Flight Patterns - Part 2/4: Check Your Controls
Apr 19
Written By Gabriel Donaldson
As a parachute opens, it leads the Smokejumper on the next in a phase of choose-your-own-adventure of options. Parachute malfunctions are low on the list of likelihood and everything beyond a malfunction results in trauma. It’s not a preferred option. The most optimal path, however, and probably the choice of a favorable amount of Smokejumpers is a self-packed, slow, snivel. Or, a nice soft opening. Others enjoy the snap that comes with an exposed nose (a technique used in Alaska to assist in faster parachute openings at lower, more humid altitudes), others could care less. In the time that passes between “pull thousand” and having a functioning parachute overhead, the jumper is exposed to their next very scary and very real frame of time, where the vehicle they plan to use to get to earth is not fully functioning.
Smokejumpers go through RAM-AIR Rookie Training or Parachute School, which is preceded by a hell week of sorts, spread out over six weeks of intensive Rookie Training. Becoming a rookie candidate takes years of focus and dedication which leads up to immersive parachute training, risk management and other tactical and strategic wildland firefighting trainings. LIke most things, there really is no comparison, save the paramilitary and prototype models that are used to manage a specialized group of very unique individuals. Broken femurs, disembowelment, death, these are realities that Smokejumpers face in their day to day work, although, it’s mostly safe, and in most cases, a necessary tool in the pursuit of protecting life and safety.
Parachute school means weeks of parachute landing falls (PLF’s), two-a-day workouts, physical tests, repelling, tree climbing, laps up and town a three story plane mockup in over a hundred pounds of gear to jump out and respond to the demands of a megaphone: “Drogue in tow! Drogue in tow!” or “Streamer! Streamer!”, over and over and over again. “Rookie Trainers” keeping a close watch on every Rookie’s actions as they exit the mockup. Jumpers respond to these demands, and if they fail to, they get washed, or returned to another program. Sometimes Rookie's get hurt, sometimes they have trouble under canopy, sometimes they can’t nail their practicals, whatever the case, it happens, and it all happens in order to protect the operator from extremely rare, but still likely outcomes during a parachute jump. Keep in mind, that these candidates are also training without tandem support or communication to learn how to navigate onto precarious knife ridges, saddles and even moving bodies of water.
But to get there, they have to follow the next in a series of checks, and hopefully, they’re merely “checking their controls”. As the canopy opens over head (and if you’re doing it right you should see it open) the jumper begins a succession of short and careful observations. First they “check their canopy”, looking overhead and determining that it is not malfunctioning or at risk. Then they check their airspace, for other jumpers, mostly, but other things, too. Finally, they “check their controls” by doing a smooth and deep right hand turn, followed by the same on the left side and moving into a deep “stall” where the canopy is crushed and devoid of most of its air while violently surging back and forth like a swing.
Sounds change. Things are quieter. Eventually the canopy over head draws in air and handmade harness, the three ring mechanism, all of those things start to feel really, really safe. But that’s just for a few seconds.
All of these checks, most of the time, most all of the time, conclude with an operating canopy and a jumper who understands and trusts their airspace. Sometimes a jumper has to pull a reserve canopy, or begin their next count with “three pumps and a dump” (pumping the canopy controls three times to clear a malfunction before “ditching” their main canopy in order to have a functional reserve canopy over head). Sometimes everything doesn’t go right and really terrible things happen. Most of the time, though, the canopy opens and cradles the jumper in suspension above the hard earth below.