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Study on parachute use

Favorite thing said by the Black Hats at jump school: If your main chute fails you have the rest of your life to pull the reserve.
 
Doubt said:
Favorite thing said by the Black Hats at jump school: If your main chute fails you have the rest of your life to pull the reserve.
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I jumped with a guy who had a streamer plus tangled reserve in his previous jump from 7200' a couple months prior.
Good sign, or bad?
Not sure... but my main was a real slooooow opener. :D
 
arthwollipot said:
Originally, it was just to get troops into places where runways didn't exist. Then, I guess, a few crazy people decided that it was fun and continued to do it.
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Erm... Sorry arthwollipot, but it really wasn't.

The parachute was around for a long time before it was used to deploy soldiers.

That's not even the first military use.

The history of parachutes is quite interesting, and much older than you might think.

ParachuteWP
 
jonesdave116 said:
Can't see the point in jumping out of planes when such things as runways exist.
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Pushing the limits of human experience seems like an obvious point to me.

Airplanes aren't made to land on runways. They're made to expand the realm of human achievement.

Your problem isn't the runways. Your problem is the prospect of approaching your limit of human achievement.
 
jonesdave116 said:
Can't see the point in jumping out of planes when such things as runways exist.
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A colleague of mine who was a pilot met a woman who was a keen parachutist and asked her, "Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" Her reply was, "Show me a perfectly good airplane, and I won't jump out of it." As they ended up married to each other, I suspect they came to respect each other's point of view.

Dave
 
Q: Why would anyone jump out of a plane?

A: To join the Caterpillar Club:

Wikipedia said:
The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft....anybody who has saved their life by using a parachute after bailing out of a disabled aircraft is eligible. The requirement that the aircraft is disabled naturally excludes parachuting enthusiasts in the normal course of a recreational jump, or those involved in military training jumps.
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The club is highly selective, but admitted the late George H W Bush.
 
Dave Rogers said:
A colleague of mine who was a pilot met a woman who was a keen parachutist and asked her, "Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" Her reply was, "Show me a perfectly good airplane, and I won't jump out of it." As they ended up married to each other, I suspect they came to respect each other's point of view.

Dave
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True story: my first skydive was out of a little modified high-wing that the pilot had trouble starting and looked like a rusty lawnmower. We joked later that we were glad to be getting out early because we doubted it would land in one piece.

For those who never did this, climbing out on the strut, and pushing off was a ton of fun and worth the price of admission in spades. The actual parachuting down was a little dull.
 
novaphile said:
Erm... Sorry arthwollipot, but it really wasn't.

The parachute was around for a long time before it was used to deploy soldiers.

That's not even the first military use.

The history of parachutes is quite interesting, and much older than you might think.

ParachuteWP
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Reading that wiki article it seems like it was originally designed just as a curiosity, to see if it could be done. The first real practical use was to balloons that were potentially under fire from enemy aircraft, and later from damaged aircraft.

The first military use of the parachute was by artillery observers on tethered observation balloons in World War I. These were tempting targets for enemy fighter aircraft, though difficult to destroy, due to their heavy anti-aircraft defenses. Because it was difficult to escape from them, and dangerous when on fire due to their hydrogen inflation, observers would abandon them and descend by parachute as soon as enemy aircraft were seen.
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People had demonstrated their effectiveness prior to this, but that seems to be the first practical use.

The "jumping from a balloon" use was developed much earlier than this, but it's not clear from the wiki article whether it was actually used much prior to WWI, it says only:
Also in 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a hot-air balloon. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later claimed to have had the opportunity to try it himself in 1793 when his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to descend (this event was not witnessed by others).
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There's no discussion of whether or not this became a common precaution for balloonists in the intervening century. If that were the case I'd say that was the first real practical use.
 
arthwollipot said:
Originally, it was just to get troops into places where runways didn't exist. Then, I guess, a few crazy people decided that it was fun and continued to do it.
Click to expand...

The Russians first thought up military parachuting (or at least the idea of air dropping troops) in the 1930s. One of their first ideas was to roll the guys up in thick bundles of straw and canvas and kick them out the back of the aeroplane like someone doing an emergency airdrop of dining room carpets. :jaw-dropp
 
kellyb said:
The BMJ does a quasi-satirical one every Christmas.
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Most of the medical journals do.

This article is a republication of a December issue joke article in the CMAJ from the 90s.
I can't find a reference.

There is a skeptical angle on this. I used it as an example of differential evidence types in medicine. Our decision to use parachutes is akin to science based medicine, but not akin to evidence based medicine. Sometimes you don't need an RCT to know a procedure is valid.
 
Thermal said:
True story: my first skydive was out of a little modified high-wing that the pilot had trouble starting and looked like a rusty lawnmower. We joked later that we were glad to be getting out early because we doubted it would land in one piece.

For those who never did this, climbing out on the strut, and pushing off was a ton of fun and worth the price of admission in spades. The actual parachuting down was a little dull.
Click to expand...

My ex and I did a jump on our second anniversary.

Single-prop plane stripped down for weight that looked really unfit for flight. As were rumbling down the tarmac (think of a 77 Ford LTD on a bumpy road) one of the instructors asks my wife if she’s feeling nervous.

“Not at all, because I am not landing in this piece of crap.”
 
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