Jumping Para-Commanders in high winds?

[dks13827 3]

Backing into the DZ !!! ha ha, boy do I remember that,, many, many times !!! All the young jumpers now can't relate to that one !It's funny to remember watching all the Cessna loads getting out way way upwind, and upon opening you would see 4 guys immediately turn into the wind as they backed up rapidly towards us,, ha !!! It was a very diffenent way of canopy control, looking over your shoulder until you were low enough to turn and run into the DZ, then set up your hook turn landing. Another thing is, everyone wore large, sturdy boots when jumping.

[skyjumpenfool 2]

.....and, in those days, we acually spent time learning PLF's! Forward, sideways, and most important on windy days, bacwards PLF's.

There was no 'flying patterns". You spent most of your time looking over your shoulder to see where the hell you were going???? Jumpsuits were not worn to look cool like today. We wore them to protect ourselfs from the crap we were PLFing into.

We worked very hard at spotting. How many jumpers today even check the spot on their way out the door? Back then, we looked over the spotters shoulder to make sure he/she wasn't hosing us with a poor spot.

I have fond memories of my old PC's but please, don't even get me started.....

Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

[Krip 2]

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Any other tips on dealing with higher wind landings?

I'm curious because I'm still working my way up in wind speed when it comes to jumping my Para-Commanders, which I've only jumped in the last few years.The tendency is still to bring them out only on milder wind days or in the evening.

What do you want to do? Find out how much wind you can handle until you reach your limit and break yourself.

Find out the minimum wind speed to make your PC come stright down and make that your max ws for jumping the pc.

You don't have anything to prove by jumping your pc in

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"Higher winds

unless you want to be known as the wind dummy

I told you so
.

One Jump Wonder

[Douggarr 6]

Landing a PC downwind in an accuracy meet was challenging to say the least. You had to be young and daring and somewhat stupid to jump in winds over 15-18. I didn't have a steerable reserve until about 150 jumps, and I had a non-steerable reserve ride before that. But we had those thick Paraboots and a lot of pea gravel. If you made the peas, you pretty much were okay. My rule of thumb was if I saw someone backing up while making an upwind landing on a PC -- go directly to the bar.

SCR-442, SCS-202, CCR-870, SOS-1353

[lodestar 0]

Fast Phil,
If you were the Phil SmithI remember from z-hills let me take you back some...
I remember one evening, very likely that alcohol was involved and I think in your apartment at the time, you and several others were testing the theory that you could jump on a waterbed and burst it.....there were no winds present at the time, and I don't recall whether or not the waterbed burst but I remember you,,,,yes you, standing on a dresser, leaping onto the waterbed with a classic plf landing and hollering "GERONIMO!"

Remember that ?
Tuna

[wmw999 2,439]

Fastphil isn't Phil Smith; he's a different Phil. From Houston...

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[fastphil 0]

Sorry Tuna, but Wendy's right; although I do have some alcohol/waterbed experience...

[lodestar 0]

Thanks Wendy, his avatar looks like Phil and I wasn't sure if he was one in the same...
Sorry Phil, didn't mean to confuse you any more than I am.....
Tuna

[beenthere 0]

I'm not sure where the logic of it came from, but when it got too windy for regular jumping, we would go up for cross country jumps. We didn't fly up wind and try to get back to the DZ (we could spot just fine). At the Harrington DZ KS. Dave Snyder would take us up to 7,500 get out over the DZ and we would see how far away we would land, then hitchike back. Not sure who came up with that idea, but we made several of those jumps

On regular windy days when our hair stuck out about 20 or 30 degrees, we were fairly competent at hooking our PC's & 28's onto little 10 foot wide strips of grass surrounded by the old bomber base concrete runways at Harrington. Feats that 18 & 19 year olds could pull off most of the time. If you are much older I would'nt try that anymore.

[lodestar 0]

At Z-hills one really bad rainy day, everyone was bored shitless and looking to get into trouble....three jumpers, I remember Mike Patterson being one, pestered Jeff Searles to let them jump out at low altitude into or near a big thunderhead, hoping to catch the updraft and see where it took them...Searles okayed the jump only if I would take em up...I was young and reckless so I said sure thing....but I wasn't gonna get too close to that thunderhead...
Off we went, got up to about 5 grand or so, I flew them as close as I could with the 182 (6472A) till there was significant buffeting going on....out they went...opened immediately and went laterally at about 40-50 mph estimated....hauled ass Northward from what I remember into some nearby wooded swampy areas where they walked out from.
Meantime the T-storm nailed the Hills shortly after I landed and tied the aircraft down....
A few peeps went out looking for them and eventually found them looking like drowned rats about 7 or 8 miles from the airport....
That's what they did for fun in those days....

[howardwhite 6]

Wanna see some windy PC landings?
I put a video of PC jumps at the Orange, MA, Parachute Center circa 1968 on the Jumptown Facebook page.
(You don't have to be on Facebook to see it.)

HW

[beenthere 0]

Nice videos, that brought back some memories, I had a red & black checkerboard PC with a black keyhole, had forgotten about the running around the canopy part after landing, and I think we hooked lower.

[paralola 0]

Hallelluja! Great Video, brings back memories of this young innocent days!

Always happy to fall out of a plane

[dks13827 3]

try to visualize: on a high wind day you come into the landing area at full speed going downwind !! at the last possible second to do it you do a hard cranking 180 degree turn into the wind. this will swing you out to the downwind side quite a bit, 30 to 45 degrees I would say. you then rebound and start swinging into the wind quite fast. this has the effect of negating your high downwind speed. you can then make a stand up landing with a net groundspeed that is very close to zero, not 13 - 18 mph. hooray !!

[JerryBaumchen 1,354]

Hi dks,

Well, a local jumper by the name of Danny Gorman ( RIP - not from jumping ) tried it a meet in '65.

He pounded in very hard. The next morning he could not walk, so his work-mates loaded him into the bed of pickup and drove him to work, where he claimed to have fallen ( he was an iron-worker ).

It worked and he collected Workman's Comp.

JerryBaumchen

[pchapman 279]

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Wanna see some windy PC landings?

Impressive, Howard! Jumpers going backwards at a 45 degree angle on landing approach...

I started the thread because I knew I'd meet Beatnik this past weekend and we were going to jump old gear if at all possible. Although the uppers were strong and there were some student wind holds, ground winds were I guess only gusting to 15-18 mph.

Even if being pushed backwards quickly at 200', I was happy to find that down below 30' there was enough wind shear so one usually ended up going backwards only slowly on landing, which is far more tolerable than what's in that video.

And even if one doesn't have the skills to truly hook turn a Para-Commander, one can still drive downwind and make a pivoting turn at quite a low altitude to get facing more into the wind for landing.

My limited experience from the weekend is that Para-Commanders seem to handle turbulence well, although a sudden gust could get one swinging unexpectedly? Among the ram air jumpers, enough of them were getting their canopies bounced around or giving themselves bad landings.

Beatnik & I got 7 jumps each on a variety of Para-Commander, Dactyl, double keel Dactyl, Thunderbow, and a complete UT-15 rig. I even hooked up the Dactyl backwards by accident and landed it that way. (Didn't flare but they hardly flare to begin with, and the canopy ground speed was low.)

[Jumpa 0]

oh cowboys we were. About 15 was the limit but the spotter had to be good or its an off DZ landing. Face directly into the wind and look over your shoulder to land. No hook turns to avoid ground problems or you pick up alot of speed and screw into the earth. Crushed heal to miss a chain link fence put me down long time. I still have purple spots on my hoof. Pick good days and enjoy the rides. Pack slowly and find a most georgouse girl for holding tension.... ya mon. Jumpa Montana

[poppenhager 1]

I went back thruogh my logs of 3000+PC jumps and it seems about 20% were in 20 or more mph winds.Most meets at the time did'nt stop the comp until 18 mph or more and the only reason for that was to keep from giving rejumps! I have been beat up a few times from high wind landings in over 6000 round jumps and have never had a broken bone.(hey grew up on raw milk).......POP

[paralola 0]

Pack slowly and find a most georgouse girl for holding tension.... ya mon. Jumpa Montana

Yep then packing was a pleasure.

Always happy to fall out of a plane

[wmw999 2,439]

Holding tension must be a girl thing; after awhile, I just packed my starlite without anyone holding tension but me

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[fastphil 0]

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Holding tension must be a girl thing; after awhile, I just packed my starlite without anyone holding tension but me

Wendy P.

But Wendy, you were holding yourself back if you didn't try the "I'll hold yours if you'll hold mine" line...

[dks13827 3]

wow that video is scary.... I dont remember in windy OK that many drags. I know that pulling a toggle on the ground would often collapse the canopy onto the ground, we also released one capewell !! wow !!

[SCS292 1]

First PC jump was on a borrowed PC in Austin with 20knts and on a hot day so it was heels, ass and head. The drag ended at the barbed wire fence. Fortunately it didn't do much damage and I bought the PC anyway but the guy I borrowed it from was really worried. Way better than the old cheapo and especially when the density altitude was high and you came in like a ton of bricks.

[steve1 5]

I thought I invented doing a hook turn into the wind with a P.C. I know now that lot's of people did the same thing. It sometimes saved your bacon, if done right.

Jumping in the wind wasn't always so bad. If you had a bad spot in combination with the wind, it could be deadly.

I remember one Utah jumper who was drug to death, when the winds came up all of a sudden. He may have been knocked out on landing. It wasn't always easy to open a capewell, particularly if you are already asleep.

I recall one wind jump at Kalispell, that still scares me to this day. I only had about 200 jumps at the time. Dave Tousey was with us. He had older than us, and since he had lot more jumps, we trusted his judgment.

After take off we started noticing dust everywhere on the ground. There was a lot of turbulance in the air. Roofs and tin was actually blowing off buildings. All of us had P.C.'s. I don't think I even thought about what kind of reserve I had. They were all round in those days. Mine was a 24 ft.

The pilot said he didn't want to land with us on board. I don't know if it was a cross wind landing or what.

With scared faces, we turned to Dave. With a shakey voice, I said, "What are we gonna do now, Dave?"

"Let's wait and see what the wind does," he replied.

A half hour later, the pilot said we were getting low on fuel. Dave looked out, and said the waves, on the lake didn't look quite as high as they did earlier. The decision was made to jump.

Dave made a really long spot. There were houses and power lines, everywhere surrounding the D.Z...... Luckily we all hit an open area. I remember a hook turn worked well that day.....It sure beat doing a feet, butt, head landing. I'd made lot's of those landings earlier. A motorcycle helmet kept me conscious each time. It wasn't easy being a jumper, back in the day!......

[SCS292 1]

wmw999

Holding tension must be a girl thing; after awhile, I just packed my starlite without anyone holding tension but me

Wendy P.

In '71, '72, '73, one DZ, either Angleton or Dickinson, wouldn't let you pack a cheapo or PC without someone holding tension. In V-Mills, and Cleveland, we just used a reserve as weight when no one was handy, shook it and sleeved it as fast as we could to make the next load. Made for some nice soft openings. I never packed or jumped a square so I don't know how important the tension is for them. Unfortunately back then most girls at the DZ weren't jumpers but came to keep from being left at home. I only jumped with one girl in three years and that was at V-Mills, Phyllis Wilhelm. There was a girl that jumped at Dickinson, who I think was named Jeanie, but I never was lucky enough to get on a load with her.