Stay in, or get out?

I've always thought it would be a good idea to take
hold of the rip-cord handle before finally leaving
the glider. Did you do that, and, if you didn't, did
you get hold of the handle quickly and easily?

At 11:00 12 September 2007, Peld wrote:
Dan,
I had the unfortunate experience of having to leave
my glider in
January after a mid air. The other glider had impacted
my left wing
and severed it about half a metre from the root,and
also broke the
tail boom midway between the wing and the tail. He
was able to land
but I had to make a quick exit, which was my first
parachuting
experience. I had no doubts that I would have to jump,
and previous
training and preparation took over.
The glider had started a spin to the left and it took
some time to
get rid of the canopy (PUSH on it after you activate
the releases!),
but I was actually surprised how easy it was to get
out of the
cockpit. Having undone the harness it seemed like no
trouble at all to
just roll over the canopy rail and out into the wild
blue yonder. I
have a below knee artificial right leg so I had considered
this
scenario for some time, expecting to have a lot of
trouble just
getting my leg past the instrument panel, but no, it
was really a
piece of cake. I put it down to the fact the gravitational
force was
less as the glider was diving and all I had to do was
push away from
it. A NOAH sytem would have been redundant I feel.
Luckily, the spin
hadn't developed to the stage where the centrifugal
forces were high,
even though it had seemed to take forever to get out;
in fact it was
probably only seconds.
The chute worked as advertised (it had been repacked
2 months
previously), opening in 3 seconds (or so it seemed)
and there was no
way I was going to do any stabilising. I used that
ripcord as soon as
I could. Adrenalin does amazing things. I was upside
down when the
chute opened, but the shock of it soon had me the right
way up. I did
get some pretty severe bruising around the groin and
shoulders, but I
was alive and thats what counted. Then there was the
landing. I
couldn't see the ground properly because the shock
of the opening
chute ripped my glasses off, and I hit before I was
ready, and I hit
very heavily, once again with absolutely no proper
tecnique, but I was
alive.
As far as I am concerned everything worked and the
end result was
good. I just hope no one else has to try out their
parachute.

Phil