Automatic Parachutes

John DeRosa Sky Soaring Chicago IL wrote....

Not good. I believe that the lesson learned is that each and every
time you exit your ship you should *ONLY* unbuckling your seat belts,
leaving the removal of the parachute for after you are standing
alongside your glider. First, this will build up some reinforced
training in how to exit your ship with your parachute on (not so easy)
and, more importantly, might save your life.


That is exactly what I do (and was thaught to do) since my very first flight
and never had any problems so far.


Back to the thought of my only now (after several hundred flights)
begun wearing a parachute, what are your thoughts on the general (US
only?) practice of not wearing parachutes for the majority of (club)
glider flying.


Don´t know what type of gliders you fly, but all I´ve flown so far are
either designed to wear a chute or are much more comfortable to sit in with
one on your back/bum...


I have been told that in England, 100% of the pilots
wear parachutes for all flights.


In Germany they do. I have yet to see a gliderpilot in Europe flying without
a chute.


An interesting comment was made about not liking automatic parachutes
for the situation of a high altitude bailout and the potential of
oxygen deprivation while hanging below an open envelope.


That´s why I always had an emergency O2 bottle strapped to my chute harness
when flying high (waves). Primarely not because I was worried about haveing
to bail out at too high an altitude to survive, but more so because the
regulator could ice up and not being able to decend fast enough (a check
ride in a decompression chamber thought me a thing or two about that).
Anyway, the emergency O2 bottle would have helped in either case I guess
(never had to use it though).

Happy landings,
Markus