Ever been unable to find PC?

Curious, has anyone here been unable to get to their PC on a wingsuit jump, when experienced and current on the suit you were jumping? 

What happened and why? Particularly interested to hear from anyone who had it happen following mutiple uneventful deployments on the same gear configuration.

Edit: please no brand wars but am keen to hear what suit you were jumping. I know there have been instances of this on different suit models from different manufacturers.

Personally I never have, but a jumper at my DZ started in a P2 and reported having occasional trouble finding his handle, so when he had 25 jumps and asked my opinion on upsizing to a Funk told him it wasn’t smart. So did the other experienced flyer. What did he do? Bought the Funk, jumped it, and wasn’t able to find his PC (never did a practice touch up high). Tumbled from 5,000ft down until his AAD saved his life, because on top of all that he’d hooked up the suit wrong and had reserve handle inside. 

2 hours ago, skydave89 said:

Personally I never have, but a jumper at my DZ started in a P2 and reported having occasional trouble finding his handle, so when he had 25 jumps and asked my opinion on upsizing to a Funk told him it wasn’t smart. So did the other experienced flyer. What did he do? Bought the Funk, jumped it, and wasn’t able to find his PC (never did a practice touch up high). Tumbled from 5,000ft down until his AAD saved his life, because on top of all that he’d hooked up the suit wrong and had reserve handle inside. 

That is ridiculous. What an idiot.

It was beyond stupid. After he asked me what I thought he didn’t like my answer so he asked the other experienced flyer at the DZ the next weekend and that guy said the same thing. Clearly he was shopping around for somebody to tell him he’d be ok. Then he bought the Funk anyway and said “I just wanted it now, but I won’t fly it yet”. I knew that was BS, but I wasn’t as firm about it as I will be in the future for those cases.

Now after all that imagine my horror when I saw him comment on a sale post about an ATC and he gave the same “I wasn’t gonna fly it yet I just wanted to buy it and hold onto it” *eye roll*.  Some people are bound and determined to kill themselves it seems. 

I know an experienced WS jumper who went straight to reserve on a jump as he could not get to his main. He was demoing a large race suit, he took it too steep and he lost control of it. He got spun up pretty fast, felt like he was going to pass out and he was unable to get to his main so he went to his reserve before he passed out.

I know of another case where someone went straight to reserve because he couldent pull his main. However, he had about 10 WS jumps and just switched to a freefly handle without trying it out on the ground. He dident know how to deploy the freefly pud and so he couldent get it out.

13 hours ago, skydave89 said:

Personally I never have, but a jumper at my DZ started in a P2 and reported having occasional trouble finding his handle, so when he had 25 jumps and asked my opinion on upsizing to a Funk told him it wasn’t smart. So did the other experienced flyer. What did he do? Bought the Funk, jumped it, and wasn’t able to find his PC (never did a practice touch up high). Tumbled from 5,000ft down until his AAD saved his life, because on top of all that he’d hooked up the suit wrong and had reserve handle inside. 

if not for AAD, human kind would evolve into so smart species....

I've grabbed fabric at pull time a couple of jumps in my havoc over the years. Just not paying enough attention to technique at pull time. Both were non events - reset, paid a little more conscious attention to what I was doing, no issues. Chalk it up to complacency.

I know a number of experienced people who could not pull at all after switching wingsuits and ended up going to reserve, in at least one case really low due to ego making the candidate try extra hard to avoid embarrassment of going to reserve on the first jump with a brand new extra shiny ATC.

Oh I’ll also add: there was a guy at Summerfest last year that went straight reserve on his ATC that I think was quite new to him at the time and he’d just arrived after driving like 18hrs from Canada so I’m assuming fatigue played a role in that one on top of the inexperience. 

I know one dude that couldn't get a FF pud untucked and went to reserve. I personally had a week pull and at the moment I realized I never did practice reserve touches in flight. I just reached back and luckily found my PC on my ass and threw it better, but it did take two tries. This is why you pull high on new gear.

I have a friend that went straight to reserve on a Freak 2 after he got spun up out of a Sky Van. Pulled pretty high. Just got into some spins and had trouble getting to the PC...perhaps due to the rate of spin. 

Straight to reserve, long canopy ride home, soft landing. 

It was only his second jump on the container, so that may have been a factor. He is an experienced wingsuiter and had made a handful of jumps on the suit before this.

I've actually had it happen to me on my 6th jump onm the RBird in the picture At deployment when I reached back the wing blew up over my pilotchute handle and wouldn't budge. I reached back several times to try to knock it off and find my handle and at the same time was keeping track of my altitude on my mudflap mounted altimeter all to no avail.  I was jumping a brand new Mirage G4 container and went to my Reserve. Never flew a PD Optimum Reserve but I'll have to say the opening was fast but not hard and it was a joy to fly and I had a superb landing under it. I attributed my deployment problems to the fact that I was jumping the wingsuit with internal arm zippers half open and also that I dropped my hands off the wing behind me instead of along my side. This contributed to the wing getting in the way of my deployment. I cleaned up my deployment technique and it's never happened again and I put many more jumos on the suit.  At present I have some minor rotator cuff problems in my left shoulder and haven't wingsuited for a while now but hope to get back into it on a newer version (GNar Bird) and have a little more fun.

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Happened to me on a Vampire 2, was current jumping, current on the suit. 
after a group flight where I used all my physical capability, grabbed the fabric over my PC. Couldn’t pull. Tried again, same mistake, same result. 
decided to go to my reserve. 
As it happened rather high, nobody at the  DZ realised that there was a freebag getting lost. 
this was one of my most expensive jumps. 

First jump on second hand Havok, in winter gloves.

Had previous experience on demo Havok Carve & had been jumping a V4 fairly regularly at time. But first time in own wrist to ankle suit.

Exited at 15k and stettled into flight pattern, barrel rolls, slow flight, bit of back fly but stupidly zero practice pulls.

5k orientate myself for pull, around 4.5k shut down wings (didn't keep elbows forward ) grabbed pud but couldn't  pull as wing covering, 3 attempts before for silver at 2k ish. Only good thing I did was fly to decent area for free-bag recovery  /reserve ride.

On 11/6/2019 at 5:31 PM, piisfish said:

Happened to me on a Vampire 2, was current jumping, current on the suit. 
after a group flight where I used all my physical capability, grabbed the fabric over my PC. Couldn’t pull. Tried again, same mistake, same result. 
decided to go to my reserve. 
As it happened rather high, nobody at the  DZ realised that there was a freebag getting lost. 
this was one of my most expensive jumps. 

I had the same on a V1, ended up pitching the PC through the wing (e.g. grabbed the handle with wing covering and threw it anyway), probably not too smart.

conversely, my venom is lovely, straight to PC, no dramas, every time.

On 12/4/2019 at 7:44 PM, davenuk said:

pitching the PC through the wing

For a second I thought you meant you managed to deploy the PC through the hole in the legwing, that would have been an interesting experience.

1 minute ago, johnmatrix said:

For a second I thought you meant you managed to deploy the PC through the hole in the legwing, that would have been an interesting experience.

"no shit, there i was......."    

On 4/25/2019 at 5:21 PM, skydave89 said:

It was beyond stupid. After he asked me what I thought he didn’t like my answer so he asked the other experienced flyer at the DZ the next weekend and that guy said the same thing. Clearly he was shopping around for somebody to tell him he’d be ok. Then he bought the Funk anyway and said “I just wanted it now, but I won’t fly it yet”. I knew that was BS, but I wasn’t as firm about it as I will be in the future for those cases.

Now after all that imagine my horror when I saw him comment on a sale post about an ATC and he gave the same “I wasn’t gonna fly it yet I just wanted to buy it and hold onto it” *eye roll*.  Some people are bound and determined to kill themselves it seems. 

This guy actually found/pulled his reserve handle before the aad fired, was an underdetermined save according to vigil.  He learned a lesson the hard way and sold that funk a week later.  Just recently saw that he is in the market for a new beginner suit that fits better.  And I remember him saying he just bought a new rig that is more suitable for wingsuiting than his old one.  Just my .02 on that topic.