At 03:02 26 October 2015, BobW wrote:
This is probably one of those arguments that can go on forever, but
somewhen I
got into soaring I read that if you could stand up straight wearing a
fully
buckled emergency chute harness, it wasn't tight enough, in the sense
that
if you later used it from a sitting position, you'd wish afterwards that
you'd
snugged all the straps up one last time *while* you were sitting.


Some time ago I bought a Thomas Sports "pop top" parachute & picked it up
directly from "Lofty" Thomas (very well known in UK army and civilian
parachuting circles, over 1500 jumps) who also repeated the above advice
that if you can stand up straight the leg straps are not tight enough.

I asked his advice on jumping from a glider & remember the words even
though it was 25 years ago. He said "As soon as you are clear pull the
handle hard, dont bother with this 'one, two, three...splat' stuff. In
fact (he said) if you are having serious troubles getting out and are in a
hurry, as long as you can get your back clear and in the airsteam, just
pull the handle, the drogue will deploy and the chute will pull you out,
although you might break the odd bone in the process!. The risks of the
chute tangling in the airframe are much less than the risk of getting out
too low."

I would imagine this may depend on chute design - his have strong coil
spring that throws the drogue quite a way.

Luckily I have never had to put this advice into practice, although I still
wear a (newer) Thomas chute.

I do worry as age creeps on about how easy or difficult it would be to exit
a damaged glider, I just hope that in the event the adrenalin would give
you the necessary strength! It's always very useful to hear first hand
accounts of this so many thanks for posting experiences on here.