I mentioned in my post yesterday showing two different wingsuits, that wingsuiting doesnt always go as planned.
When something goes wrong while wingsuiting, things can get spicy real quick. How spicy can depend on the size of your wingsuit. The bigger the wingsuit, the bigger the problem.
For example, if you are unlucky enough to experience a flat spin, you'll find out that you have very little time to do something about it. I had one in my T-bird caused by my flying too slow, it happened very early on in to my wingsuiting career, and thankfully was on a small suit, so all I did was curl up into a ball for a few seconds closing my leg and arm wings, then opened back out with a big arch and I was back on my belly again flying.
If however I was flying a larger more advanced wingsuit, such as a Tony Suits Apache or Jedei, then I would just chop. I would reach for my cutaway handle and chop, then deploy my reserve parachute. I tend not to make a regular habit of flying large wingsuits, mainly as I prefer Acro as oppose to flying for performance. But I have heard from friends that fly large suits that you can start to pull G's very quickly in a flat spin so you need to react very quickly and just get to your handles before you are not able to and pass out.
The mal I want to show you today is called a Pilot-Chute-in-Tow Malfunction.
This occurs when a jumper throws their pilot chute but the container remains closed, trapping the main deployment bag inside. This is a high-speed malfunction that requires a quick response.
I do not have a cockable pilot chute installed on the rig I was using, so this wasn't a factor in the mal, it is also in good condition, so inflates well.
The cause was due to a weak pull.
Entirely my fault.
I was far too relaxed and my pull was too casual, I didnt throw the pilot chute into clean air, I threw it to my side and in doing so it caused the bridle to dance around and cause a knot to form around the pilot chute, thus not allowing the pilot chute to fully infate and extract my main canopy.
This has killed people in the BASE environment, and if this was a BASE jump its very likely I wouldn't have survived.
So here's the sequence of events:
I had planned a pull height of 5,000ft on this jump, I was jumping with 6 others and I deployed at my planned height of 5,000ft.
When I pulled I did think to myself 'Jeez, that was super casual', then I waited for the instant wallop from my Squirrel Epicene and its super quick opening...but nothing
And here is why:
After a few seconds I knew something was wrong, I knew I had altitude on my side, so I waited a little longer, still nothing...oh ffs, so I reach down to locate my handles and as I did I felt movement on my back so I gave it another second before chopping. I then was sure I was getting some sort of canopy extraction, and yep it came out.
Thank f**k for that. I could see other canopies about as it was extracting so I knew I was getting low, but it came out just in time. I was under canopy by 2,900ft.
After looking at the stills, the pilot chute managed to inflate enough to pop the closing pin, and the pin had popped but the d-bag remained in the container. It was my movement of locating the handles that created some air flow, enough to dislodge the d-bag so that it could extract my main canopy.
Lessons learned from this:
- Throw it like you mean it.
- Don't deploy in a flare.
- I have decided to raise my usual pull height of 3,500ft to 5,000ft to allow for any future unwanted events.
- Shit doesnt always go to plan in this sport, even if you think you have ticked all the boxes.
- No wingsuit BASE, it's not worth the risk.
Thanks for reading.
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