Re: [NiteQwill] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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I've got 3 friends that un-assed themselves from a burning Queen-Air at about 800 - 1000ft. They all went main; most familiar handle. This was "back in the day" of "big" F111 mains. They all got open and landed safely, all-be-it, after a SHORT canopy ride. I doubt they all would have made it if they had been jumping some of the "opens into a streamer that eventually clears" canopies of "today."
Re: [aresye] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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We used to do hop & pops from a Cessna on cloudy days at 2 grand, if that was all we could get. That was in the old days, with older generation 5 cell and 7 cell canopies. I'd still do it nowadays, though I'd want to turn off my cypres first, just to be sure I don't get two canopies out for any reason.
Re: [aresye] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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Did 1800 feet at an air show due to clouds. Not a problem to me, but we had a flag bearer that I didn't think could deploy his 1800 sq ft flag in time. He did, and still made it on target!
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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Just out of curiosity
< = less than > = greater than
Don't get pissy !
I've asked for 2050' on accuracy jumps since it that meant my container was unambiguously open before the BSR minimum.
Where that didn't matter I've taken 10 second delays from 2000' since it's not that much more time on the aircraft and you might as well enjoy the free fall.
(This post was edited by DrewEckhardt on Jul 27, 2009, 10:33 PM)
Re: [diablopilot] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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At 35 jumps, I've really only had one chance so far to jump lower than 4000' - and it was at 2800' for what would have been #36. I knew my equipment could do it, but I rode the plane down because I didn't want to risk it at my experience level. Not to mention the fact that I would have been exiting the plane lower than my hard deck...
However I really like this discussion, as well as the one regarding the recent "incident". I didn't think too hard on this before hand, but will now. I just got my new main canopy and will certainly be measuring altitude loss for these types of situations.
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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The higher categories in the poll seem to be for the "turbine babies" generation. Low Cessna passes have normally always been 3500' in my area. That's quite adequate even for those with snivelly canopies who want to be completely open before 2000'.
For those who have been around a while, it is completely normal to jump at 3000' after dispatching IAD or static line first jump students at the same height. I've been at competitions where the accuracy jumps were from 2500', although that's for big canopies, and usually they go higher to drop more jumpers per pass.
Nowadays you still get those "ceiling check" loads that go up and decide to get out even if the ceiling turns out to be a bit low. Even at a relatively conservative DZ like I've been at, traditionally C-182 equipped, we have on rare occasions made hop and pops with our sub-100 crossbraced canopies from 2000' or 1800'. I think the latter is the lowest we'd get a whole plane load of the more experienced jumpers to agree to go out without having the mindset of doing something crazy. Not everyone will go up on a day like that, and I'm not sure what the opinion would be for those jumpers with 50-300 jumps.
(Crazy stuff is another issue. Who says you have to be stuck doing hop and pops when the clouds are at 2000'? I was getting 15 seconds of freefall on my Protrac from 2000' when using my wingsuit... on a very grey day when almost nobody was looking up.)
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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At a CRW boogie with a lot of people wanting to jump, the ceiling was at 2500'. Not wanting to sit around, we put together a set of 4-way teams to do a "Speed Stack" competition, exiting at 2500'. What could possibly go wrong. Turns out that my bad dock on a teammate wrapped him with my canopy. I cut away at about 900' for a 20 sec. reserve ride.
Low hop & pops are fine, but for low CRW, I try to dock more carefully now.
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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did a lot of LOW jumps
years ago.. ( might have even been on a few WITH tbrown...)
did many like that before i had 500 jumps..
in the days before squares or AADs
once or twice exited around 1,600 feet... no problem...
most of us were acccuracy enthusiasts then, and a "one dollar each, mini money meet " would be a sure way to get some parachutes in the air...!!!
HEY!!!! at least we weren't exiting IN the clouds... we were Under them... OK OK maybe the rudder of the cessna WAS in the ceiling... But we had jumpers who liked to jump and pilots who liked to fly... We always felt that God was setting the exit altitude,, and so who were WE to argue.. Today??? i'd get out @ 2 grand , NO problem... i watched two guys pull a two -way off the step at what the pilot later said was 1,600 feet...while jumping PCs,, but i was ON the Ground!!! watching it... ( didn't need any binoculars for THAT one!!)
However on days when the ceiling was NOT an issue,,, I'd much rather push for More altitude...it just makes better Sense ...
jt
(This post was edited by jimmytavino on Jul 28, 2009, 9:38 AM)
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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For my 60th birthday fund raiser for MS "60for60". I did all 60 of them in 7hours and 20 minutes from between 1500 and 1800. Excapt the last one the sky opened up and I got all the way up to 2200. I did a demo in the rain at 1200 with a PC but we got $5.00 so it was OK. I did the high speed Otter jumps at Rantual, and the Pac 750 low altidudes too Anyone remember the get everything that can fly jumps at Freakport? Roger had a theory all the planes at a single pass would blow the clouds away. You could get "T-Shirts that said something like "I was one of the 207 canopies in the air at Freakport"
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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I might have had the opportunity to get out at 1700' once. In the rain. On my first jump on a new, small, high performance canopy. But I wouldn't have done that, because it would have been stupid, not to mention a BSR violation.
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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First 2000':
Cloudy, seems like it's gonna snow day in winter, few hour of daylight up here north, just before christmas, accuracy target set up for a very informal accuracy competition, chief instructor goes "Please, pretty please don't hook low to get to the target, look, the prize is this neckhat, it's not worth it!"
First load gets up and they get 2000 before they hit the cloud cover. Some of the jumpers ride the plane down because they're not comfortable with the exit altitude. OK, so 2000 is what I get: Damn it's low, I can see all the houses in details, snowy roads and people out doing their shopping, then we climb the last couple of hundred feet to 2000 and the ground is blocked by clouds. I'm at 2000 and see only white. I go out under the wing of the C-182, hang like a static line student and let go, pull immediately, have a PC hesitation, but I'm out of the cloud by the time it cleared, PD Silhouette 150 is open at 1500. Good spot but missed the target.
The competition got cancelled after a while, as the cloud cover got lower and lower, and it wasn't really a good idea to fly the plane in clouds at those temperatures.
Good times!
I'll do it again, and I'll go from 1500' once I've stopped having those anoying PC hesitations on hop n' pops.
I'm a typical turbine baby.
Oh, and all of the above was according to the rules here in Norway.
Re: [Parafoil27] What was your lowest intended hop & pop?
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8 of us jumped into a wedding in 1975 from 2 C-180s. The jump plane I was in developed oil pressure problems and the pilot wanted to nurse it and head straight back to the airport. We (4 of us) did hop & pops from about 1800'. Had kind of a long walk due to a shaky spot with fairly high winds and needing to avoid some tall power lines. Fortunately, the groom was in the OTHER plane.
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