Last night, on my 113th jump, I had a wire strike. The canopy wrapped around the wire, hung there for a few seconds, then somehow unwrapped itself, reinflated itself, flew away from the object and I landed completely uninjured.
Troll 265 MDV, Gargoyle, 38 inch unvented zp pc, large mesh slider, indirect control only, 6 second delay.
This was a solo jump from a 1000 ft antenna with 3 sets of wires. The conditions were great, barely even 1 mph of wind at the top. I completely nailed the exit and got straight in to my track, I was having an absolute blast eyeballing the ground and watching the antenna lights go past. Life was sweet. I don't do many jumps from this kind of altitude so I took a fairly conservative delay and dumped at not much past 6 seconds. I dumped in full track but my body position felt sound, this was the technically most perfect jump I'd done in ages. The canopy opened hard and immediately spun 270 degress to the right, maybe a bit less (235?). My body was still facing forwards so there was now 3/4 of a twist in the lines. I kicked myself out of the twist and as I was coming around to face the direction of flight I grabbed a riser and tried to turn away but at that moment I hit the wire.
Judging by the state of my lines (they're now covered in grease) I hit the wire about 2/3 or 3/4 the way up the lines. The canopy collapsed in to a bag of **** and suddenly everything stopped and I just hung there. I stared at the canopy, not really believing what I was seeing. I looked at the wire, it was too far away to grab. I stared at the canopy again. I decided I was stuck here and that I was going to have to phone the police. Then the canopy started to move and I changed my mind. Now I was going to slide all the way down the wire. If I was lucky I'd survive the impact with huge injuries and I can't really describe how little I wanted that to happen. Then, before I could really tell what had happened, I was back under an inflated canopy flying away from the object. I was in the wrong setor (ie I'd passed through the wires) but the canopy seemed to be flying ok and I even stood the landing up.
Once I'd landed I just sort of stood there, still not really believing what had just happened. My hands were shaking. I collected up the canopy and started walking out but was in such a state that I wasn't really paying any attention to where I was going and got a bit lost. When I eventually got back to the car (probably half an hour later) I called my BASE pappa and babbled down the phone for a bit. Thanks Craig! Then just sat there trying to calm down before driving home.
To say that I got lucky would be a major understatement. People have suffered far worse consequences from far less severe accidents. This is a good example of having done everything right (the packjob was good, the conditions were good, the jump was good) and still things can go very wrong.
When I landed, apart from being suprised at being alive I was really angry that I'd "let" the whole thing happen. I felt that I'd reacted really badly and that I should have been able to avoid the strike but now I don't really know - I don't have a clear memory of exactly what happened.
I'm resigned to the fact that I've trashed the lineset, they're covered in grease and in a right state. But even if I've trashed the whole canopy you won't find me complaining.
Gus
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Originally Posted by Gus937
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