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billvon

Flare turns and flat turns

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We start with lots of altitude. But we have to land at an altitude of 0 feet AGL, so we all go through that potentially deadly 200 to 0 foot range.

Sometime ago at a dropzone I was jumping at, for a very brief moment, one planeload landed in 3 different directions when the windsock started randomly flying in all directions (zero wind with minor intermittent gusts). Two landing directions apparently happened near the pea gravel, and a separate direction for the swoopers 100 feet away. I flat turned at about 150 feet altitude to a parallel ramair runway 100 feet away from another guy landing in the opposite direction. I wondered if I did something wrong... Had I not flat turned at about 150 feet, our ramair parallel runways would have been only about 30-40 feet apart, a bit too close for comfort for opposite-direction landers... so it wasn't a head-on collision course originally but I wanted more space for myself. It was definitely a tense "air traffic" moment for a newbie like me. Full recovery and still had 100% flare with a great soft landing otherwise.

Needless to say, DZO took down the spare pea-gravel windsock (there were backup windsocks elsewhere), this is the indicator to tell everyone to land in a specific compass direction, usually east-to-west. That solved the problem.

Some of us, myself included, got some reminders about the dangers of chasing the windsock (an important lesson).

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I guess this is why some DZs have the first one down rule.

Just want to be clear...

Yes, it did scare me for a moment.

And yes, that's what we had too about "first one down", but two non-swoopers (me included) landed nearly simultaneously somewhere in the non-swooper field in opposite directions. This was a one-time thing affecting just one plane load on one dropzone visit. It happens to pretty much all dropzones occasionally, it appears (even if it's just once a year), even if there are no near-collisions imment, just opposing landing directions somewhere in the same landing field -- be ready for it, simply... Never have been any perfect dropzone, ever...

The swoopers have their own separate ramair runway grass strip adjacent to the main landing area (At that time, they were landing crosswind relative to the windsock direction I decided on, and another jumper decided 180 degrees).

There was no other problems earlier in the day or later in the day -- just for that one specific planeload when the windsock started going beserk. There were two of us that kind of chased the windsock (myself included). It wasn't exactly clear who was the first non-swooper down, and that may have been my fault as well. But nobody placed a fault on a specific person, and the matter was solved immediately for the next load by switching to compass landing mode as it was near zero wind anyway.

It only happened once for me but it was a learning experience for myself (and probably at least one or two others.) The first-one-down rule was reminded to me too, but they recognized the special circumstance of a confusion of two simultaneous landings (And simultaneously distinguishing swoopers from non-swoopers), and a windsock going beserk so I wasn't "singled out"

But it's my real life use of a slight flat turn (just 10 degrees or so). I knew how to flat turn and it gave me "more space" which was important to me after I found myself in that situation. I stress, no collision was imminent, but with a minor 10 degree flat turn, I turned it from something "too close for a newbie's comfort" into something with a lot more safety margin than there otherwise was.

It was removal of only ONE windsock only -- as an indicator that the main field is in compass landing mode. Declared compass landing mode is quite safe (safer than a randomly dancing windsock) on weak/zero wind days. For the rest of the day, the other windsock was pointing straight down (zerowind). I simply doublechecked that other windsock to make sure landing on the compass was still safe to me. I could land in any direction I want if I wanted to land in an alternate fields, all a healthy distance away (lots of landing areas and adjacent outs, more grass landing fields than there are individual jumpers!) so I am not necessarily forced to do an unsafe compass landing if it suddenly became strong wind later in the day while we were still in compass landing mode ...

One lesson I learned is that if I ever become confused again about landing direction (dancing windsock and the first-ones-down is not clear) -- simply land in a separate landing field away from traffic.

P.S. This is just my experiences. This varies from dropzone to dropzone. I'm still a 100-plus jump newbie with less than double the jumps you have. Your/instructor rules may be different... (disclaimer, disclaimer...)

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I'm bumping this (the OP, not the followup comments) since it was one of the many excellent posts I found early in my training that helped me sort out and understand an important aspect of controling my canopy, particular as a newbie, and I found myself seaching for it recently to refresh my understanding of low level turns.

On a related note: does anyone else think it would be a great idea if Dave Lepka and Bill Von and a few others of the most prolific and best writers and teachers/explainers here would cull through the archives and package up their best in single comprehensive book? With a good editor, it would be the skydiving bible that (IMO) this sport needs. Most of the important stuff has already been written, it would just be a matter of hunting it down and integrating it into an organized whole.

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A flat turn is basically a turn you can make with losing very little altitude, which is exactly what you want in an emergency situation. They are not hard to do, but absolutely must be practiced before you need them for real.
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This is my friend and I competing on a precision competition, I'm with the red yellow and green Crossfire 149 loaded at 1.75:1, I wanna believe that I pulled a flat turn on the last turn, by that time I was on half breaks and continued the flare from there...http://youtu.be/YDP4vPraBVs, the second canopy is my friend whipping a sweet old schoo 180 toggle turn on a jedei 136.

This is what we are talking about right?
--
Blue Skies
NO FEARS, NO LIMITS, NO MONEY...
"A Subitánea et Improvísa Morte, Líbera nos, Domine."

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