sniffer <nospam@any.com> wrote:

> I do know of an 18 year
> old idiot who had no knowledge of any sort. He bought a second hand PG,
> tied a rope to the harness and the other end to Landover. Apparently he
> frightened himself to death after shooting up to the height of 2 houses.

Yeah well, that's almost exactly what I did about 23 years ago. First
weekend I had my square canopy was too windy for skydiving, so I went
down to the local park with a couple of mates, my Mini 850 and 200 feet
of rope. Tied one end to the Mini bumper, the other end to my chest
strap and tally ho! (Quick release? what's that?)

After an initial hop and running like mad, I gave the signal for "speed
up". My driver sped up, I shot up and nearly filled my pants. About 30
feet up the canopy rose above the wind shadow provided by the row of
trees to one side, and the cross-wind blew it sideways. All kinds of
messy stuff happened, with much plummeting, swooping, stalling, jerking
forward and up, more plummeting and sort-of hook turns back up into the
air. Eventually we ran out of field, I did a marginally respectable
landing and decided parascending wasn't the sport for me.

Later that afternoon we went up a nearby hill, about 600 ft top to
bottom, and tried to get airborne by running/falling downhill as fast as
possible. I actually managed a couple of 20 ft "glides" before
collapsing half the canopy (only five(!) cells) and crunching in hard.

How on earth I survived another fifteen years of skydiving and hang
gliding with that kind of idiot attitude I don't know, but I'm at least
a little older and more cautious now, if not wiser.

cheers
Pd

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