How to get the most out of your landing...

[mailin 0]

I've got a problem landing... *ok, I said it*

How does one go about practicing this most effectively?

I'm going to be bringing a camcorder with me next jumpable weekend and have someone video my landings for me. I can't seem to pinpoint one particular problem - it seems to be a chain of events, different everytime (flare uneven, flare too high/too low, turbulance issues etc.). I'll spend a little extra time going over setting up landing patterns with an instructor too. Up high I'll practice stalls and flares but what should I watch for and what should it feel like?

Landing patterns... I did something stupid on my last jump. Very light and variable winds made setting up a pattern a little difficult and I ended up downwinding my landing - but this was because I thought at 500 ft. I needed to go cross wind and then 300 ft to go into the wind... despite being close to an obsticle and scaring a bunch of nice folks. I guess its one of those things I'll eventually get, right? (and should that be before or after I get hurt? ) Due to the fact there was little to no wind could I have just kept on my course without turning for cross wind etc.? Doing that would have put me where I had hoped to land... but that goes against what I was taught...

I talked to someone briefly about these concerns and plan to go over it again with other folks next weekend.

I think I'm thinking too much, but stepping out my head seems to be getting harder and harder...

What have you done to practice landings?


Jen

Arianna Frances

[Albatross 0]

The best way to improve your landings is to improve your understanding of how the canopy flys and lands. Get some instruction and someone to watch you.
Some basics are that you should set up a good landing pattern HIGH. you should have a good idea where you are landing and what to do if you need to switch.
On final you should let the canopy fly with NO togle input if possible.
Flare smoothly and ALL the way.
DON'T STOP FLYING UNTIL YOU HAVE COMPLETELY Stopped.

Chris

[MikeForsythe 0]

Go to DeLand and take Scott Millers class.

And then have lunch with me!

Time and pressure will always show you who a person really is!

[DrewGPM 0]

The Brian Germain course is pretty amazing too. That guy is SO much more than just a canopy expert.

I know people who have done both...tough to pick one as better than the other.

[PhreeZone 15]

For immediate things to practice at altitude read this old thread from CobaltDan. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=23977#23977 That will help you learn how to "feel" how your canopy will land.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[Spizzzarko 0]

Check it,

I want you to go and look at the horizon tomorrow morning. Look at it while standing flat on your feet. Then look at it on your tip toes. Notice how your sight picture changes. Now keep the sight picture of the horizon on flat feet in your mind. Your next jump should be a hop and pop fro the top. Now practice flares, and only flare as much as you need to keep the sight picture the same as when standing with flat feet. If this is to much to wrap your head around, try to feel what it is like in your harnes whil not giving any inputs. This is a one G (the force that gravity exerts on your body). Now feel what it is like in your harness when you are flareing. If you feel a lot of pull in your leg straps (more than one G) then you are probably climbing, and flaring to much. Your flare should induce not much more than one G on your wingloading. Another thing that I see people do wrong a lot is to not flare all the way. Go out and take a camel back full of margarita, and just watch people land all day long. I know, It's like watching golf on TV, but it can be exciting, and you can actually learn alot. Not only should you observe what inputs they are giving to their canopy's but look and see what the canopy is actually doing. YOu will soon learn that you can tell more of what they are doing wrong by looking at the canopy itself, and less at the person. A canopy should be flown into the wind symetricly, and smoothly. If one part is lower than the other, it's an uneven flare. If there is a lot of flare all at once, then they were probably in corner. Learn to observe the rcovery arc on the canopy's. You will notice that most people are still in a dive from a front riser input when they give toggle, or rear riser input to dig themselves out. Now when you sober up from the camel Toe (I mean Camel Back) of Margarita, thn go and do another hop and pop from the top. Do a turn (it doesn't really matter what type you do), and LISTEN to your canopy. Actually close your eyes and listen. You will notice that your canopy will take quite awhile to recover on its own from this input. I believe the Scott Miller Course says it tkaes close to 10 seconds for a canopy to recover back to it's own full flight from an input. Another thing you will notice will be that people don't truely fly their canopys on final approach. They tend to point it in the general direction that they want to land, and expect that the canopy will take them there. If you are not continously flying your canopy then you are wrong. Fly that thing untill you get back into the hangar and pack it. If you let the canopy do it's own thins, it will ut you into a bad situation, that you may or may not have the flying skills to get out of. Don't let yourself get into a situaiotn that you have to pull some skills out of your as that you may not have... Bennn there and done that, it's not cool. Take my word on that one.

Also please be carefull on whom you take advise from. There are many self proclaimed canopy experts out ther, but that doesn't mean they are right. Seek professional help if you are still having problems. Sometimes On DZ.com it's the blind leading the blind, so you have to learn from who ever makes you feel the most comfortable. I hope this post helps you out in some sort of way, but the biggest thing is for you to go out and keep trying. DO NOT get frustrated and quit. It will come to you some day, and then it will be as natural as breathing. Untill then good luck and be careful.

Grant S. Adams

[Andrewwhyte 1]

The part of my first jump course that is forgotten the most by my students is, 'EYES ON THE HORIZON.' Are you looking down when you are on short final? The more problems you have landing, the more nervous you are on final, the more likely you are to look down, the more likely you are to screw up your landing. So relax and keep your head up. Trust me it will work.

[mailin 0]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've already taken Scotts course while I was in DeLand in March (kinda sad actually, I should 'get it' now) but we didn't get to jump due to winds/rain. I get to try again when he comes up here in June.

I think that having a consistent canopy (got my own gear 7 jumps ago) should help. I hope I just need to spend some more time thinking about landing before I get on the plane. I did stand up one yesterday - it was just that last one that stung.

I think next weekend will be hop-n-pop weekend for me. Another thing will be to talk to my rigger as the brakes may be a bit long for me - and with no wind, well, I don't stand a chance



Jen

Arianna Frances

[mattjw916 2]

What!!? You mean at 40 jumps you can't land perfectly everytime!!? *gasp*

Don't stress... this is supposed to be fun...

NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

[mailin 0]

Quote

Don't stress... this is supposed to be fun...

Out of those 40 jumps I've stood up 3 and crashed in about 20... not a good ratio I still have trouble sitting for a long time after busting my tailbone on a no flare 'landing'. I'm tired of being sore!

It's still fun. But when I get people saying "You ok, that last landing looked kinda hard" I wanna turn to them and say "ya, it f'ing hurt too!".

Its supposed to be fun, but not when it hurts I'm very scared I'm going to break something...

Freefall is fun, its the landing part that sux



Jen

Arianna Frances

[AggieDave 6]

Quote

Yep, and it still is. But when I get people saying "You ok, that last landing looked kinda hard" I wanna turn to them and say "ya, it f'ing hurt too!".

I'm going to guess that when you see the video of your landings you'll see you're flaring a little high and slow, and then not finishing the flare.

It seems like quite the common thing when people get their own gear, they could get away with it when jumping those large student canopies, but now they come crashing in due to (mainly) not finishing your flare and flaring a bit high.

You're on the right track, though, you can read all you want, learn all you want from a book/net/talking, but until you go out and get some video of yourself landing and you can look at it. You won't really understand whats going on.

Also, if you're not landing good, it still shouldn't hurt since you've got your feet and knees together and are doing a good PLF.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[mailin 0]

Quote

Also, if you're not landing good, it still shouldn't hurt since you've got your feet and knees together and are doing a good PLF.

ya ya ya, technicalities



Jen

Arianna Frances

[tigra 0]

I second that! Scott also travels to different dzs, especially during the summer months.

My landings are 100% better after taking his class- of course, I had to take it twice since I managed to break my leg the first time. He has a way of presenting the material in a way that makes sense and sinks in.

[cbain 0]

I've had some landing issues, have seen video, and now doing quite a bit better. Like AggieDave said, finishing the flare makes a huge difference. After taking Scott Miller's canopy control course and practicing outloud saying "finish" at the end of the flare helped a bunches. But then my arms would get tired after 1-2 jumps especially when doing a lot of practice flares up high. So that's where the strength training has helped too.

I also had a tendency to want to pick my feet up as the ground approaches, delaying touching down, the result being a lot of butt slides, not good. Even if you flare high or low make sure your feet touch down first and PLF if needed, very important and will save much pain.

The other thing I needed was confidence. After having so many bed landings all the time I was sure every one was going to be bad, and with thinking like that I was almost always was right. I had to change my mentality before I could do it right and believe in myself that I really do know what I'm doing.

Don't know if any of that will help you but that's been my experience. Good luck.

Christina

[MarkM 0]

Brian's The Parachute and its Pilot is a good book to read for understanding your canopy and yourself as its pilot. http://www.bigairsportz.com/publishing.php

[RfukfreeflyingW 0]

See Jen ur problem is, ur not Downsizing fast enough. I have see LOTS of canopy experts come up, and their trick to being so GREAT was loaded a High Persormance canopy heavily by 50 jumps. Trust me they are so good they dont even take advice from anyone! they're cool. SO if u go get urself a 120 katana u should become a landing expert!!!

Please note my sarcasm in case ANYONE that I was serious.

edited to add: maybe just try to relax a bit and dont be so nervous, it says ur under a sabre 2 which has great flare power. so just like JM's will tell u when ur flying and going unstable and what not just relax, and do what u know ur suppose to.

----
-God, you are the perfect amount of dumb...

[mailin 0]

LMAO!

Isn't .89 : 1 enough for the cool stuff?

I think Dave is right - I think just gotta get more aggressive with my flare and do it more completely.

I'll let ya know how the video works out this weekend.

Thanks all!

Jen

Arianna Frances

[Avion 0]

My unqualified response, as presented in Scott's course is...

Practice your two stage landing flares above hard deck in the following ways. The two goals being to learn how much initial input it takes to plane out the canopy and to learn how much input it takes to maintain level flight as long as possible:

A) Practice first half of the 2 stage flare:

1) fast
2) medium
3) slow
4) with eyes closed
5) looking up at canopy

The goal of this excersize is to learn how much and how fast to apply input to swing you out to about the leading edge of the canopy in order to level out your flight.

B) Practice both halves of the 2 stage flare:

After you have learned how to initially plane out, the goal of this excersize is to learn how much and how fast to apply additional input to maintain yourself swung forward under the leading edge of the canopy as long as possible. When you have reached the limit of your flare capacity you will swing back toward the middle of the canopy. This will enable you to maintain level flight as long as possible as you decrease your forward speed prior to landing. You should develop a sense for how long you can maintain level flight.

Once acquired, actually applying these skills durning landing is a whole nother story. That's the part I'm working on now. I tend to look down at the spot where I'm going to land. I have to look more forward, because I've been tending to flare to early.

Cheers

Remember avoiding hazards always takes priority over landing into the wind. On light and varible wind days, it will make little difference which direction you land.

And as always, talk with as many of the most experienced people you can, once you are out of AFF they are more free to give explainations based on their experience.