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Morne

On realising your alti is broken mid jump , do you ?

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Quote stolen from another thread.

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>I don't think it's important to have jumped without them.

I think it's very important to be ABLE to jumo without them. Yes, altimeters are great tools - but you have to be able to judge altitude by eye, because altimeters can break. Goggles keep the wind out of your eyes, but you can forget them, they can get blood on them or you can lose them in freefall - and then you have to be able to skydive without them.

That's not to say that regularly jumping without an altimeter is a good idea. But if someone is unsure, doing a jump without one is a good way to prove to themselves that they can do it.

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The reality of things is that you haven't included all the available options.

If im on a group skydive of any sort I will use the altimiters of the other people im jumping with in combination with the fact that I most often wear a dytter of some sort and am capable of jumping w/o an alimiter.

I have had it happen a handful of times that someone on the plane forgot their altimeter and who would need it more than I would. So I have given them mine to use and just jump without one.
~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

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When filming 4 way, I never even look at mine, until breakoff, or if the team has been turning points long enough that I get scared. The benefit is that I get to stare at the ground the whole skydive, and get a great feeling for what it looks like at normal breakoff. Also, after a good number a jumps, you have a general "feel" for how long belly, freefly, etc freefall should last....granted without an altimeter can I tell you I pulled at 3250 feet? Nope, but I can't tell you that with one either. Close enough works for either case.

"when the people look like ants, pull. When the ants look like people, pray."

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Poll options is sort of tongue in cheek.

But on a Solo jump (ok well very little of these still occur...) and you dont have a aad. what then?

bare in mind alti works fine for first half or so of jump , then after another check you realise oh ooh.

what then ?
Risk deploying the main under 1000ft ? immedietly go for reserve ?

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Poll options is sort of tongue in cheek.

But on a Solo jump (ok well very little of these still occur...) and you dont have a aad. what then?

bare in mind alti works fine for first half or so of jump , then after another check you realise oh ooh.

what then ?
Risk deploying the main under 1000ft ? immedietly go for reserve ?



Well, if it was working well for the first half, then you probably knew you were somewhere around 6k ish or so. You're good to deploy most anywhere below that, after the time it takes you to realize things aren't working, you should be in the 4,5 range.
If you're so low that you are scared, and the ground is huge, then well, judgment call at that point. At your level of experience you should be a little more heads up on altitude than that, so it is not a HUGE surprise to you when your alti stops midway.

I've had the exact situation happen before. My neptune was resetting on me in freefall, and I would stare over and see a serial number. After a few jumps of it doing it, I changed battery and had a firmware update. No harm no foul really, but I also had enough jumps at the time that I didn't really mind.

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But on a Solo jump (ok well very little of these still occur...) and you dont have a aad. what then?

bare in mind alti works fine for first half or so of jump , then after another check you realise oh ooh.

what then ?
Risk deploying the main under 1000ft ?



If you know your alti is broken and you're keeping even half an eye on the ground, there really shouldn't be any risk of that happening. By any skydiver's metric, the ground looks pretty big doing terminal velocity at 1000ft. You're not going to go anywhere near that low accidentally unless you're not paying any attention to your altitude whatsoever (in which case you probably wont have noticed your alti is broken anyway).

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immedietly go for reserve ?



Does your broken alti mean your main doesn't work either?
Do you want to have an ideagasm?

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Look at others and trust that they are going to break at the right altitude.

DOnt freak out and pull right away. There may be folks above ya. If your really worried, get the attention of everyone on the jump and communicate that you are having an issue. Once the entire group knows you have a problem, then give BIG BIG wave off and pull. Just make sure you are extra careful about clearing the airspace above you. Never know what the group behind you is up to.
Dom


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This happens to me a lot with my neptune. I look down and pull when it loooks right. You can use cloud layers too if you have them and know where they are. I do this if it fails when I do a tandem also. The neptune still records deployment altitude seemingly consistaintly and amazingly I am where I think I am within 1000 ft.

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This happened to me about a month ago. I hit my hand on the door before exiting and didn't realize I borked my altimeter until freefall. Fortunately for me it was a group dive with a preplanned break off altitude, and I also had an audible. I had a pretty good idea of my altitude when the ground started getting big, my Solo beeped, and my RW partner turned to track away. ;)

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immedietly go for reserve ?



Does your broken alti mean your main doesn't work either?



Going for reserve just to not risk maybe getting a mal and no time to cut away

Guys please dont bring my experience or whatever into the answers. I just want an answer of what you will do.

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immedietly go for reserve ?



Does your broken alti mean your main doesn't work either?


Going for reserve just to not risk maybe getting a mal and no time to cut away

Guys please dont bring my experience or whatever into the answers. I just want an answer of what you will do.


No way would you want to go straight to reserve, unless you're in AAD-territory low (ie, serious groundrush I wanna stop this skydive NOW). Leave that option for when your main doesn't work right.

Immediately pulling your main when you're still plenty high is for students only: when you're further along there might be a cameraman or other member of your group above you. Even if there isn't, just pulling high is not expected and might get you into conflict with a group before or behind you or even with the next load if there are multiple plains flying.

Like others said, use other skydivers as a reference, and/or look down. 3-2 k is easily recognizable and should be no problem for a non-student. If it IS or you think/are afraid it is, please do something about your reliability on an altimeter. Now.

Most cameraflyers never even look at their altis in freefall, I wouldn't know mine was busted until under canopy, probably. An alti is not a prerequisite to stay alive :P You've got 2 built-in altis, your eyes, use those and train them, they'll come in handy someday ;)

ciel bleu,
Saskia

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Solo dive, no one else to worry about, altimeter went out somewhere after 8000 feet (i.e. I didn't look at it after that).

If it's still showing an altitude (e.g. stuck at 4500 feet) it's going to be more misleading than if it's clearly broken -- after all, you don't KNOW if it's accurate until you've checked it twice under those circumstances.

So after what feels like 1000 feet (count 5 seconds) it hasn't moved, I'm probably below 5000 as suggested above. I'd wait about 10 seconds or so depending on what the ground looks like and how the time lapse feels. If I'm at a new DZ (i.e. inaccurate sight picture) or I really don't know, well, if I was last out, I'd go ahead and pull. Maybe I'm high, less likely to be low. If I'm not last out for some reason and there are people around me (maybe I went hopelessly low on a jump), I'd base the sight picture on the hangar most likely.

This is actually a good exercise to just run down all the nasty possibilities. Mainly because by thinking of them, it might make you notice the size of the hangar when you're taking off the next time you're at a new DZ, and not just jumping out the door.

Always try to have more than one basis for a decision. Kind of automatically accumulate them. Notice where the base of the clouds is; notice which direction the wind is based on landmarks, not just the wind sock. Etc.

You never know when it might come in handy.

Wendy P.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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Going for reserve just to not risk maybe getting a mal and no time to cut away



Or the flip side is you go to your reserve and have a mal with that and now you have no 2nd chance.

A broken altimeter is not a malfunction. Stay with the plan and follow the lead of others breaking and tracking.

DO NOT PULL YOUR RESERVE 1ST.
Dom


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I did a coach jump on jump 9. My coach's (she's a good friend of mine) alti stopped working on the way up but we had mine so we weren't worried. My alti came undone in freefall so I couldn't really read it (but I hung onto it). We stopped work on the jump & broke at about 6.5k and pulled at 6k because I was a bit nervous. I could still kind of read it but took effort to do and I wasn't really comfortable without it at that stage.

Somewhere around jump 310 I was down at zhills jumping for the new year boogie and noticed that my Neptune had a broken screen and I couldn't really read it properly. I have an audible and could kinda make out the approximate altitude so I kept jumping it as it logs my jumps for me which I like to have. After the boogie was over I sent it in for repair which took forever. They ended up replacing it for free. I had (and still have) the rubber protection kit installed and felt that it shouldn't have ended up broken like that. I think I may have banged it on the plane on one of the night jumps I did for new years.

I think if you're on a solo and don't have an audile then you should be able to deal with it by waiting until an approximately reasonable pull altitude rather than going straight for the hackey.

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This is actually a good exercise to just run down all the nasty possibilities. Mainly because by thinking of them, it might make you notice the size of the hangar when you're taking off the next time you're at a new DZ, and not just jumping out the door.



This is the main reason for starting the thread. ;)

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Unless I'm struck blind my altimeter(s) won't fail.



+1

one time I jumped on a load with no helmet, shoes or altimeter and as the plane took off, two kids in the back got wild-eyed and one said, "Dude you forgot your ALTIMETER!"

The other said, "You can borrow one of mine!"

Then I noticed that each one of them had two visual altimeters and one audible -- and one of them had TWO audibles.

I said, "Thanks, but I still have two" and pointed to my eyes.

They looked at each other as if they'd never heard of such a thing.... using your eyes to tell how high you are - preposterous!

Great basic training this sport is providing, isn't it?

Really, everyone, if you can't tell where you are in the sky, sell your rig and start bowling.

As for the original poster and poll -- you don't "try to judge the altitude." There is no try, young skywalker. There is only DO... or do NOT.

And the way to DO is to practice. As another poster said, notice how stuff looks on the way to altitude. Look at the hangar and other objects (people, planes, buildings, roads, runways, whatever), then estimate the altitude, then look at your altimeter and see how close you are. Do it at 500 feet, at 1000, at 2000, at 3000... with practice, you will indeed be able to know at a glance how high you are.

you can practice in freefall too. look down, estimate the altitude, then check your altimeter to see how close you were.

Your peripheral vision of the horizon is also a huge altitude indicator and not as subtle as object-on-the-ground size. start noticing where the horizon is when it's breakoff time.

finally, "realise" that training yourself to SEE how high you are instead of relying on a machine is not very hard to do, and you don't need hundreds of jumps to get it right. JUST DO IT and you'll get better and better at it -- to the point that you'll be able to hop on a plane without a machine altimeter and not give it a second thought until the kids in the back freak out and offer you one of theirs.

B|
SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.)

"The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

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My alti froze on my AFF 7 @ 7000 feet. I realized it probably around 5, pulled a little low at the time in the 3.5 range, landed and passed. That was AFF 7.

If you're too retarded to make the right decision or not know what the wrong decisions are, please inform me prior to takeoff and I will find another load to join.

edit: little harsh i guess, but isn't this covered in FJC?
So there I was...

Making friends and playing nice since 1983

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Unless I'm struck blind my altimeter(s) won't fail.



+1

one time I jumped on a load with no helmet, shoes or altimeter and as the plane took off, two kids in the back got wild-eyed and one said, "Dude you forgot your ALTIMETER!"

The other said, "You can borrow one of mine!"

Then I noticed that each one of them had two visual altimeters and one audible -- and one of them had TWO audibles.

I said, "Thanks, but I still have two" and pointed to my eyes.

They looked at each other as if they'd never heard of such a thing.... using your eyes to tell how high you are - preposterous!

Great basic training this sport is providing, isn't it?

Really, everyone, if you can't tell where you are in the sky, sell your rig and start bowling.

As for the original poster and poll -- you don't "try to judge the altitude." There is no try, young skywalker. There is only DO... or do NOT.

And the way to DO is to practice. As another poster said, notice how stuff looks on the way to altitude. Look at the hangar and other objects (people, planes, buildings, roads, runways, whatever), then estimate the altitude, then look at your altimeter and see how close you are. Do it at 500 feet, at 1000, at 2000, at 3000... with practice, you will indeed be able to know at a glance how high you are.

you can practice in freefall too. look down, estimate the altitude, then check your altimeter to see how close you were.

Your peripheral vision of the horizon is also a huge altitude indicator and not as subtle as object-on-the-ground size. start noticing where the horizon is when it's breakoff time.

finally, "realise" that training yourself to SEE how high you are instead of relying on a machine is not very hard to do, and you don't need hundreds of jumps to get it right. JUST DO IT and you'll get better and better at it -- to the point that you'll be able to hop on a plane without a machine altimeter and not give it a second thought until the kids in the back freak out and offer you one of theirs.

B|


Bingo!

When I was an S&TA and the occasional low puller came under scrutiny on my watch, I could tell them what altitude they pulled at and provided they didn't flat out lie, I could be right within 500'. From the ground. There comes a time when you learn what altitude looks like from anywhere. If I even bother to look at my altimeter it seems that I do it at the same place every time, roughly 4,000' . A lot of us experience this. Equipment dependency is no way to go through this sport. Or, no way to stay in it and come out in one piece.

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