Skydivers vs. Gliders?

Bumper,
Please don't take anything Derek says as the truth.
He is very anti, well everything! He has a big problem
with 'the menace of parachutist'
I fly from a club where we share an airfield with parachutist's.

We have a set agrement with them and set the airfield
up in the morning, and sometimes this does have to
be changed in during the day. There has been one fatal
accident a few years ago. But it was a accident. And
we have all learnt from it. Other than that we get
on very well. There is also another club very close
by and I have flown there and all seems well with the
set up.
As for Derek saying they don't talk to us! They do!!
I think its just a case of Derek does not listen!
I have heard gliders call up and ask if they are active,
and the drop zone are more that happy to talk to them.
There are also many gliders that don't and are still
flying in the drop zones, this is not helping the gliding
movement and the case for the CAA making us all use
transponders, even better! Sorry got a bit side tracked!

Regards
Damien
Derek, Please don't waste your or my time by replying
to this post!




At 17:12 11 July 2006, Derek Copeland wrote:
People who throw themselves out of perfectly serviceable
aeroplanes at 15,000ft and then plummet almost vertically
at over 100mph for 14,000ft are an absolute menace.
If you are flying a glider or a light aircraft, you
will almost certainly not see them coming and they
have only very limited manoeuvrability to avoid you,
even if they do see you. There have been a number of
fatal collisions and very near misses between skydivers
and gliders in the UK and Europe.

One of the problems in the UK is that the Skydivers
won't talk to the gliding movement and guard their
'drop zones' like dogs in a manger, even though they
are often not being used.

If you can get them to agree to set times and to inform
pilots by radio or other means when they are about
to jump, there may not be too much of a problem. I
have flown at a site in Spain where the two sports
do liase and there didn't seem to be a problem combining
them there.

Derek Copeland

At 16:12 11 July 2006, Bumper wrote:
A Skydiving company has approached airport management,
wanting to open a
skydiving operation at Minden-Tahoe Airport, Nevada,
USA. Minden, as you're
probably aware, is considered by many to be one of
the true soaring Mecca,
with superb soaring conditions, beautiful scenery and
much more. It also has
a mix of powered aircraft traffic including business
jets, with over half
the airport operations being glider related.

There are a number of other airports in the US, and
probably elsewhere, that
support both gliders and skydivers, though I'm not
sure they have the same
number of operations was KMEV (60 to 70K per year).
Safety, is a primary
concern, as is the potential for driving away soaring
pilots.

If you have any experience, good or bad, in sharing
an airport with
skydivers, please post.

all the best,
--
bumper ZZ
'Dare to be different . . . circle in sink.'

Damien is a member of a Gliding Club that shares an
airfield with major parachuting organisations, and
as such is in a very different situation to me who
flies from a gliding only site. I find it very difficult
to find out if parachuting is taking place or not.
In the absence of any information to the contrary,
I have to assume that the drop zones are active, which
cuts out lots of useful airspace in our crowded little
country. The fact that you cannot get a radio reply
from a parachute site is unfortunately no guarantee
that they are not operating.

Derek Copeland

At 15:12 12 July 2006, Damien Dyer wrote:
Bumper,
Please don't take anything Derek says as the truth.
He is very anti, well everything! He has a big problem
with 'the menace of parachutist'
I fly from a club where we share an airfield with parachutist's.

We have a set agrement with them and set the airfield
up in the morning, and sometimes this does have to
be changed in during the day. There has been one fatal
accident a few years ago. But it was a accident. And
we have all learnt from it. Other than that we get
on very well. There is also another club very close
by and I have flown there and all seems well with the
set up.
As for Derek saying they don't talk to us! They do!!
I think its just a case of Derek does not listen!
I have heard gliders call up and ask if they are active,
and the drop zone are more that happy to talk to them.
There are also many gliders that don't and are still
flying in the drop zones, this is not helping the gliding
movement and the case for the CAA making us all use
transponders, even better! Sorry got a bit side tracked!

Regards
Damien

Here in lake Elsinore California we coexist with a skydive operation.

The airport manager has defined his drop zone so that we have our side
of the airport with dirt runway and do all our operations outside of
his drop zone except when we are at the Glider IP and in the pattern to
land. We use a common frequency to annouce our intentions at the
airport for tow planes and gliders, and the skydive planes annouce
their activities as well as 2 minutes to drop, and drop.

It seems as though general aviation passing through the area have no
clue and many times I have seen aircraft passing through the drop zone
as the skydivers have jumped.
The skydive pilot is constantly warning GA traffic to stay clear of the
drop zone.

I have not seen any problem with it, as its just a minor inconvenience
for us gliders to go around his zone that is centered over the airport.
Typically you dont ussually fly above the airport anyway as the lift is
on higher land above or near the ridge or by some other hills near by
away from the drop zone.

So far(9 months of Sundays) I have only seen 3 sky divers faceplant in
the LZ, and that was WITH a prefectly good chute......he missjudged his
Kamakazzi style landing I guess. They like to spiral in at high speed
and flare at the last second.

I have also heard of the France skydiver that dropped through cloud and
impacted a gliders wing thermalling under that cloud......wing
disintegrated, as did the skydiver....the pilot landed with his chute.

Ray

I have also heard of the France skydiver that dropped through cloud and
impacted a gliders wing thermalling under that cloud......wing
disintegrated, as did the skydiver....the pilot landed with his chute.


A similar thing happened at a glider/jump club close to my gliding club near
Oxford.

I understand that the gliding operations and the jump operations, agree a
divide zone for each to operate in.
Only there appeared to be a misunderstanding on one occasion and the agreed
zone ended up with a fatal overlap.

FWIW, I'm completely against mixing GA with jumping - it's just not worth
the trouble.

Gail