I can tell you that's not the usual experience. I don't have a whole lot of experience, but I do have nearly 300 jumps and I'm still yet to experience a hard opening. Much more like coming to a slow, graceful stop in the car. People sometimes have a "slammer" but they're rare and can usually be attributed to some reason (bad packing, bad body position at deploy time etc).
"I don't have a whole lot of experience, but I do have nearly 300 jumps"
300? I take my hat of for you sir! I must of had a bad day. It was very cloudy and the plane we jumped from ended up above the wrong island. We found out in time, corrected, found a hole in the clouds and went for it.
Yep, and if not tandem could have been rental gear. Although I've never had a hard opening on any gear, the rental gear I jumped as a student was a lot less comfortable than my rig that's sized perfectly for me.
Yes I did! I'm the guy with he black hair. Jumping with the No1 jumper from Holland. http://i.imgur.com/3beyM.jpg Everybody should do it at least once! It is incredibly cool.
