Skydiving...practice your emergency procs

[iflyvfr]

Yesterday dawned perfect VFR all over Ohio. In the air by 8:30 to meet friends, we headed to PMH for breakfast. Bellies full but not finished flying, we headed SE to a grass strip hard on the Ohio River: I41-Newlon on the West Virginia side.

We found the place no problem. The approach to the East was thru a chute of trees and as we surveyed & discussed the 2300' strip a helpful voice on multicom offered "the grass is fine." I've been into shorter but they were like golf courses. The grass on this one was much taller and so the landing was soft and I was stopped in no time.

As soon as we got out of the way, a 206 loaded 4 jumpers & departed opposite direction. A few minutes later at 4500' we heard 'jumper away' and watched one exit; that's always a thrill as they hurl themselves into space. As his chute deployed he spun around and the canopy didn't seem to fully inflate. I noticed his legs were kicking like a bicyclist and thought, 'that's some kind of technique to fix a problem.' The spins & the kicking continued 3 or 4 turns until he cut away and deployed his emergency chute. He landed w/o incident a few minutes later.

Unfortunately the wind was such that it blew his pack and main chute into the river, which is flowing rapidly due to heavy rains. A recovery team with a canoe was launched about 30' later far downstream.

After checking out the on-field restaurant and campground, we prepared to leave just as the 206 launched another group of 4. Pretty soon, a student solo jumper exited at 4500'. Immediately it was apparent he was in trouble. Not 4 feet from me, his ground-based instructor was already on the handheld telling the jumper he had a "line over" (I think) and he was going to have to cut away. Sure enough, the pack separated and out came the emergency chute. Whew!!!

As with the first, the gear floated down and splashed into the Ohio. Another 1-2k AMUs potentially lost. Everyone landed safely. With 8 jumpers launched and 2 emergency deployments I was a) glad everyone was OK, and b) determined to forfeit any thought of jumping out of an airplane.

Both parachutists performed under duress, a testament to their training. Just another example of the fascinating things we are privileged to experience as aviators. Interesting experience and great strip. The restaurant doesn't open until 5 PM, so call before you head there expecting a meal. The lady working inside let us in to tour the place and indicated that based on recent press coverage business had picked up and the owner might open earlier on the weekends to accommodate pilots and interested towns folk.

 

[Unit74]

Sounds like whomever is packing the chutes needs to be fired.

 

[Kelvin]

Sounds like whomever is packing the chutes needs to be fired.

...or choked...

 

[JCranford]

The first one, if he was kicking like a bicyclist, was trying to clear line twists. Usually not a problem unless there are a lot of them, which apparently there were.

The second one, if he had a 'line over' was unrecoverable. A line over is exactly what it sounds like, one of the suspension lines is over the top of the canopy, squeezing it into a bow tie.

In over 3300 jumps I have deployed my reserve 6 times. One was a line over. One was unrecoverable line twists. One was a tension knot on a tandem rig. My passenger never knew I deployed the reserve until I told her. The others were various other malfunctions.

Sometimes it happens on your first jump. Sometimes on your 2000th jump. Gotta be ready all the time!

Congrats to both jumpers for saving their own lives.

As an aside, the lineover is often a packing error. The line twists are usually caused by poor body position during deployment. Sometimes a packing error too tho...

 

[Hank S]

You bring back memories! I was at HTW for seven years, until last year. PMH is a great breakfast run. My first visit to Newlon was on checkride prep. Nice field. The campground is fairly new, the restaurant is newer. Tell Carl I said Hey.

I remember when the skydivers moved there, and saw one really bad landing (he went home unassisted though) but never saw any cutaways. The River is a force of its own, and something I had to adjust to when I moved to Huntington.

The best way in and out of Newlon is to land and depart over the soccer fields (land upstream on 2, depart downstream on 20), and keep close to the river where it bends; there's a little bump that will throw you airborne before the plane is ready to fly. This will keep you away from the cement plant's gravel pile on short final if you land downstream.

Wishing you many happy returns, with less excitement than this trip. I'm jealous . . .

 

[iflyvfr]

The first one, if he was kicking like a bicyclist, was trying to clear line twists. Usually not a problem unless there are a lot of them, which apparently there were.

The second one, if he had a 'line over' was unrecoverable. A line over is exactly what it sounds like, one of the suspension lines is over the top of the canopy, squeezing it into a bow tie.

In over 3300 jumps I have deployed my reserve 6 times. One was a line over. One was unrecoverable line twists. One was a tension know on a tandem rig. My passenger never knew I deployed the reserve until I told her. The others were various other malfunctions.

Sometimes it happens on your first jump. Sometimes on your 2000th jump. Gotta be ready all the time!

Congrats to both jumpers for saving their own lives.

As an aside, the lineover is often a packing error. The line twists are usually caused by poor body position during deployment. Sometimes a packing error too tho...

Thanks for your explanation, I'll share it with my buddies. Other than the expense for the potentially lost gear, overall they seemed pretty circumspect about it. But I didn't speak with either one of them.

 

[iflyvfr]

You bring back memories! I was at HTW for seven years, until last year. PMH is a great breakfast run. My first visit to Newlon was on checkride prep. Nice field. The campground is fairly new, the restaurant is newer. Tell Carl I said Hey.

I remember when the skydivers moved there, and saw one really bad landing (he went home unassisted though) but never saw any cutaways. The River is a force of its own, and something I had to adjust to when I moved to Huntington.

The best way in and out of Newlon is to land and depart over the soccer fields (land upstream on 2, depart downstream on 20), and keep close to the river where it bends; there's a little bump that will throw you airborne before the plane is ready to fly. This will keep you away from the cement plant's gravel pile on short final if you land downstream.

Wishing you many happy returns, with less excitement than this trip. I'm jealous . . .

Ha ha, yes we landed over the ballfields, but the wind picked up enough while we were there that we went out on 02, or we would have gone out on 20 for sure. As it was, we were plenty lite and the field plenty long.

We would love to go back, camp out and eat there. And yes the pilot gave us the lowdown on the runway there and talked specifically about avoiding that hump on the campground side of the runway..

 

[Hank S]

Ha ha, yes we landed over the ballfields, but the wind picked up enough while we were there that we went out on 02, or we would have gone out on 20 for sure. As it was, we were plenty lite and the field plenty long.

We would love to go back, camp out and eat there. And yes the pilot gave us the lowdown on the runway there and talked specifically about avoiding that hump on the campground side of the runway..

You'll only forget the hump once . . . Something about being airborne below flying speed while the runway curves away from you . . . And the ditch is moving towards you . . .

 

[tmyers]

If I had known you were going to PMH I would have headed that way. I was getting my BFR and we went to Urbana for lunch in the middle of the flight review. Could have just as easily been Portsmouth.

 

[tree96]

I hadn't been in there since they put the light poles up for the soccer fields.

They have done a lot of work making it a nice place. The restaurant has good food as well. I took my son down there by car to watch the skydivers. Seems like a lot more activity in and and out of there as well.