Ideas on making sure nobody goes missing at major DZs?

[BillyVance 34]

Anybody? Alluding to the disappearance of the Russian at Perris, I can see the impracticality of staff trying to keep track of all the jumpers, but what if there was a way to do it electronically? Maybe GPS chips rented out to jumpers for some fee that would attach to a safe point on their harness, like the boogie tags... If a jumper with one lands out beyond the DZ's perimeter, an alarm activates at manifest with the coordinates of the location? Would something like that work and be feasible?

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[erdnarob 1]

What a good idea. The only problem I can see is that the skydiving market is small therefore designing such a product and selling it will make the cost relatively high. OTOH such a device exists already to locate main parachutes which have been cut away in order to better recover them. If I remember the device was costing 200-300 $ or so. I didn't hear about that device for years. Last time it was in Skydiving Magazine which is not anymore under publication.

Learn from others mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all.

[in2jumping 0]

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Anybody? Alluding to the disappearance of the Russian at Perris, I can see the impracticality of staff trying to keep track of all the jumpers, but what if there was a way to do it electronically? Maybe GPS chips rented out to jumpers for some fee that would attach to a safe point on their harness, like the boogie tags... If a jumper with one lands out beyond the DZ's perimeter, an alarm activates at manifest with the coordinates of the location? Would something like that work and be feasible?

How about AAD MFGs start integrating GPS tracking into their AADs? Come in handy for lost jumpers or lost/stolen rigs?

[theonlyski 3]

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Anybody? Alluding to the disappearance of the Russian at Perris, I can see the impracticality of staff trying to keep track of all the jumpers, but what if there was a way to do it electronically? Maybe GPS chips rented out to jumpers for some fee that would attach to a safe point on their harness, like the boogie tags... If a jumper with one lands out beyond the DZ's perimeter, an alarm activates at manifest with the coordinates of the location? Would something like that work and be feasible?

You could probably use a hook/pile band with an RFID chip in it, and funnel people through one or two entrances where the scanners can pick up on them.


I just had an idea that will probably go nowhere, but something inside your AAD so that when it activates, it sends a beacon signal every x minutes until you turn the AAD off. (which, IIRC, you have to turn it off to change the cutter anyways)

Sure, it would only work on rigs equipped with that AAD, but its better than nuthin.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[theonlyski 3]

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Anybody? Alluding to the disappearance of the Russian at Perris, I can see the impracticality of staff trying to keep track of all the jumpers, but what if there was a way to do it electronically? Maybe GPS chips rented out to jumpers for some fee that would attach to a safe point on their harness, like the boogie tags... If a jumper with one lands out beyond the DZ's perimeter, an alarm activates at manifest with the coordinates of the location? Would something like that work and be feasible?

How about AAD MFGs start integrating GPS tracking into their AADs? Come in handy for lost jumpers or lost/stolen rigs?

The problem with that is real-estate and location, A GPS chip won't work too well if its covered up and packed in tight with a reserve/main wrapped around it. Then you go into how are you going to send the data? There may be no cell coverage, satellite takes a good amount of power and passing data over RF isn't all to easy to get done without making the unit way more expensive, larger and the battery changes more frequent.

Not to mention expensive and how would you track it? Require a mandatory scan at each dz for all jumpers so they know who is who? Not likely to happen.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[stratostar 5]

a kiosk type machine that would require you to self check in and in the event you don't.... say after X amount of time a notice is sent to manifest. Should be easy to build and affordable too.

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[4dbill 0]

I don't know much about the electronics technology, but the last Silicon Valley Marathon I ran, they gave each runner a little chip device we tied to our shoes. It recorded our pace at every gate we ran through. Can such technology be implemented cheaply for DZ's? I suppose a 'gate' could be set up at the hanger, and if the skydiver loses it, he/she has to pay for it. The tracking chip is probably not cheap since all runners had to turn it it at the end of the race.

4DBill
http://4dbill.com
http://dslrforvideo.com

[airtwardo 6]

Buy a daily 'poker' (pound in) chip for say 20.00 when you get to the Dz, and get your $ back when you turn it in as you leave...

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[theonlyski 3]

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Buy a daily 'poker' (pound in) chip for say 20.00 when you get to the Dz, and get your $ back when you turn it in as you leave...

Yup, it would in theory work... ish.

"I may be a dirty pirate hooker...but I'm not about to go stand on the corner." iluvtofly
DPH -7, TDS 578, Muff 5153, SCR 14890
I'm an asshole, and I approve this message

[mx19 0]

That's what we have at the dz i jump at in uk. All we do is sign ourselves back in on a computer as we land.

[grimmie 173]

It's simple. Keep track of your own group and each jumper. Solos buddy up in the loading area and check in with that person after the jump. Simple fixes kids. No need for star trek stuff here.

[stratostar 5]

Rich to a point your right, however as we've seen in the last couple years there is at least 3 people who have go in without anyone knowing until days later, on being a staff person in TX and lasts months deal in Ca... Now this guy.

So I think it's fair to say we have a problem, that last guy in CA was on a three way and those he jumped with didn't seem to miss him in the LZ or packing area.

The times I've been to PVS, it was a well run place and with one eagle eye guy who is damn good at keeping track of a hell of a lot of people! However as we see now people can not be seen and go missing.

A simple check in system could save a life of an injured jumper or at least get a search under way for the missing in less then two day's or two hours.... that don't sound unreasonable to me. I also just attended a larger boogie that had a check in system and it worked very well.

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[grimmie 173]

In Belize we all keep track of each other and have a buddy system for solos.
One year we had a couple that went missing. No one had seen them for two days. We went to their room and their gear, wallets, toothbrushes and clothes were there. I was really worried. We called the cops, the Belize military and the US embassy to look out for them. At least we knew they were not missing from a leap!
It turned out they took a day trip to the mainland, loved it and stayed a couple of days. They bought some toothpaste at the hotel in the jungle they were at! When they showed back up on the island I was really relieved...and wanted to strangle them both!

I hope this Russian jumper ordeal turns out the same.

[crotalus01 0]

J had a pretty good system at Skyfest this year. Each jumper got an ID card when they registered. When you manifested for a load, you put you card in a slot on the board for that aircraft, and picked the card up after you landed. The biggest problem was that noone was used to it so lots of folks (including myself) forgot to grab their card after landing.
I'm sure that system would work quite well once everyone got used to doing it.

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

[stratostar 5]

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I hope this Russian jumper ordeal turns out the same

Yea me too...

The card system @ skyfest worked very well, it only took one or two reminders over the PA to those of us who forgot to pick up our cards before it became SOP after getting dropped off by the lz shuttle wagon after each jump.

And no card, no manifest, the manifest was on top of anyone not picking up their cards and they would hunt you down in no time to make sure you were not off the dz.

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[bigbearfng 9]

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It's simple. Keep track of your own group and each jumper. Solos buddy up in the loading area and check in with that person after the jump. Simple fixes kids. No need for star trek stuff here.

+1
I understand a lot of folk want to come up with a system for this, however keep in mind at a larger DZ the numbers of jumpers of which so many are visiting and some don't even speak the same language.
Plus hasn't anyone heard that just getting skydivers to a dirt dive is like herding cats!?

[catfishhunter 1]

I really don't care one way or a other as I'm a look after your friends guy, but grimmie, "it's too hard", is not a reason not to. All I'm reading in your post is it will be a lot of work and difficult to begin with so you don't even want to try. Where would our sport be or hell society as a whole if we didn't do something because it was hard?

MAKE EVERY DAY COUNT
Life is Short and we never know how long we are going to have. We must live life to the fullest EVERY DAY. Everything we do should have a greater purpose.

[grimmie 173]

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I really don't care one way or a other as I'm a look after your friends guy, but grimmie, "it's too hard", is not a reason not to. All I'm reading in your post is it will be a lot of work and difficult to begin with so you don't even want to try. Where would our sport be or hell society as a whole if we didn't do something because it was hard?

Nope. Not "Too hard". When you have a system, it has to have a practical application. I think a solo buddy/tracking system will work. But to require everyone in a group to check in is ridiculous and redundant, IMHO.
I take safety very seriously in this sport. Probably more than anyone you will ever meet. But having groups of people that are jumping together check in is overkill. Think about a US Nationals, everyone checking in after every jump. Chics rock was a madhouse yesterday. The manifest line was 10 deep at times. We need a practical solution to a practical issue.
I am all for accounting systems. Account for your group. Solos, we need a system, I agree.

[3mpire 0]

RFID chips in cards that you carry in a pocket. Have an RFID reader(s) near where you board the aircraft and at the LZ. That would do an automated check-in check-out for a much lower cost than GPS. All you need is a good choke point to put the RFID reader and the jumper doesn't have to do anything but pass by.

[billvon 2,396]

To me you can break this down into two very general sorts of systems:

1) Check out/check in
2) Locator

1) is possible and can be anything from a whiteboard with check boxes to something electronic (i.e. RFID, or a kiosk or whatever.) It is regularly done for bigways, and from my experience with them it's a moderate pain in the butt. When checking in even a smaller dive (say 60) it takes about 15 minutes per load and there's a small percentage who is going to forget even if it's announced to the group beforehand. But it's doable if you have the people.

One question with this is - what do you do when someone is thought to be missing? Do you just note it and wait until the end of the day, then try to look for his gear/car etc? Do you hire someone to go find them? (Definitely possible, but more $$$) Do you shut down jumping until they are found? (Probably prohibitively costly for most DZ's)

An additional question is - how much help would this be? Depending on the system, it would get a search started within between 2 and 12 hours. How much more useful is that over a system that gets a search started in 48-96 hours? (i.e. what we have now)

2) is probably impractical from a cost standpoint. This is a similar issue to the old "main retrieval" transmitter for finding cutaways, and indeed you could use the same system for both. But as it would have to be both reliable and self powered there'd be a not-insignificant cost associated with both buying and maintaining it, and experience has shown that if skydivers don't have to change the batteries in something they don't usually need, they won't.

[Southern_Man 0]

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I don't know much about the electronics technology, but the last Silicon Valley Marathon I ran, they gave each runner a little chip device we tied to our shoes. It recorded our pace at every gate we ran through. Can such technology be implemented cheaply for DZ's? I suppose a 'gate' could be set up at the hanger, and if the skydiver loses it, he/she has to pay for it. The tracking chip is probably not cheap since all runners had to turn it it at the end of the race.

4DBill
http://4dbill.com

I know a little bit about such technology from my running. The chips are not that expensive, races rent them at ~$2-3 per runner. Runners can purchase their own chips, I think they cost $25. The bigger problem is that they have to be very close to the sensor to read--i.e. they have to be attached to your shoe. RFID are cheaper and more versatile in terms of reading them.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

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[airtwardo 6]

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To me you can break this down into two very general sorts of systems:

1) Check out/check in
2) Locator

1) is possible and can be anything from a whiteboard with check boxes to something electronic (i.e. RFID, or a kiosk or whatever.) It is regularly done for bigways, and from my experience with them it's a moderate pain in the butt. When checking in even a smaller dive (say 60) it takes about 15 minutes per load and there's a small percentage who is going to forget even if it's announced to the group beforehand. But it's doable if you have the people.

One question with this is - what do you do when someone is thought to be missing? Do you just note it and wait until the end of the day, then try to look for his gear/car etc? Do you hire someone to go find them? (Definitely possible, but more $$$) Do you shut down jumping until they are found? (Probably prohibitively costly for most DZ's)

An additional question is - how much help would this be? Depending on the system, it would get a search started within between 2 and 12 hours. How much more useful is that over a system that gets a search started in 48-96 hours? (i.e. what we have now)

2) is probably impractical from a cost standpoint. This is a similar issue to the old "main retrieval" transmitter for finding cutaways, and indeed you could use the same system for both. But as it would have to be both reliable and self powered there'd be a not-insignificant cost associated with both buying and maintaining it, and experience has shown that if skydivers don't have to change the batteries in something they don't usually need, they won't.

Big brother MUST know where you are at all times...



I see a whole lotta idea$ addressing a nearly non-existent problem...if ya'll put that much thought into preventing fatalities under open canopies the sport would really take off!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[grimmie 173]

+ one trillion.

[sundevil777 93]

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An additional question is - how much help would this be? Depending on the system, it would get a search started within between 2 and 12 hours. How much more useful is that over a system that gets a search started in 48-96 hours? (i.e. what we have now)

It is a whole helluvalot more useful if you are the one that is injured and hoping someone will come to help. I've been in exactly that situation.

It is very easy to think that it isn't worth the bother. Very easy to think that until you're the one that is left out at some alternate (student) landing field with nobody remembering to come get you, and one more thing...you've got a dislocated elbow (which feels like a broken arm). I've been there, nobody remembered to come get me at the distant student (non D-license) field (Snohomish, 1987).

That really sucked. I was the only one landing at the student field, they knew it, but forgot about me. Any sort of check in system would have reminded them of my absence. They relied on a verbal notice and that was not at all adequate. Any sort of watch out for each other/check in with a buddy if you're a solo is going to fail, and murphy's law will make sure it fails when someone is injured.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[ManagingPrime 0]

COPY AND PASTE JOB

Re: [motion] Russian man goes missing after skydive at Perris, CA, USA - 30 Sep 2010 [In reply to]
Seems like a simple RFID tag that is sensed at entry, then again at exit to DZ would solve this. They're pretty cheap these days.

Agreed.

Getting a DZ to pay for the installation of the readers might be a tough sell, but I could see other practical benefits that might make the sell easier.

If you can track a jumper from exit down to the ground one would think that it would be a valuable spotting asset that accounts for winds. Who knows what other applications can be developed when you can track a jumper to within 3 feet. If the price was right I would be interested in access to this data.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/3610/