Broken brake line
This was pretty much a non-event besides the fact that I should fix my canopy now. Read on if you're bored. The jump was a very slow slider down gainer, I think the delay was around 4 seconds. By opening shock I had gotten around and was head high. Mojo 310 in a Medusa with a Morpheus 42" ZP PC. My weight is around 220 without gear. I think the gear probably has around 100 jumps on it.
Brake settings were deep and pretensioned. There was a minimal amount of wear visible on the brake settings. The brakes were set correctly with the line side of the brake setting loop below the riser ring where it broke. See attached pic, both loops were worn evenly.
The opening was hard and more or less on heading, but it didn't hurt that bad. I quickly realized what happened and steered and landed using the left toggle and the right rear riser at the connector link. I had the brake unstowed before the turn left could really develop. The broken line released on opening and trailed behind the canopy. I was slightly surprised at how much left toggle I needed to use to fly straight. The wind was calm but the flight, flare, and landing was good and soft.
I recently replaced the brake lines on my other rig due to the wear on the brake setting loops after less than 100 jumps. The wear on the line that broke was very minimal and didn't yet need replacing in my opinion, but in hindsight, maybe it did. I think the main factor was probably the hard opening from the long delay and fairly high exit weight.
The lessons as I see them: replace your brake lines at the first sign of wear, don't take it that deep slider down, don't eat as much as me, practice your aerials into a pool lots, and maybe a smaller PC would have helped too. I had enough altitude to spare and easily made it to the normal landing area.
