Stupidest thing you've ever done on a skydive...

Forgot to uncollapse my slider while packing, and took that packjob on a tracking jump at Lost Prairie. Somehow, someway, had a perfectly butter smooth opening...

How about you guys?

I packed my self a pilot chute in tow after about 130 total pack jobs and about 165 total jumps...routed the bridal like an idiot.. the bridal actually kept too much tension on the closing loop as it went around the wrong side of the loop and the closing pin.  I felt terrible for being so cavalier during my pack job and it took a while before I forgave myself and moved on.

With about 40 jumps I agreed to do a 5-way jump on a day with questionable cloud cover.  Cloud bases were at about 4k and were probably about 1,500' thick.  Plan was to break off at 5k and pull at 3.5k.  We funneled the formation right around 6k and by the time I got stable we were in the cloud and it was time to break off and track.  I had no idea where anyone was or what direction they had tracked in.  I was entirely unprepared for this scenario.  I stayed in place, hoping everyone else had tracked, got through the cloud, cleared my airspace as well as I could, and waved off and pulled a little below 3k.  Thankfully my hope that everyone else had recovered and tracked way came true.  

I haven't come even remotely close to a cloud since then. Several times I've gotten to the DZ and chose to stay on the ground. A couple of times I've been in the plane, got to the door and looked down, saw a big cloud, said nope, not going.

I'm often told that I'm overly cautious.  I've even been called a p---y once or twice.  Whatever.    

stoopid? no

scary? yes

I led the trail plane jumpers to close on a 16 way CReW diamond to complete a 25 way diamond.

at night

lotta pressure to find the base

not a lot of fun

chose to not do that again.

craig

39 minutes ago, faulknerwn said:

Does the fact that I followed you in on that load qualify as stupid ? :-)

 

:O

I made a bet with Carol Clay. Uber stooopid! We were up late partaking in some DZ shenanigans and I bet the Queen that she wouldn't make load 1 in the morning. My dumb ass stayed up until... hell I don't know. And anyone that partied at West Point back in the day knows what I'm talking about. I think I got about an hour nap and somehow showed up to dirt dive with Carol. I fell asleep on the ride up and I do not remember the jump whatsoever except that Jason was there. When we got down I crawled into a corner of the hanger and passed out for most of the day. Never again I swore... but then there was another boogie! Damn I miss that woman. 

Lost altitude awareness on a night jump and pulled really low. I was fully open below 1,000ft and had to land in a paddock next to the DZ in almost complete darkness. I bought a Time Out the next morning.

6 hours ago, base615 said:

Lost altitude awareness on a night jump and pulled really low. I was fully open below 1,000ft and had to land in a paddock next to the DZ in almost complete darkness. I bought a Time Out the next morning.

I would hope that darkness would hide your mistake from your S&TA lol.

Land and be like 'Low pull? Nah I pitched at like 6k'

25 minutes ago, RolandForbes said:

I would hope that darkness would hide your mistake from your S&TA lol.

Land and be like 'Low pull? Nah I pitched at like 6k'

 

Sadly not so lucky. Got a 2 week grounding.

Doing a downplane with Jamie. He wouldnt let go. I had enough time to flare so I guess it wasn't too low when he finally did, but yeah. Lesson learned.

On 8/3/2022 at 1:08 PM, faulknerwn said:

Does the fact that I followed you in on that load qualify as stupid ? :-)

 

i chose not to comment

:-)

19 hours ago, kleggo said:

i chose not to comment

:-)

But you were an extremely proficient flyer then, so i'm sure you made a good decision.

I was in the left trail plane and followed the wrong person on a 75 way. Realized my mistake and flew all the way over to the other side, cutting people off as I went! Still docked in my slot. I thought it was an excellent example of some awesome flying but I was disabused of that belief at the de-brief!

Jump 50 something was loaned a Sabre 170 to taste downsizing. First jump, just above pattern height, I decided to try some “reverse turns”. Got a bit too deep on the toggle on the 3rd turn, and it just snapped 360 degrees into a line twist. 
 

The feeling of being spun up under 1,000’ isn’t something I care to experience ever again.

Several thousand jumps later, I was filming tandems. On opening and doing my housekeeping after my 6th jump of the day, I felt a little tingle, like my routine and practically subconscious chest-strap unbuckling procedure had felt different this time somehow.

on review of hand cam footage, my chest strap was misrouted. Through the buckle and folded excess stowed in a rubber band.

Don’t do either of those. 

13 hours ago, BurbleBoi said:

Jump 50 something was loaned a Sabre 170 to taste downsizing. First jump, just above pattern height, I decided to try some “reverse turns”. Got a bit too deep on the toggle on the 3rd turn, and it just snapped 360 degrees into a line twist. 
The feeling of being spun up under 1,000’ isn’t something I care to experience ever again.

Ugh, I had something like that, similar canopy, similar size, back when Sabres -- the first common zero-P canopies in North America --  were new in the early 1990's. "One last really good looking set of turns before heading to the pattern." And the canopy started spiralling. Don't know how it got out of multiple twists so fast but I didn't need to do the low pull-both-handles-simultaneously thing.

Those Sabre-class canopies were fast turning, but could snap you into near zero-G, so it was easy to get out of sync when doing snappy toggle turns, unload the lines, and twist up. Others had the same issue -- Saw an experienced jumper do something similar (without the spiral), and some multi-thousand jump Canadian jumper died from low line twists/spiral back in the early Sabre etc era too.

It was jump 187 for me, with the added complication of a large early 1990s video camera strapped to my shin with a wide angle lens looking up at the canopy for some maneuvering video.  Barely got any video in the end anyways, as the Sony's shake detection mechanism shut down the video tape transport about a second into my line twists.  

Jumped the sunset load on a Saturday night, after landing when straight to the bar leaving my parachute unpacked.  Returned from the bar after 12 hours drinking at 8:00am the next morning, packed my chute in a rush and jumped the first load on the Sunday morning.  That was 30 years ago, I wouldn't last 12 hours in bar now. ;-)

After spending the day making 10 or so wingsuit jumps with a Spectre 120, I quickly switched canopies for the night jumps. To a Katana 120. I only had 10 or 12 jumps on a Katana 120 at that time. I'm VERY lucky I didn't break myself.

Being berated by someone at PD who had next to zero knowledge of me, my canopies, my experience, or anything didn't help either.

Or maybe the wingsuit jump with Nebelkopf diving directly at me, me back flying, as my audible warned me I just went under 2500 ft. Nah, that wasn't it. I'm sure I was fully open by 1100 ft. 

Nice chat with the S&TA after he grounded us for a couple of days. 

Which one.  How about doing a demo with 1400 a foot ceiling exiting over a lake.  I landed right on target.

A few months before I got out of the tandem game (after 10 years and probably 5000+ tandems):

I exit on a handcam jump that had outside video as well, and right out the door I realize I didn't buckle my full face helmet. So I'm flying the entire jump with my right hand on my head, filming with my left, and cursing the camera flyer who decided (not for the first time) to film everything while carving around us on his head.

Apart from that helmet annoyance and the freeflying camera guy, we get to 6000' uneventfully, whereas I reach back with my left hand (wasn't going to sacrifice my helmet for the opening shot), pull, and nothing happens. 
I switch hands, hold down my helmet with my left, and pull the right handle. Nothing. 

Now we're getting to 5000', and everything I know about release blockages and drogues in tow on Sigmas flashes through my head. I give the left handle another go, then say a quick prayer and fire the reserve past the trailing drogue.

It clears, and we have a brisk, but totally manageable deployment, and I fly us down, hoping the people on the ground aren't too freaked out by the drogue dragging behind us, trying to get some good canopy HC footage to make up for what would definitely be suboptimal freefall.

We land, and I look back to locate my drogue. And it's not there. And that's when I realize it's still in the BOC, where it's been the entire time because I was too busy holding down my helmet and filming the jump, and the camera guy was just trying to keep up with us, and we went straight to reserve from drogueless terminal. And I was generally pretty proud of myself for not being one of those TIs who need the drogue to get them stable, but the dumbfuckery I managed to cram into this jump still makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

23 hours ago, jerry81 said:

A few months before I got out of the tandem game (after 10 years and probably 5000+ tandems):

I exit on a handcam jump that had outside video as well, and right out the door I realize I didn't buckle my full face helmet. So I'm flying the entire jump with my right hand on my head, filming with my left, and cursing the camera flyer who decided (not for the first time) to film everything while carving around us on his head.

Apart from that helmet annoyance and the freeflying camera guy, we get to 6000' uneventfully, whereas I reach back with my left hand (wasn't going to sacrifice my helmet for the opening shot), pull, and nothing happens. 
I switch hands, hold down my helmet with my left, and pull the right handle. Nothing. 

Now we're getting to 5000', and everything I know about release blockages and drogues in tow on Sigmas flashes through my head. I give the left handle another go, then say a quick prayer and fire the reserve past the trailing drogue.

It clears, and we have a brisk, but totally manageable deployment, and I fly us down, hoping the people on the ground aren't too freaked out by the drogue dragging behind us, trying to get some good canopy HC footage to make up for what would definitely be suboptimal freefall.

We land, and I look back to locate my drogue. And it's not there. And that's when I realize it's still in the BOC, where it's been the entire time because I was too busy holding down my helmet and filming the jump, and the camera guy was just trying to keep up with us, and we went straight to reserve from drogueless terminal. And I was generally pretty proud of myself for not being one of those TIs who need the drogue to get them stable, but the dumbfuckery I managed to cram into this jump still makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

I had a shitty Strong tandem try to kill me once in rather similar fashion. Drogue never fully deployed, I was too distracted with an over the Gulf of Mexico jump view and a handicam to realize I was drogueless.

Strong grounded the rig and required me to take a few high speed recurrency jumps.

Inspecting a tandem rig became a much more important task to me as well. I'm beyond lucky the reserve actually worked.

I was done with Stong tandems at that point.

1 hour ago, normiss said:

I had a shitty Strong tandem try to kill me once in rather similar fashion. Drogue never fully deployed, I was too distracted with an over the Gulf of Mexico jump view and a handicam to realize I was drogueless.

Strong grounded the rig and required me to take a few high speed recurrency jumps.

Inspecting a tandem rig became a much more important task to me as well. I'm beyond lucky the reserve actually worked.

I was done with Stong tandems at that point.

Strong Enterprises has published an extensive manual on how to do 25-jump-inspections on Dual Hawk. DHT has a number of well-known high-wear areas that need to be inspected or repaired on a regular basis. I have done close to 4,000 jumps on DHT along with dozens more on Vector 1, Vector 2, Sigma, Racer, Next and Veckbecker tandems. They all have their quirks. I have also inspected and repacked a hundred or so DHT reserves. I lost count of how many Strong tandem mains (425, 500, SET 400 and SET 366) that I have re-lined.

On 12/14/2022 at 10:37 AM, jerry81 said:

 and cursing the camera flyer who decided (not for the first time) to film everything while carving around us on his head.

 

Thanks for sharing this interesting story.

must have been a good camera flyer to match your velocity, no that I know that much about head down attitude speeds.