Minimum Opening Altitudes

[BMAC615 205]

@skypilotA1 or anyone else with knowledge of the subject: Is there a way to understand when and why the minimum opening altitudes were changed? How were they determined for A (3,000) vs B, C &D (2,500)? What are qualifying reasons a waiver would be granted for C & D license holders (2,000)?

Edited September 28, 2022 by BMAC615

[wmw999 2,116]

It was a few years ago, and a reflection of trends in gear, airplanes, and simple general population preference.

When the previous guidelines were established (1970’s or before), canopies opened faster, and large airplanes were less common. So people took it off the bottom. It changed within the last 5-10 years I think.

Students and lower number jumpers had a pull altitude that was 500’ higher under the old guidelines, so that was continued. The definition of “experienced jumper” has also changed, and that’s reflected in the increased number of jumps for the more advanced licenses

Chuck can probably do a better job with the explanation, but I’m here…

Wendy P. 

[BMAC615 205]

Thanks, @wmw999! I started jumping in ‘93 and remember when it was 2k. Hoping @chuckakers or @skypilotA1 or anyone else can fill in the details as to the official justification for the rule change and qualifying reasons for waiver.

[wmw999 2,116]

I would bet the qualifying reason for the waiver would be demos; not sure about what else.

Wendy P.

[MickPatch 44]

I may be wrong but I believe that here in the UK the lower opening limits are indeed to facilitate display jumping where the exit altitude could be as low as 2500 ft. Certainly the "spirit" is that we are looking at sub-teminal off DZ displays only.

Of course there is still the "odd" exception that isbpermitted under a special dispensation; consider the opening veremony of the 2012 Olympics in London where the exit from the helicopter was 800 ft and deploymemt 500ft.

 

Then again that was The Queen and James Bond so who was going to say no

[riggerrob 558]

Back when I started jumping in 1977, we mainly used small Cessnas or World War 2 surplus military transports, all with piston engines. They took forever to climb to 7,000 feet. The beater Cessna 172 that I flew for a summer would top out at 5,000 feet during the hot and hazy days of August. Ergo. we rarely jumped from above 7,200 feet. That meant only a 30 second delay and no one wanted to waste altitude by pulling above - the USPA mandated - 2,000 feet. Back then CSPA put minimum opening altitude at 2,200 or 2,500 feet ... I forget which. The DZ safety Officer would "have words" with you if you failed to show a pilot-chute above 2,000 feet.

Also consider that we started the 1970s with mainly military-surplus round parachutes and ended with Strato-Clouds which opened similar to the early square reserves. Come the early 1980s and Precision introduced the Raven series as both mains and reserves. With popular main canopies opening similar to reserves, you knew by 1,800 feet whether it was opening properly or not.

Come the 1990s and tandem overwhelming the sport - turning it into an "industry" - DZs started flying more reliable turboprops (Caravan, Porter, Skyvan, Twin Otter, etc.) and it suddenly became practical and time-effective to consistently jump from above 12,000 feet. Altitude on the bottom end lost importance. Also consider that second and third generation zero-P canopies opened much slower and softer and tossing a pilot-chute an extra few hundred feet higher - at the bottom end - made more and more sense.

Finally, the introduction of the first electronic Automatic Activation Devices (e.g. Cypres 1) in 1991 also encouraged people to raise their minimum opening altitude. Plenty complained about electronic AADs miss-firing, but the majority of those "miss-fires" occurred within the published envelope.

USPA "upped" minimum opening altitudes around 2012 and CSPA followed a year or two later.

 

[BMAC615 205]

Just to be clear, this is not an FAA regulation, this is a requirement (not a recommendation) that the USPA Safety & Training Committee enacted in 2012 to reduce risk of injury or death, correct?

[skypilotA1 67]

Yes, you are correct. The overriding reason was safety.  Based on data from the field, the Board was seeing newer modern canopies were taking as much as 800 feet to open. A deployment at 2000 ft would put the jumper at risk of AAD deployment, and that is if everything went perfectly. So, the minimum container opening altitude was moved up to 2500 ft for C & D license holders. This has virtually eliminated low pull AAD activations.  The 2500 ft. minimum may be waived by an S&TA down to 2000 ft. if conditions warrant. Personally, I don’t believe the additional 2.5 seconds of free-fall gained is much help in any situation.

[chuckakers 370]

3 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

Thanks, @wmw999! I started jumping in ‘93 and remember when it was 2k. Hoping @chuckakers or @skypilotA1 or anyone else can fill in the details as to the official justification for the rule change and qualifying reasons for waiver.

The folks who have responded have it right. In summary...

Modern canopies take longer to open
Average aircraft today climb higher (no need to squeeze every second of freefall)
Some jumpers are setting their AAD activation altitude higher

Honestly, I have never been a guy to dump at the bottom. There's nothing down there but trouble.

 

[fcajump 153]

1 hour ago, chuckakers said:

The folks who have responded have it right. In summary...

Modern canopies take longer to open
Average aircraft today climb higher (no need to squeeze every second of freefall)
Some jumpers are setting their AAD activation altitude higher

Honestly, I have never been a guy to dump at the bottom. There's nothing down there but trouble.

 

I got a "talkin'-to" in ~93... with a 'C' license, I was still deploying above 3k most the time...  (with notifying others and ensuring separation)...  the instructors were wondering what was wrong that I didn't simply plan to deploy at 2'k like everyone else. 

Got used to 2k step-out hop-n-pops and did demos at that routinely until I switched from an F111 9-cell to a Spectre.  I REALLY like the Spectre, but with a 2k exit, 800' opening and a 1500' decision altitude...  the math was broken.  (we also had an airshow pilot whose stated opinion, forged in the days of round mains, was that "anything over 2'k was a waste of gas")  The USPA change, which filtered into the airshow FAA waiver made my personal minimum of 2500' for the Spectre much easier to enforce on low cloud show days.

The difference between then and now really hit me about 10 years ago... I was trying out a new canopy and wanted to set above the load.  Remembering the 90's, I figured just ahead/behind the tandems would be fine (everyone else is opening down below 3'k, right??)  In asking in the loading area I found out how wrong I was...  the planned openings on that load were staggered from 2,500 to 8k and there wasn't even any CReW on it.  Times have changed, and I think for the better.

$.03

JW

 

 

 

[BMAC615 205]

4 hours ago, skypilotA1 said:

Yes, you are correct. The overriding reason was safety.  Based on data from the field, the Board was seeing newer modern canopies were taking as much as 800 feet to open. A deployment at 2000 ft would put the jumper at risk of AAD deployment, and that is if everything went perfectly. So, the minimum container opening altitude was moved up to 2500 ft for C & D license holders. This has virtually eliminated low pull AAD activations.  The 2500 ft. minimum may be waived by an S&TA down to 2000 ft. if conditions warrant. Personally, I don’t believe the additional 2.5 seconds of free-fall gained is much help in any situation.

What conditions are acceptable to warrant a waiver? Why not allow lower if no AAD is in use?

[skypilotA1 67]

BMAC615, the condition warranting a waiver must be pretty special, I can only think of a few, but each S&TA has their own standard. I have seen it waived for an AFF-I rating course, for a special wingsuit flight, and for a pro demo team to open lower than normal.  I am sure every S&TA has their own standards. The AAD would have little to no effect on my personal decision to waive or not waive the altitude restrictions.

[dudeman17 267]

4 hours ago, chuckakers said:

Honestly, I have never been a guy to dump at the bottom. There's nothing down there but trouble.

The book is too thick to look it up right now, but I think it's a Skratch Garrison quote form Pat Works' United We Fall...

"Ground rush is a gas, but it sure ain't practical."

 

[base615 77]

When I first started jumping in 1994, we’d regularly do hop and pops at 2.5k (or below) and would break off at 3.5k on height loads. These days I want 6k for hop and pops if I can get it and am breaking off at 5.5k from height. Times have definitely changed and for the better IMO.

[wmw999 2,116]

56 minutes ago, base615 said:

When I first started jumping in 1994, we’d regularly do hop and pops at 2.5k (or below) and would break off at 3.5k on height loads.

I've pulled off a 4-way from a Cessna at 1800'; 3500 was the standard breakoff altitude for anything less than about 6-8 people. 4500 was just fine for a 20-way. But then in those days, people thought that vertical separation was as good as lateral separation, too. People died learning those lessons. The tracking contest was invented in part because of fatalities.

Wendy P.

[BMAC615 205]

I remember the ‘90s :)Now, I’m pretty consistently open by 3,500 ft in my wing suit. In terminal BASE, opening at 750’ is “In the stratosphere.” Why wouldn’t USPA consider allowing people jumping BASE canopies in dual harness rigs to open at whatever altitude they want?

[RolandForbes 41]

8 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

I remember the ‘90s :)Now, I’m pretty consistently open by 3,500 ft in my wing suit. In terminal BASE, opening at 750’ is “In the stratosphere.” Why wouldn’t USPA consider allowing people jumping BASE canopies in dual harness rigs to open at whatever altitude they want?

Lol once you can see the white's in your S&TA's eyes, then its time to pull.

[Baksteen 84]

9 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

I remember the ‘90s :)Now, I’m pretty consistently open by 3,500 ft in my wing suit. In terminal BASE, opening at 750’ is “In the stratosphere.” Why wouldn’t USPA consider allowing people jumping BASE canopies in dual harness rigs to open at whatever altitude they want?

Given the nature of your continued questions in light of the excellent responses you got made me wonder what answer you were shopping for. Thanks for clearing that up.

What, in your opinion, would be the added value of allowing "people jumping BASE canopies in dual harness rigs to open at whatever altitude they want?"

[chuckakers 370]

9 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

I remember the ‘90s :)Now, I’m pretty consistently open by 3,500 ft in my wing suit. In terminal BASE, opening at 750’ is “In the stratosphere.” Why wouldn’t USPA consider allowing people jumping BASE canopies in dual harness rigs to open at whatever altitude they want?

No matter how good the gear is for the application, the human factor gets in the way. There are already a lot of incidents and near incidents caused by jumpers who don't take action in a timely manner. Allowing people to deploy low just because the gear can handle it doesn't mean the jumper will.

[wmw999 2,116]

I’m with Chuck. Also, what will most likely happen is a bunch of people will go out and get BASE gear just so they can dump low. Low pulls, and low pull contests, were one of the things that minimum opening altitudes were designed to stop.

Jumpers haven’t gotten smarter; those guys are still out there. Let’s not lower the bar

Wendy P. 

[grimmie 173]

 

A very long discussion with many points of view from 2013

[BMAC615 205]

I find it interesting that USPA’s stance on wing loading is to only make recommendations and refuse to consider a requirement because “skydivers are grown-ups and capable of making adult decisions, and taking responsibility for those decisions.” But, when it comes to minimum opening altitudes everyone is in line with having a minimum requirement and understands the value of having those requirements.

[BMAC615 205]

18 minutes ago, grimmie said:

 

A very long discussion with many points of view from 2013

This is a great discussion, thank you!

[riggerrob 558]

27 minutes ago, BMAC615 said:

I find it interesting that USPA’s stance on wing loading is to only make recommendations and refuse to consider a requirement because “skydivers are grown-ups and capable of making adult decisions, and taking responsibility for those decisions.” But, when it comes to minimum opening altitudes everyone is in line with having a minimum requirement and understands the value of having those requirements.

For many decades, CSPA, USPA and BPA avoided any involvement with BASE jumping because if its high fatality rate and the way the public could not tell the difference between skydiving and BASE. BASE gear may have become more reliable, but old skydivers do not understand the difference.

CSPA has been through this whole "regulations versus recommendations" debate and now only recommends.

The legal problem pokes up its ugly head when something is a "regulation" but is not rigidly enforced, putting CSPA at risk of a lawsuit for failing to rigidly enforce a regulation. Skydivers being skydivers means that they like to make their own decisions ... er ... hate being told what to do. Nothing good happens when lawyers get involved.

Edited September 29, 2022 by riggerrob

[wmw999 2,116]

23 minutes ago, BMAC615 said:

I find it interesting that USPA’s stance on wing loading is to only make recommendations and refuse to consider a requirement because “skydivers are grown-ups and capable of making adult decisions, and taking responsibility for those decisions.” But, when it comes to minimum opening altitudes everyone is in line with having a minimum requirement and understands the value of having those requirements.

Since it is a recommendation and not an FAA reg, all a BASE jumper really needs to do is to find a DZO or airplane that is willing to let him or her jump and open wherever they darn well please.

Wendy P.