Getting Very Scary Out There

[GreenLight 5]

Lots of collisions over the holidays and I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think it's just going to get worse. It's getting scary to be under a canopy around all these swoopers and it's still not safe once you're standing in the landing area. I may sound like I'm whining but I'm seeing more and more stupid jumpers pushing limits they have no business playing with in the first place. I may have to find a much quieter DZ because it's getting too crowded here.

Green Light
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."
"Your statement answered your question."

[AggieDave 6]

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It's getting scary to be under a canopy around all these swoopers...I'm seeing more and more stupid jumpers pushing limits they have no business playing with in the first place

There you go, you answered your own questions.

Basically its not the swoopers, its the ones thinking they are swooping hard and fast but without the skill and experience to do so. The ones that are blowing off landing patterns thinking they don't need one if they're swooping. The ones landing outside of the windline with out 1) being by themselves, 2) asking everyone on the load if they have proper seperation or 3) not doing solo jumps (hop and pops) to insure a solo landing.

There are those of us out there that fly a landing pattern for their swoop (downwind at 1500ft, base at 900ft and point of manuever at 600 when doint a 270 for me). There are those of us that do a lot of solo jumps to simply not have traffic or go to alternate swooping landing areas. There are those of us that don't swoop when the conditions (canopy traffic) aren't right for it. There are those of us that actually care and do our best to learn and enjoy ourselves safely.

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

[wmw999 2,114]

Fine, so it's mostly (but not entirely) people who look like swoopers, and act like swoopers, but aren't because they aren't aware enough.

Regardless, there are too many landings in too many directions, with too many turns from too many different directions. I land on the edge of the landing area (or out). But, ya know, I'm the one coming straight in on the windline declared by the tetrahedron. Gives me the time to make a decision about what will help me.

But sometimes watching it looks like watching street racers on the freeway. Yes, some are a whole lot better and more skilled than others. But a full freeway still isn't the place for that.

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)

[AggieDave 6]

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Fine, so it's mostly (but not entirely) people who look like swoopers, and act like swoopers, but aren't because they aren't aware enough.

That's an over simplified way to put it. I would equate it to those guys that have RW suits, but every time you go do an RW jump with them they're out of control, trying to get to the formation too fast and not flying their slot worth a damn and sometimes getting above or below the formation.

They look like an RW flier, they can do some RW, but a good RW flier they're not.

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Regardless, there are too many landings in too many directions, with too many turns from too many different directions.

That's not from swooping, that's from being idiots.

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ut, ya know, I'm the one coming straight in on the windline declared by the tetrahedron

If they're not landing on the windline in traffic, they're not swooping, they're being idiots. Get the S&TA to jump their ass.

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

[NickDG 23]

At one time people said RW should be banned because it was dangerous and it would kill people. Later people said CRW should be banned as it was dangerous and it would kill people. Then people said BASE should be banned as it was dangerous and it would kill people.

I'm not, and never have been for banning anything. I've always seen that after a steep learning curve we jumpers figure out how to do dangerous things. However, looking back on fatalities over the past fifteen years we aren't learning how to prevent high performance landing fatalities. It's possible that the newer among us now see these fatalities as a normal part of skydiving, like we accepted terminal impacts years ago. To veterans of the sport these landing deaths seem totally out of whack but we don't say much as we don't want to sound like the naysayers of old.

If someone put together a complete swoop-gone-bad fatality list the numbers would be frightening. Just since the year 2004, 37 percent (the largest category) of 97 worldwide skydiving fatalities have been landing deaths.

I hate to admit we as jumpers have failed. But, even with the swoop classes, and all the education about wing loading, IT'S NOT WORKING.

Every time someone dies on a swoop the blood is on our hands. How long are we going to go on denying this? And there's plenty of blame to go around. We jumpers share the blame with gear retailers and canopy manufacturers who are putting profit ahead of safety. We are selling killing machines to our innocents. I've thought about this from all angles, and the only conclusion I can come to is we are royally screwing up, and unless we do something about it, some agency, is going to do it to us . . .

We've gone from a time when hook turns were banned outright with round parachutes when the worst outcome was a broken leg, to a point where swoop landings are encouraged and the carnage and death is ignored. We are probably now three generations into the blind leading the blind. Some manufacturer with balls needs to stand up, some big retailer needs to say enough is enough, and some DZO has to lay down the law. Follow the money. Swooping is spectacular and it lures in the tandems. It's a vicious stinking money making cycle of death.

Newer jumpers will tell me to get over living in the past, but that's what people who have no past always say. But, I know this for sure; twenty year old jumpers have no business dying while landing a parachute.

Someday, wavier be dammed, some jury is going to get the fact a high performance highly wing loaded canopy is a loaded gun. Selling that loaded gun to a jumper with less than a thousand jumps, who dies under it, is negligent homicide. I love my Stiletto but I'm very careful with it. I've jumped about every kind of canopy there is round and square and I've learned three decades of lessons in this sport. And sometimes I need every bit of that experience to keep myself safe. When I see "a few years in the sport and 400 jumps" lying there dead, I know it's not entirely their fault, it's ours . . .

NickD BASE 194

[airtwardo 6]

Interesting and well stated thoughts Nick.

I was thinking along similar lines a couple weeks ago. "Marketing Gone Mad" is the only thing I can come up with.

Two weeks back I stopped at a DZ I don't normally frequent, but was in the area and needed a 'fix'.
I'm sitting geared up, basically alone waiting for a maintenance hold on the aircraft. I struck up a conversation with another jumper across from me at the staging area...a good lookin' young buck, about 25...my size-6'3" - 6'4" a good 220-230 pounds and all muscle...he looked to be in a lot of pain, and told me how this was his first day back after a 9 month lay off to recoup from a landing injury. He told me what had happened and I thought to myself he's lucky to have even survived. He was jumping the same 80 some sqft canopy that hammered him 3/4 of a year earlier....

We talked about his rehab, and how he'd kept his upper body cut by using a home gym...but only started walking without major discomfort a month or so back, and he was wondering if he'd ever be able to run 5 miles a day like he once did.

He said he loved the sport but if he ever got hurt like that again he'd hang it up.

...So I watched him come in after the jump, a great swoop...perfectly timed to a sliding -falling over stop...he still can't 'run it out'.

An hour into the beer light, I found this guy again and struck up another little talk, I asked him how it went...and told him I was wondering why, with his 'condition' and since he loves to jump...he didn't upsize to a more conservative canopy?

He said that would be like taking a Honda step through to a biker bar!

That comment really kind of told the whole story...

I liked this guy...he's smart, successful, talented...
but somewhere along the line bought into the 'shiny is better' consumer mentality that marketing people love. There is no logical reason for him to be jumping that gear...especially now...but he would rather KNOWINGLY risk permanent injury then take it down a notch.

I thought about that a lot driving home...

Has society / culture changed that much when I wasn't looking? The sport is of course influenced
by the people in it. The 'vocal majority' of our ranks seem to have quite different motivations and
values that I did at their age and experience.

It's now more about money than it ever has been...
Competition in the market place drives the changes in the sport...the quest for the most bucks in the shortest time is the value system of the current crowd.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong for society as a whole, but there needs to be some sanity when it comes to skydiving.

I can't imagine what the the DZO I worked for 25 years ago would have said if we told him that in order to stay in business...he needed to hire a D-9 and cut a pit in the landing area, then fill it with water so 3/4 of each load can low hook and drag a foot through it.
And if he didn't...people would go down the road to the DZ that would.

I don't know what the answer is...
I do know it's going to get a LOT fucking worse before it stops...there is no 'real' motivation to change things. The 'bottom line' on the tax form is what dictates change in the sport for the most part.

Sure there are those DZ's and Manufacturers, that don't necessarily follow the latest 'trend' and attempt to regulate the risk to an extent. But they do so knowing they are turnig away profit.

I truly miss those days when you didn't have to be fearful of who you were jumping / landing with killing you.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[skybill 18]

Hi Scary Larry!!,
Yup, gotta be careful around the L/Z when the swooper-wanna-be's are trying to dig trenches!! Perhaps we should make swoopers wear rotating beacons (like on airplanes) so we can see'em landing!! The light will be a good reference point for the emergency vehicles too!!!

Generally though, I just hang out till the swoopers from my load have crashed then make my approach to land. If there are any in the area when I'm getting near the ground, I just land out a bit, no big deal.

Personally I think swoopin' is fun but suicide is best left for the terrorists, they're better at it.

SCR-2034, SCS-680

III%,
Deli-out

[lawrocket 3]

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hate to admit we as jumpers have failed. But, even with the swoop classes, and all the education about wing loading, IT'S NOT WORKING.

I'd have to agree. Look at what people are bitching about now. Here's a clicky to a post two years ago made by Bill Booth.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=538444#538444

Note his quote - "The sky over most drop zones nowadays is like a busy intersection with no stop signs or traffic lights...for that matter, no rules at all. I just got back from Roger Nelson's funeral and I'm pissed. Too many good people have lost their lives recently because canopy pilots won't follow even the most basic traffic rules while landing their nylon airplanes."

There's an incident posting today abotu not following the pattern.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[RogerRamjet 0]

You have said what I have been thinking for some time now (and very well said too). I keep wondering how the evolution to the current state of affairs was allowed to happen.

In 1973 when I started, Z-Hills (a commercial center at the time) required you have 200 jumps before you could jump a square. What makes current students so intrinsically better than we where then? The statistics seem to show that they aren't any better and worse, the stats show a high percentage of the landing injuries and deaths are on high jump number individuals as well.

It appears to me (admittedly never having swooped in the modern sense of the word) that high performance landings bring the margin of error to such a small tolerance, that a very small mistake in judgment can be fatal. We used to say you could make one or two mistakes on a skydive and survive (most of the time), but this rule does not seem to hold for high performance landings....

I also agree that if the sport doesn't find a way to police itself in this regard, some agency will...

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

[nitrochute 2]

one word...EGO

[hottamaly 1]

Boy Nick, you do have a way with words. I hope a greenie will put this up as a sticky for a while so others can read this. Probably won't do any good though.

Keep up the good word and maybe it will sink into someone.

Skydiving gave me a reason to live
I'm not afraid of what I'll miss when I die...I'm afraid of what I'll miss as I live

[GreenLight 5]

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Generally though, I just hang out till the swoopers from my load have crashed then make my approach to land.

Well it's hard to hang out and wait for the swoopers to land when you have two more plane loads raining death from above... LOL! And as I say, once you're on the ground the danger is not really over... I almost got hit square on over the 4th and I didn't move a muscle... I could feel his wind as he went by... Geeesh... I like the idea of the beacons though... :)

Green Light
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."
"Your statement answered your question."

[skybill 18]

Hi Scary,
Yea' Iknow what ya' mean!! Hi-Test DZ's rain skydivers like candy mints!! 'Ya gotta wear body armour onthe DZ!! 'Yer best bet is to fly into the hanger, they won't follow you in there!! Or will they??

SCR-2034, SCS-680

III%,
Deli-out

[bigorangemd 0]

Having seen both seasoned swoopers who have the experience and wisdom to do what they do, and swoopers who have managed through luck to not have bit it (yet); I would say there is all the difference in the world. This was hammered home over the 4th of July watching two swoopers back to back. They both set up one right after the other. One altered his swoop immediately after initiation of the turn. The other had the same set up and stabbed brakes at about 75 feet. The first swooper (who I would trust to kick a cracker out of my teeth) wound up with a swoop about two feet above the pond and landed safely (the muttering about a lousy swoop). The second dragged through the water, took every leaf off a sapling, and nearly left a face print on a boulder before laughing about it and limping away. The first had the experience to know the swoop was busted by initial sight picture, the second realized as the ground was screaming at him. Old swoopers will be those that progress slowly enough to get every step 100% correct before raising the stakes.

[murrays 0]

Nick,

One of the best posts ever.

--
Murray

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

[ps5601 0]

Question for you:

You say that 37 out of 97 fatalities worldwide were landing fatalities. How many of those were intentional swoops, and how many were low/panic turns?

Certainly in the UK, while there have been too many deaths over the last few years caused by a low turn, I would venture to say (with no stats at hand to back this up) that the majority were not as a result of an intentional high speed landing, rather just a low turn. All too often I hear or read "X was a conservative pilot not known to swoop".

A lot of the incidents appear to be people downsizing too fast to canopies that only a few years ago were thought of as high(ish) performance, yet these people have no intention of using the performance of these canopies 'cos they are "safe and conservative pilots". Worse still they all too often don't learn, or even worse, have the faintest idea of what performance these canopies have and how they actually respond when you bury a toggle at 3000ft, let alone the 100ft panic turn 'cos you weren't paying attention and got yourself into a sticky situation.

Just my thoughts

Blue skies

Paul

[NickDG 23]

Probably more than a few where last second panic turns. This goes right to the experience issue. Most experienced jumpers, no matter where on the planet they are coming down, have their landing spot picked out by a thousand feet. They rarely pass a thousand feet just hoping they can get somewhere else. A few others get done in by their own moon shadow on night jumps, and a few might have had good reason to turn low, but can't make a flat turn.

The most telling thing I've seen was a video of a routine reserve ride over at skydivingmovies.com. The jumper cutaway his high performance canopy to a 7-cell reserve and he's making a nice steady approach to land in an open area. At a couple of hundred feet he hauls in a riser and slams himself into the ground. That's just clueless . . .

Another thing is we are now hearing people complain their tiny 7-cell reserves are landing hard. HELLO! If you weigh 180 pounds out the door and you are jumping a 120 sq ft low aspect ratio 7-cell reserve you are going to bust your ass. I'm afraid, as PD is doing now, we are going to start seeing higher aspect ratio reserve canopies. This may make small reserves land better, but reliability is going to suffer. A boxy shape is better, especially if you fire it into a mess, or it suffers deployment damage.

Someone mentioned egos as being the problem. And they are correct. But, we all have them. It's just that I choose to make a spectacle of myself around the bonfire in the parking lot and not in the sky . . .

NickD BASE 194

[skybytch 259]

[wmw999 2,114]

I love it when you get grumpy like that
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)

[mjosparky 3]

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You say that 37 out of 97 fatalities worldwide were landing fatalities. How many of those were intentional swoops, and how many were low/panic turns?

Does it matter? They still died under a good canopy. The only reason we wear a parachute when we skydive is to land safely so we can do it again.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[skr 1]

> Every time someone dies on a swoop the blood is on
> our hands. How long are we going to go on denying this?
> And there's plenty of blame to go around. We jumpers share
> the blame with gear retailers and canopy manufacturers who
> are putting profit ahead of safety. We are selling killing
> machines to our innocents. I've thought about this from all
> angles, and the only conclusion I can come to is we are
> royally screwing up

:-) :-)

I would hate to be called into court as any kind of witness.

Being under oath to tell the truth I'm not sure I could be as
diplomatic as that.


I think the evolution into our current state of parachuting
skill and canopy flying is the biggest collective fuck up
I've seen so far.

I slowed way down in the 80s and when I got active
again in 1993 I was amazed at what I saw people doing
under canopy, and it wasn't a good amazed either.


> I'm not, and never have been for banning anything.
> I've always seen that after a steep learning curve we
> jumpers figure out how to do dangerous things.

Me either, but we're light years past where we should
have learned.

I have no idea how to break the cycle, DZOs, S&TAs,
USPA, gear sellers, experienced jumpers ... the people
with the power to set trends ...


It's like collective Sport Death.

A long time ago we used that word for people who
persistently did stuff that was predictably lethal, you know,
take a bunch of quaaludes and pull low a lot.

But back then it was individuals, now it's skydiving as
a whole getting people in way over their heads with
little or no training.

I don't mean just little canopies and swooping here,
but canopy skill at all levels. When I do coaching toward
the A license it's about 75% parachuting and 25% freefall,
and I think canopy training should go well beyond that
into the later licenses.


More money .. I can hardly grasp the price of things now,
but I've always liked that bumper sticker:

"You think knowledge is expensive? Try ignorance."

Skr

[GreenLight 5]

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I choose to make a spectacle of myself around the bonfire in the parking lot and not in the sky . . .

That's how you made it into Air Trash....

Green Light
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."
"Your statement answered your question."

[slug 1]

Hi Skr

>>I have no idea how to break the cycle, DZOs, S&TAs,USPA, gear sellers, experienced jumpers ... the people with the power to set trends ...>>

"Back in the day" Some folks would do low pulls for grins, but from what I heard & saw the DZO's would step in a put a stop to it. One warning

The DZO's can do the same thing with canopy flying.

Reading the thread about the latest canopy collision tells me there's a big problem with the DZO's not enforceing the DZ rules relateing to landing direction.

The DZO's cash flow has been improved by the tandems gear rental etc, and their safety job has been made a little harder due to the difffernt size of canopy's, swooping etc.

The DZO's need to wake up, bite the bullet and find a way to correct the problem. Just like they did with seat belts, except this time without the FAA forceing them to do it.

R.I.P.

[itllclear 1]

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The DZO's need to wake up, bite the bullet and find a way to correct the problem. R.I.P.

DZO's have never been shy about banning or grounding people they didn't want jumping at their DZ's for any reason. I know people who jump at Elsinore because they can't jump at Perris, and vice versa.

If the DZO's believed that it would be more profitable to have people land safely than to hook themselves in, intentionally or unintentionally, they have all the power in the world to say "You're not jumping that little thing on my DZ. Go somewhere else and bust yourself up."

Since we see these incidents continuing to occur, what other explanation can there be but to assume that the DZO's think it's more profitable to go to funerals, lose customers to injuries, and have to shut down for a while on a busy weekend while the medivac helicopter comes in, and possibly shut down the operation due to local pressure because the ambulance was busy picking up the pieces at the DZ, and late getting to the mayor's mother with her broken hip.

If you don't like the DZO's way of dealing with the problem, vote with YOUR dollars and let the DZO know why you are jumping at the competition. The DZO will get the message when he can't get enough jumpers to turn the plane.

Your other option is to land out, safely, and simply piss in the crater as you walk back in. Of course, if the DZ is good about providing transportation back from landings in the outer limits of the DZ, you can ride in comfort as you pass the emergency vehicles.

Of course, it may be that most jumpers like to play "Another One Bites the Dust" on the jukebox!!

As long as the fatality is on the DZ, and the paperwork was in order, we probably don't have to worry about the FAA. They're to busy working with the TSA to make sure that people don't do pattern work in a C-152 29 miles away from where the President is speaking.

BSBD. Harry

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

"Your statement answered your question."

[GreenLight 5]

Ya know I've heard a lot of people say "Just land out if you're worried" and I say this... The grass was put there for people, all people to enjoy a nice clean landing without getting dirty or scraped up in the hard dirty dirt. Why the hell should I go land in the dirt when I'm doing things right. I'm landing into the wind like a safe pilot would. Why should I give up the grass for a bunch of A holes who want to land downwind at high rates of speed? I can just take my money to a quieter DZ where they only have one plane and a lot more grass... Can you say Taft?

I don't need a wind tunnel, a jet or a bar in order to make some skydives. I'm getting older and no longer making 5 or 6 jumps a day when I go out for the weekend so I guess I don't count anymore. I've lasted 23 years in this sport without getting injured by sticking to basics and not chalenging the odds any more than need be. The parachute was intended to make jumping out of an airplane survivable. Not become a sport unto itself... And I could care less if these idiots frapped in one right after the other all day long as long as I can enjoy the sport as safely as possible too. But when it becomes dangerous just to exsist in the air or on the ground, well you can count me out.

And as far as "Good Swoopers" verses "Bad Swoopers".... Who the hell can tell the difference on your base leg? Being tangled up with a swooper at 150 feet is not the time to figure it out. If there is even one out of a thousand chance that one of these idiots can get wrapped up with another jumper through swooping then I say ban it. It's not worth the chance. This sport is called SKYDIVING... NOT SWOOPING.... You wanna swoop, you land out and swoop your brains out. What do you think would happen if aircraft pilots all over the world decided that they wanted to buzz the runways before every landing? The FAA would be very busy me thinks...

Until the DZOs do something to change the situation, I'll be spending my jump money and time doing something a little more safe like playing hopscotch on the freeway...

Green Light
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."
"Your statement answered your question."