I'm curious. When I started jumping in '97 I seem to remember a 30 foot pea pit. Another in 2001 was also around that size. The last few DZs I jumped at didn't have them. Are they a thing of the past?
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Mullin's DZ, West Tennessee Skydiving has the largest pea pit I've seen anywhere. Not sure of the diameter though. The two DZ's I've frequented the last few years don't even have one, and they're not even 10 years old.
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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All the ones I saw were usually around 30 ft in diameter. I don't know if that was the standard or not. It's too bad they're disappearing. I was never an accuracy competitor but I shot the peas on every skydive just because it was another fun part of the jump.
They also made for comfortable sleeping on cool nights.
(This post was edited by MrPeapit on Oct 29, 2009, 5:12 AM)
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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ours got removed just before i started a couple years back; if i look at photos, and the pits at another dz i frequent, i'd say the 30ft are about accurate..
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Sometime back in the 70's, West Point switched from a big sawdust pit to peas. It seamed really big to me back than. I was just a kid. I got a chance to jump my dad's old jumpsuit a while ago and found some old stow bands and a handful of peas in one of the pockets! I keep them in a small jar......
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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I'm curious. When I started jumping in '97 I seem to remember a 30 foot pea pit. Another in 2001 was also around that size. The last few DZs I jumped at didn't have them. Are they a thing of the past?
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Probably one of the History buffs (Help me, Howard) can answer this, but the DZ at Orange Mass. had a pit made for the first World Meet held in the US back in the 60s. That thing looked like you could see it from space, it was so big. It is still visible today at the airport, but the peas were removed years ago.
Re: [Milo] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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The landing circle at Lakewood (NJ) was 1800' and all white sand! The one at the Lakehurst military base was even bigger. We once had a European group that spotted for a golf course sand trap by mistake thinking it was the target. You can still recognize it on Google Earth. The dropzone closed in '85 I believe.
Re: [jimjumper] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Shot in the dark on this but weren't the peas primarily to cushion impact when going downwind for accuracy? There was another use which usually happened at night and involved the disc and a member of the opposite....sex..... I'd think with the advent of squares and the diminishing number of accuracy jumpers the expense may be a factor.... Just guessing....
Re: [lodestar] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Shot in the dark on this but weren't the peas primarily to cushion impact when going downwind for accuracy? There was another use which usually happened at night and involved the disc and a member of the opposite....sex..... I'd think with the advent of squares and the diminishing number of accuracy jumpers the expense may be a factor.... Just guessing....
Pea gravel really was soft to land in. It had to be roto-tilled each and every year to keep it that way. You could pound in splashing gravel for yards in every direction and still get up to walk away. Crazy what a little competition will make a guy do.
Re: [jonstark] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Hi jon,
Quote
It had to be roto-tilled each and every year to keep it that way.
That depended upon the type of pea gravel used. One local DZO learned the hard way. If you ordered washed pea gravel you did not have to do any rototilling, it always would spray when coming in downwind; unless you let the weeds grow and then you should have had heavy plastic under it. Washed pea gravel has no sand in it.
The 'normal' size was 10 meters in radius. But do not miss the peas if the wind is howling.
Re: [kkeenan] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Here's an architect's drawing (yes, it had an architect.) I've indicated where Jumptown is. I'm sitting looking at the area as I write, and I made three jumps today into roughly where the "peas" in the center are. They really weren't peas as such, just sand. It was actually the Sixth World Meet, in 1962; just the first in the U.S. Among the competitors was Loy Brydon, who died over the past weekend. More, later, if anyone cares.
HW
(This post was edited by howardwhite on Oct 29, 2009, 2:03 PM)
Re: [lodestar] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Shot in the dark on this but weren't the peas primarily to cushion impact when going downwind for accuracy?....
Yeah, you could really cream into the pea gravel and walk away from it just fine.
There's a story of a couple of old-time Florida DZs who had a dispute over ownership of the peas. One night with the help of a lot of beer and earth-moving equipment, some of the jumpers removed the pea gravel (several tons) from one DZ and relocated it to the other.
Re: [kkeenan] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Yeah, you could really cream into the pea gravel and walk away from it just fine.
The DZ I owned was in Southern New Jersey which is famous for sand and gravel.
When I started the DZ I wanted to have a pea gravel pit. I went to a friend who was an engineer at one of the local sand/gravel companies. When I explained the purpose of the pit he suggested a design with a much deeper middle section than out toward the edges.
He suggested a size of gravel which was smaller and rounder than any of the pits I had jumped into during MEPA meets. The size and shape was different than any pea gravel pit on the East coast. Another thing he recommended was mentioned up-thread and that was "double washed" gravel which made it very clean.
The trouble with the design was walking in the gravel was almost impossible: you'd sink in over your ankles. It was a great landing area for doing downwind accuracy on a 28' cheapo or a PC.
When we hosted MEPA meets the judges were worn out after a day in my pit. They'd continually complain, but the accuracy freaks totally loved it. Lots of people came to my DZ to practice accuracy because the more rounded and slightly smaller stones were more forgiving.
Added after reading: The biggest problem with our pit was it had to be raked much more often because the peas were so "fluid". Actually, the raking got to be a bit of a pain in the ass it had to be done so often.
Those were the days...
(This post was edited by Guru312 on Oct 30, 2009, 7:05 AM)
Re: [Guru312] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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At Skydive City in Sylvania, GA in the 70's I made a pit. We had a couple underwater demo guys jumpng with us who got a case of dynamite and had a source of sandblasting slag. We took 36 sticks of high speed gelatinous Dupont wired all together and blew 'em up in an array inside the designated pit hoping the blast would blow the dirt out of the hole. It blew the dirt a long ways but straight up and it came right back down where it came from. We spent a few days moving the dirt out then lining the hole with plastic to prevent weeds coming back and added perforated drainage pipes. Then came the slag. Turns out it was blindingly bright white and not very fine sand. Duh. It made for a really great target to orient the students as the white circle in the corner of the soy field in the infield of the airport really stood out nicely. Years after the DZ was defunct that white circle was visible from the air. It sucked for accuracy after the first year tho.
Re: [dragon2] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Ours is fairly big, I believe the story is they mistook the asked-for 10m diameter for a 10m radius, this apparently then took a LOT of gravel to fill
Your peas are nothing like South Jersey peas.
I don't know what that stuff is in your pit but it doesn't look like a pea gravel nor does it look like anything that would be moved easily by an outstretched toe, foot and leg.
Re: [dragon2] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Ours is fairly big, I believe the story is they mistook the asked-for 10m diameter for a 10m radius, this apparently then took a LOT of gravel to fill
Looks like they just used bigger peas. If you count them I bet there would be the same number as in a normal-sized pit (of course compensated for scaling to get the same landing results.)
Re: [Guru312] How big were pea pits in the early days?
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Don't know what to call that kind of gravel, but it is good stuff to land in, certainly much softer than the grass around it. I landed a Lightning from half-brakes in it once, gravel everywhere but I was fine When it's frozen solid I don't like landing in the pit, mostly because of subsequently having to walk over frozen gravel, but otherwise it's a fav landing spot for sports jumpers, most if not all TMs like landing in it as do the accuracy jumpers.
BTW I have never seen anybody raking it, maybe we have a kind of super gravel
Da-Pea's.jpg
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