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liloz

Problem night skydive

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ShotterMG

The best reason for keeping the night jump requirement was articulated inadvertently to me by Diane Pond who was arguing against night jumps. She says she hates them because there is hardly anyone around with enough knowledge to teach them anymore.
But many. many, people still want to do night jumps. For lots of newbs it's one of the ultimate goals. And night wingsuit jumps are incomparable. Night jumps are a beloved part of skydiving and a tradition for a large percentage of skydivers.
And night jumps are an excellent learning experience. All aspects are reviewed by everybody, and everybody must plan and execute the jumps as a team.
Night jumps are not going away. There must be a mechanism for this knowledge to be passed down. It is a part of the sport. An expert in the sport of skydiving should have this fundamental knowledge. Requiring night jumps for D licenses thus helps insure that at least a few skydivers at every DZ have the knowledge to plan and execute safe night jumps.



Let me change a couple of things:

Quote

The best reason for keeping the swooping requirement was articulated inadvertently to me by XXX who was arguing against mandatory occasional swooping. She says she hates them because there is so much risk added.

But many. many, people still want to do swooping. For lots of newbs it's one of the ultimate goals. And >270 degrees turns are incomparable. Swooping a beloved part of skydiving and a tradition for a large percentage of skydivers.

And swooping is an excellent learning experience. All aspects are reviewed by everybody, and everybody must plan and execute the jumps as a team.

Swooping is not going away. There must be a mechanism for this knowledge to be passed down. It is a part of the sport. An expert in the sport of skydiving should have this fundamental knowledge. Requiring swooping for D licenses thus helps insure that at least a few skydivers at every DZ have the knowledge to plan and execute safe swoops.



So, there you go, mandatory swooping for everyone that wants a D license! And night jumps. And CRW. And dynamic freefly. And 8-way RW. And wingsuit. And............ everything!

You can't be an expert on everything. IMO the D license should reflect that you are reasonably good on the common base that covers all disciplines. Night jumps are nowhere close to common. Canopy piloting is, and we are not mandating it as a requirement. And probably we shouldn't.

Just my 2 cents.

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So, the argument against night jumps now seems to be;
"we can't require anything if we don't require everything"????
See my post above and reply as to why you "need" a D license.
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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ufk22

So, the argument against night jumps now seems to be;
"we can't require anything if we don't require everything"????
See my post above and reply as to why you "need" a D license.



No. My original post has a single point: "The logic applied on the quoted post is flawed". If you want to push something use the right arguments. Those were not. I didn't intend to say that we have to require everything.

Besides that, I think there are way more important things to require to be considered a skydiving expert than night jumps. I think canopy piloting (besides accuracy) is one of them. Proper tracking can be another one. Proper gear knowledge another one. All of them more important for safety, and far more common (they are important for every jump), than making 2 night jumps. IMO making 2 night jumps doesn't prove anything.

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propblast

B life requires a canopy control prof card.


Or has that changed again?



I've just checked and I have to admit that I was mistaken, there is a bit more than simply "land within X meters of the target". I don't belong to USPA, so please excuse that mistake.

That doesn't change my point though. Night jumps are a very very specific kind of jumps, and IMO there are way more important and general things to care about than that particular corner case. The fact that you can be a rigger, world champion in freefly, the best tracker ever and land a 67 sqft canopy in a dime, but you can't get a D license because you didn't make 2 night jumps seems ridiculous to me.

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propblast

B life requires a canopy control prof card.


Or has that changed again?



What are the criteria for a successful night jump? As far as I can see, being alive at the end is the only one. This doesn't demonstrate the development of any particular skill.You can land in a tree, on a roof, or dangling from a power line and still log the night jump.

The night jump as a requirement is an anachronism. If we wish to add advanced skills to the most advanced license, those skills should be relevant to the type of jumping that skydivers are most likely to pursue. Living through a night jump is not a skill, it is just a rite of passage inherited from days long gone.

Advanced skills worth developing would include CRW, head down, sit, wingsuit and swooping, all of which are pursued regularly at just about any good sized DZ, and each of which has some kind of performance metric that can be applied beyond "I did it and lived".
...

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

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So I do quit a dew night jumps for work (military) and there are a few pointer I have picked up.
Landmarks are funny at night and easily confused due to their unfamiliarity. I would strongly suggest to your DZ to use some distinguishable lighting system. Car headlights are perhaps the worst as there are usually heaps of cars that you can see under canopy. Strobes can be good unless your near an airport or industrial area. Perhaps strobes and some coloured lights. Also a divers compass would be a good addition to your night jump kit. Set the required heading on it prior to exit, this way even if you get disorientated on exit you are heading toward the DZ. a small wrist mounted gps is a great idea to use as above. We tend to include a small amount of stand off and deploy higher so that as guys are following their compass/gps toward the DZ they have some time to have a good look for it rather than being directly over the top. If your directly over the top then everyday you go is the wrong way lol. This can cause traffic issues as well due to everyone turning or holding over the top and the reduced visibility.
The sky is not the limit, the ground is!

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kallend

***B life requires a canopy control prof card.


Or has that changed again?



What are the criteria for a successful night jump? As far as I can see, being alive at the end is the only one. This doesn't demonstrate the development of any particular skill.You can land in a tree, on a roof, or dangling from a power line and still log the night jump.

The night jump as a requirement is an anachronism. If we wish to add advanced skills to the most advanced license, those skills should be relevant to the type of jumping that skydivers are most likely to pursue. Living through a night jump is not a skill, it is just a rite of passage inherited from days long gone.

Advanced skills worth developing would include CRW, head down, sit, wingsuit and swooping, all of which are pursued regularly at just about any good sized DZ, and each of which has some kind of performance metric that can be applied beyond "I did it and lived".

Congrats professor as per usual you are right.

There is no skill to jumping at night. It just happens. No planning no execution you just fall.
Propblast

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propblast

******B life requires a canopy control prof card.


Or has that changed again?



What are the criteria for a successful night jump? As far as I can see, being alive at the end is the only one. This doesn't demonstrate the development of any particular skill.You can land in a tree, on a roof, or dangling from a power line and still log the night jump.

The night jump as a requirement is an anachronism. If we wish to add advanced skills to the most advanced license, those skills should be relevant to the type of jumping that skydivers are most likely to pursue. Living through a night jump is not a skill, it is just a rite of passage inherited from days long gone.

Advanced skills worth developing would include CRW, head down, sit, wingsuit and swooping, all of which are pursued regularly at just about any good sized DZ, and each of which has some kind of performance metric that can be applied beyond "I did it and lived".

Congrats professor as per usual you are right.

There is no skill to jumping at night. It just happens. No planning no execution you just fall.

Hmmm? I would argue that it depends on how you go about it. Like everything else, you get out of it what you put into it. That's all I got....
Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

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>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to make sunset loads. Makes sense.

If you like. We haven't had a problem related to that at any DZ I've been at, but feel free to mandate that at your DZ. Same for clouds, altitude etc. For the rest of us, we seem to do OK, even without the practice. (Training and practice, of course, do improve odds of survival.)

>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to hit the door frame or be kicked in
>the head.

We have a strict rule that you are not allowed to kick anyone in the head, and we tell people not to run into the door frame. (Although we don't tell D-license holders that it's OK to do either one, call us crazy.)

>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to make jumps when fog is forecast.
>Makes sense.

Interesting. You are a pilot. You have never seen fog when none was forecast?

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billvon

>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to make sunset loads. Makes sense.

If you like. We haven't had a problem related to that at any DZ I've been at, but feel free to mandate that at your DZ. Same for clouds, altitude etc. For the rest of us, we seem to do OK, even without the practice. (Training and practice, of course, do improve odds of survival.)

>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to hit the door frame or be kicked in
>the head.

We have a strict rule that you are not allowed to kick anyone in the head, and we tell people not to run into the door frame. (Although we don't tell D-license holders that it's OK to do either one, call us crazy.)

>So don't allow anyone except D licensees to make jumps when fog is forecast.
>Makes sense.

Interesting. You are a pilot. You have never seen fog when none was forecast?



So you don't really have a case for the requirement. Got it.
...

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

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