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Annabellacb

BLUE SKIES APP: New weather app for licensed jumpers

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Good news!! We have officially started development for this Blue Skies App, which is gonna be pretty rad, if I do say so myself. I want to reach out to jumpers to see what we can do to make it most useful to you.

Basics: Using either your current location or a desired location, it will pull up all the nearest DZ's and the weather reports with winds, temp and cloud coverage predictions for a desired jump day. Also, for DZ's that maintain their profile, they will be able to provide all the license jumper related information (because we all know their websites are catered to tandems only!).

Two things:
1. If you want to back to app and maybe get a sweet t-shirt, you can do so here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blue-skies-skydiving-weather-report-app-application-phone
(Right now all costs are solely being covered by yours truly because I need this app to start working so I can keep my license current in Dallas ;))

2. Your home DZ has terrible weather that weekend, but you want to jump. What is the main deciding factor outside of better weather that will make you travel to a different DZ?
(i.e. RV hookups / boogies / A license min w/rental gear / indoor packing floor with carpet)

-Anna Belle Beauchamp

p.s. we have all kinds of super cool features we're adding a bit later on such as universal event list for all the boogies and training camps nationwide/internationally. We just want to get this out as a tool for us to use while we work on the extra features.

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Oh man, I could go nutz on this--lots of ideas! I have this dilemma often: there are several DZs within a few hours of my home and I'm always wondering where to go.

To me there are two critical things.

1) weather.

2) how many loads will there be?

Importance of weather is obvious. But trying to find out if there will be enough loads to justify the drive--2, 3, 4 hrs each way--is a PITA, big time. You can call or message; but DZs usually just say 'yeah come out!' or 'you can't jump if you're not here.' So you go, only to find out its totally slow; few tandems, not enough fun jumpers. You just drove 3 and a half hours to make 2 jumps and now you gotta drive 3 and a half hours back home. Sucks. (Idk if other people have this problem, but its happened to me a number of times and it drives me frikkin bonkerz!!)

If there's a way to find out, and post on your app, how many jumps your likely to get at a given DZ on a given day, just a ballpark figure, that would friggin rule.

Shit, I gotta go to work

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Really quickly, would you say that when driving hours to go to these DZs and only being able to get 1 or 2 loads, was it because there weren’t enough fun jumpers there to make loads? Or it’s a DZ that generally only puts up less than 10 loads a day?

I’m trying to think of ways to integrate this information into the app and there’s a couple ways that come to mind immediately.

1. Allowing jumpers to input their number of jumps they’re generally able to do that day to have an average for slower drop zones.
2. Or if it’s a lack of fun jumpers, we could display the number of jumpers who requested directions to that DZ each day to give a general idea of how many licensed jumpers may be there in order to make loads each day?

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Are you pulling this from the Aviation Weather TAF's or other sources? The TAF's are great since they have the cloud cover and what it's going to be doing at each weather transition.. Just since the forecast with the local news station says cloudy does not mean much if the clouds are going to be at 15k all day. Same if the forecast says partially cloudy but the TAF's call out that it will be Scattered until 10 and then overcast at 2500 feet after 1PM. Info like this is a big help if you are going to look at weather as a determining factor for a trip to other DZ's
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

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Annabellacb



2. Your home DZ has terrible weather that weekend, but you want to jump. What is the main deciding factor outside of better weather that will make you travel to a different DZ?
(i.e. RV hookups / boogies / A license min w/rental gear / indoor packing floor with carpet)



I estimate the number of jumps I expect I can make at different locations, and weigh it against the travel time and price. So I find myself checking the weather forecast for the 3 potential locations in my area for a specific period of time (e.g. Saturday through Monday). It would be nice if I could have all that in one place.

Having a list of events (including closed days) would also be useful. And also accommodation options.

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We are pulling the exact same data as that link you provided.
[[http://markschulze.net/winds/ ]]

Also, I was looking for feedback as you which option may be more helpful:
user interaction as to the number of jumps they typically can make in a day, or tracking the number of fun-jumpers on their way to the DZ so we know the odds of being able to make loads?

Personally, I think the number of people going would be more beneficial. I know on days I went and got stuck hanging around the DZ, having other fun-jumpers there to hang out with made all the difference between still having a good time and feeling like I wasted a day.

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All you'd be measuring is how many people USING YOUR APP are going to the dropzone. It won't tell you anything useful unless you get a very high participation rate. It also won't tell you anything about tandem business unless you convince all the DZOs to share their data with you in real time. Good luck with that.

- Dan G

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DanG

All you'd be measuring is how many people USING YOUR APP are going to the dropzone. It won't tell you anything useful unless you get a very high participation rate. It also won't tell you anything about tandem business unless you convince all the DZOs to share their data with you in real time. Good luck with that.



1 particular Dropzone that uses BurbleMe, manifesting with it, provides jumpers with the ability to see who is "checked in", who is on what loads and how far out they're scheduled, and can even get on a load while away from the DZ.
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

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That's absolutely correct. What I see more of is the inability to make loads due to a lack of people. Rather than too many people there to be able to manifest outside of Boogies.

So I don't necessarily need ALL the data for people at the drop zone. If it provides enough data for jumpers to know that the drop zone has enough people jumping to put up loads I feel like that will also be helpful.

Due to real time updates of wind reports / winds aloft and weather conditions, it will be helpful for jumpers to continue use of the app while at the drop zone and it may be possible to pull data of how many people are pulling that data from a particular DZ location. Thus showing they are currently there, trying to jump. This will likely be a feature that comes with an update once user base increases to the point that this is actually helpful information.

I'm just looking for ways to make this tool as useful as possible to jumpers.

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A few notes:

"Partly cloudy 59F" isn't all that useful to a jumper. Might want to pull the TAF and METAR data from NOAA and translate it, so that the app can say things like "scattered clouds at 3000 feet, overcast at 14,000, forecast to clear up by 2pm."

But jumpers can get that themselves.

Probably the biggest utility of this is concatenating people's intentions, so that you can look and see that a dozen up jumpers are there (or on their way there) so that if it _does_ clear there will be more than just loads of tandems going up.

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