Late turns?!

[hackish 8]

Back on topic if we can. There is considerable grey area around a late turn. I'm sure the OP's instructor can give good advice that would be appropriate to the skill level of the person asking the question.

I personally have found even from my first jump that student rigs respond very well to small adjustments. If you're continually tuning your flight path so you stay on heading to achieve the desired landing point then I can't see it causing any big problems. Having said that I wouldn't suggest doing a 180 degree turn within 50' of the ground.

As you progress and begin moving toward sport canopies they become more responsive and sensitive to inputs and symmetry during the flare. So some equipment and some experience levels low turns are definitely a big no-no.

-Michael

[porpoishead 8]

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Back on topic if we can. There is considerable grey area around a late turn. I'm sure the OP's instructor can give good advice that would be appropriate to the skill level of the person asking the question.

I personally have found even from my first jump that student rigs respond very well to small adjustments. If you're continually tuning your flight path so you stay on heading to achieve the desired landing point then I can't see it causing any big problems. Having said that I wouldn't suggest doing a 180 degree turn within 50' of the ground.

As you progress and begin moving toward sport canopies they become more responsive and sensitive to inputs and symmetry during the flare. So some equipment and some experience levels low turns are definitely a big no-no.

-Michael

dude youre not really in a position to even know if you see anything wrong with someone elses situation. youre not even licensed yet.

all canopies respond to input, and unless youre jumping military rounds, theyre all sport canopies.

and what grey area are you referring to?

if you want a friend feed any animal
Perry Farrell

[phoenixlpr 0]

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and what grey area are you referring to?

I guess between the "Don't do it again!" and the ambulance ride.

[popsjumper 2]

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and what grey area are you referring to?

I guess between the "Don't do it again!" and the ambulance ride.

I can't help it...

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[hackish 8]

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and what grey area are you referring to?

I'm talking about giving the person advice appropriate to their skill level. By giving gentle inputs and especially on a low wind day I'm able to turn the student canopy to pretty much wherever I want at reasonably low altitudes.

I've since moved to a sabre 210 which I've found more sensitive - again advice appropriate to the skill level. I have successfully made low corrections that some would classify as a "late turn" and still had a nice stand-up landing. Fall winds here tend to be fairly gusty.

Unfortunately most of the hard and fast rules more experienced jumpers tend to give are based on the canopies they fly. Of course you can't bury the toggles on a sporty canopy but even trying to make a student rig rise on a flare has proved difficult (uphill landing).

For those giving advice to students I'd encourage them to occasionally hop on a student rig. Going back to them even from a tame sport canopy like the sabre 210 feels like I'm flying the goodyear blimp. At least 1/2 of my jumps were 25m from the target but some students have trouble getting it into the same field. Again advice has to be tailored to what the person can do.

Finally, I don't think porpoise's comments are fair. Maybe my solo license isn't good in your country but it does not mean that I don't have anything valuable to add. I'm sure someone with 2000 jumps could make fun of your 120. I wonder how many people looking down their noses can say that they've recently flown the type of equipment the advice is being asked of?

-Michael

[Remster 30]

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Unfortunately most of the hard and fast rules more experienced jumpers tend to give are based on the canopies they fly.

No, we're not. We're basing it on seeing student jumpers flying mantas, navigators and the likes break limbs or die because someone told them they can turn low.

We're also basing it on people having been told that "giving gentle inputs and especially on a low wind day I'm able to turn the student canopy to pretty much wherever I want at reasonably low altitudes" is reasonable and end up cutting accross a pattern and creating colisions on landing.

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I'm sure someone with 2000 jumps could make fun of your 120.

No one is making fun of anyone because of their jump numbers. You need to get real...

Remster

[billvon 2,990]

>Unfortunately most of the hard and fast rules more experienced
>jumpers tend to give are based on the canopies they fly.

Personally, I base my "hard and fast" rules on what works for my students jumping Navigator 240's and my friends who jump Pilot 188's. People who jump 2:1 loaded Xaos-27's get a different set of advice.

>I wonder how many people looking down their noses can say that
>they've recently flown the type of equipment the advice is being asked of?

Like, say, tandem mains?

[hackish 8]

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Unfortunately most of the hard and fast rules more experienced jumpers tend to give are based on the canopies they fly.

No, we're not. We're basing it on seeing student jumpers flying mantas, navigators and the likes break limbs or die because someone told them they can turn low.

We're also basing it on people having been told that "giving gentle inputs and especially on a low wind day I'm able to turn the student canopy to pretty much wherever I want at reasonably low altitudes" is reasonable and end up cutting accross a pattern and creating colisions on landing.

The original question was about making a turn into the wind at a low altitude. It had nothing to do with landing patterns or traffic - a completely different topic and one I'm trying to address.

If you re-read what I've said it's not advocating anything but making sure the answers are appropriate for the situation and what the student is capable of. I'm not saying "go ahead and rip it around at 50'" but I have had to make low adjustments to avoid hazards and have been able to complete them safely.

-Michael

[kelpdiver 2]

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The original question was about making a turn into the wind at a low altitude. It had nothing to do with landing patterns or traffic - a completely different topic and one I'm trying to address.

It's hard to divorce those subjects from each other. If you make a low turn into the landing pattern in traffic, someone else may have to make a late turn on final to avoid you. Or...if someone didn't pay attention to the pattern, that might be why you had to make the late turn. Almost all other obstacles are non moving and should be easily avoidable higher up, but jumper traffic is a different beast.

People manage to kill themselves on any type of parachute. That's what they're trying to tell you.

[DSE 5]

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As you progress and begin moving toward sport canopies they become more responsive and sensitive to inputs and symmetry during the flare. So some equipment and some experience levels low turns are definitely a big no-no.

-Michael

Low turns are more responsible for more incidents than anything else, ranging from newbies to very experienced jumpers, small to very large canopies. I'd submit you've been lucky turning low thus far, but luck does eventually run out. Hopefully you won't have already developed a habit when it does.
If you are experienced and/or have been trained in flat turns and braked turns, canopies and pilots can turn a 180 at 300' (altitude mentioned by OP), and everyone should be able to turn a 90 at that altitude. But it's not something you're going to learn on DZ.com, students should consult an instructor that knows the canopy, winds of the day, and ability of the student at the time of the question being asked.

[porpoishead 8]

sorry bud, didnt mean to hurt your feelings.

what I was trying to get across to you was that, there is no substitute for expierience in this business.

with my 120+ jumps I have very limited expierience. with your 20+ and no license you have next to none.

my limited expierience tells me that you have gotten lucky a few times and pulled a low turn out of your ass, to avoid obstacles or land uphill or into the wind etc. situations that if you had any expierience at all you wouldn't find yourself in, because you would know better.

LUCK is no substitute for expierience.

my very limited expierience also serves me to know that a bigger canopy has a much longer recovery arch, then say a smaller canopy, due to line lengths. what that translates into for my limited expierience is longer distance to travel to get back under the canopy, then allow the canopy to surge forward and resume full flight to provide me with the full flare range of the wing for a safe landing.

factoring out LUCK it's simple, distance = time = altitude. making low turns with little or no expierience you are simply rolling the dice.

then you have traffic to consider, which my limited expierience (at our DZ 90% of the time 20+ canopies at a time) tells me to find my spot in the pattern, fly a predictable pattern, land in the same direction as dictated. regardless of wind direction.
low turns in the pattern are unpredictable and can screw-up others behind you that may be on final.

also I will continue to learn from and heed the warning of the instructors, coaches, canopy pilots with thousands of jumps, because my limited expierience tells me that they're not just telling you not to make low turns for shits and giggles. also common sense tells me these guys can fly a canopy big or small, I would be retarded to think otherwise.

good LUCK with your progression in this sport, and getting your first license.

if you want a friend feed any animal
Perry Farrell

[hackish 8]

I generally complete my last turn to final at about 100' of altitude - a little higher with the sabre since it flies quicker. By the time the landing flare comes I've already had a good 5-10 seconds at full flight. Sometimes the turn ends as low as 50' but I still have lots of time to get back up to full flight before landing.

Twice now I've had to make deviations at the last second. Just yesterday I got hit by a gust of wind as I was flaring to land. The correction just consisted of squeezing a little more on one toggle to correct - a flare turn about 45 degrees and still a good stand-up landing. The other time was when an excited wuffo ran directly across my path and it was just a slight flare turn so I didn't plow into them.

I don't know if this is all called luck. My instructors have always said that I can be more aggressive under canopy as I'm "very conservative". As long as they don't have anything critical to say I'll just keep on doing it.

-Michael

[DSE 5]

There is a *huge* difference between making exceptionally minor corrections (such as modifying a landing because a dog stepped in your path), adjusting for a gust, and making a 90 degree turn down low.
Additionally, a hard 90 at 100' can be significantly too low if you aren't very clear on what you're doing and how you're doing it. In fact, an aggressively hard 90 at 100' could almost be a guarantee to break a lot of bones.
One of the _first_ things you should have learned in your AFF is how much altitude may be lost in a turn. Low turns also generate speed. Some folks/most students aren't equipped to handle a lot of speed at landing time.
The bigger point is, because it works for _you_ doesn't mean it will work for everyone.

[porpoishead 8]

excited wuffo...... and the classic good ole gust of wind while I was flaring. awesome!!!!

right on bro, be safe out there and learn something.

if you want a friend feed any animal
Perry Farrell

[hackish 8]

I've tried datalogging my turns but haven't been able to see a huge increase in rate of descent while turning. I wish I had a small enough GPS to log the actual forward rate of speed. Hard to tell how fast you're actually moving relative to the ground.

The gust of wind was scary because it caught me at about a 45 degree angle and made me swing backward a fair bit. I was on final and at about 15'. Not fun when you're preparing to touch down and suddenly you go from forward flight to swinging backwards. Still landed it OK. Instructor said I was lucky it didn't deflate the chute. After that jumping was over for the day.

-Michael

[DSE 5]

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I've tried datalogging my turns but haven't been able to see a huge increase in rate of descent while turning. I wish I had a small enough GPS to log the actual forward rate of speed. Hard to tell how fast you're actually moving relative to the ground.

-Michael

Hopefully you're not accepting the lack of data as an indicator that a turn isn't costing you air.
While I'm sure you're not turning this aggressively, bear in mind that a deep 180 can eat up 400' depending on a number of factors.
My Altitrack coupled with Jumptrack _very_ clearly shows both snappy toggle turns and deep carving turns. I'm sure a Neptune shows much the same.
Just be careful out there. At 26 jumps....you still don't know what you don't know.

[hackish 8]

Sorry I should have stated that I'm talking about flat turns on final. Reason I was curious was to see how the sabre 210 compared with the PD280 and the tutor 9-cell (280 maybe?). The PD flies a million times nicer than the tutor but I can't really put a finger on why.

The sabre runs a lot quicker but the glide ratio seems about the same or even better. One other thing is that while the turn itself does not appear to be losing much altitude the resumption of full flight after that does. Perhaps the sink rate during the turn is less than the glide slope?

Carving definitely eats up the altitude. For my "A" they required front riser turns above 2000' and although I've been doing these for some time on the slower student canopies a complete 180 (hook turn maybe) loses exactly 50% the altitude of the sabre. A GPS would be good too because it's sometimes hard to match the data up with all the different things I do from 4k to 0.

Sorry to get so far off topic. I'll maintain what I originally said that the OP needs to talk to his instructor. For me smooth turns at altitudes lower than his 300' have worked very well and my instructors have never had a problem with it. What worked for me some here call "luck" and may not work for any other students.

-Michael

[MarkM 0]

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Unfortunately most of the hard and fast rules more experienced jumpers tend to give are based on the canopies they fly. Of course you can't bury the toggles on a sporty canopy but even trying to make a student rig rise on a flare has proved difficult (uphill landing).

Really? What's a student canopy? A Falcon 300 in Indiana, a Triathlon 260 in Florida or a Sabre2 170 in Chicago?

Maybe the "more experienced jumpers" understand more of what's possibly out there so they give advice that err's on the side of caution.

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Finally, I don't think porpoise's comments are fair. Maybe my solo license isn't good in your country but it does not mean that I don't have anything valuable to add.

The problem is that at 20 jumps and 1 year in the sport you really don't know much of anything, and what's worse, you're probably in that stage where you don't know what you don't know.

[Oneironaut 0]

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Agreed. Physics is BS and completely irrelevant to skydiving.

You just made me shoot tea out of my nose.

"The knack to flying is to fall and miss the ground"
-Douglas Adams

[buba07 0]

Hi erveryone,

Thanks for all the advice and didn't want to open a can of worms.

I spoke in detail to my instructors and a few more jumps in I feel great! Stayed on my feet today at landing (for the first time!) and felt great, also in low wind made some turns at about 150 in order to hit a good patch!

Realise its always best to look to direct instructors first, but thanks for the input anyway.

Cheers.

Thanks

Freefallphil.