Awesome letter in Parachutist about mandatory AAD at some Dz

[Taylor610 0]

I don't see how jump numbers change the validity of the question. He's leading to a good point. Banning hook turns would prevent far more fatalities than requiring AADs, assuming equal number of jumpers at each DZ and all else being equal.
***

I never said one over the other, I said it is the DZO's (O stands for OWNER!!) choice. Make AAD a mandatory equipment requirement, ban hook turns, it is all their choice. If you don't want to jump there don't, but don't whine about them being safety nazis. They are only protecting their liabilities and welfare.

[Darius11 12]

Yes they have the right and they make more money on tandems so they have the right to kick off experienced jumpers when they like. Having the right doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to have polices like that.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[lawrocket 3]

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As it was suggested in the letter people who do disagree with the "Safety Nazis" should take there business some where else and hopefully they will.

It's one thing to say, "I'll take my business somewhere else." It's quite another to say you hope that others will. Are you looking to kill off the AAD? If so, why would you have a problem with people jumping where AAD's are required?

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Any one who thinks skydiving should be 100% safe has lost touch with the sport. Some of us are adrenaline junkies I understand some are not but some are.

Nobody can legitimately claim to think that skydiving can be 100 percent safe. But, there are ways that it can be safer.

- Do you have the same problems with training progrssions and licenses? I mean, why should a DZO require any training at all?
- What about minimum pull altitudes? Is there a problem with that?
- What about separate landing areas for students, swoopers, etc.? Why can't a student land with the swoopers?

All of these are aimed at making the sport safer. Not 100% safe, but "safer." Whats' the difference between any of these things and an AAD requirement? A CYPRES ain't designed to go off at 2k. And if you have the money to be jumping, sporting the money for an AAD, while not easy, is not exactly out of the question.

Also, your statement about the 100% safety fails to take into account Booth's Law #2, which is, "The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant." Skydivers will find ways around AADs to kill themselves.

Most importantly (I haven't read the letter) you'll not find DZOs bitching about stuff like this. Most of the time, decisions are made on the basis of what I call, "real fucking life." If a couple of guys decide to go into a low-pull contest, it'd be nice for that DZO not to have to clean up a mess. You'll probably not find anyone who had had to clean up the mess think the same thing.

Any business owner gos through a series of decisions on the basis of risk/utility. A DZO who used to allow people to jump without AADs may later decide, on the basis of some problems, to require AADs. It's probably happened more often than it hasn't happened. There is a cause for this effect - think about it.

Some find that problems get worse, and institute other policies. Back in late 2004, Perris instituted a policy where is someone had a CYPRES save due to loss of altitude awareness, that person was grounded for 30 days. I'll bet Dan BC had his reasons for that.


Anyone who bitches about DZ policies, find another DZ. There's no DZ around that you are satisfied with? Well, open your own.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Taylor610 0]

It's easy to pick a side and blast away. But most skydivers realize that the real-world solution lies in the middle. Common sense is generally a better choice than an extreme position on either side.
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Again, my point is simple, if I own the DZ and I make a rule based on what I decide as being a good business decision, does that make me a safety nazi? NO! It makes me a DZO that has to make, sometimes unpopular decisions because on liabilities and/or any jumpers one moment of complete brain lock (something we have little or no control over). One more time, a decision based on Business, made by the owner to try and help keep them open and operating. If you don't like the menu, eat somewhere else.

[Broke 0]

That is rather close minded. Just because I haven't invested more money into the sport dosen't mean that I don't take safety into consideration.

When I buy my own gear it will have an AAD in it. While I never intend to have to use it, it is still a nice added bit of insurance.

What is an AAD? It is a man maid device that runs on batteries which may or may not work at the time you need it to. It's function is to be a last ditch effort to put some nylon over our heads before we burn in.

Now will skydiving ever bee 100% safe.
Nope not by a long shot. The plane is not guarenteed to get off the ground, or even make it to altitude safely. While parachutes are constructed of materials that want to inflate and open we are never guarenteed that they will do so. Will a reserve properly inflate? Probibly, but I don't want to find out. If you do everything right, exit the plane safely, have an uneventful freefall, pull on time, and observe a good landing pattern up untill the moment that you flare on time are you sill guarenteed to live. Nope not a chance. Once you have gathered up your parachute and are trudging across the landing area are you garenteed that someone wont collide with you.

Divot your source for all things Hillbilly.
Anvil Brother 84
SCR 14192

[pilotdave 0]

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Yes they have the right and they make more money on tandems so they have the right to kick off experienced jumpers when they like. Having the right doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to have polices like that.

Totally agree. Stuff like that sucks. But that's a totally different issue. Making extra money by focusing the business on tandems is very different from setting rules to prevent fatalities (whether or not the choice of rules is effective).

Dave

[Taylor610 0]

That is rather close minded. Just because I haven't invested more money into the sport dosen't mean that I don't take safety into consideration.
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No it was not close minded. It was a nice way of saying that you do not have enough experience (based on what you have listed) to get into a detailed discussion about hook turn injury/fatality compared to injury/fatality caused by things that are associated with the use of an AAD and the cost of things that are caused by that incidents that an AAD would have prevented.

[lawrocket 3]

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Yes they have the right and they make more money on tandems so they have the right to kick off experienced jumpers when they like. Having the right doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to have polices like that.

Totally agree. Stuff like that sucks. But that's a totally different issue. Making extra money by focusing the business on tandems is very different from setting rules to prevent fatalities (whether or not the choice of rules is effective).

Dave

True. And fun jumpers know the tandem mills and will avoid them. There was a legendary tandem-mill in Vegas, right? Fun jumpers stayed away in droves. That didn't bother the DZO, though I understand it is no longer in business.

It sucked for those who wanted to fun jump there, but word spread about Mesquite. Pretty standard way business is run, really. Find a niche. Market to it.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[davelepka 4]

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Any one who thinks skydiving should be 100% safe has lost touch with the sport.

Thats fucking retarded. The worst thing about skydiving is that I, or one of my friends, may end up maimed or dead by the end of the day. If you could eliminate that 100%, skydiving would be better. Absolutley.

[Broke 0]

OK, I can kind of understand where you are coming from, Wally.

However just because I havent been around as long as a whole lot of other people dosen't mean that I haven't been reading up on things. I am a morbid individual, and the first thing I do is check the incidednt pages of the parachutist, and reading the incident threds on this web board. I try to learn from what is published, so that hopefully I will not make the same mistakes others have before me.

That being said will I make a mistake here or there, probibly. The question is how costly is the mistake that I will make?

Some things I have learned thus far.
If there is a more expericed jumper saying that he won't jump in the current winds, I should probibly follow suit. It is better to be bored on the ground at the DZ, then to be bored in a hospital bed.
There is no shame in making a long walk if you feel that traffic over a certain landing area is heavy.
Allways keep your head on a swivel. You are the only one who can truly watch out for your safety.
When landing land in the dirrection that everyone else is landing in. I have seen this one first hand. It is unfortunate.

Divot your source for all things Hillbilly.
Anvil Brother 84
SCR 14192

[grue 1]

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When I got into the sport I was in a low income bracket and could barely afford to scrape enough cash together to by a second hand rig. My progression in the sport was often stunted by financial constraints. If having an AAD had been mandatory I would probably have given up the sport as the extra cash was simply not available. I realize people will respond with "you can't afford to not have one", but the truth was that I could not afford one. I have ran into many people who have had the same dilemna. Mandatory for student rigs is fine but individual liscenced jumpers should be left to decide for themselves or the sport will lose a significant amount of members due to excess startup costs.

Richards

Exactly

The "you cannot afford not to have one" argument is one made by people who have a lot more income than they think they do. In my case, if I buy an AAD, it's gonna be very reassuring to have in my rig, since it won't leave the ground for a couple of months.

"You can get a used one for a few hundred dollars!"

If I had a few hundred dollars to spend, I'd have more jumps. I'd rather jump more without an AAD than not jump and have one in my rig. I'm going to have to work my ass off to make enough money to hit 200 jumps before I move back to Australia, because if I don't, I'll be hanging up the rig until I have the money for an AAD.

cavete terrae.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

I have a Cypres2 in my primary rig and I know why it's there (to protect myself from freefall collisions). But it's not all that uncommon if you were to check my rig after I've landed on a given jump to notice that the unit will have been turned off. Why you may ask? Well it's likely that I just came off of some sort of hop n' pop and/or high pull where I was concentrating on my canopy flight and swooping with an ultra high performance canopy and I surely don't want to run the risk of having the AAD misfire while I'm in the process of diving my canopy. The real danger with this behavior is that if I do get on a normal load and forget to do a gear check (and check the status of the AAD), then a freefall collision could be my demise.

As long as DZOs are prepared to allow people doing dedicated swooping jumps (where we are at risk of a misfire) and CReW dawgs to not have to jump with an AAD turned on, then I'm not worried about DZOs asking me to have one in my rig as it's already there.

PS: What's all this talk of banning hook turns? If you define a hook turn as "what happens after you've done something stupid under canopy and now need a ride in an ambulance" then yes I'm all in favor of banning hook turns. But if you define a hook turn as some form of high performance canopy flight, then some of you people are going to piss off a lot of us swoopers who while we know what we do is not safe, we kind of know what we're doing even though there are no guarantees that we can't mess up.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[billvon 3,031]

>The worst thing about skydiving is that I, or one of my friends, may
>end up maimed or dead by the end of the day. If you could eliminate
>that 100%, skydiving would be better. Absolutley.

You can, but I suspect you would not like what skydiving would become. Would you really like skydiving as much if all skydiving were indoors in wind tunnels with safety harnesses attached to the walls?

[Broke 0]

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You can, but I suspect you would not like what skydiving would become. Would you really like skydiving as much if all skydiving were indoors in wind tunnels with safety harnesses attached to the walls?

The fun thing about wind tunnels is they don't have to report injuries or so I hear.

Divot your source for all things Hillbilly.
Anvil Brother 84
SCR 14192

[pilotdave 0]

I'd say the tunnel I've been in (orlando) is much more anal than most dropzones, although in different ways. They don't care if you're willing to get hurt, they won't let you get in and start doing flips until you've got a ton of tunnel time. They won't let you wear whatever you want, and they won't even let you get in and out without help until, well, they still help me out every time so I dunno!

No matter how much you want to get in that tunnel with no helmet, they're going to require one. Anyone want to complain about that?

Dave

[Tenshi 0]

Here's a whuffo quesion for you. Please do answer me though.

Can't you just turn your AAD off? I mean there isn't like a inspector at the dropzone who checks people's gear everytime they jump is there?

If it's a money thing...just stick in an AAD that's out of date and swich it off.

[waltappel 1]

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No it was not close minded. It was a nice way of saying that you do not have enough experience (based on what you have listed) to get into a detailed discussion about hook turn injury/fatality compared to injury/fatality caused by things that are associated with the use of an AAD and the cost of things that are caused by that incidents that an AAD would have prevented.

Now here I must disagree. Anyone, whether they have even made a parachute jump or not can look at the numbers and do a simple analysis. That's something that seems to be missing among jumpers. Analysis of the data that is out there. It's far easier to rely on emotion and speculation (i.e., mental laziness).

As to your point about DZOs having every right to make the rules at their DZ. I don't think anyone has disputed that. It's just the way it is and really needs no discussion.

Luckily for jumpers these days, there are more DZs competing for our business and it's really easily in large metropolitan areas to go to another DZ if we don't like the way one is run.

Walt

[Broke 0]

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Here's a whuffo quesion for you. Please do answer me though.

Can't you just turn your AAD off? I mean there isn't like a inspector at the dropzone who checks people's gear everytime they jump is there?

If it's a money thing...just stick in an AAD that's out of date and swich it off.

I think this question has been answered previously. While it is not manditory as per USPA/FAA guidelines to have an AAD in your rig. If you have one it must be maintained according to the manufacturers instructions. Ie if a rigger were to install an expired cypress he could potentially be in deep dodo.

Divot your source for all things Hillbilly.
Anvil Brother 84
SCR 14192

[billvon 3,031]

>The fun thing about wind tunnels is they don't have to report injuries . . . .

?? Neither do drop zones. Fortunately, the above-mentioned harnesses will prevent inadvertent contact with the walls or other jumpers.

[Taylor610 0]

As to your point about DZOs having every right to make the rules at their DZ. I don't think anyone has disputed that. It's just the way it is and really needs no discussion.
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Yes, you are disputing that. By saying that the DZO's are "Safety Nazis" if they say "this rule applies at my DZ", whether it is about wing loading about AAD usage or about Hook turns. They own the business and have every right to make those decisions. Why would you want to label someone a "nazi" (negative connotation) just because they are making a business decision, especially when you have other places to go. Just go there. Don't sit around and whine. If they are such bad people you should be glad they have given you the incentive you need to make that decision.
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Jason, I don't mean to sound like I am being disrespectful to anyone in this sport. If you had ever been around me you would know that I used to tell all of my "I's", "if you want to learn something, go jump with a student." I was very open minded about what we did at my DZ and sometimes it caused problems. I was also very big into "high performance landings". That forced me into being very big into high performance landing training. I did the old "walk and talk" with a ton of people too. I don't know, maybe someone learned something, maybe they didn't, but I believed in training, not regulating. The point here is simple, the same as you chose where you jump, the DZO can chose what SOPs his business is going to be run by. If it sinks, it is his fault, if it succeeds it is his benefit. If he saves one life, because he made a rule that maybe you think was harsh, interfering with your rights, well good for him and I am sorry your feelings were hurt by the rule he made.

[Darius11 12]

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What about minimum pull altitudes? Is there a problem with that?

This is a good questions cause maybe you will see what my main point is.

With my navigator my normal pull altitude would be 3K feet and I would have no problem taking to my minimum at that time of 2500 feet (B license).

Now I am flying a Saber 2 and I have a C license (minimum is 2000 Feet), under this canopy I would go for silver if I get below 2K. and my normal dep alt is 3500 feet Why? Simple my Saber 2 takes 700-1200 feet to open.


My point: I have to be smart enough to first open higher to learn the new canopy then plan accordingly. I and every one else should be responsible for there own actions. Making more rules or restrictions is not the key.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[Andy9o8 2]

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Can't you just turn your AAD off? I mean there isn't like a inspector at the dropzone who checks people's gear everytime they jump is there?

Correct; in the US, licensed jumpers are not officially "supervised" when they do their gear checks (although most of us tend to do eyeball checks of each other's gear, especially in the plane). (Such tighter supervision does occur more frequently in some other countries.) But even so, (most) DZO's are not idiots, either. They know that leaving an AAD off can be done; so if they have a mandatory AAD policy, they just might check rigs at the plane to make sure the AADs are on.

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If it's a money thing...just stick in an AAD that's out of date and swich it off.

Not possible under current technology. Most AADs are integrated into the reserve pack-job, which must be done by a rigger; and riggers aren't allowed to install out of date or non-functional AADs into reserves. (I suppose technically you could do this with your own rig if you had your rigger's ticket...but now we're getting ridiculous...)

[Tenshi 0]

ok.

[waltappel 1]

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Yes, you are disputing that. By saying that the DZO's are "Safety Nazis" if they say "this rule applies at my DZ", whether it is about wing loading about AAD usage or about Hook turns. They own the business and have every right to make those decisions. Why would you want to label someone a "nazi" (negative connotation) just because they are making a business decision, especially when you have other places to go. Just go there. Don't sit around and whine. If they are such bad people you should be glad they have given you the incentive you need to make that decision.

I don't think I ever used the term "safety nazi" and definitely did not say anything about DZOs. My problem was with one staff member who was not even an instructor. I think he is only a coach. I don't even know that the DZO is aware that he was terrorizing a jumper with his BS.

But let's say I *do* consider a DZO who requires AADs even on non-students to be a safety nazi. I don't dispute his right to be a safety nazi. He can do that as much as he wants--it's *his* playground, his rules.

In this case, I strongly recommended that the jumper go to several other area DZs and find one that doesn't have a resident jerk blowing smoke out of his ass about AADs. It was really a case of a staff guy running off business and it may well have been contrary to the DZO's way of thinking.

Seems like this whole discussion really gets under your skin--like you've had it a bunch of times before.

Walt

[billvon 3,031]

>Now I am flying a Saber 2 and I have a C license (minimum is 2000
>Feet), under this canopy I would go for silver if I get below 2K. and
> my normal dep alt is 3500 feet Why? Simple my Saber 2 takes 700
>-1200 feet to open.

Right. Now say someone likes pulling at 1500 feet, and they get such a canopy. They continue doing it because nothing bad has ever happened; their main has always opened before impact. If you were the DZO at the airport they jumped, would you:

a) accept their statement that "hey, I know the risks, and I'm an adult - leave me the fuck alone" or

b) tell them to pull higher or they were grounded?

Like I said, common sense has a big role to play (usually the biggest) in safety. Rules come about as a backup to them, because common sense isn't always common.