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ltdiver

Summer Turbulance--Watch Out!

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http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/1582022.html

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Saturday, May 14, 2005

A Wichita woman in her 40s was apparently skydiving by herself. As she was landing, she started to drift too closely to the trees. Her parachute was open, it was functioning and it was fine, but she had a rough landing.

It happened just before 5 p.m. Saturday at Cook Airfield, just east of Derby.

She broke her wrist and was taken to the hospital.

“As she came down behind the trees [she] kind of caught turbulence and landed a little bit hard,” says Martin Myrtle, Air Capitol Drop Zone owner.

The owner of the business says emergency workers are out here a few times a year, mostly just broken ankles and broken wrists from difficult landings.

Each skydiver does go through several hours of training. The woman who did go to the hospital today had parachuted from a plane around 20 times before.



Didn't think this warrented posting in the Incidents Forum, but thought this needed to be brought to the forefront now that skydiving is in earnest now that Spring/Summer is upon us.

At Perris this weekend we hit some rather nasty turbulance, and dust devils could be seen spawning all around. For others it may be a tree line, and others buildings.

Please, Please, Please be careful out there guys and keep your heads up for these nasty obstacles against good canopy control and landing. We almost lost a brother here last month to some high end turbulance coming off a building at Elsinore. He's extremely lucky to be walking and talking today. He's out of the air for 6 months, but will be back after that. Small price to pay for getting too close to something that can and will kill you!

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

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Interesting....at the DZ I was at this weekend I saw a series of very poor landings in the experienced area ( 500jumps+).
Predominantly under small elliptical canopies.
Conditions = Nil winds, Sunny ( 17-23deg Celcius) and landing in a direction facing towards the main buildings/hangers by about 30-50M.
It just seemed on each occasion that flares were being mistimed ....dramatically.
Those involved were experienced canopy pilots.....but after seeing 3 people tumble ( one was very very lucky to get away without injury) I was wondering if it was more than just a mistimed flares/faster landings in nil winds......and perhaps some effect of the heat/proximity to buildings...
CCI spotted these landings and altered the landing direction to land away from the buildings.

I didnt see any of the same problems in the 'inexperienced' landing area well away from any buildings.......

Interesting......no sign of 'traditional' turbulance characteristics...ie 'shaking' 'bouncing' canopies.......but perhaps thats just the result of a stiffer 'wing' on more highly loaded canopies....I dunno

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Lori-

Thanks for the reminder. It's soon getting time to organize the formaition loads early, so we can be through by 1:00 p.m.!

Harry
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."

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>and dust devils could be seen spawning all around.

Yep, during the bigways we saw dust devils on just about every load past noon. Oddly, they are often safest when running over the bare dirt; they are more visible then. When they hit the grass or trees they often 'disappear' but retain their dangerous winds.

A free beer to the first person who guesses where the dust devils in the attached pictures are from:

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