winsor

It occurs to me that including this one directly in the post is probaby a better approach. ------------------------------------------------------- Flight Planning for Safety by Winsor Naugler III In any aviation activity proper flight planning is critical to safety, and skydiving is no exception. If you take the time beforehand to plan for various eventualities, you don’t waste precious time making decisions when they arise. Preflight • Familiarize yourself with aerial views of the DZ and surrounding area, if they are available. Note locations of obstacles and pick likely outs for bad spots in various directions. • Check weather reports, if possible, and note forecast winds at altitude, cloud conditions and any approaching fronts. You are less likely to be blindsided by rapid changes in conditions when informed of their likelihood. • Turn on your AAD, if so equipped. Make sure your hook knives are accessible. • Find out who on the formation has audible or visible altimeters, AADs and RSLs; make sure they are all operational and properly initialized. • Check your and your partners’ gear. • Make sure you are in agreement on breakoff and opening procedures and altitudes. • Face into the wind and see where the sun is. Its position should be the same when you are on final and there is no wind indicator available. Exit • Know what groups are around you, what they are doing and what delay is planned between groups (ask around before and after boarding). The Skydive Arizona policy of large to small slow-faller groups, followed by large to small fast-faller groups, followed by students, followed by tandems is the best all-around approach in the business. • The more of a delay between groups you can arrange, the better. DO NOT assume that any reasonable delay is reason not to pay attention to other groups in the air - LOOK AROUND! Freefall • Dock gently, from the level of the formation. DO NOT swoop into a formation, but make the final approach smooth and deliberate. • DO NOT EVER get above or below a formation. Inadvertent deployment can become fatal fast if people are above each other. • If low, stay near and to the side of the formation until breakoff. Do NOT begin tracking before breakoff altitude, and DO NOT do anything to increase vertical separation.. • Track flat at a common level. DO NOT drop out of a formation vertically. If you have an inadvertent deployment when you are below the formation, the likelihood of someone getting killed is significant. The greatest likelihood of an inadvertent deployment is right after exposing the pilot chute pouch to direct air stream – like when dropping out of a formation in a stand-up. • Track to a clear sector while watching the people on either side. While flat tracking, it is easy to split the difference between the people to either side by looking under your arms. Canopy Flight • Open at an appropriate altitude. Between two and three thousand feet is reasonable for a high traffic event; any higher opening (for CRW or whatever) should be arranged with the pilot. • Do NOT spiral down through a high traffic area. If spiraling to lose altitude, get well off the wind line to stay clear of the spot for other groups, and LOOK AROUND. In a turn, the direction of most likely collision is at the leading edge of the canopy in the direction of the turn, and there is a blind spot where a collision may occur between jumpers whose canopies blocked their view of each other until right before the collision. I reiterate - SPIRALING IN HIGH TRAFFIC IS DANGEROUS! • The safest flight path when opening above the landing area is to fly the canopy away from the landing area, perpendicular to jumprun, until far enough out to allow a long, shallow approach to the landing area (leave enough room for obstacle clearance). • LOOK AROUND NEAR THE GROUND! Don’t fixate on your landing, but pay attention to who is in the area. Keep your head on a swivel, and periodically scan for potential traffic. • Do not execute unplanned turns near the ground. If you are cut off on final, executing an avoidance turn must not be a possible response. Landing • The safest landing areas are the least popular ones with the most outs. Landing in congested areas or where ground traffic is allowed (e.g., the camping area) can be an invitation to disaster. • If you must turn for traffic or obstacle avoidance while setting up to land, use a FLAT TURN. If you don’t know how to do so, find out from someone experienced in the maneuver and practice at altitude until you have the procedure wired. • Keep your head on a swivel after touchdown. Even if you land under complete control, you might want to dodge someone who is swooping where they should not. =>If landing out is inevitable, or if safely making it to a designated landing area is in doubt: • Pick an open area in which to land by 1,000 feet (300 metres). Corn can be over 12’ (4m) tall (a cornfield is NOT like an unmown lawn), so landing between rows and preparing for a PLF will reduce the likelihood or extent of injury. • Any changes of color on the ground probably have barbed wire along the boundary. Land parallel to any area changes. • Locate any telephone poles or other wire supports by 500 feet (150 metres), and set up to avoid the wires that are sure to go between them. • Identify the lay of the land by 500 feet (150 metres), and set up to land alongside any hills. Do NOT land uphill or downhill, REGARDLESS of what the wind is doing. • If there is any doubt about the landing surface, or if you are sure to have excess speed on touchdown (like when stuck with a downwind landing) execute a PLF and roll out the landing. Keeping feet and knees together, and not using hands or elbows to break the fall can greatly help avoiding injury.

The WFFC puts our articles in the flier they give out in the registration package. Bill, Gary and I have had our treatments of the subject included through the years. As I said, we take a different approach but our goal is the same. I have had enough people comment that one thing or another we discussed really helped them when it mattered, so I consider the effort worthwhile. I found my article on a server to which I have access (I won't get back from Serbia until just before the Convention), so I have attached it here. Blue skies, Winsor

The Convention is almost upon us, and I invite everyone to have the time of their lives and go home in one piece. The keys to staying safe are things you already know. All it takes is a gentle reminder to think ahead, and the odds are stacked in your favor. I have seen rather a few people come to grief in this sport, and it was almost always avoidable by using the tools you should have mastered by the time you got off student status. The Convention publishes safety articles every year, and they tend to go over some good basics. The article by Bill von Novak takes a different tack than does Gary Peek's or mine, but reading any or all of them can't hurt. Whatever you do, think ahead, have a plan, stay heads-up, look out for each other and don't push your luck. None of us are immune, and we get constant reminders of that fact. I've had the odd wake-up call, and can attest that the tuition can be a bitch for even the most minor lesson. If you have to get injured at the Convention, let it be a pulled muscle from trying position #402 from the Kama Sutra at the end of the day. Then again, if you're limber and stretch first, even that might be avoided. The time to get into the mindset to keep it safe is now. It's a hell of a lot more fun when everyone stays healthy and happy. I'll see you there. Blue skies, Winsor

Tolerance is all about condescensýon. You don't tolerate something you think is okay - you accept it. You have to think something is fundamentally fucked up in order to tolerate it, which is a rather sanctimonious standpoint. To reject something is a hell of a lot more honest than to tolerate ýt. Blue skies, Winsor

Why? The PA-28 family of aircraft is very well suited to a variety of positions. Admittedly, the lack of autopilot makes it hard to avoid aerobatics if things get intense, but it's a perfectly good Mile High flight platform. It beats the hell out of the lav on a Boeing (though that works, as well). Blue skies, Winsor

There wasn't an option on the poll for "after use." I would just as soon have a once-a-year cycle. I can't think of anyone that bounced because they used a reserve packed within a year but would have lived if the repack cycle had been 60 or 120 days. The repack process is tough on reserves, and I think much of the mandatory repack mentality is a throwback to the days of natural materials such as silk, pongee silk and cotton. Nylon, if kept packed, dry and cool, will stay operational for a long, long time. I've known people to use reserves many years after being packed, which worked just fine. BTW, I'm a rigger. Blue skies, Winsor

With nothing to do but hang out in the Balkans (and get at most three hop and pops), I broke down and got a flight to Istanbul for the weekend. Since I only have a vague idea of what to do during a two-day tourist stint (though I am pretty resourceful), I am open to suggestions as to what to do and where to go in Byzantium. I gather there's lots to see and do, but appreciate hints as to what I really ought not miss while I'm there. Blue skies, Winsor

With any luck, afterplay that turns into foreplay on one of the better weekends. If you're talking semipublic sex, the answer is to try to look nonchalant. For the Mile High Club, the answer is to get the wings back to level. If you only have one set answer, odds are you don't get out much. Blue skies, Winsor

There's a big difference between celibacy and being between relationships. Doing without sucks, but swearing it off is unnatural. Blue skies and dead kittens, Winsor

you wouldn't know where i could get a ripcord for one of those do ya??? i know where i can have one made..... just wondering if i can find one premade already... Actually, there is a guy here (Vrsac, Serbia) who has a box full of legacy ripcords of various descriptions. He has maybe 100, while I have at most a couple of dozen assorted ripcords at the house. If you can give me the dimensions you want (mine's about 3,000 miles from here), I can see if Pedja has one that will work Otherwise, I might have one, or can find out if Hank Ellis, Dave DeWolf or one of the other usual suspects has one on hand. Blue skies, Winsor

Oh, oh, oh. I'll take a litre or 3.

My favorite story about altitude recovery was from one of the earlier large-way record attempts. It seems that one of the participants got hosed on the exit and was hopelessly low. His solution was to go off to one side, deploy his main, cutaway, join the formation and land under his reserve. Even though he got in his slot, he got axed. Go figure. Blue skies, Winsor

Most stores only sell the standard size. In a town the size of Rantoul, it may be difficult to find "smalls". Hey, it's embarrassing when they have too much slack. "Who do you expect to satisfy with THAT thing?" "Me."

Last year i ran into some guy that worked for Trojan. He gave me a box of like 50 condoms.

The DHC-8 is a great plane, but has many drawbacks as a jump ship. On the up side, it, like nearly any aircraft from Canada, can take off and land damn near anywhere. It is not certificated as a STOL aircraft, but qualifies as such in practice - we would operate at gross from 33-Right at Boston/Logan, which is pretty short. Though it doesn't help jump operations, its demonstrated crosswind capability is nothing short of awesome. Our normal operations included a 36 knot crosswind component, and I have landed one with 34 knots coming abeam (not a barrel of laughs, but doable). As far as reliability goes, you could hardly do better. There has never been a fatality in a Dash, and they have logged millions of hours. On the down side, they're expensive. They start out at $18,000,000 a copy for the base model (new), and can get much more pricey by the time you get to the Q400. Even if you get one used for cheap, you are committed to maintenance of a multimillion dollar aircraft. Since they gross well over 12,500#, the PIC needs a type rating. In addition, the normal crew includes two pilots. These are not going to be 275 hour pilots with newly-minted commercial tickets looking to build time, either. As far as capacity goes, you could easily fit 60 jumpers into a -100 series when stripped of seats. In order to keep one near capacity without shutting down the engines after every load, you need maybe 200 jumpers dedicated to packing and jumping - more if you expect to fit in dirt-dives and breaks. That makes operation at anything but the biggest dropzones or boogies out of the question. For exit, you have a problem with door arrangement. Using the airstair, you aren't going to be able to the port side prop, and I don't advise going head to head with those 13" paddles. In order to use the cargo door you must first remove the aft bulkhead. I'm not sure what is involved in getting one of them certificated to fly with the cargo door removed, but there's no way I'm going to get in the way of that door if open in flight - it's heavy, and closes with authority. If someone has a Dash-8 dedicated to jump operations, I will be happy to either fly it or jump it. I do, however, consider many other aircraft much better suited to jump operations. Blue skies, Winsor

I keep a lot of rigs in date, but only one logbook. The likelihood that the particular rig I am using is in proximity to the logbook is way less than 100%, and I don't always get the odd jump recorded. Often I will show up somewhere that turns out to have jumping in progress, grab a rig out of the back of the plane or car, and get on a load or two. It's easy to lose track of such jumps. In addition, I misplaced a logbook for a couple of years and recorded jumps in a haphazard fashion along with my flight logs and whatnot. Reconstructing my logs for that period left out a goodly number that I know I made but couldn't track down sufficient details to bother recording. I think it was one of the Hunt brothers that said, when asked how much he was worth, that someone who knows how much money they have doesn't have very much. The same is probably equally true of skydives. Blue skies, Winsor

Much of what I do is time-dependent, sometimes to the extent that a few seconds make a difference. I have two Omega Speedmaster Professionals. One of them was a college graduation present some 25 years ago, the other was on Mike Mullins' wrist in Vietnam when Neal Armstrong was wearing his on the moon. I'm wearing the one I got from Mike now; the graduation present is due to go back to Switzerland for its periodic maintenance. Blue skies, Winsor

Well, I'm going to be in the London area on that date, so it could be doable. I'll have to figure out where Brixton is. Having my body clock set to Eastern Daylight Time might be useful for something that lasts until 3 AM. I usually don't stay up that late. Blue skies, Winsor

Alcohol REALLY didn't agree with me. 6,191 days - but who's counting? Blue skies, Winsor

I'm not a big fan of regulating things one way or another, I much prefer recommendation. Having said that, I strongly recommend that you go out and jump your pack job. Modern parachutes are designed to be amazingly reliable. I have seen people who were maddeningly meticulous about their pack jobs as well as those who just threw it in the bag and jumped it, and don't recall a great deal of difference between the two groups in terms of malfunction rate. By packing your own parachute you stand to benefit in a number of ways. For one thing, it demystiies the whole thing as you develop a hands-on familiarity with everything from soup to nuts. For another, you have the opportunity to perform your very own preflight inspection of your equipment. If you see a brake line finger trap that looks like it's worn a bit more than you like, or something else where your reaction is "I don't like the looks of that," you can bring it to the attention of someone who has been around longer and find out if it's a non-issue or something that could be a problem. When you are at pull altitude, it is nice to have a working knowledge of that upon which you are depending to bring you to earth in a nice, controlled fashion. I know it is reassuring to have someone who trust to prepare the gear, but it is even better when the person you trust the most is yourself. The only way I know to develop an intimate familiarity with your gear is to work with it. Pack it yourself, fire the reserve when it's due and participate in the repack if you can find a rigger who doesn't mind. I prefer to have a customer on hand while I'm working on their gear, since it's their life it will save if the reserve works as advertised. I also want to demystify the reserve, so they understand that it's just another parachute (albeit a very carefully packed variant). Jumping your own pack jobs is a really good idea, and can be a useful way of honing some lifesaving skills. In addition, you can dial in the kind of openings YOU like with your canopy, as well as saving time and money. Blue skies, Winsor

Out of shape (like now) I have a 30" waist and 42" chest; in shape it's 30" and 44". Do I qualify? yes 30/42 = .71 but you also have to be in the strongest 2%. Okay, if I don't take a shower for a couple of days I'm sure to be in the strongest 2%.

Out of shape (like now) I have a 30" waist and 42" chest; in shape it's 30" and 44". Do I qualify?

I find it funny that 2% are members, about 25% claim to be members and 75% have a total lack of interest in being associated. (Perhaps they are the smart one's. ) The only legitimate reason for Mensa membership is to get laid. Brilliant women are much better in bed. Trust me. Blue skies, Winsor

I have been a Mensa member since I was 25. There is no discrimination on the basis of sex, race, creed, national origin. People within the group have religious or political affliliations, but no agenda is supported by the organization. (edited for spelling) "Agenda" is the plural of "agendum." That should be "no agenda ARE supported..." or "no agendum IS supported...." Similarly you have: criteria/criterion data/datum addenda/addendum and so forth. What's Mensa? Blue skies, Winsor

Most of the African and African-American skydivers I know are Caucasians. Are you, by any chance, trying to refer to Negroes by that description? Mincing words accomplishes nothing. If the terminology was good enough for Martin Luther King, Jr., it's good enough for me. Blue skies, Winsor