Brian Piper tandem cutaway 

In the moment, you mostly fall back on your training and muscle memory. It takes a few seconds to recognize the issue, try to fix it, depending on what it is, and then make the decision that it isn't recoverable and then you go into your cutaway procedures that you've rehearsed hundreds or thousands of times. Now, after your reserve is open and you're fine, that's when the adrenaline starts flowing :) by the time you land from a cutaway you're SO pumped up to have made the right decision and survived. After a few cutaways, you still get the adrenaline rush but you start thinking about where your gear is falling and how you're going to recover it.

Based on what Brian explained, I remember my one and only high speed reserve so far: You praciced the emergency over and over again. As Brian said, hundrets or thousand of times. In my emergency situation (some weird mixture between pilot chute in tow and baglock) I immediatelly had a very strong feelling of "OK, today it is the day I thought about so many times. it is the reality, not training anymore". But it was rather a instincitive feeling of certainty than a real thought. Everything in a blink of an eye, not longer. You think about everything after you got savely back to earth, not up in the air! I remember, that I was very emotionally touched for the rest of the day. Everything happened during a couple of seconds and the reserve opening was not hard but pretty fast and impressive. This opening force and all these impressions gave me the feeling of a close call. I knew, the reserve had to save my life in a quite harsh manner.

With my one ride, about two months ago, there really wasn't any fear. It was just like, well that didn't work, on to the next step.

I remember still very clearly how my reserve went. I was in a real bad downplane spin with lots of line twists on a small canopy, no way I was getting out of that fast enough. So I pulled the cutaway and then reserve. I specifically remembered my training, I was focused and not panicked at all. I remember feeling the urging necessity of needing to get rid of the malfunctioning main as I was losing altitude fast (unlike what's happening in the vid). There was no thought of 'oh shit now I have to do this", it was more like "I want to get rid of this main....fast". When I pulled I remember I specifically to not pull one after the other in a too fast succession (no skyhook) and to keep hold of the the cutaway handles (it seemed in the high tense situation most throw them away). I was pretty proud of still having my handles in my hands when the reserve was open lol.

@@flybeep1661 that is impressive! and glad that everything went smooth! why do you guys keep handles?

Don't worry about it. The rule is: the main can open but the reverse must open. 😉 And he only said this to you to not make you afraid. Many people starts panicking if they knew that he has to pull the reserve. So on this case it was a smart move from him and I hope not you're last jump. 👌

Be altitude aware. We give our tandem rides their own altimeter and tell them we are deploying the main canopy at 5000'

The tandem student had no idea. After we cutaway, they noticed our main floating down and asked if that was another tandem student. Once we got to the ground, I told them that we had to use our reserve.

@@BrianPiper well why didn't you tell him at the time?

@@antipropo461 no need to make him worry unnecessarily :) he enjoyed the rest of the canopy ride and was very relieved that he didn't know during the flight :)

The Tandem Jumper just kept smiling. I thought that was weird but he didn't know there were problems.

Well, I was a little focused on getting the main cut away and the reserve out vs. getting a steady shot.

@@BrianPiper this guy...

@@BrianPiper LOL! Mark be worrying about getting that instagram clout over surviving an emergency situation.