Swooping banned at SD Arizona

[Treejumps 0]

Just got an e-mail saying that swooping is banned at SDAZ. Nothing passed a 180 permitted other than low passes with management approval.

Score one for the canopy nazis.

RIP swooping

[superstu 0]

so what are people's thoughts on this? do you think this will drive out some of the more proficient canopy pilots and canopy coaches thus lowering the knowledge being passed down to other current and future pilots? are they hoping to cut down on canopy collisions by removing the 180 or greater turn? will this really help the situation?

edited to add: i'm not trying to start anything because i know i don't know the whole story or the entire situation but it looks like changes are in the making.

Slip Stream Air Sports
Do not go softly, do not go quietly, never back down

[freefalle 0]

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Just got an e-mail saying that swooping is banned at SDAZ. Nothing passed a 180 permitted other than low passes with management approval.

Score one for the canopy nazis.

RIP swooping

Don't blame it on the "canopy nazis" blame it on the carelessness of people who try to swoop through crowded landing areas

[eUrNiCc 0]

Wasn't the most recent collision at Eloy between the only two canopies in the sky & completely unrelated to swooping? Are they doing anything to address traffic awareness in general, regardless of how many canopies are clogging up the landing area?

Egad, A BASE life defiles a bad age.

[Spizzzarko 0]

I think this is SDA covering themselves from letigation. Give it 6 months and there will be people ripping 270's and more again. I think a lot of people forget that they do not necessarilly have the right to swoop on every landing. Not every landing has to be an event and if you are putting other people in harms way by your landing style then yes maybe you do need to be constricted to less of a turn.

[Spizzzarko 0]

a colission is a colission. It doesn't matter if there were 2 people or 200 people. The fact of the matter is that there is a rash of these incidents happening and people are dying. This is totally unfreakingacceptable wheather it be one collision or 4 in as many months.

I do not think this is the end of swooping but it is more of an end to non organized landing patterns. In a swoop comp there is seperation or you get a zero. There is no reason why there cannot be sepperation on a regular load form an otter. Maybe the non swooping community can learn something from us!

[CanuckInUSA 0]

If I am understanding this correctly, they didn't actually ban swooping. They just banned "270 and bigger" turns from regular full altitude freefall type loads. If people want to concentrate on their "going big" swooping skills, they can still go do it on hop n' pop loads (and hopefully high altitude hop n' pops). Shouldn't this be what we're doing anyway? Allowing 23 skydivers to just rip it all at the same time is rolling the dice. When we compete we don't all try and swoop the course at the same time. We sequence ourselves at predetermined intervals agreed upon before we even leave the airplane.

Swooping is not dead at SDA, just controlled, as maybe it should be - at all DZs.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[freeflyn 0]

I don't know if it will drive out the pilots as I would assume that most the revenue generated for these instructors is from freeflying.

As to a remedy for the problem, definitely not. No more than a 180, says "I can do a 180 turn." So we are faced with the same situation of converging flight patterns. Instead of a right and left hand pattern converging, now it is up and down wind.

I think Grant has hit it exactly on this one, the big uglies; Litigation, and Liability.

Education, restraint, and active piloting is the only solution to this problem.

[headoverheels 291]

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Wasn't the most recent collision at Eloy between the only two canopies in the sky & completely unrelated to swooping? Are they doing anything to address traffic awareness in general, regardless of how many canopies are clogging up the landing area?

It did break the new "no greater than 180" rule.

[ianmdrennan 2]

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It did break the new "no greater than 180" rule.

And students will continue to break that. After all they're students, they're going to make mistakes. Wasnt' the last AZ collision with a low time jumper?

Anyway, the notion of '180s' being ok it ludicrous. It's a FAR more intrusive pattern than a 270. Now do I think the 270 is ok...no, but lets be reasonable here people, 180's aren't any better.

Education is the key IMO. Not some kneejerk reaction.

Smells like a witch hunt to me.

Performance Designs Factory Team

[marks 0]

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It did break the new "no greater than 180" rule.

And students will continue to break that. After all they're students, they're going to make mistakes. Wasnt' the last AZ collision with a low time jumper?

Anyway, the notion of '180s' being ok it ludicrous. It's a FAR more intrusive pattern than a 270. Now do I think the 270 is ok...no, but lets be reasonable here people, 180's aren't any better.

Education is the key IMO. Not some kneejerk reaction.

Smells like a witch hunt to me.

I would like to add,

there are many ways to do a 270 turn. 270 is just the degree of turn.

low and fast, is very very committing, just as most 180's. even if they are done fast or slow..

being low, and being committed to the turn is the problem, not the degree of turn.

but still, stay out of traffic.

[chachi 0]

the reason that 180's are ok is because that is what arizona airspeed does; so obviously it is the safe way.

it would be better had SDA setup a course right beside the swoop pond and restricted any maneuvers onto final over 90 degrees to the swoop park.

i don't think SDA will lose $$ because most people are skydivers before they are canopy pilots and they run and incredible skydiving facility. as for making things safer i do not think this will have that dramatic of an effect.

[Spizzzarko 0]

I feel that there needs to be more research into the cause of this problem. I don't feel that swooping or frontriser turns over 180* is really the problem here. Let's look at some possible causes:

1. Skydiver complacency
2. Crowded Sky's
3. Simply fucking up
4. Faster canopies

Of those 4 possible causes I feel that number 2 and 4 probably do not carry much weight in this argument. I would say that number 1 and 3 are probably more indicitave of the root causes of this series of unfortunate events. You can tell people to not fuck up untill you are blue in the face, but it doesn't mean that it wont happen again.

[dharma1976 0]

personally I have cleared 7/8ths of the landing area with a well carved 180 at SDA (and I have the video to prove it...)

I think that with all the traffic it is not a bad idea...

either that or do the swoop park thing...shit why not i would land out there if it was a no fly zone for normal L pattern landers

Cheers

Dave

http://www.skyjunky.com

CSpenceFLY - I can't believe the number of people willing to bet their life on someone else doing the right thing.

[chachi 0]

its not a matter of a turn degree to solve the problem or a matter of how far one can swoop with a 180; that was my point.

[KidWicked 0]

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Smells like a witch hunt to me.

No, it's a smart move by the DZ based on economics and the theory of an efficient market.

The majority of jumpers are scared of the minority (people who pull a 270). The DZ is predicting that banning 270s will stop people from not jumping out of fear of a collision.

Coreece: "You sound like some skinheads I know, but your prejudice is with Christians, not niggers..."

[bob.dino 0]

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1. Skydiver complacency
2. Crowded Sky's
3. Simply fucking up
4. Faster canopies

Of those 4 possible causes I feel that number 2 and 4 probably do not carry much weight in this argument.

Not speaking to the recent events, but I think 2 & 4 combined are a potent combination when the faster canopy is new to the jumper in question. The ability to think ahead of the canopy is something that takes time to develop, and if you regularly jump at a busy DZ it might cause you problems.

[dharma1976 0]

yeah sorry just responded to last poster not pointed at you at all...

naughty naughty dave with his bad posting etiquette...

Cheers

Dave

http://www.skyjunky.com

CSpenceFLY - I can't believe the number of people willing to bet their life on someone else doing the right thing.

[polarbear 1]

At face value it makes sense, but my experience is that SDA hardly ever allows hop n' pops becasue they run multiple airplanes. The past few times I've been there I've only been able to do a hop n' pop first thing in the morning. In my opinion, this effectively kills anything over a 270 at SDA.

I guess they have to do what they think is right...but I'd like to see more thought go into this before placing such a harsh rule. I really think there is more going on here than just 'a 270 doesn't fit in the landing pattern' - I think Spizzzarko hit it right with his list of causes.

But SDA has never been the most swoop-friendly DZ, in my opinion. It's a great facility but it is really focused on freefall.

I just hope other DZ's don't follow suit.

"Holy s*** that was f***in' cold!"

[hommie 0]

PA deleted by Tonto

[polarbear 1]

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Give it 6 months and there will be people ripping 270's and more again

Maybe 6 months, maybe more, maybe less, but I think you're right. This sounds a lot like the popular 'no hook turn' rules that were around when I started jumping. Eventually they were ignored - but this ONLY happened when people learned how to turn safely.

My bet is if we as a collective started paying more attention to what we were doing and made better judgements on when and how to turn...rules like this will become uneccessary.

"Holy s*** that was f***in' cold!"

[Canuck 0]

That sucks. I get on a plane in three days to head to Eloy, and have always really enjoyed landings there. Oh well, this trip is all about freeflying anyway.

It's going to be pretty funny watching guys like Fruitcake and Jeffro trying to keep their turns to 180.

Canuck

[freeflyn 0]

I hope that these types of rules become unnecessary some day. However, this problem is simply not going to go away by our small community hoping that people stop having mid-air collisions, resulting in the administration of such rules. I think we can all agree on the causality of the problem as we have all read\ debated over the past months as these incidents continue to occur. Being able to recognize the source of the problem is half of the solution.

Now that March 10th (Safety Day) has come and gone, what have we done as community to improve/ promote proper landing pattern procedures? Have we tried to change the education, and enforcement of such procedures at the dropzones that we so fondly call "home"? Or are we destine to continue discussing the problems on these forums, but make no attempt change our own environment, essentially leading us down an inevitable path. That being said; what solutions specific or general do people propose we do at our "home" dropzones to rectify this? Did your dropzone address this issue at safety day?

Of the four causalities Grant listed we can only ever eliminate one. People are going to continue to fuck up, with global growth rates at ~1% the skies are simply going to become more crowded, if they take away the fast canopies...well fuck it, I'll quit then.

[supafly 0]

I have got to say that as a SDA local that had aspirations of competing in the upcoming CPC events, I am truly disappointed. Without knowing the details of the proposed new rules, it is hard to comment, but in my eyes this is a step in the wrong direction.

While it sounds like there is the ability to make larger turns on dedicated hop-n-pops, this severely cripples anyone's ability to train and be competitive at events. In a sport that is expensive and time consuming we all do what we can to manage these constraints. My guess is that adding these restrictions will make the notion of training and competing in swooping unrealistic for many people. I know that I will be re-evaluating my plans to compete in the upcoming CPC events and I imagine so will a number of other people.

Beyond my obvious personal reasons for being disappointed, I think it is really unfortunate that a DZ world-renowned for producing great competitors is further handicapping one of the only areas in which it was already faltering.

There is a significant group of people that call SDA their home and are sincerely interested in developing the discipline of canopy piloting. The knowledge, facilities, and resources currently exist at SDA to make it a place that breeds not only competitive swoopers, but safe canopy pilots in general. Making use of these assets and creating an environment that is safe and productive for all ranges of canopy flight is the only long-term solution that makes sense in my mind.

I wish I could end this post with the magic answer to the problem, but no such luck. However, I have to believe that a more effective and enjoyable solution exists than what is currently being considered if those involved and affected put their collective efforts behind it.

Arizona Drive 4-Way VFS - www.DriveVFS.com

[diablopilot 2]

Well this is disapointing.

What had potential to be something everyone could learn from and become more aware canopy pilots no matter what wing they fly, has degenerated as expeted into a rip on "swoopers".

If this policy is as stated, I will not attend events at SDAZ till lifted.

I wonder how they expect to conduct a Nationals again with said policy?

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