JDutton

Well, yes, but I wasn't "camper", if that is what you are referring to. That was Bob Anderson. However, I was called "camper2" at times. I was really sorry to learn that the airport is gone. Do you have any idea what Bob & Diane are up to these days? How about Stan McGrew? According to another thread here, Scott Brady went to work for NASA . Have you heard from anyone else that was there in those days?

Hi Frank, Thanks for the welcome. Littleton was a fun DZ. I used to drive there after work on Friday and stay until Sunday night. Jeff

Does anyone have any idea what happened to this Lodestar? Probably some of the best skydiving I had was out of this Lodestar out of Freemont County (Canon City) Airport in Colorado. I think it was the Lodestar in the photo. From what I remember it was all brown. It arrived on the scene in the middle of '75. I learned a lot about RW that year, and earned my SCR out of that Lodestar. They would pick us up at an airport near Denver and fly us down and we'd jump in. Sometimes on the way back we would do zero-G stars inside the plane. I loved that plane. I'd heard of a couple of stalls by Lodestars, but we weren't really worried about it. Jeff

Thanks, Skymama! Well, the interesting thing is that they didn't always seem very scary at the time... well, most of the time. This wasn't as scary as some of the stories I've read, but it was scary enough for me. My home dropzone was the Littleton Airport, which was actually several miles south of Littleton, Colorado. One day, we were invited to jump into a party at nearby Castle Rock, in somebody's backyard. Because we were "responsible skydivers", a couple of us drove to the site of the party beforehand, to make sure the area was safe. We had a couple of acres to land in, so no problem. We decided that it was safe. Chuck had just bought a "Clown" Mk 1 Para Commander, and I was jumping a 28' 5TU cheapo. Well, my best friend, Chuck, and I were the jumpers. It was my 74th jump & Chuck had about the same number. The jump plane was a Cessna 180. We were jumping from 3500, so Chuck and I decided to just track apart for 10 seconds or so & open. The freefall went pretty well, except that after I'd been tracking for awhile, I looked up (down) and Chuck and I were both tracking straight down about 50' apart. I decided to open early, so I flared and opened. Chuck opened about 500' below me. My altimeter showed 1700', so I was looking forward to razzing Chuck for opening so low - 1200'. Naturally, I reached the ground first. As Chuck got ready to land he yelled "gobble, gobble!". And of course he sprained his ankle on landing, which was actually good news for me because I got to use his PC for about 6 weeks. Oh yeah, the scary part. Well, when we checked out the site beforehand, it didn't occur to us to take an altimeter along. After we got down I noticed that my altimeter was still showing 500' because I had zeroed it out just before we took off - as usual. So, I was actually open at 1200' and Chuck was open at 700'... and we didn't have a clue. Sometime I'll tell the story about the time Chuck opened REALLY low. Jeff

I've been reminiscing about my youth and thought I'd say 'Hi'. I did my jumping between 1973-1976, mostly at Littleton, Colorado, though I did make a few dozen jumps out of the Loadstar at Canon City (Fremont County). It would be fun to reconnect and share some memories. I've enjoyed reading stories in the "history" and "scary stories" forums. Interestingly, I experienced a few of them first-hand. Jeff Dutton C-10094 SCR-4927