Near miss in freefall? A mystery? Advice needed.

[humbled1 0]

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You've just experienced why it's hard sometimes to learn in this sport once off student status. Trying to separate the wisdom from the bullshit!
This guy got scared, but his goal seems to be to make sure it wasn't his fault.
1. If he had not pulled high, it wouldn't have been an issue
2. If HE had tracked 90 degrees off the line-of-flight it wouldn't have been an issue (unless either you or your parter tracks well backwards).
3. Anyone with a lot of skydiving experience knows that the exit order is backwards
Did you guys screw up??? Maybe, maybe not.
Did the freeflyer screw up (pull altitude and tracking)? yes

+1 (freeflyers first?? wtf?? I say find a new dz, bad enuff u fuks drive on the wrong side of the road, now u gonna exit backwards too?)

tell the dude that bitch'd; "plan the dive, dive the plan" he fucked up, ez to see from here.

Relax tho, the one thing about this sport I know, no matter what you do, someone will whine and bitch..

"Tell ya the truth, I don't think this is a brains kind of operation."

[Joellercoaster 6]

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+1 (freeflyers first?? wtf?? I say find a new dz.

Interesting to see a few comments like this in the thread, and I'm wondering how seriously to take it.

As it happens I agree absolutely that freeflyers should go out after flat, but to say that I wouldn't jump at a DZ that did it the other way is, honestly, taking things a bit far. I can think of at least 3 UK DZs that still do it the other way, and they're all run by people who care about safety.

If you're that worried about it, then leave longer separation when you exit after a freefly group. Nobody is making you get out 7 seconds after them (except maybe the people screaming "go go" from the inside, and frankly, fuck those guys - you can't hear them out there anyway). Look for yourself at the previous group, note where they are before you climb out.

I've done it before, people have asked me why I took so long in the door when we got down, and I've said "they were still too close." end of conversation.

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[T_P 0]

There have been some really useful replies here and I have learned a lot - thanks very much for all the serious replies. There were a few questions asked and I will try to reply to some of them here. Despite all the good advice, particularly on exit order, which I think I now need to take up in a very gentle way with the DZ (they seem to have it backwards, and I understand and agree with the argument about bellyflyers going out first), I still dont understand what actually happened.

One poster made the clever point that even if we had drifted back over the FFs (or they had drifted under us) we should have been AT LEAST 15 seconds apart when the person who complained opened. Yet he said he saw bodies falling past him while he was opening. 15 seconds is a long time... but, if you allow 4 seconds for opening, perhaps he was speaking loosly about "whilst he was opening" ie he might have been sorting his stuff out.

Re seeing his friend and seeing it was not her, this was the strangest part of it. He was certain it wasnt a specific friend of his, but when asked to explain what the two falling past him looked like he said he saw it out of the corner of his eye. We then asked whether he saw the canopies open and he said he hadnt becuase he had "immediately turned away" from the area - not sure why that would be an issue once people had fallen past him, or where he woudl have headed to in particular, but the long and the short of it was that he didn't know anything about how the people falling past him looked.

The most disapointing thing (as at least one person has commented) was that the main purpose of the discussion for him and the CCI was to find someone to blame. They wern't interested in analysing what had actually happened, or how to avoid it in future (apart from some very vague advice on exit gaps, which it turned out we had followed anyway).

None of it adds up. If he was under canopy at 3300 or so, like his altimeter says he was, and *I* fell past him without a delopyed pilot chute at that height (15 seconds earlier than I should have!) then I woundn't have been under canopy until about 2.5 k. I think I would have noticed that given that I normally pull high. Also, we were tracking in opposite directions, and the person I jumped wiht confirmed that. If we had falled within 45 ft of a fully inflated canopy I really dont think we could have missed it unless we had had our eyes closed. It would probably have been terrifying in fact.

[crashtested 0]

I still don't get it!!!

i understand the seperation issues, uppers lowers, verticle speed, but...

Here's the clever bit.

You are asuming that everyone on the load in a 3D play enviroment
is going to fall at x speed,
but will not slide to the y pattern
Unless they have there yellow suit on
in which case they will slide Z amount
lets hope they don't go flat half way through their jump.
or there altis out.
Or the have to break away early
or just pull to high / or low
Or its me and my flat is as fast as your sit, or my sit is as fast as your flat

thats quite a lot of varibles.

I'm going to study this more, i don't think there is an awnser regarding this.

Tell the other guy to go fuck himself, he should not have pulled higher than agreed on the flight line, he could have killed someone

Also by the next day no one will ever remember the particular incident where nothing happened.

[davelepka 4]

Just a few points. I'm sure some of them have already been mentioned.

Of course, the RW groups need to go first, and the reason (as mentioend) is the increased drift in freefall. This error was not yours, but the person who selected the exit order.

On that subject, a poster had mentioned that 'you might have to leave different amounts of time between different groups' as if it was odd, or a problem, but in reality, that's what should be happening.

Let's look at a jumprun. The spot is selected so the first and last person can both make it back to the DZ. If the first group out is a 10 way RW group, you can bet your sweet ass they're going to need a little more separation than a 2 way RW group would need. The ten way will break off higher, and have the jumpers tracking further, and some of them will be going up the jumprun.

This doesn't effect the spot, because half (in an Otter) of the plane got out all at once. The remaining jumpers have 90% of the jumprun left to spread themselves out across. There's no reason to rush.

Disclaimer - making changes to the group seperation should not be done by a low timer without checking with a senior jumper on the load. There are a number of factors to consider, and getting it wrong can casue a near miss, or hose the rest of the load.

Beyond that, the issue of tracking up or down the jumprun is a valid one. However, there are other things to consider as well.

You were doing a two way. How far do you think you need to 'rocket man' away from the one other jumper you're with? Granted, if you are heads-up enough to know which direction the jumprun is going, and can get yourself pointed 90 degrees off of it, then by all means, track off into the sunset.

However, if you're unsure of the jumprun direction when break off comes, you're only tyring to get away from one guy, who's also trying to get away from you. If you each track for just three seconds, you'll have six seconds of seperation, and only one canopy to avoid on opening. Sometimes going balls out for as long as you can is not the way to go.

Try to use as little sky as possible. You need to be safe within your own group for sure, but if you over-do it, and a guy from another group also over-does it, you have another near miss.

Moving on, in your circumstance, there's a fair chance that you drifted toward the freeflyers, and a fair chance that the freeflyers had some horizontal movement.

On your RW jump, if you turned a few pionts, the chances are you guys were going straight down. Even if you had a slight backslide, your actual horizontal speed would have to be fairly low for you to still turn points.

Freeflying on the other hand works differently. if they're not turning points, just flying no contact, there's a good chance they were moving around the sky. Additionally, a slight backsldie in freeflying will cover a good deal of ground horizontally. A severe backslide will produce about the same horizontal speed as a belly track.

One last point, freeflyers often cover ALOT of ground in a track. When you take the higher speeds of freeflying, and roll out into a belly track, you can cover some ground. A freeflyer not aware of the direction of jumprun, or even how much ground they can cover, can easily make it into the next groups airspace.

All of these factors could have easily combined to cause your near miss, if it was indeed you that he saw. If it wasn't you, the factors are still present, and the risk is still there. I would avoid jumping in these conditions in the future, and if anyone at your DZ has a problem with that, have them reference this thread, and see how they respond. A good number of fairly experienced jumpers commented on the mistakes that were made, and if they choose to ignore that, you might want to take your business elsewhere.

[JohanW 0]

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This has been well understood for years and is the reason that the standard exit order is sky surf, free fly, belly.

Looks like a brain fart. Skysurf, belly, freefly, I'm sure he meant.

Johan.
I am. I think.

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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This has been well understood for years and is the reason that the standard exit order is sky surf, free fly, belly.

Looks like a brain fart. Skysurf, belly, freefly, I'm sure he meant.

RIght, it's a typo. Slow to fast.

[d123 1]

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On that subject, a poster had mentioned that 'you might have to leave different amounts of time between different groups' as if it was odd, or a problem, but in reality, that's what should be happening.

That would be me, an un-experienced jumper who used logic to compensate for experience
On the human side is not easy for someone with 100 jumps to change the way experienced people organized the loads even if it has logic on his side. This is a bad part of our sport.

Regards,
Jean-Arthur Deda.

P.S. Thank you for your post!

Lock, Dock and Two Smoking Barrelrolls!

[hopnpopper0429 0]

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The chap I jumped with and the chap who had complained both had pro-tracks. Both pro-tracks showed an opening height of exactly 3.3 k. That sounded about right, but I had definitely opened at 4k. And I had checked my altimeter against several others in the plane (like I normally do).

I'm not sure about all digital altimeters, but my neptune shows the deployment altitude as the altitude when my deceleration has stopped and I'm under an inflated canopy. Thus if this is the case, the pull must have been higher than 3.5k, unless it was a very fast opening.

Many people already commented on what the correct exit order should be. I'd just like to add that when I first was starting out (4 years ago), there were still some people who I talked to who were thinking the correct exit order was free flyers -> belly flyers, i.e. slow fallers -> fast fallers. I haven't seen any drop zone implement such exit order since I can remember.
The correct exit order, as mentioned by many people on this post is belly flyers (big groups -> small groups), free flyers (big groups -> small groups), AFFs, Tandems, high pullers (5k - 10k), wing suiters, hop/pops at altitude (13.5k).

From my personal observation, I noticed two different scenarios on two different jumps that support the commonly practiced exit order: (This might be helpful for beginners)

I was doing a solo belly jump out of a casa with intention to pull above 6k. So naturally I exited after the free flyers after giving them more separation than I would to belly flyers going before me. Right after my exit, I kept my eye on the 2-way sit fly group before me, and noticed how I'm floating closer and closer to their vertical space. At one point I was right on top of them, at which instance I started tracking. That freaked me out even though I was going to pull 3k+ higher than them.

My other, closer call, was when I was practicing to see how slow I could make my fall rate be when I just got my neptune. I was the second person out, right after a 2-way rw group. I was later told by one of the people in that group that I was right next to that person on opening. So it must be that the slower you fall, the more you stay in the sky, thus the more you're going to drift with the wind. That being said, free flyers will drift less with the wind because of spending less time in free fall, and also because of cutting through the relative wind on exit.


What type of plane was this?

[jsreznor 0]

One more thing - make it a habit to look at the Winds Aloft report 1st thing when you get to your DZ. Figure out the jump run, landing approach, and whether or not you're comfortable jumping in the existing conditions. If the uppers are 40 knots, you really need to know.

No sense in fiddling with your gear, turning on your AAD, dirt diving a 15 way, etc., if you're not going to jump.

[kelpdiver 2]

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One more thing - make it a habit to look at the Winds Aloft report 1st thing when you get to your DZ. Figure out the jump run, landing approach, and whether or not you're comfortable jumping in the existing conditions. If the uppers are 40 knots, you really need to know.

No sense in fiddling with your gear, turning on your AAD, dirt diving a 15 way, etc., if you're not going to jump.

Why wouldn't you jump? The uppers affect ground speed (and therefore separation), but don't preclude jumping.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Tell the other guy to go fuck himself, he should not have pulled higher than agreed on the flight line, he could have killed someone

A guy pulling a thousand early shouldn't result in a fatality. That is still a failure of exit separation, or backsliding in FF. AADs still occasionally go off, and groups of jumpers can still bump each others handles. And if the latter (higher) jumper has a total, he's going to burn that thousand in a hurry.

[mdrejhon 8]

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If the uppers are 40 knots, you really need to know.

I remember a jump I did where uppers were like that.

It's more of a spotting issue when it comes to a 15-way, because that often fills up the plane with little or no other people.

Part of the problem occurs when you have tons of 2-ways after each other, as it happened. For this, you are under more pressure to have shorter delays between exits, to squeeze everything into a single jumprun without a go-around.

[brettski74 0]

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Part of the problem occurs when you have tons of 2-ways after each other, as it happened. For this, you are under more pressure to have shorter delays between exits, to squeeze everything into a single jumprun without a go-around.

Jump run is typically upwind, which means that higher winds require longer delays, not shorter as you suggest.

[billvon 2,400]

>Jump run is typically upwind, which means that higher winds require longer delays,
>not shorter as you suggest.

Yes. It requires longer delays. But as the previous poster mentioned, when there are a lot of groups, jumpers put pressure on previous groups to go sooner, not later.

[mdrejhon 8]

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Jump run is typically upwind, which means that higher winds require longer delays, not shorter as you suggest.

I agree, but I'm talking about "pressure", not what it should be. When you have 10 different 2-ways, no tandems, then all those delays add up.

If you go to 10 second delays, you will not empty the Twin Otter until about 1.5 minutes between the first and last groups. The "GO GO GO!" pressure automatically can go up in such rare situations.

That's the pressure factor I am talking about (technically I agree with you, though, but that wasn't my point I was trying to pass)...

My observation was brought up because this person described a load that had many non-tandem 2-ways (described in the original post); and thus the 'pressure' equation -- the point I am trying to mention -- might have played a factor into making it a 5-second between exits, despite freeflyers exiting first.


__________________

On another topic, but related: Most of us experienceds, myself included at times, have often just gone with the prevailing flow of delays and be super aware while tracking (And tracking 90 degrees too. The 90 degrees track from jumprun becomes a more important safety procedure for solo and 2-way precisely, in part, for this reason to avoid airspace enroachment, loads that have many solos and 2-ways are often exiting more tightly spaced (i.e. 5 seconds rather than 10 seconds), and thus, everyone doing 90 degree tracking helps. Problems start cropping up when you treat 10 separate 2-ways as bigways with long tracks at the end of them, despite short exit spacing between them). That said, I have no problems landing out and will not rush out being the last person out of the plane. There are times that many 2-way groups often forget to track 90 degrees from jumprun. That's not a problem for Cessna dropzones where the two separate 2-ways have the luxury of being lazy with exits (15 seconds delays between two groups have often happened, with no spotting problems). But for Twin Otter dropzones, the way some of them mandate a rule of tracking 90 degrees for all solos and 2-ways, makes a lot of sense partially because of the compressed exit delays inevitably caused by pressure caused by longer jumpruns caused by many different small (solo/2-way) groups...

[popsjumper 2]

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>Jump run is typically upwind, which means that higher winds require longer delays,
>not shorter as you suggest.

Yes. It requires longer delays. But as the previous poster mentioned, when there are a lot of groups, jumpers put pressure on previous groups to go sooner, not later.

One of my great pet peeves.

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

[popsjumper 2]

Excuse me if I missed it but...
It's quite possible that whomever told the OP to give X seconds separation could have been entirely wrong.

When in doubt, blame the youngsters.

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

[Joellercoaster 6]

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When in doubt, blame the youngsters.

I think you've hit the nail right between the eyes

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[popsjumper 2]

I love mixed metaphors!

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

[davelepka 4]

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the way some of them mandate a rule of tracking 90 degrees for all solos and 2-ways, makes a lot of sense partially because of the compressed exit delays

That doesn't make sense at all.

You cannot count on every jumper being able to indentify, and follow a 90 degree off-jumprun heading. Visiting jumpers, low timers, retards, a funnel at the bottom end of a jup are things that will conspire against jumpers correctly identifying 90 degrees off heading. Additionally, it encourages those confused jumpers to spend time at breakoff looking for the heading as opposed to getting themselves to clear airspace and deploying.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the much better solution is to relaize that you are on a two-way, and that you only need to create seperation with one other jumper, and that jumper is also trying to get away from you as well. There's no need for 8 seconds of max track. A three or four second burst from each jumper is more than enough.

It's a far more reliable system. You are only counting on jumpers to not 'over track', a situation that can be built into the dirt dive, and is easily applied during the actual jump.

By putting the emphasis on heading, and not duration of the track, you create the additional problem that if they fail on the first count (many ways listed above) then the natural insticnt to track long and hard becomes even more of a liability.

Even an Otter load full of two ways should have no problem getting everyone home. On a zero wind day (at all altitiudes) if you give 5 seconds between groups, that's 50 or 55 secinds to empty the plane. Figure the Otter will cover about a 1.5 miles in that time, so the first and last jumpers shouldn't be more than 3/4 mile from the DZ. If you're under canopy by 3000ft, you should have no problem making it 3/4 mile to the DZ (let's keep in mind that it's 3/4 to the center point of the DZ, even less distance if you figure on landing on one end of the LZ or another).

Of course as the upper wind speed increases, so does the time between groups, but along with that comes the reduction in ground speed, and the increase in winds to assist with gliding back to the airport.

[mdrejhon 8]

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You cannot count on every jumper being able to indentify, and follow a 90 degree off-jumprun heading. Visiting jumpers, low timers, retards, a funnel at the bottom end of a jup are things that will conspire against jumpers correctly identifying 90 degrees off heading. Additionally, it encourages those confused jumpers to spend time at breakoff looking for the heading as opposed to getting themselves to clear airspace and deploying.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the much better solution is to relaize that you are on a two-way, and that you only need to create seperation with one other jumper, and that jumper is also trying to get away from you as well. There's no need for 8 seconds of max track. A three or four second burst from each jumper is more than enough.

Agreed. But as you can see, it does not always happen -- see original poster. I'm not saying to make it an excuse to allow compressed exit delays, but in the real world, it unfortunately happens.

A basket of multiple safety layers including what you say, AND also for some throw in some additional safey layers like tracking 90 degrees, also help to incrementally improve the safety, even if the exit delay was good.

Not everyone holds themselves back from doing 10 seconds of max track, and especially students often need to be able to practice this. It also goes without saying that any loads with relatively new formation jumpers or students -- sidesliding freeflyers or extra tracking after a 2-way, etc -- there's an incentive to add extra layers of safety where possible, including the 90 degree rule, in the event that earlier layers of safety rules (like those you suggest) break down...

Confluence of factors often happen: Freeflyers first instead, or newer skydivers, or extended tracks in small groups, or not tracking 90 degrees, or load full of small groups meaning lots of accumulated exit delays incresing pressure to exit faster, etc. It's very rare when all of these factors happen simultaneously, but it may be precisely what happened to the original poster -- from what I see. The perfect 'confluence' may have happened...

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It's a far more reliable system. You are only counting on jumpers to not 'over track', a situation that can be built into the dirt dive, and is easily applied during the actual jump.

TOTALLY agree, but see the 'layers of safety' above.

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By putting the emphasis on heading, and not duration of the track, you create the additional problem that if they fail on the first count (many ways listed above) then the natural insticnt to track long and hard becomes even more of a liability.

I may have overemphasized the heading, so I will agree on that count too -- though I can't always rely on the group before and after me to avoid tracking too long, so it's to me and my buddy benefit to agree to the 90 degrees-from-jumprun in the plane too. (can be an independent decision rather than a dropzone rule too)

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Even an Otter load full of two ways should have no problem getting everyone home. On a zero wind day (at all altitiudes) if you give 5 seconds between groups, that's 50 or 55 secinds to empty the plane. Figure the Otter will cover about a 1.5 miles in that time, so the first and last jumpers shouldn't be more than 3/4 mile from the DZ. If you're under canopy by 3000ft, you should have no problem making it 3/4 mile to the DZ (let's keep in mind that it's 3/4 to the center point of the DZ, even less distance if you figure on landing on one end of the LZ or another).

That's assuming a well-spotted plane. But as we all know, there's often a slight fuzz to the spot, especially early in the day and especially with the first group gauging when to climb out. I don't mind landing out, so this is moot, but the last groups typically get impatient when waiting 55 seconds to exit -- so the blood pressure does go up a bit anyway.

Now, this is rare, because usually there's three or four tandems at the back of the Twin Otter, and most 2-ways start dirt diving 4-ways when they realize they're all in the same Twin Otter on the manifest board...

[shropshire 0]

Not sure if this helps, or is the best method, but I deteremine where 90off run-in is before I leave the plane.

In the door, I [try to] pick a suitable obvious landmark on the horizon (O.K this only works for one side of the plane (from a side exit) -Or it gives you a good Behind the jump run landmark from a tailgate, which I can then ensure is 90 off either my left or right hand side BEFORE I start to track.

Sorry, this sounds more complex than it really is

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 2,400]

>Not sure if this helps, or is the best method, but I deteremine where 90off
>run-in is before I leave the plane.

That's great. However, if you're doing a 2-way, you _must_ track 180 from the other jumper, which is generally the same as 180 from the center of the formation. So if the other jumper doesn't get it right, and tracks down line of flight, you are better off tracking up line of flight than tracking 90 degrees to line of flight. Whatever else happens your greatest risk of collision is the guy who is _guaranteed_ to be close to you at opening time.

If you are doing a solo and are planning not to move around too much, generally it's better to pull in place. If jump run is east-northeast, and all the solos therefore tracks west, any error in heading will put you closer to someone else.

If, however, you are practicing tracking, tracking away from line of flight is a very good idea.

[kallend 1,623]

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Sorry, this sounds more complex than it really is

Counting the fleas on my dog is simpler.

...

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