What is the best thing to do when you are low?

[crotalus01 0]

Faulknerwn, feel free to PM me about concerns you have, but to address what you posted: I am NOT scared of my canopy. I did NOT "pull high" because of canopy fear. I waved off at 3500' and pulled at 3000' or a hair below - I was saddled out at 2200' according to my Neptune.
At any rate, please PM me as I am interested in learning CRW and I know you are a big time CRW dawg. I need some advice

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

[NovaTTT 2]

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I prefer they try to come back up, but if it's hopeless, track early, track hard.

I don't agree. If the jumper is aware of jump run and can track away perpendicular thereto - maybe. But if he's that heads-up, he probably won't find himself down and out in the first place.

IMO it's better to hold a position outside the column of the formation until breakoff altitude and then, breakoff as planned. This helps avoid encounters with previous or subsequent groups.

Again - part of the dirt dive should be working out what to do if someone goes low/out/whatever.

.02


N

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[mjosparky 3]

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Faulknerwn, feel free to PM me about concerns you have, but to address what you posted: I am NOT scared of my canopy. I did NOT "pull high" because of canopy fear. I waved off at 3500' and pulled at 3000' or a hair below - I was saddled out at 2200' according to my Neptune.
At any rate, please PM me as I am interested in learning CRW and I know you are a big time CRW dawg. I need some advice

He gave you some damn good advice, get rig of the canopy you are jumping. No matter what you think you are not good enough to handle it if things turn to shit.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[crotalus01 0]

I trust my S&TA, instructors etc. They have told me I will be okay with this canopy.
Please take it to PMs if you want to discuss my canopy choice/WL etc.
Please keep the thread on topic, which is what to do when low

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

[NovaTTT 2]

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Please keep the thread on topic, which is what to do when low

That'll learn you, Sparky!

"Even in a world where perfection is unattainable, there's still a difference between excellence and mediocrity." Gary73

[crotalus01 0]

Not to be an ass, but very few of us are good enough to handle everything when it goes to shit. Most of the incident reports I have read involve up jumpers. Yeah a few are quick progressing swoopers but most are shit happens stories like Tonto or Jerry.
Please please take any canopy/WL/jump# issues to PM/email!

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

[crotalus01 0]

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Please keep the thread on topic, which is what to do when low

That'll learn you, Sparky!

I DID ask nicely and include a

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

[JohnMitchell 14]

We're applying a Holistic approach to keeping you alive.

Seriously, your canopy wing loading is a little sporty. Back to the original question. Are you on the "beefy' side of the scale? If so, you may need a better jump suit to do belly flying with others. Also, big boys tend to not track as well as skinny f-ers, like Dr. Kallend noted above. Know your limitations.

[popsjumper 2]

The answer(s) are simple and most have already been mentioned.

Plan the Dive and Dive the Plan.

-deployment altitude for everyone
(some of them passed you in freefall? At what altitude were THEY supposed to pull?)

-what to do if someone goes low
(two schools of thought...one is to try your best to get back up and track away early if you can't....the other is stay with the formation, but not under it, until planned break-off and then track away...either plan should include the low guy to pull below everyone else's planned pull altitude. The general pull altitude should be high enough to consider and accommodate someone going low).

The problem is created when the low guy cannot flat track and do so in a straight line. For example, if they started tracking 10 seconds after YOU started and still flew over you....you may want to get tracking coaching immediately...before you go out with bigger dives.

If you need a "little bit of cushion" because of the canopy you are flying, then that needs to be considered and included in the dive plan so that everyone will know and can plan for it with adjusted pull altitudes.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[ufk22 32]

I trust my S&TA, instructors etc. They have told me I will be okay with this canopy.

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Let's see here; 140 jumps=about 40 jumps/year under a very HP canopy loaded at about 1.5.
I wouldn't trust anyone who gave out this kind of advice. Are these the same people who's advice you don't seem to trust when it comes to "what to do if you go low and lose site of the formation"? Or is it that they just never told you what to do in that situation?
Another potential "spot on the tarmac".

This is the paradox of skydiving. We do something very dangerous, expose ourselves to a totally unnecesary risk, and then spend our time trying to make it safer.

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[wmw999 2,169]

OK, the topic is your freefall skills (because that is, in fact, the topic). Your experience level is such that you can't tell what group you can't keep up with AT ALL, or else the group is so inexperienced that they can't take into account that there's a faster faller with them.

So you need to pick your groups more carefully, until either (and preferably both)
a. you can keep up with groups you jump with, at least enough to remain aware of where they are
b. you can track well enough that it's not an issue

And, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don't know where the other people are (hopefully it's because you've been knocked out in freefall or ejected from tthe bottom of a massive and ugly funnel full of zoomies), you open the lowest that you safely can. It's not the time to set up for a swoop, or check out the canopy, or anything else. It's time to open low enough that everyone else is probably opening higher than you.

Because once you lose track of the other people, it's not your skydive any more. Really. It's only your skydive when you share it with the other people.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 2,471]

> I am NOT scared of my canopy. I did NOT "pull high" because of
>canopy fear. I waved off at 3500' and pulled at 3000' or a hair below . . .

Right. But in the situation you mentioned, you should be pulling at 2000 feet; the lower the better when there is a risk of people above you.

[BrianM 1]

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I am NOT scared of my canopy.

At 140 jumps, you should be scared of an elliptical at 1.45.

"It's amazing what you can learn while you're not talking." - Skydivesg

[airdvr 200]

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Indeed. It's been my experience that people with a habit of getting way low are generally not the fastest, flattest trackers either.

Easy now...I resemble that remark. I've been down there a few times and for me the bottom line is that I fucked up and now I get to ride the lightning. I know that's not gonna be a very popular sentiment. You went low...you're gonna dump low. It's only common sense otherwise you risk dumping into someone. Don't want to do that? Don't go low. Get a bigger jumpsuit, jump with bigger people, be in the base...whatever.

'Course us oldtimers don't get sceered at 2 grand

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[kallend 1,679]

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The answer(s) are simple and most have already been mentioned.

Plan the Dive and Dive the Plan.

Absolutely, and this should involve breakoff plan if the formation is incomplete.

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-deployment altitude for everyone
(some of them passed you in freefall? At what altitude were THEY supposed to pull?)

-what to do if someone goes low
(two schools of thought...one is to try your best to get back up and track away early if you can't....the other is stay with the formation, but not under it, until planned break-off and then track away...either plan should include the low guy to pull below everyone else's planned pull altitude. The general pull altitude should be high enough to consider and accommodate someone going low).

BECAUSE there are two schools of thought (one of which I disagree with but that's beside the point), everyone needs to know WHICH plan is being followed. Nothing worse than knowing someone is out there but having no clue what he did or where he is.

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The problem is created when the low guy cannot flat track and do so in a straight line. For example, if they started tracking 10 seconds after YOU started and still flew over you....you may want to get tracking coaching immediately...before you go out with bigger dives.

.

This has happened any number of times, which is why I prefer that the low guy doesn't track away early. In the case of the early track off, chances are that a better tracker will pass over the top of low man and may not see him until his canopy comes out.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[davelepka 4]

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I trust my S&TA, instructors etc. They have told me I will be okay with this canopy.

Of course, they're not the ones who have to jump the canopy with your brain and your body weight.

Here's an interesting thought - the purpose of this thread is to discuss going low on a formation. This is pretty basic information, and something I would think that you would know about with close to 150 jumps, but it turns out you don't know. You got yourself into a position you didn't know about, and according to others on your jump, you ended up creating a dangerous situaiton.

Let's take that idea over to canopy control. Do you ever wonder things you might not know about canopy control? How many situaitons that could arise that you will have no idea how to handle (sound familiar)?

If you had presented the same RW situation as above, but it was a 40 sequential out of 2 Otters, your ignorance of proper procedure would have been eclipsed by the fact that you were on a 40 way sequantial with 150 jumps. The focus would have surely been on the fact that you were on a jump designed for a much more expereinced jumper.

That's about where you're at with your canopy choice. The Vengeance is a high performance canopy, designed for expereinced canopy pilots. A WL of 1.45 is more appropriate for a jumper with closer to 500 jumps than 150. Combine the two, and you have a situation which you should be nowhere near. Neither that canopy, nor that wingloading was ever intended for anyone close to your expereince level, and as proved by your earlier question, anyone with such a lack of basic skydiving information.

[ridestrong 1]

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What is the best thing to do when you are low?

Discuss it with your fellow jumpers, and not with the 'we know whats best for you' crowd here at dz.com.

*I am not afraid of dying... I am afraid of missing life.*
----Disclaimer: I don't know shit about skydiving.----

[Heatmiser 0]

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We're applying a Holistic approach to keeping you alive.

Seriously, your canopy wing loading is a little sporty. Back to the original question. Are you on the "beefy' side of the scale? If so, you may need a better jump suit to do belly flying with others. Also, big boys tend to not track as well as skinny f-ers, like Dr. Kallend noted above. Know your limitations.

I know it! I look like a tandem pair trying to do atmo!

What you say is reflective of your knowledge...HOW ya say it is reflective of your experience. Airtwardo

Someone's going to be spanked! Hopefully, it will be me. Skymama

[mrbiceps 0]

My take on it is that if u never go low on a formation we wouldnt be talking about this. Get yourself a super baggy suit. Or if u want to do it on the cheap buy the biggest fleecy sloppy joe u can find. I went to the fat mans section at lowes and got a 7xl fleecy jumper after failing my starcrests time after time again. It cost me $12 and i couldnt believe that i was actually above the formation and had no problems arching a little bit and flying into my slot. End of going low problem on bigways.
I leant it to a fellow big jumper who was struggling with his starcrests also, i told him to trust me and he did. Man he had a smile on his face after he landed and told me he passed his first starcrest no problem and was very happy.

[tetra316 0]

Or why don't you simply learn to fly your body

[ridestrong 1]

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Or why don't you simply learn to fly your body

Maybe he doesn't want to be spread out and de-arched the entire dive. If you can fix the fall rate issue by changing the size of your suit then why not.

*I am not afraid of dying... I am afraid of missing life.*
----Disclaimer: I don't know shit about skydiving.----

[tetra316 0]

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Or why don't you simply learn to fly your body

Maybe he doesn't want to be spread out and de-arched the entire dive. If you can fix the fall rate issue by changing the size of your suit then why not.

I've seen plenty of large guys being able to fly their body without excessively large jumpsuits. That's what I object too. The stupidly large jumpsuits. No need. Get in the tunnel and you'll be able to fly much better.

[slcooper 0]

The most important thing to know when you go low is where the other jumpers are, if you can't see them, you HAVE to know where they are pulling at and pull lower. If everyone on that jump agreed to pull at 3K, you should have dumped at 2.5 which is still safe. I think someone else mentioned it, but why were people passing you in freefall? That will kill you QUICK! If they agreed to pull at 3 and were falling past you, you should have issues with them. I've been in this situation before, below the formation, and about 3.5 ground rush startes telling you to pull now. Grab your hackey, hold onto it, and stare at your alti until you are safe to pull. Works for me :)

Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Cause the door was open!

[GaVak 0]

While there is merit to the responses that suggest practicing fall rate and keeping track of other divers with smaller groups, that wasn't your question.

Add 750-1000 feet to the lowest rated jumpers minimum opening altitude and make it the base. During the jump planning, announce this base and tell the less experienced jumpers that if they get 'lost' to wait until they get to their MOE to pull.

If someone has a reservation at pulling at their MOE, they can opt out of the jump or ask the group to agree to a higher base.

Jump safety planning should be designed to account for the lowest experience levels on the jump, not the convenience of the highest ones.

~Gav

Life doesn't need reasons, just participants.

D.S.#21

[JohnDeere 0]

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Grab your hackey, hold onto it, and stare at your alti until you are safe to pull. Works for me :)

I personally will never do that again! I had a PCIT that I contribute to holding onto my pilot chute a few seconds after I extracted it....Once it comes out and I extend my arm, I have committed and it goes bye bye!

Nothing opens like a Deere!

You ignorant fool! Checks are for workers!