More take off than landings?

[Skippy722]

Never been on a plane, but I’m now well under the weight limit to go skydiving

 

[burbguy82]

On one jump, mentioned before.....out of two that I had to pull my reserve........I was near the front of the bird, a C-130..........which typically holds 64 loaded paratroopers. I think I was around the 50th out if the bird.....night jump......I jumped out, smacked another jumper after exit.......at the count of 4, I did not feel the shock of my canopy opening, waited an additional 1.5 or so seconds like an idiot and pulled my reserve. On that night, I was by far the first on the ground. It was a full moon and could see others above me. Then another jumper landed on me.

My chute had failed, over half had ripped. Ended up being a pretty big deal. It was observed by others staged on the DZ through thermal. I got lucky. We laughed.

 

[Hohn]

Just wondering around here, who has said bye-bye to the pilot, and jumped out of a plane with a parachute? If so, perhaps discuss why you were so dumb as to trust and piece of fabric and cords over a trusty pilot and their machine.

276 jumps<=1500ft AGL, C-5, C-17s, C-130s, Uh-60, CH-47

A shade over 100 a bunch higher.......

Stories are welcome aswell.

Just five for me. Got my free fall wings and moved on. USAFA AM-490

https://www.usafa.edu/wings-of-blue/98fts-am490/

Classmate got her arm in the risers at opening; vicious fractures. Delayed a year and graduated with next year’s class.

 

[Hohn]

Just five for me. Got my free fall wings and moved on. USAFA AM-490

https://www.usafa.edu/wings-of-blue/98fts-am490/

Classmate got her arm in the risers at opening; vicious fractures. Delayed a year and graduated with next year’s class.

Similar note from the cadet airfield: a guy in the graduating class ahead of me was a Wings of Blue team member and coming in final under a good canopy hit a weird eddy current coming off the top of the flat roof building upwind. Total canopy collapse and he just fell out of the sky a good 40 feet or so. Took a year to heal his broken back and rehab. He ended up graduating with my class instead of his but we were happy to have him-- he is a good dude.

The Wing of Blue is an impressive cadet parachuting team, like the Golden Knights. My roommate was on the team and got to jump a ball into the ProBowl and do cool things like that.

They would jump into the same airfield where cadet glider and sailplane training was occurring. This is why the pitot tube on those gliders is known to all USAFA Cadets as the "WoB Kabob." LOL!!

 

[Number_35]

... and the most dangerous event on a military static line jump is landing. A jumper must not know (not anticipate the ground) when he hits the ground and spread the shock of hitting the ground through five parts of his body (called a parachute landing fall). If a paratrooper anticipates the ground, a PLF can't be properly performed often resulting in significant injuries. When a paratrooper exits an aircraft, forward throw/ lateral drift is a calculated event dropping hundreds of paratroopers into a space exactly where they are supposed to land.

The jump instructor told our little group to NOT look at the ground - as one gets close to the ground, it appears to increase in size at an exponential rate. The jumper then inevitably and unconsciously tenses up, which turns out to be an effective way to break an ankle.

Rather, he told us to watch the horizon - hitting the ground should come as a surprise. I did so, and was fine.

One unrelated bit of trivia - I wore above-the-ankle hiking boots, and the instructor wrapped them with duct tape. There was the remote chance a line on the 'chute could get snagged on the hooks for the upper lacing.