Eric: "I've made over 1,000 jumps, and I've never had to pull my reserve." Wilson: *Is instilled with confidence.* Six weeks and nine solo parachute descents later... Wilson: "I've only done eleven jumps and I've had three injuries and one reserve." So after a beautiful third freefall, which I still "failed" because I accidentally did the most magnificent back flip my instructor had ever seen, and had my first, accident free solo, awesome landing without assistance. I was called to jump again, while I was still packing my canopy. To become a qualified packer, you need ten packs under supervision, Rod supervised this pack, awesome guy, but he said he'd only sign me off if it opened and I survived. It was a joke, and I said if all else, I had my reserve. So I did this jump, about half an hour after my first one of the day, and I was just buggered. Nearly fell asleep on the plane, got out, completely forgot what was going on, I was just falling, I forgot to count, flipped twice, suddenly remembered "Oh yeah, I have to pull this if I want to live," deployed my canopy while sideways and I had this huge massive, tentacle like mess wrapped around my arms and legs. I was upside down and spiraling out of control. I tried desperately to untangle myself, it was no use, it was that bad. I looked over to my left shoulder, like the drill I had done dozens of times, there was the big yellow handle, in all its glory, the reserve parachute. It was the biggest "well, this is it" moment of my life, "your time has come, oh yellow handle, do not fail me..." It is literally your last chance of survival, if your reserve doesn't open, they say to start flapping. I reached over with my free hand and pulled my beautiful yellow handle, the cords came out and I kept pulling. Such pulling is meant to cut off the main canopy, and then deploy the reserve, I was worried I was in such a mess that it'd release the main and I'd go flying with it. Fortunately the people who invented parachutes thought this through, and that scenario isn't quite possible (though it has happened to one man, Jock, twice). So the yellow handle came free and the main chute and I went our separate ways. I descended into a beautiful three more seconds of freefall. Real shame, that was a great main chute, big, green and purple, it was replaced suddenly by a small, yellow canopy. It was one of the greatest sensations ever, jumping out a plane is one thing, but jumping while mid air from one parachute to another is...something else. It was the shittest canopy ever, I later found out reserve chutes are designed to be as boring as possible, they don't turn very well or flare (slow down to land) for nuts, not fun to fly, but as risk free as possible, so it should be, my last life line, literally. (Later I pointed out how shit it was, and why they put the crap canopy into my last chance of survival, all Greg, my instructor said was "hey, it saved your life," and I shut up.) I was way off where I was meant to land, and ended up landing perfectly in...someone's backyard. I hit the ground and looked around to see where my main chute had gone, it was worth a four digit number, and the others would have to scour the earth for it. Naturally though it had landed before I did. I put everything away and suddenly my four years of cadets kicked in. I hit the deck, tried to find out which way was north, and observed my surroundings....electric fences...yikes, I saw fences as I was coming down and avoided them due to previous experience, but electric, omfg. I eventually found a way out, only to move into a paddock of barbed wire fences and a dog. There was a big "private property" gate that was about twice the size of the fences, the fences weren't so bad, its just that I've got a bad history with barbed wire. I was given a radio, so I radioed in, said I was cool as a cucumber, I guess I wasn't, I was speaking really fast and quite shaken, I told them I had to use my reserve and that I'd find my way out. I was speaking in RATEL...hrmmm. Well when I tried to radio in again to explain my predicament of being stuck in someone else's backyard, it failed, so I pulled out my trusty mobile and called various people. Eric told me to just jump the fence, so I did, chucked my stuff over and scissor kicked out. Adam was driving around on the freeway and found me. Got back, was congratulated for my first reserve and was told that I owed the club a slab of beer, this is tradition apparently. The pilot came around, shook my hand and introduced himself. He told me what he saw, muttered that he used to be an instructor and told me not to think about it too much, it messes with your head....too late. Rob later told me that he was the president of the club, who'd recently taken up flying. In the midst of it all, a country girl rocked up with a nicely wrapped up parachute...my green and purple parachute.

'Unintentional framing'. Obviously I had to support the drill in one hand, so I couldn't get my face far enough away for the camera to focus, so I just hoped it was facing in the right direction. I actually really like how it came out. This rig didn't really work all that much better than hand cranking, I need to come up with a way of fixing the speed at an appropriate value. Hacking in a fixed rheostat would perhaps be going a little too far though. I haven't got a spare drill for when I break this one for a start. Unfortunately I don't have anything else with a rotary motor that I could hack (not in Leeds anyway, I'll have a look around when I next go home)