dbonevt

I appreciate your concern, and I am not taking the presentation lightly. I am both a pilot and skydiver, so I know both worlds pretty well. The presentation is not a "how to play nice with your local DZ" kind of presentation. It is more of a what is skydiving, how has it evolved, what does the equipment look like, why do people do it, etc. The "planes of skydiving" section is one part of a 2 hour presentation, and yes, I will spend a little time on flying safely around a DZ. I know the crowd very well, as I am friends with most of them. Most of them aren't even flying anymore (age), and the ones that are, are sharp enough to know where the local DZ's are and how to avoid them. There will definitely be a Q&A session, so I can spend more time on it there if anybody has any questions about flying around a DZ. Thanks for all the help! Dave

I volunteered to do a presentation to local pilots about skydiving. I was wondering if anybody had a good pic of a jumper in freefall with the airplane (preferably a twin engine) in a dive in the background. I'd love to have one in my presentation to illustrate the fact that flying jumpers isn't your everyday flying. I searched the web but came up empty. Thanks, Dave Dallas, TX

Another post from a pilot and jumper, and I was a jumper before I was a pilot… I would like to echo what another pilot poster said earlier… On final approach as a pilot, there is a lot going on, and it’s the most stressful part of the flight. There is limited visibility, limited maneuverability, and most of all, we are concentrating on the runway in front of us because that’s the only place we can land. I don’t know the specifics of this recent accident, but I heard it was at an altitude of 600 feet AGL. If that is a correct altitude and the pilot was on final approach, then I put more of the blame on the jumper. Everybody (jumpers/pilots/even spectators) knows EXACTLY where that plane is landing. There is a paved strip of land a few thousand feet long with numbers on each end of it. That’s where the plane is going to land. As jumpers, we can land just about anywhere. You cannot expect a pilot to keep track of the number of canopies in the air and the location of each. I believe it is 100% the jumper’s responsibility to stay away from the final approach path of the runway. Planes flying over the DZ at cruise (freefall) altitudes is a whole ‘nother story. I agree with a previous post that said give up now if you think you’ll ever be able to “restrict” airspace around a DZ. It won’t (and shouldn’t) happen. However, there is something that will help pilots coming out soon. The USPA is working with the FAA to figure out where ACTIVE DZ’s are operating, because aviation maps have a lot of airports marked as DZ’s even though there hasn’t been an active one there for years. Once they get that list together, they are going to be added to Jeppeson GPS databases that are put out by major manufactures. So as paper charts fade away and more pilots fly using just GPS, they will see the DZ marked on there. Sharing the airspace means pilots won’t fly low over the LZ and jumpers won’t fly over the runway. Think of a busy road with a sidewalk. You walk on the sidewalk and drive on the road. If a person gets hit on the road, it’s more his/her fault for stepping onto a busy road. If they get hit on the sidewalk, it was probably the car’s fault for leaving the road. I jumped a lot at Skydive PA with glider traffic every weekend. They had a right hand pattern to land on the runway (from the left side of the runway making all right hand turns to land) and we landed on the right side of the runway. All DZ’s I know of and have jumped at/flew into either have landing patterns to keep jumpers and pilot’s separated and usually have the standing rule for jumpers that says no canopy below 1000 feet over or crossing the runway. Lastly, I’m of the opinion nothing needs done here. 1 accident in millions of skydives and years of sharing the airspace does not necessitate more rules/regulations. Hopefully it is a wake up call to jumpers and pilots alike, and let’s all hope it never happens again. Dave Dallas, TX

What does a 4 year maint check cost for a Cypress?