Wingsuit PC hesitation problem
Having just returned from the ITW, I decided to post this email to discuss a problem I experienced. Firstly, the winds were quite fruity and maybe that in retrospect was my mistake. So, I am high over the landing area with some considerable forward speed on my V2 when I throw the pilot chute. The throw felt fine and I felt stable, but I felt nothing deploying off my back in the normal timeframe. I immediately started to roll violently from side to side. This cleared the PC and deployment happened as normal. I was left with a 25 second canopy ride.
A friend who had landed before me noted that he saw me almost rocking from side to side, but did not realise it was a deployment problem. The video he shot also barely shows the problem, however I knew something was wrong.
A few years ago I contributed to a document written by James Boole about getting into wingsuit BASE. I put together a set of skydiving activities designed to deal with instability and to train for deployment. Since then I have expanded these exercises and had practiced rocking from side to side. For the first time, they helped me.
This is definately something worth training for even if you have already done your first wingsuit BASE jump. A few years ago I saw video of Yuri go intentionaly headlow to get deployment to work over Kjerag when he had a problem. Has anyone else had a similar situation occur?