hi everyone, and hi matt. hi andre how are you doing? very good thanks. so what have you been up to in 2020?
so in 2020 we have finished our study of reserve parachutes we have now flung 143 people either
down a zip line or round a centrifuge arm and i'm delighted to be here to tell you what
we found. so we've condensed everything down to 10 minutes this is quite a challenge but
we're really proud of this video and stick around to the end if you want to hear what
it's like to pull 6g on a paraglider. matt take it away! in 2019 55 fantastic paraglider pilots
took part in what was then the largest experiment of reserve parachute deployment ever conducted.
pilots were attached to a zip line, we stressed them out a little bit psychologically and then
we released them by surprise. they were briefed to throw their reserve parachute as fast as possible
and certainly before they reached the end of the line. that experiment was an amazing opportunity to
understand pilot behavior under stress and also to study the performance of reserve parachute systems.
we came to a few conclusions from that study. the first was that no matter where
the reserve parachute handle was paraglider pilots like to look for it on their hip
then once they found the handle they like to pull that handle upwards even if the harness
said that they should pull it outwards. once they managed to get their reserve parachute out
we found that throwing in a single sweeping action worked much better than trying to bring
the parachute forwards and then throwing it back. when we looked at front mounted reserves we found
that they needed to be secured at the base if not they could lift up.
finally the experiment taught us that reserve parachute systems have to work right first time.
when pilots are under stress they can't innovate they can't come up with solutions to even
simple problems so the system has to be perfect. in many ways our experiment was very strong however lots of paragliding emergencies aren't linear they don't involve people traveling forwards.
so in the discussion that followed the experiment it was widely pointed out that we needed to study
this not just on a zipline but also in rotation under g-force. so with the help of the dhv and
the bhpa we were put in touch with Flugschule Hochries a paragliding school in bavaria and
home of the geforce trainer. the Flugschule Hochries team led by jess and sepp did an incredible job
getting together 88 amateur paraglider pilots recruiting them to come and take part
in what then became following the zipline study the largest reserve parachute study ever conducted
the 88 pilots were made up of 27 women and 61 men who flew an average of 30 hours per year
so importantly they were amateur pilots just like us. when pilots arrived they were given a standard
briefing and they used their own equipment. the only things that we gave them were thin gloves
and a standardized lightweight helmet. we also asked them to hold the brake lines in an open
beginner grip. we were trying to simulate a paragliding emergency so we wanted to
give paraglider pilots a difficult task to do before the centrifuge started to spin.
so we got them to look up at the led lights and every time one went on pull a brake line on the
same side. we also asked them to name every word they could beginning with a particular letter.
the idea was at the point of deployment their eyes would be looking up as if towards the wing,
their hands would be in the brake lines and their brain would be overwhelmed with the sensations of
g-force and conflicting cognitive tasks. the centrifuge spun up over 12 to 14 seconds to
the target g-loading and once that g-loading was reached a buzzer went the lights turned red
and pilots were briefed to deploy as soon as possible.
after they deployed we slowed down the centrifuge and then they went straight to
an interview station so we could capture as much information about their experience as possible.
during an emergency a paraglider can either spin forwards in a spiral type configuration,
or they can spin backwards almost like a sat. we wanted to simulate both so half the pilots
went forwards at 4g like in a spiral and the other half went backwards 3g like in a sat.
so what did we find? well interestingly, even though sat was lower g pilots seemed to find
it more taxing. as the centrifuge arm spun up fewer pilots in the sat configuration
were able to do both the tasks. they also had this tendency particularly in sat to lock their hands
closer to the stall position well below the level of the carabiners. almost as if they were
trying to brace themselves against the unfamiliar sensation. one of the key findings from the zipline
study was paraglider pilots don't look for their reserve handles they feel for them. on the zipline
85% of paraglider pilots put their hand on their hip first when looking for the handle.
in spiral 83% of paraglider pilots did precisely the same thing their hands went straight to their
hips. interestingly though when pilots were spun backwards in sat 63 percent of them went for
their thigh so it seems like where pilots feel for the handle depends a little bit on the direction
of travel. however pilots always feel for it overlying their skeleton and when they couldn't
find the handle first time they tend to move their hands backwards and forwards along their
thigh bone searching for it. in the zipline study we saw that paraglider pilots liked to encircle
the handle with their finger and thumb before they threw. this was exactly the same under g-force and
we watched pilots struggle where the handles had been placed at unfamiliar angles or when
they were too tight against the harness. 70% of pilots in the zipline study tried to
pull their reserve parachute upwards even if the harness had been designed for the parachutes to
come out laterally. we watched pilots struggle and change their grips as the bag got stuck.
in this experiment only 50% of pilots pulled upwards but we still saw some sticking.
and we suspect that the difference was because the g-forces help fling the arm back and out
and also push the reserve parachute bag down a little bit in the harness. in the zipline
study we saw paraglider pilots trying to throw their parachute in a number of different ways.
interestingly in the g-force study everyone threw their parachutes back in a single sweep and we
suspect that this was due to the g-forces almost pulling the bag away from them. the other thing
that came out of the interviews with the pilots afterwards is there was a general feeling that
they lacked power and directional control when trying to throw the parachute particularly in sat.
11 paraglider pilots in the study had front mounted reserves and we didn't see any difference
in speed of deployment between front mounts and under seats. what we did see which was fascinating
was that some pilots with front-mounted reserves even though they could see it in front of them
still felt on their hip first for the handle. so what were the strengths and weaknesses of
our study? like in the zipline study we had a large sample of amateur pilots using their own equipment.
we had them do a proven standardized task under realistic forces and conditions of
psychological stress. the weaknesses were also similar and the key weakness of all of
this work is that there's no real danger involved. pilots are not going to hit the ground there's no
surprise they know they're there to throw their reserve parachute and there's no rush to throw.
throwing the reserve was always the right action there was never that doubt of oh should i throw?
am i too close to the ground? should i try and fix my wing? the other weakness was we could only mount
harnesses on the centrifuge in one direction which meant that the reserve handle was always facing
inwards in the rotation. we've now filmed over 140 amateur paraglider pilots throwing their
reserve. in that number we saw a failure rate of approximately 2.7%. if these were real emergencies
then the compounding effects of fear uncertainty the intense disorientation might mean that these
numbers are even higher. this is something that as a community we need to address it in terms
of better equipment design and also in terms of better training. in general we'd like to see
standardization of reserve parachute equipment this doesn't mean that everything has to be the
same it just means that when a paraglider pilot puts on a harness they should expect to find the
handle in the same place and to be able to throw the reserve parachute in exactly the same way.
based on the two experiments we recommend that reserve parachute handles are positioned
overlying the pilot's hip. even though pilots may have searched further forwards in sat they always
use their skeleton to track back to their hip. handles should be made prominent and big enough
to be easily encircled with a gloved hand. the pilot should be able to extract the reserve
from the container with any direction of pull. in harnesses that don't come with an integrated
reserve bag pilots should ensure that the strop connecting the handle to the reserve parachute
bag is of the correct length. front mounted parachutes need to be secured at the base.
not everything about reserve parachutes can be fixed through changing design. we have to
recognize that as pilots we are an integral part of the reserve system. we need to increase
our familiarity with the reserve parachutes by an order of magnitude. for students who
are learning they need to understand the reserve system and practice throwing over and over again.
pilots should be taught to throw the reserve parachute in a single sweeping backwards motion.
even if throwing in a particular direction makes theoretical sense to reduce the chance
of entanglement the important message should be kept simple. get the reserve parachute out of the
harness. once qualified we'd recommend that pilots threw their reserve parachute in training on
things like zip lines but also where possible in siv courses over water. it needs to stop being this
thing that sits underneath us that we never want to see. finally we would recommend that paraglider
pilots adopt a post takeoff check. in other words when we're flying we're safe we're on glide we
take our hands out of the brake lines we encircle the reserve with our hands and we imagine what
it would be like to throw. finally please remember that the mechanics of the reserve parachute throw
are just one part of the whole chain. the most important thing is recognizing the need to throw
and throwing early maintaining that altitude awareness. once the parachute has been thrown the
job's not done we have to check it's not entangled with the main parachute we have to disable the
main parachute and we have to prepare ourselves for landing as with all the studies we do this
was an incredible team effort and i'd like to thank all the pilots who volunteered to take part.
particular thanks to due to the study team: Geoff Long, Seli Metzger, Florian Heuber, Dave Thompson,
Jessi Barlow, Matt Wilkes, Hannah Müller and Josef “Sepp” Fasching. i'd also like to thank Robert Niederreuther
from Flugschule Hochries the extreme environments laboratory university of portsmouth the bhpa
Karl Slezak and the dhv Dr Becky Charles and her team of ergonomists at the Rail Safety and
Standards Board who helped analyze the results Ed Ewing and Cross Country magazine the team at
Flyeo Lanarkshire and Lothian Soaring Club and the Scottish Hang Gliding and Paragliding Federation and
the Royal Aeronautical Society all of whom helped fund the work. thank you so much for
watching we hope you enjoyed that we know it's a lot of information in a short period of time
if you'd like to know more then the paper from the zip line is linked underneath the video
and the scientific paper from the g-force study will be linked as soon as it's ready.
matt let's be honest here did you have a go on the centrifuge. i absolutely had to go on the
centrifuge it was such good fun. it was amazing i got up to 6g when we were practicing and
it was brilliant because jessi from Flugschule Hochries who's used to training people
on g-force was able to instruct me in the breathing exercises and we managed to control
my vision just through breathing. it would narrow with the g-force and then you'd do
the g-straining maneuvers and the vision would open up again i can't recommend it enough. so cool
and how do you think that compares to doing an actual spiral on a paraglider pretty close? um
yeah pretty close i think it depends how much you like control. so at least when you're spinning on
a paraglider it's really intense there's wind noise you see the world going around you but
you're in control whereas i think on the g-force sim you're kind of at somebody else's mercy.
yeah cool well thank you so much for all your work and for your team's work matt we really appreciate
it i want to say thank you from the community. also i want to say a big thank you to all of these
people that support the channel on patreon and on youtube memberships. thank you all for making these
videos possible and uh subscribe if you haven't already and you'll hear more from us very soon,
bye-bye.