being an old timer (long)

[billvon 2,395]

Sometimes when I read these threads I feel really old. Some things have really changed in this sport. And objectively it really hasn't been that long; I started skydiving only thirteen years ago. To take you back to those distant days:

The Racer and the Vector II were popular, with an occasional Northern Light or Swift filling things out. Cruislites, PD-230's and Falcons were the canopies of choice, once you had mastered the DC-5 or the Cloud XL. The Sabre and the Monarch had recently come out, but everyone knew that those canopies would kill you (and open hard to boot.) The opening hard part wasn't so bad, since pull altitudes were right around 2000 feet, to maximize the freefall time from 7500 feet. Cessnas were the standard, with bigger DZ's using D-18's and DC-3's. Otters were starting to come into usage at some of the bigger DZ's, but they were still worth a special trip. The Cypres was a brand new AAD. It looked promising; it wouldn't take much of an improvement to make it better than the Sentinels and FXC's of the time. They were so bad that students looked forward to the day they could disconnect the AAD (the sentinels had a physical connector you could disconnect.) The reputation of AAD's in general was so bad that a big selling point of the cypres was that you could hide the control unit under the reserve flap. That way no one would see you had an AAD and refuse to jump with you; premature AAD deployments had injured several people, and AAD's were frowned upon for RW.

I basically started at three DZ's, going through the static line program at one and making a few AFF at another. The gear was, well, bad. The mains were DC-5's, massive 5 cell 300 square foot things that had cells so big you could sleep in them. They had no glide ratio to speak of, which was good practice if we ever had to use our reserves (ancient Navy rounds.) The containers were in equally bad shape. I made my first repairs to a student rig I was using when I had about 20 jumps (velcro replacement) and knew to avoid the ones with duct tape on the reserve containers. I knew those rigs pretty well; I paid for my first 50 jumps or so by packing.

The aircraft we used were a bit ragged. I remember my first few jumps sitting in them looking at the sun stream in through the missing rivets, and they would refuse to start on occasion and need to be hand-propped. We had several pilots, pilots who ranged from competent time-builders to grizzled veterans with suspended pilot's licenses to new pilots with the ink barely dry on their tickets. We knew the sorts of risks we were taking. The waiver we signed, although much shorter than the ones we sign nowadays, said you could die doing this because of the carelessness or negligence of the staff or other skydivers, and it was clear to us that this was very true. It was never malicious - the hungover pilot certainly didn't mean to risk anyone's life - but we knew that the possibility was there that someone could screw up and we could die. And then Harry did screw up, and we watched him die when he plowed the plane into the runway trying to make it back after losing power over a sod farm. A JM was paralyzed for life as a result of that crash.

Lawsuits were not so much decided against as never considered. The people at the DZ were our family, and you wouldn't sue them any more than you'd sue your brother for getting drunk and crashing a car you were in. And skydiving wasn't just risky - it was deadly. We saw the deaths. Any sort of comparison to driving seemed absurd. We'd go out at night, drink heavily, drive home, and show up the next day to jump again, but a pilot would make one mistake and we'd have one dead and one who would never move again.

Nowadays I read about jumpers who think suing DZ's is a good idea. A poster here said she would sue if there was an accident and the reserve on the rig she had been renting was out of date. Another thought that a DZO who intentionally used a suspect prop should certainly be sued out of existence. Heck, when I started, we'd be the ones trying to talk him into letting us use the out of date rig or using the prop for one more weekend. Because we wanted to jump, and were willing to risk our lives with a gouged prop to get in the air. And we knew that if anything happened it would be our fault as much as his.

I learned a lot back then, mainly because I had to. I learned to spot because we had no GPS, and if I didn't spot, odds are the spot would be bad. When I started spotting the spots would be bad too, but at least I was in control, and I got better fast after some para-hiking. I learned to do demos by just doing them, first picking tighter areas to land in when I had to land out, then doing impropmptu demos into local bars. I learned to BASE jump because Harry Parker was at our DZ for a year, and I figured that was my one chance to learn. And every time I learned something new, whether it was how to land in a back yard, how to pack a main for BASE, or how to spot an Otter in high winds, I'd get a little safer, and I'd improve my odds a little bit. And that was critical, because I knew the odds weren't in my favor.

Over time, things changed. The otter in Perris crashed, and suddenly people everywhere were using seatbelts and being more careful about fuel. In a lot of ways things got better. The gear improved. We got these new high performance Mantas, and rigs like the Eos and the Infinity made their appearance. The Sabres and Monarchs started to become more accepted, and gradual evolutions produced higher performance canopies (the Stiletto) lower performance intermediate canopies (the Triathalon) and oddball canopies (the AR-11) that faded away with time. Turbines gradually replaced pistons at bigger DZ's,

Some things got worse. People started jumping not because they really wanted to jump but because they became entranced by the glossy ad in the magazine. The DZ saw a lot more transients, people who would be there for a day and leave, never to be seen again. There began to be an attitude of entitlement, a "I deserve good gear, safe airplanes and experienced pilots at a reasonable price, I got rights" sort of thing. There was a lot of friction at one place between the new brand of jumpers and the older crowd who just wanted to drink beer, smoke pot, jump crappy gear and have fun. I dealt with the problem by just avoiding them most of the time, which seemed better than trying to impose my view of the world on them. I mean, what did I know? I had 100 jumps.

Eventually I made my way to California where the planes were mostly turbine and the weather was always good. I started jumping at Brown Field, where we progressed from C206's to a King Air to a Porter to a Beech 99 to a Caravan to an Otter. I learned a lot there; got all my ratings, learned to spot down to 100 yards (important when you're half a mile from the mexican border and a mountain range) and learned to be the "bad guy" S+TA. And even though Buzz put a lot of effort into making Brown a safe DZ, we saw injuries and fatalities. I was going through the AFF JCC when we heard that a student had nearly ripped the tail off the King Air due to a premature reserve deployment, and that everyone had survived through basically a miracle. We saw a fatality when a jumper struggled with a stuck pullout for too long, and we saw another one when a local jumper tried to land downwind on a windy day. I lost a good friend of mine when he made one pretty minor mistake, one I had made in the past. In other words, skydiving was as dangerous as ever, even though we did a much better job at Brown of keeping the easily-avoidable risks to a minimum. We also had our share of risks we couldn't avoid, mainly jumpers who simply could not or would not listen. Many of them ended up out of the sport, too injured to jump again, or they became able to listen after serious injuries. It was clear that despite Buzz's best attempts (he required AAD's after the first fatality, instituted drug testing, supported groundings both from me and other local DZ's, changed student gear every few years etc) that it was not the DZ that determined whether people were safe or not; it was the people themselves. That's something that sometimes gets lost, I think. A DZ with 100 people at it is as safe as those 100 people, no matter what the DZO does. If those 100 people refuse to get into a rattly airplane, no one dies in a crash. If they do - well, they decided to get in a rattly plane.

And today I see people who honestly think driving is more dangerous than skydiving. They think that certain devices are so critical to their safety that they won't consider a jump without them, that these devices perhaps can _make_ skydiving as safe as driving. I see people jumping canopies I would never consider jumping at 200 jumps because everyone else is doing it, and insisting on a cypres again because everyone else is doing it - and thinking they are, on the balance, safer because of their gear choices. And maybe all that works for them. I know I thought I knew everything when I had 200 jumps.

The future of skydiving will depend, as it always has, on the direction skydivers take it. It will be as safe as we make it, not as safe as we sue it into being. Each of us has to decide what level of risk we're willing to accept, then educate ourselves so we can reasonably decide if we are OK with a DZ's airplanes, gear, landing area, winds, S+TA's, overall attitude etc. If we're not OK with it, don't jump. It is a thousand times better to be alive, intact and jumping less than to be paralyzed from the neck down, even if you have a $5 million settlement and the satisfaction of destroying a DZ.

And if you are OK with it? Then jump, and accept the responsibility that comes with participating in an inherently dangerous, unforgiving sport. The paybacks can be immense, but the risks are too.

[SkydiveNFlorida 0]

Wow, that puts things in perspective a bit.

All that in only 13 years. Wow.

Angela.

[mnischalke 0]

Ya made me laugh today, now you make me think.

Thanks Bill--well done.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[skyyhi 0]

Very well put sir. . .I think this is an important message for EVERYONE today. . not just skydivers. . .

Thanks Bill

________________________________________
Take risks not to escape life… but to prevent life from escaping. ~ A bumper sticker at the DZ
FGF #6
Darcy

[itllclear 1]

In the "Old" days (the 60's) with the gear we had (surplus containers with Cheapos and 7 T-U's and flat circular mains) we used to say that the instant you left the plane, you were dead UNLESS YOU DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Some of us are still alive because WE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

With the gear that's available today (docile, reliable, square mains, AAD's, square reserves, GPS for spotting, etc.) you should be alive UNLESS YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

When I read of jumpers doing themselves in with low turns on high performance canopies, it just reminds me that jumpers are people who tend to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Let's be careful out there.

Blue Skies!

Harry

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

"Your statement answered your question."

[councilman24 36]

But consider someone like me. My first jumps were in 1978 on military gear, no pilot chute on the reserve, and 28' C-9's. I didn't learn to spot because there wasn't GPS, I learned to spot to survive! Landing approach started at opening. A spot 300' off was bad. My first rig was a PC (Paracommander, not pilot chute). We'd feel special traveling to jump out of Agent Orange DC-3. The cargo Twin Beech was the hot airplane. RSL's were Steven's lanyards. Three rings really were rings, not sloted hardware. And throw out pilot chutes were new on the block and still killing people.

Training involved real PLF training, backwards from 6 feet. AFF was a gleam in Ken Coleman's (RIP) and Rocky Evans' eyes. We thought that 200 mph was the fastest a human could go. And jumpsuit had more material (or seemed to) than the popular Strato Star five cell. And we would have been laughed off the DZ if we tried to get someone else to pack for us, even for money.

What you describe Bill is RECENT history. And the changes disturb me even more. Oh well, AAD's have saved dozens, new canopies have killed even more, and new jumpers can't pack, spot, or get out less than 4000". I guess we just have to live with it.

And I just bought a 28' Phantom round so I can ride a quiet parachute again this summer, if I have enough guts with my bad ankle.

I'm not done with the rocking chair Bill. You'll have to wait your turn.

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[ifics 0]

Well put! Reading that uplifts me and at the same time depresses me a little bit. Thank you for taking the time to write it, I learned from it and I am sure others will too.

[LouDiamond 1]

BRAVO!! Very well said. I think you should submit that post to the magazines as I think everyone in the world could get a little bit of perspective from it no matter what their time in the sport.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[Kramer 0]

From a new jumper, thanks for sharing Bill. Kinda helps us newbies realize what the older guys have gone through. Very well written.

The FAKE KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMER!!!!!!!!!

[beowulf 1]

Definitely not just for skydivers. In this age of sue everyone you can, people in general are not willing to take responsibility for their own actions and accept the risks involved in their choices. Everyone that jumps should be able to accurately asses the risks that they are taking by jumping out of "perfectly good airplanes" and accept the consequences of their actions. Whether those consequences be good or bad.

[mofo554 0]

Disclaimer to all respondents to this post: The following is not intended to hijack the original thread, nor is it intended to be taken as anything more than my opinion on what has been said in the original post and subsequent postings.

I am very new to this sport compared to many people here, having been in it for only a few years. Anyways, after reading billvon's post, I disagreed with a few issues he presented...

Quote

Nowadays I read about jumpers who think suing DZ's is a good idea. A poster here said she would sue if there was an accident and the reserve on the rig she had been renting was out of date. Another thought that a DZO who intentionally used a suspect prop should certainly be sued out of existence.

In this case, if the DZO knew the reserve was out of date, or that the prop was faulty, these are clear cases of negligence. How is anybody going to know that the reserve card on their rented rig hasn't been altered to make it appear up to date? They can't know this. To act as if DZOs shouldn't be held legally responsible for such disregard for human life is, in my opinion, ludacris. People who brazenly and blatantly do such things undeniably deserve to be punished. If five people die in a Cessna 182 crash, and the DZO admits (for whatever reason) that he knew the plane was unsafe, how can anybody conscientiously say he shouldn't be held responsible?

There is a reason this country has such regulatory agencies as the FAA, FDA, etc. If the FAA didn't exist, who would be ensuring you that the flight you take to Europe is on an airplane which has been properly maintained? If the FDA didn't exist, who would ensure your beef doesn't contain mad cow disease or was packaged in unsanitary conditions? How would your health and safety be ensured if not for such government agencies?

The simple answer: it wouldn't be. Government agencies, along with the right we have to sue negligent people/companies is what keeps things in check.

People and companies are held responsible in civil courts every day across our nation. When a drunk person negligently drives down a road and kills somebody, they are often rightfully held responsible in both criminal and civil courts for their negligence. Yet, along your line of thought, such a person shouldn't be held accountable because it was the deceased person's choice to risk their life driving down the street. Again, I find this line of thinking ludacris. It simply makes no sense to me. If somebody's negligence causes harm to another human being, that person should be held responsible - no matter what.

I see no reason why DZOs would let reserves go out of date, or fly skydivers in airplanes that are unsafe. If fixing these and other problems means they can't afford to stay in business, then so be it. As long as they take proper precautions, then I find absolutely no reason for a DZO to ever worry about civil litigation. Once they stray into the realm of becoming negligent, however, they are operating their business with no respect for human life.

[LouDiamond 1]

Logical and sound examples and I think most people would agree with what you said. However, this clearly goes back to what Bill posted earlier in another thread...READ THE WHOLE WAIVER AND KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SIGNING"

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[rmsmith 1]

The latest AOPA magazine has an article regarding an avionics company whose insurance carrier was asked to help pay damages despite the fact that their product did NOT malfunction or cause an airplane to crash, but they had deep pockets, and the court felt that the victims needed somebody's money to ameliorate the pain.

This is tomorrow's tort, today!

[VanillaSkyGirl 6]

Oh Bill, thank you so much for always posting such wise words. I do not always post to your threads, but I always try to read what you post. I truly admire you so much, and I learn something every time that I read a post that you have written. Thank you, again.

[velo90 0]

Maybe I don't understand enough about the American legal system but this is the way I think about the problem of negligence etc.

Before I skydive I sign a waiver that says I have no grounds to sue, further my family has no grounds to sue. This does not prevent any goverment agencies such as the FAA or the police going after the DZ or the DZO if they have done something criminal.

There is a difference between a skydiver trying to get damages for what has happened and court of law prosecuting someone for doing something wrong.

As far as I can see, all I am doing by signing the waiver, is losing my right to collect money from the DZ if something goes wrong.

Am I correct in my assumptions?

If so, then I have no problems signing the wiaver and abiding by what I sign with no exceptions.
If a DZ intentionally tries to kill me that is a matter for the authorities and not for my wallet.

Nice post from Billvon, enjoyed the read.

[skybytch 259]

Quote

I think you should submit that post to the magazines as I think everyone in the world could get a little bit of perspective from it no matter what their time in the sport.

I agree.

Quote

Sometimes when I read these threads I feel really old. Some things have really changed in this sport. And objectively it really hasn't been that long; I started skydiving only thirteen years ago.

Me too.

Thanks Bill. You made some excellent points, you had me nodding and laughing throughout, and you brought back a lot of memories.

We may have been unsafe in the eyes of some people today, but we knew what we were getting into and we had a whole lot of fun getting into it.

[BlueSBDeath 2]

Most excellent!!! You captured many of my thoughts and some of my past!!! Keep up the good work!!

Arvel

BSBD...........Its all about Respect,

USPA#-7062, FB-2197, Outlaw 499

[Dumpster 0]

Great post, Bill!!

It was about 14 years ago, when I had my first opportunity to skydive. I was stationed at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul. (How ironic it would eventually become home to the WFFC!) I was married to mt first wife at the time and had two young daughters, but even so I managed to save up the money for the first jump. Then I got reassigned and the bucks had to go toward my moving expenses. That was almost 14 years ago. I never knew how much I was missing until I finally started jumping four years ago.

Wow!

As far as all this talk of litigation, etc. This is what I feel and I'll repeat what I've said before - Real skydivers don't sue.

It is up to the individual jumper to take responsibility for his or her own skydive. Your most important piece of safety equipment is between your ears. Use it on every jump.

Easy Does It

[diverdriver 5]

Quote

And even though Buzz put a lot of effort into making Brown a safe DZ, we saw injuries and fatalities.



........ It was clear that despite Buzz's best attempts (he required AAD's after the first fatality, instituted drug testing, supported groundings both from me and other local DZ's, changed student gear every few years etc) that it was not the DZ that determined whether people were safe or not; it was the people themselves. That's something that sometimes gets lost, I think. A DZ with 100 people at it is as safe as those 100 people, no matter what the DZO does. If those 100 people refuse to get into a rattly airplane, no one dies in a crash. If they do - well, they decided to get in a rattly plane.

How true. A lot of people listen to the old timers. But some people just insist on -not- listening. They think that old timers can't be inventive or push the envelope at all.

Nice post Bill. Some times I think I've been in this sport awhile (almost 9 years) and then again, I think "Hell, I'm still just a tourist." [major sarcasm for those who didn't get it]

Chris Schindler
www.diverdriver.com
ATP/D-19012
FB #4125

[Remster 24]

Quote

(almost 9 years) and then again, I think "Hell, I'm still just a tourist." [major sarcasm for those who didn't get it]

No sarcasm... 9=tourist

Remster

[The111 0]

Quote

Some things got worse. People started jumping not because they really wanted to jump but because they became entranced by the glossy ad in the magazine.

This statement confuses me. I don't think some whuffo would pick up a magazine, see an ad for a shiny rig, and want to start skydiving because of it. As far as I know, people jump because they want to.

Care to elaborate?

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[d15859 0]

Thanks for the memories, geeze, guess I'm an old guy too, 16 years now since that first jump. My heroes already had that many years in the sport when I started. I think I was very lucky to have them, their wisdom and guidance as a student jumper. Those were the good old days, and I think the way the attitudes are going now, these may if fact become the good old days. Great Article, Thanks again.

[MarkM 0]

No offense to the old days, but I think the sport is 10x safer today than it was back then. I'm sure there are a lot more people in the sport now, a lot more jumps going on per day than 13 years ago, but the number of fatalities per year seems to have stayed at around 30-ish since 1990. Part of that is most definately gear(the old timers tested what worked and what didn't for us noobs today), part of that might be better training(getting my A today is a lot more involved than when I started in 2000 and I don't believe a coach rating existed then), and part of it could also be a lower tolerance of certain risky behaviors.

Part of the "I deserve good gear, safe airplanes and experienced pilots at a reasonable price, I got rights" thing might be an evolution of the above, the sport is getting safer and more mainstream. 13 years ago how many people in the general population ever made even one jump? Now with tandems being common a lot of people have. I wouldn't be suprised if at some point skydiving doesn't become as popularized as snowboarding or skiiing. I personally wouldn't mind that at all, because prices would likely stay low and it'd mean more places to jump and more ways of jumping(heck, we got a heli coming to my home DZ in a week or so, how many times back in the old days did you get to do heli jumps?). But the downside to the sport getting more popular is when the beamers start to show up in the DZ parking lot those people are going to feel entitled to good gear, experienced pilots and safe planes. Of course, the DZs at that point should be making enough money to support all of that.

[beowulf 1]

I think the problem that is showing up now is that people seem to think that skydiving is safer then it actually is. Yes the gear and the planes are safer, but many of the risks are still the same. The yuppies expect the world to be a safe place and are shocked to realize that it isn't and want to sue whomever they believe is responsible. Life is dangerous. Now add more risk by jumping out of good airplanes with safe gear and less then perfect people controlling a certain amount of variables and fate controlling the rest, life becomes a lot more interesting in my opinion and more dangerous. If you can't accept your possibility of death and injuries with out having to find some one else to blame then don't jump.

[jumperconway 0]

Very nice post Bill. Parachutist/Skydiving next month I hope!