This was emailed to me from Zing, who asked that I post this in response to one of Snowman's posts. "Prior posts have gone on about how much "skill" is needed for a night jump because of disorientation etc. Has this skill requirement been overstated?" In a word, yes. There are a number of jumpers who have made night jumps and other more technical jumps, such as square parachutes back in the days when round parachutes were dominant, without the training, briefings and additional equipment usually required at most dropzones today. This ain't rocket science. A lot of the added requirements today reflect the dropzones' desire to avoid lawsuits when someone does bounce or suffers an injury just as much, and in some cases more than, the added safety of more training, equipment etc. It was not uncommon, in days gone by, for first jump students to make their first jump in the deep gloom after the sun had set. Not long enough post sunset to qualify for a night jump, but certainly in much reduced light levels. I'm certain there are other old farts on this forum who remember DC-3 loads of students at a California dropzone near a lake getting out of the plane after the sun had set, and that DZ was not the only one that ever did that. I made my first night jump with less than 35 jumps, somewhat short of the B license qualifications of the early 70s. I started training and jumpmastering students after having done less than 10 jumps, including the first five static line jumps. It was the only way for me to get enough bodies in the airplane at a defunct dropzone in North Dakota to get the airplane in the air. I pretty much ran that dropzone for two years until I moved to Arizona to jump. The only bounce that happened while I was there was when two low time jumpers, who were not my students, held a two-way down to about 500 feet. One lived, the other didn't. Both of those guys went through training conducted by USPA certified instructors and jumpmasters until they were on 30-second delays and pretty much off student status. Within a year of moving to Arizona, I became manager of a dropzone that had a reputation for being pretty loose. The only rule I ever had was that if you bounced, you were grounded. That's not to say that there weren't any close calls, there were quite a few, but over the years I ran Ghoulidge, there were no fatalities. There were 3 before I became manager, and three more after I left. In response to a few other statements and questions I've seen in this thread: The reason that the highest preponderance of fatalities is D licensed jumpers is the simple fact that jumpers with D licenses do many more jumps than any other group. Basically, the more any individual jumps, the more likely it becomes that that person will be involved in something that leads to serious injury or death. Military training is quite a bit different than sport jump training, yet the military can and does get their people up to combat ready status in under 50 jumps. Once again demonstrating that this ain't rocket science. I am not convinced that it would require a high level of skydiving experience to successfully jump from a 727 with a bag of cash tied on. At the level of jump experience I had in the early 70s, if I were going to pull Cooper's caper, I'd have most likely opted for that NB6 pilot's emergency rig over a sport rig for the simple reason that its a reserve canopy, therefore less likely to malfunction, and its a backpack style rig, leaving the front open to tie on a bag of cash. You don't need googles to jump, even out of a jet, they are merely nice to have. There are a lot of jumpmasters here who can tell stories of students whose eyes slammed closed on the "GO" command and didn't reopen until they felt the opening shock. At 10,000, with flaps down, the speed isn't so high that its going to rip your eyeballs out of your head. Even a novice with zero jump experience could have picked up a book, like R.A. Gunby's Sport Parachuting and figured out that from that altitude you could jump out, count to 10 and pull the ripcord with plenty of altitude still below you. Well, enough of my ranting, I don't want to get my friend banned for posting this for me, but apparently the 60-day ban I got quite some time ago is still in effect and I couldn't resist trying to gey my two cents in one more time. To those who inquired about my health ... Well, the doctors aren't certain exactly what happened to me. I really thought I was having a heart attack when I had chest pains, numbness and shooting pain down my left arm, shortness of breath and a bit of nausea, but after $40,000 worth of medical bills, the cardiologists say my heart and lungs and coronary arteries are healthy. I'm now engaged in trying to get my FAA medical certicate back so I can start flying again, but it may take three to six months to do that. In the meantime, I've had no reoccurence of symptoms and I feel fine.
