The Day CYPRES Saved My Life: Andy Wilson

For me, it actually started a long time ago in 1982. I did two jumps in Ontario on military equipment, old round parachutes which were garbage – and after getting mildly injured on both jumps decided it was bullshit and walked away. This was until 2017 when I was watching some people coming in and having these nice, beautiful landings on ram-air canopies. My son and I were present, and we both felt that this was the time. We booked ourselves onto the nearest AFF course. So my skydiving career really started in 2017.

The stuff we were working with back in ’82 didn’t have anything like the CYPRES on it. It was the barest, raw sort of equipment you could imagine. So coming back to the sport after that much time it was immediately apparent that the equipment had vastly changed, and what CYPRES created had made things much better.

I did my student jumps in Victoria, but began going up to Skydive Vancouver Island which is my current home dropzone – and this is where the incident took place. I have been able to put together 256 jumps to date, so I am reasonably capable but not immensely by any means. I have been working my way through different portions of the sport, playing around with different options of the sport, and trying out various types of jumps to decide what I like and what appeals to me. One thing that became apparent is that at my age (60) and density (180cm/88kg), I am a pretty fast faller. I had been moving towards more angle flying because it seemed to fit my flight profile quite well. I had done some jumps last year, and then midway through the season had an incident with some trees and was out of the sport until April with a broken ankle. I have 70 jumps this season, and had completed a tracking camp here with a local coach – and so felt I was starting to polish those skills up. Angle flying is a seductive beast. The speed is really intense and exciting, and there are all kinds of good reasons why you would want to pursue it as a discipline. 

We are normally a Cessna dropzone, so we are all used to being in the sky with just a few other people, a maximum of five and usually less than that. So at the boogie, we are jumping from a Skyvan, which is an unfamiliar plane for us. I had completed a couple of jumps with a progression group, and was feeling good. A little too confident maybe. I went off with a more advanced group to do a seven-way angle. 

I would say that the person who hit me was the unknown factor on the jump, which is something I would usually be more careful about – particularly when jumping from an unfamiliar plane. Anyway, we went. The exit was clean, and I was doing what I tend to do when flying with more advanced people, which is to hang back a little bit before starting to dive down and into my slot in the group. Then out went the lights.

The next thing I remember is standing in the field with the guy that hit me. I was completely out all the way to the ground. The luck factor was pretty high, as the field I landed in is ringed with obstacles, so the possible potential damage is endless. Where luck didn’t come into it was using a CYPRES. It did exactly what it is supposed to do. I have always had a high regard for the unit, and it did not let me down. We operate at a dropzone where the landing area is 150 ft higher than the takeoff point, so I have my activation altitude set higher accordingly. My CYPRES did exactly the right job to put me on the ground in a relatively unharmed state. If you look through the video frame by frame you can follow me all the way down and can see that I wake up when I hit the ground. I am moving by the time he gets down there to me.

So that was the incident. It had a pretty drastic impact on me and some of the other people. The guy who hit me was really shaken up, and one thing I would like to do is state that I do not blame anybody for what happened. The first mistake I made was getting on the plane because looking back I should not have been there. If you can objectively say you should not have been there, then you cannot very well get angry about someone else for hitting you. He made some mistakes, and so did I. He was quite shaken up by it, as he got to watch the whole show – which must be terrifying. It had a big impact on the dropzone too, and we are going to have a lot to discuss on safety day next time around.

I have generally decided to reduce my risk profile across the board. Any angle flying in my future will be under much more controlled and well-considered circumstances. That said, concussion aside, I would likely already be back in the sky. We are at the tail end of any lingering effects from a concussion, so I will be back jumping again before the end of the year. I went for a CAT scan and found nothing further to be worried about. I wear an impact-rated helmet (Tonfly TFX) which is actually cracked from where the guy’s knee hit me from behind. I also had a stiff leg and limped around a bit for a few days. My bell was rung pretty good, perhaps hard enough to scramble a few synapses – but it could have been so much worse. Luckily, everyone came through this pretty much unscathed. This was largely due to good equipment rather than good skydiving. This time it was my CYPRES unit that saved the day.