Word: ripcords
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...seemed like I free-fell an eternity. All this time I had this keen desire to pull the ripcord. I had to keep telling myself, 'If you do, you'll slow down and freeze to death or die from lack of oxygen.' Just as I was considering pulling the cord, I felt a shock. I looked up to see the chute. All I could see was cloud. But I could tell from pulling on the risers that I had a good chute...
...technique that tamed sport parachuting, according to Istel, is sky diving, in which the jumper controls his body as he hurtles toward earth before pulling his ripcord. The skillful sky diver leaves the plane spread-eagled, looking somewhat like a highboard swan diver, his body horizontal. Despite falling speeds up to 120 m.p.h.. the body is remarkably stable in this position. Properly executed, a sky dive is spinproof (accidental spins can whirl or tumble the body up to three times a second, black out the jumper) and keeps the diver on his belly, so his backpack chute can open...
Died. James Floyd Smith, 71, onetime dauntless barnstorming flyer and test pilot, who invented the modern ripcord parachute, founder of the Pioneer Parachute Co.; of cancer; in San Diego...
Everyone could. The suspicious, humorless Soviet crews arrived in France festooned with "secret" instruments (i.e., stopwatches, portable altimeters, audio-timers that would sound a warning buzz in time to pull the ripcord, safety devices for opening chutes automatically at minimum altitude). They brought along three political tutors: an army colonel, an interpreter and a Tass correspondent. They haggled endlessly over procedure, spent two hours on the ground discussing a maneuver in the air. But they put on an exhibition of fine precision jumping that won them the championship with ease. In second place: the Czechs. Third: the French defending champions...
Coolly, Arrington balanced in the doorway. "I pulled the ripcord in the door so the wind would snatch me out. The wind did." He went down face first, looking at the ground. When he was below the level of the treetops, he was still falling like a stone. The chute opened fully when he was only a few feet above the ground, so late that his feet were above his head when he hit. In a split second, the plane roared through the trees above him. slammed into the ground 50 yards away (killing an eight-point, 150-lb. buck...