Basejumper.com - archive

Has anybody experienced something like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDEuD7h8Jg8

Its not me or anyone I know, just came across the video today...

Wow!
I've personally seen broken steering lines on opening. That was a jumper pitching full speed from a monster fast track. There was a fatality some years ago from the Eiger I believ due to line failure on the early Feather canopy. I believe it came down to a combination of heavy jumper/hard opening/cascaded lines, but my memory could be wrong here.
I've also heard about bad batches of the colored (black) dacron lines back in the day. Others with more knowledge will probably chime in on this. Scary stuff!

BFL 171.

the problem with the feather was a heavy jumper on cascaded 400lbs dacron lines.
after that incident pretty much all big manufacturers (apex, asylum, atair) reacted, with a number of measures, going back to 600lbs dacron for bigger canopy sizes, by using 600Lbs for center A (apex), or by switching to continous center AB lines, etc.

heres the service bulletins from apex:
https://www.apexbase.com/...nformation-documents

 
I would be very interested to know what Tracking suit was worn

If anyone can PM the name of the suit

much appreciated

Wow. I'm pretty interested to hear some more details on this one - e.g type of line or any other possible contributing factors (line dump, weight of jumper, etc).

I know of 2 incidents in Norway. One was a canopy that had a salt water landing and was not rinsed with fresh water. That was broken on the high stress point AB centerlines at 150 jumps. Not sure how many jumps out of the 150 that they didnt break. Saw also a nasty hard opening that resulted in a broken steering line at the brake stow fingertrap mostly due to not having done a tailpocket stow. meaning he just fig8 them without a locking stow.
There are definite clues with line separation and easy to spot. Overload breaks at the bottom of the fingertrap at the cascade in the center AB lines. The cascade intersection which is due to the lines by friction (The V of the cascade) on the outer lines.
The only thing that you can do as a jumper is if you have hard openings at terminal,packing is suspect.
Gotta go now. will write more later if anyone is interested.
Take care, space

In the comments of the video it says a Tube3.

Looks like the line is broken before the slider comes all the way down. Maybe the slider coming down caused the break. Maybe heat, maybe sharp part on the slider grommet? Fast, steep track?

Funny how the description says it's a 180 when it actually looked like about a 90 from the direction they were facing.

Steep, fast track was also a factor in the container failure a couple of years ago - always flare out before you pull. Done properly the flare will turn your excess speed in to increased object separation and a softer opening:) win win

In 2014 I was in Brento with some friends and one of our crew had a hard opening with a few broken lines (2 or 3). He was on all Bad Seed gear. Canopy was a Mayhem 280.

One or two lines were broken down near the front riser and another was broken up near the cascades. The vents were also totally shredded.

He's probably around 185 lbs. He was tracking with a homemade Tube3 clone.

The canopy in this video flew much nicer than his did. He was basically in a parachutal stall all the way to the talus where he impacted with only bumps and bruises and hiked down.

After that Bad Seed released a service bulletin regarding some faulty line sets. I think his was the second Mayhem to have line failures at Brento that season.

The info I have was that the Eiger jumper was known to be tracking very steep and fast (which would be excarcebated at high altitude) causing some seriously hard openings.

Given the opening location in the above video this dude must have also been tracking like a fridge full of lead and probably panic pitching out of it because he was so close to the damn ledge. Base gear is tough, but it has limits.

This year at KL. ~300 jumps on gear (SU and SD). 200lb jumper, DP5, Flik lite 266, ZP nose, 3/7 vents. Both center A lines broke approximately 1.5 inches below the Cascade.

outside BLAMMY

Inside BLAMMY

Links to Apex testing this type of failure. (something I shouldve watched / understood prior to this incident)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcLQoO_x52E

HMMM 266 seems to be a bit small for a 200lb jumper? thats about my weight and i jump a Troll 285 (~2 sizes up on the FliK)

Could slider rings be damaged by nuts of hardlinks, which look inside?

Yes, that's what slider bumpers are for. If you don't have them on your canopy, you can make your own with 1" tubing from a hardware store.

Or just start using soft links and leave that tubing to the hardware store.

I bit small to land? not sure what your questioning here. I weigh

he jumps way above the generally recommended wingload with this "small" canopy and 200lbs, thats why im asking

For the same weight, deployment speed, and line strength/construction, wouldn't a larger canopy experience a greater force?

I'm not saying it would, but I think that the canopy size isn't really relevant.

I was trying to figure that one out. On one hand a smaller canopy may inflate faster, on the other hand a slammer on a big canopy exposes more surface area and probably only takes fractionally longer to spread the bottom skin.

So maybe a smaller canopy would usually open slightly faster, but on a potentially linebreaking opening the peak forces on a big canopy might be higher.

But that could all be nonsense.

I think it really depends on canopy/wing construction/type and would differ between manufacturers. Atair insist on continuous center A lines on the larger OSP sizes which would suggest they are thinking about loading. Also in skydiving larger canopies are known to open harder and it affects line choices available on larger canopies.
From personal experience I feel that larger canopies will decelerate faster than smaller canopies and therefore experience greater opening forces.

Back in the early days, we normally BASE'd our skydiving canopies. Typically 220 sq ft 7 cells. The advantage was that you got really familiar with openings, accuracy, all that, because you were jumping the snot out of one canopy. Not two.

Occasionally I would have a super hard opening on my Cruislite and break lines. It was always the center A lines around the cascade. The canopy flew, but I went ahead and used the reserve because I was afraid it would roll up if I hit turbulence on landing. There were a fair number of trees and buildings that all had their burbles, and it wasn't unheard of for a square to just collapse, causing serious injury.

I never had one of those super hard openings when BASE jumping the canopy. Even slider down. If I blew a B line, I would be really spooked. As it was, a few broken A lines seemed to fly OK at altitude. I just never landed one. I would do a canopy transfer with the reserve every time, and moan about paying the rigger for a repair and a new reserve pack job, which I could pencil pack for years.

Which lines would break? Brake lines?
Take care,
space