Another skydiving death at Perris
 

Darwin works.

Very inappropriate hat.
 

RIP Sean, 8000 jumps is a lot to have made such a mistake. Maybe it was turbulence or a collapsed cell, but it must be said that jumping with a bush hat is a bit stupid.

Reports are he got too deep in the corner (270 turn to land) and tried to dig out on his risers. This was on a speed round. He apparently hit the edge water going 60-70 mph.

Trying to dig out with your rear risers will never work. I've seen more than one really bad accident with guys trying to save it on the rears. Too much rear riser will create a high speed stall by making too high an angle of attack.

Rear rised foolishness
 

Yes, I never understood the rear riser story. A stall at high speed takes away your last chance of not breaking yourself too badly by taking away the only friend you have, lift. You can control things better just using brakes.

Just goes to show that no matter who you are, how much you have done it, you will screw up. Hopefully not badly, as in this case.

RIP, Blue Skys.

If you are an active skydiver, I suggest you get with a canopy control coach at your DZ so that you can gain a better grasp on the usage of risers in sport parachuting. If no coach(ing) is available I suggest you read Brain Germains book The Parachute and it's pilot to help you on your way to understanding rear riser use among many other valuable skills.

My company has a facility right across the road from the Perris Valley Skydiving Center so every time an ambulance or coroners vehicle goes by we know that there was an accident out there. What get's me is that it always seems like the victims have a lot of experience.

In my experience, people get hurt from their own actions while jumping with a very few jumps, or a lot of jumps.

Usually under 20, or over 500. In between is pretty rare.

I guess in between those numbers (plus or minus) you are still well-trained enough to know better, and not sufficiently jaded to think that you can get away with it.

Check out USPA's magazine for the incident reports.

TR

I just got back into the Sport a couple of years ago, after close to a 30 year hiatus. I had less than a half-dozen jumps, on an other than round canopy (986 ttl), and have adapted to the "Sport of Today" somewhat quickly. The problems @ Perris are systemic, and it happens in the more senior Jumpers. All of the folks that burned in out there in the past couple of years had a combined total of close to +/- 50K TOTAL JUMPS!! Personally, I don't care if I ever see a "Large Star/Formation" as a participant again. What has killed most of these folks is being addressed by the USPA, and that has been collisions between folks under perfectly good/safe canopies!! The latest, was an attempted "Swoop" which is usually an extremely radical and steep approach to landing, that brings you in, @ extreme speeds and angles of approach, that if done succefully, you fly for a considerable distance in close proximity to the GROUND, if not......you eat it!!

Later
Martin

AM is spot on.

I have a few jumps and when I arrived on island I went out to the DZ here and spent a Saturday and after that experience I have nev been back in 2 yrs. they were just a accident waiting to happen and I had survived tooo many near misses in my younger years to get killed with a bunch of idiots.....

I do jump sometimes when I get up to the states......

It was actually worse there about twenty years ago.

Contaminated fuel and an inexperienced pilot led to the crash of a Twin Otter on take off that killed about 15 people. An ill maintained DC-3 caught on fire while going down the runway but luckily everyone got out in time. Jumpers showing up for manifest after smoking ganja in the parking lot or stumbling out of the bar. It was a pretty wild. The owners were actually pretty nice and down to earth people though. Don't know who runs it now.

Thanks for the tip.
 

I unfortunately had to give up sport parachuting some time ago due to a non-parachuting injury. I will however look for the Germain book as I am always eager to learn. I am sure things have progressed from when the National Team I captained won the Bronze Medal at the World Championships of RW and the Gold at the Deutchland Cup of CRW. My team only managed to finish 5th at the First World Cup of CRW in France so any information, even in retrospect, is valued.

Guy, sorry to hear you are no longer able to jump. A lot has changed since the 80's with regards to skydiving equipment and even competition formats you may be familiar with have been modified quite a bit.

In this instance, swooping or canopy piloting is now it's own competitive discipline, something that didn't exist not long ago. Sadly, a lot of people end up with hardware in them and or dead from botched swoops, most of these accidents occur in a non competitive setting. In this case, this was an actual competition and the deceased was an accomplished canopy pilot. Germain's book covers a lot of good info on canopy flight in general, which might seem old hat to you, but there is some good info on swooping specifically that may be of interest to you. If you Google his name, I am positive you will also come across plenty of videos he's made and papers he has written on canopy flight.

I knew that plane, N141GW, well. It was from our stable at Golden West Airlines. After we went out of business, it went to Honduras for awhile then PV bought or leased it and changed the N number to 141PV. I don't recall a mechanical problem on that flight but I believe the pilot feathered the wrong prop when the bad fuel shut an engine down. Ironically, the lead NTSB investigator was a former GWA pilot and had a lot of time in 141GW.

Pat