Super Caravan Seating

Airplanes are a lot like people–individual (sometimes ridiculously so) in their needs and tolerances. For example, you can safely get away with sitting far back in the cabin of the Super Otter, but not so much in the Super Caravan. This is the reason for a recent policy change in how we load the Super Caravan here at Spaceland (seating arrangement).

Compared to the Otter, it’s much easier to overload the tail of the Caravan when boarding because the airplane is already more tail-heavy even when empty. As a result, putting too much weight in the tail, or even the right amount of weight too far back in the cabin, can actually tip the airplane backward, crashing the tail to the ground and taking the airplane out of service until the tail is repaired. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat! We want to fly the plane and you want to jump it!

In our Super Caravans, everyone should sit facing aft when boarding, whether you’re on a bench or on the floor. This puts the heaviest part of your body (torso and rig) further forward, which is a better balance for the weight. No more than four people may sit on the floor at any one time, and we will no longer allow anyone to sit on the cargo shelf aft of the door for taxi, takeoff, and landing. One person, maximum, may move to this shelf after reaching 1500 feet of altitude.

Please see the seating diagrams below for a visual of how the aircraft should be loaded:

Caravan seating diagram (18 people)
Seating configuration with the copilot seat facing forward (no jumper in this seat), 18 jumpers max. Caravan graphic by East West Aircraft Sales.

 

Caravan seating diagram (19 people)
Seating configuration with the copilot seat removed (one jumper in this area), 19 jumpers max

Also, when loading, don’t crowd into the area aft of the benches while one or two jumpers make their way up to the pilot. Balance is just as important as total weight, so let several people get seated on the forward benches before piling into the back. This will also help reduce the risk of tipping the plane.

So to recap:

  • 18 jumpers max, 19 only if the copilot seat is removed.
  • All jumpers face aft for taxi, takeoff, and landing.
  • Up to 7 jumpers per bench, 4 jumpers max on the floor at any time.
  • No sitting on the cargo shelf until above 1500 feet, then ONE jumper may sit here

Please help us spread the word! If you see people sitting in the wrong place in the Caravan, help educate them about this policy.

Side note: You will notice there are no longer seat belts on the cargo shelf. It’s a good rule of thumb when getting into any jump plane to note that if there’s not a belt there, you’re probably not supposed to sit there. 

If you have any questions, please ask one of our pilots, instructors, or managers at the DZ. See you soon!

Skydive Spaceland Military Transition Program

Skydive Spaceland Military Transition Program

At Skydive Spaceland, we love our active and retired military service men and women! We greatly appreciate your service to our country, and we’d like to welcome you to our training program to transition military-trained skydivers to the civilian skydiving world. This program is now available at all Skydive Spaceland locations—Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Ga.; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; San Marcos, Texas; and Clewiston, Fla.

The Skydive Spaceland Military Transition program builds on the skydiving training received in the military and qualifies jumpers for their United States Parachute Association A (basic) license in as little as three jumps (if HALO training has been completed with a ram-air parachute). This license will let you skydive anywhere in the country after completing our transition program, which is based on the very successful Skydiver Training Program used at all Spaceland drop zones. Skydive Spaceland is the busiest civilian skydiving school in the country.

Transitioning skydivers will learn about:

  • Civilian skydiving gear
  • Emergency procedures in case of malfunctions
  • Advanced canopy handling techniques
  • Spotting the aircraft
  • Stable freefall body position and maneuvers
  • Group freefall skills

The transitional training will be tailored to each individual’s needs, as military jumpers will have a wide range of skydives and experience. Transition skydives are $199 each and include everything needed for the jump–ground training, skydive, gear rental, and instructor–with no hidden fees. They can also be bought in 2-packs for $370 (saving $28).

Spaceland’s student/transition rigs are state-of-the-art systems including modern ram-air parachutes (Performance Designs Sabre2/Navigator mains and Performance Designs reserves), Sun Path Javelin harness/container systems, and Cypres automatic activation devices. Gear is available for rental after the transition training is completed, and we have a full-service gear store run from our Houston location to sell all civilian skydiving gear a skydiver needs.

All of the Spaceland drop zones have well-maintained grounds; properly maintained, upgraded turbine aircraft; state-of-the-art, high-capacity facilities; and professional instructors with experience transitioning military jumpers to the civilian skydiving environment. All locations also offer our free Transitions program on weekends, in which jumpers with less than 100 skydives can get free small-group coaching from USPA-rated coaches regardless of where they graduated.

To begin the Skydive Spaceland Military Skydiver Transition Program, please contact your preferred location for scheduling. Make sure to bring your skydiving logbook and certificate of HALO completion if you have one. We look forward to flying with you!

Weekdays Rock for Skydiver Training (STP)!

Weekends are definitely the most popular days for our Skydiver Training Program–of course, because that’s when most people are off work! However, as you might know we are open 7 days a week. If you have any availability to jump on weekdays, you might enjoy weekday skydiving training even more! Why?

  1. Overall slower pace of business gives you plenty of time to prep each dive thoroughly, with extra time if you need it.
  2. More instructor availability than weekends, during which increased business may delay the time you get to start jumping until after earlier arrivals are done jumping.
  3. More rig availability (usually) compared to weekends when more people are jumping.
  4. Generally, we shut down earlier on weekdays, leaving plenty of time to hang out and get to know the staff and weekday fun jumpers after jumping.
  5. Plenty of time to learn about other things between loads or during weather holds, such as packing, gear purchasing, and rigging.

Come on out and fly with us during the week, and let us know when you’re coming by contacting your instructor or calling manifest at 281-369-3337. We want to make sure we have enough instructors for everyone, so let us know if we need to call in instructors who might be taking the day off. (Hint: They are more than happy to have the extra work!)

Blue skies and happy training!

Breakoff Series Part 3: Video Takes the Center, High

It’s a super cool shot to get when you’re flying outside video above a skydiving formation–that shot when the outside camera flyer (who is filming the jump without being a part of the formation) drops into the center as the formation breaks away, probably turning in place to watch everyone track far and fast before deploying.

It’s a great shot, that is, as long as everyone is really tracking far and fast. On many occasions, outside camera flyers have had near misses with the people they were filming on deployment. Most of these near misses occur when the camera flyer doesn’t deploy at breakoff altitude, but instead sucks it down to the group’s pull altitude for whatever reason (there isn’t a really good one), and one or more of the formation flyers short tracks and has a 180-degree turn on opening. Or perhaps the group breaks off low, the videographer pulls low because the group broke low, everyone short tracks because they’re low, and now we’re perfectly set up for collisions on opening.

It’s easy to blame the formation flyers in this scenario–hey, remember the videographer takes the center? But the videographer bears responsibility here as well, because all he or she has to do to (usually) avoid this traffic is to pull at the planned breakoff altitude. The formation flyers should have planned at least 1500 feet of altitude or around 9 seconds (when belly flying) to track away from the center, so by the time they deploy they should be around 1500 feet below and several hundred feet away laterally from the camera flyer.

With this scenario, the only way the camera flyer should have any traffic issues with their group on deployment is if:

  • The videographer has a canopy malfunction/slow opening, and
  • Someone short tracks or tracks poorly, and
  • The short tracker has a turn on opening that puts them flying back to the center.

It would be a rare skydive for all three of these things to occur together.

For the formation flyers (belly or freefly)–always be aware that your outside camera flyer (or anyone else) could have a malfunction or off-heading opening on every jump. Break off on time on every jump, know where you are over the ground while you’re tracking, and after deploying, continue to fly your breakoff radial away from your group’s center until you’ve accounted for all of the canopies in your group and determined that no traffic problems exist.

Lastly, if your breakoff radial out of your skydive has put you tracking up or down line of flight, veer away from that direct line a bit if it is safe (i.e., not putting you too close to someone in your group), or consider shortening your track a bit to avoid running under or over groups ahead of or behind you. After opening, fly off the line of flight and account for the canopies of the group before or after you, whichever is closest, before flying up or down line of flight.

For the videographers–Know the group’s breakoff plan and pull on time, in the center, at the planned breakoff altitude, every time. If the formation flyers break off late, don’t let them suck you into their problems. Don’t feel bad about pulling on time even if they’re still turning points, because there is no good reason to get down in the mix with the formation flyers. Some of these situations have occurred because the videographer was concerned about opening high and landing off due to bad spots and/or being off the wind line, but keep this in mind: Your risks of injury or worse from canopy collisions are far higher than those of landing off. You know how to land a parachute safely and you learned about landing off in the first-jump course, but no amount of skill will save you from injury due to collision. Use your skills (and your brain) to AVOID the collisions. Don’t let concerns about landing make your breakoff and deployment more dangerous; minimize each risk in order.

Be safe out there!

PS: We recommend that all skydivers wear audible altimeters–videographers included.

Video

Please see this video showing one example out of many skydives that led to the writing of this article.

Have you had a close call with (or as) an outside videographer? What did you learn from it?

Breakoff Series Part 2: Flat Tracking

Tracking away from other skydivers well is one of the most vital survival skills a skydiver can have. No matter what kind of freefall skydive you do, unless it’s a Mr. Bill or a solo, you will be tracking to achieve horizontal separation from the other people you are skydiving with before deploying your parachute. Failure to track well and straight can result in collisions with other skydivers as you deploy, with potentially fatal consequences.

For these reasons, tracking well and straight is also an absolute requirement to do larger-way skydives. Big-way organizers will cut you from the jump if you can’t track, and sometimes you’ll get invited just because you can.

Tracking is a skill we may think we have when we graduate from the Skydiver Training Program, because we had to do it properly to pass the upper levels, right? However, just like most other skills you learned as a student, the track you learned in the program is only a starting point. As you jump more and more, you should continue to work on tracking better (flatter and farther) on every jump. Let’s talk about what that means.

What’s a Flat Track?

Compared to the delta track you learned as a student, a flat track is one where you fall slower and move forward more rapidly (a flatter glide slope). In the same amount of altitude (i.e., from breakoff to deployment altitudes), a skydiver tracking flat will gain more horizontal separation from the center of the formation than someone in a steeper delta dive.

Delta track vs. flat track
Delta track vs. flat track

Why Flat Track?

Simply because it will save your life. The goal of breakoff and tracking is to get as far as possible away from those mofos you’ve been flying with so you can all deploy your parachutes in clean air. It has often been said that you have no friends below breakoff, and this is very true! If you’re close to others horizontally, if the low jumper pulls (or if the high jumper cuts away), the high jumper who’s still in freefall can fall through the low jumper’s canopy as they decelerate. Or an off-heading opening between jumpers who are near each other horizontally can result in a canopy collision/wrap. None of these scenarios carry high expectations of survival. Particularly with highly loaded canopies, you might be surprised at how much ground they can cover just after opening, even with the brakes stowed.

Not one of us is immune to a collision based on experience or time in the sport; only through good breakoff plans, constant awareness of others around us, and good tracking technique can we reduce our risks of collisions during breakoff and deployment.

Flat Tracking Technique

You may ask, “If flat tracking is so awesome, why didn’t I learn it as a student?” Excellent question! Most students are not taught a super flat track because it is a less stable body position with a higher center of gravity, and thus harder to master. As a student, if you are able to break off, track straight, and pull on time, you will pass the tracking requirements.

The student delta track maintains a good arch, legs straight with feet slightly apart, and arms swept back in a triangle shape with your body. When you transition into this body position, you may feel that you’re covering a lot of ground because you can feel and hear the increased wind noise. However, a significant part of this acceleration is downward, which doesn’t help out your horizontal separation goals at all.

 

Delta track
Delta track

In comparison, a flat track body position has the legs tight together and straight (with toes pointed), front of the body completely straight to very slightly de-arched, and arms tight to your sides. You are turning your body into a single efficient wing with more lift, and as such it should have smooth, straight lines. In this body position, you will fall slower than your normal neutral belly position and achieve significant forward movement.

Flat track technique
Flat track

It takes time and practice to master this position and be able to maneuver this position as needed. Because it is less stable, a minor issue like a dropped shoulder can cause a barrel roll right at the time it’s most inconvenient. As you work your way into this position, do it gradually over many jumps to maintain safety. Don’t punch into a new body position all at once at breakoff! Start with the track you know, and then work on making it ever more effective as you are able by:

  • Gradually straightening your legs further, locking your knees, and bringing your legs together.
  • Bringing your arms back tight against your sides, palms down.
  • Thinking of de-arching slightly (which will probably just put you in a flat body position, which is great). Think of pushing your straight legs down, parallel to the ground, and hanging your upper body just below them. It should feel like an ab crunch, and if you did it for an entire full-altitude skydive you’d probably be sore in the morning.
  • If you need to adjust your heading in this body position (say, to avoid someone tracking too close to you when you have space on the other side), you can do so by ever-so-slightly banking a shoulder in the direction you want to turn.
  • Remember your priorities at breakoff: Check altitude, pick a good heading, extend legs, then sweep your arms back.

Once you achieve this effective tracking body position, use it and refine it on every skydive. If you think your flat track is good enough… it probably isn’t! Never stop working on your track, because it certainly can’t hurt and it WILL save your life.

Anyone Can Flat Track

We sometimes see heavier jumpers tracking lazily because they think they can’t track well with their body type. We also sometimes see lighter jumpers track lazily because they figure their long limbs and light weight mean they are guaranteed to track well. Neither is true! Regardless of your body type, you can probably track a lot flatter than you think by using these techniques. I’ve seen many a lightweight jumper get passed up by heavier jumpers who tracked with better technique.

Also, large-framed jumpers have some advantage in that their wide shoulders have a lot of surface area to generate lift.

Caveats

I have three points of caution regarding this effective tracking position:
  1. If you don’t know where everyone from your group is at breakoff, make sure you turn, then check in front of you before blasting off away from the formation. It won’t do anyone any good if you track into someone who was trying to get back into the formation just before breakoff.
  2. You can cover a lot of ground with this body position. As such, if at breakoff you are oriented directly up or down line of flight towards other groups, especially if you have a high breakoff altitude, you may end up in other groups’ airspace. Consider tracking not quite as hard as you are able, or divert your tracking heading off line of flight if that doesn’t interfere with other jumpers in your group.
  3. Maintain awareness of other skydivers in all directions as you track. Especially on big-way skydives, jumpers may be in all of those directions and small adjustments will help you gain even more separation from them. Be able to track while scanning in all directions.
You will never know how many incidents you avoided by tracking well–and that’s A-OK. See you later!

 

 

Breakoff Safety Series

Breakoff after a skydive

As skydivers who want to skydive again (and again, and again…), we tend to pay attention to the highest risk areas for our skydives to make them as safe as possible. We learn as students how to fly and land our parachutes safely, and we take canopy courses to get even better at it. We learn stable body positions for deployment, how to maneuver safely around other skydivers, how to determine the safest exit order for a plane full of skydivers, and how to find out how much time we should leave between groups to avoid freefall and deployment collisions. We also learn how to separate from other jumpers at breakoff to clear our airspace and safely deploy our parachutes.

Yet it seems the last item–breakoff and tracking–is becoming more and more neglected. For example, in a recent month at Spaceland Houston, we saw no less than five freefall near misses on breakoff from angle and tracking dives, one actual canopy strike by a jumper still in freefall, and numerous other close calls between jumpers in the same group as they deployed their parachutes (and those are only the ones I heard about). Some of these issues involved relatively inexperienced jumpers, while others involved highly experienced jumpers; thankfully, no one was hurt.

What’s happening? Is Mercury in retrograde? Are we teaching the wrong information? No and no. The simple fact is that as fun-loving humans, we tend to focus on all the cool stuff we want to do during our freefall much more than on the somehow less exciting time-to-save-your-life part at the end. But if we don’t start paying more attention to that save-your-life-part, there may not be another opportunity for the fun parts. Let’s work on creating safe breakoff scenarios so we don’t put ourselves in needlessly dangerous situations, and keep ourselves and our friends out of the incident reports.

Over the next few weeks, look for a series of articles on different safety aspects of breakoff and tracking, starting with this updated article on planning breakoff and tracking.

  1. Part 1: Planning Breakoff and Tracking
  2. Part 2: Flat Tracking
  3. Part 3: Video Takes the Center, High

Breakoff Series Part 1: Planning Breakoff and Tracking

Breakoff after a skydive

Revised August 2015

Before you hop in the plane for your next jump, here’s some food for thought on safety: Plan your breakoff and tracking just as carefully as you plan the freefall part of your jump. This part of the jump is often neglected because it comes after “the good stuff,” but it is at least as important to your survival as your other freefall objectives, if not more so. Remember you don’t have any friends below breakoff, so get away from those people! Your objective is to get as far away from your group horizontally as you can, so you all have clear columns of air in which to deploy your parachutes and deal with any malfunctions.

Let’s plan the dive and dive the plan. Whatever you’re going to do for most of your freefall, make sure you have these bottom-end basics in mind.

  1. Plan enough exit separation from previous groups to give your group plenty of room to open in clear airspace. If you aren’t sure how much time to leave, check our Safety Stand information on today’s winds and thereby the recommended exit separation. If you are still not sure how much time to leave, ask an organizer or instructor.
  2. Plan an appropriate breakoff altitude that will allow everyone in your group enough time to track away from each other into clear space for deployment. Allow at least 1500 feet between breakoff and deployment altitude of the highest-pulling jumper. At belly speeds, this gives everyone about nine seconds minimum to turn away from the formation, track to achieve separation, then slow down to initiate deployment. Groups with less experienced jumpers or larger groups may want to give even more time to track away.
  3. Know which direction you will track from your fellow jumpers from any given point in the dive. If your group is very small and you have a large “piece of sky” for escaping others in your group, track away from the line of flight. (You knew which way that was before you exited, right?)
  4. Dirt dive breakoff from each planned formation so you know where everyone will go regardless of whether you complete all of the planned formations (or start going through them again!). 180° from the center of the formation is the usual breakoff direction for everyone, but if you’re already facing sideways to the formation, for example, you’ll only have to turn 90° to get there. Think about this ahead of time and you won’t be trying to make decisions at the bottom of the skydive as time is running out.
  5. Break off on time. Period. Don’t suck it down to close that last point or get that last geek in; this reduces the time you have to break off safely and it’s often the first link in the chain of events that leads to a collision.
  6. Maintain awareness of other jumpers in your group as you track, so you can adjust your path as needed to maximize horizontal separation.
  7. When you deploy, always scan for other skydivers so you can avoid any that are close enough to require evasive action. Don’t fly up or down the line of flight until you have verified that the groups exiting before and after you have already deployed and are not collision risks. Particularly with today’s faster canopies, you can cover a lot of ground even before you unstow your brakes, reducing your margin of safety if you’re flying towards other jumpers.

As always, if you have any questions, just ask one of our instructors or organizers. Happy skydiving, and stay tuned for part 2 on flat tracking!

Red Light, Green Light, No Light? 

Skydiving aircraft door lights
Always make sure the green light is on before exiting the aircraft.

Quick! What do you do if you are on jump run, the green light has been turned on, and then the green light goes out (either the red light comes back on or the green light simply turns off)?

  1. Assume the light is broken and proceed with your climbout and skydive.
  2. Flip the spotting switch left and right quickly to let the pilot know the light is out, then climb out and exit after waiting the appropriate amount of time after the group ahead of you.
  3. Abort your climbout, help any jumpers who have already climbed out to get back in, then look for an explanation/further instructions from the pilot.
  4. If jumpers are already floating outside the aircraft, that group should continue their climbout and exit, but later groups should not climb out and they should await further instructions from the pilot.
  5. You’re supposed to look at the light before exit?!

In an aircraft full of skydivers standing up and moving around as they prepare to exit, the door and exit lights are the quickest, simplest ways for the pilot to communicate with jumpers by the door. At Spaceland we have the red light to tell us to open the door and check for spot and traffic, and green light when the pilot says it’s OK to exit.

If that green light goes dark and/or the red light comes on, the following groups should not exit! The pilot is telling you that he or she believes it is no longer safe to exit. The problem could be clouds, a spot that’s getting too long, or even an air traffic problem such as another aircraft flying into our jump airspace. Yes, we are in fairly highly controlled airspace here, but that does not mean that all pilots talk to air traffic control regularly when flying or respond as quickly as desired if ATC tells them to change course to avoid us. This is even more true in less controlled airspace than ours.

I hope you answered #4 above! If the green light goes dark and/or the red light comes on, if jumpers are already floating outside the aircraft, that group should continue their climbout and exit, but later groups should not climb out and they should await further instructions from the pilot.

Once climbouts have stopped, close the door to reduce noise and communicate with the pilot to discover the reason for the aborted jump run and what will happen next. The pilot will either look back to communicate with the first group out directly or pass that communication on to an instructor or experienced jumper up front to relay to the first group out. Jumpers not essential to that line of communication should sit back against the walls and stay quiet until communication is complete.

The pilot has more information about weather and other aircraft than the jumpers in the back, so for everyone’s safety we need to be aware of this vital communication from him/her and respond accordingly.

Blue skies and fly safe!

Skydivers Set Three State Records in Two Days at Skydive Spaceland Atlanta

Women’s large formation, first point

Skydivers set three state records for parachutists at Skydive Spaceland Atlanta in Rockmart July 11-12, 2015. The jumps occurred during the newly opened skydiving center’s first Sisters in Skydiving event for female skydivers.

Women make up about 20% of the licensed skydiving population in the United States, and events like this aim to bring them together for camaraderie and fun. This particular event focused on coaching and mentoring female skydivers, but it also enjoyed enough talent to set two state records for formation skydiving in the female category and one in the general (male and female category). According to the United States Parachute Association, no records had been officially set in Georgia in these categories.

Women’s large formation, second point

On Saturday, July 11, nine women from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina built an all-women formation (flying belly-down) over Skydive Spaceland Atlanta, then they built a second formation during the same skydive. Thus, the women claimed records for the largest all-woman formation skydive and the largest multi-formation skydive, also called a sequential skydive. Katrina Shows organized the skydive, which included Shows, Christy West, Frankie Davis, Belynda Adams, Erin Boubel, Sam Smith, Alisha Bloodworth, Brianna Palleschi, and Valerie Marvin.

On Sunday, July 12, two women and one man built the largest claimed head-up formation skydive, also known as a sit-flying formation. Sam Smith, Alisha Bloodworth, and Andree Blesgen claimed the head-up formation record for Georgia.

General head-up 3-way

“There was a lot of great coaching going on for various types of skydiving and parachute flight,” said Spaceland’s owner Steve Boyd, who was present to witness the event and records. “The record skydives flew great and we are looking forward to beating these performances in the future!”

Skydiver Training Tip: That First Hop and Pop

Is it about time for your first hop and pop (low-altitude emergency exit simulation) in our Skydiver Training Program? If you’re like most skydiving students, chances are you are more nervous about this jump than most of your full-altitude skydives! The lower exit altitude combined with the 5-second maximum deployment time, and possibly your first time opening the aircraft door, seems like a very tall order when you try it for the first time.

Diving exit
This exit is no different from any other solo diving exit you’ve done, except that you’ll need to be stable and deploying within 5 seconds to pass this level of the program.

Here are 8 tips on how to rock that hop and pop!

  1. Check the winds aloft and discuss the spot with your instructor before boarding. It’s hard to check the spot on jump run if you don’t know where it is.
  2. Be prepared to open the door. Chances are good that your instructor/designated jumpmaster will have you sit by the door and open it especially if it’s your first time (BEER!). At 1500 feet, you’ll remove your seatbelt, check your handles, check that seatbelts are off of the jumpers near you, then get a thumbs up regarding seatbelts from an instructor or experienced jumper near the front of the plane. Only then will you open the door, which is easiest when done from a kneeling position at the center of the door. After reading all of these tips, watch this video on how to open/close the aircraft door.
  3. Keep an eye on the ground while you’re climbing and find the airport early. This will give you practice at recognizing where you are relative to the airport, and give you an idea of how long it will be before you’ll get door and exit lights from the pilot. Your view of the area is best from right in front of the door, so take this opportunity to pick out the usual landmarks and use them to find the dropzone. Ask your instructor/jumpmaster for help if you can’t find it.
  4. Get a good gear check before exit. ‘Nuff said.
  5. Check your handles before exit. ‘Nuff said.
  6. When the door light goes on, put your goggles on if you haven’t already and look outside the plane to check the spot. Don’t just find the airport; figure out if you are in about the right spot relative to it for the day’s winds aloft.
  7. Also lean your head out of the plane to look around and check for other airplanes below you. Checking for traffic is important because while most pilots in our airspace are in contact with Air Traffic Control and they are being routed away from our drop zone, occasionally a pilot will miss the warnings or have a radio problem that keeps them from knowing about us. Aircraft below us can be a major safety hazard, especially if they are below, behind, and traveling in the same direction. Those are the aircraft that are right where you are going when you jump out. If you see an aircraft below you, check with your instructor to see if it really is an issue. You may need to call for a go-around to let that aircraft get out of the way.
  8. Now that you’ve checked the spot, the traffic, and your gear/handles, you’re ready to dive out on green. This exit is no different from any other solo diving exit you’ve done, except that you’ll need to be stable and deploying within 5 seconds to pass this level of the program. On the green light, stand facing out the door with your left foot forward and exit when ready. Leave the airplane by pushing off straight out the door (not upward), left foot last, and with your right side (hip, shoulder, and elbow) higher than your left. This will put the wind on your chest and belly for stable belly flight out the door. Chances are you’ll turn a little with your head down the hill as you exit, and that’s just fine. Deploy your parachute calmly after 5 seconds or less, and you will pass your hop and pop level. If you become unstable/tumbling on exit, sort it out as quickly as you can and remember to pull by 3500 feet whether you are stable or not. The parachute will open into the relative wind, so it may not be directly above you since you aren’t at terminal velocity yet, and the wind is coming horizontally from the prop when you first leave the plane.

After rocking your hop and pop, you know you’re ready to jump safely in the unlikely event of a low aircraft emergency. As always, ask your instructor any questions before your jump. Blue skies!

I Feel The Need for Speed!

Speed skydivingIf skydiving is a strange game of reverse-dodgeball (throw yourself at the dirt ball and try to just miss), then speed skydiving is the upper end of the game. As the fastest sport on Earth, at no other time will the “ball” be coming at you that fast! For neither the faint of heart nor the inexperienced, it is a game of intense mental preparation, alertness and mind-over-body control that can test the mettle of a skydiver with thousands of jumps.

The goal of the speed skydiving event is to turn in the highest average vertical speed through a designated one-kilometer course from 8858 ft to 5557 ft (1000 m). The current world record for speed skydiving is 511 km/h (317.5 mph) That’s almost three times normal belly-fly speeds!

Prerequisites

While there are currently no formal requirements for speed skydiving, I would recommend the following: C license (minimum), 1000 jumps, thorough knowledge of how the gear works (and fails), the ability to hold heading in a head-down orientation, the ability to easily handle off-landings, and good reflexes.

Before You Start: Gear Check

Before you begin to train for speed skydiving, go through your gear with a fine-toothed comb with an eye to making it ultra-freefly friendly. Make no mistake, a premature opening can kill you at these speeds. And your gear has never been tested in this scenario. The manufacturers will tell you that you are going where angels fear to tread.

Velcro is an active enemy in this environment. Take a close look at your gear and ensure that maintenance is two or three steps above adequate. Closing loops should be tight. All tuck tabs and flaps should hold their intended position easily, with little to no tension. Riser covers in particular should be well-seated. Magnetic riser covers have been used, but they are not currently recommended. The pilot chute pud should be in good shape and rest comfortably close to the container.  Under no circumstances should you “bury” the pud inside the pocket. All retaining bands should be in good shape. Failing to use a leg strap retaining band may not cause a major issue, but it will hurt.

Don’t stop with the rig! Also have a close look at your helmet visor for general condition and security of the visor. If a visor comes off at 300 mph, it is a potentially sharp object about to travel the length of your body at high velocity. Afterwards, you get to experience skydiving blind, which is never recommended.

Also choose clothing that is tight and tough. Flapping clothing can and will tear in the force of a 300-mph relative wind.

Audible altimeters (notice the plural) are mandatory. The rules require at least one for safety. The other is to give you key vertical location information like that start of the course, or (more importantly) the bottom of the course. I prefer to set mine just a bit above the bottom of the course and let reaction time handle the difference. I also intentionally set my altitudes 500 feet higher than normal.  You should also consider the higher wind noise in the helmet at these speeds, and get that helmet tight!

In order to prove the speed of your training and competition skydives, you have to be able to accurately measure your velocity. The current international standard requires the use of two L&B ProTracks attached in line with the laterals of your rig. Some competitors are using Lycra pockets sewn to the sidewalls of their main container. A single ProTrack (or similar device) mounted in/on the helmet is not as accurate.

When measuring your speed, there are two things you must keep in mind. First, this event is NOT based on PEAK speed. If your wrist-mounted altimeter says you did a max speed of 284 mph, you are probably running slow. The event is based on average speed in the course, as measured on two devices. Secondly, know that a difference in measurements between the two devices can have a HUGE impact on your actual score (see rules about Out-of-Bounds). You also have to make sure that your devices are set to measure properly. On L&B products (I am not sure about others), you should be set to read TAS (True Airspeed), rather than SAS (Skydiver Airspeed). The latter adjusts for pressure and is totally invalid for this event, but it is the far more common setting.

Airspace Concerns

When you manifest for a load, consider what else is on board. Complicated airspace is a bad idea. The fact is that your mass plus your velocity on a speed skydive make you a true meat missile to other skydivers if you end up in their airspace. Don’t hesitate to scratch from the load if there are lots of different types of skydives going on! Complex jump runs make it very hard to have confidence that people will be where you expect them, and this is critical. At the speeds you want to attain, you can’t see and avoid other jumpers in time. You just have to plan to stay clear and stick to that plan.

I prefer to be out first, and just a bit short. This means that I will sometimes land off the DZ. But that is better than risking a collision. Conventional practices for loading put fast fallers out later because of reduced drift, but a speed skydiver is going so fast that you can quickly pass other skydivers/groups vertically, then slide under them if you’re not falling straight down or during your deceleration flare. Seek advice from the local S&TA and load organizers, and coordinate every speed skydive with them.

Anatomy of a speed skydive

A normal speed run starts with a head-down exit at 13,000 feet (12,500ft is fine for practice); head-down is the fastest orientation possible. The key to a good run is acceleration, acceleration, acceleration.  And this is just the first section of the skydive! On exit, focus on building speed. Getting “off the hill” takes on new meaning, as “the hill” is going to get longer because maximum velocity is much higher than usual.

The key ingredient to the bulk of the skydive is to stay relaxed. Be Zen. If you are tense, you will feel oscillation develop like a student potato-chipping. As you tense up to control the oscillations, they will get worse. If you thought your AFF-I’s were insistent about relaxing, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Think of this oscillation as potato-chipping in a vertical axis. Here is the catch: Your body has to stay relaxed, while your mind is at peak awareness. You have to learn how the air feels at these speeds. If you feel something out of the ordinary (like a main flap opening and slapping against the container) you have to react right now! As you learn how the air feels, you may react to nothing a time or three, but you will figure it out.

The other reason to stay sharp is that when you come to the bottom of the course, you have less than 10 seconds to slow down to less than 150 mph for deployment. From experience, I can tell you that you will feel each and every mile per hour you are over 135-140 as a slap in the crotch and the neck.  Opening at 160 mph is on my “do not do that again” list. While you are doing this, you will need to check your heading and set up for the end of the skydive to take you away from the line of flight.

At the bottom end, your focus goes from “go faster” to “slow the hell down!” First, check your heading and face across the line of flight. As you slow down, you won’t continue to fall straight down. You’ll take that high vertical speed you’ve generated and shift into a fast-fall track to begin bleeding off speed, and this will create very fast horizontal movement. Horizontal speed of 70-100 mph is not impossible after a fast speed run, and this can absolutely put you into other groups’ airspace if you move up or down jump run. I do not recommend immediately flattening to your belly and getting big as a winning strategy. From 250+ mph, that just hurts. Shoulder and finger dislocations are possible. Shift first to a fast-fall tracking position with your shoulders rolled back, then bring your head and shoulders up into a head-high tracking position. Then bring your arms and hands out slowly until you are falling slow enough to fully extend them. Then pour your entire being into maximum deceleration! If you don’t work hard enough at this, you may rest assured that the opening will provide you with instant feedback about your lack of technique. Once the main is open, take the time to actually inspect it, as openings at too-fast speeds can break your parachute.

Now that you are under canopy, check your location over the ground. It is very possible that you are not in a normal opening location. Decide if you can make it back to the DZ quickly. But do NOT fly directly up the line of flight. EVER! If you exited first, you are possibly under the jump run. If you exited last, you almost guaranteed to be under the jump run. As you check airspace, LOOK UP!!! Having freefall jumpers come past you is most definitely in the category of “undesirable.”

Performance Logging

If you want to get better, you are going to have to log. Not the usual stuff, either. Get both ProTracks out and compare the data. Determine if you have gone “out of bounds” (see the rules). Take the time to think over your body position very carefully and in minute detail. Focus on eliminating anything that can cause excess aerodynamic drag. If you had oscillations, it is time for long talk with yourself. You will find yourself spending real time poring over your acceleration curve and trying to figure out how to improve it.

More Info

You can find other good information at www.speed-skydiving.com.

Have fun!

As you pour time, energy, and money into this, remember the idea is to have fun! The main competition in this event is actually with yourself–mastering your body and mind. Triumph will bring you in to the ranks of humans who have gone faster without a vehicle than most will ever go in a vehicle!

Skydiver Training Tip: Finding Your Match

When you get ready to skydive for the first time, you put the ultimate trust in your instructor. You trust that person to gear you up, give you the freefalling time of your life, and deliver you softly back to the real world on the ground. The relationship between first-time student and instructor is an intense one, albeit often short-lived for those who choose to make only one jump.

When you decide to skydive again and start training for your skydiving license, you again put your trust in an instructor to train you to save your life, but now without being next to you at all times. All of our Skydiver Training Program instructors are more than qualified to give you the knowledge you need to skydive safely; many have several thousand skydives and many years of practice skydiving and training students just like you.
With that said, however, not every instructor clicks perfectly with every student. Just like in any other kind of school, some instructors’ communication/training styles will suit some personalities better than others. The good news is that we have several instructors on staff here at Spaceland! So if you feel that your current instructor isn’t quite the perfect match for you, you can request a different instructor who may work better with your personality and needs. It’s very important to your skydiving education and your safety for you to be comfortable working with your instructor, and to be comfortable asking questions for clarification.
Some skydiving students enjoy working with different instructors who all have different perspectives, while others like to stick with the same instructor throughout the program. We will always work with you to provide an instructor who will best fit your training needs, because we want you to succeed in your skydiving goals just as much as you do!
We understand that it can be a little intimidating to ask for a change of instructor; feel free to reach out to our chief instructor in person at the drop zone, via email, or chat with our office staff in person or on the phone (281-369-3337). We will all be happy to help you find your perfect instructor match and watch you soar through the program!

Canopy Traffic: Find Your Place in the Sky

Traffic is a bad word, especially for those of us living in the Houston area! And while we think we can get away from it when we’re flying, the reality is that at any dropzone, and particularly at a busy one like Spaceland, the traffic can resemble downtown Houston rush at its worst. The difference is that if we don’t like what’s ahead of us, we can’t just stop and let things sort themselves out. Parachutes can’t stop until they land, so we skydivers have to manage our position in traffic from deployment through landing to avoid collisions.

When we’re driving down the highway in a pack of cars going 85 mph, we are very, very close to each other, but it works because we’re all going the same direction and at the same speed. Parachute traffic doesn’t have such rigid guidelines for paths and minimum/maximum speed; add the third dimension of altitude and it’s no wonder the canopy pattern can look like a total mess!

SUMMARY

Problems:

  • Closing Speeds
  • Converging Paths
  • Faster Canopies Behind
  • Slower Canopies in Front

Solutions:

  1. Take responsibility for getting in the best place in the pattern order on every skydive, and staying there.
  2. Maintain hyper-awareness of where everyone is under canopy throughout your descent.
  3. Put safe landings for you AND everyone else in the air at the very top of your priority list on every skydive.

There are two major reasons why cars and canopies collide: Closing speeds and converging paths. First let’s look at closing speeds: Just like on the highway, a Ferrari going 40 mph faster than everyone else has a higher risk of catastrophically running into slower vehicles; what would be a bump at similar speeds becomes a crash. With high closing speeds, there is very little time to react if the traffic in front of you doesn’t behave as expected. Flip that on its head and look at it from the other perspective; a slower car in front of a pack of speed demons can cause impressive chaos, especially if it behaves erratically.

This leads us to the next aspect of collisions: Converging paths. We don’t have problems on the road when everyone’s going the same way and staying in their lanes, even if some cars are going much faster. The problems occur when people going the same or different speeds turn towards each other, change lanes, or otherwise get in each other’s way. The problem can be significantly more complex with canopy traffic that can be going in any direction at any time (although hopefully we’re all on a similar page in the landing pattern under 1000 feet!). There is a lot more to watch in the sky than there is even on Houston’s highways, because other people could be coming from anywhere–even from below if you’re descending faster or turning.

The other aspect of converging paths is that essentially, we are all converging on every skydive. We’re spreading ourselves out as we leave the plane, but then flying back towards a landing area that’s nowhere near as big as our jump run.

With more and more canopies filling the skies above dropzones, we need to reduce our chances of canopy collisions by being aware of our ideal place in the canopy pattern and flying to maintain that place. For canopies approaching the same landing area, your place in the pattern is where the jumpers above/behind you are flying at the same speed or slower, and jumpers below you are flying at your speed or faster. Some might call it an “order of go,” and this reduces our chances of a closing speed issue. It’s a loose order given that we are not all aiming for the same pinpoint on the ground such that we are forced to take turns (we do have quite a few acres to land in!), but it is a good guideline to minimize converging canopy paths and closing speeds.

There can be a couple of challenges in getting to that place:

1) Exit order, which is selected to maximize horizontal separation between groups at pull time, may result in faster canopies being placed behind you. For example, freeflyers will exit behind belly flyers, and some of those freeflyers may have more highly loaded, faster wings than the belly flyers (and vice versa!). Also, Skydiver Training Program instructors/tandem videographers who often jump highly loaded canopies will be behind both of these groups.

2) Canopy flight choices are very individual; any one of us can go from being a slow right-lane flyer to a passing demon with a simple turn. We are all flying high-performance canopies that turn and dive easily; one of our instructor likes to say we are all driving Ferraris, but some are in second gear and some are in sixth gear!

As with any problem, there are multiple solutions. Every single skydiver (whether you’re on a fast or slow canopy) should use these strategies on EVERY skydive! If you’re wondering if this is about you… it is. 🙂

Solution 1: Take responsibility for getting in the best place in the pattern order on every skydive, and staying there.

That place will vary depending on what you’re doing and who’s getting out in front of and behind you, and what canopies they are flying. Your job is to get into the place in the order where faster canopies are below/in front of you, and slower ones are above/behind you.

  • Know the canopies that will be in the air around you. This is yet another reason to get to the loading area a good five minutes before your load! Remember that we pick our exit order to maximize horizontal separation between groups at deployment; once that order is set, ask about canopy sizes/wingloadings of the jumpers in the groups before and after you so you can plan the canopy part of your skydive as well as the freefall part. We spend more time under canopy than in freefall, but we tend to plan the canopy part of our jumps much less than the freefall part. For our safety, this needs to change.
    • Slower canopies or lighter wingloadings behind you aren’t likely to be big traffic problems, but a much faster canopy is likely to pass you at some point. If you have a pocket rocket behind you, find out what color it is so you can prepare to look for that canopy in the sky. If it’s near you, let it go by, flying predictably straight and possibly in some brakes to make the pass easier. Don’t forget that kicking your feet lets the other jumper know you see them, which is great to know when you’re passing or being passed! (Kick your legs once or twice while watching the traffic all around you–don’t fixate on the other jumper and forget about everyone else.) It’s better to get that pass out of the way up high than to dive and play so the pocket rocket is forced to pass you at a much lower altitude, leaving you less altitude to recover in the event of a collision. Remember that we are converging on a single property to land, so passing each other closer to the ground generally means all of the canopies from that load are also closer together laterally, with less margin for error.Spiraling and playing with your canopy inputs should be reserved for times when no other canopies are nearby.
    • Jumpers in front of you with slower canopies or lighter wingloadings may pose a traffic problem as well; find out what color their canopies are so you can be aware of those you will most likely pass. Talk to those jumpers and make sure you are both aware of your canopies and colors so you can get yourselves into the right place in the pattern relative to each other. Don’t just swoop past someone close by without warning; people do unpredictable things when they get scared.
  • Once you’re settled into the appropriate spot in the pattern, especially under 1000 feet, stay there! Don’t dive and play and crowd the person in front of you, or float in deep brakes so that you crowd the person behind. Don’t be that guy/girl. :p This requires you to follow the next solution as well.

Solution 2: Maintain hyper-awareness of where everyone is under canopy throughout your descent.

This can’t be over-emphasized! Keep checking the airspace around you every few seconds, because the traffic pattern will fluctuate with people’s wingloadings and canopy flight choices all the way to the ground. The last thing you want is to lose track of someone close to you! Also, we have blind spots behind and below us due to our rigs, so keep checking! As you approach the ground, don’t fixate on the ground or on traffic near you. Maintain awareness of both by using your peripheral vision and scanning fore, middle, and far ground ahead of you, and left and right of your line of flight. Big head movements aren’t necessarily required; but we want to avoid target and traffic fixation, and tunnel vision, to see any traffic problems developing while there’s still time and altitude to fix them.Remember, it takes two to collide but only one to avoid. Also, remember that once your feet touch down, it isn’t over! Look up and around for other traffic landing after you, and collapse your canopy quickly to keep it out of the way of others.

Solution 3: Put safe landings for you AND everyone else in the air at the very top of your priority list on every skydive.

Are you working on accuracy, but someone’s too close? Land somewhere else and work on accuracy on another jump. Or do a hop and pop to work on that with fewer or no other people in the air with you. Or perhaps you’re swooping, and traffic reduces the space you have to do the big turn where and when you want. Remember Rule #1, “Land safe, not close?” Everyone’s safety is more important than your swoop.

On multiple occasions, skydivers considered to be some of the top canopy pilots in the world have collided with others, sometimes with fatal results. No one is perfect all the time, and if we fly very close to others, our margin for error is very small. Let’s increase that margin by knowing when conditions are good for our landing goals and when to bail to plan B. (You do have one, right?!)

I’ve heard it said a few times that parachute landing is a team sport whether you train with your teammates or not. This is so true; we are all in this together, and we need to watch out for our teammates on every jump.

Blue skies and fly smart!

Skydiving? Take Your Phone!

These days, most of us are almost never without our mobile phones. Some even seem to have separation anxiety if they misplace their phones for even a few minutes! 🙂 This week’s tip is good news for the phone-bonded among us, because it’s a recommendation to take your phone with you whenever you skydive.

Why, you might ask? Do I really need to get that last selfie on the plane before exit? That’s just a bonus; the main goal is to give you a way to communicate with manifest if you happen to land off the drop zone. Whether it’s a long spot or a malfunction that led to you landing away from home, we want to know you’re OK! We also want to get an idea of where you are so we can send the cavalry to pick you up quickly. Chances are that we’ll have spotted you, but it is possible that we missed your off landing.

Also, if you do happen to turn an ankle and need help getting home, we definitely want to know that as soon as possible so we can come prepared to help you.

If you’re doing tracking, angle, or wingsuit dives, you know you can cover a lot of ground and out landings are more likely. Phones are required on every jumper for these jumps in particular (see our horizontal flight guidelines for more information).

Before jumping with your phone, please program the following numbers into it:

  1. Manifest: 281-369-3337
  2. Your jump’s organizer
  3. In case of emergency number (ICE)

If you land out and you’re fine, let manifest and your jump organizer know! If you land out and you have a mild injury such as a sprained ankle, let both of us know that too. Lastly, if you’re badly injured, call 911 first and then us.

And if you REALLY want us to pick you up quickly, find your location on your phone’s map application, screenshot that, and text it to your group’s organizer and manifest. 🙂

Keep that phone in a nice, secure zippered pocket (preferably an inside one) until after you land. Traffic management and canopy safety is our #1 priority until we land safely; save the selfies for pre-jump and/or post-landing “OMG, look where I landed!” times.

I know I sure wish I’d had my phone on some of my previous off landings, and the drop zone probably wished the same at the time!

Altitude Awareness: Do You Have It? 

Checking altitude during a skydiveWhat’s the first thing your skydiving instructor has you do after you leave the plane? Check your altitude. Before and after maneuvers, check your altitude. If you don’t have altitude awareness, PULL! Awareness of your altitude is of paramount importance to our survival in skydiving, and we all know it.

And yet we sometimes forget about altitude awareness as we progress as skydivers. We start working on more advanced skills and jumping with other people, and we take our survival skills for granted as we shift our focus to these new, fun things to do. Generally speaking, there aren’t a whole lot of different things that injure and kill skydivers–but loss of altitude awareness is a common factor in many incidents, both in freefall and under canopy.

Altitude awareness is something we must actively pursue throughout every skydive, or we can get surprised. Most of us develop an “internal clock” after doing a lot of jumps from the same altitude, so we have a pretty good idea of when it’s time to break off from the group and when to pull even without looking at an altimeter or hearing an audible altimeter beep. However, this is imprecise and absolutely not something we should rely on! Even if your internal clock for your usual kind of jumping were perfect, several things can make your internal clock wrong by a little or a lot:

  • Exiting from a lower or higher altitude than usual (i.e., hop and pops or lower-altitude helicopter jumps when you usually do full-altitude jumps)
  • Doing a faster-falling type of skydive than usual (for example, sit-flying when you usually belly-fly)
  • Planning to break off and/or pull higher than usual

Altitude Awareness Tools

Since relying on your internal clock can lead you astray, it’s important to develop good altitude awareness habits that will keep you aware on every skydive, no matter what you’re doing. First, let’s look at the altitude awareness tools we have at our disposal.

  • Visual altimeters
  • Audible altimeters
  • Internal clock
  • Your eyes

The first step in altitude awareness is to be aware if your altimeter is working properly. Check your visual altimeter before boarding to make sure it’s turned on (if electronic) and zeroed out, and look at it a few times on the way up to make sure it’s working properly (counting up at about the right rate). If you aren’t sure it’s correct, check it against other altimeters in the plane. If your altimeter readings differ significantly from others’, try to figure out why. Did the calibration knob (if there is one) get bumped? Or are the batteries dying, or is the unit malfunctioning? If you suspect your altimeter is misbehaving, it may be better to ride the plane down or pay extra attention to other methods of estimating your altitude.

Once you know your altimeter is working, it’s a good exercise to check it periodically on the ride up and glance out the window to see what the ground looks like from that altitude to train your eyes. This is also a good time to practice looking around the landscape and identifying where you are relative to the drop zone. Your eyes will generally not be as accurate as a working altimeter, but they can give you a general idea of altitude to compare against your altimeter readings and to back you up in case your altimeter fails. Also, this keeps you aware of your altitude in case of an aircraft problem–since your options and actions will vary with your altitude if a problem occurs.

Comparing eyes to altitude is a fun exercise to do on commercial airline flights as well, as long as you have an in-flight display available to give you accurate altitudes (pressurized cabins cause our altimeters to read incorrectly.

Once you’re on jump run, check your altitude again so you know how high you are exiting. This will also tell you if you are exiting at a different enough altitude from usual to know if your internal clock will be off.

After exiting, continue to check your altitude periodically throughout the skydive. Now is when a different kind of internal clock can help you out–the clock that counts how long it’s been since you’ve checked your altitude. Checking altitude every 10 seconds or so is a good target, and take extra opportunities to check your altitude when they arise. For example, if you’re in a formation waiting on someone to get there, and you’re not doing anything, check your altitude.

After break-off, check your altitude quickly as you wave off and pull; this will tell you if you’re pulling higher or lower than usual. If you’re much higher than planned when you start to pull, hold off until you’re close to the altitude the other jumpers expected you to pull when you planned the dive. This will keep you from opening high underneath or close to someone who’s aiming for the preplanned pull altitude. Plan the dive, dive the plan.

Knowing your pull altitude will also affect how you handle a malfunction. For example, if you are pulling slightly higher than planned, you have a few more seconds to deal with a malfunction. But if you’re lower for some reason, that tells you that you don’t have as much time as usual to sort out any mess over your head before your hard deck.

Once you’re under a good canopy, check your altitude so you know where you saddled out (useful if you have a late malfunction such as a brake line that doesn’t release). If you do have a malfunction and you decide to try to fix it, keep checking your altitude; many malfunctions can burn through altitude faster than you’d expect even if you are flying a lightly loaded parachute. Know your hard deck for a cutaway, and know when you’ve reached it.

As you fly your canopy to the landing area, continue to check your altimeter periodically (while maintaining traffic awareness) so you get to your holding area and fly the landing pattern as planned. Be ready to adjust your pattern if you end up higher or lower than intended at your pattern turn points, and work on developing your eye for altitude while in the pattern. This is especially important to track when you have recently changed canopies or are working on higher-speed landings.

Audible altimeters are fabulous for reminding us about important altitudes such as break-off, pull time, decision altitudes, and pattern altitudes (for some models). However, you can’t check them periodically to see how high you are. They are great back-up devices and should be used as such; don’t rely on them as your only altitude reference.

Altitude is an ever-shrinking commodity as we skydive, and it runs out at various speeds depending on what we’re doing in freefall and how we fly our canopies. Keep track of altitude using all the tools at your disposal until you’re on the ground, and you’ll go a long way towards staying out of the incident reports.

Skydive Spaceland Brings World-Class Skydiving with Texas Hospitality to Atlanta on May 1

Rosharon, Texas (March 31, 2015)–Building on the strong success of two world-class skydiving centers near Houston, Texas, and Miami, Florida, Skydive Spaceland will open a third skydiving center near Atlanta on May 1.

“This is such a beautiful farm property in the Appalachian foothills,” says owner Steve Boyd. “We’re super excited to bring our business here.”

Boyd first opened Skydive Spaceland just south of Houston, Texas, in February of 2000, and the third-generation family skydiving business quickly grew into Houston’s largest, most progressive skydiving center. Spaceland conducts more than 100,000 skydives per year and has hosted major skydiving competitions including the U.S. National Skydiving Championships, and several state, national, and world records for skydiving including a Guinness World Record for most tandem skydives done in a day have been set there. The brand expanded to Clewiston, Florida, near Miami in early 2013.

Located just 55 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta in Rockmart, the latest Skydive Spaceland location is a 60-acre skydiving center that’s currently undergoing a complete remodel in preparation for its grand opening. Brand-new classrooms, restrooms, office, and a newly carpeted parachute packing area will welcome guests in style.

Skydive Spaceland-Atlanta will fly the area’s largest skydiving aircraft, a Twin Otter capable of carrying 23 jumpers to 14,000 feet in just a few minutes. This allows up to 11 first-time skydivers to jump at the same time, unlike small skydiving centers where only a few people can jump together.

Skydive Spaceland-Atlanta will continue the Spaceland tradition of offering one of the world’s strongest and most efficient civilian skydiving training programs, using modern training aids and state-of-the-art equipment in a wide range of sizes to fit most any body type. Open every day but Christmas starting May 1, Spaceland-Atlanta will be able to help skydiving students attain their basic skydiving license in as little as a week. This popular training program draws skydiving students from around the country and the world, many of whom cannot complete skydiving training as efficiently or cost-effectively in their home countries.

To celebrate its grand opening, Spaceland-Atlanta is offering free skydives to licensed skydivers after 2pm on Thursday, April 30 (gear rental not included) and $15 skydives ($10 off the usual rate of $25) for its opening weekend May 1-3 (Friday-Sunday). Tandem skydives for first-time jumpers are currently being offered at a pre-opening special rate of $169, $50 off the regular retail rate, and these can be redeemed for six months from the date of purchase.

“I am super stoked to bring Spaceland’s professional, friendly way of doing things to Atlanta skydivers,” says operations manager Kevin Purdy, a longtime skydiver with 16,000 jumps and 24 years of experience as a skydiver and tandem/Skydiver Training Program instructor.

For more information and to sign up for Spaceland-Atlanta email updates, see http://atlanta.SkydiveSpaceland.com.

What’s Your Wind Limit?

Gusty winds are common at Spaceland and many other dropzones. As an experienced jumper, I have thought a lot about what my personal wind limit is–in other words, when I will sit down even though the dropzone is not on a wind hold. Recently, I made the decision not to jump after watching other fun jumpers and tandems land. Later in the day, the tandems went on a wind hold. I was surprised to see that many newer jumpers flying larger canopies with lighter wing loadings than I have continued to jump that morning and afternoon, even after the drop zone put the tandems on a hold.

Once you graduate from the Skydiver Training Program, you are responsible for determining your own wind limit. What is safe for someone with 100-200 jumps flying a canopy loaded around 1.0 is very different from what is safe for someone with thousands of jumps on a crossbraced canopy. To quote Brian Germain,” …until your skills and knowledge are ready to fly smaller, faster parachutes, you should stay out of the sky until the winds come down. I still haven’t been hurt by a jump I didn’t do.”

There are many questions you can ask yourself and ways to observe the conditions at the DZ that will help you make a safe, informed choice. I often ask myself the following:

  • Are people with more experience than me sitting it out? 
Particularly, are people with thousands of skydives standing down?
  • How are the landings of other people jumping canopies loaded similarly to yours?
  • Are they coming straight down or landing backwards?
  • Are their canopies “breathing” a lot or do you see their end cells folding under?
  • What is the spread between the peak gust and lowest reading on the wind-meter at manifest?
  • Is the wind sock standing straight up and then going limp, or whipping up and down?
  • What is the wind direction, and is it consistent or changing?
  • Are there obstacles near my target landing area that are likely to cause turbulence?

Just because you can jump, doesn’t mean you should. What is your personal wind limit? What do you consider when you decide whether or not it is safe for you to jump?

Factors You Should Consider

How your canopy’s groundspeed will affect your accuracy and landing

Consider the speed of the uppers and the speed of the winds on the ground. If you are on a lightly loaded canopy, you may not “penetrate” into the wind—this means that it may be harder for you to make it back to the drop zone. You will want to pay close attention to your heading on opening so you do not unintentionally fly your canopy downwind of your targeted landing area.

Strong winds also mean that you may have to “crab” the crosswind leg of your pattern, because you will experience a push away from your target while flying this leg of your pattern. You will also need to be ready to see some different sight pictures under canopy: your canopy may be pointing one direction and moving another. Then, on your final approach you may come straight down or go backwards. You will want to be able to plan your pattern in light of these conditions. You will want to avoid flying over any obstacles. If you are getting very little penetration into the wind, you will also want to make sure that you are flying your canopy in full flight—without any pressure on your toggles—until you begin your flare. Preserving as much forward speed as you can will improve your flare, and flying in full flight will reduce your vulnerability to turbulence.

Strong winds will also affect how you land your canopy. When you start your flare, you may start to go backwards. You will need to be prepared to deal with how this may change the speed and depth of your flare—you still need to flare after all—and be confident in your PLF.

As you land and begin to unload your canopy, you will need to be prepared to collapse your canopy quickly using your risers or a steering toggle. Otherwise, your canopy could continue to fly and drag you (and your beautiful rig) across the landing area. Many experienced jumpers have different tricks that help avoid them from getting dragged. Some examples are stepping on your d-bag or canopy and “running around your canopy”. Your mileage may vary, so be sure to develop a method that works well for you. If you make a mistake and your canopy drags you quickly and violently, you may need to disconnect your RSL and cut away your main.

Finally, in the event that you have a bad spot or experience a malfunction, how comfortable are you dealing with all of the above while landing off? You should always be sure to know the outs at the dropzone where you are jumping and consider your ability to land your canopy accurately and safely in an unfamiliar area.

The above are only some of the considerations and skills that go in to deciding if you can fly and land your canopy accurately and safely. Even if the winds are not gusty—just strong—you should be sure to consider whether or not you have the skills and confidence you need to land your canopy in those conditions.

To summarize, here are some questions you should ask yourself before jumping any day where the winds are strong.

  • Will I make it back if the spot is less than perfect?
  • Am I comfortable landing off the drop zone in less-than-ideal landing conditions where I may not be able to see a windsock?
  • How strong is my ability to fly a proper, accurate landing pattern? Am I likely to misjudge the conditions and land on an obstacle if I come straight down? Do I have the skills and awareness necessary to avoid obstacles?
  • Will I be able to pay attention to and account for canopy traffic while landing in strong winds?
  • Are the winds strong enough relative to my wing loading that I could land backwards and if so, do I really want to land backwards?
  • Can I collapse my canopy quickly and effectively or am I likely to get dragged by my canopy?

How turbulence will affect your ability to fly your canopy safely

Many of the factors discussed above are things you can learn to control with canopy coaching and the appropriate level of experience. You may feel that once you have 200 jumps and fly a canopy at a non-student wing loading, you can jump in any conditions you want. If you feel this way, you may either be overconfident or have forgotten the effect that turbulence has on your ability to fly and land safely.

Turbulence created in gusty conditions may cause your canopy to collapse or your end cells to fold under. Obviously, this will impact your ability to fly and flare your canopy. If the “spread” between the peak gust and lowest lull in the wind speed is high, many canopy pilots experience a bumpy ride. Typically, jumpers consider anything over about a 10 mile an hour difference between the average wind speed and the peak gust to be high enough to cause trouble. So, if the winds are 10 gusting to 21, many jumpers will choose to sit down because the air feels “dirty” or “bumpy”. If you watch the windsock and it whips up and down, it is a good indication that the conditions are gusty and bumpy. Often, the best way to determine if the conditions are bumpy on a particular day is to watch other jumpers land. If you are concerned, ask the jumpers who just landed what the conditions were like.

You may also have a bumpy ride if there is mechanical turbulence caused by obstacles near the landing area. As a student, you learned that mechanical turbulence exists directly above, upwind, and downwind of large obstacles. On the downwind side, turbulence may be encountered at a distance equal to at least ten times the height of the obstacle. If you catch mechanical turbulence that causes a rotor, your canopy may speed up and increase its angle of attack. You could experience a sudden drop or surge that makes it feel like your canopy has lost lift. If you experience turbulence close to the ground, you may “drop” out of the sky and you need to be ready to take whatever countermeasures are necessary (if you are at flare altitude, typically stabbing out a flare) to stay under your canopy and also be prepared to PLF.

At Spaceland for example, the hangar is a source of turbulence in the D license landing area when the winds are out of the north and the landing direction is toward the hangar. It’s really easy to catch turbulence off the building if the winds are strong and there is even a slight northern component to the wind—I have made this mistake, been deposited on my butt, and had trouble sitting for weeks. Not worth it!

Finally, gusty or inconsistent winds may also affect your accuracy because your penetration into the wind can change unpredictably throughout the course of your canopy flight. Remember not to fly over anything you do not want to land on and to err on the side of caution when evaluating where to land.

To summarize, here are some questions you should ask yourself before jumping any day where the winds are gusty or the conditions appear “bumpy” for other jumpers. For an excellent technical discussion of the different kinds of turbulence, take a look at this article from Performance Designs.

  • Does my canopy ride feel typically feel “bumpy” on windy or gusty days?
  • Are other jumpers with canopies loaded similarly to mine either sitting out or, if they are jumping, are their end cells rolling under?
  • What direction is the wind out of? Is it out of the North or another direction that is likely to create turbulence near my intended landing target?
  • Am I comfortable jumping in conditions where it may be more difficult to accurately predict where I will land?

Who sits down and who stands up

Watching other canopies land and asking jumpers about the conditions is one of the best ways to evaluate whether or not you feel safe jumping. Of course, you have to ask and observe the right people. Consider the following.

1. Experienced jumpers sit down because they know they can jump on a better day

Many experienced jumpers have jumped in not-so-pleasant conditions. As a result, many of them are totally over it and are much pickier about the conditions they choose to jump in. This usually because they have experienced turbulent conditions either felt unsafe or just determined that it is no fun to land in sketchy conditions. When long-time jumpers are sitting down, it is typically a good sign that the conditions are bad enough that they are not worth the risk of jumping.

2. Experienced jumpers might stand up because they are very experienced canopy pilots on high-performance wings

Some experienced jumpers, however, may choose to jump in a wide range of conditions because they feel it has very little effect on the canopy that they fly. For example, people with thousands of jumps jumping tiny cross-braced canopies are, speaking broadly, less vulnerable to turbulence. They are also very experienced canopy pilots. If you are a beginning or intermediate skydiver on a larger canopy, do not decide you should jump because these kinds of jumpers are still skydiving. If, however, even very experienced pilots are sitting out—take note! The conditions are very likely not the kind you want to be jumping in.

3. Experienced and inexperienced jumpers might stand up because they are very eager to jump on a particular day

Jumpers who are team training or at the drop zone for a record event might choose to jump in conditions that they would sit out if they were fun jumping. Someone who hasn’t jumped in a long time may also choose to jump in borderline conditions. And many inexperienced jumpers may choose to jump in sketchy conditions because they do not know any better or are still experiencing the initial rush of a new hobby. Jumpers of all levels of skill will experience peer pressure to jump when their friends make the decision to jump.

You can make positive safety decisions that will affect your friends. Often, if one jumper on a load decides they do not want to jump in certain conditions, other jumpers who are too afraid to speak up will join that jumper in sitting down. That decision may impact another group’s decisions about whether to jump or not. Choose to be a positive role model. Choose to be conservative. As many an experienced skydiver will tell you, it is best to be on the ground wishing you were in the sky than in the sky wishing you were on the ground.

By Meredith Regan
Reprinted with permission from FlyLikeaGirl.com

Splish-Splash: Landing in Wet Conditions

Ah spring… Green grass, warming temperatures, and RAIN! One of the most common questions we see in our social media news feeds this time of the year is, “How wet is the landing area?” If you have to ask, the answer is usually “underwater.” 😉

Since we’re not too interested in waiting days for perfectly dry ground to skydive, that means we have at least a fair chance of landing in a puddle from time to time. As you might have already discovered, it’s far from the end of the world! However, there are a few things that can help you land more safely and better manage your gear.

  1. Puddles are the last hazard to avoid. Water won’t hurt you unless it’s deep enough to drown in and you can’t swim. Plan your landing pattern to avoid obstacles and people first, puddles last.
  2. Don’t dodge puddles if you’re on final. Since no one WANTS to land in the water, it’s very tempting to turn a little left or right to avoid a puddle when you’re about to land. However, remember two things: One, low turns can hurt you a whole lot more than a little water! Two, other skydivers may be flying near you, and your turns may cause them to turn low to avoid you and thereby risk injury. Not cool!
  3. Water and mud are super slick–be ready to PLF! Whether you’re touching down in a puddle or slick mud (and you know how slick that gumbo mud can be here in south Texas!), chances are very good that you may slip and fall. As funny as it can be for the rest of us to watch others trying to stay on their feet in this scenario, it isn’t unusual for skydivers to sprain ankles trying to stay up. Just like if the ground were dry, always be prepared to PLF if your landing isn’t going as planned.
  4. Once you’re down, hop up quick to get the rig out of the water. If the container soaks in water for any length of time, it will have to be dried before it can be repacked, meaning you can’t jump it again for awhile. And if the reserve container gets soaked, there’s a reserve inspection and repack in your future and that rig is down for even longer. Thirdly, there is the risk that if the reserve container gets very wet, your automatic activation device (AAD, Cypres in our rigs) may have gotten wet enough that it will need maintenance as well–>more potential downtime.This is why sometimes when it is very wet, we’ll put rental gear on hold–more people will get to jump the gear if we wait till it’s a little drier than if all of our rigs end up in the loft waiting to dry and be repacked.
  5. Pick the canopy up out of the water quickly as well. If your canopy lands in standing water, pick it up as quickly as you can rather than waiting until after you’ve removed helmet/goggles, etc. The packers won’t pack a wet canopy, so if you want to jump that rig again soon, pick it up quick to minimize its soaking time! Make sure you have every bit of the gear off the ground before carrying it in, as always.
  6. If your jumpsuit or shoes get significantly muddy, you can hose them off out back by the observation deck or between the hangars.
  7. If your rig gets significantly muddy, it’s usually best to scrape off any clinging mud, then let the rig dry thoroughly before using a brush to knock the rest of it out of the fabric. If you brush it wet, you’re just cramming the dirt deeper into the fabric.
  8. Not sure if your rig needs any special care after a wet landing? Ask one of the packers or instructors for help if you’re not sure how to handle your wet gear.
  9. Bring dry shoes and socks to wear after jumping. Don’t waste your last pair of dry socks and shoes on another water landing, but it sure is nice to have dry feet for the evening and on the way home.

Follow these tips to land safely and manage your gear when jumping in the wet, and remember we have showers in the main restrooms and bunkhouse if your mud landing is truly epic. 🙂

Emergency Exit!

Current weather reports 1000 foot overcast skies… anyone for a hop & pop?

In all seriousness, how low are you prepared to get out of the airplane? Have you thought about what you would do in an emergency since you were a student?

A couple weeks ago I was flying, had just taken off from Spaceland in the SuperVan with a load of jumpers, and after waiting for a lull in the radio traffic I checked in with Houston Air Traffic Control:

Me: “Houston, Jump one foxtrot lima back with you passing through seventeen hundred for fourteen thousand.”
ATC: “Roger Jump one foxtrot lima, ident, and hold at or below two thousand five hundred for crossing traffic.”

Now being that the airplane wasn’t real full and that the SuperVan climbs so fast, my response to comply with the instruction was a pretty quick reduction in power and a push forward on the yoke to level off. The next thing I heard?

Silence.

Seriously, even through my noise canceling headset you could almost hear a pin drop from what I’ve come to expect as a noisy group of people chatting about anything and everything, and expressing their energy and excitement for the upcoming jump.

After about two minutes the traffic had passed and we resumed the climb, at which point a rather more subdued than normal tandem instructor asked me “Traffic?” and seemed rather relieved for me to nod yes, knowing it wasn’t a real emergency.

The point of this is that I’ve been thinking, “How many people consider what they will do in an emergency?”

What is your lowest exit altitude?

There is no one answer for this question as an experienced jumper. There are the numbers we teach in our STP program, but for jumpers who have different gear considerations, there may be different numbers. For example, a tandem instructor is supposed to ride the aircraft down at an altitude that an STP student and their instructors could exit safely on a reserve. An experienced jumper with a sub-100-square-foot crossbraced canopy is going to be making a different decision than a highly experienced CReW dawg.

What will you do with your helmet and or goggles?

Have you thought that you might have to leave gear in the aircraft? Could you safely do a hop and pop without goggles or a helmet on?

Is your gear ready to skydive?

Of course it is, because we jump at Spaceland and no one should be boarding the aircraft without gear that is tightened down and ready to jump.

Can you get your own seat belt off, and at what altitude should you remove it?

As a tandem instructor, mine stays on higher than the usual 1500 AGL. Speaking of seat belt, consider its location and how you’ve got it attached. Will it keep you restrained and prevent you from causing injury to others in the event of a forced landing? Ideally it should be around you (in an Otter/Skyvan with side benches) or connected to your harness as close to your center of mass as possible and have the shortest run to its floor or wall attachment point (straddle benches/floor seating).

Who makes the call to exit?

The pilot is of course the final authority over all aircraft-related things including if it’s safe or permissible to exit. That said, the pilot’s workload goes up exponentially in an emergency and disturbing him/her at this time might not be the best course of action. Instead, be as ready as possible to exit or be prepared for a forced landing. If the pilot wants jumpers to exit, he/she will inform them after taking care of the immediate emergency and its associated workload. Trust me, we’d rather land empty when things are going wrong, but we will consider whether it’s safer for the jumpers to stay or not.

Who should you listen to in the airplane?

Usually the pilot will communicate through one jumper, often the person sitting behind the co-pilot position. Ideally this should be an instructor or other highly experienced jumper who can remain calm and relay instructions clearly. Everyone else should keep quiet, listen, and obey without question. There’s plenty of time for discussion after everyone lands; now is not the time.

How will you exit?

Will you remember to not overload the rear of the airplane, and to keep the exit orderly? How much separation is needed if everyone is taking no more than a 5-second delay? I can’t think of very many situations where anything other than solo exits would be advisable for anyone other than students or tandems. Climbouts are going to increase the danger to everyone, so don’t do them. Freefall is not recommended, so exit separation can be kept to a minimum since freefall drift won’t be a factor. Keep in mind if the issue is the loss of an engine, the aircraft may very well be descending and the pilot may want the aircraft emptied as quickly as is safely possible.

Where will you land?

This is something locals should have a pretty good idea of; we spend so much time in the aircraft on the climb to altitude, and we should spend some of it looking outside for the options we have for off landings. Your pilots have. Your safest option may be an off landing even if you think you can just barely make it back to the DZ. If it is back at the drop zone, remember that the pilot may be trying to return there in an airplane that has no power to perform a go around and avoid you if you make the mistake of crossing the runway at a low altitude. Follow our runway crossing guidelines in all situations (do not fly over the runway under 1,000 feet if aircraft are using it or approaching).

I think the jumpers at Spaceland have a great chance of responding properly to a problem since we have some of the best training and resources in the sport, period. I also think we have some of the best aircraft in the industry and I trust every one of them; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t fly them or jump out of them. That said, if you haven’t thought of YOUR answer to the questions above, maybe you should take a few moments to do so.

I guarantee your pilots have…..

Keep Learning with Facebook!

As a current or former student in our Skydiver Training Program here at Spaceland, you have access to our skydiving students group on Facebook. This group is a ton of fun! You’ll find everything from freefall and canopy control questions to gear inquiries, discussions of who’s jumping on a particular day, Spaceland event announcements, and what crazy exit people want to try on their post-graduate dives.

We keep this group focused on safety/training and skydiving, so the signal to noise ratio is pretty good. Unlike many corners of social media, this group is a valuable use of your time for continuing education, support, and skydiving photos/videos.

Many of our highly experienced jumpers and instructors keep in touch with this group to offer advice and answer questions, so know the advice you get here will be of high quality and in line with your training. It’s a great digital bonfire for all jumpers, new and experienced! So grab a beer and let’s chat. 🙂 What questions do you have about skydiving safety and training?

www.facebook.com/groups/spacelandstudents/

Flying the Hill: Basics

Skydiving: The "Hill"
Skydiving: The “Hill”

You’ve probably heard skydivers talk about the “hill” and “flying the hill” when discussing exits from powered aircraft flying horizontally. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, let’s define it! The hill is that transition period between your leaving the aircraft and reaching terminal vertical velocity. When you exit, you are initially traveling horizontally just like the aircraft from which you exited. Gravity works quickly to accelerate you towards the planet, however, and your horizontal velocity quickly decelerates (due to wind resistance) to zero relative to the air mass through which you fall.

While you are on the hill (in that transitional state), there are two reasons why flying there is different from flying at terminal velocity. The first is that due to your initially horizontal movement, airflow over your body isn’t coming from below–it’s coming from the front of the aircraft, 90 degrees to the ground (we call this the relative wind and it comes from the direction the aircraft is moving towards). So if you’re thinking of freefall as something you only do relative to the ground or the horizon, your thinking is 90 degrees wrong as you leave the plane and funnels/unintentional flips often occur. Only when you reach terminal velocity are you correct. Think of freefall and flying as something you do relative to where the wind is coming from, and you’ll be right all the time. 🙂

The second reason why the hill is tough is that initially, you don’t have quite as much airflow over your body as you will at terminal velocity. The plane is usually going a little slower than belly-down freefall speeds (the differential is much bigger for freefly speeds). So any inputs you give (legs out, dipping a knee, etc.) won’t seem to do quite as much until you reach terminal velocity. You might hear skydivers say things like “the hill is mushy” when talking about how this feels.

Diving exit
This diver is doing a great job presenting his belly to the relative wind (coming from the front of the plane). Note that his right side is much higher than his left.

Learning to fly well on the hill is quite challenging for one simple reason: You get so little time to practice it! You only get about 10 seconds of hill time before you reach terminal velocity at standard belly speeds. So while you get little enough time to practice freefall as it is (maybe 60 seconds depending on your exit and deployment altitudes), only a small fraction of that already short time is spent on the hill. It’s a challenge within an already big challenge!

So let’s look at some hill flying concepts to get started on meeting that challenge! For this article, we’ll focus everything on belly-fly exits and assume we are exiting from a left-side door aircraft such as a Twin Otter or Caravan.

Presentation

Proper presentation of your body to the relative wind is key to the success of any exit, solo or linked. Good hill flying starts with good presentation; you want to be oriented to the relative wind (forward towards the nose of the plane) exactly the way you eventually want to be oriented to the ground. If you are doing a poised floater exit, for example, you’ll step off the plane with your head up to the sky, knees below, and belly forward towards the prop, perpendicular to the ground. If you change nothing about your body position, you’ll gradually transition to a stable belly-to-earth orientation with your head pointed the same direction the plane was traveling.

When a skydiver unintentionally flips, flops, and flails on exit, the reason is almost always poor presentation. Usually the problem is that the skydiver exits with a literal belly-to-earth orientation, but this means he/she is presenting his/her side or feet/knees to the relative wind coming from the prop. There’s a reason we don’t teach students to fly on their sides–it’s hard! It’s kind of like trying to balance a knife on a table by its blade instead of just laying it flat.

Divers and floaters
This shows examples of good floating presentation and less-than-perfect diver presentation. The floater has his belly squarely into the relative wind coming from the front of the plane. The diver is flat to the horizon, presenting his knees and feet to the relative wind. Flying in a stand out the door isn’t easy, especially if you’re not ready for it!

When floaters flail, the problem is usually that they did not get their left sides up and away from the plane quickly enough to present their bellies/chests to the relative wind, so they are essentially flying with their left sides into the wind. To help avoid this, turn your body to stand in the door with your left side slightly further from the plane than your right side; this will get some wind on your chest and belly. Consider standing just on your right foot and trailing your left foot away from the plane a little to get your hips even more squarely into the wind. Now you’re ready for success! On exit, step strongly away from the plane, leading with your left side and keeping your chest and belly into the wind.

When divers flail, usually they are diving out with a belly-to-earth mindset, which presents their right sides to the relative wind. To get your belly into the wind as a diver, you have to have the right side of your body higher than your left. That means launching off your left foot with your body twisted a little to raise your right hip and get wind on the front of your pelvis and belly, and raising your right shoulder/arm/elbow to get wind on the front of your chest.

When belly flying, put the front of your hips/pelvis into the relative wind wherever it may be (depending on the aircraft), and the rest of you will usually follow! Visualize this before your jump; this helps performance significantly.

It’s All Relative

Now that we know how to exit in a stable position from inside and outside the plane, let’s think about staying close to others on the hill. So we can, you know, turn points and stuff. 🙂 This is where things get familiar (yay!), because the physics of staying relative to other skydivers don’t change on the hill. The challenge of staying relative is slightly one of physics because of the lower airspeed we mentioned earlier, but it’s mostly one of perspective.

Flat diving exit
This diver is diving with her belly to the ground, not to the relative wind. The air is hitting her right side, making it very likely that she’ll barrel roll instead of flying smoothly down the hill. If her right side were much higher than her left, her belly would be into the wind.

Mostly, we just have to remember that while we are on the hill, we should throw the horizon and ground out the window, because they are fixed references in a changing world. Don’t try to keep up with the changes by counting seconds out the door, especially since early floaters/divers will have different times out the door. Instead, look at where you are relative to where you want to go and put your mind into hyperdrive.

Lock onto your target like a fighter pilot and see what needs to happen. See that the distance may be increasing between you and your target in terms of altitude, or lateral distance, and catch that before those inches or feet of separation become tens of yards or hundreds of feet. See that you are just a little low or high relative to your target, and fix the levels before you have to perform hero moves to get there. It’s very common for new skydivers to just lock down a body position out the door and try to survive the exit so they can make it to freefall, but the hill is a fun, fluid place to fly because it’s even more of a challenge than terminal velocity.

Caveat: Never, in any skydive, lock onto a target so hard that you forget what else is around, because lack of awareness of others around you can lead to other problems. Lock on in the sense that that’s where you’re going and you’re tuned in to what you need to do to get there, but always, ALWAYS maintain situational awareness.

A great friend and teammate of mine loves a quote that’s really appropriate here: “You can only make a hero play when you’re out of position.” The key to flying relative to others on the hill is to see quickly when your position is worsening and fix it before it takes a hero to get back. Awareness guides skill, and both come with experience.

Competition Perspective

When doing 10-way speed years ago, then as now it’s all about the exit and hill flying. The best teams are building 10-ways from a no-show (all-divers) exit in 10 seconds or less, and on the best jumps in 8 seconds or less. Our team captain (Roger Nelson, founder of Skydive Chicago and a super awesome 10-way competitor) would tell us that if you look at your target (assuming that your target is stable!) and see backpacks, you’re a diver. If you see bellies, you’re a floater.

This gives you an idea of the body positions you need to get into to reach your target. See your target, see what you have to do relative to the target, feel the wind on your body, and use it to fly where you want to go. It sounds simple, but we all know it isn’t! 😉 Start with good presentation that puts you on the same plane as your target, follow that with awareness of what needs to be done, and close the gap with the techniques you’ve already learned to get closer to your target.

You might have noticed that we have spent no time on actual skills of body flight, such as legs out to go forward, sideslide technique, etc. Why? Well, those skills are all the same on the hill as they are at terminal; the physics don’t change. What changes on the hill is just your perspective relative to the horizon; it’s all a head game. As a licensed jumper, you have already demonstrated that you know what it takes to go forward, back, up, and down relative to a target. So take that knowledge and apply good presentation and quick-thinking awareness to it, and you’re a hill-flying rockstar. 🙂

Skydiving Currency: Use it or Lose It! 

Ah, wintertime. We’re lucky enough here at Spaceland-Houston to have jumpable temperatures year-round, but cooler days and holidays often result in many of us taking a bit of a break from jumping this time of year. This break can result in a lack of currency, which is an additional risk factor for injury in skydiving. No one wants that!

If you are a licensed jumper, but you haven’t jumped in however many days your license level requires for currency, you will have to complete ground training and/or a recurrency jump with a coach or instructor to demonstrate survival skills before you can skydive here unsupervised. If you’re not yet licensed, you’ll need to jump every 30 days to avoid a recurrency jump.

As you already know, skydiving is a very technical sport. Taking a lot of time away from it means our brains aren’t thinking about jumping as much, and our bodies aren’t going through the motions. Our ability to recall the details of how to skydive safely decreases over time, as does our knowledge of anything else! And then there is the additional risk with very long layoffs that equipment or safe skydiving procedures may have evolved during our absence from the sport, and thus recurrency training will be critical to safety.

Sometimes people feel recurrency jumps are money grabs (and they aren’t shy about telling us!), but this has nothing to do with money and everything to do with safety. Uncurrent skydivers are at higher risk of injuring themselves and those around them, and no drop zone wants that additional risk in their skies. Our currency requirements are those recommended by the United States Parachute Association, with additional requirements for C/D license holders after years of layoff time.

Currency requirements vary by your license level, with higher license levels requiring less frequent recurrency training than lower levels. We all learned about currency requirements as students, but it’s easy to forget them. So here they are from our policies and the United States Parachute Association Skydiver’s Information Manual (as of January 2015):

License Held/Last Item Completed Time since last jump/item Must do or repeat
Tandem level 2 30+ days Tandem level 2 (TL2) must be done 30 days or less before ground school and Skydiver Training Program (STP) level 1
Ground School 30+ days Ground school must be done 30 days or less before STP level 1. Must repeat TL2 and do a ground refresher course before STP1.
Solo STP student (no license) 30+ days STP-15 or last passing dive flow
A license 60+ days Coach jump
A license 90+ days STP-15
B license 90+ days Coach jump
B license 180+ days STP-15
C license 180+ days Coach jump
C license 2+ years STP-15
D license 180+ days Coach jump
D license 3+ years STP-15

Please note: If your last jump wasn’t done here at Spaceland, we will need to see your logbook to verify the date and place of your last jump, and the signature of the experienced jumper who witnessed your jump. Don’t leave home without it!

Rigs vs. Doors

Recently, one of our licensed jumpers took it upon himself to remind us all about keeping our rigs away from the edges of the aircraft door when rotating out to a floater exit. It’s a great reminder for all of us, because it’s far too easy to get too comfortable and complacent about safety aspects such as this when we’re focusing on a crazy new exit or type of skydive. The trick is to never be complacent!

Why is it important to keep your rig off the door? There are a couple of big reasons, and they are both major safety concerns.

  1. Contacting the door with your rig on climbout can knock your flaps open and even your pins loose, potentially resulting in a horseshoe malfunction or immediate premature deployment of your main or reserve. This has implications for your safety as well as that of the jumpers in your group, any jumpers still in the aircraft, the aircraft itself, and the pilot. A prematurely deploying canopy can rip you off the aircraft and knock your buddies off the plane as well. Entanglements and injuries are possible. Not only that, but a parachute deploying off the aircraft door could also go over the tail, causing damage to the tail and potentially crashing it. This is more of a risk in the Caravan than with the Otter, but neither is immune (and other aircraft with low tails are also at higher risk).
  2. Contacting the door with your rig can damage your rig, especially if there are any sharp sheet metal edges or hinges. Damage could range from a cosmetic scuff on the material to a cut that needs rigger repair to return it to airworthy status. Your rig is a lifesaving device; treat it as such and protect it at all times!

So back to floater exit technique: The wrong way to turn out for a floater exit is whatever way risks scraping your rig on the edge of the door; the right way is to keep your rig towards the center of the door as you rotate out to a floater position. For example, if you’re floating near the front of the door on a left-door aircraft, pivot clockwise as you climb out to float to keep your rig away from the front edge of the door. If you’re rear floating, pivot counter-clockwise to keep your rig off the rear edge of the door.

If you’re in the center of front and rear floaters, it doesn’t matter which way you turn but your front floater will be experiencing more prop blast, so he/she might appreciate it if you rotate your rig toward the rear so you don’t knock them off the plane. 🙂

Keep an eye out on jumpers practicing exits in the mockups; chances are good that you’ll see someone turning the wrong way on climbout before too long. Help them out by reminding them to keep rigs to the center of the door; the life you save could be your own!

Think about protecting your rig on every exit; not just floater exits. See #7 in this article on hop-and-pop safety for more thoughts on keeping your rig clear of the door for other types of exits. And always, always do a thorough gear check before gearing up and before exiting.

Blue skies and fly safe!

Skydiver Training Tip: What If You Have to Repeat a Dive?

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Let’s face it: Skydiving isn’t easy, especially when you’re just starting the sport. You may be a natural at freefall, but struggle with canopy patterns or landing, or vice versa. Or you may be nervous enough to have trouble getting out of the plane at all.

The important thing to remember here is that many highly skilled skydivers had trouble with at least one aspect of skydiving when they were learning to fly. (My issue was landing patterns; what’s yours?) Hey, if every bit of skydiving was easy to pick up right away, we’d all get bored and do something else! I’ve known quite a few world-class skydivers who initially couldn’t force themselves to exit at all, or who battled bad landings, or who had trouble staying stable. They were able to get through it and excel, and so will you!

Also, remember that a dive that has to be repeated isn’t a waste; it still counts towards your total number of jumps needed for your license.

“With the right attitude, you probably learned more from a jump that did not go as planned than you would have if it had gone perfectly,” adds instructor Hank Prewitt. “You will have plenty of jumps that do not go as planned (during and after training), but as long as everybody is safe and you learn something, it is a good job.”

When your instructor utters those words you were hoping not to hear: “Let’s try that dive flow again,” don’t despair. Instead, run down this list of tips and make sure you’re fully prepared, physically and mentally, to repeat that level and knock it out of the park.

  1. Make sure you are physically ready for this jump. Learning to skydive isn’t easy even if you’re in top shape, so trying to fly when you’re not in top shape is a detriment you don’t need right now. Consider that if you’re feeling sick or exhausted (or both), you won’t perform at your best, and is skydiving really something you want to take on in a compromised state? If you’re overly tired from an all-nighter at work or play, or if you’ve got a cold or worse, consider taking a break for a couple of hours or waiting for another day when you’re healthy. If you’re hungry or dehydrated, take care of those physical needs before you get ready to fly again. Make sure your body’s taken care of so your mind won’t be distracted by physical needs or problems.
  2. Study the dive flow again as often as you need to memorize it. If you can’t remember what to do when, you definitely won’t be thinking of how to do it with proper technique.
  3. Take some quiet time to relax and visualize the skydive. Visualize the good parts of your previous dives, and fill in anything that needs improvement with visualization of proper technique. Don’t replay mistakes in your head, or you’re more likely to make them again.
  4. Practice, practice, practice. Walk through the freefall and canopy flows as realistically as possible, and ask your instructor to help make sure you’re doing it right. Definitely practice even if you’ll be leaving for the day and doing the jump later; this way you’ll have the right information and visuals in your head to consider in the day(s) between then and your actual jump. If you’re battling with a particular freefall skill, your instructor may even suggest that you practice that skill in a wind tunnel for a few minutes before your next jump.
  5. Put yourself in the right frame of mind to succeed. If you’re nervous and fidgety, find someplace quiet to sit for a few minutes, breathe, relax, and focus on good visuals of good performance. You got this. 🙂 If you’ve had trouble with forgetting things, study until you’re fully prepared. If you’re angry about repeating the dive or about something that happened outside of skydiving, take a few minutes to sit someplace quiet and put that out of your mind so you can focus on the jump. Listen to the tips your instructors give you on mentally preparing to skydive, because getting in the right frame of mind to fly well is just as important as a good gear check.

With all that preparation under your belt, you’ll be ready to rock that next training jump!

Skydiver Training Tip: Cheat Sheet!

Are you one of those people who knocks standardized tests out of the park without half trying, or do you tend to need some quality study time to ace them? Regardless of your test performance proclivities, keep one thing in mind regarding your skydiving training tests: These are definitely tests you don’t want to fail, because this knowledge could literally save your life!

Your Skydive Spaceland Skydiver Training Program (STP) manual will tell you everything you need to know to pass the quizzes you need to complete before each STP dive flow. But sometimes you might want a different study perspective, and the USPA Skydiver’s Information Manual (SIM) can help!

The manual includes everything the United States Parachute Association requires and recommends for skydivers doing various activities, from basic training to wingsuiting and high-performance canopy flight. As a skydiving student, you’ll want to focus on sections 2 (basic safety requirements, or BSRs) and 4 (Integrated Student Program).

Section 4, in particular, has quizzes for each category of training dive along with the answers, which will give you a very good idea of what we’ll ask you to know before each training dive at Spaceland. It’s a bit like a cheat sheet, but we’ll call it a study guide. 🙂 Review the applicable categories before you arrive at Spaceland for your training, and you’ll be extra prepared for success! The SIM is also available for mobile devices, so check it out in your mobile device’s store if you want to review it on the go.

And if you really want to be the star student, ask your instructor (or another instructor if your previous instructor is busy) to review your next dive flow with you at Spaceland before you leave for the day. Ask for physical practice on the creeper board and/or malfunction junction so you have a clear idea of what’s expected of you for that next jump. That way, you can spend some of the time between that practice and your next jump reviewing a clear, accurate visualization of your dive flow objectives and be ready to knock it way out of the park on your next jump day.

As always, if you have any questions about what you read in the SIM or what you practiced earlier, just ask one of our highly capable STP instructors!

Skydive Spaceland Owner Gives Back to our Military By Flying Wounded Veterans

Do you ever wonder what our pretty King Air with the in-flight door is up to? Spaceland’s owner Steve Boyd, Sr., has teamed with the Veterans Airlift Command (VAC) to provide free transportation in his King Air to our wounded veterans. So far, he has completed four missions including trips to North Carolina, Florida, and two to Colorado.

The Colorado missions were extra special to Boyd, as he and co-captain Rabbitt Staib were included in the closing ceremonies of the Chris Kyle “Seal on the Mountain” Memorial Hunt.

“We were privileged to transport Jeff Kyle and SSG Bruce Heckendorn back to Texas,” said Boyd. (Heckendorn had an IED blast under his vehicle blow out his knees, rip his Achilles tendon, and cause mild traumatic brain injury.) “Also going on were the Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, from which we transported SSG Brian Boone and his family back to San Antonio.”

Want to help our veterans too?

Steve is looking for any corporate sponsors who are interested in contributing, tax-free, to help us fly more missions for our wounded veterans. Please email him at steve@skydivespaceland.com if you’d like to learn more and get involved!

Boyd also transported Army SGT Cory Muzzy and his wife on a VAC mission. Muzzy lost both legs and is now legally blind from a training accident at Fort Bragg on February 21, 2014, in which an explosion killed one service member and wounded seven others. Muzzy has endured many surgeries and continues to recover and remain positive, and he has big plans for his future. He and his wife went home to San Antonio for the first time since the accident courtesy of Boyd and the Veterans Airlift Command.

Finally, Boyd flew 7th Special Forces Group SFC Mario Pinilla from San Antonio back home to Tampa after Pinilla had maintenance done on four different orthopedic devices. Pinilla was injured on three separate occasions during his deployments to Afghanistan. On August 20, 2008, he was shot in the left hip and the bullet exited through his lower back. He was put in a medically induced coma and had a two-liter blood transfusion. He was eventually sent to the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa, Fla., where he spent three months in a wheelchair and had to learn how to walk again. Pinilla was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during that mission.

“Being able to give back to these heroes who have given so much is truly an amazing experience,” says Boyd, who continues to fly VAC missions (two more are scheduled for November so far).
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Right-Now Rigging 

Oh no! You want to jump this weekend, but your reserve is out of date! Can this tragedy be averted so you can get some quality sky time? The answer is: Maybe!

Our full-time rigging loft may very well be able to accommodate your right-now repack request, depending on their current workload. If you need your repack completed in less than a week, please give our riggers a call at 281-369-3337 to see if your rig can fit in their schedule. And next time, you might want to check our online repack calculator to plan further ahead. 😉

Our rush and rig storage fees have recently changed, so make sure to check out our current rigging work order form online for the latest rates. Also, it’s a great idea to print this form ahead of time, fill it out, and drop it off with your rig to save time at Spaceland. If you need to find this form in the future, just see the “experienced” link on our website (which describes all Spaceland policies for experienced jumpers) and scroll to the Rigging section.

Did you know that our loft is full-service? We can handle routine assemblies, repacks of square/round reserves in sport and bailout rigs, many customizations/upgrades, and nearly any repair your gear or jumpsuit may require from harness repair and canopy patches to jumpsuit knee/butt pads. If you want it, there’s a good chance we can do it! Check with our riggers on-site or call them at 281-369-3337 to discuss the work you need done.

Keep your riggers happy! Remember: No shoes in the loft!

Special Dives: Low/High Pulls, Toy Dives, Pond Swooping

Low/High Pulls

  • High openings and low passes must take into account the number of airplanes flying, other skydiving activities, and canopy descent rate. We cannot always accommodate low passes or high openings.
  • We cannot guarantee that low-pass jumpers will land alone unless only one plane is flying.
  • Ensure that the aircraft is configured for your exit regardless of your exit altitude.
  • Licensed jumpers wishing to open above 5,500 feet (such as CRW or canopy flight courses) must discuss their flight plans with the drop zone manager beforehand. High-opening canopies will be assigned an airspace box where they must stay until 1,500 feet.
  • Jumpers wishing to open at full altitude must exit last. No exceptions.
  • Jumpers straying outside their airspace box will not be allowed further high openings.
  • High pullers must declare their intended pull altitude to the pilot and the entire load.

Pond Swooping

  • You must sign our pond waiver in manifest before swooping the pond.
  • Your approach and turn for your pond swoop should not encroach on aircraft operations on the runway.

Toy Dives

  • Toy dives are jumps on which you bring an unnecessary toy or piece of equipment (anything from a Barbie doll to a tube or inflatable raft) that can become separated from you.
  • No weighted spaceballs. No exceptions. The risk to people and property on the ground is too great.
  • Before taking your toy for a skydive, you must brief the pilot of the plane you’ll be jumping on what you are doing. If the aircraft is hot-turning and you can’t reach the pilot, speak with the drop zone manager or manifest, who can then communicate with the pilot.
  • If you have a heavy item, your jump run/freefall area must be over an open field in case you drop the toy (the pilot will help).
  • Have a plan for deploying your parachute safely while keeping control of the toy.
  • Take toys on skydives at your own risk.

Landing/Canopy Safety

Canopy Safety

  • Wind indicators: Landing direction arrow, flags, wind sock. The landing direction arrow is an air-traffic control device that sets the landing direction on the north side of the runway.
  • Know the landing direction before takeoff, and check the landing direction indicator (LDI) north of the runway after you open and check canopy in case winds have changed.
  • Follow the landing direction indicator when landing north of the runway. No exceptions even if the wind is light/variable and not in perfect agreement with the LDI at that moment. If you would prefer a different direction, land south of the runway. This keeps all skydivers moving in the same direction, which is better for seeing and avoiding other traffic than mixed landing directions. Think of landing here as landing on a runway at a controlled airport rather than landing in an open field.
  • Pattern altitude begins at 1,000 feet.
  • Fly left-hand patterns north of the runway unless safety requires otherwise.
  • Below pattern altitude, do not fly over primary landing areas (i.e., 1 or 2) where you don’t plan to land. Think of these areas as vertical columns for different jumpers up to 1,000 feet, not just lines on the ground. The point is to keep higher-performance traffic in area 1 completely and safely separated from slower canopies in area 2, so keep your pattern over the area where you intend to land without overlapping other areas.
  • No S turns, spiraling, or sashaying to lose altitude in the pattern (below 1,000 feet).
  • Tandem instructors always have right of way.
  • After landing, remain vigilant for other canopies you may need to dodge by turning around and looking up line of flight and all around until all other canopies have landed.
  • Do not kite your canopy while others are landing nearby.
  • Please see this map of each drop zone’s landing areas and read their policies.

Runway(s)

  • Under canopy, do not fly over the runway or its approaches below 1,000 feet when aircraft are approaching/taking off/taxiing.
  • When under canopy, avoid holding off the ends of the runway where aircraft take off and approach.
  • When crossing the runway on foot, stop and look both ways first. If an aircraft is on landing approach or taxiing, stop well back from the runway and take a knee or squat down to show the pilot you see him/her. NEVER cross in front of an aircraft on the runway.
  • The pavement is not the only runway; we also land on the grass runway next to it. Stay well back from the runway when landing or waiting for an aircraft to pass.

Aircraft/Loading Area Safety and Policies

Winds Aloft

This information is posted daily on the board near the aircraft mockups. Also check out our weather page…

Loading Area

  • We use loading area 1 (north of the hangar) on cold starts/after fueling, and loading area 2 (northwest corner of hangar) on hot turns.
  • Please be in the loading area on the 5-minute call.
  • You must be fully geared up, ready to jump, before entering the loading area. No loose leg straps or gearing up in the loading area.
  • No smoking in the loading area.
  • When the airplane pulls up, be lined up ready to board. Don’t make the aircraft wait for you.
  • Please observe our planned boarding/exit order

Runway(s)

  • Under canopy, do not fly over the runway or its approaches below 1,000 feet when aircraft are approaching/taking off/taxiing.
  • When under canopy, avoid holding off the ends of the runway where aircraft take off and approach.
  • When crossing the runway on foot, stop and look both ways first. If an aircraft is on landing approach or taxiing, stop well back from the runway and take a knee or squat down to show the pilot you see him/her. NEVER cross in front of an aircraft on the runway.
  • The pavement is not the only runway; we also land on the grass runway next to it. Stay well back from the runway when landing or waiting for an aircraft to pass.

Aircraft Safety

  • Please avoid all aircraft operations areas except when boarding the aircraft.
  • NO GUM on the airplanes!
  • 4 on the floor MAX in the Caravan! No more than 4 jumpers aft of the benches during boarding, taxi, takeoff, or landing.
  • Avoid all propellers, moving or otherwise, at all times.
  • The person sitting behind the copilot seat must be prepared and willing to relay commands from the pilot to jumpers in an emergency situation.
  • Helmets must be buckled on heads for takeoff and landing (until 1,500 feet). Large video helmets can be buckled to seat belts.
  • Seatbelts on until at least 1,500 feet. Open door at 1,500 feet in hot weather after checking your handles and verifying seat belts are off jumpers near the door first. Also check for a thumbs up from any instructors near the pilot. DO NOT slam the door open or closed! (More info/video on operating an Otter/Caravan door…)
  • The Skyvan door must be operated by two people.
  • Close door around 7,000 feet in hot weather (or lower if it’s too cold) to allow students to easily talk with instructors.
  • Get a gear check before exit!

Check 3s before exit:

  • 3 rings
  • 3 buckles
  • 3 handles
  • 3 accessories (helmet, goggles, altimeter)

Exit Procedures

  • First ensure the door and exit lights are dark before jump run (have not been left on from the previous flight).
  • Red light turns on: Open door and check for other aircraft traffic/spot. Request course corrections using left/right toggle switches at your own risk. DO NOT exit on the red light! If you exit before the green light, you may be grounded.
    Green light turns on: Exit.
  • If you are in the Caravan, ensure the green light is on AND aircraft is not climbing before exit (to avoid striking the tail).
  • Before observing other jumpers exit on low passes, full-altitude jumpers should remove their seat belts, check their handles, and prepare for exit in case of emergency.