Near miss: parachutists and Bell LongRanger
 

Well, that would have got the adrenalin pumping. Well done to the chap who retrieved it all :ok:

**** would really hit the fan if the shut comes in the tail rotor of main rotor then you would wish you had a parachute.

Oooooh, I feel sick watching it. :yuk:

Reminds me of a time in my fixed wing days when flying a Seminole along the Vic Surf Coast under 8/8 cloud to hear "4 canopies away" on the CTAF only to see something black whoosh past about 100 metres away. Would have made a dent ... :eek:

Scary stuff - especially as the guy doing the untangling almost certainly was not secured to anything. At least if he had fallen and ended up dangling beneath, they might have been able to land him gently, unlike a hang-up in a fixed-wing.

f*****g idiots.

Makes a change from the seat belts being left dangling!

If the canopy had gone through the tail rotor, would the pilot have been able to carry out an autorotation or keep control of it?

What??? Is the quality of posting diluting over the years on Pprune - or am I a GOM?:ugh:

As a skydiver and PP currently in the middle of a heli add-on, scary stuff indeed! You are trained to "always protect your handles when moving about the aircraft" but obviously stuff happens, and obviously could have lost the entire aircraft, although the jumpers might have made it out OK. Scarier for pilots of "cabin class" aircraft as they don't have to wear a pilot emergency chute and so have no chance when the bits by the tail are totaled.

I was on a Twin Otter jump once when a guy's pilot chute got loose on climb out (skydiver climb out at ~12K AGL or so, not aircraft climb out). I saw it go out the door and center punched the guy through the door and out the airplane. Everyone safe although he had a long descent while the rest of us did freefall. I was worried that he was going to think it was all my fault but by the time he got down I had several other eyewitnesses from the load who were very happy with my actions.

Farsouth: the intrepid jumper who did the untangling was unlikely to be in danger if he had fallen, wearing a parachute as he was. The entire load appeared pretty cool and collected as they solved the emergency, including the unfortunate jumper who realized, with the assistance of the intrepid jumper, that the best course was to release the main chute from the harness (there is a release handle for this) and rely on his reserve chute. This is all relative to my perspective as a skydiver, of course! :)

aa777888 - thanks for that - I had only watched it once and missed the fact that the guy with the tangled chute had cut away and gone. I was thinking the "untangler" was sorting out his own chute.

I wonder about the Pilot's actions after the fun began?

Having done some Jumping many years ago myself....and have flown Jumpers in both Airplanes and Helicopters as a Pilot...I would have slowed right down.....to minimize the force of the wind on the Extractor Chute....and as a Jumper I would have grabbed the Extractor Chute by its top and thus collapsed the chute and enabling me to control it with minimum force.

This was a very dangerous situation and am really glad it worked out the way it did.....the Jumpers did a good job all things considered.

OMG
 

That must have been really scary for all concerned! I wonder if the pilot knew the extend of the potential problem?

@T.C. I thought this was actually a very interesting video, expecially after min 3:00

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...ps9ecf4c1b.jpg

Very scary :sad::eek: And very close to ... One reason why we don't do that from B206 JR III anymore !

JR

Hmm interesting video

aa777888

As a jumper ( and jump pilot) that incident stinks of a too loose closure loop. Seems as though the bag came out first and then the pilot chute. I always made sure my pin went in really tight to prevent this sort of really nasty malfunction. The mango would have really hit the fan with a FW aircraft running in 80-90 kts

Maybe I should wear a bailout rig from now on.

The fault was traced to a too long closing loop.

Totally agree with Aesir, around min 3:00 was the best part of this video :D

Maxed-out and RotaryWing: I watched the video more carefully in full screen and see what you are saying. The bag is definitely out first. Thanks for pointing that out!

I jump a Racer and as you know Racer's pack tight :) And I never jump without a pin check by somebody who I trust. If somebody offers me a pin check I won't refuse out of courtesy, but I'll still make sure there's one by somebody I trust in addition to that. And a good pin check includes a good bridle routing check, too.

And if I ever decide to do the jump pilot thing I'm definitely wearing a pilot rig, required or not!

I jump a VSE infinity, no way my pin or bridle is ever coming out!

TC
 

I guess we are maturing gently? The risks the young pups do seem extreme, apart from military(who have to do it) who on earth would want to jump out of any aircraft?