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From: coleman@sundae10.DAB.GE.COM (Richard Coleman)
Newsgroups: rec.skydiving
Subject: my first reserve ride (don't try this at home!!)
Message-ID: <1991May22.195426.17798@ge-dab.GE.COM>
Date: 22 May 91 19:54:26 GMT
Sender: coleman@sundae10 (Richard Coleman)
Reply-To: coleman@sunny.dab.ge.com (Richard Coleman)
Organization: GE Aerospace, SCSD
Lines: 20
Nntp-Posting-Host: sundae10.dab.ge.com

Well, I got my first reserve ride this weekend.  I thought I would
bare my soul for some net-wisdom.  I have 16 jumps (8 using hand-deploy).
I was using a different rig than what I had been using in the past, and
it had the pilot chute in a *slightly* different place than what I had
been using.  For some reason (probably stupidity) I did not do any
practice rip-cord pulls on this jump.  Well, guess what,  when it was
pull time I couldn't find my ripcord.  I tried 3 times, then popped
the reserve (my first time doing this).  Boy was I in for a surprise.
It came out so hard, it about knocked me out.  Now, I have to go to
the chiropractor every day for the next 2 weeks because of whiplash.
It's funny how something as simple as finding your ripcord can become
a problem when you can't spare the time to think about it.  Has anybody
else every had this problem?  Of course, from now on,  I will make sure
to do practice ripcord pulls.  I now understand why they make you do
so many of these during AFF training!!
-- 
Richard Coleman
GE Aerospace
Simulation & Control Systems Dept.
coleman@sunny.dab.ge.com