled in a track; the 360 when I went back into a box-man first.

As soon as I stopped rolling the nose, I didn't have any issues.

My canopies are Troll MDVs; I always use direct control slider up and don't use a tailgate for such jumps.

How many total jumps did you experience this on? Is it possible there is another cause?

because of travelling frequently with two rigs (and thus having to check in one) and jumping infrequently, I have discussed repack cycles / keeping rigs stowed / ... with a couple of people.

i have been told that there has been a study by the US military which proved that as long as you keep the rig in dry conditions, reserves will open fine even after several years. (true, it's RESERVES, but the concept of the packjob is identical) BTW, this makes me think about repack cycles on reserves on sports canopies... but that is a different topic.

my own experience is that the rig will be packed tighter after an airplane-belly-ride (not surprisingly...), but have found no significantly different opening characteristics.

rigs that i had to repack after several months of stowing (because of configuration changes) always proved to look in good working order, and i never found anything that would have worried me or would have indicated problem from stowing itself.

glad the jumper was able to walk away,
flummi

for what its worth... I just popped a reserve packjob from JUNE 1992.. That's right, over 15 years old !!!. I cannot even verify that the rig was stored properly.

The reserve PC launched fine (irrelevant for BASE), and the canopy was in tip top shape. The folds stuck together just a little more then a freshly opening 120 day F111 reserve. I am confident the canopy would have opened just a hair longer and would have flown fine.

just my data point...
PS Canopy was a Raven IIIb

when a canopy is fresh packed , the openingtime is faster....after 30 days it stays and slows not down anymore.....then its not important how long you wait, the openingtime stays at this level...over years....

thats what the pointer manual says....and by the way, i test it

for sure it depends on the fabric and storeing conditions.....

Real world data... I toured an US AirForce rigging loft to see hundreds of rigs online and learn from the riggers in charge of the loft.

They had a waiver to go to a 1 year repack cycle on all rigs that are stored in the loft under the supervision of riggers. They had no ill effects. The rigs are typical to what you would find in civilian skydiving. They have ground to sky video on every jump these rigs are used on, and the openings appeared to be the same for fresh and old packjobs.

All rigs that leave the Base, (such as rigs assigned to team members) have the typical 120 day cycle because the humidity, temperature, etc, were not monitored - and the rigs get more abuse in transit. It seemed they were concerned about things like closing loop and harness wear than the actual fabric folds when keeping those at 120 day cycles.

One of my rigging mentors right now is a FAA Master Rigger and DPRE. His business is primarily pilot emergency rigs. Most rigs come in about once a year, sometimes longer, when the pilot suspects he is due for a ramp inspection or something. These rigs are left in hot aircraft and sat on every day. I have seen with my own eyes damage to the container/harness from wear and tear, and rubber bands that have either broken, got tremendously brittle, or have actually bonded to the lines of the canopy with a few pounds of pull force, or bonded to themselves on a doublewrap, effectively making a band twice as thick and much less elastic. But, I have asked, there have not been fabric concerns (other than the spills of chemicals that have gone unnoticed or general age).

When you close a packjob and pop it on the ground up to a couple of hrs later the material definitely wants to expand again. No so after a couple of weeks.

I'm happy to jump a 2-month old packjob if I'm gonna delay 3-sec or more but when doin sub-200' FF then I am fastidious that the packjob be done no more than 24hrs before.

BTW - I think that Poynter data refers to round canopies.

And just remember that a 180 with multiple linetwists is an acceptable opening for a skydiving reserve for the purposes of TSO evaluation. So I think any comparison to BASE canopies is flawed.

g.

first off,im in the belive that if you store the rig at the right conditions it will work.
I also agree that using a packjob soon after it were packed opens it faster,however i dont understand...

If i left my rig(wont happen unless i get injuryed) for more than 1 month,whats the hassel about repacking it?
Its like 30 mins of working time.. and you had a month to do so in.. If your time budget is that tight you might need to find a new hobby...

If you dont care,then you wouldnt post in this tread anyway would you?

Nose was not rolled..

From the video it looks like another case of the whip&twist that yuri_base wrote about here: http://www.basejumper.com/...ost=2877927;#2877927

Check the Mikki's 180 video and compare with pfcbandgeek's vid.