chachi

i would suggest that you go to canopypiloting.com and post the same post under ask jim. when i started doing two way landings (270) he wrote me a whole page of thing to know an be aware of. it gave us an incredibly good place to start and we progressed very quickly.

if they were interested in listening to anyone other than themselves they would probably be listening to omar, steve, jeffro, fruitcake, tj or any of the other 20 professional skydiver / swoopers in the area.

are you an employee of SDA? because you're the only one trying to use words to defend them. in fact; they aren't even defending themselves. if SDA really wanted someone on these message boards defending their stance or words like a lawyer they would probably have betsy doing so. the best pilots and organizers will tell you that their reaction is the wrong one if they want to actually progress safety and the sport. it is crystal clear that their motives are ONLY driven by revenue. while i believe they are also making decisions they think are for safety; they are going about it the wrong way. billvon this especially sticks out for me :Absolutely. And I prefer to jump at DZ's that follow the SIM. (The most pertinent section that comes to mind is "Fly the landing pattern or land elsewhere.") Makes everyone safer IMO. Doesn't mean you're wrong, or stupid - just that you make different decisions that I do. " you are dead wrong if you think they have made their DZ safer. a 180 in traffic is significantly more stupid than a properly setup 270 and you are buying what they are telling you. the only reason they think it is safer is that AIRSPEED does them. of cource a team doing the same thing every single day makes it look safe and easy. random 180 setups all over are ridiculous and will be the next cause of an accident. why? because the ones doing 180's are mostly inexperienced pilots making bad decisions. the same people causing most of the accident. fuck; wake up.

who are you to think everyone should put a specific amount of energy into anything and why do you think you should have to get along with someone or they shouldn't enter BASE. you try to push your own values, moral, and ethics onto people to much. everyone does things for their own reasons and has to accept the outcome. stop thinking there is only one way to do BASE, your way.

i love these comments. how exactly is skydiving easy? which discipline are you world champion level in? flailing around in the air is easy, just like jumping at TF. doing the best of either world is a challenge that takes a lifetime to master. open your mind BASE is not as hard as you think to walk into and be competent at. keeping yourself and your attitude in check is what is the hard part.

Things that grow out of control either kill themselves, or are killed by others, though. What advantages do you see to current jumpers from increasing the number of jumpers in the sport, the number of jumps done per year, or the exposure of the sport in the eye of the general public? no one said grow out of control as if that would EVER happen in BASE. but the crew in BASE is so secretive, skeptical of everyone, and more. this is really why i don't think most want it to grow, their ego's. if it becomes mainstream then all the BASE jumpers now don't feel special. we think we are so hardcore when there are people out there doing far more dangerous and profitable things. in fact this sport could be the alternative to people that can't afford skydiving but instead it is ruled as a secret society almost.

tom - i really respect you but i think you are narrow minded with this post. things that don't grow, die. pure and simple. check history if you don't believe me.

you will have to relearn anyhow where to put your hand so it might as well be a lot safer.... left hand BOC os my idea or get your shoulder fixed...

my advice after multiple dislocations including once on a base jump flaring and once after opening on my vx94 is to go get surgery. the smartest decision i EVER made. i was in some predicamints that thanksfully i was able to fly myself out of. imagine landing in the worst possible place with one shoulder half in and continue with a piece of elastic around your shoulder if you want to.

you should go to everyone except the FAA but i would suggest a serious sit down with the DZO first. try working correctly on the inside before going external.

wow..... holy narrow view Batman How is he having a narrow view? Sorry but he's been around alot longer and probably will be around alot longer than most swoopers. I just hope he is right and it fades away. I've seen enough people injured or dead because of swooping and quite frankly, I'm sick of it. j you're attitude is part of the problem. first, swooping can be done incredibly safely and most good canopy pilots only ever get bumps and bruises. secondly, swooping isn't the only problem. what is going to happen is that canopy collisiosn will continue to happen. people continue to downsize with little regard for learning the wing they fly. while we have tragically had a couple of incidents where a pilot has taken someone out, that is not the norm.

personally i think we should have specific canopy coaches and you should be required to spend some time with them in the progression program of A and B license.

SDA does not like high passes either while running multiple aircrafts. i am speaking from experience. besides, when training for high performance landings doing performace drills up high only offer so much benefit. you need the ground reference to practice. doing only high passes not worth the ticket all the time. i made a post in the other thread going on in swooping forum that they have been incredible clear on their intentions. when you make policy with no alternate solutions you are saying one things; we do not want you hear. i wish everyone would stop trying to cover up for SDA or sugar coat it. they do not want it going there and are going to make it difficult to begin happening again and setting precedent and expectation.

having a tiny grass landing area surrounded by dessert that gets all over you and inside your canopy and full of obstacles is kinda setting all those people that pay for facilities to skydive at up for disaster. preach all you want about being able to land any where but if you can afford multiple million dollar plus aircraft and jets for toys you should be able to afford a little bit more water. everyone is making apologies and rationalizing SDA's behaviour when they aren't bothering too. they do not want high performance landings at their dropzone. they aren't going to expand facilitites to cater to all types because they simply do not want to. they think their landing area is perfectly acceptable if you do not have high performance turns in the mix. i think they are taking a stand and don't give a shit. i think they are short sighted in their behavious but recognize that they run a dropzone so they can as they see fit. im the customer, i will spend my $$ where i see fit. it all works out.

i think you are over stating the issue. while it may not be economically viable in the SDA business model they do not have the lock on how to run a skydiving business. SDA has the unique ability to be able to decide what kind of business they want to cater to based on the sheer volume of peopole coming to the sun and planes. in their case, the high lift capacity to 13-14K is their bread and butter and comparing a hop 'n pop load for them to a full altitude load is how they are going to do it. i work for a similiar business. we cater to high end customers withh $$ so when business comes around sometime i price it out of their reach so i don't have to worry about it. the bottom line is that they don't really care about that 20% of business. hold on though, before we panic there are lots and lots of dz's that want that 20% of business. skydive centres that build ponds, that create separate swooping environments, and most all the dz's that love to keep their aircraft flying jumpers all day from sun up to sun down. while SDA was a great skydiving centre there are far better places for a swooper to go and now i imagine more will just do that.

i think they feel that their landing area is big enough for skydivers flying moderately loaded canopies; not to include highly loaded crossbraces doing 270 degree approaches. then they made a rule to accomodate that size only with no room for building bigger.

well i think they are deadly serious about the issue. i know you, and i know you may not agree with their decisions but i also think that they ahve some level of experience in running a "skydivers" orientated dz than we dont have have sitting behind our keyboards in our chosen professions. while i dont like 180's they may lessen the potential accidents to an acceptable level for SDA. if it does not reduce i am sure they will make a 90 degree policy.

Feel free to try and avoid the points I raised or twist what I'm trying to say. However, if you read my response you see that I mention 3 being unacceptable and avoidable. It still ignores the big picture though IMO and too many skydivers are reading this as a swooper problem. Because of that, they'll never do what THEY need to do to help reduce these fatalities. If you can't see that this is a problem across the board from that post, then I'm not sure what else I can do to help you with that. Blues, Ian you know IAn i have seen you raising the identical point as i have been in like 30 different threads on this board and the SAD... SAD fact is that the majority will consider this a swooper problem and never take precautions. separating the landing areas will take care of the swoopers being part of the problem but i wonder who the average skydiver will blame next for the continued deaths.

as both a swooper and a business man i have to give many kudos to brian's sound arguments and well thought out points. personally i can totally understand why at SDA the business of skydiving is out-weighing the business of swooping. they are not setup like most dropzones so i dont think we have to take it too far like every dz is now going to find it won't work. for instance my dz owner already knows that economically swooping does not work out of his king air and wouldn't ever dream of doing low passes. i think perris can deal with it because they have more airspace in which to drop you with the tuffet and the pond being so far away from the landing area. oh well; most dz's that aren't SDA have cessna's so i am sure most won't be banning hop 'n pops. brian is right though that the (US) government will step in if things don't fix themselves. they will probably begin making the largest contributers to this problem pay first; SDA. we can all work on this problem by educating our dz owners about the benifit of separating the landing area's if possible, all becoming more active canopy pilots and being able to assess the sky on that load and fly to a safe spot. following predictable paytterns is probably the single best thing a skydiver can now do. reckless swoopers cause problems but so do reckless skydivers under lightly loaded canopies. lets all work on minimizing the problems. swoopers have a bit of attitude on this simply because we know how little time the average skydiver learns to fly their canopy of choice and how grossly under prepared they are for an emergency. this does not alleviate the blame of the swooper for making a poor decision in traffic but it does provide example of more than one layer to this problem of canopy piloting; and where we now are in the sport.

go throught the fatality list over the last few years and then tell me the majority of the deaths were swooping related. again YOU are part of the problem; as is everyone that doesn't understand that the only thing that will truly fix this problem is if everyone learns to think ahead and find their own piece of blue sky to fly the canopy in. horizontal and vertical separation is the key.

swooping IS NOT the major cause of death and injury. in fact, it is just one of the causes. while most are canopy related now your ignorance on the issue and your subsequent lack of recognizing that YOU also need to learn more to prevent these incidences will allow the problem to perpetuate; not go away. wake up please. educate yourself, do more canopy only training, get coaching, learn how to put yourself into your own slice of the sky. these things will prevent accident; not going on rampages about how swooping is the problem.

its not a matter of a turn degree to solve the problem or a matter of how far one can swoop with a 180; that was my point.

the reason that 180's are ok is because that is what arizona airspeed does; so obviously it is the safe way. it would be better had SDA setup a course right beside the swoop pond and restricted any maneuvers onto final over 90 degrees to the swoop park. i don't think SDA will lose $$ because most people are skydivers before they are canopy pilots and they run and incredible skydiving facility. as for making things safer i do not think this will have that dramatic of an effect.

the website doesn't say jack about the canopy. maybe you could? looks like a velocity copy to me.

i am going to offer advice although i have kept my mouth shut in many of your posts. some guys can go to a xbrace at 500 - 600 jumps. while you have the positive attitude you just don't have the knowledge you should. go get some fantastic coaching on a canopy that has more forgiveness than a CB. i can tell you from personal experience that you would love many of the characteristics of the CB but from how you come across knowledge wise on the internet you would probably find it a handful. that in itself is a reason to stay under a more controllable platform. these things fly so fast that if you are not very consistant in your inputs and cant put yourself at the right spot coming out of your turn every time they will put you in spots you don't want to be in and making decisions you didn't think you would have to. you have mentioned in your own writing how inconsistant your turn can be. take a breather, keep your legs friend.