Basejumper.com - archive

Knot in brake line. Luckily the victim walked out with just bruising.

Trying to upload a video but all files are too big. 300mb limit in 2013!!!!

Did you get the knot Dunny? I got a knot on the left brake line at the cascade this year too, luckily cleared after pumping itl but very scary.

Not me. Knot in left brake cascade. Did not clear. Incredibly lucky landing amongst rocks.

would high pull big grab toggles helped? why not hook knife the brake line?

And how would that help?

I don't know if its me or not, but I seem to be hearing about a lot of tension knots lately. Does any one else see this?

Its seems to me that with the rise in popularity of ultra lite gear, there has been a rise in knots.

Either that or they are just better reported using the www.

Thoughts....

They help make pussies feel safer :-)

It seems to me that with the rise in popularity of BASE jumping there has been a rise in the incidence of tension knots.
Pack neatly fuckers.

untwist break lines more often

I believe there could be more discussion on a lot of incidents that sometimes are never spoken of.

The facts of this particular jump:

This was WS terminal jump.
Jumper had very little experience in V3
Exit was very nice. Flight was very average.
Deployment was high enough to deal with 99% of situations.
Gear was NOT lightweight gear.
On opening Knot has restricted left brake line/cascade. (Video just cannot quite see) Jumper automatically reaches for toggle but is wearing WS. Canopy is turning, Jumper fumbles with arm zippers but gets them open. Jumper blows brakes but left brake line is slack. Jumper pumps brakes all the way to the ground.
Amazing timing places the jumper between narly rocks bruising his arse and left ankle.

So Jbag he had toggles off and pumping, hook knife a slack brake would not help.

Quick release toggles were NOT fitted, but would not have helped anyway.

After seeing this i realised i have no plan for this situation.
Thoughts and ideas would be much appreciated.

If i understand you correctly the canopy turns right due to slack in the left brake lines. As if there was input on the right side?
Would it helped if he could have released the right side brake line only?

Thank you for the full report.

Yeah, not much to do in that situation.

Good reminder to work to prevent it.

The canopy was turning left. There was some type of knot at cascade area so left brake line was slack from cascade down. When he blew brakes he blew them both but could not stop the left turn with the right toggle.

You know once upon a time we jumped sorcerers. A lot of people who jumped slider up felt they needed some kind of option and jumped sorcerers from vertigo or some modified system similar to it. It was kind of an east coast west coast thing. People jumping 2000 ft antenas slider up with sorcerers on the east coast and single canopy Velcro rigs out west. I used to have one. Big, bulky, heavy but it worked. And I know of at least one case of one being used in anger in Norway.

If you're jumping slider up and you willing to forgo humming it all the way to the ground... And let's be honest, is that really smart? Then it's actually a viable option.

Ok, every one, let's count. How many fatalities or injuries can we name that could have been avoided if they'ed opened a bit higher and had a reserve?

How about the broken center lines?

How about this little incedent? Would have been nice to trade out that canopy?

Pilot chute knots? How many is that. And lets say they had a reserve and planed there opening a bit higher. How many might have bennefited from a reserve?

I used to jump mine here in TX all the time. It wasn't till later that I started building single canopy rigs that I felt obliged to hang it up. My bad. I'm just saying that there was once a time when we felt that we needed an option. Then we convenced our selves that we were so good, our packing so perfect, that we didn't need one. And humping that big rig sucked. I'll admit it. I hated climbing with it.

Just tossing it out there. Now I will dive for cover.

Lee

If you can't compensate for the canopy turn, you can also try to actually pull the toggle on the offending side, than release it suddenly(not smoothly) I heard that it actually worked for one jumper and cleared the knot.

Is the problem that the slider was stuck, or that the canopy was turning uncontrollably?
(I know these are both problems, but if the slider came down then who cares about the slight turn.)
Ive freed a slider in a sky environment before by grabbing all four line-sets and bringing them together above my head, shaking them, then rapidly letting them go. Another idea might be by grabbing the brake-lines individually above the risers and pulling them as far forward as possible while they are still stowed. this might cause the slider to clear the knot(s). Lame ideas, I already know.

So in some way the left brake line(s) above the cascade were knotted with another line? Do you which one?

Everyone has a go pro.. lets have a look..

Upload it to vimeo ..

did he check for misrouting after he landed?
The left rear riser is twisting 180degrees whenever he pulls the toggel down. Will this happend if you have a knot in the cascade only?
Also when he pulls the toggel down, it gets jammed. I cant see any linx cover?

Yes Michael. All is routed correctly.

Seems like the only solution is a Sorscorer.

Lets not jump to conclusionsDo you untwist your brake lines often?

Yes. I did it 30min ago.
This discussion was NOT my incident. I witnessed only the exit and 1st 6/7 seconds. My jump was great thanks

I made my first 400 BASE jumps on a Sorcerer, I have 11 intentional cutaways on a Sorcerer, the only reason we don't jump a two canopy rig today is the inconvenience of carrying an extra canopy up a mountainside, the sorcerer was an excellent idea, whose time is still arguably relevant, When you go in ,... and you feel you would have survived, if you had a back up canopy,... don't blame anyone but yourself,... the technology existed long before you started to BASE jump.,,, respect and regards,.B.

+1

Maybe the time is here for a lightweight 2 canopy set up with maybe 150 reserve pull out system like old Woomera rig? (Bunny tail on left chest/shoulder)

Considering i am only jumping from mountains 900m+ and regulary opening 200m with ws

This looks like very similar incident

http://youtu.be/OsB0b68Cwos

It's surprising this topic hasn't been discussed yet. With the wingsuits used today it would be very easy to allow yourself some extra height äto have time to get a reserve out if you have a tension knot, bridle/pc knot, pc in tow or don't find the pc at all. These things happen and they kill.

I made my first 130 Kjerag jumps with a modified skydiving rigg and always pulled a little higher (but far away from the cliff) to have time to use it the reserve. I felt very comfortable with this setup. Had a malfunction on my main once and nearly used the reserve. A good friend who also used a skydiving rigg was saved by his reserve (pc in tow).

My next 100 Kjerag jumps were with a state-of-the-art single canopy BASE rigg. That is when the linetwists started. Ohhh the irony...

Stalling the canopy has been known to successfully clear tension knots in the past. Stall the canopy aggressively and then release the risers, the momentary loss of line tension will sometimes allow the knot to slip out. Although in my experience you still need a whole lot of luck to get this trick to work.

http://youtu.be/_yy3EcHA5Wc

What just pump the risers a little like this?

You can attempt to do this if you've stopped the canopy from spinning, which 95% of tension knot guys failed to accomplish. I see the physics behind this though, the key is to unload(duh) the offending line(s)
But still, it is a LOT better to have a knotted canoppy ABOVE your head, than a pefectly fine one spinning 50 feet(20 meters) above those rocks

edited to remove a mis-quote

True... but having first watched/experienced/thought
about a similar malfunction/save/etc. helps to stack
the deck in our favor.... Tom A's well seen video of
him cutting a line over while under canopy shows us
that it is very doable by jumpers of medium+ skill.

No i did not type that mate.

I don't rely on any luck in my tricks.

Can you possibly post this Tom a video for those of us that don't revolve around the US?

My experience is different to this. Unless you are on a highly loaded canopy it shouldn't be hard to stop a tension knot from turning the canopy in the majority of cases. Note this does not mean it will be flying all that great but at least it won't be spinning in.

Theres footage of some dude off kl with a knot on a old ABA dvd, from memory he had both brakes off and was pretty busy on the toggles. All he could do was stall, half spin to stall, repeat. Landed hard but ok....

I suppose the only way to avoid shit like that is to stay home and knitt (and pack well, untwist brakes, use a 2 canopy rig and land in 30, 000 boxes).

THe tension knot is the nasty nasty that happens from time to rare time and is really bad. Its the malfunction that you makes base jumping hard to justify, the only way to relieve a tension knot is to relieve tension... that means take the weight off... no dice with no reserve.

There was an upswing in occurrance of them around 2006 when some brake lines cascaded to 5 and not all were equidistant in length. It was scary... people were spinning in, some were fine, others, like Karina had life changing injuries and never jumped again.

What canopy was this guy/girl jumping and what was the brake line configuration and the DOM of the canopy?

I fear it more than any other and I hesitate to use anything but Dacron normal thickness lines (i think they call those 525 and or 400) that cascade to 4 lines at the top, not 5. 4 is tried and true with reserves, 5 is us BASE jumpers trying to be smarter.

I am not sure if the thin lines are more prone to the tension knots and i do jump both kinds of lines, but I hesitate when packing the skinny ones into that tail pocket of a 265 sq ft 7 cell f111 because the Raven reserve is awesome and landed many o early day base jumpers, and the Ravens of that size come in dacron, with the Raven 249sq ft and lower coming in both dacron and skinny lines. I think they call those Spectra.

Ouch is really an understatement. With it spun up that hard, with all that momentum it's going to be hard to control it. Wing suits suck. I mean they suck ass. They are terrorably restrictive. You can't move in them. You can't launch in them. You can't reach up in them. Even just flying in them isn't that easy. And that's when every thing is going right. You see here what happens when some thing goes slightly wrong. He really wanted to reach those risers. I'm just surprised more people don't die jumping them. Oh wait, they do. Don't get me wrong wing suits are cool. The things they let you do when it goes right are amazing. But if we're going to be jumping these things maybe we should be looking forward to the day when things will go wrong. This is a prime example of how you can't deal with a problem with all of your limbs tied down. Maybe it's time to rethink our emergency proceadures. Maybe it's time for a reserve. The sorcerer was a good rig. It worked. Mards have come a long way. Maybe it's time for a sorcerer mark two.

Lee

Can you possibly post...

Here is the video I mentioned:

http://www.basejumper.com/..._Malfunction_61.html

Maybe they should design a wingsuit where you can reach the yonkles...wait...okay, well what about a way to cut away the arm wing..? wait, there already is? Maybe being proficient in using it would would help in these situations. Not saying it would have changed things, but time is crucial.

 
Any idea of the age and jumps on the lines? I think older lines that have been "worn in" might have a much higher chance of knotting because of the flexibility in them.

I had terrible line twists that were stuck on a skyjump partly because the lines were so furry. It seems like it allowed them to bind together. I read somewhere that furry lines are more likely to knot.

Based on my expereances with tandems, yes old furry lines are more prone to knots but how often do you see base canopies get that bad?

In regards to another post. Was it the Pegasus that people were modding to reduice the number of friction knots? I vagely recall a SB reduicing the length of the break lines above the cascades to lower the rate of malfunction. I don't recall the details. Any one have a better recollection?

Lee

+1

You read correctly. I had three tandem cutaways in my tandem career (1500+ total), and they all happened in a 2-week period -- two of them in three jumps -- because... you guessed it... the DZO was trying to stretch his line sets a few more jumps and the lines were very fuzzy. The cost of those unscheduled reserve repacks sobered him up though, and both canopies had new linesets before they were jumped again. That was how and when I learned how important it is to not let lines get worn to the point of fuzziness.

This brings up a key point: In the "old days," you were a highly experienced BASE jumper if you had 200 jumps in 3-4 years, so "furry" lines were not much of a problem unless you were using an old skydiving canopy of some kind with old lines.

Then we started jumping dedicated-to-BASE canopies and they were all new and it still took a long time to make a lot of jumps on them, so tension knots were not much of an issue.

Now we have people making a lot of jumps on their rigs, in a short period of time, plus you couple that with maybe not so optimal packing conditions at many BASE sites and suddenly furry lines start to become an issue.

The key thing to remember is that, Sorcerers, et al, notwithstanding, every BASE jump is a reserve jump and every skydiving reserve is packed under optimal conditions in a clean, controlled environment... which is frequently not the case with BASE "reserves."

Tension knots usually occur as a result of a variable combination of poor maintenance, poor packing and poor body position, all of which in some degree reflect an attitude of complacency.

Add a wingsuit to this equation, and the generally low opening altitudes of BASE jumps, and you instantly have all of the ingredients for a perfect poopstorm.


44

Just couldn't get this idea out of my head so...In 2011 I spent a chunk of the season jumping a MARD rig setup with a Trango 220 freepacked as primary and a 170 as the second canopy with a big mesh slider as well. Never needed the second canopy, it was dead weight, the cost of insurance I suppose - like unused heli or health insurance. I had been thinking about why in base wingsuitting don't I have a second canopy if I am willing to pull at perhaps 200-300 ft higher.

I spent a good amount of time researching the idea. Discussing it with friends, manufacturers, test jumpers, demo jumpers, and other random jumpers. Got my hands on a Sorcerer. Discussed it at length with Marta. This included why they built the Sorcerer, why it was designed the way it is. PC location, MARD mechanism. Read about and discussed several saves on it and one fatality on it. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Problem for wingsuiting is the pc for the second canopy is on the left shoulder so no go. This led me to current setup.

When I did jump this setup at popular sites, everyone who saw it asked questions. As soon as I would explain what it was, most people would ponder the idea, then interest in the reason and approach, sometimes we all had a laugh about one thing or another. This led to many discussions at the exit and on the ground later, or on hikes when we crossed paths again. If someone got too serious, sometimes I would goof and say it was my first jump and I heard wingsuits were fun, good for a few laughs at least. All in all, it was a good conversation topic. However, I think most people like to be with the crowd. It's not easy to go against the standard, even in our group.

The strangest thing while jumping this setup was watching a girl jump before me and thinking about that she only had one canopy, one chance. The thought of having this thought itself was totally foreign.

So the premise is this: Wingsuit dedicated rig, high alt jumps, willing to hit the saddle at say 500 or 600 ft.
Oh yeah, and you want a second shot (and are willing to carry the expense) if you have a total (1 recent) , pc in tow (3 or 4 known), tension knot or something else we have not invented yet. Maybe it's more like 10 fatals that might have benefitted. Or if you are test jumping crap and think too much.

I must say, the simplicity of a single parachute system can not be denied. A Hybrid L/D is way more aerodynamic and you are carrying half the weight. All true and VERY appealing. Most of all, you can only work on a problem with a standard system, add another canopy and you now have decisions to make - yes, more complex which can lead to other problems. So still some reasons for and some against.

Final thought: If someone made a single use round that packed up to the size of a deck of cards, mounted on the chest strap or the like, weight was ounces. Would you carry that second chance?

why u guys blame wingsuits? tension knots happened a lot on non-ws junmps as well

I dont think anyone is blaming WS. This incident did involve a WS.

I'll blame the wing suit. It probable didn't cause the problem but it did signifigantly delay his ability to cope with the problem. By then it was building up momentum and it was more difficult to control. I think it played a part. But that's just my openion.

Lee

could it be that the complication of a skydiving rig adapted for base negates the benefit of the second chance? i.e. u have the 2nd chance but u have to use it (statistically) more often due to complication and sometimes its too low to be effective (u may pull at 600ft, but subtract opening, subtract decision time.. and oops u're at 100ft) - net result that probability of getting busted up is the same or even worse than that of the simple base setup?

futuristically, if u have a 100-gram round reserve in u'r pocket, sure why not? realistically, u have a 2-chamber skydiving container, with main folded more times than in a base container (read: more chance to make a mess), with risers possibly opening the riser covers at different times (read: one side getting very different tension from the other = more opportunity for tension knows), with 3-ring system which may release (read: riser strike, or ws pulling the handle b/c of a hard opening), tired jumper making weaker pitches (read: more often bridle knots over PC) etc etc

only someone who can hire two groups A and B of 1000 base jumpers each (all willing to die for the sake of research) to make 1000's of jumps each can come to a clear, objective conclusion: B is better than A.. at the expense of a pile of dead bodies

so how can u explain your "B is better than A" other than by saying "i have a 2nd chance"

?

Troll DW 245
DOM 2005
Jumps 150
edit to add: Very good condition

I spun in with tension knots at the heli boogie last year after a tracking jump. I had 30 jumps on the lineset. Fox 266 at .7. The redlines were only cleared to the slider (yes yes i know) and I was not using brake line control. It was a C-D brake line entaglement. I landed in on top of some rocks. I had 4 rotations before hitting the ground. Managed to PLF and was lucky that the rotation carried me downhill onto a relatively big sized downhill slopped boulder.

From watching a bunch of videos of people spinning in with this type of tension knot, I was aware that compensating with the opposite brake would stall the canopy and not achieve much. It took me one rotation to recognize the problem. One rotation to try my strategy (My strategy in the event was to compensate by using an opposite front riser to stop the spin and keep up airspeed so as not to stall the canopy and fly to something a little less hard). This didnt work. 2 rotations in I realized impact was imminent. I sure as shit wasnt going to start yanking on the already heavily deformed side to speed up the spin in the chance of clearing the mal. The descent rate was bone breaking fast but not lethal. I then tried to stabilize the turn with brakes. The canopy, albeit compensating with a deep toggle position on the opposite side, remained in the turn only slowing down a little eventhough I was tethering on the edge of a stall. I impacted in this configuration luckily managing to get my feet infront of me. I walked away with a severly bruised hip.

Wing level as possible and feet and knees together and infront of me I believe saved me.

Popping WLOs would probably not help as the lower brake line was slack. As with the videos I had with this type of knot a small turn turned into a merry go round of death after popping the brakes.

It seems most tension knots occur between the brake line and outside C-D cascade. I saw two others with this mal last year in LB.

tension knots suck but they are not a death sentence from what I have seen so far. Practice your PLFs.

I have always believed and taught that Tension Knots on slider up jumps are due to the disparity in line lengths between the C-D lines (long) and the Control lines (short) at opening time. The control lines take a lot of load on opening and as they tension up they trap the C-D lines. For this reason I always clear the control lines below and more importantly above the slider in the hope that they never get a chance to trap the C-D lines between them.


I don't use line control on slider up jumps either. But is it possible that a tape gate may help keep shit neater and help prevent the interaction between the C-D and control lines that causes tension knots?

The wingsuit clearly restricts the jumper in this situation. But from the video it is also clear the jumper has little to no routine or drill on unzipping the arms on his wingsuit, giving himself worse odds in dealing with this problem. The lack of proper training in a safe environment with the suit (which also can been seen on the poor flight performance) is something that should be noted here. I like these threads and it's important to adress malfunctions and incident so we all can learn and progress. But we need to remember that this is base jumping though, the most fun, beautiful and dangerous sport in the world. Shit like this happens, and Murphy is out there.
And I see a lot of shit that can go wrong with a spinning cutaway wearing a wingsuit at low altitude in a mountain environment... Nice modern base equipment works really good

Your points are all valid and should be considered strongly by anyone considering such a thing. Each of the things you listed as detractors of the gear are negatives in some capacity and there are more.

"so how can u explain your "B is better than A" other than by saying "i have a 2nd chance""

I didn't say A or B was better just this is what I did to try to see if there were other options. Just looking to see if there is a way to take out a risk that has killed a few good people who went in fighting to the end. I don't have the answer unfortunately.

Re: unzipping the arms. I tried to do that on a way too low opening myself one time, and of course did not succeed. Talking to quite a few people after that, nobody mentioned the arm-release option, of my V3. (which of course I only thought of after the jump but which I knew where there).

Thing is, I never really had this in my mental drills. I can give you the time you might need.

going back to twin canopy rigs will bring new problems and new fatalities. in 2011 we watched a guy do a wing suit jump in brento in which he went into a flat spin at deployment pitched had a line over and cutaway luckily having a skyhook fitted and pretty much snivelled into the trees somehow surviving a dirty low cutaway. he had cameras on too which would be epic footage. if you have good gear in good condition and you pack it right and deploy it properly then u should never have a tension knot or a line over.. is it possible that the problem was as simple as shitty velcro on his tail pocket resulting in line dump on deployment and a tension knot resulting?? that would be my first guess. be safe fuckers

Would it be possible to build a small round into the leg wing or into the fat ass of tracking pants? This type of reserve seems to save acro PG pilots all the time.

I'm not sure how the routing would work. The riser would have to pass out side the lateral. on it's way to the shoulder. It could not be routed till the suit was assembled. Then it would have to be joined to the harness around the shoulder. It would be doable if a little awkward. I don't think you'd want a really small one. Honestly if I was going to land a round on rough ground I'd want something big. 26 ft and then I'd expect brusses. So it wont be small or light. It would fit but it would move the CG south a good bit. At that point you might just be better off with a more conventional dual canopy rig.

I've been thinking about a dual canopy design. Long container all the way down to your but so the BOC would be more reachable. Left side ripcord located at the lower left corner of the container opposite the BOC. Routing to a pin on the back pad ala reflex/teardrop. Open reserve tray with a hesitator loop to stage the bag rather then corners as it may be deployed down wards in a total. The Rigging inovations spring is nice and long. I'll bet I could build a rather large pilot chute from it with a conical mesh cone. It adds to the bulk but I might like to sleeve the spring like an MA-1 to carry the center line load and reduice malfunctions. I really like Strongs Mard. Very secure. Main tray designed to open downwards tapering to the base with a through loop to help compress it flat, almost like an upside down reserve.

Just thinking. I know... It's really dangerous when I get to thinking.

Lee

In theory, shouldn't cutting the C/D line(s) that is/are entangled with the steering line clear the _rotation part_ of the problem?

If the steering line is entangeld with only one C/D line, cutting 1 out of the 4 lines from the rear riser. If possible to see which one to cut that is. Perhaps not so easy in practise.

I would guess the canopy would fly better with only one C/D line cut than with a tension knot.

If extending this logic, how bad would the canopy fly if cutting all 4 lines from a rear riser? After all, it would be a quarter of the lines... Would it be better to land this than the tension knot configuration? Would be interesting if anyone has info on flight characteristics after single rear link failure.