2 2
BMAC615

WL of 1 for <C-License?

Recommended Posts

I've been following this discussion since the beginning.
I don't agree with the idea of requiring qualifications to jump a wingloading and have said so.

But I had a thought yesterday:

How much difference would it make?

That is, how many people who are getting hurt or killed would have met the qualifications and been 'legal' to jump the w/l they were?

From what I've seen & read, the answer would be 'not many'.
Most of the people I know who got hurt were fairly well qualified. They had the experience, the jumps and the skills to do what they were doing. They just screwed up. 
Some had the jumps and the advanced licenses, but didn't have the skills.
Some of the 'new jumpers' who got hurt were under reasonably conservative canopies. They just thought they could do what the 'cool kids' were doing and flew themselves into the ground.

This applies both to what I've personally experienced and what I've read on here. The one big exception to it was Sangi. And he had everyone on here telling him he was going to hurt himself for a fairly long time before he proved them right.

The actual number of people who were on a canopy beyond their skill level when they got hurt is pretty small, as far as I can tell. 

Again, this is just my 'gut feeling', and doesn't really have any facts or statistics to back it up. I welcome correction from anyone who has better info.

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
(edited)
16 hours ago, gowlerk said:

You keep saying "refused" as if USPA has made a policy decision on this. Most likely it has never even been formally debated. As far as I can tell you would seem to be the only one concerned about it here. And even then all you do is keep asking about it without making any personal recommendation about just what it is you want from USPA. In brief, the reason would be that very few jumpers want USPA to impose such restrictions and therefore it has never been seriously considered. USPA is run by jumpers for jumpers. It's just that simple.

Post #s 2 & 3 are pretty clear about the USPA Safety and Training Committee’s current position on the matter. I have been very clear about my recommendation of max WL of 1.1 for A & B, 1.5 for C and unlimited for D. I outlined why I think USPA should in post #28.

The whole point of this discussion was to understand if USPA had ever seriously considered something similar (they haven’t) and if they would (they won’t).

As a result, it has become clear that suggesting this recommendation to a USPA Regional Director to try to get it implemented is futile as it would never be seriously considered by the Safety & Training Committee.

Edited by BMAC615

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

The whole point of this discussion was to understand if USPA had ever seriously considered something similar (they haven’t) and if they would (they won’t).

As a result, it has become clear that suggesting this recommendation to a USPA Regional Director to try to get it implemented is futile as it would never be seriously considered by the Safety & Training Committee.

it has also been suggested that i have been a "keyboard warrior", yet i sent an email to the safety contact on uspa website with a pretty detailed plan on endorsements, yet not only did i not get a reply to the email saying they got it, i guess it didn't really go any further than that.  i'm curious now, did uspa not get my email or did they just ignore it?  how do i find out @skypilotA1?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
(edited)
7 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

As a result, it has become clear that suggesting this recommendation to a USPA Regional Director to try to get it implemented is futile as it would never be seriously considered by the Safety & Training Committee.

In replying to BMAC615, I don’t agree with you on this subject and data indicates you are incorrect. Many, in fact most times, a new rule is not implemented at first suggestion. Most of the time a new rule, especially something restrictive, must be presented several times to be passed. The Board members must be convinced to change their minds. Many times, to change someone’s mind, you keep introducing data to support your position.  To quote a past Board member, “If it’s a good idea today, it will still be a good idea in 6 months or a year”. On one particular BSR I helped push through, it took a year of Board meetings to finally get a simple safety BSR implemented.  If you are convinced, and think you can persuade the USPA Board to see it your way, that is the way to do it. Your Regional Director is the best conduit to get a new rule implemented, convince him, and he can help you convince the Board.

Edited by skypilotA1
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, sfzombie13 said:

it has also been suggested that i have been a "keyboard warrior", yet i sent an email to the safety contact on uspa website with a pretty detailed plan on endorsements, yet not only did i not get a reply to the email saying they got it, i guess it didn't really go any further than that.  i'm curious now, did uspa not get my email or did they just ignore it?  how do i find out @skypilotA1?

I have sent you a long private message answering your questions. I hope it helps.

Paul Gholson, USPA Southern Regional Director 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, skypilotA1 said:

In replying to BMAC615, I don’t agree with you on this subject and data indicates you are incorrect. Many, in fact most times, a new rule is not implemented at first suggestion. Most of the time a new rule, especially something restrictive, must be presented several times to be passed. The Board members must be convinced to change their minds. Many times, to change someone’s mind, you keep introducing data to support your position.  To quote a past Board member, “If it’s a good idea today, it will still be a good idea in 6 months or a year”. On one particular BSR I helped push through, it took a year of Board meetings to finally get a simple safety BSR implemented.  If you are convinced, and think you can persuade the USPA Board to see it your way, that is the way to do it. Your Regional Director is the best conduit to get a new rule implemented, convince him, and he can help you convince the Board.

I understand and appreciate all the responses you and everyone else have given. It has been enlightening.

Like I said, this was a way for me to understand if this had already been voted on, why other, similar, rules had been established and if I believed it could get implemented.

Based on the information I’ve gathered in this and other threads, I do not believe my recommendation would ever be seriously considered by my Regional Director or the Safety & Training Committee.

 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
10 minutes ago, BMAC615 said:

I understand and appreciate all the responses you and everyone else have given. It has been enlightening.

While I don't agree with your proposal, I have to agree that it's been an interesting discussion.

In part because, on this internet forum, there's been a Regional Director and the President of the BOD participating.

Not sure what other sport/activity would see that happen.

 

23 hours ago, wolfriverjoe said:


That is, how many people who are getting hurt or killed would have met the qualifications and been 'legal' to jump the w/l they were?

From what I've seen & read, the answer would be 'not many'.

Oops. Should have been 'how many would NOT have met the qualifications.

Too late to edit the post.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 12/7/2022 at 6:09 PM, chuckakers said:

There is one case of a canopy that had a nasty disposition when not loaded on the heavy side for the performance of the day. The Nova.

I had a Nova 135. At 220 pounds in street clothes, it had two speeds - fast, and f*ckn fast. It was blamed for several low altitude, light loading canopy collapses and at least one death if memory serves.

When people called me out for jumping it, I would tell them that "I got a good one".

Yes, I put dozens perhaps hundreds of jumps on a Nova 150 (I weighed 190 pounds in street clothes) and never had any problems. It only got snarky when I pulled down a front riser. My only other complaint was that it opened harder than a Sabre 1 - 150.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 12/9/2022 at 1:54 PM, riggerrob said:

Yes, I put dozens perhaps hundreds of jumps on a Nova 150 (I weighed 190 pounds in street clothes) and never had any problems. It only got snarky when I pulled down a front riser. My only other complaint was that it opened harder than a Sabre 1 - 150.

Mine was stable in fronts, although the force to use them was excessive.

I always described the openings as "snivel, snivel, BANG!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We commonly have the 200+ pound newly A licensed jumper searching the classifieds for a rig with 190 main and room for downsizing.  The newly A licensed jumper didn't decide on his own it was the right size.  Changing the culture would help.

Edited by sundevil777
  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
11 hours ago, sundevil777 said:

We commonly have the 200+ pound newly A licensed jumper searching the classifieds for a rig with 190 main and room for downsizing.  The newly A licensed jumper didn't decide on his own it was the right size.  Changing the culture would help.

Same problem here. It is difficult to change the culture when all the “cool kids, including all instructors and mentors, are jumping  small canopies. The culture is deeply ingrained.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, skypilotA1 said:

Same problem here. It is difficult to change the culture when all the “cool kids, including all instructors and mentors, are jumping  small canopies. The culture is deeply ingrained.

I've never felt pressured to jump a small canopy. What I have felt pressured to do, however, is justify my choice to jump a large canopy. That's a subtle difference, but a critical one....and I'm not sure which of those two is more problematic. 

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
22 minutes ago, BMAC615 said:

So, other than implementing a USPA restriction, what are some ways to change the culture?

I believe the best way, is leading by example. And show the jumper a clear and positive path toward downsizing, and pros and cons of every decision. If the jumper  understands the physics and mechanics, you can then assist them in making educated decisions on canopy choices. A jumper will never react positively to arbitrary directives on what they can do. It is the “mad skills” and “the Man keeping me down” mentality. But if they are given enough information to make the intelligent, appropriate decision themselves, it is a “win-win”.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, skypilotA1 said:

I believe the best way, is leading by example. And show the jumper a clear and positive path toward downsizing, and pros and cons of every decision. If the jumper  understands the physics and mechanics, you can then assist them in making educated decisions on canopy choices. A jumper will never react positively to arbitrary directives on what they can do. It is the “mad skills” and “the Man keeping me down” mentality. But if they are given enough information to make the intelligent, appropriate decision themselves, it is a “win-win”.

Let me rephrase that: How does the UPSA Safety & Training Committee plan to change the deeply ingrained culture and scale the program to the 400 Affiliate DZs?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

Let me rephrase that: How does the UPSA Safety & Training Committee plan to change the deeply ingrained culture and scale the program to the 400 Affiliate DZs?

Why don’t you ask them? You have that ability during the Board meetings, either in person or via Zoom. It’s all open to members.  In my personal opinion, I don’t think the USPA S&T committee is the best vehicle for this kind of change, aside from general recommendations and guidance like it has already presented. I think the best method for the change you advocate is as I already presented: At the local level, 1. By personal example. 2. By proper education, coaching and mentoring.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

So, other than implementing a USPA restriction, what are some ways to change the culture?

The only thing I've seen actually work is close mentorship by an experienced local canopy coach.

I've long since stopped telling people what they should and should not do and instead encouraged people to get good mentorship from a local expert.

People who want to rush into things unfortunately need to a higher frequency of feedback on their shortcomings from someone who paints them as areas of improvement towards a grand goal.

This is not exclusive to CP. Whoever suggested a system of endorsements, I support the idea. Seems to work for the FAA with pilot licenses. And we already have one in the B license canopy course which is effectively an endorsement.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No doubt close mentorship works. That’s what we’ve been doing for more than 30 years. It’s not consistent or scalable across 400 affiliates and hasn’t addressed the deeply ingrained culture of new jumpers being encouraged to buy and fly canopies that the Canopy Risk Quotient Profile would consider high risk.

Here’s how some jumpers reacted to the tool in the Reddit Skydiving forum.

Here’s my favorite response, “Lol, This is utter garbage. The ones making this type of trash are old belly flyers. You can tell it was made by someone that can’t fly a small wing.

Edited by BMAC615

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

 Canopy Risk Quotient Profile would consider high risk.

I'm not super impressed by it. Nice idea though.

Of course it is a good idea in getting people to look at different factors that people consider when looking at risk under canopy.  Unfortunately the tool doesn't show the points for each of the choices one can make, so without a lot of experimentation one has no idea what the developers or USPA think about different risks.

It also seems to show a lot of stuff as dangerous. Which may be true. But for example, without going into every choice:

It gives me a score of 45 if I am a fairly new jumper with 150 jumps who downsizes to a Sabre 2  135 at 1.25:1, has just started to fly the canopy for the first time, and has no canopy courses (but at least isn't a total idiot and so has done some canopy maneuvers recently).  That 45 is "High Risk" between 35 and 50, below the 51 "Scary" range. 

If I plug in numbers for myself with a cross braced sub-100 canopy, for a year where I was the most active, with thousands of jumps, hundreds of jumps on the canopy and hundreds that year.... I still get a score of 43.

So the newbie who is downsizing can say, "Well sure it says High Risk for me, but only slightly more than you with all your experience? So what's wrong with me downsizing?  I mean, if you with your thousands of jumps and lots on your crossbrace are High Risk... then don't I WANT to be High Risk too?  Living the swoopin' life?  You can't smugly stand there and say I can't suddenly downsize to a whole 1.25 wing loading, when our risk levels are so similar? Do you get more right to live dangerously if you have thousands of jumps?"

If the situations are equivalent the tool pretty much only says, "Well, duh, skydiving is dangerous unless you just keep flying big canopies."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

No doubt close mentorship works. That’s what we’ve been doing for more than 30 years. It’s not consistent or scalable across 400 affiliates and hasn’t addressed the deeply ingrained culture of new jumpers being encouraged to buy and fly canopies that the Canopy Risk Quotient Profile would consider high risk.

Here’s how some jumpers reacted to the tool in the Reddit Skydiving forum.

Here’s my favorite response, “Lol, This is utter garbage. The ones making this type of trash are old belly flyers. You can tell it was made by someone that can’t fly a small wing.

Not super Impressed with that particular tool either. It seems to say I'm in more risk by upsizing because my canopy courses and familiarization with canopy mechanics were with previous, smaller size. And 1.3 WL is the same as 1.7.

There is no semi elliptical category of canopy (the one most jumpers are in). That alone will turn newer jumpers off and make it seem like the test was created to intimidate newer jumpers, not educate them.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The higher your score, the more in common you have with people who have been injured or killed.

This discussion is about A, B & C License holders. Go back and manipulate it as if you are someone with between 25 and 500 jumps within <1 year - five year timeframe.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

The higher your score, the more in common you have with people who have been injured or killed.

This discussion is about A, B & C License holders. Go back and manipulate it as if you are someone with between 25 and 500 jumps within <1 year - five year timeframe.

 

it's a bs tool and i'll post the screencap of mine to prove it.  first one that spots the reason why gets a beer on me next time i see them.

bs.png

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I’m new here and don’t really have a dog in this fight. But the data behind the calculator had me curious. 

So I scraped the dataset from USPA’s incident reports for canopy related incidents, that the calculator is presumably pulling from. It’s pretty terrible as a dataset to make any sort of reliable assessments of risk from. 

Of the 164 IRs since 2008 relating to canopy incidents, I had to remove 41 for garbage data. Things like listing 0 total jumps when the description lists the jumper having 1000 plus jumps, or weird discrepancies with more jumps in the last 12 months than they have total jumps. Lots of missing information overall that makes the IR meaningless for wingload vs experience discussions  

But even once you clean out the egregious stuff I can’t see any statistical significance that shows higher wing loadings are more likely to cause incidents with lower jump numbers. Mostly because there aren’t many incidents of it. I could only find one incident report that you could reliably say the jumper had less than 100 jumps and a wing loading over 1.1.

Anecdotally, as a new jumper in the two large DZs I’ve been to that have a significant high performance canopy culture and on the common internet groups I’ve only ever felt pressure to avoid downsizing until I’ve mastered the canopy size I’m on. So overall this feels kind of like a solution without a problem. Almost all high wingload IRs come from jumpers the proposed BSRs would exempt. 

I've attached the raw data I pulled, cause it's very possible I messed up the scrape or misinterpreted the data. 

canopy_incidents.csv

Edited by serzkawpoije

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

2 2