Safety

With safety day now over, and a couple of bounces that occurred, I think that I should say something on the matter.

I attended the safety day meetings at Elsinore on March 10Th. They went well. At first they went over some statistics of previous years accidents. For me, that was a bit boring. Rather than going over any specific incidents, it was just statistics and more statistics. What I was hoping for was some specifics: what happened, how it happened, and what could have been done to prevent it. Specifically those accidents that happened on the DZ. I know they don't like to talk about them, keep them hush hush, but they need to be known. I want to learn from others' mistakes, to become safer myself.

With that said, there is a portion of the safety meetings that i really pulled a lot from. Ryan S. gave a nice presentation on landing patterns. Yes, it is mainly review, but well needed for a lot of people. This seems to be where most fatalities are occurring in the past couple of years. Prior to this, i was thinking, that no matter what, I should do a downwind, cross, and final. but, with the presentation, I learned that it would be acceptable to join the pattern, from a long spot. I know, it is common sense, but, for some reason, it just was not clicking in my brain.
An example of something I did just that day that I could have used that information. I was on a longer spot, and was headed into the wind . I did not want to just go strait in, so I started to implement a quick landing pattern. I don't know why, my brain just told me to do it, and I did it. .. What ended up happening from it, Right as i started on the toggle, I then realized that i was already cutting it close to making it back, continued into a 360 turn. Looked around, and now had 2 choices: 1. to land on the roof of the industrial building, or 2. land in that building's parking lot, with trees and such on either side. Of course, I went for the parking lot, and had an uneventful landing. My little stunt scared the ST&A. As I was walking back to the DZ, I saw him on the street corner, looking for me, with a worried look on his face. I got the nice little speech, and it was done with.
It is funny how the information I needed, was just a couple hours away, in a meeting. I learned a valuable lesson, and hopefully those reading this can learn from that lesson as well!

Spencer, one of the pilots, and fellow jumpers did a presentation on aircraft safety. He went over the way his GPS spotting works, and how he figures everything into the equation, such as upper winds. It was very useful information. And thanks to spence, i will never stand on the second step of the loading ramp waiting to get on board...Don't want that unspent fuel on my rig!

Please everyone, be careful out there, keep your head on a swivel, and watch where you are going. I have heard of way too many canopy collisions. Luckily, the ones involving the people that I know personally occurred at a high enough altitude that EP's were able to save lives.
On that note, make sure, in a canopy collision/wrap that you communicate with each other. I have heard a story where 2 canopies collided, wrapped, and *what i have are rumors/second hand info* reserve was pulled before cutaway, no communication, and both pilots had rsl's still connected. Luckily, all was OK, both survived.