44 Footer Parachute Club

One day a big fellow, over 300 pounds, showed up at the DZ wanting to jump. He had experience and came prepared with a custom 44 cargo chute that had a TU modification, s/l bag and container. I believe his reserve was a 28 flat circular. It was a beast of a rig even by military surplus standards.

John Skolfield and I were napping on the packing table during the mid day summer heat. As we heard the details of the custom main parachute we started thinking out loud, 300 pounds that's more than both of us combined, with rigs, wonder if he would let us borrow his rig. We were able to talk the guy into letting us use his rig and built a stirrup from webbing and a short piece of PVC tubing that hung from the seat.

On the first jump John wore the rig and I held onto the seat straps only to have a line over on opening. It was stable and our rate of descent was not very high but John strongly encouraged me to let go and as I did the line over cleared. We posed for a photo of our plan as we went to the plane for the first jump, the stirrup can be seen in his right hand.

I wore the 44 footer rig for John on the next jump and it took nearly 1000 feet for it to open. John was able to use the stirrup to boost himself high enough to climb up and stand on my shoulders. After riding around for about less than a minute he dove off head first.

Others of course saw us and wanted to play. The rule was to get a chance at hanging on to someone jumping the 44 footer you first had to jump it, and pack it, for someone that had already jumped the rig. Not sure how many joined the 44 footer club but it was fun while it lasted. Wayne Ramsey wore the rig for my second attempt to climb up onto the shoulders then I back looped off while shooting this 8mm footage.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• static
• line

[dorbie]

The big guy's name wasn't Mr. Bill was it?

[calhoun66]

Great videos paragator! I hope you can post some more!