“You’re not building my confidence….”
I saw a Facebook comment where a potential new jumper wrote that being at the DZ during several recent malfunctions and cutaways was making him worry about the safety of the sport. “You’re not building my confidence”
Being present when other jumpers survive malfunctions can be a great learning experience and can help build your confidence.
What can we learn from other jumpers’ malfunctions?
We can learn that the equipment and procedures WORK! If you are talking to the jumper… they survived!
We can learn what went wrong and think about how to prevent that. After a friend packed himself a pilot-chute-in-tow, I learned to stow my bridle much more carefully.
We can learn how their emergency procedures worked. Did their EPs work as expected, or did the jumper have to do more? When a CRW jumper had a very complex problem and used a VERY unconventional solution… I filed that for potential future use.
We can learn from their attitude about the malfunction: “It was just a spinner. Damn, that MARD is sweet!”
It didn’t take me too long to realize that malfunctions are a part of the sport, are almost always readily managed with standard EPs, and that experienced jumpers are rather calm about the whole topic
