Nastyn8

jamesfreefall: Yes, the leaves will follow a similar path along the bank, but they will maintain the separation they had due to the time between when they were released, thus they don't ever occupy the same "piece" of water (the "piece" of water that the other leaf is in is already downstream). Think of watching all of this happen while you are floating down the river in a life jacket with your favorite beverage. If you passed the boat from which the leaves are dropped at the same time that the first leaf was dropped, the first leaf would remain beside you, and the next leaf dropped would remain behind you as it floated down the river, never ending up in the same "piece" of water that you and the first leaf are in (unless you started swimming up-river, analogous to tracking directly up jump run or flying your canopy directly up jump run = bad idea as Melissa points out in the article).

NWPoul: 1) As you mentioned, the airmass movement at different altitudes is what actually determines what is going on - but it still doesn't matter what the ground is doing relative to the aircraft in determining minimum exit separation. 2) There would of course be nothing wrong with giving yourself more time if you can afford it - my problem is with people that think the MINIMUM safe exit separation changes based solely on ground speed, which is an incorrect and dangerous assumption (the MAXIMUM separation should logically change with ground speed as you are implying)

clsalo: In my example, a second group leaving a few seconds later (assuming same body positions etc...) would follow a similar looking path, but WOULD NOT end up opening in the same place - their path in the sky is translated over by aircraft speed*exit separation. I probably should have used a leaf instead of a stick to illustrate what I was talking about with the stream analogy. I'm attempting to show the folly of ignoring motion relative to the air mass. The sphere or massive object sticking to bottom of the stream is not representative of a skydiver in an air mass, as we can all agree that the skydiver will "drift" with the air mass (eventually reaching essentially zero speed relative to the air mass in a neutral body position, regardless of whether the wind is 1mph or 1000 mph relative to the ground.
Scrumpot: Yes, of course. And what does that have to do with ground speed? It's all a function of speed relative to the AIRMASS, not the ground. The reference frame for this discussion on exit separation is the air that we are playing in - the ground does not influence where we end up relative to each other (other than our landing pattern obviously). Think of it this way: during your skydive, does the ground exert any force on you other than one acting straight down? How then can it physically influence the horizontal separation between you and another group?

This is great, except for the reference to the widely accepted and yet completely false theory that exit separation should be a function of ground speed. An example to illustrate why it's false: imagine an 80 mile per hour headwind on the aircraft (uniform to the ground - keep it simple for the sake of illustration), if the aircraft has an AIRSPEED of 80 miles per hour, this would mean the aircraft is not moving relative to the ground. According to the ground speed theory, the second group could never go as they would supposedly end up right on top of the other group. That is a false conclusion, as exit speed relative to the air mass is what determines horizontal separation, and has nothing to do with ground speed (wind shear could be a factor, but that is not typically factored into the fallacious ground speed theory). You can also think of the boat with a motor pushing against the stream, with no speed relative to the ground. If you are in the boat, and drop one stick into the stream a few seconds after another, would the second stick land on top of the first?