By Christine Collins
26 September 1982 storm jump
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26 September 1982 storm jump
By Christine Collins
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5 CloudContentssuck:Whatisit? ............................................................. 6 Incidents ................................................................................. 6 1982 Commonwealth games ........................................................ 10 Practice Jumps .......................................................................... 11 Stadium rehearsal .................................................................... 12 jump sequence ........................................................................... 13 what happened? ........................................................................ 23 news reports ............................................................................ 24 opening ceremony ..................................................................... 28 closing ceremony ..................................................................... 30 1984: Readers digest ................................................................. 42 2000: advertisement ................................................................. 47 2007: Rick’s book ...................................................................... 48 2018: search for the canopy ..................................................... 49
Towering cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds are associated with cloud suck. It is a phenomenon commonly known in paragliding, hang gliding, and sailplane flying where pilots experience significant lift due to a thermal under the base of cumulus clouds, especially towering cumulus and cumulonimbus. The height of the cloud is a good indicator of the strength of lift beneath it, and the potential for cloud suck. It commonly occurs in low pressure weather and in humid conditions.
Cloud suck is typically associated with an increase in thermal updraft velocity near cloud base. The process that causes this happens above cloud base height, but the effect is often noticeable as much as 300 m (1,000 feet) below cloud base.
When halfway to the ground it was hit by another updraft and began to rise rapidly at an even faster rate. Ultimately the keel snapped, and the ship broke up while still more than a mile above the ground. Shenandoah’s commanding officer and 13 other officers and men were killed. Twenty-nine members of the crew survived the break-up, although some received serious injuries.
“Power failure. May have to eject.” then pulled the lever to deploy auxiliary power for the aircraft. The lever broke off in his hand.
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Cloud suck: What is it?
A rigid helium airship, USS Shenandoah, was lost in a cloud suck accident associated with a squall line. At about 6:00 AM on 3 September 1925, near Ava in northern Noble County, Ohio, the Shenandoah was suddenly caught in a violent updraft while at an altitude of 2,100 feet, rising at the rate of a meter per second. At about 6,200 feet the ascent was checked, but the ship began to descend.
After roughly 10 seconds, he hit the top of the thunderstorm where he experienced frostbite from the severe cold. His parachute was equipped with a built-in barometer set to automatically deploy at a safe altitude. Although Rankin could manually pull the ripcord to deploy his parachute, he was familiar enough with the circumstances to resist that urge. If he deployed too high, he could die from asphyxiation or hypothermia.
At 6:00 pm, after assessing the aircraft as unrecoverable, Rankin pulled the twin ejection handles and shot into the atmosphere, ripping his lefthand glove off as he left the aircraft. He was at 47,000 feet and the air temperature was -50 °C. Instantly, the decompression caused his abdomen to swell painfully and blood to leak from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. He was able to breathe thanks to an emergency oxygen supply.
a brief message to Nolan
As the unpowered aircraft began to heavily nose down, Rankin knew that there were several problems with the extreme altitude, including frigid temperatures, severe decompression, and almost non-existent levels of oxygen. Even worse, Rankin wasn’t wearing a pressure suit.
Incidents
On 26 July 1959, Rankin and wingman Herbert Nolan were flying a pair of F-8 Crusaders from the Naval Air Station at South Weymouth, Massachusetts to the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort, South Carolina. To keep above some nasty looking storm clouds that peaked somewhere around 45,000 feet, Rankin and Nolan had climbed to 47,000 feet and were cruising at Mach 0.82 (roughly 624 mph). Shortly before they were set to descend, Rankin heard a loud bump and rumble from the engine. The engine abruptly stopped, and warning lights began Rankinflashing.transmitted
1925: USS Shenandoah
Paraglider pilots have reported being unable to descend in strong cloud suck, even after bringing their canopies into deep spiral, which would normally result in a rapid vertical descent. Cloud suck is especially dangerous for paraglider pilots, whose maximum speed is less than 30 knots, because storm clouds (Cumulonimbus) can expand and develop rapidly over a large area with accompanying large areas of strong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_sucklift.
1959: William Rankin
Rankin was nowhere near 10,000 feet. Strong updrafts within the thunderstorm had greatly slowed his descent, and the chaotic storm conditions had prematurely triggered the barometric sensor and automatic switch. And with the parachute now deployed, Rankin was even more susceptible to the updrafts. He was caught and dragged thousands of feet back up into the sky, before once again falling. This sequence repeated over and over, so many times that Rankin lost cost. Eventually, he also lost his lunch. “At one point, I got seasick and heaved,” he recalls.
“My God, you should have been on the ground at least ten minutes ago! You are really trapped. You are really in the pattern of the storm and a part of it, a speck of human dust, up-over-and-down, up-overand-down and that’s the way it’s going to be. But how long? For how long?”
Hailstones formed and he was soon being pelted with shards and balls of ice. Rankin worried the ice would eventually get big enough to start shredding his parachute. Also the air around him became so saturated with water that he frequently had to hold his breath and carefully choose when he attempted to breathe in air to avoid breathing in mouthfuls of water and succumbing to the real possibility of drowning in the sky.
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Finally, the violence of the storm started to die down, the updrafts released Rankin, and he started to descend. Temperatures became noticeably warmer as Rankin left the thunderstorm behind, and descended into a much gentler summer rainstorm. Rankin was alive, his parachute was intact and he was descending toward the forests of the North Carolina backcountry. As he prepared to land, the storm couldn’t resist one final poke, and the wind kicked up, flinging him into a stand of trees.
His parachute became tangled up in the branches, and Rankin’s momentum carried him headfirst into the trunk of a tree.
Rankin expected to reach a breathable altitude of 10,000 feet in roughly three to four minutes. As William Rankin fell through the upper reaches of the thunderstorm, his visibility was reduced to near zero. Rankin fell for what seemed to him a long time. Long enough that he began to worry that the barometric sensor and automatic switch on his parachute had been damaged.
William Rankin returned to duty, and late wrote The Man Who Rode Thunder (1960). He died on 6 July 2009, just 20 days short of the 50th anniversary of his https://disciplesofflight.com/william-rankins-story/fall.
Thankfully, his flight helmet absorbed most of the blow, saving him from injury. He extracted himself from the tree, and checked the time: it was 6:40 pm. He had just survived a 40-minute fall through a raging Rankinthunderstorm.setouttolocate help, and eventually found his way to a backcountry road, and a lift to a store in the town of Ahoskie, North Carolina. An ambulance took him to hospital where he was treated for frostbite, and decompression. His injuries were surprisingly minor considering what he had experienced.
Finally, he felt an upward tug on his harness as the parachute deployed. Though he couldn’t see the parachute above him, Rankin tugged on the risers and was satisfied that it had deployed and inflated Unfortunately,properly.
Lightning flashed all about. Rankin described seeing blue blades several feet thick arcing around him, followed instantly by concussive blasts of thunder he felt rather than heard. At one point, a lightning bolt lit up Rankin’s parachute with brilliant light, causing him to momentarily believe he’d died.
I looked at both my handles, took a deep breath and pulled the cutaway handle. I pulled the reserve at about 3000 feet, which I consider a mistake... I was out of the grey cloud, I was still quite high, and not going down - but I was not going up either!
2007: Ewa WiśnierskaCieślewicz
2002: Mathieu Gagnon
Just before 5 pm, the five men jumped from about 7000 feet. Within a minute, the winds had shifted, sending dark clouds hurtling toward the jumpers. Gagnon was the first to open his parachute, a few hundred metres above the others and was the only one sucked into the black cloud.
On 14 February 2007 while practising for a paragliding contest in Australia, Polish-born German team pilot, Ewa Wiśnierska-Cieślewicz, was sucked into a cumulonimbus cloud, climbing at up to 20 m per second (4,000 feet per minute) to an altitude of 9,946 m (32,600 feet). She lost consciousness due to hypoxia, but regained consciousness after 30 minutes to an hour, and landed still covered in ice after a three and a half hour flight.
In the same storm, 42-year-old Chinese paraglider pilot, He Zhongpin, died after being sucked into the same storm system and struck by lightning at 5900 m (19,000 feet). His body was found the next day 15 km (9.3 mi) from his last known position prior to entering the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_suckcloud.
Gagnon ascended 3,000 feet before cutting away his main parachute and freefalling until he opened his reserve parachute, still in cloud. He landed on a road on the opposite side of the Ottawa River, about 25 kilometres south of the airfield. One of the other other jumpers was blown a few kilometres away and another broke both his legs.
I was at 3000 feet...
Then suddenly I was in a big grey cloud... I very well knew that there were no clouds under or around me… I checked my altitude: I was now at 6000 feet… and all this happened in less than 30 seconds!
The wind was too strong, and my 65 kgs was not sufficient to pull both risers at the same time. But with all my weight pulling on 2-3 lines at the front, I was able to lose a little altitude at a time. This was hard and long work... I succeeded in getting as low as 1000 feet.
2014: Paolo Antoniazzi
Mathieu Gagnon was a 21-year-old Montreal student of Paramax, a Gatineau, skydiving company in in Orleans, Ontario. He was on this 24th jump with four other jumpers in a Cessna 182 over Gatineau Airport. Thunderstorm warnings had been issued for the region but local conditions seemed safe. Southerly winds were moving torrential rains and high winds in the opposite direction and the storm was about four kilometres away.
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I was still unable to pull of the front risers with my arms because of the strong wind. Then it occurred to me to use my legs in order to lower the front risers.
Even though I consider it an error to have opened my reserve at 3000 feet, this is probably what allowed me to cross the river... a very large river.
In 2014 Italian paraglider, Paolo Antoniazzi, 66 years old retired Army general, died after being sucked into a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_suckthunderstorm.
Matheiu recounted:
In the last 1000 feet I was falling much faster. I was not able to orient my round canopy, neither to brake so I made a hard landing. I had landed on my feet, but I fell on my back afterward, my canopy got hooked on a car parked not very far from where I landed...
People from the home I landed on came to my help and called an ambulance. I was in pretty bad shape at that moment, but I got away with some cracked ribs and a back sprain. Later on, people told me I landed between 20 to 25 km from the dropzone, and had been in the sky for 25 to 30 parachutist-caught-in-storm-r160/https://www.dropzone.com/articles/news/minutes.
In the cloud, the wind was very strong and it was coming from every direction. I tried to pull on my front risers to lose some altitude, but... the wind was gaining the control... very brutally, and I was scared that my canopy would not resist such strong gusts.
Edward Ristano saved five skydivers before dying in the storm-related accident. A missing hot air balloon pilot has been found dead in Georgia and a skydiver who was in the balloon said the hero pilot “sacrificed himself for our safety.” Dan Eaton, 47, one of the skydivers who was in the balloon with Ristaino, 63, said that balloons had been going up all day with skydivers as part of a balloon festival. The day had been all “blue skies and sunshine,” Eaton said.
Ristaino used a walkie-talkie to speak to crews on the ground, but they eventually lost contact. “We had 105 people on the ground and six aircrafts in the air,” McLemore said of today’s search efforts. “A helicopter spotted the balloon in a very thick wooded area (the next Theday).pilot
was likely pulled up into the storm before being sent crashing to the ground. Ristaino may have reached a height of about 18,000 feet before crashing... The skydivers who made it safely to the ground appreciate Ristaino’s sacrifice. “My thoughts and prayers are with his family and thanks, Ed, for your sacrifice,” Eaton https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-balloonist-died-saving-sky-divers/story?id=15954595said.
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“He sacrificed himself for our safety.”
“We got in and we got 1,000-1,500 feet and started seeing haze or fog out on the horizon. We were like, ‘What is that?’” Eaton said. “It was a really fast-moving storm.” Eaton said Ristaino put the safety of his passengers ahead of his own when he chose to take the balloon higher, rather than try to land with all of them in a small
“He could have put it down there where we landed, but it was a very small field and he was likely worried about us getting hurt,” Eaton said. “He sacrificed himself for our safety,” Eaton said. “If we had waited another minute or two, we would have been in the thunderstorm with him. When we got to the ground, we couldn’t see the balloon anymore. He was already sucked into the storm. Lightning was already popping.” None of the skydivers were injured. Eaton had gone up with Ristaino about six times over the years and described him as, “very professional, very safety conscious.”
When asked if Ristaino had a parachute or any other means of getting to safety, McLemore said, “The balloon itself acts as a parachute. It just deflated.” He said the balloon was intact, but that Ristaino had not been able to survive the fall.
“Asfield.soon as he found a place for us to get out, he wanted to make sure we were high enough that if we had a problem with our main parachute, we’d have time to open the backup parachute,” Eaton said. Though the ideal height for jumping is around 6,000 feet, Ristaino had the skydivers jump at about 4,000 feet, the highest he could go with the impending storm.
2012: Edward Ristaino
1982 Commonwealth games
“The Brisbane Commonwealth Games marked the beginning of Ric Birch’s career in producing major events and ceremonies - and led to the formation of Spectak International.
Birch’s experience in producing major events for television was a key factor in his appointment as the creative director and producer of the live Opening and Closing ceremonies that welcomed athletes from 53 countries to Australia.
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The Ceremonies totally surpassed the expectations not only of the host nation, but also of the rest of the Commonwealth. “I had no idea we were going to so much trouble!” said one of the laidback Brisbane reporters, There was military Guard of Honour that greeted HRH Prince Philip at the opening ceremony and HM the Queen at the Closing.
An article about the creation of the ceremony:
In between, spectators saw a 10 metre-tall kangaroo known as Matilda move cheekily into the stadium and wink at the Duke, while Rolf Harris sang about Tying His Kangaroo Down, Sport and thirty young ‘joeys’ bounced on trampolines as skydivers arrived standing on each others’ shoulders. It established a new standard for the Commonwealth Games and there are still many people in yearsbetteredhaswhoBrisbaneclaimitneverbeeninthesince.”https://www.spectak.com/comm_games.html
30 Sept - 9 Oct 1982
Brisbane, Queensland
Practice Jumps
• Paddy McHugh, Graham Jeffery and Gary McMahon;
The teams practised at Toogoolawah DZ. The top man steered the tri-planes, and the photos indicate how the middle and bottom jumpers landed more heavily in Peter’s tri-plane. He would use an accuracy approach that left no airspeed for the other two jumpers. Note the spray of pea gravel from the laning in the top photo. Rick nursed one or the other sprained ankle throughout the practice jumps.
• Peter Nobbs, Rick Collins and Stewart McNee.
The plan for the Opening Ceremony was for three triplanes to land in the centre of the Thestadium.teams were coloured coordinated: the top jumper from each team had a blue rig (Pigmees) and blue jumpsuit, the bottom was all red, and the middle jumpers had white gear, which was an awful colour to keep clean!
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All nine jumpers had red, white and blue 228s with the Commonwealth Games logo on
from top to bottom •were:David McEvoy, David Hancock and Geoff Holmes;
Thethem.teams
stadiumpractice
my seating
Planned order of events
5. As skydivers leave, the bullseye changes into outline of Australia, and logos change into green and gold banners saying “1982”.
6. Cultural groups enter the Australian shape and sing “I Still Call Australia Home”.
2. Australian flag made with placards held by children.
7. Matilda enters and moves around track. Matilda moves into position and releases children ‘joeys’ into centre where they jump on mini-trampolines.
N to Brisbane City
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Stadium rehearsal
1. Marching bands enter while Australian bush songs are sung.
4. Drum roll loops until the 3 x 3 CRW stacks land in the bullseye.
cemetery
10. “Parade of nations” enters as chldren leave the stadium.
3. Flag changes into bullseye in preparation for the skydivers to land.
8. “ Tie me Kangaroo Down” and “Waltzing Matilda” is sung by Rolf Harris.
9. Games logo forms in centre of a circle and balloons are released, and audience releases streamers.
The stadium before the start of the event, with seating ready for those in the logos. Family and friends invited to the rehearsal are still finding their seating.
jump sequence
Children enter the stadium to begin performance. Note the blue sky and flags indicating wind from the south.
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Children continue to enter the stadium and are seated on the righthand side of the stadium.
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Children begin to move into position in the centre of the stadium and the logos.
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The logos are formed with the placards, and the stars of the Australian flag are formed. More children are entering on the lefthand side to create the blue part of the flag.
All children are in position to create the Australian flag.
The flag is the indication for the jumpers to exit the planes. The jumpers are observed exiting over the top and forming the three formations ready to land in the stadium.
The banners are raised in time to the music to create the flag and logos.
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The bullseye is ready for the jumpers to land. Note there is less light and the bullseye appears shiny. The storm is approaching from behind my position (from the south), with wind and some rain.
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The flag is changing into a circle, in order to create the bullseye for the jumpers.
The music loops over and over but the cloud rolls in under the jumpers and they disappear from view. After several minutes, only three jumpers land in the stadium. The bullseye formation stops and people unsure of what to do next.
The children are instructed to continue the rehearsal. At this stage, I leave the stadium to find out what had happened.
The storm passes as quickly as it came, but six jumpers are missing, nowhere to be seen.
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Padd McHugh, GaryGeoffMcMahon,Holmes:mainstadium
The updraft from the storm deposited the jumpers in roughly the same north-easterly direction. Whereas Peter, Stewie and Graham were released sooner, Rick was caught in severe updraft, and was therefore carried further away. His main parachute, being lighter, is likely to have continued its upward path until spat out at a later point, hence its different south-easterly trajectory.
As Rick had no idea where he was or how fast he was moving, he was concerned about being over a mountain range or even the ocean. This was particularly so while freefalling in total white-out.
what happened?
McEvoy:Davidpracticearena
DavidcemeteryHancock:
Peter NewmanNobbs:Hotel
Stewart McNee: St Catherines Primary
RickcreekCollins:bank
Graham Jeffery: highway 5km out
farm,canopy:south-east
24 news reports
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Opposite page, right: Article in Rambling On, September/October, 1982.
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opening ceremony
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Rick’s father attended the opening ceremony, but was disappointed not the see the parachute display due to the high Relativeswinds. watched the bullseye on TV without the jumpers. The rest of the ceremony proceeded as planned.
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closing ceremony
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The closing ceremony was still very windy, but the jump proceeded with a different sequence of events. The bullseye was now streamers radiating out from the the centre of the stadium, and the jump was conducted as thousands of balloons and streamers were released.
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Opposite page, bottom photo:
The three stack consisting of Peter Nobbs (top), Rick (centre), and Stewie (bottom) flew it to the ground. The photo shows Stewie landing (but not standing up), Rick about to sprain both ankles, and Peter about to stand up.
“And here are the skydivers, the poor skydivers who were thwarted during the opening ceremony because of those extraordinarily high winds, the same nine skydivers who are involved in a display jump this time. So let’s hope they can land a little bit better. The conditions are much better I think than they were last time.” (Live commentary)
Opposite page, top photo:
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Considering the turbulence in the stadium with 20 knot winds, the jump was a success. One of the stacks opted to split and land separately.
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Screenshots from the televised version of the Closing Ceremony.
41 Above: Jumpers leaving the Right:stadium.Jumpers walk past the ScreenshotsQueen. and commentary from: • (31:50-35:00watch?v=bvRSmVAiex0https://www.youtube.com/mins) • watch?v=x2mWAmZZUG8https://www.youtube.com/ • (598) Opening of 1982 Commonwealth Games Brisbane (Australia) Part 1 - 5- YouTube
42 1984: Readers digest
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47 2000: advertisement
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News reporters latched onto the story quickly. There were several interviews that evening, and the story went worldwide. Rick described how going up in the storm felt like someone lifting him up by the risers with the feeling in the pit of your stomach like going up an elevator. He described how he tried to shield his face with his arms to stop the battering hail, which came from all directions. He was so worried about being knocked unconscious because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. (The team weren’t wearing helmets for canopy relative work so they could hear each other’s directions.)
This story was written as part of a book commemorating Rick’s life, and was one of many family contributions.
The Storm Jump
Rick described how hard the three parachutists tried to hang onto each other before being blown apart by the severity of the storm. The last words he heard were from Peter Nobbs who was at the top of the three parachutes stacked together. Peter yelled out, “Stay together.... stay together… stay to...!” Then Peter drifted away and could no longer be heard.
2007: Rick’s book
The story in the Reader’s Digest is well known but there can always be more to a story, as was the case with the storm jump. I am not a superstitious person but unusual things happened that impeded the jump for the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in 1982 - a freak storm, high wind and maybe even some serendipity. We all know the power of the Brisbane storms and how the thunderheads top out at something like 50,000 feet. Rick survived the battering by the gigantic hail stones then avoided drowning in a swollen creek. I was in the stadium at the time, so I didn’t know what had happened until I saw Rick’s battered and bruised face later that evening. He had been to hell and back and was babbling about the incredible experience. He said he wouldn’t have believed it himself without the physical evidence on his body and his altimeter that showed the dramatic height changes.
Rick continued upward and out of control while Peter was spat out not far from the stadium. He had survived! Peter bundled up his parachute to rush back to the stadium and raise the alarm for the others. Meanwhile, David Hancock had landed in the cemetery near the grave site of Doctor Bob Komoroski, a well-liked jumper who had recently died at Toogoolawah drop zone. It was a strange coincidence. After the ill-fated jump, Rick’s main parachute was missing. Pleas were broadcast on radio stations for its return in time for the opening ceremony. It was finally found in a farmer’s paddock. The farmer had spread it out in a ploughed paddock and used clumps of red mud to hold it open so that search helicopters could find it. The parachute was irreplaceable and had it not been found, the demonstration jump for the opening of the Commonwealth Games would not have proceeded. Luckily, it only needed washing to remove most of the red stains.
While several of the jumpers onsold their gear, Rick kept his and continued to jump it throughout the 1990s. He had moved to Bundaberg and one of the last jumps that he did with the gear was for a demonstration jump in Bundaberg with Alan Ing.
With trepidation, the jump for the closing ceremony proceeded. The Queen was suitably impressed and took photos of the jumpers with her ‘Box Brownie’ camera. Rick left the stadium happy and relieved. Later, he was treated for his two sprained ankles.
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After that, the gear went missing. Alan didn’t know where it was nor anyone else who was contacted. Ambor, Rick’s son, was keen to find it, but it was to no avail.
It wasn’t until 2018, that one of the canopies was found in South Australia. Jeremy Browne had it in storage and sent it up for Ambor at no cost.
More misfortune ensued. It was so windy during the opening ceremony that there was no chance it could be done. The head of the Department of Transport at the time was a man called Mr John Bally. In his thick European accent, he made the radio call, “Clear to drop!” at the rehearsal jump. It was only moments after his instruction to exit the plane, that the storm came in fast underneath the jumpers. He was in trouble for his lack of judgement that day in the face of an oncoming storm. He was also the focus of jokes from jump ers since that time. So, there was no way he was going to make a similar mistake at the opening ceremony. Even the closing ceremony was windy. In the photos of the closing ceremony, you can see all the flags flying straight out and balloons being whisked away. It also mean a lot of turbulence in the stadium. Peter was at the top of the three stack and was responsible for an accurate landing. He treated it like an accuracy jump, but it meant that the two jumpers underneath him landed heavily.
Thanks to Jeremy, Ambor was able to have something meaningful to remind him of his Dad.
2018: search for the canopy
Finally...
AfterLeft: years of searching, Ambor gets to open a special present.
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WhileBelow:no longer on the canopy after 36 years, the markings of the Commonwealth Games logo can still plainly be seen.
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Dedicated to Rick Collins Blue skies, Rick. Hope there are no more sucking clouds up there! 26 September 2022. 29.09.53 - 15.06.07
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