No Shit There I Was: Wingsuit Virgin
It was my first wingsuit jump…I was underqualified and changing variables. I was a little uncurrent because of a lack of winter jumping, but managed to get out to a popular northeastern turbine DZ that jumps year-round. After a few freefly and tracking jumps to get back into the groove I donned the suit. Because it was so cold out (as winter-time jumping sometimes is :p) I changed my gloves from my regular tackified Newmann’s to a warmer cotton brand that I would find to be slipper later on.
I’m a pretty self-taught kind of guy and have been told I have a good head on my shoulders and approach things the right way. So I was confident, knew my EP’s, practiced, did all the appropriate training but was still underqualified (probably around 150 jumps at the time and no FFC or wingsuit coach at my local DZ). I got up in the plane and had a phenomenal exit, and really picked up the flying aspect pretty quickly.
This was in a Birdman GTi which is considered more or less a good suit to start in, not necessarily a “beginner” suit however. Regardless, I was having fun flying lines and carving and getting the feel of things and because of my slow fall rate decided it was OK to smoke it down to my regular pull altitude. By the time I decided to pull I was passing through 3k. I reached back and pulled but my non-tackified gloves slipped off my hackey handle! I went back to grab for my PC but found nothing was there, I must have half pulled it out and I had the impression that it sitting in my burble not inflated. Thoughts of pulling silver flashed through my mind as I went back one last time. I found some bit of fabric still in my BOC and chucked it with a rather hefty flick of the wrist. I looked over my shoulder and saw an inflated PC begin the deployment process.
I found myself in the saddle around 1800ft with 3 line twists. My conservative loading (1.0/1) on a quick opening Triathlon 160 gave me the leeway to get away with this- the canopy wasn’t diving or turning as I pulled myself out of my linetwists and unzipped my suit.
Lessons learned?
1) Formal training would have drilled me to open higher than normal.
2) Complacency kills! Because things were going great I decided to smoke it lower- this could have been fatal!
3) Changing too many variables at a time (new suit, new gloves) is not a good choice.
Hopefully some of the newer birds can learn something from this. I am all the more humbled and wiser because of the experience and as a result, always am more aware during the opening process- giving more effort into my pulls than I did before.
Thanks!
-AG
–
Andrew Garcia
http://www.whoisandrewgarcia.com
http://www.inseparablenomads.com
Do you have a similar story to Andrew’s? What would you tell someone who just got down from doing something like this? Add your two cents in the comments below.
New poll: Who’s the most badass female swooper?
Swoopers are pretty cool, there’s really no denying it (as much as we’d like to). Female swoopers, though – they just plain rock. Whether it’s because she wins the most competitions, has the best attitude or is just straight up a badass, which girl do you root for at the end of the day? I know I’ll have a tough time picking only one, too!
Who is the most badass female swooper?
- Diana Blackburn (29%, 96 Votes)
- Ian Drennan (26%, 86 Votes)
- Kaz Sheekey (20%, 67 Votes)
- Jessica Edgeington (16%, 53 Votes)
- Pia McFarland (7%, 22 Votes)
- Nina Engel (2%, 7 Votes)
- Jules McConnel (1%, 3 Votes)
- Denise "Sunny Dee" Chervenak (0%, 2 Votes)
Total Voters: 336
Loading ...Did we forget someone? Comment if you’d like to nominate another badass swooper-ita.
P.S. – Sorry Ian, it’s just too easy sometimes.
Swooping in Raeford
Pia McFarland and Brian Buechler putting on the big boy pants!
This past weekend, 37 canopy pilots met up pondside at the Raeford
Parachute Center in North Carolina. The event was the fifth and last meet of the Florida Canopy Piloting Association league for the 2009 season. On hand was a healthy mix of pro and amateur competitors, ready to lay it all on the line for 6 rounds of speed, distance and zone accuracy, to find out at the end who would be crowned the 2009 league champion.
North Carolina was in a bit of a pissy mood and kept threatening to drench competitors and spectators alike. By mid-morning, the first competition load finally took off and competition began. During the speed rounds, two competitors decided to test themselves against the density of planet
Earth; planet won in both cases. Jairo Garcia was able to walk away (very slowly) whilst Morgan Lane got a full service ride from the local ambulance service. To the best of our knowledge, both should recover well.
“Happy Swooper” Marat Leiras set a couple of new records during this meet. He set a new record in speed that qualifies both as a state and national record of 2.472 seconds. The distance record of 115 meters (337.3 ft) will be a state record only. Both records have been submitted to USPA and await
validation by the association.
At the end of a long day with multiple weather holds, it was finally time for the award ceremony. League director Albert Berchtold gave a short and sweet speech and immediately went on to announce the awards (smart move, considering the hordes of hungry skydivers awaiting food).
The top finishers at the Raeford Swoop meet were:
1. Critter Weiss, Atlanta Skydiving Center (GA) – 444.05 points
2. Curt Bartholomew, Air Adventures (FL) – 410.88 points
3. Joe Ablen, U.S. Army Golden Knights (NC) – 399.32 points
4. Micah Couch, Skydive DeLand (FL) – 367.02 points
5. “Big Steve” Haseman, Skydive the Farm (GA) – 365.22 points.
After a healthy amount of high-fives and man-hugs, it was on to crown the 2009 FLCPA league champion. It had been announced earlier in the season that the winner of the league would get a free ride to go compete in the USPA Nationals, including airfare, hotel, competition jumps and
registration. Albert also announced that the runner up would get competition jumps and registration comped as well. The top five finishers would be issued “PRO” cards by the league, so quite a lot was on the line for the top contenders.
Showing off the bling!
The top five were:
1. Curt Bartholomew, Air Adventures (FL)*
2. Micah Couch, Skydive DeLand (FL)
3. Jairo Garcia, Skydive Palatka (FL)
4. Shane Shaffer, Skydive Palatka (FL)
4. Kai Sherwood, Skydive Orange (VA)
* Golden Knight and World Champion Greg Windmiller actually tied Curt in points for the first place, but since he already has a PRO status, he wasn’t eligible for the title.
All in all a great meet and it will be exciting to see how these guys and gal do at future competitions.
Welcome!
You found us. We are still arranging things and moving in here, so please pardon any dust, and let us know (lara@blueskiesmag.com or comment) if you find anything wrong with the site, you can’t find what you’re looking for, or have suggestions for what you would like to see. Here are some things you probably want to know:
About the magazine
- We’re shooting for a July issue to start.
- Blue Skies Magazine will be a monthly print magazine, with a combined issue December/January and/or June/July issue.
- We’re an independent air sports magazine, so we’ll be covering BASE, skydiving, ground launching, speed flying, paragliding, hang gliding and any other human-powered air sport around the globe – but mostly skydiving in the U.S. to start.
About the website
- The website will have all the little stuff that doesn’t fit in the mag and time-sensitive news, plus extra features – like video, photo galleries, etc. that don’t fit so well on the printed page.
- The links up at the very top are static pages; they probably won’t change anytime soon.
- The links below the Blue Skies Magazine logo are Categories; we’ll add, delete, modify those as we go along.
- We’ll have feeds for the whole site and each category; so, if you’re only interested in the News, you can subscribe to just that feed, for example.
- Like I said, we’re still sorting things out on the website, so if something changes that you liked, or we add something you don’t, please let us know.
Any other questions? Let us know. Welcome in, make yourself at home and thank you!
No Shit There I Was
Got a good(?) tale of your own harrowing incident that you’d like to share? Or, did you do something that was this close to being an “incident”? Are you open to a discussion about it? Let us know – e-mail Lara at lara@blueskiesmag.com.
New Cypres Website
Airtec, the German manufacturer of the Cypres AAD, has launched their re-designed website, www.cypres.cc. Users can explore the interactive Cypres, complete with videos of the cutter in action, units being dunked in water and run over by beer trucks. Fun for the whole family—and very informative for anyone with an interest in their gear (which should be everyone!). Features are still being added, according to company spokesman Martin Thannheiser.
experience