Wingsuit skydive malfunction in slo mo

basejumper (62)in #skydiving • 6 years ago (edited)

Self-inflicted Mal while flying my Wingsuit yesterday.

FIRST OFF: My fault, not the fault of the wingsuit or equipment.

I went to pull and obviously didn't bring my arms in symmetrically, thus causing a rotation, which ended up with me deploying and rolling on to my back.

NOT IDEAL.

The bridle snags, so I have to manually pop the closing pin so that my canopy can come out. It all happens very fast, so I have slowed it down so you can see what I had to do to rectify the situation.

Video below:

It's not fun when you can see your pilot chute...it's a clear indicator that you have fucked up. (This image was from my rear view camera, but I saw the pilot chute with my own eyes from the front. Not cool).

Out of nearly 100 wingsuit jumps on this suit this is the 5th unstable deployment I have had, this being the worst. Its a reminder of how wingsuiting can bite ya.

There is a reason why its a 500 jump minimum requirement in the UK (or 200 jumps made within an 18 month period) to fly a wingsuit.

When it all goes to bollocks in a wingsuit, shit gets real, very quick!

Here are some stills of the incident:

The beginning of the mess. I had pulled my deployment handle and began to rotate onto my back

The pilot chute is out into the air now wanting to inflate.

Its grabbed air, like it is supposed to and gone up between my legs.

First problem, as now it is snagged, it can't get further up into the air so that it can pull my pin out.

I'm now fully on my back looking up at this shit show.

Time for the ol reach-around, to find some bridle to grab hold of and pull.

I found the piece of bridle that has the pin attached to it (pretty lucky to be fair)

You can see the closing pin attached to the bridle. I couldnt see this when it happened as this still is from my rear view camera, but I knew I had pulled it as I felt it.

Now I knew I was going to get a canopy out, it's a case of 'what type of canopy am I going to get?' ...

The movement of me popping the pin on my back caused me to roll back onto my front, which was handy, as I was in a good position for my canopy to come out now.

So for any non-skydiver (whuffo), now that the pin has released, the pilot chute is able to pull the deployment bag (d-bag) out of the container on my back, this d-bag contains my main parachute (canopy) inside of it.

It shouldn't come out sideways like this, but my body position is still pretty poor at this point, so its caused that. Its a first world problem in this situation...I was just happy that something was happening.

The deployment bag stows the lines with elastic bands, so as the bag is coming out it is pulling on the lines, so that they release from the elastic bands and come out evenly.