diverdriver

Yes, every hour leading to my 275 hours when graduating with a BS in Aeronautical science WAS a training flight. Now, that training plus the 4 year BS degree cost me much more than 15-20K so I discounted my own cost to bring it in line with many other Commercial pilots. I just considered the flight training at a local FBO and not a 4 year degree program. I am not discounting what the AFF guy does. In fact I commented that there was time outside of the jump that was valuable. (please re-read my post). What I am talking about is the coach jumps! Robin Heid is saying the 50 dollar coach jumps are killing the sport. Many are paying it so if they are paying that then they can pay more for the pilot. That is what I'm saying. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Ahh, there's the rub. You say "equally qualified". Is he? Yes, they both have a commercial license or ATP in case of the CASA. But are they truly "equally" qualified? One pilot has 1,000 hours in a king air alone and knows how to fly through an engine failure just after gear retraction, brings it around, sets it down without a scratch. Another "equally qualified" king air pilot leaves the control lock in and goes off the end of the runway which leaves many jumpers injured and at least one paralised for life. What's equal about that? Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

April 1992 was the Perris, CA Twin Otter crash. The pilot had 4,300 hours total flying with 100 in make and model. Here is the official cause which does include pilot error but is more than just pilot error: I guess it comes back to whether this industry respects the position of pilot. I know that low pay effects pilots but it is hard to give tangeable evidence as it can be suttle or only conjecture by other experienced people who know the story when an accident happens. From reading many reports I see pilots exhibit low professionalism and allow themselves to be pressured into flying situations that cause accidents. This pressure comes from low pay / low respect of the position. It goes hand in hand. Jump pilots have not had a raise in about 15 years yet everyone else in this sport seems to be making more. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Is every jump a training jump to be an AFF instructor? No. Many were fun jumps for entertainment and were not focussed instructional training jumps to become a teacher. Your number is inflated. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

One: I would never burn the flag. Not that you implied that I would... just saying. Two: I wanted to bring people's attention to this obvious disparity in DZ pay. Many have been justifying 50 dollar pay for coach jumps yet I see few championing the pilots that get you to altitude so you can make that 50 dollar a jump pay. And the pilot has much more safety related duties than a coach. Am I saying that people shouldn't make 50 dollars a jump to coach? No. Never said that. What I DID say is that if the market will bare this type of revenue demand then pilots should wise up and collectively demand more. The money is obviously out there. They just have to ask for it. And maybe many didn't think to ask until I spoke up. A ground swell needs to start somewhere. The pay for jump pilots has been stagnant for almost 15 years or more. What new pilots don't know is the history. I happen to know a little history. With education people might feel different about going to work for 5 bucks a load since that prescious time jumpers throw up in the pilots face when they do ask for more ain't worth what it used to be. You do not move on like before. There is no comparison to a professional skydiver to a DZ pilot. The commerical DZ pilot will have spent at least 15,000 to 20,000 to get the certificates in order to do the job. What did the AFF instructor pay? What did the TM pay? We all know it isn't that much. Yet, they get paid WAY more per load than the pilot. An AFF JM has much more prep work to do than just go up and jump and that time is valuable. What I'm getting at is this 50 bucks for a coach jump later on. So, if it's true people are getting 50 bucks a jump for coaching then the pilots need to let their voices be heard and say some pay needs to come our way. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

That is the most bogus arguement ever. I bet you say to people who discent to the governement "love it or leave it!" I love flying. I also recognize what low pay in the jumping world does. Many qualified pilots with a professional attitude DO NOT come to the industry so we are left with people who may not act in your best interest (safety) as they are just slaves to the system. What do you want? You get what you pay for and this industry has continually shown they do not care that the accident rate is abismal. People are more concerned with paying 50 bucks a jump extra for coaching when your 182 pilot makes 5 bucks a load or a twin otter pilot makes 10 bucks a load. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

The pilot is also earning hours as compensation. Hours that can earn them a big time job later. An AFF guy, Tandem guy, or coach is not getting that same compensation. This is an old problem in flying. You work for shit pay till you make it. Show me one AFF instructor that eventually could get a 200,000 a year job because he did all those AFFs. And as a coach I am not sure you really know all that a coach does if you think all they do is tell students to stick their legs out, to be honest. Or how much money they spent to be able to charge. The same could be said of pilots, I mean all they do is fly right? ...BTW I have never charged 50 bucks a jump, but let the market decide the rate. Hey Ron, There is no "big time" in the airlines anymore. The market is saturated and there are no more pensions or 200K a year. It's all gone. There are many pilots who will retire as a regional pilot and guess what, they are underpaid for what they do too. I'm gone from home more than half the month. The days of "I only work 10 days a month and get paid 250K" are gone, probably forever. Those precious hours at the DZ don't get you anywhere anymore unless you plan on being at the DZ for the next 4 years and then you have a problem with qualifying for the ATP when you don't have instrument or cross country time. I hope I open the eyes of some diver drivers out there. Be educated on what is going on with the industry. What I'm getting at is there seems to be a huge disparity in pay for roles on a DZ. If there truly are people getting 50 bucks per coach jump (after the student course is done and before the A is aquired) then pilots need to stand up and demand more money because this is BS. And by the way, I used to coach people too and I never charged them for my time. Several of them are now on a competing 4 way team and it's cool to see them now coaching others coming in. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

You all need to be paying your pilots more if you can afford 50 bucks a jump to hear "you need to stick your legs out more". I don't think jump pilots know how much money is exchanged at a DZ. They should demand their fair share. They have the most responsibility on any lift. They are responsible for ALL the lives on the flight. The pilot has the most to lose in a violation. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Damn. Blue skies Conway. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

I feel that when we stop seeing pre-teens go in while making their first jump in some other country on TV over and over we will get more people to participate. When we stop seeing Cessnas spin into the ground after dropping the first S/L student on TV we will get more people out to the DZ. When we stop seeing new jumpers with little experience talk on GMA about how their chute didn't open right spin into the parking lot when in fact they caused their own malfunction and are damn lucky to be alive we will get more people into the sport. We have met the enemy and the enemy is ourselves. All of us. All of us that let this stuff go on. When DZs start addressing safety issues when they come up rather than sweep them under the rug people will stay in the sport as they feel their safety is being taken seriously. But when canopy collision after canopy collision occurs there is some shit that just can't be tolerated. Not only are we not retaining students we aren't retaining the experienced jumpers either. I'm no longer a USPA member and I'm out of the sport. Training has not caught up to the sport nor do I see it catching up either. Robin seems to think that every DZ should say "Yes" to everyone that wants to make a jump. He wants to reinvent the wheel on currency. Well, in flying airplanes if you aren't current you PAY TO PLAY! Why should a commercial operation be expected to take a loss getting a jumper in the air? Everything for free huh? That's bogus. You got to pay to play folks. I totally disagree with this "article". Maybe I missed it in the headline but this seemed to be more of an editorial than a "news" article. It's one persons opinion. Was this an editorial? Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Cessna 150 Aerobat? I used to fy one and instruct in it. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

1. Punch the CFI's F'ing lights straight out. 2. Re-power the A/C back up. 3. Land the A/C safely at my convenience. Blues, -Grant Well, what you don't know is that this type of training happens every day. The instructor/examiner will actually retard the throttle (pull it to idle). They DON'T actually turn off the engine. By putting the trottle back in the engine usually powers up right away. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

A confluence of random events? It will be impossible to prove and you will always have neh'sayers but I do believe that some, not all events this past weekend can be attributed to it being Memorial Day weekend. The summer kickoff. I was told once that most work related accidents happen either the first hour of the shift or the last hour of the shit. This was the first big weekend of the jumping year. Coincidence? I don't think you can prove a threaded link but in the back of our minds I bet we think it's at least possible. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

I second that one. The man up stairs I think has a really sick sense of humor sometimes. "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think God's got a sick sense of humor. And when I die I expect to find him laughing." -DM --probably due to Shanon being up there already.

BSBD GFD. That truly sucks.

It always killed me when my mom described where I was flying as a "Free Basing Operation". Even my non-aviation brother would get pissed and go "Mom they are not doing coke!" God that was funny for so many years. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Just as you have intentionally left out evidence that it WAS a 757 that hit the Pentagon. See how easy it is to believe anything you want even though the evidence is right in front of you? Oh, and nice try passing that exit hole off as the entry hole of the 757. Again, you have no idea what made that hole on the interior walls of the pentagon. It could be from the fueselage, an engine, or just the debris that was blown further into the pentagon from the momentum of the 757 hitting the wall. Or was that just from your cruise missile? If it was a cruise missile and it blew up on impact with the outer wall how in the world could it made such a perfect hole on the interior wall? It would blow up in all directions! And if you blieve it wasn't a 757 because there aren't any civilian eyewitness accounts (which I'm not saying there aren't) from the highway why for the same reason are there not any civilian accounts about a cruise missile flying right over head! Come on man! That highway was packed! There should be hundreds of eyewintess accounts of a cruise missile flying right over them! Well, there's not. Because there wasn't a missile. But have fun with your mental masturbation on this subject. No matter what I say or show you, you will always believe that a missile hit the pentagon because you cling to it like a warm blanket. It scares you to think of anything else. Sometimes, a plane crash is just a plane crash. Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125

Point.

LOL!! That's great!

You sure about that? Once again, reference picture attached. I would expect a little more damage to the grounds if a commercial airliner skipped across it. Are you expecting a trench? See, that's why you're not an investigator since you go into it with a preconceived notion of what happened. You look at this photo and see no trench. The ground is sloping down to the pentagon and then levels. The strike point is most likely off the left of the frame and since everyone was concerned with the Pentagon being on fire and not accident investigation it's likely that no photo of the trench was taken before emergency services and heavy egquipment started trampling across the point of first impact. It very likely was airborne again (remember we said it skipped) before hitting the wall. Think of it like a pebble skipping across a pond. Yes, this does happen in accidents. There can be several skip points (if it doesn't run into a wall first).

Photo of American 191 DC-10 crash at ORD 1979. No fireball here: http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/aa191/2.shtml Where's the DC-10? Can't see a plane here. Must be a conspiracy. http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/aa191/4.shtml United 232. I would have expected a much larger accident site. Why is it in such a straight allignment? Must be a conspiracy. Can you find the DC-10? http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/ua232/2.shtml Nothing similar here: http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/aa77/4.shtml No aircraft parts at scene? Well, except this one: http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/photos/hullpiece.html Must be a plant. The photo is said to be taken about 10 minutes after the crash but since I wasn't standing next to the guy when he took the photo I can't cooborate the story so I must be part of the conspiracy too. note: heavy sarcasm here in my comments. This is utter nonsense that anything other than a 757 hit the Pentagon.

It did scatter debris but mostly in the direction that it was traveling at impact! You never studied Newton's laws? And in a post impact fuel fire you aren't going to find tires! Rubber melts. And there are pictures of metal parts outside the pentagon as they rebounded from impact. This isn't Wilee-Coyote stuff. You aren't going to have a perfect silouhette of a 757 in the side of the Pentagon. It hit the ground before hitting the wall so it started to break up before hitting the wall. The wings would have started to fold back and when hitting a hard wall would have continued to fold back. There is damage to the wall outside of the big hole but it's not easy to see. Nothing here tells me it's anything other than a 757 hitting the Pentagon.

They saw it because it happened right in front of them! Again, eyes forward. They aren't looking off to the side or above. You know, yah, you'd think there would be some eyewitnesses that are civilian. I can't point to any document with a civilian eyewitness account. I've read the conspiracy websites and I've seen the websites that refute the conspiracy websites. I've done accident investigation before. I may do again in the future. Nothing, aboslutely nothing tells me that this was anything other than a 757 hitting the pentagon. I like your statement about the explosion not looking like an airliner exploding. You don't remember the Sioux City, IA crash? United 232? It had the same fireball and it had about the same amount of fuel. Anyhow. Your "evidence" doesn't hold up. But I am curious since I don't know you. What is your background in aviation accident investigation? Have you studied accident investigation of any kind? Car? Trucks? Industrial? What do you currently do for a living? If I understand where you are coming from maybe I can see your point better.

You're assuming that flying 5 feet off the ground at over 300 knots was his intention and so he was flying precisely. Truth is, we don't know that he meant to skip the plane off the ground before hitting the pentagon. In flight training, you're judged on how well you treat the airplane not how well you crashed it. So that he sucked in flight training doesn't mean crap. People who have never touched a plane before have landed them succesfully when the pilot had a heart attack and was incapacitated so you have conveniently forgotten that a human is capable of things that don't seem possible. Maybe this was his best flight to date for precision control. I've "peaked" on a checkride when I thought I had been just doing adequate in training. The pentagon is right next to Reagan National. We fly DIRECTLY OVER THE PENTAGON ON APPROACH TO 15 ALL THE TIME! People get used to seeing planes there and so they mentally block them out. Most of the public is oblivious to what is going on around them. And if they are driving I hope they are looking at the road in front of them! You assume too much. As for other security videos I have no idea. Can't answer that one. And if that's the only thing that proves your conspiracy theory it's weak.

Right, that's why EVERY airliner crash burns for days not minutes. (said with extreme sarcasm) You need to do some research on airliner accidents and you will learn that you are completely wrong. They said the WTC buildings would burn for a year. Ummm... how long did they actually burn for? Oh that's right... not a year.