Benefits and Costs by James Middleton – Sunday, 11 July 2010, 10:51 PM
Are you aware of how you weigh up the benefits and costs when you make a decision?
Well, I can think of a decision I made once which nearly cost me my life.
Back in 2004 I had a pretty old parachute, and an even older container to hold it in. I’d been feeling pretty good, I’d not long met my future wife, who was pregnant with our first child, and life was pretty good.
I thought it was time I purchased a completely new kit, Parachute and container. It had to be ordered from the USA and took about 3 months from order purchase to delivery, and even back then, in 2004 cost about 2,000 UK pounds. No small sum.
It arrived all shiny and new three months later. Away I went, jumping out of airplanes like a mad thing.
Not long later, after about four days of jumping, having logged about 20 jumps on this new canopy, I had an experience most skydivers expect at some time in their jumping career. A total malfunction. Absolutely no parachute at all after going through the opening procedures. Expected but not welcomed.
You can read a more exciting and detailed description of this event here if you like;
http://www.hypnosistapes-and-cds.com/skydive.pdf
Now getting a new parachute seems like a sensible thing you would have thought. Shiny, new, no worn lines, the fabric is new so the porosity is low, which keeps the lift very good. When a parachute gets older, the lines wear and can snap, the material becomes much more porous, and the amount of lift it generates is considerably reduced. However, they do have complications. Firstly you don’t know how it performs, and you can only find this out after the first few test jumps, and secondly they take a while to wear in a little so that they are easier to pack. This can take up to fifty or so jumps.
On this particular jump described in the pdf linked above, it all went horribly wrong.
On reflection, I still think it was the best choice under the circumstances, buying a new parachute, I just hadn’t expected this outcome.
The decision had been based on a number of factors, one of them specifically because I had thought with a new child on the way, and a partner, I should be more cautious of my mortality. So I took this decision with them in mind too.
Let me know your thoughts.
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