Idiot's First Cutaway 

the opening of that reserve is the smoothest thing i've ever seen

Reverse Psychology - if he said he was smart everyone would be calling him an idiot.

Calm. Steady. Precise. I don’t see an idiot here. You’re safe and a beautiful landing with it. Awesome job!

3 attempts to clear the fouled lines, decision point no hesitation, and a fine approach and landing. Well Played Sir!

James don't beat yourself up. You set your hard deck and stuck to it. Mad props

I must say, that is a BEAUTIFUL reserve chute.

I don't think the title should be "Idiot". He did what he thought was right and is still alive

Hopefully you know this by now, but there is a line twist technique that could have fixed this in about 10 seconds. Kicking with a wingsuit is less effective because the drag of the leg wing works against you. Twist the risers with your hands so that the line twists are moved down below the level of your hands. This creates separation in the risers above your hands which you can then use to manually undo the twists. Blue Skies!

Never question the pilots decision to cut away. Well done

Textbook job you lived to jump another day I'm so glad you found that awesome main canopy

Well handled. Cool as a cucumber! Amazed how fast the reserve deployed!

I think you did the right thing, by jettisoning the mains, and going to reserve. By the time you detangled the mains, it might've been too late. Thanks for the video.

Great video and superb decision making. I had my first malfunction 30 years ago (fast opening, broken lines) on jump 59and remember it like it was yesterday.

Good advice I got from experieced wingsuiters, NEVER unzip your legwing before you have a good canopy over your head. It will make it pretty much impossible to kick out of twists, it turned out ok for you but apparently pepole got hurt when theit reserve also ended up in linetwists but the trailing legwing didn't allow them to kick out of them. Glad you are ok!

Old post but it's shocking to me how he was able to, and allowed to learn how to fly wingsuit while being unable to demonstrate and clear the most basic twists talked about before the first jump of any AFF student... He was wasting altitude by just taking his sweet time unzipping, just to barely try afterwards to untwist them, his priorities were out of wack. Then he was right next to, and over that runway way too long! I'm glad hes alright, but hope he had a good ground debrief with others about line twists. Learn from mistakes, we all do, and become a safer skydiver then before. Glad hes alive without further problems

Thanks for uploading, a lesson learned for all

The cutaway of SHAME!!! Had to do that once on a tandem. With a wingsuit, use your arm wings to do barrel rolls as your canopy flies to untwist. Learned that trick from the master Jeff Nebelkofph

Perfectly good procedure. Good work!

Thank you for sharing! What you did, made you walk away after landing … I would call it Smart's First Cutaway.

Oh man! Glad you're safe. Not to be a critic, but I've had worse line twists than that and kicked them out in a few seconds. When you see a line twist or two, get kicking ASAP! Put your weight into it! Grab those risers and pull them apart, lean into it! A few seconds of struggling and then you're set. You only want to cutaway if it gets really bad and you can't get it unstuck, but you should give it a few solid seconds of full struggling. Not a time to be casual! Still, props for sticking the hard deck. Glad you're safe.

That was beautifully done, bro. Calm, cool, and collected but rightfully frustrated.

Can't say you didn't have a good go at fixing it! Good call

The landing looked softer than jumping off a curb.

You did a great job in my opinion. Beautiful cutaway and good decision making. By your spare chute packer a case of beer!

Having completed 1-4 AFF I think he did everything very well! Clean cut off, back to a quick free fall with a reserve pull. Landed and is alive to talk about it! Congratulations!!!

If you are having trouble clearing the twist, hold your risers together and twist the twists down into your riser(clockwise in this case) and they will come out on their own. Standard procedure on tdms. You'll be amazed how well it works.

That looks to me like a light twist that could have been kicked out. Having the suit and a low pull played against you, but is good you played it safe and you are sound and at it again. Enjoy your flights man!

When wing suiting, and you have line twists on opening, as long as it is "there and square", you can use your wings to untwist you. Look up and figure out which way you need to twist, figure out which direction you're facing and which way the wind is coming from, figure out which wing you need to stick out to get you to spin in the direction that you need to spin. When you stick your arm out, you'll begin to twist, when you rotate 180°, then stick the other arm out, because it will keep the spin going. It'll get you out of line twists in a Wingsuit so easily! I call it the weathervane method. 😁Also...from the squirrel people, if you have a normal, soft opening, immediately look up and grab your risers and try to keep yourself from twisting up. That has helped me immensely! I have not had line twists since I started doing that. WinX 210 (cuz I'm old and phat)

Yes I had the same thing happen on a training jump,deployed at 4000 feet so plenty of time,managed to kick out,but a massive bollocking from the CI for not cutting away,but I remembered something another Instructor had told me,if you have the altitude try kicking out,you have the time,Met the CI later in the bar he said well done and bought me a pint,happy days.

I had a very similar issue last week, which ended in a cutaway, mine like yours looked easy enough to solve, but I just couldn't get any momentum to get the canopy turning. I did read a good article after by Maxine Tate called 'Line Twists - Nuisance or Malfunction? which gives an alternative way of getting out of twists by using both hands to twists the risers in the same direction as the twists in order to bring the twists to the risers. You can then reach above the twists to get some momentum and get the twists out. Clearly in the video's in the article it looks really easy. Glad you were okay though, and the only person there was you so you made exactly the right call.

Very clam and professional landing

watching these videos brings back memories

Good job buddy ! You tried without persisting. Then you applied the security proceedure to stay alive.

Beautiful canopies!

You walked away ? Well done bud good safe jump . You just couldn't get that last kick . Good drills !

Good executed cut away, you tried to kick the twists out and made a good judgement at a safe enough altitude to deploy your reserve , well done.

I had this exact same line twist mal and I regret chopping it. The best technique is to squeeze the risers together t get the twists out. It works so much better than trying to kick them out.

No panicky shit, he tried to get results but was aware of being on the clock. The transition to reserve was smooth af. No idiot detected. Good job and glad you were able to retrieve your canopy.

Great video though I don't think the skydiver was an idiot. But I do get the self-deprecating humor.

I think he handled that just fine

At least it was flying towards the DZ. Great job man!

I was going to ask if you found the canopy, but then read your description above. Great job not panicking.

Good job. Sometimes you have to kick a little at a time to get rid of line twist.

I bet that second chute was the best, prettiest thing you have ever seen!. Way back when, I had a streamer and spent 5 seconds whacking the risers open to get air up into the chute, it worked but if it hadn't, boy would I have been the idiot, the dead idiot probably.

Literally the smoothest opening of a Reserve ever, and the title is "Idiot's First Cutaway"

I think it was a beautiful day to do anything, anything!!!! he s his own hero!

I've seen that twist happen too many times! There's just NO way I'm taking a chance like that. I look back now at my bungee jumping and wonder how I did even that! (I have acrophobia and learning to pilot an aircraft and enjoy flying, which helped that fear, but didn't eradicate it; as I age, I sense the value of longevity a lot more!!)

If your chute fails, you have the rest of your life to fix it. I nice way of looking at it

Twisted lines suck because you feel you can untangle them eventually and you don’t want to go hunting for your cutaway canopy (they ain’t cheap). So good decision there. I had one canopy that was so badly tangled that it was forcing my head forward so I couldn’t see what was up. Wasn’t a square though… was a para-commander round.

Dude, I'm pretty sure you owe the whole internet a beer. As for the slow speed malfunction, it looked like you handled it well and gave yourself plenty of time under the reserve.

You lived. A successful jump.

To all those disliking because they think he called someone an idiot: read the fucking discription...

Here's why you couldn't get out of line twists. You had your legs out in front of you with the wingsuit on, and they were acting like the tail on a weathervane, keeping you facing backwards due to air pressure on them. Next time put your legs together and straight underneath you, not out in front. You'll be able to get out of line twists. Similar situation with passenger's legs if you get line twists on a tandem jump.

Next time stick a wing out and untwist yourself. Your canopy was flying straight and level. Don't unzip your wings, use them to untwist yourself. I've done it many times, it's very fast.

That's a really cool chute!

I think you did fine. The bonehead thing to do would have been to keep trying to regain stability after burning through your intended pull altitude.

Good chop. Stuck to your hard deck. I saw someone almost die because they too long messing with a bad main

The same thing happened to me during my training. I decided to cutaway. My instructor wasn't happy, claimed it was unnecessary. The following day I had a streamer. This time he praised me for my quick cutaway.

Wooooow!!!! Congratulations

This guy is not a idiot. Well done!

Perfect cutaway

I had a tandem malfunction ( tension knots). I didn't want to loose the main. I flew the mal to 2500 ft. made sure I was up wind and on the wind line. I then cut it away landed safely and recovered the main and freebag. I was told the DZO was giving a play by play of what I was doing.

After your 3rd try couldn’t kick out of it. Not an idiot done well walked away good jump. Keep it up!

Not an idiot cutaway, you did it because you thought that was the best choice at this moment. That was a good jump ;)

How is this described as an "idiots cutaway?" Top pros with hundreds/thousands of jumps with no malfunctions have daily thoughts about this scenario and don't fully know how they'll react. He's alive.

there aren't idiot's cutaway, just safe choices :)

smooth landing bravo !!!

Great recovery, u tried to save your shoot but nice and smooth cut away

Very good. In due time, which you will have, because of the good decision making skills you show here, you will learn to get out of something like that easier. Good job!

You stayed very calm!

I was with you the whole time, good EPs and everything, except for the flyover over runway right before landing. Planes can sneak up on you like you wouldn't believe, and there was no need to cross it so low.

Thinking about having to cut away definitely makes me think a brightly colored main parachute is the way to go. I imagine a black or green one might be tougher to find if you're rummaging through the woods looking for it after the fact. But bright orange? Seems like that'd be a lot harder to miss.

2 thumbs up for saving your 2 handles.

VERY GOOD PROCEDURE, YOU DID VERY WELL ,!!

In my perspective he've tried correctly to solve the line twist (maybe neet to pull the rises apart ;-) ). I would do the same if I were unable to solve the twist, probably a little earlier, but definatelly I would cut away.

You did good as you tried to save the main chute, and your reserve pull you did awesome as meaning you lived😆😆😆😆👍👍👍👍. I bet that was an adrenaline rush alright!!!!. I am at Spaceland Houston going for class "D" license to "Wingsuit" as that's my goal and "Tracking" balloon suit as my life challenges. Keep up the good work😆😆😆😊😊😊👍👍👍 btw jump 4 on me I had same situation you had happen to me in this video here. I was higher than you were though as 5,200ft, as the ball over as a ball over my head as i smiled 8n pencil position towards earth very fast, and I said to god, we are going to do this shit, as get out alive together, well I am still talking to sir, and amen to that. My situation happened at Spaceland Houston, and jump 7 I landed into a 3' ditch, lol. They considered me a liability after that even though I walked away unscathed, so I took up Kitelandboarding too full blown extremes, as too like a skydiving landing approach literally, lol, as I do know how to fly you know, lol😊😊😊🧚🏼‍♂️🧚🏼‍♂️🧚🏼‍♂️👍👍👍 like the rest of us that fly in the world🌞🌞🌞😊😊😊🧚🏼‍♂️🧚🏼‍♂️🧚🏼‍♂️👍👍👍

I wouldn't call him an idiot, well done sir.

I don't see why you see this as an idiots cut away. Your alive and did great.

That is one bad ass canopy

Hope you found your main. Good save.

Good job!

Only thing I see wrong was how long the decision to cutaway took. A good friend of mine died 12 years ago in this exact same scenario at this same height. Sadly his reserve tangled as well and he didn't save sufficient altitude to work the problem. Glad you made it

Looks like a pretty good cutaway to me

You live you learn

Learning to battle twists is much easier under a round canopy. I’m not saying bring them back but when I trained I jumped rounds at first. Whenever I got twists on a square I was able to deal with it bc I’d done it under a round a good few times.

If I had been in the same situation, I would probably have opted to stay with my discarded parachute instead of going for the airfield. The price of a taxi is a lot cheaper than a new canopy.

Had many line twists never had a problem kicking out of them.

I would not have changed anything. Looks like the line twists were not coming out. You did not want to burn anymore altitude so you cut away and used your reserve. Smart dude.

It's like you almost had it.. Nice recovery.

Why an idiot? I'm no expert at all but if I was attached to him I'd of felt safe in the regards that he was calm and got the job done calmly also. Everyone's got to learn somehow, you did on this day 👍🏼

When in doubt chop it,good stuff mate

You are alive. You succeeded.

I'm glad you're safe but I have had line twists worse than those and kicked out. I don't understand why you weren't able to get out of them. Keep your knees in the breeze! BSBD! D23360

Some of those glances toward the legs make it look like you were wearing a wingsuit but only had one leg out. The wind was blowing on your legs asymmetrically, which pushed you like a sail, back in the direction of your line twist. So every time you made a little progress, you went right back. You easily could've fixed the line twist after unzipping and freeing the other leg, or after pinching your knees together. Fly safe, bro.

had the same issue with a Jojowings Sonic. No autorot but twists didn't want to untwist, so 500m (1700ft)-> cutaway

He saved his legs with thos cutaway

"Idiot"??? This looked like he tried a for a good while and decided to cut away while he still had alt. Sound execution.

i think with a bit more aggression it might have cleared but choice was yours and you got to drink a beer after

Ha ha like the cut away, a memory you wont forget I'm sure

Good job. Well done. Shit happens and you took care of it.