SIV Kurs in Lysefjord - how not to deploy a reserve: Nurhan's take:

Nurhan's take:

Still plenty of snow in the mountains, this is from the reservoir road that heads in towards Langevatn STF cabin. Plenty enough to make a continuous ski trip above 900 m elevation - however it started to rain on the Friday evening when we arrived, and rained on and off the entire weekend. This was unfortunate as the reason for being in Lysebotn was to partake in a misleadingly called paragliding 'safety course', this is a course where you do most things that you never want to do with a paraglider, it's done over water with a rescue boat below, so if you screw up you should manage to throw your reserve parachute, land in the water and be picked up by the rescue boat.

Not the best picture but my mother was with us, course really wasn't her 'cup of tea' although I did ask her if she'd like to do the course as a passenger for a tandem pilot - surprisingly she declined (picture was taken on the way back on the Sunday when heavy rain had caused considerable meltage).

Above picture gives a pretty good idea of how the weekend was. We were staying in 'tentsville' with Per (who's previously looked after the little chap) doing a sterling job with organising a  kitchen tent. Kin slept in the boot of the car or on the grass, small tent below is mine, and I failed to get a picture of Kin standing (wet) inside my tent.

Landing was at the campsite which was cool. Sadly given the conditions most of us didn't manage much air time, plenty of paraventing.

For the other pilots who were wondering why I landed with a reserve parachute jamed between my thighs, I said if I had footage I'd post it. Things went pear shaped for me on exiting the full stall. On releasing the breaks, one arm whipped up and off we went. Now last safety course I should have thrown my reserve, this one I was way too early throwing as I had plenty of height to recover, but believing I was going to go into an unrecoverable spiral dive owning to twisted risers, I tried to throw my reserve, for the pilots amongst you spot the obvious error:

Please see link for how you should throw the reserve:

http://kin-newfie.blogspot.no/2011/03/reserve-packing-nurhan.html

See this is dead easy in the gym, with a whole 100 mm of air between your feet and the ground. SIV course was worth doing purely and simply that if I need my reserve I won't make this mistake again... still it saved me getting wet (well wet from salt water, anyway).

{Post script note, Arvid posted this: http://vimeo.com/44721634   which a link of everyone's flights on the SIV kurs from the ground}.

As stated, way more meltage on the way home:

Rotten snow, crap for skiing, but Kin loved it, complained when we drove by so had to stop and let him have a play.