Take Back the Sky

[MakeItHappen 15]

Ok, I am more than a little miffed about the events that took place this past weekend and the canopy collisions in the past several months. I am not going to wait for an 'official' decree from organizations.

I set up a web site Take Back the Sky for you and me and everyone else to add their two cents into what needs to be done. All contributions will be considered public domain.

Tell me what you think needs to be done.
BTW, saying that USPA needs to do something is not a good answer.
I want specific 'this needs to happen at this level in order to prevent canopy collisions' type of recommendations.

The domain was just registered and may not be available to some for another 48 hours.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[billvon 2,396]

>I set up a web site Take Back the Sky for you and me and everyone else
>to add their two cents into what needs to be done.

I took a look, and right now it appears to just be a statement of the problem and a note that says 'email me your suggestions.'

>I want specific 'this needs to happen at this level in order to prevent
>canopy collisions' type of recommendations.

OK. We need to add a BSR that prohibits swooping in standard landing areas. One way to word it would be:

"Jumpers must fly standard patterns in the primary drop zone landing areas. (See illustration 4.a.1.) Jumpers who wish to perform high performance landings by turning more than 90 degrees in the pattern below 1000 feet must land at a designated alternate landing area."

We then need to institute a "canopy coach" rating to help teach people how to make high performance approaches more safely.

[Spizzzarko 0]

We then need to institute a "canopy coach" rating to help teach people how to make high performance approaches more safely.


I honestly do not think that will work very well. Who will monitor and issue the rating? What will be the standard for issueing the rating? What is going to force people to get canopy coaching from "Canopy Coach" rating holders? This is just not an isolated phenomenom occuring to only swoopers. Two of the deaths at eloy were low time jumpers. You cannot hold only swoopers accountable for an industry wide problem.


"Jumpers must fly standard patterns in the primary drop zone landing areas. (See illustration 4.a.1.) Jumpers who wish to perform high performance landings by turning more than 90 degrees in the pattern below 1000 feet must land at a designated alternate landing area."


What if I get out on a hop and pop and swoop the main landing area and no one else is in the air? Are you still going to enforce the rule?


Don't be so quick to institue policy before you have a good idea as to what is actually causing the problem Bill. One person was saved because he or she had a sky hook. Are you going to make a policy demanding that all rigs have sky hooks or RSL's or they are grounded? Do you even want to go down that road? I for one am pro sky hook, but anti RSL but that is neither here nor there. You can mandate a lot of things but you cannot force people to behave with common sense.

[bbarnhouse 0]

Skydive Arizona has already implemented a new policy that was put into place today.
Bryan Burke will post that in the safety and training forum sometime in the next days.

[kelpdiver 2]

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"Jumpers must fly standard patterns in the primary drop zone landing areas. (See illustration 4.a.1.) Jumpers who wish to perform high performance landings by turning more than 90 degrees in the pattern below 1000 feet must land at a designated alternate landing area."

Works great for Elsinore where there is the advanced field on the other side of the runway. Probably works great for Perris where everyone lands on the tiny patch, but the remark about HnPs is valid counterpoint. Works terrible at Byron where the swoop pond is part of the main LZ but separation seems to be pretty good.

[Spizzzarko 0]

This is one DZ taking matters into their own hands. Do I agree with what they are doing? NO. But I do understand as to why they feel that this rash reaction may be prudent. If there were two terrible incidents at your dz and the dzo or management did nothing do you think that would settle well with the jumpers there?

Don't get me wrong Eloy is a wonderfull DZ and management there does a great job, but I do not feel that limiting turns to 180 is going to help matters. I also do not feel that making a rash reaction to the deaths is required by USPA. Who is this "Take Back The Sky" person anyways? Normally people who do not post any info about themselves in their bio would be called a troll here. Maybe Makeithappen feels that he or she is doing the best thing, but it seems like a witch hunt to me.

Again I think that the problem is a little more systemic than jus tthe amount of turn that people are doing on final approach, and that we need to look more for the root cause than blindly issueing policy.

[bozo 0]

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Who is this "Take Back The Sky" person anyways? Normally people who do not post any info about themselves in their bio would be called a troll here. Maybe Makeithappen feels that he or she is doing the best thing, but it seems like a witch hunt to me.

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She....is one of your National Directors.

bozo
Pain is fleeting. Glory lasts forever. Chicks dig scars.

[skybytch 259]

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Who is this "Take Back The Sky" person anyways?

MakeItHappen is a USPA national director.

In hopes of being part of the solution, I'll be sending her a list of what I think might help the problem before the end of the day.

[Spizzzarko 0]

She....is one of your National Directors.

Well isn't that nice. I hope that before one of our national directors decides to take the information gleamed from her web site to USPA, she really thinks about the root cause of all the incidents. Blindly issuing policy restricting how we land is not the answer here.

"I am not going to wait for an 'official' decree from organizations."

That is a quote from her post. Just what do you plan on doing with this information that you are going to gather? Don't you all understand just how dangerous this could be by her getting a few responses on her web site and setting her own agenda. Read what she has written in her post and ask yourself "Does this make sense?"

[Spizzzarko 0]

"I want specific 'this needs to happen at this level in order to prevent canopy collisions' type of recommendations."

What needs to happen is for each individual skydiver to think about what they are about to do before they do it. You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can make all the rules and regulations you want, but if the individual jumper does not feel that they need to adhere to your rules or regulations then they are not going to do it.


"Ok, I am more than a little miffed about the events that took place this past weekend and the canopy collisions in the past several months."

Are you doing this for the greater good of the sport or are you really doing this because you are emotional and a "little miffed" about what happened. I am saddened by this and I lost someone I knew too, but I am not having a knee jerk reaction to this and trying to create policy that may not fix a damn thing which is what you are doing by "not going to wait for an 'official' decree from organizations".

[skybytch 259]

All you've been doing is giving what you think are reasons that what other people suggest won't work. What do you think WILL work?

Don't you think that 9 deaths from canopy collisions in the past 10 months is 9 deaths too many?

[Spizzzarko 0]

"Don't you think that 9 deaths from canopy collisions in the past 10 months is 9 deaths too many?"

Oh yes I do. Very much so. What do I think will work? Possibly a stronger focus on not racing to the ground.... Hmmm maybe an emphasis on setting up a good canopy stack... A good and thorough briefing on what group will land first just like we talk about what group will exit first and last... Jumpers actually thinking about where they are going to fly instead of being reactionary to all of the goings on in a pattern.

This is just a start of what I think could help the situation. What do you think we should do?

[NWFlyer 2]

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What needs to happen is for each individual skydiver to think about what they are about to do before they do it. You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can make all the rules and regulations you want, but if the individual jumper does not feel that they need to adhere to your rules or regulations then they are not going to do it.

How about if they keep getting booted off DZs if they don't follow the rules and regulations? Eventually they'll run out of places to jump.

My concern is that not enough DZOs are willing to give up the revenue that they get from those habitual offendors.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[Spizzzarko 0]

"How about if they keep getting booted off DZs if they don't follow the rules and regulations?"

What rules and regulations would cause me to be removed from a dz? There really are not that many out there, and what rules and regs would you implement?

I'm sure DZO's will remove people they feel to be a problem, but did you expect the people involved in the GA incident to be involved in it? Those were two highly experienced dudes and I'm sure neither one of them were consciously breaking rules or regulations.

[skybytch 259]

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What do you think we should do?

I agree with everything you said, but I think we need to go a bit further.

I think that every jumper out there needs to understand that landing safely is a team sport. We should all fly our canopies so that everybody gets to walk back to the packing area.

I think that every jumper should be taught things like how to set up a canopy stack (how many jumpers out there who've never done a demo even know what that means?), how to fly in traffic, that S-turns on final aren't okay, that just because you got away with something once, twice, 100 times does not make it safe...

As such, I think that basic canopy control education that includes the above and more should be a requirement. Not just for new jumpers, not just for swoopers... for everybody, no matter how many years in the sport, no matter how many jumps they have, no matter what kind of landing pattern they prefer to fly.

I've also come to believe that separate landing areas for those doing traditional 90 degree patterns and those doing high performance patterns (ie turns greater than 90 degrees) are needed.

[Spizzzarko 0]

"I've also come to believe that separate landing areas for those doing traditional 90 degree patterns and those doing high performance patterns (ie turns greater than 90 degrees) are needed"

Sure that is a good thing. Most swoopers will be very quick to tell you that they are more affraid of the common people (non swoopers) than them making a mistake.

You also mentioned more canopy control lessons. That is a good thought but how are you going to regulate that. There are still many many people who believe that the canopy flight is just something to get them down to the ground for their next silly little sit fly jump ( I can never pass up a good opportunity to take a dig at the free flyers hahaha). USPA has instituted a more canopy centric a license requirement but that doesn't really even help matters here and now. Every jumper is required to know "basic" canopy control in AFF. How much of what we teach you in AFF changes when you have a 1000 jumps? I'm not saying the AFF course is the be all to end all, but every thing you need to know to become an old skydiver is taught to you in that course. It is really not the people with less than 50 jumps causing these problems. The root of the problem is people doing things they were not taught to do in AFF.

So how do you incorporate what we are talking about to the general populus? Do you think making rules and regulations are the key/ If so who will implement them, who will enforce them, who will feel that they are necessarry to follow? How do you tell an old toggle whipping four way dude who has been toggle whipping his stilletto at 50' for the past 1000 jumnps that he is wrong and always has been? What are you going to do to make him want to change his habbits?

[NWFlyer 2]

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Those were two highly experienced dudes and I'm sure neither one of them were consciously breaking rules or regulations.

Well, I wasn't in Dublin, so any answer I give you to that question would only be based on secondhand knowledge of the rules in effect at the boogie, and on rumor and innuendo about the jumper in question (since it appears only one of them made a fatal error, he just happened to take another jumper with him).

I'm a relative newbie to the sport. I don't claim to know a damn thing about swooping. I tend to walk a lot after landing because I like to stay on the edge of traffic. I don't spiral, so with my big-ass canopy, I'm usually among the last down.

But I've been to a lot of DZs (20, at last count) and seen some stupid stunts pulled by jumpers of all experience levels. Sometimes it's a first offense, oftentimes I see people rolling their eyes and saying "there he/she goes again." And that seems to be a more common reaction than DZOs/S&TAs/others in authority roles actually taking action to either 1) set rules and/or 2) enforce rules already in place.

There is a DZ that I don't jump at any more because the DZO there spent an hour telling me that he was worried that I couldn't adequately control my canopy because I don't stand up all my landings. While we were talking, a guy who has a strong rep for pulling stupid stunts on a pocket rocket in the landing area walked by. The DZO rolled his eyes and said "There goes another one of my problems. The guys with that many jumps don't ever listen to me." I said "Why don't you ground him?" and I got some lame excuse about how he'd never actually seen any of these alleged incidents.

The guy is a KNOWN hazard to himself and others and this DZO won't do anything about it. Instead, he focuses on me, and my PLFs and baseball slides when all I'm likely to hurt is my jumpsuit.

That's the kind of revenue-focused chicken shit stuff that I see. From my perspective, it looks the kind of unwillingness to stand up to the people who are highly-experienced, for whatever reason. "Because they don't listen" or "because they have more experience than me" or "because they're highly-experienced and popular and people love to watch them" or whatever else. What it boils down to is "Because I'm not willing to lose their business and/or piss off their friends and lose their business too."

Ironically, that DZO lost my business.

Donning flame-retardant suit.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[skybytch 259]

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So how do you incorporate what we are talking about to the general populus? Do you think making rules and regulations are the key?

Yes, I do. Maybe not the key, but a big part of it.

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If so who will implement them, who will enforce them, who will feel that they are necessarry to follow?

USPA could recommend them. DZO's could implement them. DZO's and S&TA's can enforce them. The culture needs to be changed so that everybody feels they are necessary to follow.

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How do you tell an old toggle whipping four way dude who has been toggle whipping his stilletto at 50' for the past 1000 jumnps that he is wrong and always has been? What are you going to do to make him want to change his habbits?

I think he'd be wanting to change his habits if he knew he would get grounded for doing it at every dropzone out there. If he were required to get canopy control education, he might come away from it with a better appreciation for the risks his behavior is putting onto other people.

[Spizzzarko 0]

You know that the saftey and danger advisors could enforce the rules already on the books and thi might prevent this from happening. what new rules and regulations would you instill to prevent thus from happening again in the future? That is a question to "Makeithappen" too. Getting angry and making rash decisions because people got killed is not the answer here. banning swoopers from one landing area or limiting people to a 180 on landing unless you are cleared from management like sda has done is not really the answer either. education is the key here.

[MakeItHappen 15]

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"I want specific 'this needs to happen at this level in order to prevent canopy collisions' type of recommendations."

What needs to happen is for each individual skydiver to think about what they are about to do before they do it. You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can make all the rules and regulations you want, but if the individual jumper does not feel that they need to adhere to your rules or regulations then they are not going to do it.


"Ok, I am more than a little miffed about the events that took place this past weekend and the canopy collisions in the past several months."

Are you doing this for the greater good of the sport or are you really doing this because you are emotional and a "little miffed" about what happened. I am saddened by this and I lost someone I knew too, but I am not having a knee jerk reaction to this and trying to create policy that may not fix a damn thing which is what you are doing by "not going to wait for an 'official' decree from organizations".

Nah, I'm doing it for the one cent per degree over 90 to landing kickback royalty that I get from the conspiracy among DZOs.
Danny Page owes me $1.80.

Dude, all these lessons were learned years ago. It befuddles me that they have to be relearned via fatalities today.

All I can say to you is to re-read what I did put on Take Back the Sky

I am asking you and everyone else what we can do about this.

My 'agenda' is to make sure no one has to worry about being attacked from behind by a swooper, crashed into by someone doing an S-turn or taken out by someone doing spirals in the pattern. If that is a 'bad' goal in your mind, let me know, so I won't be in the air at the same time as you.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[kallend 1,623]

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What needs to happen is for each individual skydiver to think about what they are about to do before they do it. You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can make all the rules and regulations you want, but if the individual jumper does not feel that they need to adhere to your rules or regulations then they are not going to do it.

How about if they keep getting booted off DZs if they don't follow the rules and regulations? Eventually they'll run out of places to jump.

My concern is that not enough DZOs are willing to give up the revenue that they get from those habitual offendors.

Maybe a lawsuit or two for gross or culpable negligence that will not be protected by a waiver will get their attention.

At this stage, allowing reckless behavior known to endanger the lives of others is, IMO, culpable negligence.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[bozo 0]

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What needs to happen is for each individual skydiver to think about what they are about to do before they do it. You can preach until you are blue in the face. You can make all the rules and regulations you want, but if the individual jumper does not feel that they need to adhere to your rules or regulations then they are not going to do it.

How about if they keep getting booted off DZs if they don't follow the rules and regulations? Eventually they'll run out of places to jump.

My concern is that not enough DZOs are willing to give up the revenue that they get from those habitual offendors.

Maybe a lawsuit or two for gross or culpable negligence that will not be protected by a waiver will get their attention.

At this stage, allowing reckless behavior known to endanger the lives of others is, IMO, culpable negligence.

John, you just typed my thoughts. Thats where, i'm afraid, this is all going to wind up.

bozo
Pain is fleeting. Glory lasts forever. Chicks dig scars.

[marks 0]

please just remember, I jump because I get to swoop. that is why I jump.

something needs to happen, and I dont think I am the one to come up with what needs to happen.

but to those who do come up with it. please remember,

I jump, because I get to swoop.

selfish as that may sound, why do you jump?

I hope there are many things put up and out there. then maybe I can vote on what I think is best. so can everyone else.


p.s.

I have told this to many people who ask me at boogies, "why dont you jump?"

the answer is because I am too scared of all the traffic, and my canopy does not permit me to jump in those circumstances. I just wish others would relies this also.

[wmw999 2,121]

An important thing to do in any process (which, trust me, landing a parachute in a large group is) is to try to mistake proof it wherever possible.

It's all good and well to educate people and tell them to do well, and tell them they fucked up. But if you can change the process to make some mistakes impossible, then you reduce the opportunity for error.

We can't entirely mistake-proof landing or skydiving. Absolutely no way. But saying that nothing will do unless it's perfect is bullshit. Better is better.

Maybe we have blocks of airspace where turns greater than 180 aren't allowed. Maybe we have mandatory canopy coaching for anyone who wants to learn to swoop. It has to be done on a dz-by-dz basis, but so does most everything else.

My current tagline is "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." Doing a 270 and swooping through congested skies totally falls into this category.

Wendy W.

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)

[nathaniel 0]

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email me your suggestions

Quit fighting the laws of probability. Streaks happen, deal with it.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?