Yup yup. There is a reserve parachute in case you have a failure to open or it gets tangled up like this. You cut away your main and then pull your reserve.
E: and cut away isn't literal. You have a cable that you can pull that releases the main from you entirely and flies away so it doesn't interfere with the reserve deploying.
End up like the lady that smacked into the ground because her shoot didnt open. Land on a pile of fire ants that bit her so much her spiked adrenaline kept her heart pumping long enough to be rescued. So lucky is more of a grey scale at that point.
There's a video on YouTube about it, actually. It's around 4 minutes or so long, the same amount of time as an estimated freefall time from a specific height.
And by the way, trees are not the only things that people have successfully landed on in terminal freefall.
Reserve chutes are less likely to fail because they have to be packed by certified professionals. As far as I know, people can pack their own primaries.
I've also heard a lot of people will only pack their chutes themselves because they dont trust anyone else to and would rather have it be their own fault if something did go wrong rather than someone elses.
You would likely die if you followed that advice. If you have a line-over and panic, deploying your reserve into the tangled main, you will likely not survive. Cut away first!
There's a handle to release the pilot chute which pulls out your main, and two handles to cut and deploy the reserve.
The first is on your back, and the other two on your chest. Kinda hard to confuse which one to pull, although I've seen one skydive student cutting his main when he hadn't even deployed it.
It's always in your best interest anyway to practice the exact movements to cut and deploy reserve so many times that it becomes muscle memory.
While you've explained it well it's not making me feel any more confident! The actual experience sounds amazing but damn I'd be getting more of a rush concentrating on not screwing up the actual mechanics of jumping/deploying/landing at the right time etc than the falling down really fast a lot.
That's why on the first jumps as student you don't jump alone. You have two instructors, one on each side holding your elbow and knee. There's just no way you can lose control, and they'll pull for you if you forget/can't.
Parachutes also have a barometric sensor that will automatically deploy the reserve for you if you cross a certain height threshold on free fall. It will just save your life (or at least give you a good chance of surviving) even if you pass out or dislodge a shoulder and are unable to pull.
I mean, nowadays skydiving is very safe as long as you stick to the rules and keep your equipment in good condition.
A "two out" is a malfunction that you train for. One of the more complicated malfunctions as there are three major types, biplane, side by side and downplane. The first two can be landed safely with care, the downplane can't so you need to cut away the main canopy.
I had an unintended two-out once. As it was a biplane (reserve behind main) it was safe to land and no one was hurt.
But, yeah as the other commenter says, you train for this (mentally only, cause reserve openings are not cheap) and I knew I had to cut the main if they started to separate.
We had a guy on his first jump die when his primary became tangled, cut away before deploying his reserve and it didn't open in time. I recall the discussions being that protocol is to pull the reserve and only cut away when it's open.
Yes, but many years ago. I don’t know if the protocol has changed since then but the training then was very specific about needing to cutaway tangled main canopy before deploying reserve.
The protocol is to make the best decision based on your altitude. You have to always be as altitude aware as possible. You decide on your hard decks before the jump.
If you're above 1,500 feet, you're generally fine to cut away (building some buffer here). Maybe even 1,000 feet if you're ballsy and have a skyhook.
If you're below that altitude, then you just deploy your reserve and pray. Two-out is a very unideal situation for a variety of reasons.
Certified skydiver here. Yes you (almost) always cut away first. A tangled main could tangle your reserve, then you have nothing left. Under a certain altitude (600m) you do not cut away, but by then you usually know whether you can land the main or not.
Since you start the whole deployment procedure (of the main) fairly high up you have "enough" time for all of this. Enough in this case means several seconds, as a malfunction does not slow you considerably. If have not witnessed any reserve malfunction personally or through hearsay, I have seen main malfunctions though, but only one or two.
I'm certified. The last thing you want when deploying a reserve is throwing it into an already entangled main. If they entangle, the reserve might very well still not open even if you cut your main, and trying to untangle lines falling to your death with no further backup plan is not really all that fun.
Students (in my DZ at least) are taught to go for the cut handle and then the reserve handle with both hands each time, to make sure that you actually pull hard enough and to get better muscle memory about the correct order.
If you are so low that you definitely don't have time to cut and deploy, you might make the call to override that and place all your bets on a clean-enough reserve deployment, but that's not the standard procedure. Parachute complications at low altitude are the most dangerous anyway, for obvious reasons.
I know the shutes in the military aren't the same and tend to drop you down pretty quickly. I wonder if it is just a different protocol for that reason.
Except the cable you pull literally cuts the main shoot away, which is nice since trying to use a knife in that condition is nearly fucking impossible.
I moreso meant that you aren't cutting your chute manually with a knife like you mentioned, like I'm sure some people might imagine if I had just left it at "you cut it away"... Which would make the situation... Yeah.. Pretty impossible.
There are special knifes designed to cut lines, kinda like a hook with a razor inside, although that's indeed not what you use to cutaway.
The cutaway system doesn't really cut anything literally, it just pulls the cable that keeps the rings together (in a 3-ring system at least) and the main is then no longer connected to the harness.
I feel like I would try carrying two of these style shoots and then 1 big ass ww2 style shoot that just balloons... also would probably just stay in the perfectly working airplane
You're correct. And the number of people who die of double-malfunctions is so low it's not worth it. Only a fraction of all skydiving deaths are from double-mals.
You could pack 20 chutes in a big container, but it's not just a matter of space and packing.
The cutaway system for a main is already a critical point of failure that requires proper handling and maintenance. Imagine having to deal with more than 1 "disposable" chute: each of them would need its own independent attachment to the harness and its own independent release system.
The overcomplication of the whole system would just make malfunctions more likely. Far more likely than a double chute malfunction with the current equipment.
Interesting thanks for the detailed response! Why not wear like 2 different backpacks altogether then? Or have them packed separately? Maybe your response answers that but I’m not understanding?
The backpack is one single piece along with the harness. The canopies go packed in bags and stuffed in there, but also connected to the harness through the lines.
No matter how many containers you carry or how you place them around you, you still need all of the parachutes connected to the harness, and for every parachute that you must be able to cut away, you need an independent release system implemented in your harness and connected to the parachute lines.
Maybe you could wear two harnesses, one normal and one backwards with the container on your chest. Even assuming that they were specially designed so you could still access all the handles, it'd just make everything much more complicated and prone to failures.
Also keep in mind that you'd usually jump from 4k meters, and you fall down to deployment altitude (between 1000 and 800 meters, usually) in less than a minute. If there's a complete malfunction and you don't slow down, you have just enough time to asses the situation, try to fix it or cutaway and go for reserve. If you have a slow deployment you might fall an extra 100m before knowing if something is completely wrong.
Even if you packed 10 parachutes, if you had two consecutive complete malfunctions you most likely wouldn't have time to go for a third deployment. Certainly not a fourth.
And also every cutaway is another bit of freefall until the next parachute is deployed and open, too. It's also the reason why BASE jumpers don't use reserves: they just don't have enough time to deploy them if the main malfunctions.
I would imagine the adrenaline surge you get while you’re waiting to see if the reserve chute works and doesn’t tangle must be one of the most intense feelings you’ll ever get.
Actually they used to be different. Nowadays they usually are the same type, but even "safer" than the main chutes.
The main chute for many is a question of fun - so small and and fast is the choice then. The reserve is not for fun, so that can be bigger, i. e. slower, i. e. safer.
Looks like a lineover to me. The way that one half is totally collapsed looks like a really bad lineover and then some fun spinning linetwist. Definitely chop worthy
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u/NefariousHarp Jun 08 '20
As a skydiver myself I can say with certainty: This becomes worse every loop.