Been there, done that. We dragged a 4 way formation out the door of a Cessna 206 at only 2200’ feet on account of the low overcast. Regulations call for jumpers to already be achieving separation and deploying their parachutes by that altitude. We had all turned off our automatic openers so they wouldn’t deploy our reserves up into our main canopies. I had about 250 jumps at the time.

Of course that was the day I had a high speed malfunction with horrible line twists similar to the video. Except it flipped me on my back and I was augering in, still descending at 50-60 mph.

Down and dirty at 800’ I cut away this garbage, was back in freefall and witnessed the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen….a fully inflated round reserve parachute. I was close enough to the ground I could see the whites of people’s eyes when I grabbed the toggles and prepared to land 5 seconds later.

It was funny, a couple guys were having an informal accuracy competition that day with a bunch of military surplus round main parachutes. I ended up closest to the pea gravel target pit on my round reserve.

The DZ owner handed me another rig immediately and insisted that I go up and make another jump on the next load at no charge, before I could second guess whether I really wanted to stick with the sport lol. Good economic move on his part.