Tracking up the line of flight

[ianmdrennan 2]

Hey Folks,

Had a close call today when someone in a group behind us tracked up the line of flight.

The person in question was doing a solo sit after our Freefly group. Todays spot was quite deep and the jumper didn't trust that he could make it back to the dz so he started tracking back towards the dz along the line of flight.

I had been under canopy for about 5 seconds (which makes me think he didn't give enough time before leaving after us) and he blazed by not more than 20 feet away from me (and would you know I'd just turned the camera off....nuts) pilot chute off his back and ended up below me by about 50-100 feet under his canopy. Very scarey stuff, could have turned out badly for both of us.

Just thought I'd remind those who would track back to the dropzone (other than a normal breakoff track) after other groups that this probably isn't the best idea.

So what do you think we should tell people who end up in this situation? I think if adequate seperation is given between groups, there is no reason you can't pull just a little higher and fly back along the flight line under canopy (to avoid flying under groups behind you and besides it's a high pull to get back right?
Blue skies
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[juanesky 0]

Glad you pull through. How is Orange and until when will they be open?

BLue ones,

J

"According to some of the conservatives here, it sounds like it's fine to beat your wide - as long as she had it coming." -Billvon

[b1jercat 0]

Hi, glad your ok. Someone should set down with the Individual and explain the basics of separation between sticks. If he knew he was doing something wrong and he thought he could get away with it ,he should be grounded. Just my 2cents.

blue skies

jerry

[ianmdrennan 2]

Nah he was a relatively inexperienced jumper and genuinely didn't think about what could happen. He understands now and was rather hard on himself for the mistake.

Blue skies
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[Casch 0]

When I was first learning tracking, well...I was terrible but I also wasn't "heads up" enough to know which way was the line of flight after exiting the plane...so I really didn't know which was I was tracking . I ended up tracking about 100ft under an RW group and I didn't even know it . All went well though and I got a good bitching at by an ex-Golden Knight . He's a pretty cool guy and decided not to skin me alive and I learned my lesson too

[Cacophony 0]

That person should have also been conscious of their airspace above and below them. Low man has the right of way.

  Quote

I think if adequate seperation is given between groups, there is no reason you can't pull just a little higher and fly back along the flight line under canopy (to avoid flying under groups behind you and besides it's a high pull to get back right? ). I think it's safer than tracking back and risking what this guy did....thoughts?

How do you know if the group behind you has given adequate separation? Assuming that you pulled at your normal altitude, what if you had pulled slightly higher to avoid landing off? The situation could have been much worse. Pulling high isn't a good thing to do. It changes the dive flow and endangers the people after you. Same goes with people who track back to the DZ. All of that should be taken care of with the spot and exit order. If you suspect that you aren't going to land on the DZ then you shouldn't get out. Its your life and you have control over it.

[Jimbo 0]

  Quote

Pulling high isn't a good thing to do.

I disagree. The name of the game here is horizontal separation. Give it, and everyone is happy. Crowd the group below you and nasty shit starts to happen. Vertical separation is nice, but you can't count it. What happens when the guy in group in front of you has a premature? Are you going to land and bitch him out because you didn't give him the necessary horizontal separation?

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[Cacophony 0]

  Quote

you didn't give him the necessary horizontal separation?

The key thing with that is exit order. If everyone agrees on a set order to exit that will allow for maximum horizontal separation, then you shouldn't have to worry about a premature in your face.

  Quote

Vertical separation is nice, but you can't count it.

Nor can you count on horizontal separation when people leave early after you to start tracking for the DZ.

[Staso 0]

  Quote

Nah he was a relatively inexperienced jumper and genuinely didn't think about what could happen. He understands now and was rather hard on himself for the mistake.

Blue skies
Ian

well, he has a coach rating, doesn't he ? he has a tendancy to be a little reckless, i'd say.

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[Staso 0]

  Quote

Glad you pull through. How is Orange and until when will they be open?

BLue ones,

J

Orange is usually open thru the winter. if enough people show up the otter will go up,
otherwise cessna. it might get a little cold, but we keep jumping.

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[ianmdrennan 2]

No he does not. I think you're thinking of someone else.

Blue skies
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[ianmdrennan 2]

Exit order and enough time between groups. I'm with Jimbo on this one.

Blue skies
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team

[SkydiverRick 0]

  Quote

Hi, glad your ok. Someone should set down with the Individual and explain the basics of separation between sticks. If he knew he was doing something wrong and he thought he could get away with it ,he should be grounded. Just my 2cents.

blue skies

jerry

This type of thing isn't taught in the first jump course. I think that coaches should fill in the cracks and cover this type of information. What seems like common sense to experienced jumpers may never even enter a newbies mind.

never pull low......unless you are

[mccordia 74]

Also..wouldn't it be wiser to just open a few 100 ft higher instead of tracking to the dz (especialy if you're doing a solo)
The distance covered in canopy-flight is bigger then the distance you cover in freefall and it avoids dangerous situations like this...

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[2fat2fly 0]

  Quote

but I also wasn't "heads up" enough to know which way was the line of flight after exiting the plane...

I can relate to this. As a brand newbie, it didn't do any good to tell me that we would be running jump run down 27 or 36 or BR549 Someone pointed out to me that the important thing was if jump run was more or less parallel to the runway or more or less perpendicular to the runway. For several jumps he would tell me "Remember, we're going straight down the runway so you'll need to track perpendicular away. I've never heard anyone else discuss this on the plane. I admit that I haven't thought of it again until reading this thread. I think I'll start mentioning it to low timers such as myself in order to avoid this problem.

I am not the man. But the man knows my name...and he's worried

[jaaska 0]

I have relatively few jumps, but this is what helps me a lot:

If (and there should be) there is an aeral photo of the dropzone with the different jumpruns / degrees printed on it, it is always good to ask how the jumprun is being fly. Then it's just a matter memorizing what direction is the jumprun in relation to any recognizible landmarks (runway, a hanger, a body of water etc.)

On the plane, you can still look from the window and check whether the jumprun is really the one told you earlier. On the door you still have 5-8s (ok, not so much if you need to climb out) to check your spot and actually see what direction the plane is flying (compare and check whether it's the same as the visual memory you have of the aeral photo).

After exit, enjoy and when it's time track, whether you're doing a track dive or just practicing/doing a breakoff (it takes a bit more time at first, but after practice, you recognize at least one of the landmarks really fast) it's just a matter of turning to right direction and start tracking.

Whenever I'm jumping from 13.5k, even on solos, I try to do this. I do the breakoff manuevers (wave off, turn and track, wave again, check the airspace) on almost all my solos. Of course, the lenght of the track may vary depending... It's still good practice and as someone wise has said: "The most inexpensive lifeinsurence one can get in skyding!"

[bmcd308 0]

As near as I can tell, this is the reason that you have to be able to recite the headings of the runways in order to complete the A card.

----------------------------------
www.jumpelvis.com

[GAskygirl 31]

  Quote

Exit order and enough time between groups. I'm with Jimbo on this one.

Me too. Being on a 4way team, I am often in the first group out on a dropzone with a large percentage of freeflyers, so there is always another group behind me. And it's not at all rare for the group behind us to end up too close, regardless of what they're doing. I've even tracked about 45+ degrees off line of flight to have the second group open up down the line of flight from me. My track isn't terrible, but breaking off no higher than 4000 feet, it's not good enough to cover safe horizontal separation distance and then enough extra to PASS the next group out.

All of us are probably revved up on adrenaline when the door opens and it's time to exit (if we aren't, then why are we jumping? ;-). This is why more experienced jumpers often exchange a knowing look when a newbie talks about giving you ten seconds out the door, when it was really more like five and you know it. When you're keyed up, patience isn't a strong suit. That's natural.

This is why, in my opinion, exit separation is often too short. Add this to the almost guaranteed fact that on a large aircraft, if there are people exiting behind you someone will tell you to hurry it up. Add this to the concern that we all have about landing off, and you can end up with a lot of rushed climbouts and exits...and a much more dangerous lack of proper horizontal separation.

Horizontal separation is paramount. A freefall collision will very likely kill you. So avoid it at all costs--give the group ahead of you enough separation. If you're not sure how much time to give, ask the pilot, a jumpmaster, or some other experienced jumper what they would do with the day's winds. And if someone behind you doesn't like how much time you give, you can fight about it later on the ground. Too much separation never hurt anyone.

Yeah, but landing off does, right? True, in rare occasions. But if you're worried about the spot, look down and make the decision to jump or ask for a go around. You are responsible for your own spot, not the group in front of you. And if you do land off, do what you were trained to do and it is usually no big deal--a story, maybe a corncob souvenir. "I was worried about landing off" or "Everyone was yelling at me to go" is absolutely not a justification for unsafe horizontal separation...it could be more like an epitaph.

Decide before jump run how much separation to give (again, ask someone "in the know" if you're not sure), and stick to it. And tell the group behind you how much time you need too. We're not always good about crossing all the Ts and dotting the Is, but we should be.

Blue Skies!
-=Christy=-
D-21464

[jose 0]

Ian,

There are some good comments on tracking here, and for all intesive purposes, should be read by the newbie that almost tatered you. There are a couple things that I have done to *try* to prevent this from happening to me.

1. know who will be exiting behind you on the way to altitude. Talk to them, and find out their experience level and what they plan to do on thier jump. Obviously this only applies if you really dont know the person that well. TELL THEM that they need to give you "x" number of seconds of seperation. Dont ask, but be pretty insistant about it, without coming off as an ass obviously.

2. After leaving the plane and going about your dive, track perpendicular to the flight line, or whatever the line is that the DZ specifies. I probably don't have to tell you this, but ya know.

3. At about 3500 roll to your back and check your airspace, EVERY TIME!!! EVERY EVERY EVERY JUMP!

I can't tell you how dead I would be if I didn't do this. Twice now, I have had to suck it low because of an idiot that tracked right over the top of me and flared out for deployment. Once was from another group and once from my own group that got too much vertical seperation. The last time I sat there on my back waiting for that ass to deploy, all the while trying to track off on my back and keep him in sight. As soon as I saw his arm go back to dump, I rolled and dumped as well. I'm tellin ya, I was no more than 200 feet below this clown, so if I had dumped without rolling, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have collided. In the saddle at 1000 feet = pissed off Jose. Some would say that I waited too long, but hell, they wernt there to see how close it was. My life = my decision.

I had video of this and showed it to the guy, and he said he "never saw me". Lesson learned here? You cannot trust anyone out there to see you, be smart, or have any common sense unless you know them really really well. And everyone screws up sometimes as well.

The most important lesson here is that we are all responsible for ourselves. Obvioulsy some things are unavoidable. Even though someone tracked right over the top of you, making them dead wrong, if you dont check out whats above you with a quick barrel roll, you will be "dead" right. I'm no expert here in safety an all, but all I know is that I saw a guy do this and I have been doing it ever since. It possibly saved me once and definitely save me the other.

[phoenixlpr 0]

Landing off? :) Easy to say. Im jumping a place where almost no alternate landing area: forest, lakes, high-way, town and railroad.

[jose 0]

You just gave 4 examples of where you can land off in an emergency. You can land at the shoreline of a lake....even if it means getting soaked. You can land on a highway, its nice and flat usually with a grass median. Not the best place, but still a place. There must be dozens of places to land in a town. Just thinking of my own town, I can name a few that would suffice. And a railroad couldn't be more perfect. Its nice and flat, long, plenty of clearing on both sides. Trains dont run all the time like traffic does to boot. If you think about it, you can make almost any area an emergency landing out area. The trick is to know which one is the best for you at that time, and deciding on it EARLY. Waiting till the last second can injure or kill you.

[phoenixlpr 0]

Shore seems good, but lakes are deep 2-6-10...meters.
Highway is quite bad, plenty of bridges, street lamps and other obstacles. That town is a green belly cutted out from forest, far from ideal. That rail-road can kill you: high tension power cord over it :). Ive started jumping in Hungary, there are more places than obstacles.

[JDBoston 0]

Good suggestions, but if I see someone below me or above me tracking who doesn't seem to know I'm there, I don't wait for them to do something, I take the initiative and get the hell away from them. Seems to me like sitting there waiting to see what they'll do is just begging for trouble.

If they're above you, why not just stop tracking, let them continue on past you, turn 90, and dump ASAP? Or veer so you're not tracking in line with them, then pull when you're clear enough of them. If they're below you, again, either stop or veer. Depends on your altitude when you notice them & where the other folks on the dive are, and whether you know where those other folks are. Personally, I do NOT want to suck it down waiting on someone whose awareness and skill have already been shown to be dubious.

Unless you're on a big way with a zillion bodies all around you, you're likely to have a lot more space around you on deployment than you think.

Of course, not getting in that situation in the first place is somewhat better.

Thoughts from exp'd folks?

Joe

[billvon 3,089]

>If they're above you, why not just stop tracking, let them continue on
> past you, turn 90, and dump ASAP?

The danger is that people tend to deploy at similar altitudes, so he may stop at the same time. The best strategy at breakoff is to be aware of the people around you, keep track of them as you break off, and thereby ensure that no one gets above you that way. I am not a fan of the barrel roll, since if everyone does that you get less effective tracks and less separation at pull time.