There have been corrections and updates to my original report. You
can see some of them here:
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5860. It appears as though the
main riser was originally in poor condition at the connection where it is
wrapped around the Delrin slider. That there was only one loop around the
slider, instead of two, which is the normal case. Apparently there was no backup
(as would normally be the case), so when the main gave way there was nothing to
back it up and the harness separated from the riser and the glider.


When Andy threw his parachute while in free fall (although I don't know at what
speed even approximately), the parachute deployed and pulled hard on the strap
between the shoulders. This strap then broke and the parachute came free.
Apparently the strap on the harness was not designed for free fall deployment.
Hang glider reserve parachutes are not designed for free fall deployment either,
but the strap at the shoulder was apparently weaker than the parachute which was
recovered in good condition. It would appear to me that in this case the strap
could have been stronger (who knows how worn it was in this seven year old
harness), and the parachute would have held without exploding on deployment.


It would appear that the parachute reserve is not designed to backup the problem
of a broken riser with no backup connected. If those systems fail, the third
system won't save you. So only two things had to go wrong to make this accident
deadly.


Many of us spent Friday (AUSEDT) going over our harnesses and checking our main
hang strap and backups.


I wondered exactly how fast I was falling after I tumbled a few years ago. I
can't imagine that my severely broken ATOS was slowing my fall all that much,
and when I threw my chute it came out very quickly and opened under a strong
load. It was a small chute, which I realized as I came down too fast, and now I
have a bigger chute, a LARA Gold 250, but would the bigger chute blow apart
under the same deployment load?


Write into the Oz Report forum with your comments on what we might be able to
learn from this accident.