Skydiving: No Jump Experience, Heading into a Gutted City

My biggest issue is with his limited experience and his ability to guide the parasail type chute to a pin point landing. A standard parachute would be even worse to guide.

There is also the fact that the target, hole in the roof, is going to be emitting updrafts which will want to push him back up.

Lastly, there is also his fear which will be kicking in and I am not sure he is going to be able to really handle all that is required of him.

If the MC is important enough, more than likely a tandem jump would be the number one choice of those planning the mission so as not to lose the guy they need to get into the building. Have the pilot hook him up for a tandem jump. There is also the added bonus of the extra weight making it harder for an updraft to push them away from the target.

If the tandem jump is not an option, I would rather see him land on the roof and then use the stairs... More believable...

Actually I don't have a problem with it. The Character had training (even if it was limited to theory) but skydiving into a rustic meadow is not like diving into the straights of HEll. I'd have no problem believing that the character's adrenalin was able to temporarily overpower the phobia. I mean, that's sort of what adrenalin is for...

By the way, I would also not have a problem with the adrenalin crash, meaning adrenalin levels drop after the rush of near death expletives deplete and the character finds a nice soft warm place to take a nap.

Snitchcat said:

Questions

• How likely is it for the MC to manoeuvre his way onto this roof and survive without severe injury?

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Realistically? Slim and none.

As an adventuresome youth, I wasted too much time as an army parachutist and civilian skydiver. My experience as a jumpmaster with people who think they want to jump but have hardcore height phobias is they are basket cases from exit to boots on the ground. Steerable sport chutes which turn and produce forward speed require much guided practice for pinpoint landings. The chances for a first-time spot landing are slim, but (unrealistically) Dan Brown had his freefalling hero hold a seat cushion over his head to guide him to a river landing at over 100 MPH which he miraculously survives. A reading public buying that one will buy anything.

As said, if the chute is an emergency, non-steerable canopy, he pretty much descends at the mercy of the gentle breezes.

Snitchcat said:

If this is not a feasible scenario, what would you suggest?

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My first thought is to somehow write it so a pro skydiver is forced to do a tandem jump with your MC, snapped together to the pro's front D-rings until they land.

Another is that his target has some kind of suction vortex which will draw his chute to itself. That way, luck can get him close, and the vacuum will get him inside.

Yeah, those are a bit lame.

Do you need to re-use the plane?

If your pilot was an experienced jumpmaster, he could do the tandem jump with your hero, and just let the plane fly on until it runs out of gas.

However... I think that most people afraid of heights would, given only those two choices, take the helicopter over the chute. Even if he had to be drugged or tied up in the chopper.

I haven't made a jump in twenty years, and only about a dozen before that including two tandems. I seem to recall that the military subsidized most tandem jumps back in the 80s because they viewed tandem jumps as the best way to get an expert in some topic, with no skydiving expertise, into an area quickly and cheaply.

The square chutes are pretty manueverable and you say your MC has jumped before but also backed out of jumping a few times. Sounds like me (after a minor injury I got spooked and rode the plane down several times with jumps in between). If you say the MC has something like 150 jumps it can be believed that he can land on a target like a rooftop but you may have some winds to deal with at rooftop level while at the ground the winds are calm. If the building is only a story or two high that might not be a problem. A hi-rise though almost certainly has some winds to deal with (and you might have the MC land on the roof but add tension as the winds drag the chute...and the MC...toward the edge of the roof.

I'm a bit bothered by the mention of spiked rails on the roof. That could make landing anything, even getting out of a helicopter, a real challenge.

But you're dealing with fiction and a fictional world. Is it possible that the canopy can have a self-steering mechanism that keys onto some target on the rooftop (like laser guided weaponry that uses ground based targeting systems)?