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Practicing for canopy cut away (the easy way)

by André Lemaire, 2005

Every spring, for a number of years now, other than participating in the National Safety Day, I have a little ritual I like to follow, i.e. practice doing cut aways while suspended from a harness, each trial ending in a real drop. I usually do at least 5 times, and I always use my own equipment. I very much like the idea of using my own equipment : should my parachute ever fail me, it’s my own equipment that I’ll be dealing with.

The hundred dollar question: Of course you know what to do in the event of a malfunction but, if you’ve never had to cut away, are you sure you’ll be able to cut away your main chute and, especially, activate your reserve? Remember you never did it before! As you know, when under intense emotions or great stress, the mind does not work normally and the simple and logical actions to take are suddenly not so obvious anymore. The accident statistics are very clear:

“It’s something you need to think twice about ! "

To prevent such possible confusion, there’s nothing better than practice. By practicing with your own equipment and with a real drop, you end up better equipped to face any contingencies, especially if you use high-performance chutes and/or if you don’t have a static line on the reserve. We still hear about accidents where divers cut away their chute and never open their reserve…!

Here’s a list of the necessary material and how I proceed so it doesn’t cost too much.

Suggested conditions and material:

• One basement with access to the joists (the 2 x 10s supporting the floor above you)
• Two 5/16’’ or 3/8’’ screws terminated with a ring and nut
• 2 x 30 inches #17 strap (type 17, 1’’ wide nylon webbing # W 9970) from Paragear, the same 1’’ webbing used for elevators.
• 2 D rings (D ring H300H) from Paragear
• 2 adapters (2’’seat belts adjusters H348) from Paragear
• Masking tape
• Two old risers with 3 rings (the small rings are good for all equipment) ask your rigger
• A spare reserve handle (the same as on your equipment, no need for the cable)
• A mattress and/or cushions, etc. (to soften the drop)

Note: All this is done without opening the reserve and without removing the main chute from the bag.

Preparation of the container/harness pack:

• Pull out the reserve’s activation handle from its pocket and fold it away inside, near the top, under the main web just below the shoulder, and keep it into place with several layers of masking tape.
• Put the trial reserve handle in the pocket and use several layers of masking tape around the main web to simulate resistance.
• Disconnect the elevators, open the shoulder riser covers, fold back the risers onto themselves, place them under the riser protector flaps and close back the shoulder riser covers.
• Attach the equipment by connecting the 3 rings. The equipment doesn’t have to be placed very high. To make things easier, you can get into the equipment with your feet on the floor once it’s attached to the suspended harness. To put a charge on the equipment, put your feet behind you with your legs straight and your body leaning forward (where a mattress has been set).

The trials:

• Close and adjust your thigh straps and tighten your chest strap.
• With your legs stretched together behind you, lean forward to create tension on the harness.
• Simulate a jump with waving, track, and really throw your pilot chute to the side.
• Imagine you’re in trouble and you have to cut away your canopy and proceed to your: identification, decision and action.
• At action, grab your cutaway handle and your reserve handle after having looked at both.
• Pull the cutaway handle, then and only then, your reserve handle (thumb in the handle) even if you’ve already hit the mattress. If your reserve handle is hard to pull, help your left hand with your right.
• Get out of your equipment, put everything back as before, and repeat several times.
• When you’re finished, remove the masking tape, put the reserve’s handle in its pocket (the one with a cable and a pin that locks the reserve’s loop), reconnect the two risers which have been folded under the riser covers and check out your entire equipment (handle-cable-reserve pin, AAD, pilot chute-kill line-main closing pin, handle-cable-3 ring system).

Note: You can do that by yourself whenever you want or with skydiver friends and have a good laugh as they, too, will get their turn in the suspended harness. End the exercise with a couple of good beers and that’s it!

(Translated from the original French text by par Jean Charland)

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