danielcroft

>> So have a rule. "No arrow direction changes when anyone is in the air unless it's more than 10 knots difference." That still presents the issue of wind changes part way through a load. Ok, taking a step back here; if you have separate landing areas for swooping and standard patterns, why would a swooper be setting a landing direction anyway? If they land down wind in the swoop area, why do non-swoopers need to land down wind? I don't know Perris but I know that you guys are super busy, based on that, I'm not sure how you'd decide who would be the first person down but we do work out exit orders and if we're expecting people to be this disciplined then I don't know if it would be too much to ask to have the first person down into the standard/main landing area make a decision *only* if the wind had changed. The choice to actually call that into action could also be made based on information from the pilot as radioed form the ground. All of this is just closing the gaps a little, I think the reality is that if we want to have a flexible landing direction then we need to accept that some people will get the short end of the stick. Either having to land out (will they have time to do that once the FMD had made the choice?) or collisions (worst case) or down wind landings resulting in injuries. No solution will be perfect, we're human we excel at being imperfect.

I think that an arrow as described only mitigates the landing direction issue a little. You're just delaying the decision point and handing it to something that's impartial. It's a step in the right direction IMO but every time I think through this scenario (I sure don't have all the answers mind you) I keep finding it wanting. You're still open to collisions caused after the arrow moves and the people behind then having to change direction. Personally I think that landing direction should be set on the ground. People should stick to that landing direction and land somewhere else if they're not comfortable. All the guess work goes out the window at that point and anyone landing in the main landing area contrary to the agreed direction is clearly in the wrong. People landing elsewhere can do whatever they want. Another alternative for places like Perris would be to agree a direction on the ground and have one person designated as the FMD. If that person sees that the winds have switched they MUST land a STANDARD pattern into the new direction and then it's set from there on in. Key difference from standard FMD is that there's a designated FMD and that that person must land a standard pattern.

BSBD - his family is missing man formation for ever. My condolences.

So the argument dismissing the 83% of fatalities last year is that (to take it to its logical conclusion) ~83% of skydives made were by D license holders? Personally I'd be happy to avoid any DZ that has an FMD rule, not because I'm concerned about landing in any wind direction but because it presents a danger to me and others around me. I've never jumped at Perris so I don't know the unusual weather patterns there. To me, if you're getting winds switching that quickly from load to load, at a wind speed that would be dangerous to land down wind in, I'd say don't jump. What do I know though.

Why are we talking about FMD again? FMD Pros: 1. In the even of a large change in wind direction combined with speed, we can all land safely FMD Cons: 1. Pattern not set until X time (who knows when and by whom) 2. No one in the air knows how they're going to be landing until X time 3. Relies on one person making a good judgement call 4. The people who need the most help (students/newbs) get the least 5. The first person down has the least motivation to make a good call 6. People in the air are focussed on the ground and not the air 7. more? If we're going to discuss patterns then let's talk about the real issue which is enforcement. You can set whatever you want but someone will decide they don't want to for whatever reason (valid or otherwise) and do whatever. If we're not prepared to enforce the rules as a community, there's little chance we're going to solve the issue of random landing directions IMO. Anyone care to comment on the statistic that 83% of skydivers who died last year were D license holder?

My apologies if my comments are hard to take for friends and family, I mean no disrespect.

A few thoughts that have occurred to me since this tragic incident: 1. In 2010, 83% of deaths were D license holders (page 41 of the April Parachutist) 2. Are separate landings areas and limits on swoop turns actually solving this problem? 3. Is this what I have to look forward to in this sport? 4. Do more rules make us less aware? I didn't know either of these people and can only imagine how their friends and family are feeling right now. Their experience and skill dwarfs my own, like orders of magnitude greater, how the hell does someone like me avoid this, even with the current rules? Do the rules really help? Does it make sense to use a draconian landing pattern? Will that really fix anything? Will the skydiving community and the USPA really consider the ramifications and affects of any proposed changes in rules and will we analyze the existing rules and their application to see if there's any affect on fatalities? Just because we have a bunch of rules, doesn't mean we're making it better, let's be realistic here, we want the right rules, not more rules. I'm at a loss a bit with this one, and the last two, experienced people going in at an alarming rate, what's broken here?

Do we know it's FFX that owns the airport because as far as I know, FFX doesn't own the Ranch or Kobelt. For the record, Kobelt basically faces north-south and our prevailing winds are generally east-west so that may have presented a problem but also makes for a great alternate landing area. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=45+sandhill+rd+gardiner+ny&aq=&sll=40.773294,-73.928634&sspn=0.080664,0.083857&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=45+Sand+Hill+Rd,+Gardiner,+Ulster,+New+York+12525&ll=41.657331,-74.143553&spn=0.079582,0.083857&t=h&z=14 jrsample, if you know this for a fact, I'm not sure why you're asking us to find proof if you already have it. You're the one who characterized the purchase that way and then wouldn't back it up except to allude to some inside knowledge. It's totally beside the point in any case, and as a couple of people have said, not unusual or really an issue anyway. You're coloring your comments to suggest it's a bad thing and in fact, that argument would support Skydive City and Deland more than it'd support what Billy's doing in that area - stopping competitors when there are viable alternatives. Personally I hope that the two DZ don't go ahead and, if they're not economically viable, I'd expect that Billy/Joe won't proceed because I hope this is about money. Yes, I know I'm being naive and overly optimistic, no need to state the obvious.

To follow on a little from what DocPop said, Pilots are known to have a pretty positive recovery arc meaning that you could actually gain altitude when you release your risers (depending on how you release them of course) so it's going to be really helpful if you do get a digital altimeter. Also, I'd actually suggest doing all exercises on double fronts rather than 90s but I'm the same as DocPop, not an instructor or a canopy coach so seek experienced advice. I'd also suggest finding someone who knows what they're doing to do a clear and pull with so you can have a point of reference when trying some of this stuff out. At some point, you're going to need to decide to bring it down low, it'd be worthwhile cornering an experienced canopy pilot and asking their advice on how to do this. Your canopy will behave differently up high as opposed to down low, having an experienced person watch you is going to be very helpful.

Care to post a source for that remark?

Fair enough. I think the main disconnect here is that when you jump in a car, you don't just accelerate without doing something (Toyotas not withstanding - sorry, I had to), you control how fast you go. If you want to go 40 on the freeway, you can. When you jump out of a plane, you don't have that control. You accelerate no matter what you do. I'd definitely agree with you on the last point. I think that's why many people are considered tourists (I have a year or two to see if I am or not) because after that length of time (5 or 6 years right?) they finally figure out that they're mortal and that they're putting themselves on the edge every time they visit the DZ. Personally I'd like to think that I'm not a tourist but time will tell. I've had a cutaway, jump 12, I've had a long pilot chute hesitation that had me in tears and scared for my life, went up again, it happened again, so I had an experienced friend jump my rig who had the same issue and I got rid of it right away. Anyway, enough rambling. Point is that we can't say both that you're completely dependent on yourself and that you aren't dead when you jump from the plane. We can't claim that the AAD is "only a backup" and "can't be relied on because they fail" and, at the same time, say that you'll be fine, don't worry about it. I'm sure that mindset will help some people overcome the fear but the reality is that we can all die, we can die on our very next jump and every one following that. An AAD just tips the odds a little more in our favor. It's a catcher and even they don't catch every ball.

This thread makes me want to learn more about my gear, thanks for posting guys. I popped my reserve for repack over the weekend and played around with it with my rigger present. Didn't find anything fun though, no lucky charms, maybe next time.

I don't know if I agree with that. I know you have *way* more experience than I do so I'm very open to correction here but are we talking with someone spotting them? Radio for canopy? Direction on where the landing area is? Maybe I remember my own nervous fear a little too clearly to get a good picture of what you mean here. The fact is that we don't do either of those things. Most people who jump have some training and most people who drive also have some training. I'd suggest that the analogy is pretty flawed in other ways, such as people being brought up with the concept of steering since they were very small in terms of toys and tv, not to mention the level of investment on all levels of government and communities (to a greater or lesser extent) the very well defined laws and regulations, a real police force, etc., etc. I don't think your point is totally invalid, just saying that the car analogy fails so often when put up against skydiving, I think this is another case. In so far as we're pretty able to get just about anyone safely to the ground, I'd agree with that but I think that skydiving presents a much greater and real risk of injury and death than driving. I also think that driving skills and drivers generally would improve dramatically if people confronted the fact that driving is also a life and death business.

I personally think that the main issue for people advocating higher firing altitudes (with all due respect to BB) is justifying the reasoning. Right now, the reasoning seems to revolve around the instances where an AAD has fired but the person has gone in without an open reserve. So far as I've seen, we haven't actually established the reason for these fatalities. If the loop is cut by the AAD correctly but the reserve doesn't open in the time available, who says it'll be open with an extra second? I'm all for saving lives but if we're going to bandaid this (better to use a bandaid and save some people for sure) we really shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the AAD wasn't the problem. We've then taken a last ditch, hail mary backup device and turned it into a solution to a problem that no one understands. I think that raising the AAD firing height causes several issues in itself and the higher we go with that firing height, the more people will be affected by the change. The scenarios where people are having two out because their main deployment crossed over at sufficient speed with the AAD firing parameters to cause a two are the outliers statistically speaking. When you move the AAD activation height, you move the curve and we'll start seeing more two out scenarios. When we think about two outs it's nice to imagine that we're talking about happy side by sides or biplanes but we could also be talking about downplanes and entanglements. The more people who have a two out, the more likely we are to get into these ugly two out scenarios. I think one of the other issues we face is that an AAD is a mechanical (for all intents and purposes) device that fires no matter what once the parameters are met. If someone (foolishly IMO) sets their AAD for 2000ft and then goes on a bigway and is deploying at 2500, it's likely that they'll end up with 2 out with a bunch of people in their airspace and this could lead to a collision. The main point of all this is that we could be trading the small number of fatalities caused by reserves not opening in time when activated for a whole bunch of other problems without really knowing why. Having said all that, I'd be ok with raising the general AAD firing height to 1000 but I wouldn't want mine firing higher than that. I think that any variance in base firing altitude (excluding any offset) should be limited to the currently available range. By that I mean that my AAD can be changed from "pro" ~840ft to student ~1040ft (for the Vigil 2) and those altitudes are already available to me and have been duly considered by the designers and engineers. Raising the base height to other values could actually cause issues with the algorithms used (remember, we're not talking offset here) and would have to be investigated by AAD manufacturers before it should be even considered airworthy IMO. I look forward to corrections because god knows I don't know everything. edit: To correct myself - here's the wording from the Vigil 2 manual regarding activation altitude (page 10 & 11 if you're curious):

Actually, every car I've ever driven has a terminal velocity (If you'll excuse the bastardization of the term) of 0mph, if you don't do anything and the road is straight (like, say, jumping from a plane) over 2 miles the impact is likely to be less severe due to friction slowing the car over time. Not to mention that you have seat belts, airbags and a crushable body and chassis to absorb impacts. I wouldn't rely on any of these things to save my life but combined, they all make driving a car at highway speeds much less likely to kill you than jumping from a plane. I voted to tear the thing out and fire up the plane.

I jump with an AAD (Vigil 2) in my own gear. A couple of years ago I was out in South Africa and made a jump on borrowed gear without an AAD. I was jumping from a Cessna (first time) and was climbing out with my back to the prop. I wasn't expecting the prop blast to be quite so strong and fell forward towards the door. I caught myself with my right hand (left was outside) but could easily have cracked my head on the door and been knocked out. I thought hard about jumping without an AAD, on gear I've never jumped, at a DZ I'd never jumped, flying a canopy I'd never flown. I decided that I was willing to accept the risk and deal. Almost falling out of the plane (yeah, that's the idea but you kinda want some control right?) really struck me as getting as close as I want to be to being unconscious in freefall. I can't control it but I can do my best to avoid situations where I'm put in higher levels of risk. I would do the jump again btw, my decision wasn't changed by the incident. Had a good jump and landed exactly where I wanted to right in front of the hangar. I even got a cool stamp in my log book. ;) To answer your question (which I think is a little silly to be honest) if you're randomly knocked unconscious on a jump without an AAD, you die. If you live you're lucky. All skydives are the same, the AAD changes the equation a little but it doesn't change the fundamental nature of skydiving which is that you can die on any jump even if you do everything right. I just work at doing as much as I can right and try to avoid situations that present an increased risk that hold no reward. edit: yes I was wearing a helmet but would have hit my face or forehead on the door.

There's nothing wrong with challenging the status quo if you're willing to accept that you're wrong and that there's a good reason for the status quo. Things change all the time, new technology comes along (like AADs or skyhook) that affect what people do but that doesn't mean that we change without seriously thinking through the affects. Dave's delivery isn't great but dismiss his opinion out of hand at your own peril. I look forward to seeing the result of the inquiry on the AAD.

Fair comments and I can't disagree. I guess what I object to most is the witch hunt but Avaiacom aren't doing themselves any favors. If they were open and transparent about their issues I'm sure people would be more willing to give them a chance. I had a long chat with one of the senior jumpers/rigger at my DZ about this today.

Ok, the first SB is related to a software bug. The second is related to the design of the cutter. The cutter was recalled. Here you have a company, trying to get into a market that has two (main) players. They have a new product that has unique features and have had a couple of problems. I'm not sure what "a couple" relates to in terms of actual recalls, incidents or fatalities (and I'm not trying to trivialize them either) but I don't think these problems are unique to this company. How did people react to the Vigil issues? What about the CYPRES' issues? I would be more inclined to agree with you if they'd had the same issue a number of times, claimed they'd fixed it and then people had died. But in this case, we don't even know that for sure. I'd like to see the company given the chance to examine the gear (not sure that's even valid at this point given the time that has passed), make them do that under supervision if there's some suspicion about their ethical leanings. At least give them the chance to check the device logs and condition. The second SB showed a recall for the housing of the cutter, that was not identified as the issue here so I think it's unfair to say that Avaicom has had their chance. They've had issues and, ostensibly have fixed them. This may be a new issue that they need to resolve. As described by the PIA, there were issues with the condition of the rig and the state of the reserve system was unknown prior to this event. Are we really happy to just blame the cutter/AAD and ignore the other factors (this is not a rhetorical question)? Isn't it the HC manufacturer who decides where the cutter goes?

Man made wind?

http://www.pia.com/piapubs/ServiceBulletins/TEXASUSA211.pdf According to the PIA report, the rig in question wasn't entirely in order, at least, sufficiently in my mind to cast doubt on effectively shutting down a company. On top of this, according to Aviacom, they haven't been permitted to check the unit in question and therefore are unable to come to any conclusions or most importantly to a resolution. I think it's fair to say that if some issue is found with the cutter then (at least for me) a full recall and switch to new cutter is just about all that would allay any concerns with the Argus. Until Aviacom has had a chance to inspect the offending cutter and system then I think a lot of this talk is pretty harsh. The other incidents were found to be related to the 2007 cutter sequence which resulted in a recall (and subsequently fruitless) test. The cutter in question is a later model that doesn't fall inside the previous recall so it seems pretty poor form to me that Aviacom shouldn't be given the opportunity to test and at least a little time to work out the issue, especially in light of some of the issues with the rig reported in the PIA report. I don't mean that the units should be considered safe until then, just that they currently do anything about the issue. As for why different rules should apply to different manufacturers, I don't believe we're talking about apples and apples here. The Vigil 2 issues are not a death sentence (although they could be), the Argus issue is a little more directly connected to an issue and could result in a state which is unsolvable and likely fatal. I do not own an Argus, I own a Vigil 2. I would jump without an AAD (if I had to). I haven't considered buying a CYPRES after any of the incidents in discussion.

Then - ordinal: "then it happened!" / "if you're going to have poor grammar then at least spell things correctly." Than - preference: "rather than do another zoo dive, can't we track?" / "I think the velo 84 is better than the spectre 190 for you because you have mad skillz."

I notice the spelling mistakes too but sometimes they're better spelled wrong. Like a recovery ark - are we collecting animals for that ark? I thought that the OP wanted someone help them spell "sanity" from the title, maybe using the correct capitalization would have helped too.

Thank you Captain Irony, you've almost done us a great service again.

I read an article somewhere (I'll see if I can find a link) talking about this phenomenon and a scientific study into it. The theory was (IIRC) that what happens is that the brain becomes aware of more information or more detail than is normal and based on previous experience, the amount of information available makes us perceive that more happens in the same amount of time. I believe the theory was somehow related to some autistic people who always perceive everything. To rephrase, in every day life, we filter a lot of the little things out and get used to x amount of data in a space of time. In high stress situations, we become aware of the extra information (i.e the filter is removed) giving us the impression that more time has passed than actually has. I jumped on Saturday and felt so uncurrent, it seemed to be over so quickly, it's interesting how we perceive time as a flexible thing depending on our state of mind.