Swoop indicators - Was: fatality at Perris.

[ianmdrennan 2]

Agreed.

I believe Canopy Pilots should have an accurate digital altimeter or audible. However there are a significant amount of them that use the device inappropriately with a "Turn on the beep" mindset.

It's sure to get people hurt - there is SO, SO much more to a HP landing than initiation altitude.

Blues,
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[CanuckInUSA 0]

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My opinion is that the pilot should be 100% focused on the task at hand. When we're higher (1000 feet range) visual and audible devices give us a sense for the type of turn and rotation speed we're going to be using. Once the process starts the pilots attention shifts, significantly, to observing as much as possible to whats happening around them and this heightens as they get lower.

When you're finishing up your turn, the last thing you need to be is distracted by some device - regardless of how accurate it is.

Exactly ... you have the ever changing dynamic sight picture as you dive and as you turn and then at some point in time what I refer to as "your spider senses" kick in and it tells you to complete the turn and initiate the recover phase. As a swooper you know this happens pretty quickly and the last thing you need is some device distracting you. Technology can be very helpful giving you information prior to your turn. But once you have committed to the diving turn it's all up to the swoopers eye sight and their experience to recognize the situation they have put themselves in and react accordingly.

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

[rmarshall234 13]

>I earlier suggested a grad student..
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Here’s another project for our mythical grad student:

Conduct a study of all the swoops that have gone horribly wrong in the past 15 years to determine what the atmospheric peculiarities were that day. In particular, what was the exact air density/pressure? It can be mathematically computed. And, how did that air compare to the “standard day” air that that particular jumper was accustomed to at his home DZ, or time of day, or usual canopy he jumps, etc. I’ll bet our grad student finds a connection between “thinner air” and the accident jump. Or better yet..Ha!...advocate for greater FAA oversight and let the NTSB begin investigating skydiving accidents. I’ll bet they would come up with an interesting and factual-based analysis of what we are doing to ourselves.

Any fixed wing pilot can tell you that the air is different based on atmospheric conditions and the wing will react differently as a result. And, we’ve got long, rigid, efficient wings with a fixed Center of Gravity (CG) that loads that wing predictably. Skydivers on the other hand have short, mushy, inefficient wings - and more importantly - a shifting CG that moves-about in the loading of that wing. Since, it is essentially -- a pendulum on a string. So, when one paints themselves in the corner because of a miscalculation, the CG is lagging behind and can’t provide the immediate wing loading to get you out. Otherwise, what we would we would be witnessing is a bunch of accelerated stall accidents instead of behind the power curve crashes as are happening now.

The question and the answer I believe, is the AIR. And since you can’t see the stuff the challenge now becomes: How do we sample it, measure it, and feed that information back to the pilot in a useful way? We need to get past this egocentric mindset that says: The only reason he crashed and I haven’t, is a difference in skill level.

[CrazyL 0]

Uhh, ya, the atmospheric conditions play a part each day, and of course each day is different. Wings react to atmospheric conditions. Skill level/experience/expertice in the field may play a part in every jump I make. A culmination of understanding ground effects, wind direction, turbulent areas, hot rising air, cool dropping air. Knowing and recognizing micro climate conditions that happen various times of the day. Preparring swoop height to accomodate for bumps in the air like flying over hot dirt onto cool grass. How speed is stability and lift are my friends getting through turbulence. Yep every jump adapting to the 'air'. The air is part of the problem and the solution. Finest swoop indicator so far, my eyes. If I can see, I can swoop. Electronics won't give me all the the answers I need to make a swoop happen. Electronics may alert my eyes to take note, electronics I use for skydiving are not believable. They are kinda like guages. Capable of reading true, capable of being miscalibrated, add the human element and the thing could be missing a screw, batteries go dead. No waiting for electronics here. The electronic altitude warning devices are novelty items to me, they have their dangerous aspects too, the believers. I can survive skydiving without
the electronics. But I take electronics with me on pretty much every
jump. Even when the batteries are going dead or dead.

[phoenixlpr 0]

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Electronics won't give me all the the answers I need to make a swoop happen. Electronics may alert my eyes to take note, electronics I use for skydiving are not believable.

Electronics can help us with consistency, but we have to set the limits first. It should be just an aid not a replacement for skills.

[wmw999 2,116]

When electronic aids are first developed, they are generally an aid to already-developed skills. Later, they become a crutch so that people don't have to develop those same skills as finely.

That's true in a number of applications, including calculator use to make change in stores, and flying airplanes.

Wendy P.

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)

[platypii 20]

Perhaps a device could be programmed by performing a "model" swoop first, in order to calibrate it to your canopy and weight. Then in the future, if you deviate from this pre-determined path, the device could issue a warning. Varying windspeed might be difficult to account for though, as well as varying atmospheric conditions.

It's also possible that the margin of error is so small once a swoop is initiated that it is likely too late for a gps/barometer to reliably warn you. But it shouldn't be overlooked that they could increase consistency by supplementing the swooper's visual cues.

[PS- I am that hypothetical grad student. And I am working on a flight computer app for the Galaxy Nexus. This thread has been great inspiration, so keep the ideas coming if there's anything else you might like to see in a flight computer...]

BASEline - Wingsuit Flight Computer

[davelepka 4]

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The question and the answer I believe, is the AIR. And since you can’t see the stuff the challenge now becomes: How do we sample it, measure it, and feed that information back to the pilot in a useful way? We need to get past this egocentric mindset that says: The only reason he crashed and I haven’t, is a difference in skill level

I've got to tell you, it's not the air. The changes in measureable air properties are not enough from one day to the next to make the degree of difference you would need to just end up flying your canopy into the ground.

Virtually every 'swoop' landing involves a range of altitudes you could turn at, and still be able to pull out of the dive before impact. Even the exact same turn can be made from a range of alitudes, higher if you let the canopy recover on it's own, lower if you 'manually' recover it with pilot input. All of these ranges are far greater than atmospheric conditions can effect the canopy.

For example, I can fly the same set-up and make the same turn when the air temp is 90 and when it's 50. I may need to 'help' the canopy out of the dive on the hot day, and can just let it fly on the colder day, but the net effect of the temp is not enough to overcome the abilities of the canopy. My example isn't even going to the extreme of a 'bail out' manuver, where you apply as much input as the canopy can take without stalling (aka stabbing out). The 'help' I'm talking about giving the canopy on a hot day is a bump to the rears, or a 'brush' of the toggles. Nothing that would be seen as 'risky' or a 'close call' to an observer.

Granted, significant differences in LZ elevation can play a more significant role, and if you add density altitude to that, it's even worse, but I can't recall many accidents that matched the model of a jumper who went up to a high DZ and pounded right in. There are some impacts and close calls, but no 'significant' incidents I can recall. Even so, you don't need a complicated gizmo to understand and indentify density altitude. A few minutes of internet study can explain the concept, and a phone call to the AWOS at the nearest airport will generally just tell you the density altitude when it's a factor.

Of course, there's always the concepts of object turbulence and the wake they produce, but again, that's not gizmo related, it's about taking the time to learn the concept, then making a careful and informed choice before each jump as to where you intend to land, and that following that plan.

You have to get very deep into a swoop before it's non-recoverable, and you are going to hit no matter what you do. The line between 'recoverable' and 'non-recoverable' is about 5 or 10 ft wide, and you at swoop speeds you'll go through it in a nano-second. If you're not on the brakes or leveling out before you pass through that line, you're just fucked. No beeper can help you with that, it would literally need to predict your actions 40 or 50 ft further up, and 'know' that you're not going to react in time.

Your choice is simple, you can slowly work your way up to flying at the ground at a high speeds little by little. If you make it so your next approach is never more than 1% or 2% faster than any of your last 20 landings, you'll probably be OK. The net change from what you're 'used to' and what you're 'about to do' is suttle enough that you're still in familiar territory. It's when you start to stray from that, and you put yourself in a new-to-you position of flying at the ground much faster, you risk smoking right across the line where your dive becomes 'non-recoverable', and we know what happens next.

In terms of the incident that spurred this thread, sometimes accidents do happen. If you jump, you'll have a bad landing sooner or later, and if you swoop, that bad landing is going to be a bad swoop.

[phoenixlpr 0]

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Perhaps a device could be programmed by performing a "model" swoop first, in order to calibrate it to your canopy and weight. Then in the future, if you deviate from this pre-determined path, the device could issue a warning. Varying windspeed might be difficult to account for though, as well as varying atmospheric conditions.

It's also possible that the margin of error is so small once a swoop is initiated that it is likely too late for a gps/barometer to reliably warn you. But it shouldn't be overlooked that they could increase consistency by supplementing the swooper's visual cues.

[PS- I am that hypothetical grad student. And I am working on a flight computer app for the Galaxy Nexus. This thread has been great inspiration, so keep the ideas coming if there's anything else you might like to see in a flight computer...]

You are the only one who can perform recalibrate. You suppose to execute the very same turn everywhere. If you go for a new place than start your turn high enough and adjust initiation point accordingly.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Conduct a study of all the swoops that have gone horribly wrong in the past 15 years to determine what the atmospheric peculiarities were that day. In particular, what was the exact air density/pressure? It can be mathematically computed.

Not really (though I found Dave's reply that it shouldn't really matter interesting). Pressure varies in the day, and in locations. Thermals. windsheer, rotors, turbulence are all factors that you can't go back and get. I think you can only generate the data to create your models by going out and collecting it. Although ultimately the problem remains that our altimeters all rely on the barometer - we don't have lasers or radar bouncing beams off the ground to get a true distance.

[rmarshall234 13]

>Perhaps a device could be programmed by performing a "model" swoop first, in order to >calibrate it to your canopy and weight. Then in the future, if you deviate from this pre->determined path, the device could issue a warning.

And if the altitude at the beginning and end of the swoop are known, the average rate of descent can be calculated by measuring the time between these two. Your device could serve as a personal "debrief" for each jump.

People like you that question the status quo provide answers to questions. I'm certain that Steve Snider, Irwin Jacobs and Burt Rutan were told by some very credible people that "it can't be done" too. Good luck with your device.

[davelepka 4]

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>Perhaps a device could be programmed by performing a "model" swoop first, in order to >calibrate it to your canopy and weight. Then in the future, if you deviate from this pre->determined path, the device could issue a warning.

And if the altitude at the beginning and end of the swoop are known, the average rate of descent can be calculated by measuring the time between these two. Your device could serve as a personal "debrief" for each jump.

People like you that question the status quo provide answers to questions. I'm certain that Steve Snider, Irwin Jacobs and Burt Rutan were told by some very credible people that "it can't be done" too. Good luck with your device.

Again, your (I guess the two of) basic misunderstanding of the 'perameters' of a swoop are getting the way here.

There is no 'model' swoop that you can calibrate such a device to. Each swoop is different to the degree that you would lose the percision needed to provide any type of useful alarm during a swoop.

I've already covered the concept that you can make the same turn from a good range of altitudes. That range can be 300+ft on highly loaded x-braced canopies, but even on less aggresive canopies and smaller degree of turns, there's still range +/- 100ft where you can make the turn, and still have a good (and safe) swoop.

Let's cast that aside, and sugggest that a jumper is good enough to be so consistant that the above isn't a factor. now you run in to the atmospheric conditions, and how they change during the day. Temps and humidty will rise, and so will density altitude as th day wears on. While this isn't something a jumper needs to actively worry about and check before each jump, it can throw off your 'critical' altitude (the one where if you are still diving at X rate you cannot recover) to the point where the swoop warning device becomes uselss.

Keep in mind that for any such device to be useful, it has to be accurate and relaible. If it's too conservative and 'cries wolf' too soon and too often, people will either stop using it or start ignoring it.

Let's say it goes off 20ft too high, and the jumper reacts by applying full toggle to arrest the dive. The canopy then planes out 20 ft above the ground, and the jumper has just aborted a swoop they didn't need to, and bled off a good deal of airspeed 20ft up, leaving themselves to mush through the last 20ft to the ground. How often will a jumper put up with that before the device is shelved?

The problem is not in the 'closed mind' of some more experienced swoopers, the problem is in the uninformed mind of non-swoopers. HP canopy flight is extremely fluid in the changes that occur from jump to jump, from day to day, and from second to second. Despite what some might have you believe, it's highly impercise venture. The end result, the swoop itself is fairly percise in that you fly above the ground to a fairly close tolerance, but the approach and dive are very fluid, and inlolve a constant asses/adjust/reasses cycle during the manuver. If you were to instrument a top swooper and measure things like toggle/riser position, time in turn, speed/descent rate, and g-loading at the bottom of the turn, you would see that there are variations to the degree that you can't draw a hard line and say 'This' is the point of no-return for every swoop. It's just not possible.

The simple fact of the matter is that there aren't instruments percise enough and software predictive enough to handle the speeds and precision required for swooping, short of the human eye and brain. That's why I keep coming back the core concpet that swooping is a very long road to travel if you want to 'go big'. HP canopy flight, as we know it today, represents the highest end of the sport in terms of required training and experience to get there. You can fly camera, a wingsuit, or become a TI or AFF instructor with 500 jumps, but that's a drop in the bucket if your goal is to become a 'swooper'. 500 jumps is the 'warm up' you need to get started with swooping, but again, most people don't see it that way.

[dks13827 2]

Question: Anyone ever been under a spinning mal, or any mal, in which you hesitated to cutaway BECAUSE of concern that your RSL, or Skyhook, would deploy your reserve immediately ?

[Trae 1]

in reply to "HP canopy flight, as we know it today, represents the highest end of the sport in terms of required training and experience to get there. "
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You're kidding right ?

HP canopy flight the highest end? higher than relative work, CRW, freeflying , wingsuiting , etc ??? .
Any of these disciplines can take a lifetime to master and then you get smart enough to realise you haven't mastered them at all and never will.

Consistent , HP canopy flight truly demands a high level of training . but so too do the other disciplines.
You place HP canopy flight above the rest??
Why ?

[rmarshall234 13]

So if Swooping is king of the skydiving disciplines then by extension, Reno air racing must be king of the flying disciplines. (Not that I believe that either). And when my buddy Charlie says an audible slip indicator will improve his performance on the race course (which I do believe) why can’t it be that better information can improve one’s swooping performance? Or at least, flatten the learning curve and thereby - make it safer. The challenge isn’t to your swooping skills, it’s to the notion that we can’t develop a better process for learning to “go big”, as you say. And to address another post: the ridiculous notion that one must develop superhuman traits like “spider senses” to play in the arena.

[davelepka 4]

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HP canopy flight the highest end? higher than relative work, CRW, freeflying , wingsuiting , etc ??? .
Any of these disciplines can take a lifetime to master and then you get smart enough to realise you haven't mastered them at all and never will.

Consistent , HP canopy flight truly demands a high level of training . but so too do the other disciplines.
You place HP canopy flight above the rest??
Why ?

If you had bothered to read the entire post, you would have seen this-

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You can fly camera, a wingsuit, or become a TI or AFF instructor with 500 jumps, but that's a drop in the bucket if your goal is to become a 'swooper'. 500 jumps is the 'warm up' you need to get started with swooping

I'm not suggested that swooping is the hardest skill to develop, just that swooping requires the most experience before getting started, and probably takes the longest to develop. You can do any of the things you mentioned with 200 jumps (or less) if you want to follow the USPA regs. That same number of jumps does not make you ready for swooping.

It takes the longest to develop for the same reason that 200 jumps isn't enough to prepare, you only get one shot at it per-jump. Short of accuracy, every other discipline allows you multiple 'tries' at whatever it is you want to do per jump, with CRW being the stand-out, as a CRW jump can last upwards of 10 min. If you figure an average swoop, from turn initiation to touch-down might last 8 to 10 seconds, you're looking at 60 to 70 jumps to get 10 min of swooping under your belt.

I'm not catagorizing or ranking disciplines, just stating the facts. It takes a lifetime to 'master' just about anything, but it takes a couple years and a few hundred jumps just to get started swooping (if you want to do it 'safely'). Even then, once you get started, you have a long road of smaller-degree turns and short swoops ahead of your before you get to the 'good stuff'.

[davelepka 4]

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when my buddy Charlie says an audible slip indicator will improve his performance on the race course (which I do believe) why can’t it be that better information can improve one’s swooping performance?

It might be able to, and if you want to strap a data-logger to a jumper, and just crunch numbers you might come up with something. The big difference between planes and parachutes is the instrumentation, and your ability to equip the airframe with the sensors to gather that type of air-data. If you were to fore-go all of that, and simply look at the raw data based on senros you could mount inside of a data-logger, with no exteral inputs, it would be far less useful.

To stay on the aircraft comparison, the pilot is able to reference the instruments in real time. They can physically (and they do) scan the panel to get info that pretains to 'right now'. If you recorded all that info, and simply showed them the graphs after-the-fact, again, you lose much of the benefit. Connecting an instrumented read-out to an exact previous time that occured in the middle of a high-speed, high stress scenario is unlikely.

Back to the idea of a 'warning system', I thought of good comparison. Think about driving a race car on a track. In the corners, the goal is to drive up to the corner as fast as possible, and then stand on the brakes as hard as possible, then go through the corner on the verge of spinning out. The end result is to get through as fast as possible.

Now try to imagine creating a device that would let the driver know they were going to over-shoot the corner or spin-out mid corner without any connection to the car itslef.

We all know that traction control and anti-lock brakes exist, do some of the job I outlined above, but that type of physical conntection to the canopy would not be possible in a swoop alarm. So if you limit yourself to the 'corner alarm' only knowing the entry speed and track position, how would you create such a device that would know the driver was coming in too fast or about to corner too hard before it would happen? The driver would need that advanced notice to be able to adjust their driving to prevent the mishap, so how would you let them know before it happend, that they're about to 'overcook' the corner?

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The challenge isn’t to your swooping skills, it’s to the notion that we can’t develop a better process for learning to “go big”, as you say. And to address another post: the ridiculous notion that one must develop superhuman traits like “spider senses” to play in the arena.

I didn't take it as a challege to my skills. The problem is that we have a good process for learning, it's just that nobody uses it.

Advance slowly, plan on not swooping until you have 300/400/500 jumps, plan on keeping your WL under 2.0 and off an X-brace until you have 500+ swoops, and seek professional training. This isn't toggle whipping down the beer line anymore, but people think it is. If you want to 'go big', and recognize swooping as a 'real sport', you have to treat it that way.

Nobody does 20 way CRW diamonds without a bunch of CRW experience and a professional coach/organizer leading the effort. Nobody gets on a 50-way head-down jump without 1000 freefly jumps, and a ton of coaching/advice along the way. Nobody gets on a 200-way belly jump without years of experience and/or going to a big way camp. But a shit-ton of people think they can just 'figure out' swooping on their own, and that a 270 isn't a big deal.

If you want to fly a conservative canopy at a reasonable WL, and then do a double fronts approach, or carve through a 45 or 90 to final, have at it. That's not 'swooping' and that doesn't match the magnitude of the activites I mentioend above. I learned CRW while jogging to catch a running aircraft, but it was a 2 or 3 way jump (with an experienced CRW dog), and we just built a couple of stacks, and that was cool, but it's not advanced top-level CRW. If I wanted to do that, I'd find a training camp and a coach and get to work. So when a jumper has their sights set on big-time swooping, they sould seek training and the like, but they don't.

The system exists, now figure out a way to get the new guys to recognize and follow it.

I'm glad you brought up the 'spider sense' because it gives me a chance to reference what might be my all time favorite quote. Have a look-see at this and pay close attention from 1:15 to 1:32 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZBcapxGHjE

It's not super human, and there's no radio-active spiders invovled, it's just an a accumulation of time and expereince that let you recognize things that others can't or don't see. Which is why, again, I stress that if people would take their time, and develop that sense slowly and gradually, that it will be there when they need it. The idea that something isn't right will be quite clear, and occur to them early enough to allow for an abort of the manuver, without even getting close to a close call.

[Trae 1]

in reply to "If you had bothered to read the entire post, you would have seen this-

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You can fly camera, a wingsuit, or become a TI or AFF instructor with 500 jumps, but that's a drop in the bucket if your goal is to become a 'swooper'. 500 jumps is the 'warm up' you need to get started with swooping"
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Well, I did read your entire post, and agreed with most of it. praps the superlatives messed with my comprehension.
can't disagree with the fact that it takes swoopers many jumps to get their time up.

You're familiar with high level competition relative work.
How would you compare the two in terms of experience gathering.?
Time is one way I suppose. So rounding out .. swoopers get as you say about 10 seconds actual swooping per jump?
Relative workers get say 50 seconds (rough estimate to make the maths easy.

Is it as simple as saying it takes about 5 times as many jumps to get proficient at swooping as it does for 4 way ?
Of course there are many other variables in the two learning processes, but if I was guiding a newbie would that be a reasonable thing to tell them? as an estimate ?

There seems to be a distinct tendency for skydivers not wanting to serve their apprenticeship but just go straight to tradesperson or even manager.

Good on you for setting some high standards for getting into swooping.

[davelepka 4]

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can't disagree with the fact that it takes swoopers many jumps to get their time up

That's only half of it, the other (first) half is the work you need to do before you even start swooping. It's the one discipline where you more or less need to be an 'expert' canopy pilot (non-swooping) before you even start swooping. You should be able to pilot a variety of different canopies, at different WL, and in different conditions, all with the same outcome of a controlled, accurate, soft landing, all of this before you even begin swooping. If you're not good with a canopy at 'regular' speed, what business do you have flying one with added speed?

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You're familiar with high level competition relative work.
How would you compare the two in terms of experience gathering.?
Time is one way I suppose. So rounding out .. swoopers get as you say about 10 seconds actual swooping per jump?
Relative workers get say 50 seconds (rough estimate to make the maths easy

There's no way to say for sure that there's a 'set' ratio between the two. If will differ from jumper to jumper, and situation to situation. My 'gut' tells me that it's more related to the points on the RW jump. Each point is chance to practice your flying, so as many moves as you make might be the number of 'experiences' you have on the jump. A swooper gets one experience per jump, so you can see where it would take much longer to build the time needed to be an 'expert'.

(No offence to 4-way guys, by the way, they put in their time and have that shit down to a very sharp edge)

One comment about that comparison, however, the price that an RW guy pays for blowing a move is much different than a swooper.

[rmarshall234 13]

>The problem is that we have a good process for learning, it's just that nobody uses it.
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And as leaders in this sport we need to recognize that our instructional approach is failing miserably. And if we want to reach/help the less experienced we need to try something different. (Which is why this discussion is being held in Safety and Training and not Swooping and Canopy Control.)

Another buddy (Bill Von Novak) just wrote a wonderful article in Parachutist (The Downsizing Checklist) that addresses this exact point. We need to keep trying different approaches until we find one that works. Bring your expertise as a swooper to the party and lets all fix this problem.