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fcajump

Instruction Directions: Split from Fatality August 27 2022 Skydive Toronto Canada

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On 9/1/2022 at 1:10 PM, JoeWeber said:

In my view, and long practice after decades of student training, a Tandem should be a requirement for everyone before a jump wearing your own system regardless of the method and no matter how proud someone is of their mad skilz or how strong their desire to "do it on their own".

I don't know if I would have taken that first step if there had not been SL option...  The idea of freefall was a bit too much.  At least with SL, one could learn all the other parts first.

I would absolutely agree with you on Tandem in principle, BUT having gotten my TI under Strong Ent, and not surrounded by UTP, my _perception_ is that the reason many places do Tandem first and primary is money.  It helps fund the DZ (at some DZ to the exclusion of all else), but I see very little "training" going on.  SE pressed that this was a training jump with a student.  Sigma pilots seem to be all about taking the passenger for a ride.  

Yea, I get it... 90% will only make one bucket list driven jump.
BUT as my TI-E said (in effect)... if you treat them like a student, your rate of return will go up, and those that do return already have the mind-set of learning a skill rather than taking a ride.


Just my $.03

JW

 

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Yes dear facjump,

For many years I taught according to Strong Enterprises' syllabus with an altimeter and some ground practice on how to pull a "ripcord' but few most students just said "Oh? You pull the ripcord." because they only wanted a one-time thrill-ride and bragging rights.

Tandem just reduces the amount of ground training compared with static-line or IAD and vastly less ground school time than accompanied freefall.

The other factor that tandem reduces is the one student per hundred or one-student-per-thousand who faints under canopy or simply never touches controls and wanders off to land in the forest. By the end of the summer of 1979, I had already retrieved my lifetime quota of student parachutes from trees. Every recovery took an hour or three. Part of the problem was military-surplus round parachutes that could not avoid large clumps of trees.

The 1980s switch to square mains reduced the number of solo students landing in trees. During the decade (1999 to 2010) that I worked at Pacific Skydivers, I only had to retrieve a single student from a tree and one from blackberry bushes. Both leafy obstacles were along the edge of our regular landing field. 

We did not understand why students sometimes faint under canopy until we had been doing tandems for 6 or 8 years. The problem is sedentary, city-slicker students who are not accustomed to being out in the heat and exercising for many hours. They arrived at the DZ with no breakfast, then sweat all day, consume little water and are badly dehydrated by the time they jump. During their first jump, all that adrenaline rushes through their body and burns through their last reserves of blood sugar. Then they faint.

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On 9/4/2022 at 10:30 PM, riggerrob said:

I disagree.

Static-line students are taught to count to 5, then look up to confirm if they have a good canopy overhead. If not, they should immediately cutaway and deploy their reserve. Any delay worsens their chances of survival. Adding an altimeter only adds an extra layer to the decision-making process.

First jump students are already emotionally over-loaded. Any extra instruments (e.g. altimeter) just complicate the decision-making process.

And what if the student has a canopy collision? How can he/she determine, if they can cut away, or not?

.

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3 hours ago, skydiverek said:

And what if the student has a canopy collision? How can he/she determine, if they can cut away, or not?

.

Careful planning can almost eliminate the risk of canopy collisions.

As I mentioned above .... smaller DZs (e.g. single Cessna) can easily plan for plenty of vertical separation between students. Just let one student out per pass. That puts 2 or 3 minutes of vertical spacing. If you drop the heaviest student first, he descends faster and creates greater vertical distance from the other students. OTOH if you put the lightest student out last, they will descend slower and will never pass the heavier students.

As for larger DZs (say a Twin Otter with 20 seats) it is a bit more difficult to separate student canopies by altitude, but we rarely see more than 4 AFF students or junior jumpers per load. 4 AFF students often need 2 or 3 passes.

Usually we tell students to "land in that big field over there" while more experienced jumpers are allowed to land in a smaller field, closer to the hangar. If an experienced jumper flies an erratic pattern near the student landing field, he/she will only get one opportunity to improve their behavior under canopy. If they continue to fly erratically near students, they get "encouraged to jump elsewhere."

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sounds like it's easier to just give them all an altimeter.  they need to start using them pretty soon anyway.  we always had one and it makes for good habit forming.  i still do a lot of things i was trained to do over 25 years ago and am damned glad i was taught well.

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I agree that we shouldn't task load students. The dive flows are simple and repetitive, the landing patterns are standard and explained and emergency procedures are practiced and critiqued by instructors long before the first now call. Fate, however, doesn't give a brown baggie of shit about a student's skills or coping abilities. One of my favorite quotes from ground school is "After you pitch you are on your own.". I wonder, are we teaching students to trust their gear too much? Dan BC (loosely quoted) says he expects a mal on every opening. Is too little "gear fear" catching students off guard? Is faith in the radio creating a false sense of security? 

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i don't know anyone who has faith in the radio, if they've done it for very long that is.  as far as faith in the gear, well you can't really NOT have that, especially with students if you want them to jump at all.  you just can't take the danger out of the sport, no matter how safe you make it.  even with 3 weeks of airborne training sometimes the chute just doesn't open.  then sometimes the reserve just doesn't.  not very often thankfully, but there is not a lot that can be done if they don't.  maybe we need to extend ground school to a few days or a week.  it may have helped on this instance, but it may not have.  more time to build muscle memory is not a bad thing, but it may take a toll on student enrollment or completion.  i'd say it's more important to look at how often this happens and try to figure out a way to prevent it rather than just changing the whole training program for one specific type of incident.  now it it turns out that it happens a lot, time to act.  if not, time to figure out how to stop it those few times.

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IMO there is no perfect method to avoid all issues. S/L worked fairly well, until it didn't. IAD was the same. AFF likewise, seems that the safety record was better when the requirements/standards/evaluation process to earn a rating were tougher. The early 1990's of Don Yahrling, Billy Rhodes and crowd.

Regardless of how, and how well people are trained there will be issues. Why does a S/L trained student on an early FF jump roll over, grab a spring loaded pilot chute and hug it until they hit the ground? Why does a student under a good canopy cut away at 300'? Why does an AFF student, that is a pilot that understands aviation concepts, ignore the radio and fly into an airplane on the ground? Why does a Level 6 AFF student lose all altitude awareness when on prior jumps they had zero issues? Why does a student not flare at all and get crunched? And the list goes on. Those are all real world examples.

We're now using a combination of tandem jumps first then AFF jumps to try and avoid, or lessen, incidents. They attend thorough a ground school prior to jumping. Then get additional training before the first jump wearing a rig.

It reduces overload, allows in air training on flying, pulling and parachute flight, which hopefully increases performance when they wear their own rig. We'll see.

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On 9/1/2022 at 1:07 PM, pchapman said:

 dropzones were exciting places where students, especially first timers, were the entertainment. Always somebody screwing up something!

Perris 1981, sunset student load(s) out of the DC-3. six to eight on a pass, then around for another run. Nearly everyone stopped what they were doing to watch.

I was part of the show in May that year.

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2 hours ago, billeisele said:

IMO there is no perfect method to avoid all issues. S/L worked fairly well, until it didn't. IAD was the same. AFF likewise, seems that the safety record was better when the requirements/standards/evaluation process to earn a rating were tougher. The early 1990's of Don Yahrling, Billy Rhodes and crowd.

Regardless of how, and how well people are trained there will be issues. Why does a S/L trained student on an early FF jump roll over, grab a spring loaded pilot chute and hug it until they hit the ground? Why does a student under a good canopy cut away at 300'? Why does an AFF student, that is a pilot that understands aviation concepts, ignore the radio and fly into an airplane on the ground? Why does a Level 6 AFF student lose all altitude awareness when on prior jumps they had zero issues? Why does a student not flare at all and get crunched? And the list goes on. Those are all real world examples.

We're now using a combination of tandem jumps first then AFF jumps to try and avoid, or lessen, incidents. They attend thorough a ground school prior to jumping. Then get additional training before the first jump wearing a rig.

It reduces overload, allows in air training on flying, pulling and parachute flight, which hopefully increases performance when they wear their own rig. We'll see.

Well, no one has grabbed a single spring loaded pilot chute that wasn't there in sub terminal air, I'm fairly sure. We're doing it much better and safer now with Tandem first before AFF progression. The next component is recognizing that selling AFF one jump at a time, accepting into your program those who can't afford to jump, or want to jump once a USPA month, or will try to make one or two training jumps a year, etc. etc. is a bad safety plan. Training jumps sold in blocks and a program that requires regular participation through graduation make things safer. It's a hard pill to swallow but the reality is that the old SL/IAD programs out of 182's using low time staff and accepting trainees that jump once a month and putting them in the air without a long, solid refresher (that is unaffordable to do on the fee paid) is less safe. 

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9 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

It's a hard pill to swallow but the reality is that the old SL/IAD programs out of 182's using low time staff and accepting trainees that jump once a month and putting them in the air without a long, solid refresher (that is unaffordable to do on the fee paid) is less safe. 

I would agree that IAD classic progression is less safe. But the question is whether it is acceptably safe? Long solid refreshers are quite common with the few who take long breaks where I am. We offer both programs and do encourage but not require packaged pre-paid training. Skydiving is not a particularly safe sport. 

Edited by gowlerk
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Yes dear Joe Webber,

Selling AFF jumps one ticket per month are a waste of time and energy. 

With barely one jump per month, they have usually forgotten most of what they learned during their last jump (a month ago). They need extensive ground refresher training and rarely progress. 

This reminds me of a couple of perpetual students" at Pitt Meadows. They were both in their 40s or 50s and had started jumping back when roudn reserves were fashionable (e.g. before 1996). They only came out to jump perhaps 4 times per year and never grasped the concept of earning a license. For some silly reason, the boss just continued renting them gear and allowing them to jump.

The silliest jump included a spinning "student" who bloodied the nose of a coach/ PFF Instructor. As the coach was bleeding all over the taxiway, the "student" kept asking if he had passed the jump! Fortunately, the nose injury was minor and the coach was back in the air a day or two later.

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28 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

I would agree that IAD classic progression is less safe. But the question is whether it is acceptably safe? Long solid refreshers are quite common with the few who take long breaks where I am. We offer both programs and do encourage but not require packaged pre-paid training. Skydiving is not a particularly safe sport. 

In skydiving safety science there is no acceptably less safe. By the fatality numbers how less safe are cars without seat belts? How less safe are conveyor chains without guards? Who makes the call? I would probably agree that IAD can be an honest service to sell but only with some very close together fog lines. 1. A lot more training than most do before every first jump that day. 2. No long periods between jumps, as in you are signed up to finish the entire program within a couple of months. 3. Meticulous gear, meticulously packed. 4. Seriously experienced jump masters, people who can read the student not just do a cursory gear check and remember to hold the pilot chute. Those sort of things at a minimum.

It's just too glib in my book to fall back on the inherent danger argument. The simple truth is that many small DZ's do SL and IAD is because it can be done on the cheap with low experienced staff and no one holds anyones feet to the fire about the second hand, shop worn gear they use. That, in the US at least, includes the FAA who are limited to looking at the reserve packing data card.

In the end, those programs are about cash flow at the bottom end of the industry. Harsh, but true.

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54 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

 It's a hard pill to swallow but the reality is that the old SL/IAD programs out of 182's using low time staff and accepting trainees that jump once a month and putting them in the air without a long, solid refresher (that is unaffordable to do on the fee paid) is less safe. 

That gets into the Big DZ vs. Little DZ argument, what is the Best vs. Acceptable.    Some day: "Sorry, no training in this state. You gotta travel to CA or FL for the only DZ's allowed to teach any more. But on the plus side, every instructor has at least a thousand jumps, and many have that much with students alone..."

And the thread is also touching on the argument about "1 jump at a time vs. pay for all the jumps at once".  I know the arguments, but man, not everyone is ready to drop so much money all at once on something they know so little about.

As for Rob's perpetual students:
I have also seen those perpetual students who just come a once or a couple times a year and aren't progressing or don't want to progress. Nothing wrong with it IF the system is ready to handle it, and the students don't actually deserve the bowling speech, and the students pay their way. But if the system isn't ready, then instructors start making themselves scarce when those people show up, because for example some junior jumpmaster is only going to get his usual pittance yet needs to take on a massive retraining of a problem student with no extra pay....

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4 minutes ago, pchapman said:

I know the arguments, but man, not everyone is ready to drop so much money all at once on something they know so little about.

Bummer. In a sport that's not for everyone some winnowing is required. Would you rather do it on the phone or on a ladder pulling them out of a tree?

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9 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

In the end, those programs are about cash flow at the bottom end of the industry. Harsh, but true.

In my view it is the large turbine tandem factories that are the DZs with the focus on profits, cash flow and bottom line. I may be biased because no one at my small two 182 DZ is really in a posistion to make any money at all from owning the small portions we each have. Our main revenue source is tandems, our main mission is training skydivers. The only people making any meaningful amounts of income are the TIs, and even then it is strictly a part time job. Our student program barely breaks even and I doubt that many DZs do much better on training skydivers.

 

15 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

In skydiving safety science there is no acceptably less safe.

That is complete bullshit. Unless you can tell yourself that there is absolutely nothing you could humanly do to increase safety and that no injuries are possible under your system you have chosen a level of risk that you can accept. Everyone can do better, even you.

Skydiving is not hard. It is by it's nature a risk based activity. It is done by people who are adults. (we don't accept anyone under 18 although legally we could). You should consider just how high up you are in your saddle on that large horse you are riding. You could easily find yourself slipping and falling to the ground just like that. 

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19 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Bummer. In a sport that's not for everyone some winnowing is required. Would you rather do it on the phone or on a ladder pulling them out of a tree?

Most of the winnowing is self done. It is after all an adult sport. Uncle Joe doesn't decide because sooner or later he will be wrong. Very few people fail to realize that skydiving is not something they are capable of. They mostly drift away quickly. 

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2 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

In my view it is the large turbine tandem factories that are the DZs with the focus on profits, cash flow and bottom line. I may be biased because no one at my small two 182 DZ is really in a posistion to make any money at all from owning the small portions we each have. Our main revenue source is tandems, our main mission is training skydivers. The only people making any meaningful amounts of income are the TIs, and even then it is strictly a part time job. Our student program barely breaks even and I doubt that many DZs do much better on training skydivers.

 

That is complete bullshit. Unless you can tell yourself that there is absolutely nothing you could humanly do to increase safety and that no injuries are possible under your system you have chosen a level of risk that you can accept. Everyone can do better, even you.

Skydiving is not hard. It is by it's nature a risk based activity. It is done by people who are adults. (we don't accept anyone under 18 although legally we could). You should consider just how high up you are in your saddle on that large horse you are riding. You could easily find yourself slipping and falling to the ground just like that. 

Ken, you're just being defensive and silly. Of course large Turbine DZ's focus on profits-as a necessity. If you are doing a good job doing what you are doing good on you. I never said it couldn't be done well. And pretend if it makes you feel better but there are safer ways to do anything and those ways, if safety is the goal, are by definition better.

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23 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

And pretend if it makes you feel better but there are safer ways to do anything and those ways, if safety is the goal, are by definition better.

I guess my point is that goes for every system. The goal is to skydive, train people to skydive, and to do it as safely possible. In that order.

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1 hour ago, pchapman said:

As for Rob's perpetual students:
I have also seen those perpetual students who just come a once or a couple times a year and aren't progressing or don't want to progress. Nothing wrong with it IF the system is ready to handle it, and the students don't actually deserve the bowling speech, and the students pay their way. 

Hi Peter,

Mid-60's, PI at Orange, MA celebrated their 100,000th jump.  It was a fellow jumping there that also was making his 100th jump.  Everyone of his jumps was via static line.  The photo of him with the short article showed him with his Crossbow rig.

Jerry Baumchen

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1 hour ago, JoeWeber said:

Bummer. In a sport that's not for everyone some winnowing is required. Would you rather do it on the phone or on a ladder pulling them out of a tree?

Oh yeah, sometimes a DZ has to listen to their staff, "Stop taking money from this person. It just isn't worth it, they're scaring the instructors as well as wasting our time!"

I was trying to distinguish the truly scary / inept , from others who I think should still get a chance to jump:
(a) those who just want the occasional simple jump within their abilities (e.g., the perpetual static line folks),  (b) those who aren't ready to drop thousands of dollars all at once for some 'full course' (e.g., lots of people who got into the sport more slowly), and (c) students who are slow to learn but not dangerous (e.g., Wendy Faulkner's tale of going from endless student days to world championships level).

 

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18 minutes ago, pchapman said:

Oh yeah, sometimes a DZ has to listen to their staff, "Stop taking money from this person. It just isn't worth it, they're scaring the instructors as well as wasting our time!"

I was trying to distinguish the truly scary / inept , from others who I think should still get a chance to jump:
(a) those who just want the occasional simple jump within their abilities (e.g., the perpetual static line folks),  (b) those who aren't ready to drop thousands of dollars all at once for some 'full course' (e.g., lots of people who got into the sport more slowly), and (c) students who are slow to learn but not dangerous (e.g., Wendy Faulkner's tale of going from endless student days to world championships level).

 

There are quite a few recreational jumpers who only jump a few times a year and never got beyond A CoPs. ( A Licenses for US residents) They are inherently less safe that more active current jumpers. Should we turn them away as safety risks? Because basically that's what they are. They usually have older gear as well. We cope with them by watching them closely and being sure to limit them to more appropriate dive plans. 

What do you do with these people Joe?

To turn back to the incident the thread is about we have an FJC student who cut away low from a malfunction. I am far from certain that the same thing could not happen with a tandem/aff program student. After all it has been known to happen with highly experienced jumpers as well. A student or anyone else under canopy is truly alone and no instructor can help them. Every new jumper wonders if they will perform their EPs properly when they need to. There are many examples of both students and more experienced jumpers who failed at this unexpectedly. Even with the "best" training systems.

Edited by gowlerk

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13 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

There are quite a few recreational jumpers who only jump a few times a year and never got beyond A CoPs. ( A Licenses for US residents) They are inherently less safe that more active current jumpers. Should we turn them away as safety risks? Because basically that's what they are. They usually have older gear as well. We cope with them by watching them closely and being sure to limit them to more appropriate dive plans. 

What do you do with these people Joe?

To turn back to the incident the thread is about we have an FJC student who cut away low from a malfunction. I am far from certain that the same thing could not happen with a tandem/aff program student. After all it has been known to happen with highly experienced jumpers as well. A student or anyone else under canopy is truly alone and no instructor can help them. Every new jumper wonders if they will perform their EPs properly when they need to. There are many examples of both students and more experienced jumpers who failed at this unexpectedly. Even with the "best" training systems.

Turn them away. I am under no obligation to assume any other jumpers level of assumed risk. Last week, after several chances to upgrade his gear, get an AAD, and join USPA I turned permanently away someone I've known from my early day's. He's 71 hasn't jumped in years-except sneaking through the system at a nearby small DZ for 3 jumps recently-and doesn't want to invest in anything for his desired 2 jumps every few years. So sorry.

You do it your way and I'll do it mine. But don't think that after 34 years of running a Turbine DZ I don't know that there are risks and unknowns. What I do know is that I am going to do this as safely as I know how, no matter what others may think is acceptable, and if hell hits I'll use that thought, and a few glasses of wine, to find sleep.

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3 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

Last week, after several chances to upgrade his gear, get an AAD, and join USPA I turned permanently away someone I've known from my early day's. He's 71 hasn't jumped in years-except sneaking through the system at a nearby small DZ for 3 jumps recently-and doesn't want to invest in anything for his desired 2 jumps every few years. So sorry.

I don't disagree, but that is not the guy I'm talking about. He is the extreme end. We absolutely do not allow anyone without a membership in CSPA, or their national organization if a visitor to get in our aircraft. But that is not for safety reasons. Without knowing the guy you are talking about we might let him jump on rental gear if he bought a membership. But at 2 jumps every few years we would require some retraining. We have a couple guys who do 2 or 3 a year. They have gear that I consider safe and AADs. But they are marginal in skills and are at higher risk. Those are the ones I'm talking about. 

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