peek

They reported that the buckle was unreachable due to the position of the jumper's body.

An experienced jumper forgot to take off his seatbelt and was hanging for a short time outside the aircraft until a quick thinking friend cut the seatbelt, whereupon he fell clear of the plane. Fortunately the remaining assembly was around the left leg strap and did not interfere with pilot chute deployment. Aircraft was a C206U with right side cargo door. Jumper was sitting on bench seat next to pilot, facing rearward. I asked him later if he didn't feel the seatbelt tighten as he got closer to the door, but he said he did not. The seatbelt does not have much slack in it. The owner/operator/pilot gave a nice post-incident briefing to everyone. The jumper did the right thing and bought the destroyed seatbelt. (Of course he took it to the bar that night and used it as a conversation piece to accompany his "no-shit-there-I-was" story to the local gals.) Please remind everyone to take off their seatbelts at the altitude recommended by drop zone policy. It's easy to forget. (The times I have forgotten I wasn't anywhere near the door.)

Would you care to explain? (Or to perhaps fill out your profile?)

Another interesting note for those of you who think that a particular pack job will necessarily open off heading... I jumped a friends canopy once that was roll packed, and my awareness that day was such that I noticed all of the folds come unfolded and the canopy turn to the orientation that gave me an on-heading opening. It was really interesting. Why this can often happen is that your body has more mass and does not turn as easily as the canopy, so the canopy is more likely to orient itself to your body than the opposite situation.

Thank you!

Larry, a "stack" pack, once folded, is NOT 90 degrees off heading, but is nearly as symmetrical as a "pro" pack. A "roll" pack on the other hand, needs to do a number of turns while unfolding to be on heading. Knowing which "flat" pack people are refering to is needed. Unfortunately, nearly everyone uses the name "flat" for anything that is flaked out on the ground!

Once again.... To which "flat" packing style are you referring? http://www.pcprg.com/packing.htm

Perhaps some of the naysayers of the WFFC will take notice your statement and quit using information they remember from the 1990's to scare novices away from going to the WFFC! The WFFC has been reflecting skydiving in general for quite some time now, that is, a general decline in the activity of experienced jumpers. Some more local boogies may be increasing in attendance, and for good reason. Travel is more expensive and nearly every DZ has a decent turbine aircraft. But the WFFC is special, and there is a lot of fun to be had there.

Carol was a - - great S&TA at local drop zones over the years - great instructor - great Coach Course Director - great professional educator - a great WFFC volunteer We are going to miss her.

A national organization might create a rating that tries to insure that a skydiver teaching the basics of freefall and canopy control has a reasonable idea of how to do that safely. That is the intent of the USPA Coach rating (as far as I know and as far as I have heard it discussed.) As to whether the rating needed to be created after essentially doing away with the USPA Jumpmaster rating, well, that is an entirely different discussion. :) I guess it depends on what you mean by "properly" maneuver in freefall. If you are talking about freefall skills as related to formation skydiving and competition, well, it would be best for a novice skydiver to go to someone like a Skydive U coach or course. But most student (unlicensed) skydivers are simply in need of someone to teach them how to learn/improve their skills and to be safe. A related comment: I know that there are a lot of people out there that think that student skydivers should have the very best skills training available in order "not to learn any bad habits", (one of the ways I have heard it put.) But if we don't allow students to do some jumps during their student training that are simply fun, and where they aren't required to try to perform to some standard, I think we are at risk of losing some students because they aren't having much fun.

Hey, all of those look pretty good. I'll be able to use those, thanks!

If you can do that then the whole skydiving instructional community can benefit, so please post anything you feel like creating. If you are talking about a video or picture of a model of a skydiver in a tunnel complete with smoke showing the burble, then, ..... wow. Visualizing turbulence under canopy would be more difficult, but anything you do that can help people understand that would be great too.

??? Because I don't have a science book with a picture like that.

Maybe not in that much detail, but yes, I tell students that if the wind picks up and they are not making forward progress, or are even backing up, that sliding sideways (crabbing) may very well get them (or even back them up) to a better place to land.

I am in need of a line drawing of a skydiver with a pilot chute in the burble. (Ideally a student with a spring loaded "hot dog" style pilot chute, and with the pilot chute upside down or sideways.) Second choice would be a skydiver with the wind flow and burble drawn as lines. Third choice would be a good picture. I have been using an example of "the burble" by telling people it's like the picture in their science book showing the wind flow around an object, but I am finding fewer people that have seen such a picture.

That's one of the more innovative ideas I have heard for a while! I'm sure you are aware of the limitations of it, but hey, sounds like fun. And I think it could simulate simple things like turns OK. What you might have fun doing is taking a non-skydiver and show them how to do turns to see how quickly it lets them learn.

Sigh.... Another one of the WFFC's coolest load organizers gone. I'm glad I got to see him at WFFC 2006. I knew he was ill, but it still doesn't make it easier.

A skydiver maintaining his gear during the winter months, cool! I can't imagine it shrinking that much in so few jumps. I have never experienced that. If concerned about this, a person could just make sure the amount of line fingertrapped inside is long enough so that it could be re-fingertrapped when it get shorter.

If you are refering to an original PD Sabre (not Sabre 2) you might want to start here: http://www.pcprg.com/hardop.htm Some of the responses you have gotten so far are just astounding. I was just saying to myself a while back that it seems like it it fortunately now common knowledge about how to change a Sabre's opening characteristics for the better, but apparantly not.

A guy I know somehow got a copy of this video because he was at the DZ and asked for it. I think the guy doing the video had second thoughts later and told him to not make it public. Only a few of us have seen it since he had it. I'm really glad it is now public. It is important for people to be scared shitless by this type of thing. It is my (unverified) understanding that the pilot had sufficient oxygen, but that the jumpers only had about 10% of the flow they needed.

Oh, my, I certainly did not intend it to be considered a "thesis", and that is why I called it a "white paper". I'm not bitter, I jump every weekend, and have a lot of fun! It's the whining I hear so often that makes me comment in this manner. I adapted quite well to the decline, but it is a lot of work. Thanks for the comments.

That's correct. The reasons for the decline are well known and have been discussed by many people during the last few years, but the suggestions are mine. I have not presented anything in this writing as a researched fact, else I would have supplied data. One of the definitions of a "white paper" that I found was a writing describing particular issues in an industry and suggestions for dealing with them. I think that is what this paper has done. And as I replied to someone earlier in this thread, perhaps the "research group" in my bio is confusing. This paper is not related to the technical research I do on parachutes. My apologies to all if that is how you interpreted it. As far as professionalism, well, if you can make a professional living doing it, great! But the industry of skydiving does not owe a living to anyone. They must work at it, and for those not willing to do that, perhaps another career is in order.

An update. At the PIA Symposium I gave to a number of people a paper copy of the paper, but only a few had time to read it and comment at the Symposium. An addition to the reasons for decline would probably be what I learned from a graph of USPA membership that Chris Needels, USPA's Executive Director, made for various presentations at the USPA BOD meeting and DZO Conference. It showed that although the number of young members (expected?) and older members (retirement, empty nest?) is increasing ever so slightly, that the people in the middle age groups which contain the majority of members, are declining.

In my opinion, quite possibly! I recall a number of years ago when I had been doing a lot of sit flying. We did an AFF jump where the exit didn't go as planned. I was thrown into a sit position, and it felt so comfortable that I didn't do anything for several seconds, and did not feel an urgency to do so. When I later saw the video, all I could say was, "Dude, get face-to-earth and back to your student!"

Travis, thanks for your comments. I don't consider it a "scholarly" paper, but rather an informal paper for skydivers. I must admit the style changes when I go to the "Suggestions" section, and this has be disconcerting to a number of people. Please keep in mind that most of the things described in the "problems" sections are not just my opinion, but have been discussed by many people of many ages. And also, if skydiving is good for you, and you see none of these problems where you are, then great! In that case please disregard the paper.