winsor

http://www.vladiball.org/ Though I do not particularly like the guy who makes these, and consider it to be a half-baked design from an engineering standpoint, I have bought many products made by people with whom I would not personally associate, and the market is small enough that it does not really justify the cost of developing a mature product. Personally, I have stuck to "Sunkist dives," where one flies relative to a spherical navel orange over farm country (eccentric oranges track like a bastard). Blue skies, Winsor

In some circumstances it is downright dangerous. Opening at 4,500 will have you under canopy above breakoff altitude for other groups, and at multiple-aircraft venues this can be a real problem. In addition, if you have one jump ship and multiple disciplines, having someone open at an unusually high altitude without prior coordination can present an unacceptable hazard. On big-ways you may be instructed to open between 2,000 and 2,200, another ring between 2,200 and 2,400 and so forth. Opening early can get you axed, since there is little room for creativity when choreographing the movements of hundreds of jumpers at save-your-life time. Having two jumpers try to occupy the same place at the same time has had tragic results all too often. Unexpectedly operating at variance with established procedures is a good way for this to happen. Part of safety in this sport involves playing well with others, and getting everyone on the same page goes a long way toward getting everyone back on the ground in one piece. Blue skies, Winsor

What is happening to skydiving already happened to SCUBA, for better or for worse. In the 1960s, there were precious few of us who SCUBA dived. It was viewed as a wild & crazy thing to do by mainstream types, and the people in the sport were somewhat hard core. Most of us could swim like fish, and spent many a summer day snorkling when we did not have tanks on. Some time in the 1970s, dive shop owners came to the realization that they were not going to get on the Fortune 500 by catering to the likes of me. I'll stop in for a tank refill, a tube of Wet Suit Weld and the periodic hydrostatic test, but I have been set for equipment for quite a while. By getting Muffy and Biff off the ski slopes and tennis courts and into the water, dive operations were able to tap into a much greater flow of cash. You have color-coordinated BCs and wet suits, dive computers and sundry instrumentation, and training programs which transfer directly from the Platinum Card to the Diver's Certification card. Of course, with the change in clientele you had a change in attitude. No longer was the primary focus that of personal responsibility, where losing your knife when diving apart from from a buddy could well result in drowning ensnarled in monofilament. SCUBA was touted as safe, and people invested heavily in hardware designed to keep them out of trouble. The parallels between SCUBA and skydiving are not exact, but they are instructive. In both cases, using military surplus gear and training is really not an option (special warfare being a special case for both). The bottom line is that we can't turn the clock back, and you can't get the genie back in the bottle. We can bemoan the passing of the good old/bad old days as the case may be, or simply accept that we live in a different world and make the best of it. I find it as amusing to get a rise out of youngsters when using 71.2 steel tanks and (recently overhauled) regulators made before they were born as I do jumping paracommanders and balloon suits among skydivers who can count their years in the sport on one hand. I do have aluminum tanks and crossbraced class-5 canopies, but use whatever works. All I can say is to enjoy yourself, since this too shall pass, and we will be saying "hell, I remember back before 2010 when we used to..." all too soon. Blue skies, Winsor

Keep abortion safe and legal until the fetus can vote.

If someone wants to play Lawn Dart on their own time, I'm fine with that. If they want to take me or someone else with them in the process, I have a problem with that. Blue skies, Winsor

With all due respect to those who suggest that changing instructors is indicated when results are not forthcoming, this approach has its pitfalls. One flying student, described as having more money than ability, could not meet one instructor's criteria for solo flight and went to another instructor. Somehow getting cleared to solo, and later the signoff and a checkride, our new pilot dropped the bucks and got a spiffy Centurion. Experimenting with rapid power cuts from high power settings at altitude, the plane ate the turbocharger and he managed to arrive alive. Since that plane was broken, he got himself a Malibu. With an autopilot and all the navigational whistles and bells, he did fine until he chose to execute a maximum demonstrated crosswind landing (crosswind landings were never his strong suit). After cartwheeling the Malibu and surviving, he took up another hobby. A skydiving student with whom I am familiar was considered hopeless at one venue, and went to another. Considered "Ms. Bad Example" there, she went to yet another locale to train. The third location got her through AFF and sent her home. I was in the air at the same time as this individual once, and was stunned by the lack of control that was demonstrated. Canopy flight proved to be an equally elusive skill, and what should have been a normal landing resulted in dreadful injuries. In this case, the theoretical concept that anyone is teachable was outweighed by the practical reality. On the one hand, it is good that she did not die. On the other, it was unnecessary to have Blue Cross handle her departure from the sport. I know some people who got "the talk" and went on to become great skydivers anyway. I know of many, many more who either got the talk or should have, and went on to become crippled or dead. I feel better about the people who were craters looking for grid coordinates and are now happy doing other things than I do about those where everyone saw it coming and they stuck around until it did. James Webb said, in a rather different context, something to the effect that it is fine to train by touch-football rules, but it does not do much for you if you are going up against the Green Bay Packers. Skydiving is a hazardous activity at best, but it is orders of magnitude worse for some than for others. To ignore that reality is to engage in denial, and does nobody any good. Blue skies, Winsor

I am not a skydiving instructor; my instructing credentials are in Physics and Firearms. I have, however, been detailed to give someone "the talk" on more than one occasion. The commonality between firearms and skydiving is significant in that neither is particularly forgiving of gross lapses of procedure. In both there are fundamental principles which, if not grasped fully in advance, can result in immediate death or ghastly injury. I am strongly convinced that not everyone is cut out for this hobby. Maybe limiting someone to static line jumps on rounds with an AAD-equipped reserve would place low enough demands on them if their decision making skills are not up to sorting things out with a planet coming at them at 120 mph, but even there you have a limit. I know of one very motivated individual who is limited to an endless series of tandems because her decision-making skills are the pits. I watched her open a soda, which began to overflow, whereupon she continued to open it - amazed that it then poured all over the packing area. Retightening the cap the moment it began to fizz over appeared to be beyond her grasp. The reality of the sport is that it is dangerous as hell, and cuts nobody any slack as far as wrong or too-late decisions go. I have seen enough people die or get maimed that I have seen people come to grief whose downfall was no surprise to anyone. Life is by its very nature a stochastic process, and in this sport we rely on the odds to a very great extent. If you hope that someone will beat the odds and survive long enough to catch on just by sheer luck, you are doing them no favor by encouraging them to continue. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. That is, however, the way to bet." Blue skies, Winsor

Cargo can't panic or move around (of its own accord). I was going to say that cargo can't talk and distract you, but that is not entirely true. I was once flying solo in a very full airplane, and heard some kind of discussion behind me. It turns out that two packaged Furbys I was bringing as presents were situated so they could see each other, and were thus happily conversing. In any event, the training is not all for the pilot. Since there are circumstances in which the aircraft must return with everyone aboard, it is often a good idea for the passengers (who had hoped to be jumnpers) to have a good idea of what is involved in landing a full jump plane. I once flew to a distant DZ with another jumper, only to have him climbing up the seat on short final. When I asked him how come the reaction, he said "I've taken off in an airplane over 600 times, but I never LANDED in one!" The two things jumpers need to do during an emergency landing is to sit down and shut up. Almost as bad as moving around and changing the center of gravity is having people who won't stop talking. It has been suggested by people familiar with the particulars of the incident that JFK, Jr. crashed as a result of having two high-intensity females on board, one or both of whom demanded his attention at a time when he had his hands full. It would not be the first time that people who hadn't said "boo" for a two-hour flight had an incessant list of questions that began about the time of handoff from approach to tower. Even though I have landed with the airplane, either singly or with a full load, on many occasions, I am still up for participating in a training exercise. Getting a jump out of the deal is a nice touch. Blue skies, Winsor

I would forget about planning to do a demo-type jump if you are not PRO rated and going into some kind of official shindig. Of course, skydivers don't like to fly, so wearing a parachute when doing so is only a matter of common sense. If, while along for an airplane ride, there is a loss of power and abrupt change of attitude, it would be easy to assume that it was some kind of mechanical failure that warranted getting out while there was still plenty of altitude. Also, in the event of mechanical failure, reducing the load on the airplane makes it just that much more likely that it will be able to glide somewhere that it is possible to make a safe landing. This is an obvious misunderstanding of the pilot wanting to show you the park by your parent's house, but it is better to err in favor of aviation safety, eh? Blue skies, Winsor

I don't know about the UK, but do know something about the physics involved. I know people at your weight that jump, but it is not a sport well suited to those of great mass in general, regardless of their state of physical fitness. The more out of shape you are, however, the worse it is. When things work just right, there is no penalty to weight. A smooth opening does not overstress anything and a nice landing has a tiptoe touchdown with no runout at its conclusion. When things get peculiar is when it gets dicey. The lines and line attachments on a 370 square foot canopy are typically the same in number and stress rating as on a 88 square foot canopy, and they are, for spatial and temporal reasons, more subject to uneven loading. Similarly, if I put on another 100 pounds, my bones, joints, ligaments and the like are no stronger than they are now. Thus, with another 100 pounds on my frame, the normal loading on my ankles hips, knees and back is that much more, as is the normal loading on my harness, risers, suspension lines and line attachments. Thus, an event that increases the load on my body or equipment by 50% over normal - a hard opening or hard landing - might be unpleasant at my weight, but catastrophic with another 100 pounds. As it stands, I have seen people weighing a lot less than me get up saying "ow!" after a botched landing where I am convinced that I would have had at least an ambulance ride to an emergency room, followed by a stay in an orthopedic ward, had I experienced such a landing. If you can figure out how to lose the gut and get down to 15 stone, you would be in a much better position to skydive without getting hurt - regardless of regulations. Blue skies, Winsor

I agree that separating standard landing people from nonstandard landing people is an important first step. I also agree that people screwing around under Mantas have no business mixing it up with people executing HPLs. In the motorcycle world you have people who, if I ride up on my Harley (shovelhead), will go into a discourse on how their crotch rockets set them apart, and that people of my generation have no idea whatsoever. Of course, when I pull up on my Suzuki (GSXR 1100) they skip the diatribe. Similarly, I get one lecture from people when I'm jumping a Raven IV, but don't hear about it as much when I'm jumping an EXTreme 99 FX. In any event, my contention is that, while hot landings under tiny canopies are exhilerating, swooping is by nature a not a primary consideration. By that I mean that the #1 goal to have everyone land uninjured, having a great time is a close second, and doing the aforementioned in a "hey, y'all, watch this!" fashion comes in third at best. To have separate areas strictly devoted to standard patterns, HPLs and erratic low performance stuff involves a lot of work to organize, and I don't blame a DZO who doesn't bother to do so. Running a successful DZ tends to leave one with a pretty full dance card to begin with. Regardless of what approach is taken, it is imperative that the jumpers involved are all on the same page before boarding the aircraft. If, while waiting to board, someone says to the group "I'm going to be swooping the pond, setting up for a right 270 over there and landing to the West - is everyone okay with that?," you don't have people surprised to find it out under canopy. I've seen it work at various DZs for years. I am not sure if I am crazy about seeking safety through regulation, since the mandated solution may be less effective than another approach that is summarily forbidden. Again, I prefer getting everyone on the same page before takeoff to counting on someone not killing me because doing so would be against the rules. I do applaud DZs that forbid the mix and match of landing styles, giving priority to those doing a standard approach. Whatever we do, making a safe standard approoach a viable option for any jumper that chooses it has to come first, and others should be free to push the limits elsewhere. Blue skies, Winsor

No, not at all. The Airborne uses a standard landing pattern that involves coming straight down, and it works pretty well. They do, of course, use rounds, but you did not get overly specific. With ram-airs straight-ins work, and there are other approaches that can be used without getting maimed or killed, but the basic aircraft traffic pattern is the gold standard because it works. Okay, I will dignify this with a response. A 270 into traffic is dangerous, and I do not care a whit who is doing it. Even if you had eyes in the back of your head, the likelihood that you would put together the four-dimensional analysis of collision parameters in real time and keep it safe is nil. If you can even formulate such a question in all seriousness, I strongly recommend a few years of intense study of the physics involved ("can you concieve...?" Jesus.) Again, I am floored by presumptions inherent in your statement. What special knowledge of the physics involved is possessed by people you deem to be "swoopers?" If you think a "swooper solution" would be an improvement, let's hear it. Be advised, however, that your implication that a blind approach can improve safety tends to discredit much you might have to add. By golly, you're right. We old farts are too hung up on old-school considerations. All the people we've watched get maimed and killed could have been spared by the input by Skilled Swoopers. Boy, you sure could tell us a thing or two about how it should be done. Yup, the place to dial in blind turns and commit to highway speeds is where the outs are the fewest, the population density is the highest and everbody is moving. What could be more obvious? I can't wait for your explantaion that shows why everyghing I know is wrong. You are, of course, going to upset the Medical Lobby. When Skilled Swoopers show us the way, the amount of work we send to the Orthopedic wards will dwindle to just about nothing. When the Skilled Swoopers hold a seminar on how to achieve perfect safety without resorting to old-fashioned traffic patterns, I want to be there, taking copious notes. The old ways are gone! A new era is here! Just tell us the true way and we will pay heed! Anytime you're ready, C.B.. Blue skies, Winsor

I assume you guys jumped at SAZ too... how about separate landing area for HP landings? or maybe low passes for everyone? No... Instead they ban serious swooping I am getting somewhat annoyed at the people who think that "swooping" is much of an issue one way or another. I insist that people quit bitching about how they are subject to discrimination for being swoopers. It is patent nonsense, and gets away from the key point at hand, which is that, if you fly in traffic, you must fly WITH traffic. Right up front: if you want to swoop, knock yourself out. However, if you want to fly so that you are putting people in the pattern at risk of death or serious injury, that is not okay. Pay attention here - it does not matter whether you are coming through the pattern at a significant Mach number after a blind setup or are sashaying your way back and forth across the windline, you cannot fly so as to endanger others. In aviation, you can get away with a lot of questionable procedures, but one transgression that is codified is that it is patently illegal to violate the traffic pattern. For example, if you fly a right hand pattern where a left is published, or vice-versa, you are subject to sanctions. The idea that people feel they have the right to fly their canopies with disregard to the most fundamental principles of aviation safety is mind boggling. Nobody says you can't swoop. Nobody says you can't do 360s. Nobody says you can't sashay. You just can't safely do any of these things in the pattern, and there is nothing personal in that. If you want to do these things, fine. You simply have to do them at some other place or time than people flying a standard pattern. How tough is that to comprehend? The best swoopers I know can also fly in close formation with other canopies without incident. Threading the needle through traffic to effect a swoop is not so much a demonstration of skill as it is bad judgment. The BSR is not about swooping, it's about traffic safety. Blue skies, Winsor

Pictures? I'm waiting for someone to send some to me. As soon as I get some I'll post them

Kallend, as someone who's always interested in proving statistics and trends, I find it interesting that you conveniently ignore the last few years showing over 50% of the fatalities were non-swoopers. Any particular reason for this? Ooh, I can answer this one! Let's see, I see like one swoop out of twenty landings overall. If the 5% of landings that qualify as "swoop" are related to 50% of the collision fatalities, swoopers have an 1,800% greater likelihood of being in a fatal collision on any given jump. 270s or greater have no place in the pattern. End of story. BSBD, Winsor

On any load that we're aboard, Orly King, Scotty Carbone or I will call for a gear check at about 10,000 feet. Each of us has a different briefing announcement, but the end result is the same. Most people do one of their own volition, but enough people have found misrouted chest straps, folded-under cutaway handles or inaccessible hackeys when so reminded that I think it a sound policy. A couple of times someone has found a misrouted chest strap after rolling their eyes and "humoring" me by checking, so I don't mind it so much when people think it uncool. If you're going to come to grief because of something that could easily have been caught before exit, it won't be on my watch. Blue skies, Winsor

I'll never forget Sandy taking a shot with that shotgun and flying 3 feet back right into my arms. I kinda had a feeling that was going to happen! When can we do it again???? Come on down to Houston and we can surely work something out. I have quite a few heavy-hitters that were not out that day (though the .460 and the 10 gauge are a rather good start). Blue skies, winsor

Try adding to your usual separation time, 4 seconds plus 2 seconds for every 10 kts of upperwinds. So if you would leave 8 seconds following a belly flier, and the uppers are at 30 kts, when a belly follows the freeflier he would leave 8 + 4 + ( 3 * 2) = 18 seconds. As you can see, you should be leaving more than a few seconds. I don't follow your algorithm. IIRC, the difference in throw between FF & RW works out to be like 3.5 seconds. This is to say, if a FF group gets out and an RW group gets out 3.5 seconds later, the RW group will be on top of the FF people at opening altitude. Thus, if you wait 4 seconds before beginning your count, you should be good to go. Of course, if you stick to the industry standard exit order (ask B. Burke), you avoid these issues in the first place. Complexity tends to work against safety. Blue skies, Winsor

Time... actually, I'm lucky in a way. I got tinnitus just by shoving those tiny little Walkman earphones into my ears and blasting away with hardrock music at full volume. Mind you I was already deaf. I was also using my hearing aids at a higher volume level than really needed. Once the tinnitus hit, I had to take the hearing aids out and set them down. For damn close to a year. I have permanent damage in my left ear from the tinnitus and cannot wear a hearing aid in it again, but the right ear is touchy and I have to go easy on it. In noisy places, I turn it off. Do a search on Tinnitus Cures... there's bound to be some kind of treatment that'll help. Also check with your ENT doctor. I hope it now makes sense why I made you and your SO wear ear protection when firing the .460 Weatherby. Being deaf does not make one immune to permanent inner-ear injury. The shoulder protection was mandatory, as well.... Blue skies, Winsor (50 years with tinnitus & counting)

Social and economic changes over the decades are reflected in a manner peculiar to the sport. This is to say that, though we represent a somewhat unusual cross-section, the society of which we are a subset is greatly different now that we are bringing Peace, Justice and the American Way to Mesopotamia than it was, say, during the Southeast Asian War Games. Howards, Norsemen, Beech 18s and DC-3s have been supplanted by TwOtters, KingAirs and other turbine platforms. Sex & Drugs & Rock and Roll have been trumped by AIDS (wrap that rascal!), the War on Drugs (just say no, kids) and Hip Hop (barf). The days of a hot-knifed cheapo in a B-12 rig with a borrowed chest-mount twill 24' being beginner gear are long gone. So, too, is the static line jump at a club after a morning's instruction, all for the price of a bag of pot (Columbian Gold, pricey at $40 - not skunk weed sold by the gram). Now you have the tandem jumps underwriting million dollar jump ships, and AFF courses at thousands of dollars that turns out Instant Skygods who drop six or eight gees on color coordinated gear. AFF, of course, focuses on the important part of the skydive and treats as an afterthought the part of the jump that involves saving your life. The parachute end of things is addressed by premium canopy coaching, where people learn to do CRW with the planet. Femur is now a verb. Most of us who could tuck our hair into our belts have gone low-key (sort of). There are quite a few of us who understand what is viewed as "hippie" by those who don't know better (hippie != freak). I suppose we have become a fringe-element subculture of a fringe-element subculture, which is itself marvelously ironic. Compared to the well-heeled sheep out there, being a "nobody" is good fun. Blue skies & purple haze, Winsor

I have known all too many prodigies who came to grief when they counted on their "natural talent" one time too often. Some died, some just got pulverized. The Darwinian nature of the sport cuts nobody any slack. Arrogance is as great a risk as ineptitude - either one can make you a crater waiting for grid coordinates. Most of us who have been around for a while can hang out for hours swapping stories of personal close calls. Most of us both recognize that we simply got lucky on the day in question, and would not take the same risk again - there's no saying that we would be dealt the same hand the next time. I will go ahead and talk to someone if I see them coming too close to disaster too often. Usually I tell them something to the effect that I miss the friend that died doing what they just did, and that I have been on too many ash dives already. It gets through often enough that I think it is worth the trouble. You might as well get used to the fact that not everyone survives. Some people leave the sport because they scare themselves, some get hurt, and some go out feet first. If, however, you focus on survival skills, you can stay in the sport to a ripe, old age. Blue skies, Winsor

Oh, I'd call it a true leap of faith. I am aware of an instance around 1990 where (so I was told) someone donned a rig in freefall that was handed to him by another jumper that carried it out of the airplane. After taking a great deal of grief about it, the two people involved denied it. Given their denial, I will keep their identities to myself - though the Statute of Limitations has certainly expired by now. However, judging by how pissed off was the pilot and by the reactions of others that claimed to be witnesses - and knowing the culprits - I am convinced that it happened. Wesley Snipes I am not. If I don't have a parachute on, I'm staying with the airplane. Blue skies, Winsor

I here by make the motion that we change the requirments to "5" night-jumps, "2" of which have to be made under a Para-Comander or similar round. That should bring out the studs. All in favor?? Responses: A) You bet! B) been there, done that.... I definitely favor adding CRW to the requirements for a D. Doing stacks at night under ParaCommanders just makes the process that much more fun. Moonlit skies, Winsor

I am not sure what is your point in this thread, since "dime a dozen" pretty much covers the airplane-driver career path. I am not too impressed with any job that has one wearing polyester, and most airlines mandate bus-driver attire. The pay generally blows, as well. I agree that it is nice to have someone up front that can bring the aircraft down in one piece if something breaks, but pay scale and skill set are not terribly well linked in the aviation business. The best pilots I know are often DZOs. If you think you can outfly Mike Mullins or Paul Fayard, you are welcome to try. In any event, it sounds like the old "I don't get no respect" monologue. Blue skies, Winsor (have flown an airplane or two...)

Perhaps instead of "tools" I should have said "impetus." Blue skies, Winsor